Tim Oren's Due Diligence

Or All The Seas Without Oysters

One of the fun things about about chasing AGW links, as a balance to all the heated rhetoric and wretched code, is wandering into corners of science I would never otherwise encounter. Today's find is a study by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute investigating the effects of increased CO2 levels on shell-building sea creatures. (Some fraction of CO2 dissolves into water, creating the relatively weak carbonic acid, which nonetheless has the potential to screw up deposition of shells built of calcium, which is normally dissolved by acids.)

The study used gaseous CO2 concentrations well beyond those currently observed to see what might happen if we keep dumping it into the atmosphere. It seems that some of the critters did in fact have trouble growing their shells under extreme conditions, but others liked it just fine and even grew heavier shells. Us crab and lobster munchers are in good shape, you oyster and uni fans, maybe not so much.

In a way, this isn't very surprising. It's well known that most organisms have collections of genes that are normally repressed and inactive, but might become active depending on conditions in the environment or internal to the individual. The critters we eat for seafood dinner have been around in more-or-less similar forms for much longer than Homo saps. Their evolutionary history could very easily include atmospheric and climatic conditions well beyond our current experience, and they may have genes evolved during those periods sitting around ready to become active at need. Might be some interesting research possibilities there when sequencing gets even cheaper.

(Found via Open Markets.)

Back From Vacation

We took advantage of the Easter break at my wife's school for a short trip to the Carson Valley area in Nevada, for some backroading, geocaching, and looking at potential retirement locations. It was still too early for wildflower hikes there; there were even a few snow flurries.

For the Easter weekend we came back over the Sierra to the Shenandoah Valley wine region near Plymouth, which we've visited a number of times since the early 90s. Big reds, no tasting fees, and no tour buses. We did well on the wine front (Story, Bray), and the wildflowers were out in profusion in the west Sierra foothills.

We drove back on Monday, our usual move to miss the Sunday ski slope traffic, and spent yesterday shoving the travel mess back into its usual spots. This afternoon we'll be attending a Tax Day Tea Party in San Mateo. Field report to follow.

The Roving Eye: Adios, Sam Zell, Cookies On, The Banana Republics of America

First over the cliff. I suppose I should take a victory lap after the Tribune Company's bankruptcy, having forecast financial crisis for the industry, but that one was just too easy to see. Sam Zell thought he was buying a cash cow, and got money pit instead. I don't envy the bankruptcy trustees trying to figure out how to get money out of the 'assets'. Well, maybe the Cubbies. Meanwhile, Bloomberg surveys other cheap credit media LBOs that could end up in trouble.

Saving Mother's. To the relief of at least some, Kelloggs buys the assets of Mother's Cookies out of bankruptcy. The famous circus animal cookies are way too sweet for me on most days, but they are just the thing to revive the blood sugar levels after a heavy day trail building.

Bio-feedback you've never considered. Someone in Japan thinks you can gain insight into your creative moments by seeing how your legs shake. If you do too, consider this gadget. There's an online community so you can compare your twitches with others'...

Never mind the Constitution, the state is hungry. California's Democrat legislature prepares an end-run of the requirement of a 2/3 vote to raise taxes. The RINO governator seems ready to go along with it. Lawsuits, if not recalls and ballot propositions, are being readied if this succeeds. When I moved here from Michigan 25 years ago, I assumed I'd left behind state governments stupid enough to raise taxes in the face of a recession. Guess not. Meanwhile, it turns out the state employee retirement fund not only bet big on the housing bubble, but leveraged itself to do so, and suffered losses of greater than 100% on their principal. So will unrealistic state retirement programs be revisited, or the taxpayers soaked to make up the difference? It's not even guessing, is it? NB: If you're holding California state or municipal debt, directly or indirectly, you should get out of it. Any tax savings are not worth the risk to principal.

And speaking of Michigan. The emblematic home state of the US auto industry. I'm glad to see the bailout of the former Big Three go down. They've been attempting to fly in the face of reality for far too long. Brands that have been milked to death, a union that thinks running machinery someone else owns should be a ticket to an upper-middle class income and early retirement, and states that try to balance their capital-hostile budgets on the backs of an immobile industrial base. American workers and managers can build world-class cars and trucks and make a profit. It just takes Honda and Toyota to show it. Time to get the assets out of the hands of the Detroit clowns, labor and management and politicians. The fallout from rolling Chapter 11s may cost the treasury as much as the proposed bailout, but at the end of that process you've got reality, not another attempt to ignore it.

The Roving Eye: No - The Peacock Can't Sell, The PC Stops?, A History Of Newspaper Folly

Dropping The Internet Baton. As I speculated, NBC's revenue from online video advertising during the Olympics was pitiful. eMarketer reports the take as only $5.75 million. Via TechCrunch, which notes that Yahoo had more Olympics related page views than NBC. Ouch, that's gotta hurt!

The Good Enough Point? Ole Eichhorn notes the deceleration of improvement in laptop specs in the last few years. We're seeing a confluence of reasons: Limitations imposed by energy budgets and battery life, performance already good enough for most uses, and a lack of inspiring new applications to drive platform specs. The bleeding edge of development has shifted towards low power, more specialized mobile devices on one hand, and server-based applications on the other. As laptop technology commoditizes, one might expect a shift from specsmanship towards packaging and design, which may partly explain Apple's rising market share.

Who else remembers videotext? Valleywag is not my usual cup of tea, but in this case they've done a service with a history of the newspaper industry's misadventures online. It's not as if the papers haven't tried through the years - the article includes a screen shot from a Viewtron NAPLPS interface circa 1983. But it seemed that they walked away from that and other experiments with the same lessons that proved fatal to CompuServe: Online was a slow-growth market, not ready for real consumers, and too much or too early investment was the way to lose your money. All of which was true, until it wasn't. Unlike the online services, the newspapers thought they could deal with the change in their own time, since after all "Content is king". Except it's not, It's easily trumped by communications and community, and the industry is still in a flat spin from which it's unlikely to recover.

Didn't you always suspect this? A fake restaurant wins an award from Wine Spectator. The spoof menu and wine list contained a number of vintages that the magazine had previously trashed. Wine Spectator claims it did its diligence by making phone calls and checking online - everything except actually eating at the place. One hopes they are actually tasting the wine they review. Snark aside, I've little use for this kind of review content. Going to the wineries and checking things out personally is one of the pleasure of California that partially justifies the price tag of living here.

The Roving Eye: No Newspaper Trust, Let Our Genomes Go, A Mundane Singularity

A fundamental value problem. Jeff Nolan has a smart post on why creating an online consortium of newspapers won't solve their problems. RTWT. A newspaper is already a bundle of information of various types, a bundle whose value is breaking down. Putting together a bunch of these bundles into a super aggregation of some sort doesn't fix the fundamentally broken premise. Even creating new bundles sliced along topical lines may be problematic unless there's some fundamental rethinking: The Associated Press is such a topical bundle and it's not exactly covering itself in glory. As Jeff points out, some deeper rethinking about both the cost and product side is required.

Chocolate is love. and it's good for you, too. Put it on the healthy diet list right next to red wine. More proof that your favorite deity wants you to be happy.

Bio-nannies on the march. Our betters in the California Department of Health are taking it taking it upon themselves to send out 'cease and desist' notices to companies providing genomic marker scans direct to consumers. It's less than clear that the laws about 'diagnostic' tests apply to results intended for general information, given that there's no immediate therapeutic intent. It is clear that California state government continues to drive the innovation golden goose to other locales.

While we're discouraging investment. Ever time a US oil refinery goes down for maintenance or due to an accident, the price of gasoline and other products spikes. The refining process runs right at the edge of being a choke point in our energy supply, and any glitch affects the end supply and hence the price point. That might have something to do with the fact there have been no new refineries built here since 1976. Perhaps some fresh investment would be in order. But no, the House Democrats think we should nationalize them instead. What a fine move to send any potential expansion capital running the other way. The Democrats are economic illiterates, or just don't care.

Train travel is a luxury. Trying to turn long distance routes into an alternative to air travel is inherently flawed. Charlie Martin runs the numbers. Commuter rail can make money, if not run by politicians. The long haul routes are for those out for adventure, not for business people on a schedule. Repackage and reprice them accordingly.

alt.singularity A nice catalog of potential technology breakthroughs that could lead to a 'singularity', without requiring either human-equivalent AI or de novo molecular scale nano-engineering. While these two seem to be articles of faith for some singularists, they both have the problem of a very low observed learning rate. Regardless of theoretical possibility, capital requirements and technology path dependency suggest that nanotech will emerge from some combination of carbon chemistry and silicon processing. Human replication seems to be going nowhere fast; emphasizing complementary and symbiotic intelligences in the machine phase seems more the ticket. It's good to see so many other break-out possibilities, given my skepticism on these two.

Review: Wakuriya Restaurant

This one is for you Bay Area and visiting foodies. The rest of you just get to be envious.

Bay Area fans of Japanese kaiseki cuisine have had the wonderful, but crowded, Kaygetsu restaurant off Sand Hill Road to feed their addiction. Now there's a new choice in town: Kaygetsu's head kaiseki chef has turned entrepreneur and opened up Wakuriya in a small San Mateo shopping center just off highway 92. My wife and I tried it out yesterday evening, to celebrate my 50-somethingth birthday. (Thanks to my partner Mochio Umeda for clueing us in ahead of the crowd.)

The restaurant is nicely decorated but tiny, only three tables plus eight seats at the bar, perhaps 20 patrons at a time. This allows very attentive service, but requires taking their 'reservations recommended' suggestion seriously. The place was 3/4 full, on a mid-week evening two weeks after opening, so the word is already getting around. One lucky couple managed to walk-in while we were there, but don't count on it!

Wakuriya is open for dinner only, and offers the set kaiseki menu only; no separate sushi or other orders. The choice is between the full 9 course meal, or 3 and 6 course subsets. We went for the whole deal. We were unfortunately restricted to a table since I'm still on crutches, so we'll have return another time to watch the chef at work. Expect to spend at least two hours if you do the full experience; but you'll not notice the time passing.

As usual with this style, presentation was immaculate and diverse, ranging from a heated stone to support the beef course, to Japanese style earthenware to appropriately decorated glazed pieces. This extends down to the accessories: a bamboo coaster laser-cut in the shape of a lotus root, for instance.

As you might expect given Wakuriya's genesis, the food is also impeccable. We believe we detected an overall difference in themes - which my wife characterized as 'earthy' - in comparison to the Kaygetsu style. Whether this was an artifact of the particular menu is hard to tell. We'll just have to return to get more more sample points!

I'll pick out two of the courses for special mention: The Zensai plate has a "Slow cooked mountain potato and snap peas with sesame sauce, sliced almonds, Kukonomi (Goji Berry)" selection that takes a potentially bland base vegetable and makes it dance with flavor. The shiso leaf dressed vegetable dish on the same plate is also exquisite. Definitely grab this one if you're doing the sampler menu.

Second, the Age Mono plate has a "Cherry Blosson flavored Ebi-Shinjo (deep fried minced shrimp cake) wrapped with cherry leaf", with macha salt for extra taste. You've never considered eating a cherry leaf? Trust me, you should! The same plate came with a fried lotus root that nicely echoed the table setting.

The restaurant is so new that it doesn't yet have its liquor license. Denied our usual recourse of throwing ourselves on the mercy of chef and server for appropriate sake pairings, we decided to dig into our own cellar. We came up with a dry, floral 2005 Saucelito Canyon sauvignon blanc. It paired well with all the courses but the beef, and dessert. Considering the latter included a layer of sauvignon blanc jelly, perhaps we were on the same wavelength as the chef.

For those already into kaiseki, you know why you need to go to Wakuriya. For others, there's nothing on the menu that would be considered too 'challenging' to an American palate already acclimated to sushi and sashimi. Give it a try and discover one of the great secrets of world cuisine!

For more reviews of Wakuriya try Yelp and - if you read Japanese - this blog post. Enjoy!

The Roving Eye: Harshing Microsoft, An Anthropic Principle For Investing?, Proof God Loves Us

Vista Collapse? And here I thought I was being rough on Microsoft. Now Gartner says Vista (and Office) are becoming irrelevant, and maybe only a Yahoo deal can save Microsoft.

That really depends on how MSFT handles the acquisition, should it close. If it compromises the Yahoo business for the sake of the core, or tries to use the Windows and Office franchise to dragoon users onto the Yahoo properties or worse - both - then both businesses will end up in the same tar pit. In the best interpretation, closing the Yahoo deal could be a gigantic example of the business move known as 'getting pregnant' - spending so much on a venture that it can't be ignored or compromised. If Microsoft forced itself to stop regarding services and anything operational as a red-haired stepchild of the Windows franchise, trying to leverage everything to and from that same franchise, and learned to respond to customer input in real time, it might end up being worth it. But it still wouldn't answer the question about Vista's relevance.

Update: The save XP movement breaks into the mainstream press. Pretty soon people are going to be squirreling away XP discs next to their incandescent light hoard.

What Can't Be Hedged? Physics has the notion that models that don't allow the existence of humans may as well be ignored. An interesting article from Policy Review essentially proposes an investing parallel, with globalization in the place of humanity: Any future in which globalization collapses cannot be hedged, and it's not worth doing it anyway. Globalization is now so deeply entrenched that the magnitude of disruption it would take to break up its economic patterns would leave little future in which to enjoy any proceeds of betting on the ultimate Black Swan. The author, Peter Thiel, is alarmed by the current frequency of bubbles that seem to threaten financial stability, but it doesn't take a lot of reading in (for instance) 19th century history to know that frequent shocks are nothing new. In theory, a more networked society and financial system may generate more frequent excursions, but also be more resilient against them. Thiel's point is that it's only worth taking one side of that bet. (Another interpretation is that this is a public display of how a hedger talks himself into being an optimist...)

Congress, As Seen From Iraq. You can take it from one of the locals or from one of our folks on the scene: The Congress critters trying to smear Gen. Petraeus aren't hurting his reputation, but their own.

The Religion of Beer. Speaking of Iraqis, some of them have their heads screwed on straight. As soon as Sadr's militia got kicked out of town, the Basrawis got their priorities in order. Perhaps they were inspired by one of America's founders, but more likely the cradle of civilizations was among the first to display mankind's proclivity to ferment anything that will, and sample the results. Meanwhile, back in California, one of our 'esteemed' legislators wants to make beer so expensive we'll be resorting to homebrew ourselves. Brilliant!

The Old 'Old Pro' Bites The Dust

Many university campuses are surrounded by well-aged watering holes. For Stanford students present and past, and those of us hangers on and locals, there are several of note. There's the grand-daddy, Rosatti's housed in an 1850's roadhouse (with graffiti back to the founding) located in tony Portola Valley. The Dutch Goose and the Beer Garden in Menlo Park, the latter in a building recycled from a WWI training camp. And in our end of Palo Alto, there's long been the Old Pro, in a tatty WWII-era Quonset hut on El Camino Real. None of these are exactly haute cuisine, but if you go expecting beer, burgers and peanuts and fun you'll be happy. (And the clientele is broad enough that you'd better not talk deals without checking out the nearby tables.)

The sword of Damocles the developer has been hanging over the Old Pro for several years, in the form of a New! Office! Building! Real Soon Now! sign in the gravel lot next door. The Old Pro owners opened up the New Old Pro in the upscale end of town about the same time. Now the sword has fallen. Today I walked past on a lunchtime ramble to Fry's and back, and the old dump is gone. The scrap iron of the old Q-hut has been hauled away, and there's an excavator perched like a vulture on the rubble that was the concrete slab. I'm sure they'll put up something pretty in its place, but (along with the loss of the Rickey's), it sure feels like we're carting a lot of Valley history off to the recycling yard of late.

Theory and Practice of Sushi

For the foodies out there, check out Noriko Takiguchi's (so far) five part series on 'How to Eat Sushi Properly' (links to earlier parts at bottom of the linked post). Not only does the series deliver on the title, but she also passes along tidbits such as the history of our epicurean debt to Yohei Hanaya, and the names of the best sushiyas in the Bay Area, with a little assist from commenters. Recommended. Disclosure: Among other gigs and accomplishments, Noriko manages translation projects for Pacifica Fund, which has about nothing to do with the price of tuna in Tsukiji.

A Plug for Kaygetsu

OK, restaurant reviews aren't the usual fodder here, but I'm going to make an exception. It's always struck me as paradoxical that for all the money up on Sand Hill Road, the culinary options are rather limited. Not that Quadrus and the Sundeck are bad, but they do get a bit repetitive.

About a quarter of the way up the Hill, behind the overpriced Shell station, is a little shopping center that a lot of people miss: Sharon Heights. Recently a new Japanese restaurant opened there, the Kaygetsu of the post title. On the recommendation of friends, my wife and I gave it a try last night for a celebratory dinner - our 25th(!) anniversary.

The title gives away that we think Kaygetsu is a great addition to the Sand Hill and Valley scene. We went for the kaiseki (set meal) option, since this opportunity is rare in the Bay Area, and were well rewarded. Without going into lots of detail, the offering does a great job of giving the many tastes in each course which tradition demands, with very sophisticated presentation. I'll particularly mention that the grilled salmon with rice cracker crust is awesome, the sashimi plate with amazingly luscious toro and specks of gold leaf might have come from an Iron Chef show, and the chef's delicate fish broth holds the whole meal together. We also enjoyed the sake sampler that gives a range of tastes of the traditional rice wine, before moving on to generous sized glasses of a favorite for more serious toasting.

Two of us, working hard at doing it up, went through $100 apiece, but that's likely near the high end. There are more modest a la carte and sushi bar options, and a lunch menu that I will be sampling sometime soon. Two thumbs up from the Due Diligence foodie department.

Thanks to Mochio Umeda and Scott Loftesness for the suggestion.