Monthly Archives: January 2009

The Message of Sri Aurobindo

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But with the advent of man, for the first time, there is a creature on planet earth that can cooperate consciously with the force of evolution. This is the great difference. Evolution need no longer be blind and instinctive. Human beings are endowed with consciousness that enables them to cooperate with the evolutionary thrust. And thereby perhaps, speed up and telescope what, otherwise would have taken another billion years into a much shorter time span. The concept that has evolved is that man is an intermediate creature between the animal and the divine, and is endowed with consciousness that enables him to cooperate with the forces of evolution.

The Message of Sri Aurobindo.

Green IPOs

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IO: Companies that create or invest in green technology, which is very much in fashion, even they’re not immune?

GW: No. I don’t believe so because unless they’ve actually got a product that’s generating income as opposed to a good idea, then they’re susceptible to any changes in the market and certainly with the finance the way it is and the credit market, there are a lot of companies that aren’t going to be getting the support to go with that debt to develop their products and grow and that’s what people are buying. They’re buying growth.

via Business Spectator – Floating back to earth.

Ron Johnson on Apple Retail Stores

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“Why has it worked?” Johnson asked, especially in the face of all the press and analysts’ criticism. “I think it’s all about Apple’s grounding in design, being applied to a different business from products–to a retail strategy.” He said he’s taken a lot from his experience with Graves and, “How you take one tea kettle, and change a company like Target.” He said it’s about how one store with the right concept can not only change a company like Apple, “but can also start to influence retailing all over.”

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“So fundamentally, we think what’s made our stores successful is the design decision to put the customer at the center, but not the buying experience– the life experience– and to really make it all about, in a larger experience, that’s even better than what happens when you buy, ” Johnson said.

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“But I think the one thing that sets apart our stores and Apple, is fundamentally two types of people in the world, in my view. There are believers and there are skeptics,” Johnson said. “Apple is filled with believers. And believers tend to think of what can be, and they just go do it, and they don’t spend time asking why not. They go and make it happen.”

via Ron Johnson Keynote Speech – April 2004.

The peakers

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The plants are “peakers” in the industry jargon, on hand to deal with extreme summer and winter demand in NSW. The state’s peak demand was only 11,500 MW at the start of the decade. Now it is more than 14,000 MW and by 2016 it is expected to be more than 17,000 MW – and, as every pollie knows, voter angst about future global warming problems is as nothing compared with how they react to blackouts in the depths of winter or when the thermometer hits 40 degrees C.

The peakers’ clean little secret is that, given the right carbon pricing environment (about $20 per tonne will do it), they can be converted to baseload supply relatively cheaply and, in their most modern guise, emit only 30 percent as much greenhouse gas per megawatt hour of electricity production as a conventional coal plant. They also use a great deal less water for cooling.

Nice Mr Rudd’s proposed emissions trading scheme promises a taste of nirvana for the gas-fired generators. Their problem is that nasty Mr Rudd’s intention to also give wind power a big boost through the enlarged renewable energy target threatens to see the air farmers eat their lunch over the next decade because power retailers will be required to take the green stuff to the tune of a fifth of their sales.

via Business Spectator – Reaching the peak.