Ruthless Sons of Bitches

By Evan — — Personal

According to a USGS
report on US gemstone consumption, the numbers for 1999 and 2000 were the following:

Stones (cut but unset) 1999 2000
Carats Value (US$) Carats Value (US$)
Diamonds 19.2 million 9.16 billion 19.5 million 11.3 billion
Emeralds 5.04 million 183 million 22.1 million 176 million
Rubies & Sapphires 11.2 million 239 million 12.9 million 241 million

So in the U.S. market in 2000, cut-but-unset diamonds were worth (per carat)
72.8x more than emeralds, and 31.0x more than rubies & sapphires. Interesting.

Yesterday Dad cooked rack of lamb for dinner. It was just us guys — Mom was out
of town, and Sarah had an “emergency birthday party” to attend.
We mostly told stories about Grandpa and talked about
IntraOp. Good news — they’ve just
signed a new manufacturing deal with a new company.
Hopefully the new partner, unlike the old one, won’t simply renege on their
contract because they judge that course of action to be more profitable.
So that’s one problem down. Now for more funding…

It’s been so frustrating to watch IntraOp limp along so undercapitalized
for so long… always, there’s never been quite enough money to manufacture
that next machine, hire another sales rep, … you name it, they didn’t have it.
It was particularly painful during the Internet boom, where you had companies burning through
ten million dollars a month with no business model whatsoever — while IntraOp
was spending two orders of magnitude less money, and selling a real product that
cures cancer (and for a actual profit, imagine that!)
I think Dad’s problem is that he’s too honest. “How can I ask someone to invest
in a company without telling them exactly what they’re getting into?”

What’s happening to our family? Grandpa George was a successful businessman. On
the other side of the family, my great-grandfather was even more successful
(because, as my uncle says, “he was a ruthless son of a bitch.”) But we Goers
and Harmans and Kellstedts seem to be losing our edge. My fathers and uncles
have struggled mightly to get their businesses off the ground. and my sisters
and cousins have shown no interest in entrepreneurship at all.

Over the last few years I’ve read maybe over a hundred magazine articles
that have extolled the virtues of The American Entrepreneur: being tough and fast
and smart and blah blah blah. The funny thing is that the real
entrepreneurs that I’ve spoken to all tell me the same thing: at any moment,
your small business could be crushed. A big company will just take over the
market and squash you. Or someone will rip off your patent, or
refuse to pay for inventory, or renege in some other way. The sad part is,
for a small business it doesn’t matter whether you’re in the legal right. As
Mike likes to point out, justice, like medicine, is
expensive. You might win your lawsuit, but it’ll probably be far too little,
too late to save your livelihood.

My impression of the entrepreneurial world? It’s not really about being tough
and fast and smart (although that helps). It mostly has to do with luck. And
it probably has something to do with being a ruthless son of a bitch.

That’s why I like writing. The luck part is clear enough, but the son-of-a-bitch
part is completely optional.

Rope ’em and brand ’em

By Evan — — Personal

M’ris reminds me why we need engagement
rings. “Silly Evan,” she says, it’s because “paying off med school loans doesn’t
give a physical mark saying, ‘Hands off! This woman is property!'”
Sheesh, I can’t believe I forgot about that.

We then discussed alternative solutions for the problem: 

Mris:  >> Maybe a tattoo would work....

Me:    > Now *that's* using the ol' noggin!  The only problem is, 
       > the tattoo idea needs to hit "critical mass" in the public 
       > consciousness, otherwise it won't act as a deterrent to all 
       > those unscrupulous predators out there.  Kind of a 
       > chicken-and-egg problem there.

M'ris: Ahh, but the tattoo just needs to be on the forehead and 
       read "taken."  Subtlety is quite overrated.  Then as the custom 
       evolves, it can become simply a t or something like that.

When I brought up this issue with Mike, he immediately
launched into a discussion of property law. In the 19th century, some whalers
would hunt whales by firing harpoons from shore. However, there were
many whalers, and when you’d shoot a whale, it would dive, swim off for a while,
and then beach itself and die. There was no way to tell who owned
the carcass. So each whaler had to decorate his harpoons in a distinctive manner.
(The decorated harpoons were called, “waifs”.)

I’m not quite sure what this has to do with marriage, and I’m not sure I
want to know.

In Other News: On Poker Night this week, we only had three people (two of our
regulars were out of town). So there weren’t enough for poker. However, our host,
Page, has been trying to get us to play
Mordheim
for a long time now. I admit, I had been cool to the idea of playing Mordheim — I’m not
really into miniature-strategy games. But Page finally wore me down — “You can play
a squad of human mercenaries, undead, rat-men, battle nuns…”

Battle Nuns?! Why didn’t you say so in the first place!

So it turns out that basic rules in Mordheim are easy to learn, set-up is fast,
and the game has a cool 3-D aspect to it. And the best part is that a match takes
less than two hours (even if you choose to fight until one side is
completely wiped out — or as we call it, “To the Pain!”TM).

Anyway, I am proud to report that my crack warband of Battle Nuns carried the day
against Page’s foul undead legions. Once again the Pants of Evil have been yanked
down by the Mocking Hands of Justice! Page, good sport that he is,
commemorated the battle in a news report.

Finally, last night I saw Monster’s Ball
with Mike, Nancy, and Sam in downtown
San Jose. It was a decent
flick (I loved the nearly wordless ending scene — Halle Berry can act.)
Unfortunately there was a jackass right behind us who had an inappropriate laugh or
comment every minute-and-a-half. Yes, these jerks are in the artsier theaters, too.

Nancy then took us to Picasso’s, where we ordered tapas and a bottle of wine.
M’ris! Wake up, pay attention — they had tapas! I found tapas! And this reminds
me, it’s time for another winelog entry:

Campillo, Spain, 1996 Crianza: ¡Bueno!

Diamonds are a girl’s best friend?

By Evan — — Culture

Happy Valentine’s Day! I just finished reading an interesting
Atlantic article,
“Have You Ever
Tried To Sell A Diamond?”

Until the late nineteenth century, diamonds were found only in a few riverbeds
in India and in the jungles of Brazil, and the entire world production of gem
diamonds amounted to a few pounds a year. In 1870, however, huge diamond mines
were discovered near the Orange River, in South Africa, where diamonds were soon
being scooped out by the ton. Suddenly, the market was deluged with diamonds. The
British financiers who had organized the South African mines quickly realized that
their investment was endangered; diamonds had little intrinsic value — and their
price depended almost entirely on their scarcity.

And thus, the DeBeers cartel was formed. DeBeers completely
controls the world’s diamond supply, maintaining artificial scarcity and
artificially high prices. Those who defy the cartel (like
Zaire in 1981)
suffer the consequences.

But who cares? Diamonds are a luxury item. No one forces you to buy them… right?

Nope. Every American man is expected to spend, at a minimum, two months
salary on a diamond engagement ring. Two months salary (before taxes?) on a
pretty rock that should be about as valuable as jade or amber. And why,
pray tell?

Because DeBeers says you should. The culture of buying staggeringly expensive
diamond jewelry to cement your engagement did not exist until sixty years
ago. But in 1938, DeBeers created
the “Diamonds are Forever” marketing campaign, and the rest is history.
In twenty years, the American psyche was transformed. At the end of the 1950s
DeBeers was able to crow,
“Since 1939 an entirely new generation of young people has grown to marriageable age.
To this new generation a diamond ring is considered a necessity to
engagements by virtually everyone.”

Not that any of this is news. The Atlantic article I cited dates back to 1982.
Economics and marketing professors have used the DeBeers cartel as a
case
study for years. It’s a fascinating issue, from an academic perspective.

Unfortunately, there’s no avoiding the result — you can’t get married in this
country without giving your sweetie the biggest, bestest rock you can afford.
End of story. Even questioning the idea makes me sound cheap, doesn’t it?
That’s how ingrained the whole thing is.

Listen, I’ve got no problem dishing out the cash… if that’s what it takes to prove
my undying devotion, so be it. I just resent that a ruthless cartel is forcing me
to spend money on a near-worthless object. (And let’s not
forget that these days, there is no way to know if you are buying a
“conflict diamond“, which
is the sanitized way of saying “thugocracy diamond” or “rape-and-murder diamond”.)
All I’m saying is, why not spend the money on something positive? For example:

“Darling, I can’t imagine spending the rest of my life without you. And to cement
our relationship, please do me the honor of allowing me to pay back the next two
years of your med school loans.”

Or how about:

“Darling, I can’t imagine spending the rest of my life without you. And to cement
our relationship, I want to give you a really special gift.
Let’s go get your teeth straightened, like you’ve always wanted!”

Who knew I was such an
incurable romantic?

Florida Funeral

By Evan — — Personal

I wasn’t going to comment on my grandfather’s funeral in Florida, but I’ve changed
my mind. Just a few words on the rabbi:

  • He was over an hour late. This was due to traffic — although one of the
    mourners, coming from the same direction, managed to make it nearly on
    time by taking backstreets.

  • He arrived wearing:

    • a white jacket and shirt
    • black pants
    • black shoes with large gold buckles
    • a yellow tie, askew
    • a deep orange tan


  • My aunt had given him some anecdotes about my grandfather the day before.
    She was concerned about whether the rabbi had gotten everything down
    properly, because the conversation happened over a cell phone, while
    he was driving. My aunt took him aside right before the ceremony to make
    sure he had everything straight. It was a good thing she did — he had everything
    completely mangled.

  • The non-mangled eulogy wasn’t a big improvement. He managed to get my
    grandfather’s Hebrew name wrong, and he mangled a few of the dates. (Grandpa
    came to the States in 1920, not 1912 — a significant distinction, because he
    spent those eight formative years starving in war-torn Poland.)

On the other hand, he drove off in a Mercedes S500 sedan. I can only surmise that the
whole late-to-the-funeral, wear-tacky-clothes, and offend-the-grieving-aunts-and-cousins
gig is, at some level, working out for him.

George Goer

By Evan — — Personal

It’s going to be a couple of days until my next journal entry.
My grandfather, George Goer, passed away… peacefully, in his sleep. He
was 93.

I’m off to Miami for the funeral. More later.

Poker Night Invasion

By Evan — — Culture

Remember Charlotte Raven?
Well, she’s baaack.
This time she’s gushing about Muhammad Ali for telling an anti-Semitic joke at a recent
charity banquet. (What’s the difference between a Jew and a canoe? A canoe
always tips. Yuk, yuk.)

Raven is, of course, thrilled with Ali. In fact, she goes so far as bestow Ali with the
highest praise possible in the postmodern universe. Yes, she calls him “subversive”.
Nope, sorry, Ms. Raven. Telling anti-Semitic jokes is mainstream… and
boring, to boot. Hiding Jews from the SS: now that’s subversive.

In Other News: Gregg Easterbrook is not a happy camper.
“Where’s my Enron bribe?” he
demands. After all, he’s been writing long boring energy policy pieces for
years. But nobody cared. Here’s his account of trying to sell
an energy deregulation piece to
The Atlantic in 1992:

Bill Whitworth was silent for a long pause and then said in his
modified Arkansas drawl, “Gregg, don’t you think that topic is — a little dry?”
When Bill Whitworth, the most bookish and circumspect in a storied line of bookish
and circumspect Atlantic editors, tells you your topic is a little dry, that’s
like the pope telling you that you need to get out and meet some girls.

As for my life:

Sarah got pretty sick last night. With Mom and Dad both out of town,
I was the only one left to take care of her. She has some variant of the flu
with a nasty fever. Poor kid.

On Tuesday, we had a major Invasion on Poker Night. Our old friend Phil
was in town, and that brought out a number of friends from all over the bay,
including a couple of significant others. Well, just one significant other.
There was another cute girl (a cute Mudd alum!!) who I thought was
Brian Cheney‘s spouse, but
turned out not to be. Believe me, I was emphatically not-crushed to
learn I was mistaken. Unfortunately she’s moving to Albuquerque, NM in a matter
of days. At least that’s what she said… hmmmm….

Anyway, we had ten people for poker. We played with two decks,
high-low split on nearly every game, with very few wilds. It worked out
pretty well. I even came out a buck ahead, although Lord knows I didn’t
deserve to. On one game of
“Pass the Trash”
I had the winning high hand, but I folded on the first round. The hand that
actually won was a straight. A freaking straight. It was agonizing to
realize on the third round that half the pot should have been mine. Mine!

At least I played it
cool at the time. I was simply too embarrassed to let everyone know how high my
hand was. I’m still too embarrassed. I must be the Worst Poker Player
Ever. Grandma Ruth, if she were still alive, would definitely not approve. And
I don’t care for basketball, either. Oh, the shame.

Marijuana (or: Econ 101)

By Evan — — News

Well, it looks like
Ken Lay
has chickened out of his Senate hearing appointment, and now they’re going to
have to subpoena him. The article ends with a nice quote from the
Chairman of the SEC, Harvey Pitt:

Pitt lamented the impact of Enron’s dissipation on regular people who trusted the company.
“It is these Americans whose faith fuels our markets, who have no lobby and no trade
associations, whose interests are, and must be, paramount,” he said. “I am appalled at
what happened to them as a result of Enron’s collapse.”

Chairman Pitt’s concern for the average American investor would be truly
heartwarming… if only he hadn’t played such a large part in
creating the legal
environment that let Enron rip off those investors in the first place.
Oops!

Well, the Superbowl is over, and the Patriots, 14-point underdogs, beat the
St. Louis Rams 20-17 in an exciting last-minute field goal. But even more exciting,
apparently, were the Partnership for a
Drug-Free America‘s Superbowl TV commercials, which pointed out that the drug trade
supports criminals and terrorists.
Well, the PDFA was sloppy; they conflated the tens of millions of dollars of
Taliban
heroin funding with the six hundred million dollars of
cocaine
money that went to the FARC with the rest of the illegal drug industry.

This of course
prompted
numerous
self-righteous
screeds
from the other side that managed to muddy the issue further, claiming that
the government is trying to tie marijuana to Al-Qaeda. I admit, the screedists did a good job.
The straw-man argument that “smoking a joint supports terrorism!” can now be considered
Officially Knocked Down.

On the other hand… according to NORML,
Americans consume at least 1200
to 1800 metric tons of 6% THC cannabis per year. Here’s the bad news: those
hundreds of metric tons were not grown by your
goofy slacker college roommate in his dorm room closet. No, I’m afraid the bulk of the revenue
went to some very anti-social men in Northern California or Mexico. Men with guns and bear traps
and dogs trained to kill. And what products and services did these men purchase
with their profits? As much as I wish otherwise, methinks they did not
invest in Enron.

We Americans have spent the last few months bitching and moaning about “the root causes”
of terrorism. Where do these grievances come from? “Why do they hate us?”
Well, we can debate whether the Arab world is justified in hating us from now ’till
Doomsday. In the meantime, I’ll tell you who does have real grievances
against the USA. The Colombians, that’s who.

Of course, if we legalized all drugs, this problem would go away.
And I’ve got no objections to that. That’s the best way to cut the legs out
from under the organized criminals who profit from the business.
However, just because you support drug legalization, don’t
for a second think that means you’re pure as the driven snow when you consume
them. Your choices have consquences;
unfortunately, you don’t usually end up paying them.

Ye olde goer.org

By Evan — — Miscellany

I’ve decided to switch webhosts.

It wasn’t last month’s several hours of unannounced and unapologized-for downtime.
It wasn’t the numerous typos on their help pages.
No, I think what did the trick was the bill I received for $4,211.20 for
unpaid web services. To accumulate that bill, I would have
had to have been delinquent for 188 months, or since mid-1986. (That predates
the Mosaic browser
and the HTML standard, although not
the TCP/IP protocol.)

Anyway I think the procedure is pretty simple:

  1. Register with new host
  2. FTP files to new host
  3. Get NetworkSolutions to change their nameservers
  4. Cancel service with old host

So if all goes as planned, the changeover will cause no interruptions to this site.
Oh, damn. I’ve probably jinxed myself right there. I’d better move on before
I do any more damage.

Last night Nancy and I went to Bill’s for dinner. His
sister Patty was there, along with Jennie and a nice Belgian couple,
Sophie and Ward. The problem with the dinner: I can’t say anything
else about it. See, Bill is currently obsessed with my silly little website that maybe
ten people bother to read on a regular basis. All evening it was,
“Don’t put that on the website!” “That’s off-the-record!”
This must be what Bob Woodward’s social life is like.

So I think the only thing I can talk about is the wine. So here it is,
another Winelog entry:

Stag’s Leap, Napa, 1998 Cabernet Sauvignon: BRAVISSIMO!!

In Other News:

“Reassurance is good. Cash is better.” – Ahmad Fawzi, spokesman for the
United Nations special envoy to Afghanistan, on long-term American
support for the nation (from Newsweek.)

Fawzi should take heart: if President Hamid Karzai doesn’t get the
support his country so desperately needs, he can at least
knock
us dead with his fashion sense.

Edit, April 2003: Well, it’s pretty clear by now that we’ve screwed Karzai pretty good. I guess fashion sense isn’t enough.

Misinformation… on the INTERNET??

By Evan — — Culture

First, I’d like to call your attention to this month’s sidebar commentary.
I’m sponsoring a very special charity project. I’m sure you’ll
all agree that it’s a worthy cause. Check it out… and give, give, give!

Last night Nancy, Randy, Shauna, and I went to a
Bill Fredlund lecture on “Fra”
Filippo Lippi, an influential
painter in early 15c Florence. (I use “Fra” in quotes because
as it turns out, Brother Lippi did not exactly turn out to be the best “Fra”,
as his wife the ex-nun might attest.) It was a good Bill-lecture, although
at just over an hour, it was a bit short. Also, while some of Lippi’s paintings were
breathtaking, he had the same “misshapen baby” problem that all his contemporaries
struggled with. Perhaps there was some tradition or taboo in Renaissance Italy
where adult males were not permitted to see infants? I can’t explain it otherwise.

Incidentally, while I was looking for Lippi biographies to put on the site, one of the
biographies
I ran across had this amusing statement near the bottom:
“His pupils were far inferior to him.” Ummm, really? Inferior like, say, Botticelli?
Oh, well. I only mention this to remind you all that I scruplously check
all links on this site for quality. Rest assured, a goer.org link is a
mark of taste, erudition, and 100% quality, guaranteed. You’re welcome.

In Other News: This morning I was listening to
Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!
on the radio today, and guess who they had as a guest? That’s right,
Petra Verkaik (warning: link unsuitable
for children), perhaps better known as the
Playboy Playmate who took 17-year-old Toby Hocking to his Winter Formal dance
(as I mentioned earlier).
Coincidentally, NPR is doing another Pledge Week right now. Can you think of
a better reason to support National Public Radio? Neither can I.

Good Guys and Bad Guys

By Evan — — News

Sometimes, we nerds win.

I’m referring of course to the tale of
Steuard Jensen, Prom King.
As it turns out, Steuard was a physics major at HMC,
just one year behind me. I stumbled across his page by accident.
Of course, his story is still not quite as good as the one about
the
straight-A clarinet player who took Miss December 1989 to his Winter Formal,
but all in all, not bad.

In other news, Linda Lay is
bemoaning
her husband’s fate. The spin is that the family is facing bankruptcy, and that Ken Lay
is an “honest, decent, moral human being who would do absolutely nothing wrong.”

It’s funny how bankruptcy just kinda creeps up on you like that. I mean, I
haven’t cashed out $101 million dollars in stock, and I don’t
own several multimillion dollar
homes in Aspen, and yet somehow I manage to pay most of my creditors on time.
Maybe his teenagers have, like, huge phone bills or something.

Heck, forget about Lay. I’m still having trouble feeling sorry for
those poor Enron employees. I mean, if you’re a white-collar worker
at a big company, you know what’s going on. Sure, you probably
don’t know enough to be prosecuted for anything. But… you hear rumors.
You pick up on things at meetings, on email aliases, in casual conversations.
You just kind of know things you’re not supposed to know, unless you’re
socially blind, deaf, and dumb.

Here’s who I do feel sorry for: the janitors. And the landscapers, and the cafeteria
people, and the workers who built and maintained Enron’s plants and pipelines.
And possibly the admins. But as for the energy traders and the IT department?
Let’s see… you earned your living screwing over helpless people for money, but
it didn’t occur to you that perhaps your bosses viewed you in the same light.
Well, tough luck and good riddance.