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Not sure how I missed this revolutionary new auto industry startup before,¹ but last week’s news that the State of Hawaii has signed up definitely caught my attention. Better Place’s ambitions plan involves a combination of smart invisible technology, quickly replaceable (not just rechargeable) batteries, and a business plan that makes drivers “subscribers.” I dug up a profile of the company, its plan, and its visionary, Shai Agassi, who definitely gets it:

When I ask Shai if he’s worried about a competitor stealing his idea, he stares at me like I’m an idiot. “The mission is to end oil,” he says, “not create a company.”

UPDATE: This story just came much closer to home.

On my continuing quest for good audio content, I’ve recently subscribed to the University of Chicago Law School Faculty Podcast and so far I’ve been very pleased. Today I was listening to the latest installation: Dean Saul Levmore’s talk on “The Internet’s Anonymity Problem.” He opened the talk with an anecdote about graffiti at the Med and bathroom graffiti. This immediately reminded me of a Scav Hunt item which I completed in my first year:

From the 2004 Scav Hunt list:

Item 80. Brain Farts: The Collected Works of The University of Chicago Bathroom Graffiti (organized by theme, but attributed to location). [102 points. 15 bonus points for an inset detailing the entirety of the “Grout Work.”]

I spent a day or so going around campus with a friend (so I didn’t have to be snooping around in ladies’ rooms) taking pictures and compiled the booklet. (more…)

The New York Times had a nice article the other day on the eerie (but perhaps uncoincidental) similarities between this year’s presidential election and The West Wing seasons 6 + 7, but this video from Slate does a nice job laying it out visually:

From Asiajin:

Softbank Mobile announced today to release 1-seg digital TV tuner device for iPhone in the middle of December. The 80-gram device provides the feature of TV over WiFi (converting TV signal received to IP-based data for iPhone) and doubles as a battery extender. Three hours continuous TV viewing is available.

I’ve seen a number of these ワンセグ (wansegu, 1seg) digital TV tuner-enabled phones around the office and in trains. I’m not a huge TV watcher, even in Japan,¹ but I have to say these phones are pretty cool. In the land of one-hour train commutes, there’s definitely both appeal and demand. I’ve sat on trains next to everyone from hip high schoolers to grandparents watching TV on these phones.

Frankly, however, I think the fact that it’s a separate device (even if it can be unwired) will still limit its attractiveness. I’ll be curious to see what the interface is like.

The Counter-Intuitive Comparison Institute of North America (CICINA) hopes to definitively identify the best thing in the world. And don’t worry—CICINA isn’t like the “east-coast media elite”:

“We are like you—only more so.”

Brilliant. Watch the video:

(via kottke)

On September 19th, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson made a speech regarding the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) to allay the fears of investors:

I am convinced that this bald approach will cost American families far less than the alternative—a continuing series of financial institution failures and frozen credit markets unable to fund economic expansion.

Unfortunately, the key phrase in this passage was widely mistranscribed in the media as a “bold approach.” But now that more details of the new Troubled Asset Relief Program have being released, Secretary Paulson’s true intentions are clear.

Chris Carey of Bailout Sleuth writes:

The Treasury Department tapped James H. Lambright [above center], head of the Export-Import Bank, as the interim chief investment officer for the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program… The bailout program is being directed by Neel Kashkari [above left], who had been senior advisor to Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr [above right].

Will this new program stem the global credit crisis? Maybe. But at least we can all agree… it’s a bald move.

About two doors down from my new place is a restaurant serving ramen (ラーメン, derived from the Chinese 拉麵), a distinctive type of noodle. Ramen noodles are wheat-based but crucially use kansui (鹹水), a mineral-rich water.¹ This water colors the noodles yellow and helps add a certain firmness to the noodles. The noodles can be served in a variety or different ways (with regional variations as well), but it is most often served in a miso-, soy sauce-, pork broth-, or salt-based soup.

The store down the street is called ichifuku (一福). Not only is it one of the closest restaurants to my house, it’s also been featured on a number of ramen restaurants and websites. The store is known for its delicious miso ramen but also for its more creative, Western-style arrangements. The female shopkeeper is often running everything by herself, gardening out front as well as cooking and playing great music.

Here are some pictures of the great food they serve:

If you ever come by the Hatsudai area, I highly recommend a visit. The address is: 東京都渋谷区本町６−６−４.

From Old Man on Campus:

The Shoreland’s 13 floors, hundreds of rooms, will be a dorm for another year or so before it’s transformed into high-end condominiums. Meanwhile, plaster sifts from the ceilings, and the lobby is a mishmash of couches, stacks of student publications, a big-screen TV and handbills covering the walls. A friendly, bored staff of desk attendants watches as students — listless, sleepy, harried, running late, dressed to the nines, falling down drunk, depending on the day and hour — file past.

Accurate. I can vividly visualize the scenes he describes. Funny, I miss the Shoreland.

(via Bailey)

In my recent quest for podcasts, I just today discovered Jerry Sadock’s Automodular Grammar lectures on iTunes U, brought to you by the University of Arizona. This is essentially the first few lectures from his Automodular course I took my last year in college, which was one of my favorite and most thought-provoking and challenging (“thought-challenging”?) courses while at Chicago. While I still feel that having visuals (slides, or his handsome face, above), you can download his talks and handouts separately from their website, linked here:

1. Automodular Grammar 1. Jerry Sadock, University of Chicago, January 18, 2008. Lecture (mp3), handout (PDF)
2. Automodular Grammar 2. Jerry Sadock, University of Chicago, January 25, 2008. Lecture (mp3), handout (PDF)
3. Automodular Grammar 3: The Passive. Jerry Sadock, University of Chicago, February 1, 2008. Lecture (mp3), handout (PDF)

Possibly one of the positive results of ridiculous college entrance exams and a culture of cram schools: here’s a series of Tokyo Gas commercials. Various historical characters jump out of his armoire (the other end of a time portal) and learn about natural gas products, including John Ambrose Fleming (ad #4)! I swear, though, in the US, you couldn’t run an ad that makes fun of Fleming’s Left Hand Rule. You just couldn’t.

Now that the Taiwanese presidential election is out of the way, the already pretty boring Taiwanese news has hit a new high in boringness, today asking if closer ties to the PRC (with Ma Ying-Jeou’s promise to open up the Three Links (三通)) means we can have a panda now. No seriously. The people have been waiting.

This, together with my currently daily train commutes, have led me to further explore the world of podcasts. I’m now a proud subscriber of “The Bugle: the Audio Newspaper for a Visual World,” with John Oliver of Daily Show fame and Andy Zaltman, distributed by The Times of London. Like a weekly audio Daily Show, except more British and thus more ridiculous. It’s fabulous fun, and perfect for those of us who hate reading.

Here’s a snippet from this past episode:

USA and Britain are once again at the top!, of the western world’s teenage pregnancies – also called the two countries most committed to the war on terror. … What it also suggests is, as nations, we get overexcited in the prospect of an easy conquest without really thinking about the long term consequences.

So true.

Day 3: The Great Wall

Before we finalized our plans to go to China, K80 just had one criteria for an itinerary: to go to the Great Wall of China. We reserved all of our final full day in Beijing to going to the Wall. After our delicious breakfast, we hit the roads, taking a bus from the Dōngzhímén bus station out to Mìyún (密雲) and then a taxi to Sīmǎtái (司馬臺). Compared with other more popular Great Wall sites, Simatai is less restored, less touristy, and a more challenging hiking experience. We gave in to the adventurers within.

The weather was actually pretty nice, hovering right above 0°C, with beautiful clear skies, making up for the rest of China. We could see miles across. The higher up we went, the more of the Wall we could see.

They weren’t kidding when they said Simatai was more challenging of a hike… with some sections >45° up, sometimes it felt like a climb rather than hike… the path also sort of disappeared towards the end.

The whole experience fills with you a sense of awe, especially when you think of the people, real humans just like us (at least, we think), building this hundreds of years ago. Its scope is mind blowing. We made sure to make our visit memorable and well-documented as well.

In the end we turned back after climbing for a couple hours, and when we saw that the next peak ahead of us looked particularly menacing. We took some final pictures and turned back.

K80 made sure to steal a brick on the wall down. Shh… We also saw a frozen river which excited the Floridian.

Noodles for dinner

For dinner we met up with Anna again and her friend. Anna recommended a noodle place where you can watch the guys whip up the different kinds of noodles in front of your eyes… there’s a guy lassoing some into a pot, a guy beating some dough into submission, another shaving little noodle bits off a ball of dough with a knife. These are the Chuck Norris of noodles.

For desert we had what I describe as Chinese 大学芋… some chunks of sweet potato, dipped in hot candy-ness. You then pick some up, dip it in water to let it cool off, and eat it. It was wonderful.

Thus concludes our haphazard trip to China. We all had a fabulous time, enjoying many cultural sites and seeing and making many friends.

I don’t care much for the game, but always love checking out the SuperBowl ads every year… this year there was something really cool… a sign language ad by a deaf group at PepsiCo.¹ Very cool.

The crew has their own website at Pepsi too: Bob’s House.

Bailey just pointed me to a hilarious series of videos apparently introducing Japanese culture to foreigners, produced by the Japanese comedians Rahmens. Rahmens are incidentally the ones who play Mac and PC in the Japanese versions of the Apple ads.

Here’s one to get you started:

Kuviasungnerk/Kangeiko just put Bailey on the front page of chicagotribune.com! ^^ You kind of have to see a different page to know who it is, though.¹ Heh.

I recently got Daring Fireball‘ed too,² so that almost makes us a celebrity couple.

I personally like the caption right above. That’s the same story, right?