Moses Kagan's Aurora Borealis

Gmail appears to be having one of its periodic fainting spells, so I can't get on my account. This is at 1:03pm PST. Brutal.

Labels: gmail, Google, outage

Parag Khanna's got a provocative piece in today's NY Times magazine arguing for a new way of viewing world geopolitics.

Khanna argues that the world's balance of power has already shifted from the so-called "unipolar moment" (total US dominance) to a multi-power competition between the United States, Europe and China, with other countries cooperating or defecting from the main powers' alliance group as dictated by their own self-interest.

Students of history will know that multi-polar arrangements tend to be both interesting and extremely dangerous, since they involve shifting alliance patterns and complex power calculations. Like a game of Risk brought to life, the wrong strategic moves can quickly lead to isolation and / or conflict. And, Khanna argues, the sooner we Americans wake up to the new reality, the sooner we can re-shape our foreign and domestic policies to account for (and profit from) this new state of affairs.

Whether or not Khanna is right about where we're headed, his piece makes for a fascinating read.

Labels: balance of power, geopolitics, Khanna

My very good friend Conor Neu, with whom I had dinner last night, has been writing a very interesting blog for some time - and I had missed it until now. Check out Conor's musings on real estate, finance, internet domains and other random issues at greentaxi.com.

Labels: Conor Neu, Greentaxi

So I spent a bunch of time over New Years speaking with Greg Chase, one of my best friends and the guy who gave Mike Gravel a chance in New Hampshire. Greg's current obsession is with figuring out the best way to get the United States off its oil dependency, both for economic and environmental reasons.

Greg's a good physicist, a former oil trader, a current hedge-fund manager, and the kind of person who tends to drill very deeply into issues he's interested in, reading everything in sight. So I thought you might enjoy getting a quick, bullet-pointed summary of Greg's preferred energy policy:

- Importing foreign oil is killing our economy because it contributes to a permanent trade deficit.

- We need to import oil because we've chosen to build our society around automobiles which can only use one form of energy: gasoline.

- To get us off oil, we need a massive gas tax, as high as $2-3 per gallon to reduce consumption in the near term and incent people to work on alternatives.

- We also need to make major investments in improving battery technology.

- The way to get us off oil is through plugin electric cars, because plugin cars are powered by the electrical grid, which is capable of taking power from a wide array of sources.

- Using the grid will allow us to power our cars using energy from whichever source is cheapest and least environmentally harmful (choosing from among coal, nuclear, natural gas, wind, etc.)

I'm personally persuaded. What do you think?

Labels: econom, energy, greenhouse, policy

As many of my friends will know, I have been working with a small team over the last six months to develop Cazt, a secure new system for organizing, viewing and sharing audition videos over the internet.

Cazt differs from competitive sites in several ways, the most important of which is that it is free for producers, directors and casting directors. Cazt saves these busy people time and money by eliminating endless rounds of burning and messengering DVDs around Hollywood.

How does Cazt make money? Actors who audition for roles in participating projects are given the opportunity to:
1. Watch their audition videos, and
2. Customize online resumes into which their videos will be embedded. That way, actors ensure that they put their best foot (feet?) forward for the people who will decide whether they get the job.

Actor resumes are also available on the wider internet (minus the confidential audition videos!), so they can serve as professional home pages.

All of this value is available to actors for the low price of $14.99 per month, which is considerably less than most online resume services.

If you or someone you know is casting a tv show, movie, commercial, industrial film, get in touch by e-mailing me or commenting below.

Labels: Cazt, internet