“
Republicans approve of the American farmer, but they are willing to help him go broke. They stand four-square for the American home--but not for housing. They are strong for labor--but they are stronger for restricting labor's rights. They favor minimum wage--the smaller the minimum wage the better. They endorse educational opportunity for all--but they won't spend money for teachers or for schools. They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine--for people who can afford them. They consider electrical power a great blessing--but only when the private power companies get their rake-off. They think American standard of living is a fine thing--so long as it doesn't spread to all the people. And they admire of Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it.
”
”
Harry Truman
“
I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them, or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment—what is this, then?
I do not ask any more delight—I swim in it, as in a sea.
”
”
Walt Whitman
“
I took the one letter he had for us. It was from the Switchblade Gas & Electric Company. I didn't know I had admirers there too, but I wasn't that surprised. I threw it in the trash with the IRS's love letters and closed the door without reply.
”
”
The Harvard Lampoon (Nightlight)
“
Apparently, sir you Chinese are far ahead of us in every respect, except that you don’t have entrepreneurs. And our nation, though it has no drinking water, electricity, sewage system, public transportation, sense of hygiene, discipline, courtesy, or punctuality, ‘’does’’ have entrepreneurs. Thousands and thousands of them. Especially in the field of technology. And these entrepreneurs—"we" entrepreneurs—have set up all these outsourcing companies that virtually run America now.
”
”
Aravind Adiga (The White Tiger)
“
While I don't think sociopaths have any sort of moral urge to do good things, I think they can and do act morally in the context of pursuing their own advantage. A good analogy would be a corporation. There are a lot of corporations that do things that you like, maybe even good things, like produce vaccines or electric cars, although the primary motivation is to make a profit. But just because you are trying to make a profit doesn't mean you can't do it by doing things you like, or that you are good at, or that comport with the way you see the world, or want the world to see you.
”
”
M.E. Thomas (Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight)
“
As it is, we are merely bolting our lives—gulping down undigested experiences as fast as we can stuff them in—because awareness of our own existence is so superficial and so narrow that nothing seems to us more boring than simple being. If I ask you what you did, saw, heard, smelled, touched and tasted yesterday, I am likely to get nothing more than the thin, sketchy outline of the few things that you noticed, and of those only what you thought worth remembering. Is it surprising that an existence so experienced seems so empty and bare that its hunger for an infinite future is insatiable? But suppose you could answer, “It would take me forever to tell you, and I am much too interested in what’s happening now.” How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such a fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself as anything less than a god? And, when you consider that this incalculably subtle organism is inseparable from the still more marvelous patterns of its environment—from the minutest electrical designs to the whole company of the galaxies—how is it conceivable that this incarnation of all eternity can be bored with being?
”
”
Alan W. Watts (The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are)
“
He’d started the company to put a dent in the automotive industry and force people to rethink electric cars.
”
”
Ashlee Vance (Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future)
“
Other examples of granfalloons are the Communist party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the General Electric Company, the International Order of Odd Fellows—and any nation, anytime, anywhere.
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Cat's Cradle)
“
What was remarkable was that associating with a computer and electronics company was the best way for a rock band to seem hip and appeal to young people. Bono later explained that not all corporate sponsorships were deals with the devil. “Let’s have a look,” he told Greg Kot, the Chicago Tribune music critic. “The ‘devil’ here is a bunch of creative minds, more creative than a lot of people in rock bands. The lead singer is Steve Jobs. These men have helped design the most beautiful art object in music culture since the electric guitar. That’s the iPod. The job of art is to chase ugliness away.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
“
Local fog in Venice has a name: nebbia. It obliterates all reflections ... and everything that has a shape: buildings, people, colonnades, bridges, statues. Boat services are canceled, airplanes neither arrive, nor take off for weeks, stores are closed and mail ceases to litter one’s threshold. The effect is as though some raw hand had turned all those enfilades inside out and wrapped the lining around the city... the fog is thick, blinding, and immobile... this is a time for reading, for burning electricity all day long, for going easy on self-deprecating thoughts of coffee, for listening to the BBC World Service, for going to bed early. In short, a time for self-oblivion, induced by a city that has ceased to be seen. Unwittingly, you take your cue from it, especially if, like it, you’ve got company. Having failed to be born here, you at least can take some pride in sharing its invisibility...
”
”
Joseph Brodsky (Watermark)
“
Educators worried that they might encourage women to pursue math and science who would then be left high and dry. One electrical company asked for twenty female engineers from Goucher, with the added request, “Select beautiful ones for we don’t want them on our hands after the war.
”
”
Liza Mundy (Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II)
“
My own acid-eating experience is limited in terms of total consumption, but widely varied as to company and circumstances ... and if I had a choice of repeating any one of the half dozen bouts I recall, I would choose one of those Hell's Angels parties in La Honda, complete with all the mad lighting, cops on the road, a Ron Boise sculpture looming out of the woods, and all the big speakers vibrating with Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man." It was a very electric atmosphere. If the Angels lent a feeling of menace, they also made it more interesting ... and far more alive than anything likely to come out of a controlled experiment or a politely brittle gathering of well-educated truth-seekers looking for wisdom in a capsule. Dropping acid with the Angels was an adventure; they were too ignorant to know what to expect, and too wild to care. They just swallowed the stuff and hung on ... which is probably just as dangerous as the experts say, but a far, far nuttier trip than sitting in some sterile chamber with a condescending guide and a handful of nervous, would-be hipsters.
”
”
Hunter S. Thompson (Hell's Angels)
“
Today the man who has the courage to build himself a house constructs a meeting place for the people who will descend upon him on foot, by car, or by telephone. Employees of the gas, the electric, and the water- works will arrive; agents from life and fire insurance companies; building inspectors, collectors of radio tax; mortgage creditors and rent assessors who tax you for living in your own home.
”
”
Ernst Jünger (The Glass Bees)
“
One: An end to cross-ownership in businesses. For example: weapons manufacturers cannot own TV stations, mining corporations cannot run newspapers, business houses cannot fund universities, drug companies cannot control public health funds. Two: Natural resources and essential infrastructure—water supply, electricity, health, and education—cannot be privatized. Three: Everybody must have the right to shelter, education, and health care. Four: The children of the rich cannot inherit their parents’ wealth.
”
”
Arundhati Roy (Capitalism: A Ghost Story)
“
I became a so-called science fiction writer when someone decreed that I was a science fiction writer. I did not want to be classified as one, so I wondered in what way I'd offended that I would not get credit for being a serious writer. I decided that it was because I wrote about technology, and most fine American writers know nothing about technology. I got classified as a science fiction writer simply because I wrote about Schenectady, New York. My first book, Player Piano, was about Schenectady. There are huge factories in Schenectady and nothing else. I and my associates were engineers, physicists, chemists, and mathematicians. And when I wrote about the General Electric Company and Schenectady, it seemed a fantasy of the future to critics who had never seen the place.
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (A Man Without a Country)
“
Willfully polluting the ground with AC electricity is just another aspect of how the electrical utility companies will be remembered by the next generation.
”
”
Steven Magee (Electrical Forensics)
“
When the government and electrical utility company jointly harass an electrical fraud researcher, it confirms that the research is progressing in the right direction!
”
”
Steven Magee
“
Fifty years ago in his novel Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut playfully (but prophetically) called these “connections” a “granfalloon”—a group of people who choose, or claim to have, a shared identity or purpose, but whose mutual association is actually meaningless. The author offered two examples, Daughters of the American Revolution and the General Electric Company; if Vonnegut wrote the novel today, the examples could just as easily be Facebook or Twitter.
”
”
Jerold J. Kreisman (I Hate You--Don't Leave Me: Understanding the Borderline Personality)
“
Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as base. We come to them who weep foolishly, and sit down and cry for company, instead of imparting to them truth and health in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in communication with their own reason. The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire.
”
”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (Self-Reliance: An Excerpt from Collected Essays, First Series)
“
The harsh realities of cobalt mining in the Congo are an inconvenience to every stakeholder in the chain. No company wants to concede that the rechargeable batteries used to power smartphones, tablets, laptops, and electric vehicles contain cobalt mined by peasants and children in hazardous conditions.
”
”
Siddharth Kara (Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives)
“
Marx wrote about finance and industry all his life but he only knew two people connected with financial and industrial processes. One was his uncle in Holland, Lion Philips, a successful businessman who created what eventually became the vast Philips Electric Company. Uncle Philips' views on the whole capitalist process would have been well-informed and interesting, had Marx troubled to explore them. But he only once consulted him, on a technical matter of high finance, and though he visited Philips four times, these concerned purely personal mattes of family money. The other knowledgeable man was Engels himself. But Marx declined Engel's invitation to accompany him on a visit to a cotton mill, and so far as we know Marx never set foot in a mill, factory, mine or other industrial workplace in the whole of his life.
”
”
Paul Johnson
“
Cities are sustained by similar network systems such as roads, railways, and electrical lines that transport people, energy, and resources and whose flow is therefore a manifestation of the metabolism of the city.
”
”
Geoffrey West (Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life, in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies)
“
Hazel’s obsession with Hoosiers around the world was a textbook example of a false karass, of a seeming team that was meaningless in terms of the ways God gets things done, a textbook example of what Bokonon calls a granfalloon. Other examples of granfalloons are the Communist party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the General Electric Company, the International Order of Odd Fellows—and any nation, anytime, anywhere.
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Cat's Cradle)
“
Meanwhile the wineglasses had flushed yellow and flushed crimson; had been emptied; had been filled. And thus by degrees was lit, halfway down the spine, which is the seat of the soul, not that hard little electric light which we call brilliance, as it pops in and out upon our lips, but the more profound, subtle and subterranean glow, which is the rich yellow flame of rational intercourse. No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself. We are all going to heaven and Vandyck is of the company--in other words, how good life seemed, how sweet its rewards, how trivial this grudge or that grievance, how admirable friendship and the society of one's kind, as, lighting a good cigarette, one sunk among the cushions in the window-seat.
”
”
Virginia Woolf (A Room of One’s Own)
“
Real love is sacrifice, unconditional, selfless and benevolent. Love is watching you from afar, happy in the knowledge that as long as you were happy, I would never tell you of my feelings. I would hold them inside and worship the feeling of knowing I felt true love. Love is craving your company, counting the thuds in my chest when you walk into a room because it’s the only sound I can hear. Love is the electricity that ignites every nerve when you brush against me. Love is the million dragonflies taking flight inside my gut when I hear you giggle. If love was physical to touch, it would be your form. I sound like a pussy right now but it’s not weak to love fiercely, it’s powerful and a gift, the greatest there is and I’m grateful for loving you.
”
”
D.H. Sidebottom
“
Now I'll never see him again, and maybe it's a good thing. He walked out of my life last night for once and for all. I know with sickening certainty that it's the end. There were just those two dates we had, and the time he came over with the boys, and tonight. Yet I liked him too much - - - way too much, and I ripped him out of my heart so it wouldn't get to hurt me more than it did. Oh, he's magnetic, he's charming; you could fall into his eyes. Let's face it: his sex appeal was unbearably strong. I wanted to know him - - - the thoughts, the ideas behind the handsome, confident, wise-cracking mask. "I've changed," he told me. "You would have liked me three years ago. Now I'm a wiseguy." We sat together for a few hours on the porch, talking, and staring at nothing. Then the friction increased, centered. His nearness was electric in itself. "Can't you see," he said. "I want to kiss you." So he kissed me, hungrily, his eyes shut, his hand warm, curved burning into my stomach. "I wish I hated you," I said. "Why did you come?" "Why? I wanted your company. Alby and Pete were going to the ball game, and I couldn't see that. Warrie and Jerry were going drinking; couldn't see that either." It was past eleven; I walked to the door with him and stepped outside into the cool August night. "Come here," he said. "I'll whisper something: I like you, but not too much. I don't want to like anybody too much." Then it hit me and I just blurted, "I like people too much or not at all. I've got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them." He was definite, "Nobody knows me." So that was it; the end. "Goodbye for good, then," I said. He looked hard at me, a smile twisting his mouth, "You lucky kid; you don't know how lucky you are." I was crying quietly, my face contorted. "Stop it!" The words came like knife thrusts, and then gentleness, "In case I don't see you, have a nice time at Smith." "Have a hell of a nice life," I said. And he walked off down the path with his jaunty, independent stride. And I stood there where he left me, tremulous with love and longing, weeping in the dark. That night it was hard to get to sleep.
”
”
Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
“
EHMs provide favors. These take the form of loans to develop infrastructure—electric generating plants, highways, ports, airports, or industrial parks. A condition of such loans is that engineering and construction companies from our own country must build all these projects. In essence, most of the money never leaves the United States; it is simply transferred from banking offices in Washington to engineering offices in New York, Houston, or San Francisco. Despite the fact that the money is returned almost immediately to corporations that are members of the corporatocracy (the creditor), the recipient country is required to pay it all back, principal plus interest.
”
”
John Perkins (Confessions of an Economic Hit Man)
“
Imagine your bills are checks you're receiving. Or use gratitude and give thanks to the company who sent you the bill, by thinking about how you've benefited from their service - for electricity or being able to live in a home. You can write across the front of a bill when you pay it, "Thank you - paid." If you don't have the money to pay the bill right away, write across the front of it, "Thank you for the money." The law of attraction doesn't question whether what you imagine and feel is real or not. It responds to what you give, period!
”
”
Rhonda Byrne (The Power (The Secret, #2))
“
Hazel obsession with Hoosiers around the world was a textbook example of a false karass, of a seeming team that was meaningless in terms of the ways God gets things done, a textbook example of what Bokonon calls a granfalloon. Other examples are the Communist party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the General Electric Company, the International Order of Odd Fellows - and any nation, anytime, anywhere.
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Cat’s Cradle)
“
tell me where you got that hot-water-heater? Are they very expensive things?' 'Why, no. They're very cheap. I don't know what they cost to buy outright, but you can hire them from the electricity company you know. We hire ours. I forget what it costs—something quite small. Two bob a quarter, or something like that.
”
”
Nevil Shute (No Highway)
“
When a director at Pacific Gas & Electric, one of the nation’s largest utilities, testified that all of its control systems were getting hooked up to the Internet, to save money and speed up the transmission of energy, Lacombe asked what the company was doing about security. He didn’t know what Lacombe was talking about.
”
”
Fred Kaplan (Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War)
“
I often ask, "What do you want to work at? If you have the chance. When you get out of school, college, the service, etc."
Some answer right off and tell their definite plans and projects, highly approved by Papa. I'm pleased for them* but it's a bit boring, because they are such squares.
Quite a few will, with prompting, come out with astounding stereotyped, conceited fantasies, such as becoming a movie actor when they are "discovered" "like Marlon Brando, but in my own way."
Very rarely somebody will, maybe defiantly and defensively, maybe diffidently but proudly, make you know that he knows very well what he is going to do; it is something great; and he is indeed already doing it, which is the real test.
The usual answer, perhaps the normal answer, is "I don't know," meaning, "I'm looking; I haven't found the right thing; it's discouraging but not hopeless."
But the terrible answer is, "Nothing." The young man doesn't want to do anything.
I remember talking to half a dozen young fellows at Van Wagner's Beach outside of Hamilton, Ontario; and all of them had this one thing to say: "Nothing." They didn't believe that what to work at was the kind of thing one wanted. They rather expected that two or three of them would work for the electric company in town, but they couldn't care less, I turned away from the conversation abruptly because of the uncontrollable burning tears in my eyes and constriction in my chest. Not feeling sorry for them, but tears of frank dismay for the waste of our humanity (they were nice kids). And it is out of that incident that many years later I am writing this book.
”
”
Paul Goodman (Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized System)
“
You know that when the local utility company is trying to assassinate you, that your research into their frauds and corruption is progressing in the right direction.
”
”
Steven Magee
“
Niagara Falls Power Company chose to go with AC current to feed the industry of Buffalo, which became briefly known as the electric city of the future.
”
”
A.A. Gill (To America with Love)
“
By my rambling digressions I perceive myself to be grown old. I us'd to write more methodically. But one does not dress for private company as for a publick ball. 'Tis perhaps only negligence.
”
”
Benjamin Franklin (The Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin: Letters and Papers on Electricity, Philosophical Subjects, General Politics, Moral Subjects & the Economy, American Subjects Before & During the Revolution)
“
Antoher giant, Toshiba, started from a joint venture in the early 1900's between Americas's General Electric and two Japanese companies, Tokyo Electric and Shibaura Electric (part of Mitsui group).
”
”
Kenneth G. Henshall (Storia del Giappone (Italian Edition))
“
Just as your electricity or phone line is not shut off if the electric company or phone company doesn’t like what you say, social media platforms should not be in the business of monitoring and punishing speech.
”
”
Gad Saad (The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense)
“
Our sympathy is just as base. We come to them who weep foolishly, and sit down and cry for company, instead of imparting to them truth and health in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in communication with their own reason.
”
”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (Self-Reliance and Other Essays)
“
Shows like 3-2-1 Contact, The Big Comfy Couch, Captain Kangaroo, The Electric Company, The Great Space Coaster, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, Romper Room, Reading Rainbow, Sesame Street, Zoobilee Zoo, and many, many more.
”
”
Ernest Cline (Ready Player Two (Ready Player One #2))
“
What do you know about me, Isabeau?"
He leaned forward, and I forced myself to stay still instead of shying away. He was so close that I could smell the subtle notes of his cologne: musk and wood with a hint of leather.
What did he want me to say? That everyone said he was an ogre? Or that they all wanted to sleep with him anyway?
"I..."
"Go on. You won't hurt my feelings."
He was still smiling, slight dimples visible in both cheeks. The sight was destracting, to say the least.
"I know that you're the youngest CEO and partner in the company's history, and I know that you earned the spot by working your way up after graduate school instead of using your inheritance as a crutch."
"Everyone knows that. What do you know about me? The real stuff. None of this press release bullshit."
I looked down at my hands, anything not to have to look up at his face so close to me.
"Um. People say... they say that you're scary. And that your assistants don't last long."
He laughed, a deep, warm sound that seemed to fill up the office. I glanced up to see him smirking at me. I relaxed my grip on the desk a little. Maybe I wasn't being fired after all.
"What else do they say?"
Oh, God. He can't possibly want me to tell him everything. Does he? The look on his face confirmed that he did. It was clear by the way he looked at me that I wasn't leaving this office until I gave him exactly what he wanted.
"They say. Um... They say that you're very, uh, good looking... and impossible to please."
"Oh they do, do they?" He sat back, and tented his fingers beneath his chin. "Well, do you agree with them? Do you think I'm scary, handsome and woefully unsatisfied?"
My mouth dropped open, and I quickly closed it with a snap.
"Yes. I mean, no! I mean, I don't know..."
He stood, then, and leaned in close, towering over me. "You were right the first time."
Anxiety coursed through me, but I have to admit, being this close to him, smelling his scent and feeling the heat radiating off his body, it made me wonder what it would be like to be in his arms. To be his. To be owned by him...
His face was almost touching mine when he whispered to me. "I am unsatisfied, Isabeau. I want you to be my new assistant. Will you do that for me? Will you be at my beck and call?"
My breath left me as his words sunk in. When I finally regained it, I felt like I was trembling from head to toe. His beck and call.
"Wh-what about your old assistant?"
Mr. Drake leaned back again and took my chin in his hand, forcing my eyes to his. "What about her? I want you."
His touch on my skin was electric. Are we still talking about business?
"Yes, Mr. Drake."
His thumb stroked my cheek for the briefest of moments, and then he released me, breathless, and wondering what I'd just agreed to.
”
”
Delilah Fawkes (At His Service (The Billionaire's Beck and Call, #1))
“
hydropower is an obvious first choice for generating electricity. The Willamette Falls Electric Company installed the first AC hydroelectric power station in the United States in 1889 to send power from Oregon City to Portland, Oregon, thirteen miles away.
”
”
Richard Rhodes (Energy: A Human History)
“
New Rule: Republicans must stop pitting the American people against the government. Last week, we heard a speech from Republican leader Bobby Jindal--and he began it with the story that every immigrant tells about going to an American grocery store for the first time and being overwhelmed with the "endless variety on the shelves." And this was just a 7-Eleven--wait till he sees a Safeway. The thing is, that "endless variety"exists only because Americans pay taxes to a government, which maintains roads, irrigates fields, oversees the electrical grid, and everything else that enables the modern American supermarket to carry forty-seven varieties of frozen breakfast pastry.Of course, it's easy to tear government down--Ronald Reagan used to say the nine most terrifying words in the Englishlanguage were "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." But that was before "I'm Sarah Palin, now show me the launch codes."The stimulus package was attacked as typical "tax and spend"--like repairing bridges is left-wing stuff. "There the liberals go again, always wanting to get across the river." Folks, the people are the government--the first responders who put out fires--that's your government. The ranger who shoos pedophiles out of the park restroom, the postman who delivers your porn.How stupid is it when people say, "That's all we need: the federal government telling Detroit how to make cars or Wells Fargo how to run a bank. You want them to look like the post office?"You mean the place that takes a note that's in my hand in L.A. on Monday and gives it to my sister in New Jersey on Wednesday, for 44 cents? Let me be the first to say, I would be thrilled if America's health-care system was anywhere near as functional as the post office.Truth is, recent years have made me much more wary of government stepping aside and letting unregulated private enterprise run things it plainly is too greedy to trust with. Like Wall Street. Like rebuilding Iraq.Like the way Republicans always frame the health-care debate by saying, "Health-care decisions should be made by doctors and patients, not government bureaucrats," leaving out the fact that health-care decisions aren't made by doctors, patients, or bureaucrats; they're made by insurance companies. Which are a lot like hospital gowns--chances are your gas isn't covered.
”
”
Bill Maher (The New New Rules: A Funny Look At How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass)
“
She worked for a life insurance company that had only recently become sufficiently progressive to hire Negroes. This meant that she worked in an atmosphere so positively electric with interracial good will that no one ever dreamed of telling the truth about anything.
”
”
James Baldwin (Come Out the Wilderness)
“
(When the company was finally broken up in the 1980s to satisfy antitrust regulators, it was worth more than the combined worth of General Electric, General Motors, Ford, IBM, Xerox, and Coca-Cola, and employed a million people.) Bell moved to Washington, D.C., became
”
”
Bill Bryson (At Home: A Short History of Private Life)
“
In effect, Wisconsin politicians forced the owners of these 8,000 small, family-owned and taxpaying businesses to turn over a month’s profits so the money could be given to one of the biggest companies in the world, General Electric, and its partners to make a film glamorizing violent theft.
”
”
David Cay Johnston (The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use "Plain English" to Rob You Blind)
“
Nine times out of ten it's an electric razor. But … every once in a while [looks around, leans in conspiratorially] … it's a dildo. [leans back] Of course, it's company policy never to imply ownership in the event of a dildo. We have to use the indefinite article, "a dildo", never … your dildo.
”
”
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
“
The 1950s witnessed especially rapid expansion of electronic and electrical firms, of tobacco, soft drink, and food-processing companies, and of the chemical, plastics, and pharmaceutical industries. IBM blossomed as a leader in the computer business, soon to become a guiding star of the American economy.
”
”
James T. Patterson (Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (Oxford History of the United States Book 10))
“
Schmidt’s advice would come to define the methods of Comstock’s media and public relations operation. The campaigns of both politicians and companies, Schmidt told GE, were not “won by the candidate or company with the best character, or product, but by the one with the simplest and most clearly told story.
”
”
Thomas Gryta (Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric)
“
Using Hollerith’s tabulators, the 1890 census was completed in one year rather than eight. It was the first major use of electrical circuits to process information, and the company that Hollerith founded became in 1924, after a series of mergers and acquisitions, the International Business Machines Corporation, or IBM.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution)
“
When Musk announced in 2014 that Tesla would open-source all of its patents, analysts tried to decide whether this was a publicity stunt or if it hid an ulterior motive or a catch. But the decision was a straightforward one for Musk. He wants people to make and buy electric cars. Man’s future, as he sees it, depends on this. If open-sourcing Tesla’s patents means other companies can build electric cars more easily, then that is good for mankind, and the ideas should be free. The cynic will scoff at this, and understandably so. Musk, however, has been programmed to behave this way and tends to be sincere when explaining his thinking—almost to a fault.
”
”
Ashlee Vance (Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future)
“
Not every artist has to make a living making art. Millions of people who play guitar would do well to keep their day jobs. Plenty of people make incredible art "on the side". William Faulkner wasn't any less of an artist for writing As I lay Dying on the back of a wheelbarrow during breaks in his job shoveling coal for the electric company.
”
”
Michael Gungor (The Crowd, The Critic And The Muse: A Book For Creators)
“
Meanwhile the wineglasses had flushed yellow and flushed crimson; had been emptied; had been filled. And thus by degrees was lit, half-way down the spine, which is the seat of the soul, not that hard little electric light which we call brilliance, as it pops in and out upon our lips, but the more profound, subtle and subterranean glow which is the rich yellow flame of rational intercourse. No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself. We are all going to heaven and Vandyck is of the company--in other words, how good life seemed, how sweet its rewards, how trivial this grudge or that grievance, how admirable friendship and the society of one's kind, as, lighting a good cigarette, one sunk among the cushions in the window-seat.
”
”
Virginia Woolf (A Room of One's Own (Classics To Go))
“
4-19-10 Monday 1:00 P.M.
Today the gas was turned off – more panic reactions. I’m wondering if the darkest hour is just before the dawn and all those wonderful cliches. I don’t see anyway out of my current situation, at least any quality of life I’m willing to accept. It’s just too much to think about right now. I lost the gas stove, the heat, and the water heater. Hmm cold showers, but found an electric crock pot and frying pan, and I still have the microwave.
I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose the water. My mother told me there’s a family who pitched a tent in the forest preserve. Somehow the father’s still working and keeping his two kids in school, with a little help from a local church.
And it’s good to know the forest rangers have a heart and have looked the other way. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that they’ve dropped off some food and supplies. Isn’t that America.
”
”
Andrew Neff (The Mind Game Company: The Players)
“
I’m sorry, baby,” I whisper through tears. His execution would have been hours ago. I swore to keep him company as he fried on the electric chair, but I left the only man who ever showed me love to die alone. That was unforgivable enough, but I also missed the wedding we were supposed to have in the prison chaplain, followed by three hours of conjugal bliss. Xero died among enemies today because I couldn’t put aside my trauma. That guilt will plague me until I die.
”
”
Gigi Styx (I Will Break You (Pen Pals Duet, #1))
“
Hazelina opsjednutost Hoosierima diljem svijeta klasičan je primjer lažnog karassa, prividne ekipe što nema nikakve veze s onime što i kako Bog radi, klasičan primjer onoga što Bokonon zove granfalloon. Drugi primjeri granfalloona su Komunistička partija, Kćeri američke revolucije, General Electric Company, International Order of Odd Fellows – bilo koja nacija, bilo kada, bilo gdje.
Kako nas Bokonon poziva da pjevamo s njim:
„Ako želiš znati što je granfalloon
Samo zaviri u napuhani balon
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Cat’s Cradle)
“
Look you," Pandora told him in a businesslike tone, "marriage is not on the table."
Look you? Look you? Gabriel was simultaneously amused and outraged. Was she really speaking to him as if he were an errand boy?
"I've never wanted to marry," Pandora continued. "Anyone who knows me will tell you that. When I was little, I never liked the stories about princesses waiting to be rescued. I never wished on falling stars, or pulled the petals off daisies while reciting 'he loves me, he loves me not.' At my brother's wedding, they handed out slivers of wedding cake to all the unmarried girls and said if we put it under our pillows, we would dream of our future husbands. I ate my cake instead. Every crumb. I've made plans for my life that don't involve becoming anyone's wife."
"What plans?" Gabriel asked. How could a girl of her position, with her looks, make plans that didn't include the possibility of marriage?
"That's none of your business," she told him smartly.
"Understood," Gabriel assured her. "There's just one thing I'd like to ask: What the bloody hell were you doing at the ball in the first place, if you don't want to marry?"
"Because I thought it would be only slightly less boring than staying at home."
"Anyone as opposed to marriage as you claim to be has no business taking part in the Season."
"Not every girl who attends a ball wants to be Cinderella."
"If it's grouse season," Gabriel pointed out acidly, "and you're keeping company with a flock of grouse on a grouse-moor, it's a bit disingenuous to ask a sportsman to pretend you're not a grouse."
"Is that how men think of it? No wonder I hate balls." Pandora looked scornful. "I'm so sorry for intruding on your happy hunting grounds."
"I wasn't wife-hunting," he snapped. "I'm no more interested in marrying than you are."
"Then why were you at the ball?"
"To see a fireworks display!"
After a brief, electric silence, Pandora dropped her head swiftly. He saw her shoulders tremble, and for an alarming moment, he thought she had begun to cry. But then he heard a delicate snorting, snickering sound, and he realized she was... laughing?
"Well," she muttered, "it seems you succeeded."
Before Gabriel even realized what he was doing, he reached out to lift her chin with his fingers. She struggled to hold back her amusement, but it slipped out nonetheless. Droll, sneaky laughter, punctuated with vole-like squeaks, while sparks danced in her blue eyes like shy emerging stars. Her grin made him lightheaded.
Damn it.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Devil in Spring (The Ravenels, #3))
“
I love my kids, and I’m so proud of them for everything that they have accomplished. My oldest child, Elon, is making electric cars to save the environment and launching rockets. My middle child, Kimbal, opened farm-to-table restaurants and is teaching children across the country to build fruit and vegetable gardens in underserved schools. My youngest child, Tosca, runs her own entertainment company, producing and directing romance films from bestselling novels. They all have different interests.
”
”
Maye Musk (A Woman Makes a Plan: Advice for a Lifetime of Adventure, Beauty, and Success)
“
Buchanan took pride in what he called his academic entrepreneurship. Contributions from corporations such as General Electric and several oil companies and right-wing individuals flowed in, as anti–New Deal foundations provided funds to lure promising graduate students.53 Before long, the cofounders of the center were able to seize an opportunity to prove their enterprise’s value to the Byrd Organization on the issue that mattered most to its stalwarts in these years: the future of the public schools.
”
”
Nancy MacLean (Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America)
“
How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such a fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself as anything less than a god? And, when you consider that this incalculably
subtle organism is inseparable from the still more marvelous patterns of its environment —
from the minutest electrical designs to the whole company of the galaxies — how is it conceivable that this incarnation of all eternity can be bored with being?
”
”
Alan W. Watts (The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are)
“
As a rule, menstruation is generally not something seen in porn, which is a peculiar omission in an industry that fetishizes everything from shoes to stuffed animals to excretory functions. Though credit-card processing companies seem to have no problem with double- and triple-penetration sites, bukkake, and electricity play, most of them regard menstruation and other forms of blood play as out of bounds, citing obscenity violations as well as safer sex concerns---though anal cream pies and the like are at least as risky.
”
”
Audacia Ray (Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads, and Cashing in on Internet Sexploration)
“
While everything requires work to be produced, practically nothing can be produced with work alone. Farmers need land; taxi drivers, cars; the artists, something to paint and something to paint with. Even a comedian needs an inventory of jokes, his capital, as well as hydroelectric dams are the capital of the companies that generate electricity. Capital complements workers in the production process, but it also competes with them for jobs. In other words, many goods and services can be produced with either a lot of labor and little capital
”
”
Thomas Sowell (Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy)
“
Hazel’s obsession with Hoosiers around the world was a textbook example of a false karass, of a seeming team that was meaningless in terms of the ways God gets things done, a textbook example of what Bokonon calls a granfalloon. Other examples of granfalloons are the Communist party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the General Electric Company, the International Order of Odd Fellows—and any nation, anytime, anywhere. As Bokonon invites us to sing along with him: If you wish to study a granfalloon, Just remove the skin of a toy balloon.
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Cat’s Cradle)
“
As our society grew more complex, more and more of the government’s function took the form of social insurance, with each of us chipping in through our tax dollars to protect ourselves collectively—for disaster relief if our house was destroyed in a hurricane; unemployment insurance if we lost a job; Social Security and Medicare to lessen the indignities of old age; reliable electricity and phone service for those who lived in rural areas where utility companies wouldn’t otherwise make a profit; public schools and universities to make education more egalitarian.
”
”
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
“
5-4-10 Tuesday 8:00 A.M.
Made a large batch of chili and spaghetti to freeze yesterday. And some walnut fudge! Relieved the electricity is still on.
It’s another beautiful sunny day with fluffy white clouds drifting by. The last cloud bank looked like a dog with nursing pups.
I open the window and let in some fresh air filled with the scent of apple and plum blossoms and flowering lilacs. Feels like it’s close to 70 degrees. There’s a boy on a skate board being pulled along by his St. Bernard, who keeps turning around to see if his young friend is still on board.
I’m thinking of a scene still vividly displayed in my memory. I was nine years old. I cut through the country club on my way home from school and followed a narrow stream, sucking on a jawbreaker from Ben Franklins, and I had some cherry and strawberry pixie straws, and banana and vanilla taffy inside my coat pocket. The temperature was in the fifties so it almost felt like spring. There were still large patches of snow on the fairways in the shadows and the ground was soggy from the melt off.
Enthralled with the multi-layers of ice, thin sheets and tiny ice sickles gleaming under the afternoon sun, dripping, streaming into the pristine water below, running over the ribbons of green grass, forming miniature rapids and gently flowing rippling waves and all the reflections of a crystal cathedral, merging with the hidden world of a child. Seemingly endless natural sculptures.
Then the hollow percussion sounds of the ice thudding, crackling under my feet, breaking off little ice flows carried away into a snow-covered cavern and out the other side of the tunnel. And I followed it all the way to bridge under Maple Road as if I didn't have a care in the world.
”
”
Andrew Neff (The Mind Game Company: The Players)
“
She started shaping the face, using a wire loop to gently carve the slope of the strong forehead and brow, then the nose and the lean angle of the cheekbones. In little time, her fingers were moving on automatic pilot, her mind disengaged and gone into its own flow, her subconscious directly commanding her hands into action.
She didn’t know how long she’d been working, but when the hard rap sounded on her apartment door some time later, Tess nearly jumped out of her skin. Sleeping next to her feet on the rug, Harvard woke up with a grunt.
“You expecting someone?” she asked quietly as she got up from her stool.
God, she must have been really zoned out while she was sculpting, because she’d seriously messed up around the mouth area of the piece. The lips were curled back in some kind of snarl, and the teeth . . .
The knock sounded again, followed by a deep voice that went through her like a bolt of electricity.
“Tess? Are you there?”
Dante.
Tess’s eyes flew wide, then squeezed into a wince as she did a quick mental inventory of her appearance. Hair flung up into a careless knot on top of her head, braless in her white thermal Henley and faded red sweats that had more than one dried clay smudge on them. Not exactly fit for company.
“Dante?” she asked, stalling for time and just wanting to be sure her ears weren’t playing tricks on her. “Is that you?”
“Yeah. Can I come in?”
“Um, sure. Just a sec,” she called out, trying to sound casual as she threw a dry work cloth over her sculpture and quickly checked her face in the reflection off one of her putty spatulas.
Oh, lovely. She had a slightly crazed, starving-artist look going on. Very glamorous. That’ll teach him to do the pop-in visit, she thought, as she padded over to the door and twisted the dead bolt.
”
”
Lara Adrian (Kiss of Crimson (Midnight Breed, #2))
“
And this is one of the first things one learns from Musk’s example—he is relentless in his pursuit of the bold and, the bigger point, totally unfazed by scale. When he couldn’t get a job, he started a company. When Internet commerce stalled, he reinvented banking. When he couldn’t find decent launch services for his Martian greenhouse, he went into the rocket business. And as a kicker, because he never lost interest in the problem of energy, he started both an electric car and a solar energy company. It is also worth pointing out that Tesla is the first successful car company started in America in five decades and that SolarCity has become one of the nation’s largest residential solar providers.9 All told, in slightly less than a dozen years, Musk’s appetite for bold has created an empire worth about $30 billion.10 So what’s his secret? Musk has a few, but none are more important to him than passion and purpose. “I didn’t go into the rocket business, the car business, or the solar business thinking this is a great opportunity. I just thought, in order to make a difference, something needed to be done. I wanted to have an impact. I wanted to create something substantially better than what came before.
”
”
Peter H. Diamandis (Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World (Exponential Technology Series))
“
The tunnel leading away from Corvin’s lair had undergone several twists and turns, leaving the electric light of the inhabited passageways behind, and it was only because the little turnip-sized wellmonster huddled against her neck had quite unexpectedly begun to glimmer palely with a cold unnatural light that she was able to find her way at all. When I get out of this, she told herself, eyes wide in the near-complete darkness, I am so writing a paper on these creatures. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of them bioluminescing, but I’m jolly glad they do. Its eyes were two small pale lamps, brighter than the glowing skin around them.
”
”
Vivian Shaw (Dreadful Company (Dr. Greta Helsing, #2))
“
The explosion was deafening; a huge cloud of fire rolled out the window after us, its immense heat brushing my face as we tumbled into the snow.
We hit the ground and rolled. Flaming debris from the house came down around us; Griffin shoved me flat on my back, covering us both with his heavy coat.
The echoes of the explosion reflected back across the river, then slowly dwindled away, like dying thunder. The leaping flames threw warm light onto the falling snow, turning it into a storm of sparks pouring down from the heavens.
Griffin started to push himself off of me, then stoped. His hands were braced on either side of my shoulders, his legs twined with mine. Mt heart pounded, my palms sweated, and I was suddenly, acutely aware of how close his face was to mine.
"You're a madman," he whispered. "An utter madman."
"Perhaps," I allowed. "But it worked."
The leaping light from the burning house painted his features in gold, highlighting his patrician nose and finding threads of brown and blue in his green eyes. His pupils widened, the irises contracting to silver. "Whatever am I going to do with you?" he murmured.
The warmth of his breath feathered over my skin. Heat collected in my groin, my lips. My mouth was dry, my voice hoarse, and perhaps he was right and it was madness when I whispered, "Whatever you want."
A shiver went through his body, perhaps because we were lying on the cold ground. But instead of getting up, he leaned closer, his overlong hair tumbling over his forehead. He paused, his mouth almost touching mine, his eyes seeming to ask a question.
It was madness; it was folly; it was sheer selfishness. I was delusional, misguided, wrong, out of control. I needed to pull back, to say something sane, to re-establish mastery over myself. I could not do this. I could not take the risk.
Later tonight, I'd relive this moment in my lonely bed and wonder if I'd done the right thing. But at least that would be familiar, would be something I knew how to cope with.
And yet the very thought felt like dying.
I surged forward, crossing the final, tiny gap and pressing my lips to his. It was awkward and desperate and frantic, but the feel of his mouth against mine sent a bolt of electricity straight down my spine. Just a moment, just this one kiss, surely that would be enough...
Then he kissed me back, and it would never be enough, a thousand years of this would not be enough. His mouth was hungry and insistent, his tongue probing my lips, asking for greater intimacy. I granted it, tongues swirling together, mine followed his when it retreated and tasting him in return.
There came the clanging of bells in the distance, the fire company alerted to the explosion. Griffin drew back a fraction. His breath was as raged as mine, which left me dazed with wonder.
"My dear," he whispered against my lips. Then he swallowed convulsively. "We should leave, before the fire companies come."
"Y-Yes." It was amazing I managed that much coherence.
He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against mine, our breaths mingling. "Will you come home with me?"
Was he asking...? "Yes." Oh, God, yes.
His lips curved into a smile.
”
”
Jordan L. Hawk (Widdershins (Whyborne & Griffin, #1))
“
Shipbuilding stalled postwar—the Great Depression came early to the shipbuilding industry—but welding advanced, finding a major new application in pipeline construction. In 1925 the Magnolia Petroleum Company of Galveston, Texas, rebuilt a leaky two-hundred-mile bolted natural-gas pipeline with acetylene lap-welded pipe. After five more years of development—other companies followed Magnolia—electric welding replaced acetylene, eliminating overlapping, using less pipe, and cutting welding time in half. Alloy steels were also important to pipeline improvement, as were improved ditching machines and gas compressors. By 1931, pipeline workers were laying the first thousand-mile natural-gas pipeline from the Texas Panhandle to Chicago.
”
”
Richard Rhodes (Energy: A Human History)
“
Pen, you really shouldn’t use the same password for all your accounts. I’ve headed off three hackers in the last week who would’ve gotten into your PayPal, bank, and electric company accounts.” “What?” Penelope was obviously confused at the change in subject, but Cade merely relaxed back in his seat and kept his eyes on Beth as she fidgeted uncomfortably. “Using PenisGod isn’t a good username for things like Amazon and eBay. And you really need to delete your craigslist account because calling yourself a penis god is only attracting weirdos. You probably don’t even remember you had that old ad up when you were trying to sell your bicycle. Well, it’s one of the most clicked-on ads on the site for San Antonio. I’m not exaggerating either. You had four hundred and sixty-nine messages—and I’m not even going to comment on the sixty-nine thing. But three hundred and fourteen of those contained pictures of men’s dicks. Fifty-seven contained marriage proposals, most from overseas; twenty-seven were from women who were interested in a threesome with you, fifty-five were spam, people trying to get you to click on links or buy some crap product, and the remaining sixteen emails were religious in nature, telling you to repent for your soul.” “I should probably be pissed you got into my account, but I trust you, so I’m not. But it’s not penis god!” Penelope exclaimed huffily. “It’s Pen IS God.” Cade burst out laughing. “Seriously, sis? Penis god? Just wait until the guys hear this!
”
”
Susan Stoker (Shelter for Elizabeth (Badge of Honor: Texas Heroes, #5))
“
If talking pictures could be said to have a father, it was Lee De Forest, a brilliant but erratic inventor of electrical devices of all types. (He had 216 patents.) In 1907, while searching for ways to boost telephone signals, De Forest invented something called the thermionic triode detector. De Forest’s patent described it as “a System for Amplifying Feeble Electric Currents” and it would play a pivotal role in the development of broadcast radio and much else involving the delivery of sound, but the real developments would come from others. De Forest, unfortunately, was forever distracted by business problems. Several companies he founded went bankrupt, twice he was swindled by his backers, and constantly he was in court fighting over money or patents. For these reasons, he didn’t follow through on his invention.
”
”
Bill Bryson (One Summer: America, 1927)
“
Since our civilization is irreversibly dependent on electronics, abolition of EMR is out of the question. However, as a first step toward averting disaster, we must halt the introduction of new sources of electromagnetic energy while we investigate the biohazards of those we already have with a completeness and honesty that have so far been in short supply. New sources must be allowed only after their risks have been evaluated on the basis of the knowledge acquired in such a moratorium.
With an adequately funded research program, the moratorium need last no more than five years, and the ensuing changes could almost certainly be performed without major economic trauma. It seems possible that a different power frequency—say 400 hertz instead of 60—might prove much safer. Burying power lines and providing them with grounded shields would reduce the electric fields around them, and magnetic shielding is also feasible.
A major part of the safety changes would consist of energy-efficiency reforms that would benefit the economy in the long run. These new directions would have been taken years ago but for the opposition of power companies concerned with their short-term profits, and a government unwilling to challenge them. It is possible to redesign many appliances and communications devices so they use far less energy. The entire power supply could be decentralized by feeding electricity from renewable sources (wind, flowing water, sunlight, georhermal and ocean thermal energy conversion, and so forth) into local distribution nets. This would greatly decrease hazards by reducing the voltages and amperages required. Ultimately, most EMR hazards could be eliminated by the development of efficient photoelectric converters to be used as the primary power source at each point of consumption. The changeover would even pay for itself, as the loss factors of long-distance power transmission—not to mention the astronomical costs of building and decommissioning short-lived nuclear power plants—were eliminated. Safety need not imply giving up our beneficial machines.
Obviously, given the present technomilitary control of society in most parts of the world, such sane efficiency will be immensely difficult to achieve. Nevertheless, we must try. Electromagnetic energy presents us with the same imperative as nuclear energy: Our survival depends on the ability of upright scientists and other people of goodwill to break the military-industrial death grip on our policy-making institutions.
”
”
Robert O. Becker (The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life)
“
The history books, which had almost completely ignored the contribution of the Negro in American history, only served to intensify the Negroes’ sense of worthlessness and to augment the anachronistic doctrine of white supremacy. All too many Negroes and whites are unaware of the fact that the first American to shed blood in the revolution which freed this country from British oppression was a black seaman named Crispus Attucks. Negroes and whites are almost totally oblivious of the fact that it was a Negro physician, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, who performed the first successful operation on the heart in America. Another Negro physician, Dr. Charles Drew, was largely responsible for developing the method of separating blood plasma and storing it on a large scale, a process that saved thousands of lives in World War II and has made possible many of the important advances in postwar medicine. History books have virtually overlooked the many Negro scientists and inventors who have enriched American life. Although a few refer to George Washington Carver, whose research in agricultural products helped to revive the economy of the South when the throne of King Cotton began to totter, they ignore the contribution of Norbert Rillieux, whose invention of an evaporating pan revolutionized the process of sugar refining. How many people know that the multimillion-dollar United Shoe Machinery Company developed from the shoe-lasting machine invented in the last century by a Negro from Dutch Guiana, Jan Matzeliger; or that Granville T. Woods, an expert in electric motors, whose many patents speeded the growth and improvement of the railroads at the beginning of this century, was a Negro?
”
”
Martin Luther King Jr. (The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.)
“
How, then, can Apple claim to be 100 percent renewable? It purchases a fraudulent “100 percent renewable” status from electricity producers. The basic way this works is that Apple pays utilities to give it credit for the solar and wind that others use—and to give others the blame for the coal, gas, and nuclear that Apple uses. It’s as if Apple CEO Tim Cook were traveling with nine other people on a yacht powered 90 percent by diesel and 10 percent by a sail—and Cook claimed that he traveled just using the sail, while the others traveled using the diesel. This energy accounting fraud is shameful and destructive, because it leads us to think that we can have innovators like Apple without the uniquely cost-effective energy we get from fossil fuels. Even worse, leading company after leading company, including Facebook, Google, Bank of America, and Anheuser-Busch, is claiming to be 100 percent renewable.[18]
”
”
Alex Epstein (Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas--Not Less)
“
It’s worth pausing for a moment to meditate on what Tesla had accomplished. Musk had set out to make an electric car that did not suffer from any compromises. He did that. Then, using a form of entrepreneurial judo, he upended the decades of criticisms against electric cars. The Model S was not just the best electric car; it was best car, period, and the car people desired. America had not seen a successful car company since Chrysler emerged in 1925. Silicon Valley had done little of note in the automotive industry. Musk had never run a car factory before and was considered arrogant and amateurish by Detroit. Yet, one year after the Model S went on sale, Tesla had posted a profit, hit $562 million in quarterly revenue, raised its sales forecast, and become as valuable as Mazda Motor. Elon Musk had built the automotive equivalent of the iPhone. And car executives in Detroit, Japan, and Germany had only their crappy ads to watch as they pondered how such a thing had occurred.
”
”
Ashlee Vance (Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future)
“
Drucker saw two possible roads ahead. On the one hand, Bell Labs could become a standard industrial lab, much like the ones that supplied technology to General Electric or RCA. Or the Labs could take a “far bolder, but also far riskier course” by going into business for itself, making money from its patents and products. It could become a kind of unique and monolithic brain trust, one that did research for AT&T but also for any company or part of the government that was willing to pay for access to its people and resources. “Nothing like this has ever been done,” Drucker noted. “And no one knows whether it could succeed.” It was a tantalizing idea: Bell Labs would remain intact as a citadel for problem-solving. And it would be a citadel of capitalism, too. But perhaps this was too tantalizing. Drucker wondered if the notion was simply too experimental and too radical, and that it therefore could not actually come to pass. A conventional future, he concluded, seemed far more likely.
”
”
Jon Gertner (The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation)
“
The Proofs Human society has devised a system of proofs or tests that people must pass before they can participate in many aspects of commercial exchange and social interaction. Until they can prove that they are who they say they are, and until that identity is tied to a record of on-time payments, property ownership, and other forms of trustworthy behavior, they are often excluded—from getting bank accounts, from accessing credit, from being able to vote, from anything other than prepaid telephone or electricity. It’s why one of the biggest opportunities for this technology to address the problem of global financial inclusion is that it might help people come up with these proofs. In a nutshell, the goal can be defined as proving who I am, what I do, and what I own. Companies and institutions habitually ask questions—about identity, about reputation, and about assets—before engaging with someone as an employee or business partner. A business that’s unable to develop a reliable picture of a person’s identity, reputation, and assets faces uncertainty. Would you hire or loan money to a person about whom you knew nothing? It is riskier to deal with such people, which in turn means they must pay marked-up prices to access all sorts of financial services. They pay higher rates on a loan or are forced by a pawnshop to accept a steep discount on their pawned belongings in return for credit. Unable to get bank accounts or credit cards, they cash checks at a steep discount from the face value, pay high fees on money orders, and pay cash for everything while the rest of us enjoy twenty-five days interest free on our credit cards. It’s expensive to be poor, which means it’s a self-perpetuating state of being. Sometimes the service providers’ caution is dictated by regulation or compliance rules more than the unwillingness of the banker or trader to enter a deal—in the United States and other developed countries, banks are required to hold more capital against loans deemed to be of poor quality, for example. But many other times the driving factor is just fear of the unknown. Either way, anything that adds transparency to the multi-faceted picture of people’s lives should help institutions lower the cost of financing and insuring them.
”
”
Michael J. Casey (The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything)
“
If talking pictures could be said to have a father, it was Lee De Forest, a brilliant but erratic inventor of electrical devices of all types. (He had 216 patents.) In 1907, while searching for ways to boost telephone signals, De Forest invented something called the thermionic triode detector. De Forest’s patent described it as “a System for Amplifying Feeble Electric Currents” and it would play a pivotal role in the development of broadcast radio and much else involving the delivery of sound, but the real developments would come from others. De Forest, unfortunately, was forever distracted by business problems. Several companies he founded went bankrupt, twice he was swindled by his backers, and constantly he was in court fighting over money or patents. For these reasons, he didn’t follow through on his invention. Meanwhile, other hopeful inventors demonstrated various sound-and-image systems—Cinematophone, Cameraphone, Synchroscope—but in every case the only really original thing about them was their name. All produced sounds that were faint or muddy, or required impossibly perfect timing on the part of the projectionist. Getting a projector and sound system to run in perfect tandem was basically impossible. Moving pictures were filmed with hand-cranked cameras, which introduced a slight variability in speed that no sound system could adjust to. Projectionists also commonly repaired damaged film by cutting out a few frames and resplicing what remained, which clearly would throw out any recording. Even perfect film sometimes skipped or momentarily stuttered in the projector. All these things confounded synchronization. De Forest came up with the idea of imprinting the sound directly onto the film. That meant that no matter what happened with the film, sound and image would always be perfectly aligned. Failing to find backers in America, he moved to Berlin in the early 1920s and there developed a system that he called Phonofilm. De Forest made his first Phonofilm movie in 1921 and by 1923 he was back in America giving public demonstrations. He filmed Calvin Coolidge making a speech, Eddie Cantor singing, George Bernard Shaw pontificating, and DeWolf Hopper reciting “Casey at the Bat.” By any measure, these were the first talking pictures. However, no Hollywood studio would invest in them. The sound quality still wasn’t ideal, and the recording system couldn’t quite cope with multiple voices and movement of a type necessary for any meaningful dramatic presentation. One invention De Forest couldn’t make use of was his own triode detector tube, because the patents now resided with Western Electric, a subsidiary of AT&T. Western Electric had been using the triode to develop public address systems for conveying speeches to large crowds or announcements to fans at baseball stadiums and the like. But in the 1920s it occurred to some forgotten engineer at the company that the triode detector could be used to project sound in theaters as well. The upshot was that in 1925 Warner Bros. bought the system from Western Electric and dubbed it Vitaphone. By the time of The Jazz Singer, it had already featured in theatrical presentations several times. Indeed, the Roxy on its opening night in March 1927 played a Vitaphone feature of songs from Carmen sung by Giovanni Martinelli. “His voice burst from the screen with splendid synchronization with the movements of his lips,” marveled the critic Mordaunt Hall in the Times. “It rang through the great theatre as if he had himself been on the stage.
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Bill Bryson (One Summer: America, 1927)
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To show just how all pervasive the Committee of 300 is, a few words about the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), a Club of Rome creation and the test it ran against a nuclear power station at Three Mile Island (TMI) Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, seems in order. Termed “an accident” by a hysterical media, this was not an accident, but a deliberately designed plot to reverse favorable public opinion to nuclear power generated electricity. TMI was a crisis test for FEMA. An additional benefit was the fear and hysteria provoked by the news media, which had people fleeing the area, when in fact they were never in any danger. Bear in mind that nobody died as a result of the TMI “accident,” nor were any serious injuries reported. The stage-managed incident bore all the hall marks of a similar incident when Orson Wells scared New York and New Jersey half to death with claims that the world was being invaded by alien beings from Mars. Actually, the radio play was an adaptation of H.G. Wells “War of Worlds.” TMI was considered a success and gained favor with the anti-nuclear forces, as it provided the rallying point for the so-called “environmentalists,” well financed by Atlantic Richfield and other major oil companies and
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John Coleman (The Conspirator's Hierarchy: The Committee of 300)
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At such a time [at dawn] I would dream of being a baker who delivers bread, a fitter from the electric company, or an insurance man collecting the weekly installments. Or at least a chimney sweep. In the morning, at dawn, I would enter some half-opened gateway, still lighted by the watchman's lantern. I would put two fingers to my hat, crack a joke, and enter the labyrinth to leave late in the evening, at the other end of the city. I would spend all day going from apartment to apartment, conducting one never-ending conversation from one end of the city to the other, divided into parts among the householders; I would ask something in one apartment and receive a reply in another, make a joke in one place and collect the fruits of laughter in the third or fourth. Among the banging of doors I would squeeze through narrow passages, through bedrooms full of furniture, I would upset chamberpots, walk into squeaking perambulators in which babies cry, pick up rattles dropped by infants. I would stop for longer than necessary in kitchens and hallways, where servant girls were tidying up. The girls, busy, would stretch their young legs, tauten their high insteps, play with their cheap shining shoes, or clack around in loose slippers.
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Bruno Schulz (Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass)
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Our team’s vision for the facility was a cross between a shooting range and a country club for special forces personnel. Clients would be able to schedule all manner of training courses in advance, and the gear and support personnel would be waiting when they arrived. There’d be seven shooting ranges with high gravel berms to cut down noise and absorb bullets, and we’d carve a grass airstrip, and have a special driving track to practice high-speed chases and real “defensive driving”—the stuff that happens when your convoy is ambushed. There would be a bunkhouse to sleep seventy. And nearby, the main headquarters would have the feel of a hunting lodge, with timber framing and high stone walls, with a large central fireplace where people could gather after a day on the ranges. This was the community I enjoyed; we never intended to send anyone oversees. This chunk of the Tar Heel State was my “Field of Dreams.” I bought thirty-one hundred acres—roughly five square miles of land, plenty of territory to catch even the most wayward bullets—for $900,000. We broke ground in June 1997, and immediately began learning about do-it-yourself entrepreneurship. That land was ugly: Logging the previous year had left a moonscape of tree stumps and tangled roots lorded over by mosquitoes and poisonous creatures. I killed a snake the first twelve times I went to the property. The heat was miserable. While a local construction company carved the shooting ranges and the lake, our small team installed the culverts and forged new roads and planted the Southern pine utility poles to support the electrical wiring. The basic site work was done in about ninety days—and then we had to figure out what to call the place. The leading contender, “Hampton Roads Tactical Shooting Center,” was professional, but pretty uptight. “Tidewater Institute for Tactical Shooting” had legs, but the acronym wouldn’t have helped us much. But then, as we slogged across the property and excavated ditches, an incessant charcoal mud covered our boots and machinery, and we watched as each new hole was swallowed by that relentless peat-stained black water. Blackwater, we agreed, was a name. Meanwhile, within days of being installed, the Southern pine poles had been slashed by massive black bears marking their territory, as the animals had done there since long before the Europeans settled the New World. We were part of this land now, and from that heritage we took our original logo: a bear paw surrounded by the stylized crosshairs of a rifle scope.
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Anonymous
“
Nothing in the period that followed was too good for the Rouge; it had the best blast furnaces, the best machine tools, the best metal labs, the best electrical systems, the most efficient efficiency experts. At its maturity in the mid-twenties, the Rouge dwarfed all other industrial complexes. It was a mile and a half long and three quarters of a mile wide. Its eleven hundred acres contained ninety-three buildings, twenty-three of them major. There were ninety-three miles of railroad track on it and twenty-seven miles of conveyor belts. Some seventy-five thousand men worked there, five thousand of them doing nothing but keeping it clean, using eighty-six tons of soap and wearing out five thousand mops each month. By the standards of the day the Rouge was, in fact, clean and quiet. Little was wasted. A British historian of the time, J. A. Spender, wrote of its systems: “If absolute completeness and perfect adaptation of means to end justify the word, they are in their own way works of art.” Dissatisfied with the supply and quality of the steel he was getting from the steel companies, Ford asked how much it would cost to build a steel plant within the Rouge. About $35 million, Sorensen told him. “What are you waiting for?” said Ford. Equally dissatisfied with both the availability and the quality of glass, he built a glass factory at the Rouge as well. The
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David Halberstam (The Reckoning)
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There’s the potential that Tesla is setting itself up to capitalize on a situation like the one Apple found itself in when it first introduced the iPhone. Apple’s rivals spent the initial year after the iPhone’s release dismissing the product. Once it became clear Apple had a hit, the competitors had to catch up. Even with the device right in their hands, it took companies like HTC and Samsung years to produce anything comparable. Other once-great companies like Nokia and BlackBerry didn’t withstand the shock. If, and it’s a big if, Tesla’s Model 3 turned into a massive hit—the thing that everyone with enough money wanted because buying something else would just be paying for the past—then the rival automakers would be in a terrible bind. Most of the car companies dabbling in electric vehicles continue to buy bulky, off-the-shelf batteries rather than developing their own technology. No matter how much they wanted to respond to the Model 3, the automakers would need years to come up with a real challenger and even then they might not have a ready supply of batteries for their vehicles. “I think it is going to be a bit like that,” Musk said. “When will the first non-Tesla Gigafactory get built? Probably no sooner than six years from now. The big car companies are so derivative. They want to see it work somewhere else before they will approve the project and move forward. They’re probably more like seven years away. But I hope I’m wrong.” Musk
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Ashlee Vance (Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future)
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Like spacecraft that pick up speed as they rise into the Earth’s stratosphere, growth stocks often seem to defy gravity. Let’s look at the trajectories of three of the hottest growth stocks of the 1990s: General Electric, Home Depot, and Sun Microsystems. (See Figure 7-1.) In every year from 1995 through 1999, each grew bigger and more profitable. Revenues doubled at Sun and more than doubled at Home Depot. According to Value Line, GE’s revenues grew 29%; its earnings rose 65%. At Home Depot and Sun, earnings per share roughly tripled. But something else was happening—and it wouldn’t have surprised Graham one bit. The faster these companies grew, the more expensive their stocks became. And when stocks grow faster than companies, investors always end up sorry. As Figure 7-2 shows: A great company is not a great investment if you pay too much for the stock. The more a stock has gone up, the more it seems likely to keep going up. But that instinctive belief is flatly contradicted by a fundamental law of financial physics: The bigger they get, the slower they grow. A $1-billion company can double its sales fairly easily; but where can a $50-billion company turn to find another $50 billion in business? Growth stocks are worth buying when their prices are reasonable, but when their price/earnings ratios go much above 25 or 30 the odds get ugly: Journalist Carol Loomis found that, from 1960 through 1999, only eight of the largest 150 companies on the Fortune 500 list managed to raise their earnings by an annual average of at least 15% for two decades.
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Benjamin Graham (The Intelligent Investor)
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And thus by degrees was lit, half-way down the spine, which is the seat of the soul, not that hard little electric light which we call brilliance, as it pops in and out upon our lips, but the more profound, subtle and subterranean glow which is the rich yellow flame of rational intercourse. No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself. We are all going to heaven and Vandyck is of the company--in other words, how good life seemed, how sweet its rewards, how trivial this grudge or that grievance, how admirable friendship and the society of one's kind, as, lighting a good cigarette, one sunk among the cushions in the window-seat. If by good luck there had been an ash-tray handy, if one had not knocked the ash out of the window in default, if things had been a little different from what they were, one would not have seen, presumably, a cat without a tail. The sight of that abrupt and truncated animal padding softly across the quadrangle changed by some fluke of the subconscious intelligence the emotional light for me. It was as if someone had let fall a shade. Perhaps the excellent hock was relinquishing its hold. Certainly, as I watched the Manx cat pause in the middle of the lawn as if it too questioned the universe, something seemed lacking, something seemed different. But what was lacking, what was different, I asked myself, listening to the talk? And to answer that question I had to think myself out of the room, back into the past, before the war indeed, and to set before my eyes the model of another luncheon party held in rooms not very far distant from these; but different. Everything was different.
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Virginia Woolf (A Room of One's Own (Classics To Go))
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The Memory Business Steven Sasson is a tall man with a lantern jaw. In 1973, he was a freshly minted graduate of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His degree in electrical engineering led to a job with Kodak’s Apparatus Division research lab, where, a few months into his employment, Sasson’s supervisor, Gareth Lloyd, approached him with a “small” request. Fairchild Semiconductor had just invented the first “charge-coupled device” (or CCD)—an easy way to move an electronic charge around a transistor—and Kodak needed to know if these devices could be used for imaging.4 Could they ever. By 1975, working with a small team of talented technicians, Sasson used CCDs to create the world’s first digital still camera and digital recording device. Looking, as Fast Company once explained, “like a ’70s Polaroid crossed with a Speak-and-Spell,”5 the camera was the size of a toaster, weighed in at 8.5 pounds, had a resolution of 0.01 megapixel, and took up to thirty black-and-white digital images—a number chosen because it fell between twenty-four and thirty-six and was thus in alignment with the exposures available in Kodak’s roll film. It also stored shots on the only permanent storage device available back then—a cassette tape. Still, it was an astounding achievement and an incredible learning experience. Portrait of Steven Sasson with first digital camera, 2009 Source: Harvey Wang, From Darkroom to Daylight “When you demonstrate such a system,” Sasson later said, “that is, taking pictures without film and showing them on an electronic screen without printing them on paper, inside a company like Kodak in 1976, you have to get ready for a lot of questions. I thought people would ask me questions about the technology: How’d you do this? How’d you make that work? I didn’t get any of that. They asked me when it was going to be ready for prime time? When is it going to be realistic to use this? Why would anybody want to look at their pictures on an electronic screen?”6 In 1996, twenty years after this meeting took place, Kodak had 140,000 employees and a $28 billion market cap. They were effectively a category monopoly. In the United States, they controlled 90 percent of the film market and 85 percent of the camera market.7 But they had forgotten their business model. Kodak had started out in the chemistry and paper goods business, for sure, but they came to dominance by being in the convenience business. Even that doesn’t go far enough. There is still the question of what exactly Kodak was making more convenient. Was it just photography? Not even close. Photography was simply the medium of expression—but what was being expressed? The “Kodak Moment,” of course—our desire to document our lives, to capture the fleeting, to record the ephemeral. Kodak was in the business of recording memories. And what made recording memories more convenient than a digital camera? But that wasn’t how the Kodak Corporation of the late twentieth century saw it. They thought that the digital camera would undercut their chemical business and photographic paper business, essentially forcing the company into competing against itself. So they buried the technology. Nor did the executives understand how a low-resolution 0.01 megapixel image camera could hop on an exponential growth curve and eventually provide high-resolution images. So they ignored it. Instead of using their weighty position to corner the market, they were instead cornered by the market.
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Peter H. Diamandis (Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World (Exponential Technology Series))
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There is no reason at all for thinking that the average intelligent investor, even with much devoted effort, can derive better results over the years from the purchase of growth stocks than the investment companies specializing in this area. Surely these organizations have more brains and better research facilities at their disposal than you do. Consequently we should advise against the usual type of growth-stock commitment for the enterprising investor.* This is one in which the excellent prospects are fully recognized in the market and already reflected in a current price-earnings ratio of, say, higher than 20. (For the defensive investor we suggested an upper limit of purchase price at 25 times average earnings of the past seven years. The two criteria would be about equivalent in most cases.)† The striking thing about growth stocks as a class is their tendency toward wide swings in market price. This is true of the largest and longest-established companies—such as General Electric and International Business Machines—and even more so of newer and smaller successful companies. They illustrate our thesis that the main characteristic of the stock market since 1949 has been the injection of a highly speculative element into the shares of companies which have scored the most brilliant successes, and which themselves would be entitled to a high investment rating. (Their credit standing is of the best, and they pay the lowest interest rates on their borrowings.) The investment caliber of such a company may not change over a long span of years, but the risk characteristics of its stock will depend on what happens to it in the stock market. The more enthusiastic the public grows about it, and the faster its advance as compared with the actual growth in its earnings, the riskier a proposition it becomes.
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Benjamin Graham (The Intelligent Investor)
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Lucid Motors was started under the name Atieva (which stood for “advanced technologies in electric vehicle applications” and was pronounced “ah-tee-va”) in Mountain View in 2008 (or December 31, 2007, to be precise) by Bernard Tse, who was a vice president at Tesla before it launched the Roadster. Hong Kong–born Tse had studied engineering at the University of Illinois, where he met his wife, Grace. In the early 1980s, the couple had started a computer manufacturing company called Wyse, which at its peak in the early 1990s registered sales of more than $480 million a year. Tse joined Tesla’s board of directors in 2003 at the request of his close friend Martin Eberhard, the company’s original CEO, who sought Tse’s expertise in engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain. Tse would eventually step off the board to lead a division called the Tesla Energy Group. The group planned to make electric power trains for other manufacturers, who needed them for their electric car programs. Tse, who didn’t respond to my requests to be interviewed, left Tesla around the time of Eberhard’s departure and decided to start Atieva, his own electric car company. Atieva’s plan was to start by focusing on the power train, with the aim of eventually producing a car. The company pitched itself to investors as a power train supplier and won deals to power some city buses in China, through which it could further develop and improve its technology. Within a few years, the company had raised about $40 million, much of it from the Silicon Valley–based venture capital firm Venrock, and employed thirty people, mostly power train engineers, in the United States, as well as the same number of factory workers in Asia. By 2014, it was ready to start work on a sedan, which it planned to sell in the United States and China. That year, it raised about $200 million from Chinese investors, according to sources close to the company.
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Hamish McKenzie (Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil)
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Give us an idea of…” Noya Baram rubs her temples. “Oh, well.” Augie begins to stroll around again. “The examples are limitless. Small examples: elevators stop working. Grocery-store scanners. Train and bus passes. Televisions. Phones. Radios. Traffic lights. Credit-card scanners. Home alarm systems. Laptop computers will lose all their software, all files, everything erased. Your computer will be nothing but a keyboard and a blank screen. “Electricity would be severely compromised. Which means refrigerators. In some cases, heat. Water—well, we have already seen the effect on water-purification plants. Clean water in America will quickly become a scarcity. “That means health problems on a massive scale. Who will care for the sick? Hospitals? Will they have the necessary resources to treat you? Surgical operations these days are highly computerized. And they will not have access to any of your prior medical records online. “For that matter, will they treat you at all? Do you have health insurance? Says who? A card in your pocket? They won’t be able to look you up and confirm it. Nor will they be able to seek reimbursement from the insurer. And even if they could get in contact with the insurance company, the insurance company won’t know whether you’re its customer. Does it have handwritten lists of its policyholders? No. It’s all on computers. Computers that have been erased. Will the hospitals work for free? “No websites, of course. No e-commerce. Conveyor belts. Sophisticated machinery inside manufacturing plants. Payroll records. “Planes will be grounded. Even trains may not operate in most places. Cars, at least any built since, oh, 2010 or so, will be affected. “Legal records. Welfare records. Law enforcement databases. The ability of local police to identify criminals, to coordinate with other states and the federal government through databases—no more. “Bank records. You think you have ten thousand dollars in your savings account? Fifty thousand dollars in a retirement account? You think you have a pension that allows you to receive a fixed payment every month?” He shakes his head. “Not if computer files and their backups are erased. Do banks have a large wad of cash, wrapped in a rubber band with your name on it, sitting in a vault somewhere? Of course not. It’s all data.” “Mother of God,” says Chancellor Richter, wiping his face with a handkerchief.
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Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
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The first thing to note about Korean industrial structure is the sheer concentration of Korean industry. Like other Asian economies, there are two levels of organization: individual firms and larger network organizations that unite disparate corporate entities. The Korean network organization is known as the chaebol, represented by the same two Chinese characters as the Japanese zaibatsu and patterned deliberately on the Japanese model. The size of individual Korean companies is not large by international standards. As of the mid-1980s, the Hyundai Motor Company, Korea’s largest automobile manufacturer, was only a thirtieth the size of General Motors, and the Samsung Electric Company was only a tenth the size of Japan’s Hitachi.1 However, these statistics understate their true economic clout because these businesses are linked to one another in very large network organizations. Virtually the whole of the large-business sector in Korea is part of a chaebol network: in 1988, forty-three chaebol (defined as conglomerates with assets in excess of 400 billion won, or US$500 million) brought together some 672 companies.2 If we measure industrial concentration by chaebol rather than individual firm, the figures are staggering: in 1984, the three largest chaebol alone (Samsung, Hyundai, and Lucky-Goldstar) produced 36 percent of Korea’s gross domestic product.3 Korean industry is more concentrated than that of Japan, particularly in the manufacturing sector; the three-firm concentration ratio for Korea in 1980 was 62.0 percent of all manufactured goods, compared to 56.3 percent for Japan.4 The degree of concentration of Korean industry grew throughout the postwar period, moreover, as the rate of chaebol growth substantially exceeded the rate of growth for the economy as a whole. For example, the twenty largest chaebol produced 21.8 percent of Korean gross domestic product in 1973, 28.9 percent in 1975, and 33.2 percent in 1978.5 The Japanese influence on Korean business organization has been enormous. Korea was an almost wholly agricultural society at the beginning of Japan’s colonial occupation in 1910, and the latter was responsible for creating much of the country’s early industrial infrastructure.6 Nearly 700,000 Japanese lived in Korea in 1940, and a similarly large number of Koreans lived in Japan as forced laborers. Some of the early Korean businesses got their start as colonial enterprises in the period of Japanese occupation.7 A good part of the two countries’ émigré populations were repatriated after the war, leading to a considerable exchange of knowledge and experience of business practices. The highly state-centered development strategies of President Park Chung Hee and others like him were formed as a result of his observation of Japanese industrial policy in Korea in the prewar period.
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Francis Fukuyama (Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity)
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It wasn't as though we didn't know how overwhelmingly the army outnumbered us. But the strange thing was, it didn't matter. Ever since the uprising began, I'd felt something coursing through me, as overwhelming as any army.
Conscience.
Conscience, the most terrifying thing in the world.
The day I stood shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of thousands of my fellow civilians, staring down the barrels of the soldiers' guns, the day the bodies of those first two slaughtered were placed in a handcart and pushed at the head of the column, I was startled to discover an absence inside myself: the absence of fear. I remember feeling that it was all right to die; I felt the blood of a hundred thousand hearts surging together into one enormous artery, fresh and clean ... the sublime enormity of a single heart, pulsing blood through that vessel and into my own. I dared to feel a part of it.”
(p. 120-121)
“Some memories never heal. Rather than fading with the passage of time, those memories become the only things that are left behind when all else is abraded. The world darkens, like electric bulbs going out one by one. I am aware that I am not a safe person.
Is it true that human beings are fundamentally cruel? Is the experience of cruelty the only thing we share as a species?
Is the dignity that we cling to nothing but self-delusion, masking from ourselves this single truth: that each one of us is capable of being reduced to an insect, a ravening beast, a lump of meat? To be degraded, damaged, slaughtered - is this the essential fate of humankind, one which history has confirmed as inevitable?
I once met someone who was a paratrooper during the Busan uprising. He told me his story after hearing my own.
He said that they'd been ordered to suppress the civilians with as much violence as possible, and those who committed especially brutal actions were awarded hundreds of thousands of won by their superiors. One of his company had said, 'What's the problem? They give you money and tell you to beat someone up, then why wouldn't you?'
I heard a story about one of the Korean army platoons that fought in Vietnam. How they forced the women, children and elderly of one particular village into the main hall, and then burned it to the ground. Some of those who came to slaughter us did so with the memory of those previous times, when committing such actions in wartime had won them a handsome reward. It happened in Gwangju just as it did on Jeju Island, in Kwantung and Nanjing, in Bosnia and all across the American continent when it was still known as the New World, with such a uniform brutality it's as though it is imprinted in our genetic code.
I never let myself forget that every single person I meet is a member of this human race. And that includes you, professor, listening to this testimony. As it includes myself.
Every day I examine the scar on my hand. This place where the bone was once exposed, where a milky discharge seeped from a festering wound. Every time I come across an ordinary Monami biro, the breath catches in my throat.
I wait for time to wash me away like muddy water. I wait for death to come and wash me clean, to release me from the memory of those other, squalid deaths, which haunt my days and nights.
I'm fighting, alone, every day. I fight with the hell that I survived. I fight with the fact of my own humanity. I fight with the idea that death is the only way of escaping this fact.
So tell me, professor, what answers do you have for me?
You, a human being just like me.”
(p. 140-142)
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Han Kang (Human Acts)
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Until this night, this awful night, he’d had a little joke about himself. He didn’t know who he was, or where he’d come from, but he knew what he liked. And what he liked was all around him-the flower stands on the corners, the big steel and glass buildings filled with milky evening light, the trees, of course, the grass beneath his feet. And the telephones-it didn’t matter. He liked to figure them out, master them, then crush them into tiny hard multicolored balls which he could then juggle or toss through plate glass windows when nobody was about. He liked piano music, the motion pictures, and the poems he found in books.
He also liked the automobiles that burnt oil from the earth like lamps. And the great jet planes that flew on the same scientific principles, above the clouds.
He always stopped and listened to the people laughing and talking up there when one of the people laughing and talking up there when one of the planes flew overhead. Driving was an extraordinary pleasure. In a silver Mercedes-Benz, he had sped on smooth empty roads from Rome to Florence to Venice in one night. He also liked television-the entire electric process of it, with tiny bits of lights. How soothing it was to have the company of the television, the intimacy with so many artfully painted faces speaking to you in friendship from the glowing screen.
The rock and roll, he liked that too. He liked the music. He liked the Vampire Lestat singing “Requiem for the Marquise”. He didn’t pay attention to the words much. It was the melancholy and the dark undertone of drums and cymbals. Made him want to dance.
He liked the giant yellow machines that dug into the earth late at night in the big cities with men in uniforms, crawling all over them; he liked the double-decker buses of London, and the people-the clever mortals everywhere-he liked, too, of course.
He liked walking in Damascus during the evening, and seeing in sudden flashes of disconnected memory the city of the ancients. Romans, Greeks, Persians, Egyptians in these streets.
He liked the libraries where he could find photographs of ancient monuments in big smooth good-smelling books. He took his own photographs of the new cities around him and sometimes he could put images on those pictures which came from his thoughts. For example, in his photograph of Rome there were Roman people in tunics and sandals superimposed upon the modern versions in their thick ungraceful clothes.
Oh, yes, much to like around him always-the violin music of Bartók, little girls in snow white dresses coming out of the church at midnight having sung at the Christmas mass.
He liked the blood of his victims too, of course. That went without saying. It was no part of his little joke. Death was not funny to him. He stalked his prey in silence; he didn’t want to know his victims. All a mortal had to do was speak to him and he was turned away. Not proper, as he saw it, to talk to these sweet, soft-eyed things and then gobble their blood, break their bones and lick the marrow, squeeze their limbs to dripping pulp. And that was the way he feasted now, so violently. He felt no great need for blood anymore; but he wanted it. And the desire overpowered him in all its ravening purity, quite apart from the thirst. He could have feasted upon three or four mortals a night.
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Anne Rice (The Queen of the Damned (The Vampire Chronicles, #3))
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As an example, if GE was trading at a price-to-earnings ratio of 40, that meant that, if its stock was $40, it was earning $1 per share every year. If GE then bought a company with a price-to-earnings ratio of 10—that company was earning $4 per share for every $40 of stock—GE was essentially trading $1 of earnings for $3 of new earnings without doing anything except making the deal.
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Thomas Gryta (Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric)
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While at General Electric, I’d noticed firsthand what a big difference it made to be in a good industry. When I ran General Electric’s major appliance business, we had a great position but were in a crummy, highly competitive, low-growth industry. No matter how hard we worked, we stood little chance of excelling—the pressure on prices was just too intense. It was far easier, I found, to make progress with a business that occupied a bad position in a good industry.
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David Cote (Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term)
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A “permissionless” cryptocurrency like Bitcoin is built to be out of anyone’s control, wastes incredible amounts of electricity — Bitcoin uses about as much power as all of Austria45 — and would be a completely silly idea for a company to develop as an investment, unless they were maintaining control by other means.
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David Gerard (Libra Shrugged: How Facebook Tried to Take Over the Money)
“
new era” for Volkswagen.12 The company announced that it would launch at least seventy-five all-electric vehicles by 2028. “The future belongs to electric drive,” said Diess. “Without EVs, we can’t win the battle against climate change.” He also pledged that the company would become “carbon neutral across the whole supply chain.
”
”
Daniel Yergin (The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations)
“
We’re a very complex, diverse company that no one from the outside looking in can reasonably be expected to understand in complete detail,” he said. “Our story to the investing world is, we have a lot of diverse businesses, and when you put them all together they produce consistent, reliable earnings growth.
”
”
Thomas Gryta (Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric)
“
The doubters soon realized that “Imagination at Work” wasn’t just advertising. Immelt was intent on putting marketing at the heart of GE strategy to dictate not just how the company sold the things it made but what it made in the first place. Much as Welch had before them, Comstock and Immelt hatched new jargon to express the process they wanted the company to follow. GE business leaders would now convene to come up with “Imagination Breakthroughs”—that is, ideas about products the company should design and sell.
”
”
Thomas Gryta (Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric)
“
There was support for Immelt’s foray into software in the traditionally gritty industrial world. Marc Andreessen famously wrote in 2011 that “software is eating the world,” meaning that it was transforming and disrupting businesses and sectors throughout the economy. But the widespread innovation, he noted, wouldn’t be as destructive for certain companies. “In some industries, particularly those with a heavy real-world component such as oil and gas, the software revolution is primarily an opportunity for incumbents,” he wrote. “Over the next 10 years, the battles between incumbents and software-powered insurgents will be epic.” GE
”
”
Thomas Gryta (Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric)
“
Air Conditioning Repair in Atlanta | HVAC Companies Near Me
Split air conditioners may not take too long to cool the room, but the explanation may be a dirty air filter or a blocked condensate drain, even if it is kept on for hours if there is no proper cooling. The AC is shielded from dust in the air by air filters. In a Window AC, it might be easy to clean an air filter, but you would need assistance from a professional for split AC. Air filters collect dust and debris that is drawn into the ducts and if they are not cleaned regularly, they stay clogged and affect the cooling process. For improved efficiency and to prevent any issues during summers, we suggest having the air conditioner serviced twice a year.Another potential explanation for lack of cooling may be ice formation around the coils or a filthy outdoor compressor for which a specialist may need assistance. If the air conditioner is not cooling properly, it may also be low on refrigerant. This either suggests that it has been undercharged, or that the split air conditioner has a gas leak. For residents residing around coastal regions or anywhere close to sewage, where air pollution is high, this is a more common issue. In this scenario, before applying more coolant, a professional will need to search for any leaks, as issues with leaks can persist, and they can be detrimental to the environment.Note, it works harder and runs longer to maintain your room at the set temperature when the air conditioner has a refrigerant issue. So don't use the appliance for hours, thinking that it can start to cool or lead to higher electricity bills. However, with frequent maintenance, you can prevent expensive AC repairs and keep your AC running at optimum output. When the compressor stops working, it is a sign of a burned wire, a faulty starting capacitor or a faulty compressor itself. In this case, if it is found to be defective, you will need to clean the condenser coil, check the capacitor and replace the compressor. If your air conditioner continues to turn on and off, it is safer to turn it off before you get it serviced. The evaporator is most probably dirty and the condenser is dirty or blocked. A dirty filter limits airflow and more issues, like a frozen evaporator coil, are caused by limited airflow. In particular, before and after summer, for better cooling and overall efficiency, it is necessary to change the air filter. Double check your thermostat settings to see if the timer function has been switched on and changed accordingly.
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heating and cooling near me
#acpowerAtlnta#AcpowerAtlanta#airconditioning#hvac #hvaclife #ac #airconditioner #heating #hvacservice #cooling #hvactechnician #hvactech #heatingandcooling #hvacrepair #refrigeration #plumbing #hvacr #hvacinstall #maintenance #furnace #hvaccontractor #aircon #service #acrepair #hvacquality #hvactools #airconditioningrepair #hvaclove#ACRepairNearBy #ACTechnician #HVAC #Heating&Cooling #FurnanceRepair
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”
atlantaacrepairnearme
“
Looking for the Best Denver AC Repair, AC Installation, and HVAC Repair
Split air conditioners may not take too long to cool the room, but the explanation may be a dirty air filter or a blocked condensate drain, even if it is kept on for hours if there is no proper cooling. The AC is shielded from dust in the air by air filters. In a Window AC, it might be easy to clean an air filter, but you would need assistance from a professional for split AC. Air filters collect dust and debris that is drawn into the ducts and if they are not cleaned regularly, they stay clogged and affect the cooling process. For improved efficiency and to prevent any issues during summers, we suggest having the air conditioner serviced twice a year.Another potential explanation for lack of cooling may be ice formation around the coils or a filthy outdoor compressor for which a specialist may need assistance. If the air conditioner is not cooling properly, it may also be low on refrigerant. This either suggests that it has been undercharged, or that the split air conditioner has a gas leak. For residents residing around coastal regions or anywhere close to sewage, where air pollution is high, this is a more common issue. In this scenario, before applying more coolant, a professional will need to search for any leaks, as issues with leaks can persist, and they can be detrimental to the environment.Note, it works harder and runs longer to maintain your room at the set temperature when the air conditioner has a refrigerant issue. So don't use the appliance for hours, thinking that it can start to cool or lead to higher electricity bills. However, with frequent maintenance, you can prevent expensive AC repairs and keep your AC running at optimum output. When the compressor stops working, it is a sign of a burned wire, a faulty starting capacitor or a faulty compressor itself. In this case, if it is found to be defective, you will need to clean the condenser coil, check the capacitor and replace the compressor. If your air conditioner continues to turn on and off, it is safer to turn it off before you get it serviced. The evaporator is most probably dirty and the condenser is dirty or blocked. A dirty filter limits airflow and more issues, like a frozen evaporator coil, are caused by limited airflow. In particular, before and after summer, for better cooling and overall efficiency, it is necessary to change the air filter. Double check your thermostat settings to see if the timer function has been switched on and changed accordingly.
ac companies near me
heating and cooling near me
#acpowerDenver#AcpowerDenver#airconditioning#hvac #hvaclife #ac #airconditioner #heating #hvacservice #cooling #hvactechnician #hvactech #heatingandcooling #hvacrepair #refrigeration #plumbing #hvacr #hvacinstall #maintenance #furnace #hvaccontractor #aircon #service #acrepair #hvacquality #hvactools #airconditioningrepair #hvaclove#ACRepairNearBy #ACTechnician #HVAC #Heating&Cooling #FurnanceRepair
”
”
denveracrepairnearme
“
Find Out the Long Beach AC Repair | HVAC Contractors Near Me
Split air conditioners may not take too long to cool the room, but the explanation may be a dirty air filter or a blocked condensate drain, even if it is kept on for hours if there is no proper cooling. The AC is shielded from dust in the air by air filters. In a Window AC, it might be easy to clean an air filter, but you would need assistance from a professional for split AC. Air filters collect dust and debris that is drawn into the ducts and if they are not cleaned regularly, they stay clogged and affect the cooling process. For improved efficiency and to prevent any issues during summers, we suggest having the air conditioner serviced twice a year.Another potential explanation for lack of cooling may be ice formation around the coils or a filthy outdoor compressor for which a specialist may need assistance. If the air conditioner is not cooling properly, it may also be low on refrigerant. This either suggests that it has been undercharged, or that the split air conditioner has a gas leak. For residents residing around coastal regions or anywhere close to sewage, where air pollution is high, this is a more common issue. In this scenario, before applying more coolant, a professional will need to search for any leaks, as issues with leaks can persist, and they can be detrimental to the environment.Note, it works harder and runs longer to maintain your room at the set temperature when the air conditioner has a refrigerant issue. So don't use the appliance for hours, thinking that it can start to cool or lead to higher electricity bills. However, with frequent maintenance, you can prevent expensive AC repairs and keep your AC running at optimum output. When the compressor stops working, it is a sign of a burned wire, a faulty starting capacitor or a faulty compressor itself. In this case, if it is found to be defective, you will need to clean the condenser coil, check the capacitor and replace the compressor. If your air conditioner continues to turn on and off, it is safer to turn it off before you get it serviced. The evaporator is most probably dirty and the condenser is dirty or blocked. A dirty filter limits airflow and more issues, like a frozen evaporator coil, are caused by limited airflow. In particular, before and after summer, for better cooling and overall efficiency, it is necessary to change the air filter. Double check your thermostat settings to see if the timer function has been switched on and changed accordingly.
ac companies near me
heating and cooling near me
#acpowerLongBeach#AcpowerLongBeach#airconditioning#hvac #hvaclife #ac #airconditioner #heating #hvacservice #cooling #hvactechnician #hvactech #heatingandcooling #hvacrepair #refrigeration #plumbing #hvacr #hvacinstall #maintenance #furnace #hvaccontractor #aircon #service #acrepair #hvacquality #hvactools #airconditioningrepair #hvaclove#ACRepairNearBy #ACTechnician #HVAC #Heating&Cooling #FurnanceRepair
”
”
longbeachacrepairnearme
“
Whenever I meet a young Hoosier, I tell them, ‘You call me Mom.’” “Uh huh.” “Let me hear you say it,” she urged. “Mom?” She smiled and let go of my arm. Some piece of clockwork had completed its cycle. My calling Hazel “Mom” had shut it off, and now Hazel was rewinding it for the next Hoosier to come along. Hazel’s obsession with Hoosiers around the world was a textbook example of a false karass, of a seeming team that was meaningless in terms of the ways God gets things done, a textbook example of what Bokonon calls a granfalloon. Other examples of granfalloons are the Communist party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the General Electric Company, the International Order of Odd Fellows—and any nation, anytime, anywhere.
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Cat's Cradle)
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But this may be the place to remark that the very fact that the unit costs of electricity, gas, and telephone services have advanced so much less than the general price index puts these companies in a strong strategic position for the future.3 They are entitled by law to charge rates sufficient for an adequate return on their invested capital, and this will probably protect their shareholders in the future as it has in the inflations of the past.
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Benjamin Graham (The Intelligent Investor)
“
1. Don’t buy stocks that are hitting 52-week lows. We have already discussed this point, but it bears repeating, simply because so many new traders lose a lot of money trying to catch the proverbial “falling knife.” In spite of what everyone will tell you, you are almost always much better off buying a stock that is hitting 52-week highs than one hitting 52-week lows. Has a company that you own just reported some really bad news? If so, remember that there is never just one cockroach. Bad news comes in clusters. Many investors recently learned this the hard way with General Electric, which just kept reporting one bad thing after another, causing the stock to crash from 30 to 7. There is no such thing as a “safe stock.” Even a blue chip stock can go down a lot if it loses its competitive advantage or the company makes bad decisions. A cascade of bad news can often cause a stock to trend down or gap down repeatedly. If you own a stock that does this, it is often better to get out and wait a few months (or years) to reenter. Again, there is never just one cockroach. Never buy a stock after you have seen the first cockroach. When a stock goes down a lot, it can affect the company's fundamentals as well. Employee and management morale will deteriorate, the best employees may leave the company, and it may become more difficult for the company to raise money by selling shares or issuing debt. Conversely, when a stock goes up a lot, it can improve the company's fundamentals. Employee and management morale will be high, everyone at the company will want to work harder, it will be easier to recruit new talent, and it will become easier for the company to raise money by issuing stock or debt. If you stick to stocks that are trading above their 200-day moving averages, or that are hitting 52-week highs, you will do much better than trying to catch falling knives.
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Matthew R. Kratter (A Beginner's Guide to the Stock Market)
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When they began, desktop publishing did not exist, but for $150 a month, Brand leased an IBM Selectric Composer, an advanced version of the company’s workhorse electric typewriter that had been introduced in 1966. The composer was capable of producing camera-ready justified copy with proportional fonts and it opened the door to low-cost publishing. (The Fall 1969 Catalog cost only $33,000 to produce.)
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John Markoff (Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand)
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There’s no better case study showing how connectivity and computing power will turn old products into digitized machines than Tesla, Elon Musk’s auto company. Tesla’s cult following and soaring stock price have attracted plenty of attention, but what’s less noticed is that Tesla is also a leading chip designer. The company hired star semiconductor designers like Jim Keller to build a chip specialized for its automated driving needs, which is fabricated using leading-edge technology. As early as 2014, some analysts were noting that Tesla cars “resemble a smartphone.” The company has been often compared to Apple, which also designs its own semiconductors. Like Apple’s products, Tesla’s finely tuned user experience and its seemingly effortless integration of advanced computing into a twentieth-century product—a car—are only possible because of custom-designed chips. Cars have incorporated simple chips since the 1970s. However, the spread of electric vehicles, which require specialized semiconductors to manage the power supply, coupled with increased demand for autonomous driving features foretells that the number and cost of chips in a typical car will increase substantially.
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Chris Miller100 (Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology)
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Nearly every organized group on Oahu staked out something to do. Boy Scouts fought fires, served coffee, ran messages. The American Legion turned out for patrol and sentry duty. One Legionnaire struggled into his 1917 uniform, had a dreadful time remembering how to wind his puttees and put on his insignia. He took it out on his wife, and she told him to leave her alone —go out and fight his old enemy, the Germans. The San Jose College football team, in town from California for a benefit game the following weekend, signed up with the Police Department for guard duty. Seven of them joined the force, and Quarterback Paul Tognetti stayed on for good, ultimately going into the dairy business. A local committee, called the Major Disaster Council, had spent months preparing for this kind of day; now their foresight was paying off. Forty-five trucks belonging to American Sanitary Laundry, New Fair Dairy, and other local companies sped off to Hickam as converted ambulances. Dr. Forrest Pinkerton dashed to the Hawaii Electric Company’s refrigerator, collected the plasma stored there by the Chamber of Commerce’s Blood Bank. He piled it in the back of his car, distributed it to various hospitals, then rushed on the air, appealing for more donors. Over 500 appeared within an hour, swamping Dr. John Devereux and his three assistants. They took the blood as fast as they could, ran out of containers, used sterilized Coca-Cola bottles.
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Walter Lord (Day of Infamy)
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France is a perfect example. After investing $33 billion during the last decade to add more solar and wind to the grid,20 France now uses less nuclear and more natural gas than before, leading to higher electricity prices and more carbon-intensive electricity.21 Between 2016 and 2019, the five largest publicly traded oil and gas companies—ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron Corporation, BP, and Total—invested
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Michael Shellenberger (Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All)
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We are a Master Stocking Distributor for Monarch water pump, Franklin Electric water pump, Red Lion Products also CH&E Generac Magnum Diaphragm pump. Ken’s Distributing Company specializes in water pump and replacement parts for clean water, sump & effluent, lawn & sprinkler, irrigation water pumps, electric motor driven, engine driven, gas engine driven, frame mount water pump, industrial & irrigation water pumps, centrifugal water pumps also submersible water pumps and Diaphragm pumps.
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Ken's Distributing Company
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But careful investigation by ordnance experts revealed that antiaircraft shells caused every one of the 40 explosions in Honolulu, except for one blast near the Hawaiian Electrical Company’s powerhouse.
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Walter Lord (Day of Infamy)
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None of us likes our electric utility or our cell-phone provider or our cable-broadband company in the way we love Apple or enjoy Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Behind all of these unpopular institutions and sectors lies a frustrating combination of onerous regulations, quasi-monopolistic franchises (often government sanctioned) or ownership of scarce real estate (radio spectrum, medallions, permits, etc.), and politically powerful special interests.
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Vivek Wadhwa (The Driver in the Driverless Car: How Your Technology Choices Create the Future)
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I started learning English from Abuelo Jorge's old grammar textbooks. I found them in Abuelo Celia's closet. They date back to 1919, the first year he started working for the American Electric Broom Company. At school, only a few students were allowed to learn English, by special permission. The rest of us had to learn Russian. I liked the curves of the Cyrillic letters, their unexpected sounds. I liked the way my name looked: Иван. I took Russian for nearly two years at school. My teacher, Sergey Mikoyan, praised me highly. He said I had an ear for languages, that if I studied hard I could be a translator for world leaders. It was true I could repeat anything he said, even tongue twisters like kolokololiteyshchiki perekolotili vikarabkavshihsya vihuholey "the church bell casters slaughtered the desmans that had scrambled out." He told me I had a gift, like playing the violin, or mastering chess.
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Cristina García (Dreaming in Cuban)
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Hawaiian Electric has turned into the new Pacific Gas and Electric Company.
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Steven Magee
“
The government telling the public it is hardening the electrical grid is code for free taxpayer money for privately owned electrical utility companies.
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Steven Magee
“
I worked for a utility electrical company and I was completely overloaded and overworked! I hated it!
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Steven Magee
“
I find the talk of ‘Hardening’ the electrical grid to be absurd during times of utility company under-staffing and a lack of routine maintenance of the electrical grid.
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Steven Magee
“
The worst understaffed company I worked for was one of the largest electrical utility companies in the USA.
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Steven Magee
“
I reported under-staffing and overworking to my electrical utility company employer every day. It remained unchanged until I left.
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Steven Magee
“
There are a few large and successful firms in most industries. 2. These successful companies are becoming even more successful. 3. Weak companies are getting weaker. Numbers 1 and 2 are direct conclusions of the research, and number 3 is an indirect but logical outcome of 1 and 2. As I wrote earlier, our investing experience in India is not different from what research from the United States, the United Kingdom, or Europe says. Our investee companies have been gaining share over the competition over decades. Some examples are Berger in the paint industry, Supreme in plastic pipes, Voltamp in industrial transformers, Page in innerwear, Havells and V-Guard in consumer electricals, Amara Raja in batteries, Info Edge in job boards, MRF in tires, and Ratnamani in specialty steel pipes. In India, too, great businesses continue to be great, and poor businesses continue to suffer. The observation that “stasis is the default” does not respect national boundaries.
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Pulak Prasad (What I Learned About Investing from Darwin)
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In a small, stuffy, perpetually dark, hot-plastic-scented wiring closet, in a cubicled office suite leased by Novus Ordo Seclorum Systems Incorporated, sandwiched between an escrow company and a discount travel agent in the most banal imaginable disco-era office building in Los Altos, California, a modem wakes up and spews noise down a wire. The noise eventually travels under the Pacific as a pattern of scintillations in a filament of glass so transparent that if the ocean itself were made out of the same stuff, you’d be able to see Hawaii from California. Eventually the information reaches Randy’s computer, which spews noise back. The modem in Los Altos is one of half a dozen that are all connected to the back of the same computer, an entirely typical looking tower PC of a generic brand, which has been running, night and day, for about eight months now. They turned its monitor off about seven months ago because it was just wasting electricity. Then John Cantrell (who is on the board of Novus Ordo Seclorum Systems Inc., and made arrangements to put it in the company’s closet) borrowed the monitor because one of the coders who was working on the latest upgrade of Ordo needed a second screen. Later, Randy disconnected the keyboard and mouse because, without a monitor, only bad information could be fed into the system. Now it is just a faintly hissing off-white obelisk with no human interface other than a cyclopean green LED staring out over a dark landscape of empty pizza boxes. But there is a thick coaxial cable connecting it to the Internet. Randy’s computer talks to it for a few moments, negotiating the terms of a Point-to-Point Protocol, or PPP connection, and then Randy’s little laptop is part of the Internet, too; he can send data to Los Altos, and the lonely computer there, which is named Tombstone, will route it in the general direction of any of several tens of millions of other Internet machines.
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Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon)
“
I joined Amazon in 2004 in the early days of Amazon Web Services (AWS). Once I joined, my boss explained the mission. Amazon was going to build enormous data centers and rent compute-power and storage capacity not as applications, but as building blocks that developers and other companies can use to build their apps. This would enable any developer and every company to leverage Amazon’s mastery of web-scale infrastructure. The service would be flexible, able to scale up and down on the fly. If your traffic surged for a few days, the “Elastic Compute Cloud” would simply throw extra computer horsepower at your website. When the surge ended, your virtual data center would shrink back down. You paid only for what you used. You paid a monthly bill, just like you do for your mobile phone and your electricity. The pay-for-what-you-use model was a huge breakthrough—maybe as significant as the technology itself.
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Jeff Lawson (Ask Your Developer: How to Harness the Power of Software Developers and Win in the 21st Century – A Management Playbook for Tech Industry Leadership and Digital Transformation)
“
Trandesk is a growing company with a vision. We are driven to providing the highest-quality standing desks to businesses across the globe. The frames are fully adjustable with electric or manual options and you can choose Single Leg Standing Desk, Dual Motor Standing Desk, L Shaped Standing Desk Frame, 4 Leg Standing Desk Frame, Back To Back Standing Desk Frame, Single Motor Standing Desk Frame, Manual Standing Desk Frame, TVlift, Monitor Arm, Desktop Power, and PET Panels.
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Trandesk
“
Companies don't want anyone telling them how to deal with their workers -- they never have; they never will. Stores don't want anyone telling them how to design their entrances; how many steps they can have (or can't have); how heavy their doors can be. Yet they accept their city's building and fire codes, dictating to them how many people they can have in their restaurants, based on square footage, so that the place will not be a fire hazard. They accept that the city can inspect their electrical wiring to ensure that it "meets code" before they open for business. Yet they chafe if an individual wants an accommodation. Because, it seems, it is seen as "special for the handicapped," most of whom likely don't deserve it.
Accommodation is fought doubly hard when it is seen to be a way of letting "the disabled" have a part of what we believe is for "normal" people. Although no access code, anywhere, requires them, automatic doors remain the one thing, besides flat or ramped entrances, that one hears about most from people with mobility problems: they need automatic doors as well as flat entrances. Yet no code, anywhere, includes them; mandating them would be "going too far"; giving the disabled more than they have a right to. A ramp is OK. An automatic door? That isn't reasonable. At least that's what the building lobby says. Few disability rights groups, anywhere, have tried to push for that accommodation. Some wheelchair activists are now pressing for "basic, minimal access" in all new single-family housing, so, they say, they can visit friends and attend gatherings in others' homes. This means at least one flat entrance and a bathroom they can get into.
De-medicalization
No large grocery or hotel firm, no home-and-garden discount supply center would consider designing an entrance that did not include automatic doors. They are standard in hotels and discount warehouses. Not, of course, for the people who literally can not open doors by themselves -- for such people are "the disabled": them, not us. Firms that operate hotels, groceries and building supply stores fight regulations that require they accommodate "the disabled." Automatic doors that go in uncomplainingly are meant for us, the fit, the nondisabled, to ensure that we will continue to shop at the grocery or building supply center; to make it easy for us to get our grocery carts out, our lumber dollies to our truck loaded with Sheetrock for the weekend project. So the bellhops can get the luggage in and out of the hotel easily. When it is for "them," it is resisted; when it is for "us," however, it is seen as a design improvement. Same item; different purpose
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Mary Johnson (Make Them Go Away: Clint Eastwood, Christopher Reeve & The Case Against Disability Rights)
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One morning a man walked into his office and told his boss, “Boss, I want you to know, three big companies are after me. You must give me a raise.” His boss said, “What! Which companies? Who wants you?” He said, “The electric company, the telephone company, and the gas company.
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Sadhguru (Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy)
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Mr. Ralph J. Cordiner, chairman of the board of the General Electric Company, said this to a leadership conference: “We need from every man who aspires to leadership—for himself and his company—a determination to undertake a personal program of self-development. Nobody is going to order a man to develop. . . . Whether a man lags behind or moves ahead in his specialty is a matter of his own personal application. This is something which takes time, work, and sacrifice. Nobody can do it for you.
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David J. Schwartz (The Magic of Thinking Big)
“
The Good Electrician is a company that specializes in residential and commercial electrical services throughout Malaysia. We are a team of local electricians based in Malaysia that are committed to delivering the highest standards of service and customer satisfaction. We take great pride in our work and have a reputation for being honest, reliable and knowledgeable.
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The Good Electrician
“
Several forces can widen a company’s moat: a strong brand identity (think of Harley Davidson, whose buyers tattoo the company’s logo onto their bodies); a monopoly or near-monopoly on the market; economies of scale, or the ability to supply huge amounts of goods or services cheaply (consider Gillette, which churns out razor blades by the billion); a unique intangible asset (think of Coca-Cola, whose secret formula for flavored syrup has no real physical value but maintains a priceless hold on consumers); a resistance to substitution (most businesses have no alternative to electricity, so utility companies are unlikely to be supplanted any time soon).5 The company is a marathoner, not a sprinter. By looking back at the income statements, you can see whether revenues and net earnings have grown smoothly and steadily over the previous 10 years.
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Benjamin Graham (The Intelligent Investor)
“
Several forces can widen a company’s moat: a strong brand identity (think of Harley Davidson, whose buyers tattoo the company’s logo onto their bodies); a monopoly or near-monopoly on the market; economies of scale, or the ability to supply huge amounts of goods or services cheaply (consider Gillette, which churns out razor blades by the billion); a unique intangible asset (think of Coca-Cola, whose secret formula for flavored syrup has no real physical value but maintains a priceless hold on consumers); a resistance to substitution (most businesses have no alternative to electricity, so utility companies are unlikely to be supplanted any time soon). The company is a marathoner, not a sprinter. By looking back at the income statements, you can see whether revenues and net earnings have grown smoothly and steadily over the previous 10 years.
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Benjamin Graham (The Intelligent Investor)
“
The Love of Money It is not money in itself but the “love of money” that is the root of all evil. When the threat of Climate Change became a national crisis, the families of noted politicians began investing their money in “new green technology,” including solar panels, wind turbines, and electric cars, as informed investors invest where future money is to be made. When COVID hit, there were already certain pharmaceuticals that were used to treat the virus, including one I took that helped me within 48 hours. However, these pills have been available for many years to help prevent malaria but were ignored or not permitted to be sold, as the companies creating the vaccines and various doctors put the word out that these pills were not effective, and only the vaccine would work. According to whistleblower-doctors, the underlying reason for rejecting a cheaper pill is because vaccines would create more money.
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Perry Stone (America's Apocalyptic Reset: Unmasking the Radical's Blueprints to Silence Christians, Patriots, and Conservatives)
“
General Electric was the largest company in the world in 2004, worth a third of a trillion dollars. It had either been first or second each year for the previous decade, capitalism’s shining example of corporate aristocracy. Then everything fell to pieces. The 2008 financial crisis sent GE’s financing division—which supplied more than half the company’s profits—into chaos. It was eventually sold for scrap. Subsequent bets in oil and energy were disasters, resulting in billions in writeoffs. GE stock fell from $40 in 2007 to $7 by 2018. Blame placed on CEO Jeff Immelt—who ran the company since 2001—was immediate and harsh. He was criticized for his leadership, his acquisitions, cutting the dividend, laying off workers and—of course—the plunging stock price. Rightly so: those rewarded with dynastic wealth when times are good hold the burden of responsibility when the tide goes out. He stepped down in 2017. But Immelt said something insightful on his way out. Responding to critics who said his actions were wrong and what he should have done was obvious, Immelt told his successor, “Every job looks easy when you’re not the one doing it.
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Morgan Housel (The Psychology of Money)
“
Second, the hurdles for entrepreneurs who wanted to launch a company were lowering quickly. Amazon Web Services, or AWS, changed the startup game entirely. Amazon started AWS in 2002 as an engineering side project; it would grow to become one of its most successful innovations in Amazon history. Amazon Web Services powers cloud computing services for coders and entrepreneurs who can’t afford to build their own infrastructure or server farms on their own. If a startup is a house, AWS is the electric company, the foundation and the plumbing combined. It keeps the business up and running while the company
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Mike Isaac (Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber)
“
What I found most interesting about Session C was the unique window it provided the CEO into the business. It was "boundaryless" before the word came into favor as a GE company value. It was functionally agnostic and part of a more extensive system managed by the top executive with ties to the board of directors, corporate and operating executives, and various management levels. No one could claim outright ownership for it, but everyone was intimately involved.
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Paul Pierroz (The Purpose-Driven Marketing Handbook: How to Discover Your Impact and Communicate Your Business Sustainability Story to Grow Sales, Retain Talent, and Attract Investors)
“
So far in 2008, the company had spent more than $3 billion buying its own stock. And in 2007, GE had spent $15 billion on its shares. Over the entire period, GE paid an average price of about $37.50 for half a million shares worth more than $18 billion. Now, it would sell almost 550,000 shares back to the market for $22.25 a share in order to raise $12.2 billion. By selling shares back to the market at a much lower price, GE was wiping out more than twice the amount of cash that the deal with Buffett had yielded. It was a disastrous use of the equity markets, and it wouldn’t be the last time.
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Thomas Gryta (Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric)
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BSK Data & Electrical Pty Ltd is a licensed electrical company that services commercial and residential customers for all their electrical needs. From LED Lighting upgrades, intercom systems, electronic gate automation, wall mounted TV bracket systems and just about any other data or electrical need you might have.
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BSK Data and Electrical Pty Ltd
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Get Extensively Qualitative HDPE Pipe Chiller through Reynold India
The cooling procedure is extremely effective when you utilize a highly preferred and appropriate HDPE Pipe Chiller and select the finest one. The Reynold India offers outstanding chiller for HDPE, PP, CPVC, and UPVC pipes. The features in these pipe chillers are extraordinary that enhance productivity.
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These PP Pipe Chiller are accessible in multiple series, models, designs, strengths, and sizes. Companies and individuals can easily get appropriate pipe chillers on our premises. They have a fabulous temperature regulation system that allows you to preserve your products at a particular temperature for idyllic outcomes. The chiller for HDPE, CPVC, UPVC, and PP pipes are exceptional in nurturing environmentally friendly overture because of their low electricity usage. With tremendous flow rates, these chillers' UPVC pipe chiller assure the most satisfactory results and productivity.
How To Maintain Pipe Chiller
As a prominent HDPE pipe manufacturer in India, Reynold India has the aptitude to deliver high-efficiency chiller piping. You will be amazed to know that CPVC Pipe Chiller maintenance is too simple and hassle-less. Let’s know-how:
• Their cylinders and other machinery are effortlessly cleanable; hence it averts the buildup of gauges and other pollutants that disturb their chilling competence.
• Every pipe chiller is designed with first-rate products that showcase elevated confrontation to seepage as they prevent moisture away to preserve the finest productivity.
• The repairs of our pipe chillers are unfussy, which makes them suitable for different cooling and chilling procedures.
• These pipes are extensively applied in different sectors for hurdle-free liquid flow.
• It is admired for its waterproof fixture, and it is made from first-rate raw substance advanced methodologies under our supervision.
Here are the significant features of our Pipe chillers
• Robust design and impeccable texture
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• Durable lifecycle and rust resistance feature
• Stress-free maintenance with minor fitting charges
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Reynold India Pvt.Ltd
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Many other industries have their practice patterns measured. In 2009, the utility company Positive Energy (now Opower) was interested in reducing power use in neighborhoods. Their data showed that some households used far more electricity than their neighbors. After all, there are no standardized protocols on turning lights on or off when one vacates a room. Just ask anyone who’s argued with a spouse about this issue. The company decided to mail each household a regular feedback report that compared their electricity and natural gas usage to that of similarly sized households in their neighborhood. Playing on the benchmarking theme, the data feedback intervention resulted in an overall reduction in household energy use. When people saw they were outliers, they modified their habits so their usage fell more into line with that of their peers. In a year, this simple intervention reduced the total carbon emissions of the participating houses by the equivalent of 14.3 million gallons of gasoline, saving consumers more than $20 million.4 Lots of utility companies now take this approach—and it works.
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Marty Makary (The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care--and How to Fix It)
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The only mothers who never embarrass, harass, dismiss, discount, deceive, distort, neglect, baffle, appall, inhibit, incite, insult, or age poorly are dead mothers, perfectly contained in photographs, pressed into two dimensions like a golden autumn leaf. That’s your consolation prize, Milly Tanner. Your mother will never be caught sunbathing in the driveway in her bra or cheapened by too much drink. She’ll never be overheard bitching to the phone company or seen slamming her bedroom door in fury. Your mother will always be perfect. But who would say such things to a girl so electric with envy?
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Kelly Corrigan (Glitter and Glue)
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To change what you’re feeling, you need to use your imagination to turn your bills into something that makes you feel better. You can imagine they’re not really bills at all but instead you’ve decided to donate money to each company or person out of the goodness of your heart, because of the wonderful service they provide. Imagine your bills are checks you’re receiving. Or use gratitude and give thanks to the company who sent you the bill, by thinking about how you’ve benefited from their service – for electricity or being able to live in a home. You can write across the front of a bill when you pay it, “Thank you – paid.
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Rhonda Byrne (The Power (The Secret, #2))
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Going public is a sign a company has found enough competitive advantages to scale into a large corporation. But almost 40% of all public companies lost all their value from 1980-2014. A list of top ten fortune 500 companies that went bankrupts includes: General Motors, Crysler, Kodak and Sears. General Electric, Time Warner, AIG and Motorola. Countries follow similar fates. At various points in the past, the world scientific and economic progress has been dominate by Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Whenever a once-powerful thing loses an advantage, it's tempting to ridicule the mistakes of it's leaders but it's easy to overlook how many forces pull you away from a competitive advantage simply BECAUSE you have one. Success has it's own gravity. The higher the monkey climbs a tree, the easier to see it's ass.
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Morgan Housel (SAME AS EVER: Timeless Lessons on Risk, Opportunity and Living a Good Life (From the author of The Psychology Of Money))
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It was the smack of electricity slamming into my flesh and burning me from the inside out. It was the taste of charred flesh on my lips and the sound of my screams filling the air. He was responsible for that. And even the idea of lingering in his company had me fearing it happening again. But I couldn't show him that. My king had been very clear about that.
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Caroline Peckham (Fated Throne (Zodiac Academy, #6))
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Clothes Washer Hoses and Filters
A couple of years ago, I came home from running an errand and heard the sound of rushing water (like a waterfall!) coming from my basement. I tore down the stairs and saw what looked like the Old Faithful geyser spewing water from behind my washing machine.
I immediately cut off the water at the supply stop behind the washer, but there was quite a pool on the floor. I cut the power to the washing machine (at the electrical panel), then unplugged it and moved the appliance back from the wall.
The washer was about 15 years old, and so were the hoses that ran from the supply valve to the machine. Made of rubber, they had grown brittle and corroded with minerals from our well water over the years. One of them finally split; that’s what caused the gusher. I’d never given them a thought before the split.
If you’ve had your washing machine for eight years or more, it might be wise to replace the supply hoses now, before they do to you what mine did to me! Insurance companies—who often wind up paying out for the damage done by burst hoses—advise homeowners to replace supply hoses every 3 to 5 years.
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Judy Ostrow (The Complete Idiot's Guide to Simple Home Repair: Fast Fixes for Every Part of Your Home)
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What is immoral is the act of deliberately causing frustration in a human being. If this evening the lights go out for ten minutes in your street, you’ll never know whether there has been an actual power failure or whether the electricity company has decided to cut off the power for random intervals of ten minutes to teach citizens to tolerate frustration and to make do without electricity.
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Carlos González (Kiss Me: How to Raise your Children with Love)
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One electrical company asked for twenty female engineers from Goucher, with the added request, “Select beautiful ones for we don’t want them on our hands after the war.
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Liza Mundy (Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II)
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Since 1903 American interests had exercised virtually complete control over Cuba’s political and economic affairs. For $2000 a year the United States rented military bases at Guantanamo and Bahia Horda. During this time, Americans did little to improve conditions for the local population. Statistics showed that in 1920, there was only one doctor for every 3000 people; a third of the population had intestinal parasites; the average per capita income was two dollars a month; six out of every ten rural children never went to school; 75 per cent of Cuba’s arable land was controlled by American companies; U.S. control in the telephone and electric services exceeded 90 per cent.
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Gordon Thomas (Shipwreck: The Strange Fate of the Morro Castle)
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Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology. When I started out with my first company, Zip2, I thought patents were a good thing and worked hard to obtain them. And maybe they were good long ago, but too often these days they serve merely to stifle progress, entrench the positions of giant corporations and enrich those in the legal profession, rather than the actual inventors. After Zip2, when I realized that receiving a patent really just meant that you bought a lottery ticket to a lawsuit, I avoided them whenever possible. At Tesla, however, we felt compelled to create patents out of concern that the big car companies would copy our technology and then use their massive manufacturing, sales and marketing power to overwhelm Tesla. We couldn’t have been more wrong. The unfortunate reality is the opposite: electric car programs (or programs for any vehicle that doesn’t burn hydrocarbons) at the major manufacturers are small to non-existent, constituting an average of far less than 1% of their total vehicle sales. Given that annual new vehicle production is approaching 100 million per year and the global fleet is approximately 2 billion cars, it is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis. By the same token, it means the market is enormous. Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day. We believe that Tesla, other companies making electric cars, and the world would all benefit from a common, rapidly-evolving technology platform. Technology leadership is not defined by patents, which history has repeatedly shown to be small protection indeed against a determined competitor, but rather by the ability of a company to attract and motivate the world’s most talented engineers. We believe that applying the open source philosophy to our patents will strengthen rather than diminish Tesla’s position in this regard.[431]
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Charles Morris (Tesla: How Elon Musk and Company Made Electric Cars Cool, and Remade the Automotive and Energy Industries)
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Gather six to 12 months of checking, savings, and credit card statements, and break your income and expenses down into categories and then line items. I have suggested some here, but add your own as needed. Check to see if your bank or credit card company provides reporting that categorizes charges or lets you assign categories—your work may already be almost done for you: •Income—paychecks, interest, dividends, rents, royalties, business income, pension, social security, child support, spousal support •Housing—mortgage/rent, property taxes, HOA dues, insurance •Utilities—gas, electric, propane, phone, TV/Internet, trash, water/sewer •Food—groceries, dining out •Auto—car payments, gasoline, repairs, insurance •Medical—health insurance, doctor/dentist visits, prescriptions, physical therapy •Entertainment—travel, concerts/shows, sports •Clothing—personal purchases, dry cleaning, uniforms •Personal care—hair/nails, gym/yoga, vitamins/supplements •Miscellaneous—gifts, pets, donations •Children—education, activities, school lunches, childcare You can use a spreadsheet or pen and paper to take note of income and expenses as you go through statements, then calculate a monthly average for each item.
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Debra Doak (High-Conflict Divorce for Women: Your Guide to Coping Skills and Legal Strategies for All Stages of Divorce)
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If Tesla was positioning itself to build battery packs and sell them as part of solar panel systems, they should control the entire customer experience. To board members such as Gracias, it crystallized the understanding that they were moving into a new era for the company: the electricity storage business.
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Tim Higgins (Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century)
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His story from there is a classic Conservative tale of entrepreneurship: on top of the weekly dole money, he was given additional funding attend a course to form a business plan. After beginning with a £40 a week grant for the first year of his business, his electrical company has celebrated twenty-six years of business.
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Sebastian Payne (Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour's Lost England)
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As a building company in Bromley, Kent, Connor Building has been supplying building services for over 20 years. We take your construction dreams from home design to planning permission to a new home. Our services include Loft Conversions, Plumbing, Heating, New Boilers, Bathrooms, Roofing, Electrics, Design & Build, Shell Only Build, Property Maintenance, Home Refurbishments, House Extensions, Plastering, Kitchen Extensions, Rendering and Blockwork. Contact Connor Building for a free quote today.
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Connor Building
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Tesla How a New Kind of Company Made Electric Cars Cool, and Remade the Automotive and Energy Industries By Charles Morris
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Charles Morris (Tesla: How Elon Musk and Company Made Electric Cars Cool, and Remade the Automotive and Energy Industries)
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In May 1901, Edison formed the Edison Storage Battery Company. Edison had big plans for his new battery, which he thought could be used by trolley companies and others. To extend the viability of his invention into the countryside, Edison even proposed that small windmills be attached to electrical generators. Together, they would be used to recharge batteries in cars while homeowners were asleep in a manner that would be cheaper than gasoline.25 This model of decentralized household distributed energy plus electric car is being revisited today in the Honda House of the Future on the University of California, Davis, campus, again raising the prospect that we lost what could have been an opportunity to do things differently one hundred years ago.
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Amy Myers Jaffe (Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security (Center on Global Energy Policy Series))
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Another survey found that at one very large electric company, 80 percent of the devices were connected to the corporate intranet, and there were, of course, connections from the intranet out to the public Internet.
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Richard A. Clarke (Cyberwar: The Next Threat to National Security & What to Do About It)
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We all need electricity, so it doesn’t have to be beautiful or delightful. That’s why the electric company gets away with draping ugly wires all over beautiful cities, ruining the view.
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Kara Swisher (Burn Book: A Tech Love Story)
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By setting up the first distribution company that carried electrical power into private homes, Edison laid the groundwork for the development of an enormous industry. It is, after all, not only the electric light which uses this power source today, but the whole array of home electrical appliances, from the TV set to the washing machine.
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Michael H Hart (The 100: A Ranking Of The Most Influential Persons In History)
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We were discussing the performance-potential matrix that so many companies use for succession planning or “talent management.” McKinsey & Company originally developed it to help General Electric decide which businesses to invest in, and HR departments
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Kim Malone Scott (Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity)
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Some of the very people who ran McDonnell Douglas into the ground resurrected the same penny-pinching policies that sank their old company. Borrowing a page from another flawed idol, Jack Welch’s General Electric, they executed what today might be called the standard corporate playbook: anti-union, regulation-light, outsourcing-heavy. But pro-handout, at least when it comes to tax breaks and lucrative government contracts.
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Peter Robison (Flying Blind: The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing)
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With regulatory changes in nuclear power plant construction in the United States after the Three Mile Island anti-nuclear hysteria, producing years of added new delay in completion of existing power plants, nuclear energy as an investment for America’s electric utility companies became prohibitive under the Volcker interest rate regime. After that year, 1979, not one new nuclear reactor was ordered in the United States, and scores of half-built or planned nuclear projects were cancelled midstream because of prohibitive financing costs. One of the most advanced sector of the productive economy was allowed to die.
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F. William Engdahl (A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order)
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Power companies love people that light up their homes all night long!
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Steven Magee
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When IBM discovered that it was not in the business of making office equipment or business machines, but that it was in the business of processing information, then it began to navigate with clear vision. The General Electric Company makes a considerable portion of its profits from electric light bulbs and lighting systems. It has not yet discovered that, quite as much as AT&T, it is in the business of moving information.
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Marshall McLuhan (Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man)
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Suraj solar and allied industries,
Wework galaxy, 43,
Residency Road,
Bangalore-560025.
Mobile number : +91 808 850 7979
Introduction to Solar Rooftop Systems
Understanding Solar Energy
Importance of Solar Rooftop Systems
Harnessing the power of the sun to generate clean and renewable energy has become increasingly essential in today's world. Solar rooftop systems offer a sustainable solution for both residential and commercial properties to reduce reliance on traditional grid electricity and lower carbon emissions. By understanding the fundamentals of solar energy and recognizing the significance of solar rooftop installations, individuals and businesses in Bangalore can pave the way towards a more environmentally conscious and cost-effective energy future.
# Solar Rooftop in Bangalore - Sunease Solar
## Introduction to Solar Rooftop Systems
### Understanding Solar Energy
Solar energy is like the coolest kid on the block when it comes to renewable energy sources. It's basically sunlight transformed into electricity, which is pretty neat if you ask me.
### Importance of Solar Rooftop Systems
Solar rooftop systems are like the superheroes of the energy world - they harness the power of the sun right from your rooftop. They not only help you save money but also reduce your carbon footprint. Win-win!
## Benefits of Solar Rooftop Installations
### Financial Savings
Imagine cutting down on those hefty electricity bills - that's what solar rooftop installations do. They help you save money in the long run while also increasing the value of your property . It resembles having your cake and eating it as well!
### Environmental Impact
By switching to solar energy, you're basically giving Mother Earth a virtual high-five. Solar rooftop installations reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help combat climate change. So, you're not just saving money, you're saving the planet. NBD.
### Energy Independence
Who doesn't want to be a little more independent, am I right?
Solar Rooftop in Bangaloreprovide you with a sense of self-sufficiency when it comes to energy. You're not at the mercy of fluctuating electricity prices anymore. It's like taking control of your energy destiny.
## Solar Rooftop Initiatives in Bangalore
### Government Policies and Incentives
Bangalore is all about that solar love. The government has rolled out various policies and incentives to promote solar rooftop installations. It resembles they're saying, "Here's something special to do your change to sun oriented considerably better."
### Community Programs and Awareness
Communities in Bangalore are coming together to spread the good word about solar energy. From awareness campaigns to collective installations, they're making sure everyone knows that solar is the way to go. It's like a solar revolution, but with a cool community twist.
## Sunease Solar: A Leader in Solar Rooftop Solutions
### Company Overview
Sunease Solar is basically the Gandalf of solar rooftop solutions - wise, reliable, and always there when you need them. They're experts in the field, making the switch to solar as easy as pie (solar-powered pie, of course).
### Product Offerings
From sleek solar panels to cutting-edge inverters, Sunease Solar has it all. They offer top-notch products that are not only efficient but also look pretty darn good on your rooftop. It's like having the Ferraris of solar installations.
### Customer Success Stories
Customers love Sunease Solar, and for good reason. Their success stories speak volumes about the quality of service and satisfaction they provide. It's like a feel-good movie, but with solar panels instead of actors.
5. Key Features of Solar Rooftop Systems
Panel Efficiency and Durability
When it comes to Solar Rooftop in Bangalore, panel efficiency and durability are key factors to consider.
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Solar Rooftop in Bangalore
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Berkshire Hathaway Public Holdings April 4, 2012 Company Holding Value Stake The Coca-Cola Company (KO) $14.69 billion 8.8% International Business Machines (IBM) $13.17 billion 5.4% Wells Fargo (WFC) $12.99 billion 13.0% American Express (AXP) $8.69 billion 2.8% Proctor & Gamble $5.16 billion 2.8% Kraft Foods $3.32 billion 4.9% Wal-Mart Stores $2.36 billion 1.1% ConocoPhillips $2.22 billion 2.3% U.S. Bancorp $2.16 billion 2.3% Johnson & Johnson $1.90 billion 1.1% Moody’s Corp $1.20 billion 12.8% DIRECTV $995 million 2.9% Washington Post Co. $645 million 22.4% M&T Bank Corp $465 million 4.3% Costco Wholesale Corp $386 million 1.0% Visa Inc. $341 million 0.35% Intel Corp. $321 million 0.23% CVS Caremark $315 million 0.55% USG Corp $283 million 16.2% General Dynamics $281 million 1.1% DaVita Inc. $233 million 2.9% Dollar General $210 million 1.3% Torchmark $208 million 4.2% MasterCard Inc. $174 million 0.3% Verisk Analytics $162 million 1.9% General Electric $153 million 0.07% Sanofi SA $153 million 0.15% Liberty Media $149 million 1.4% United Parcel Service $114 million 0.15% GlaxoSmithKline $68 million 0.06% Bank of New York Mellon $43 million 0.15% Ingersoll Rand $26 million 0.2% Gannett $26 million 0.73% Source: CNBC, Warren Buffet Watch.
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David Andrews (The Oracle Speaks: Warren Buffett In His Own Words (In Their Own Words))
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Tips for Purchasing Industrial Surplus Parts
Industrial surplus equipment and parts are becoming increasingly popular as more companies turn to purchasing the components either for use or for refurbishment and resale. Industrial surplus parts are sold when an industrial manufacturer decides to get rid of these extra (or surplus) pieces, whether they are equipment or parts for putting together equipment, which can then be purchased by resellers or
Industrial surplus buyers. For example: The most common type of parts sold for industrial surplus are electrical or electronics—because technology is increasing at a rapid past, it is not uncommon for the parts for electrical equipment to become obsolete when the latest model or latest technology is used. After the new model replaces the old, the parts and equipment are considered surplus.
And also When we can buy surplus inventory from retailers or businesses is a great way to invest relatively little money and resell those inventory items for a significant profit.
The following are some practical tips to keep in mind when purchasing industrial surplus parts.
Tip: Research the surplus parts before purchasing
Not all surplus parts are created equal, which is why you should never just purchase a surplus part because it seems like a good deal or because you have come across a new sale. It’s important to research the type of part, the manufacturer, whether it is used/non-used, and other relevant information. You want to be able to get more than what you paid for these surplus parts, if you are reselling, or to use the parts, if you are purchasing them for your own business; “jumping right in” could result in a waste of time, money and purchases.
Tip: Never purchase certain parts without a warranty period
Most surplus parts should have some kind of warranty or warranty period. This is especially true for electrical or electronic parts, which are more sensitive in nature. Do not purchase any electrical surplus parts if there is not a warranty period, as you will be risking your money. When possible, purchase other types of surplus parts only when there is an acceptable warranty period to help protect your purchase.
Tip: Look for professional surplus retailers
It might be tempting to look for an “underbelly” store that offers surplus parts at an extreme discount, but you should only do business with a professional retailer or manufacturer with a reputable reputation. When you choose little known surplus part resellers or sellers with poor reputations, you might be purchasing parts that are cobbled together or even stolen.
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James Comacker
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In Colchester electrical services offer a professional and experienced company Luxelent. We offer a wide range of electrical services for both residential and commercial customers, we proficient in Domestic Electrics, Repairs and Upgrades, rewires, Condition Reports, Fault finding, Testing for non registered installers and more.
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Garry Goodchild
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Who better than Wal-Mart, after all, to make a kilowatt of electricity go twice as far, or a gallon of fuel move our trucks move three times the distance?" -Wal-Mart ad
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Charles Fishman (The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works - and How It's Transforming the American Economy)
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There are many types of electric blankets on the market today and they come in different price ranges. It is probably a good idea to purchase one that has an automatic shutoff.Shantinathsales Is Best Electric Blanket Manufacture Company In Delhi Ncr.
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Shantinath
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Rishikesh is one of the most wanted places for adventure lovers. Rishikesh is also well-known among Hindus for its pilgrimage. The free of charge graceful river and also Substring Mountains make this place beautiful for travelers. It is really one of the best locations for people wanting onward to get tons of adventure, and fun. It's also a precious knowledge for nature lovers. The major fair activity in Rishikesh is White Water Rafting. It has grown to a well-liked and daring spot for white water rafting enthusiast as the place offers an impressive experience of average to very tough and rough rapids in the region of River Ganges. Uttarakhand adventure is well known rafting company in Rishikesh. Many adventurous tourists both from India and overseas stay this place to experience the real challenge of white water rafting. All services for white water rafting Rishikesh is available here, and there are preparation guides for rafting from whom a tourist can take help in this sport.
River rafting in Rishikesh is one of the majority popular sport activities because of free flowing rivers from Himalayas. Rafting, camping, trekking, and Rock Climbing, Bungee jumping is some of the sports education that a traveler can consider. We are best rafting company in Rishikesh. Important and Helpful Information and Rafting Safety Tips for All Rafting Users
• Important Equipments Shell Be take for River Rafting and Camping
• Sunglasses and water glasses with retaining cord, Battery Torch
• Swimming costume and quick drying shorts for river
• Odomos, Antiseptic Cream and Sunscreen Lotion, First Aid Box
• Only Use River Sandals & old Sneakers , no flip flops
• River Rafting Guide & Splash life jackets.
• Other required safety accessories
• Waterproof disposable camera with Extra Battery (Full Battery Charge).
• Mobile Phone with Extra Mobile Batteries (Electricity may be off)
• We provide River Rafting Gears & Assistance
• Helmets & river rafting gears
• Trekking Shoes
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uttarakhand adventure
“
Failure can feel like the ultimate death sentence, but it’s actually a step forward. When we fail, life is pushing us in a different direction so we can experience something new. One adventure has ended and another is about to begin, because it must. Think of your activities in life as scientific experiments. Scientists expect the vast majority of their tests to fail, but they still view each test as a step forward, regardless of the outcome. This is because each failed test rules out that particular approach, narrowing the remaining scope of potential solutions. You might be thinking, “What if all of my experiments fail until the day I die?” Great question. That might happen, depending on how you define failure and success. Here’s the magical solution to that problem: The results of your experiments are of little consequence. Only the experiments themselves matter. The old platitude is true: It’s about the journey, not the destination. Doing experiments will account for 99% of your time on this earth. That’s the journey. The result of your experiments is the other 1%. If you enjoy 99% of your life (the time spent in experimentation), who cares about the results? This is how to remove the problem of failure. Failure is just a temporary result. Its effect is as big or as small as you allow it to be. Elon Musk is becoming a household name. He cofounded Paypal. He now runs two companies simultaneously. The first, Tesla Motors, builds electric cars. The second, SpaceX, builds rocket ships. Many people think of Elon Musk as a real-world Iron Man—a superhero. He’s a living legend. He works extremely hard, and he’s brilliant. Did you know that Elon Musk never worked at Netscape? This is interesting because he actually wanted to work there very badly. He applied to Netscape while he was in grad school at Stanford, but never received a response. He even went to Netscape’s lobby with resume in hand, hoping to talk to someone about getting a job. No one in the lobby ever spoke to Elon that day. After getting nervous and feeling ashamed of himself, he walked out. That’s right. Elon Musk failed to get hired at Netscape. The recruiting managers didn’t see a need for him, and he was too ashamed to keep badgering them. So what happened next? Well, we know what happened from there. Musk went on to become one of the most successful and respected visionaries of our time.[30] Take a deep breath and realize that there are no life-ending failures, only experiments and results. It’s also important to realize that you are not the failure—the experiment is the failure. It is impossible for a person to be a failure. A person’s life is just a collection of experiments. We’re meant to enjoy them and grow from them. If you learn to love the process of experimentation, the prospect of failure isn’t so scary anymore.
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Jesse Tevelow (The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions)
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The fraudulent electrical utility company in conjunction with the corrupt sheriff taught me that an Englishman's home is not his castle
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Steven Magee
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Aluminum Hulls
In 1931 England, aluminum was used in the construction of the Diana II, a 55 foot express cruiser, which is still in use. Aluminum is non-magnetic and is almost never found in the elemental state. As a ductile metal it is malleable and has about one-third the density and stiffness of steel. Aluminum is a corrosion resistant, easily machined, cast, drawn and extruded, however the procedure to weld it is more difficult and different from other metals. In 1935 the Bath Iron Works in Maine, built an experimental hull for Alcoa. Named the Alumette, it was floated to the James River in Newport News, Virginia for the purpose of testing its structural properties.
The MV Sacal Borincano was an all-aluminum constructed Roll on Roll off, or Ro-Ro ship, designed to carry 40 highway trailers between Miami, FL and San Juan. PR. The relatively small ship was 226 feet in length and has a displacement of 2000 tons. The South Atlantic and Caribbean Line Inc. operated the vessel which was constructed by American Marine in 1967, with help from the Reynolds Metal Company. The vessel was constructed completely of heli-arced aluminum plates to achieve a working speed of 14 knots with a diesel electric power plant of 3000 hp generating 2240kW.
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Hank Bracker (Suppressed I Rise)
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An electrical utility company that blatantly lies to law enforcement about an electrical fraud researcher would be considered suicidal by many people.
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Steven Magee
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Batteries: The Key to a Renewable Future Modern civilization depends upon a constant, reliable stream of energy. However, renewables such as wind and solar are notoriously intermittent; wind depends on the whim of nature, and solar power dries up as the sun goes down. Batteries solve this problem by storing excess power generated throughout the day and supplying it in the absence of sunlight or wind. In addition, batteries respond well to high electricity demands, help lower energy costs, and ensure reliability. They are the most crucial components in any clean power future. Power storage is a much more difficult technological problem than power generation. From lithium ion to rechargeable flow, inventors and developers have experimented with many new ideas. There is not yet a magic bullet to solve our power storing needs. The good news, however, is that in the past decade, batteries have made great strides in capacity and lower prices. This is due in part to the electric vehicle industry, which relies heavily on efficient lithium ion batteries. In 2016, Tesla Inc. began manufacturing its Powerwall and Powerpack energy products at its Gigafactory, currently the world’s largest lithium ion battery factory. The goal of the plant is to drive down the cost of the company’s electric vehicle and energy storage batteries while also spurring innovation. Doing so, according to the company, will make renewable energy storage a more accessible and viable option.
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Al Gore (An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power: Your Action Handbook to Learn the Science, Find Your Voice, and Help Solve the Climate Crisis)
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Companies such as Intel, IBM, General Electric, Apple, and Microsoft have also expanded their research operations abroad to countries including India, China, Singapore, and Israel in order to be nearer customers and technological talent. In fact, PricewaterhouseCoopers has estimated that 94 percent of all global companies now do some research and development outside their home countries.
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Jeffrey E. Garten (From Silk to Silicon: The Story of Globalization Through Ten Extraordinary Lives)
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In 1973 the companies and individuals later to be identified with the advent of the personal computer were otherwise engaged. IBM was still turning out electric typewriters; Microsoft’s Bill Gates was a freshman entering Harvard; and Steve Jobs, the future co-founder of Apple Computer, was a college dropout wandering around India in search of his Zen master. But
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Michael A. Hiltzik (Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age)
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has to be connected to the company’s billing department, which in turn needs to be connected to whatever department actually conveys electricity to the home. Each connection provides another potential attack surface. In
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Ted Koppel (Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath)
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The Bosworth Company has been providing midland tx with quality air conditioning, heating, air quality, plumbing and electrical services since 1949.
CONTACT US
Contact Name: Frank Peterson
Address: 2205 W Industrial Ave, Midland, TX, 79701
Phone: (432) 570-5233
Email: sdbbosworthco@gmail.com
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Frank Peterson
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TABLE OF GERMAN COMPANIES AND MAIN SS CONCENTRATION CAMPS REPORTED TO BE ACTIVE IN EXPLOITATION OF FORCED LABOR DURING THE THIRD REICH Auschwitz AEG (electronics) [5] Barthl (construction) [5] Bata Schlesische Schuhwerke (leather, shoes, and factory construction) [10] Benton-Monteur-Bau (construction) [10] Berle Hoch- und Tiefbau (construction) [10] Berliner Baugesellschaft (construction) [10] BRABAG (mining, synthetic fuel) [3] Breitenbach Montanbau [10] Borsig-Koks-Werk (coal processing) [10] Charlottengrube (Hermann-Göring-Werke) (tunnel construction) [10] Concordia Kohlenbergwerk (coal processing) [10] Deutsche Gasrusswerke, Gleiwitz [5] [8] Dyckerhoff & Widman (construction materials) [5] Egefeld (construction) [10] Emmerich Machold (textiles) [10] Energie-Versorgung-Oberschlesien AG (electrical construction for Elektrizitätswerk “Walter”) [10] Erdöl Raffinerie Trzebinia GmbH (oil refining) [10] Fürstengrube GmbH (coal mining) [10] Fürstlich Plessische Bergwerks AG (coal processing) [10] Godula (factory construction) [10] Grün und Bilfinger (construction) [10] Gute Hoffnung Janinagrube (coal mining) [10] Heinkel (aircraft components, munitions) [5] [10] Hubertushütte (coal processing) [10] IG Farben—Buna Werke (construction, synthetic fuel) [3] [4] [5] [8] [10] Junkers (aircraft) [5] Klotz und Co. (construction) [10] Königshütte Metallwerke (metal works) [10] Königs- und-Bismarckhütte AG (armored cars and tanks) [10] Krupp (munitions) [4] [5] Krupp—Laurahùtte (munitions) [8] Lasota (tunnel & road construction) [10] Oberschlesische Gerätebau GmbH [10] Oberschlesische Hydrierwerke (construction of synthetic gasoline works) [5] [8] [10] Ölschieferanlagen (oil refinery construction) [8] Ost-Maschinenbau GmbH (OSMAG) (cannon) [2] [5] [8] [10] Pfitzner und Kamper (munitions, loading) [10] Philipp Holzmann (construction) [10] Pluschke und Grosser (construction) [10] Portland-Zement-Fabrik AG (construction materials) [10] Riedel (tunnel and roadbuilding) [10] Rheinmetall-Borsig (munitions) [3] Schuchtermann und Kremer Bau AG (construction) [10] Schweinitz (construction) [10] S. Frankel—Schlesische Feinweberei AG (textiles) [10] Siemens-Schuckert (electronics for aircraft) [2] [3] [10] Union Metallindustrie (munitions) [4] [5] Vacuum Öl (oil refinery) [5] [10] Vereinigte Aluminiumwerke (aluminum) [5] Wayss und Freytag (construction) [10] Zieleniewski (munitions) [10] Zwirnfabrik G. A. Buhl und Sohn (textiles) [10]
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Christopher Simpson (The Splendid Blond Beast: Money, Law, and Genocide in the Twentieth Century (Forbidden Bookshelf Book 24))
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I research what electrical utility companies do not want researched.
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Steven Magee
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If we are going to avoid similar financial crises in the future, we need to restrict severely freedom of action in the financial market. Financial instruments need to be banned unless we fully understand their workings and their effects on the rest of the financial sector and, moreover, the rest of the economy. This will mean banning many of the complex financial derivatives whose workings and impacts have been shown to be beyond the comprehension of even the supposed experts. You may think I am too extreme. However, this is what we do all the time with other products – drugs, cars, electrical products, and many others. When a company invents a new drug, for example, it cannot be sold immediately. The effects of a drug, and the human body’s reaction to it, are complex. So the drug needs to be tested rigorously before we can be sure that it has enough beneficial effects that clearly overwhelm the side-effects and allow it to be sold.
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Ha-Joon Chang (23 Things They Don't Tell You about Capitalism)
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Having worked for a utility company, I was aware of how corrupt they are with their own workers. What really surprised me is how corrupt utilities are with their own customers!
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Steven Magee
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screamed night and day, blotted out the starlit skies and Northern Lights with flashing red strobes, slaughtered thousands of bats and entire flocks of birds, banished tourism and wildlife, made people sick and drove them from their now-valueless homes. But though there was very little wind and the turbines made almost no electricity, they made billions in taxpayer-paid subsidies for energy companies and investment banks, some of which trickled down to their fully-owned politicians and “environmental” groups. As I’d learned in previous dealings with WindPower LLC, these turbines did absolutely nothing for global warming. Because wind is so erratic, wind projects must have fulltime fossil fuel plants to back them up, and the result is that wind projects often cause more coal-burning, not less. And the saddest thing is that these billions of dollars wasted on industrial wind projects could be spent on rooftop solar, substantially reducing CO2 generation and fossil fuel use. But the utilities hate rooftop solar, despite what they pretend, because it cuts their income, so they are avidly trying to curtail it.
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Mike Bond (Killing Maine (Pono Hawkins, #2))
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Electricity has just two disadvantages: it is difficult to store cheaply, and it can be transmitted easily only on high-voltage lines, above the ground and visible. Automotive lead-acid storage batteries are as cheap as mass production and the cost of materials will allow, yet their cost for storing an hour's worth of energy coming off the power line is over two thousand times as much as the utility company charges for that energy. Multiple recharges can't even come close to bringing that factor down below about three. There is a radically different type of battery, using liquid sodium and liquid sulfur as electrodes and solid sodium aluminate as an electrolyte (yes, I said that the right way round) that is now getting substantial research. Theoretically, it could store as much as seven times the energy per pound of a lead-acid battery. Sodium-sulfur batteries have to be heated above normal outside air temperatures - a disadvantage that will probably make them unusable in vehicles - but they could find use in central power stations to supply peak loads.
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Gerard K. O'Neill (2081)
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Expect to be blatantly harassed by the local utility company and corporate controlled law enforcement departments when investigating utility fraud.
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Steven Magee
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If you cannot tie your marketing efforts to actual dollars that the electric company will accept, it’s time to adjust your plan.
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Amber Hurdle (The Bombshell Business Woman: How to Become a Bold, Brave Female Entrepreneur)
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As Musk put it, “Try to imagine explaining that you’re investing in an electric car company, and everything you read about the car company sounds like it is shit and doomed and it’s a recession and no one is buying cars.” All Musk had to do to dig Tesla out of this conundrum was lose his entire fortune and verge on a nervous breakdown.
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Ashlee Vance (Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future)
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Some automakers already sell autos with carbon-fiber composite parts or powered by electric motors. As we’ll see next, these innovations are about to converge, not just to make a better, more efficient auto but to support the companies’ long-term survival and success. So how can we make this revolutionary leap?
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Amory Lovins (Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era)
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We don’t simply have a problem when it comes to the amount of tax collected. We have a huge problem when it comes to the way we collect taxes. Take corporate taxes as an example. We impose taxes at the second highest rate in the rich world (35%), yet the corporate tax code is riddled with incentives, subsidies, exemptions, and loopholes.13 The result is crazy. We give firms a huge disincentive to earn money at home (because our basic tax rate is so high), while giving them huge incentives to play the system. And remember: the United States boasts some of the world’s most innovative and entrepreneurial companies. If we give those guys an incentive to find ways around our tax code, they’ll turn out to be world-beaters. World-beaters like General Electric, for example.14 GE earned $14.2 billion of profit in 2010, of which $5.1 billion was generated in the US. I’m guessing that you earned less than $5 billion that year, but I’m damn sure you had a more painful settlement with the taxman. In 2010, GE’s net corporation tax obligation to the US government was sub-zero. The firm actually derived a net benefit from the government. In the five years to 2010, GE accumulated $26 billion in American profits and booked a net benefit of $4.1 billion from the IRS. That’s completely insane. You don’t, however, need to be GE to outperform in this way. Big Oil can play the same game to almost equal effect. According to a Citizens for Tax Justice report out in 2011, ‘Over the past two years, Exxon Mobil reported $9,910 million in pretax US profits. But it enjoyed so many tax subsidies that its federal income tax bill was only $39 million—a tax rate of only 0.4%.’15
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Mitch Feierstein (Planet Ponzi)
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I assured them that our government was not going to be ideological about this: if I was asked whether I was in favour of or against privatization, my answer would be, ‘It depends on the asset in question – a port, a railway, a beach, an electricity company?’ Beaches I would never sell, I told them, just as I would never sell the Parthenon. And the privatization of electricity grids reliably leads to environmentally and socially suboptimal outcomes. But when it came to ports and airports, I would form a view based on four criteria: how much the buyer was committing to invest in the asset; the buyer’s commitment to workers’ rights to union representation and decent wages and conditions; environmental standards; and the extent to which the buyer would be obliged to leave room for and encourage the benefit of small and medium local businesses.
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Yanis Varoufakis (Adults in the Room: My Battle with Europe's Deep Establishment)
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recent decades, American utility companies have spent relatively little on research and development. One industry report estimates that, in 2009, research-and-development investments made by all US electrical-power utilities amounted to at most $700 million, compared with $6.3 billion by IBM and $9.1 billion by Pfizer. In 2009, however, the Department of Energy issued $3.4 billion in stimulus grants to a hundred smart-grid projects across the United States, including many in areas that are prone to heat waves and hurricanes.
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Eric Klinenberg (Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago)
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For most of the past two decades the central goal of energy pricing has been to reduce volatility. Policymakers want to ensure that businesses face a predictable environment, with relatively stable prices for electricity and fuels; in a more predictable environment, businesses are more likely to make large-scale capital investments. The government’s main tools in achieving this stability are state-run firms that convert raw fuel into usable energy: power-generating firms and oil refiners. When fuel prices are high, these companies suffer depressed profits or even losses, because they cannot pass on the full cost increase to their customers. But when prices are low, their profits soar, because they are not required to pass on their full cost savings either. These industries can be thought of as “shock absorbers” that enable the economic car to drive relatively smoothly even when the road is full of potholes.
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Arthur R. Kroeber (China's Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know)
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A great story about a big company’s ability to do this comes from one of the world’s biggest businesses, General Electric. I learned about Doug Dietz a few years ago when I saw him speak to a group of executives. Doug leads the design and development of award-winning medical imaging systems at GE Healthcare. He was at a hospital one day when he witnessed a little girl crying and shaking from fear as she was preparing to have an MRI — in a big, noisy, hot machine that Dietz had designed. Deeply shaken, he started asking the nurses if her reaction was common. He learned that 80 percent of pediatric patients had to be sedated during MRIs because they were too scared to lie still. He immediately decided he needed to change how the machines were designed. He flew to California for a weeklong design course at Stanford’s d.school. There he learned about a human-centric approach to design, collaborated with other designers, talked to healthcare professionals, and finally observed and talked to children in hospitals. The results were stunning. His humandriven redesigns wrapped MRI machines in fanciful themes like pirate ships and space adventures and included technicians who role-play. When Dietz’s redesigns hit children’s hospitals, patient satisfaction scores soared and the number of kids who needed sedation plummeted. Doug was teary-eyed as he told the story, and so were many of the senior executives in the audience. Products should be designed for people. Businesses should be run in a responsive, human-centric way. It is time to return to those basics. Let TRM be your roadmap and turn back to putting people first. It worked for our grandparents. It can work for you.
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Brian de Haaff (Lovability: How to Build a Business That People Love and Be Happy Doing It)
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EFG 112-A. PATENT 4,125,662. WAREHAM ELECTRIC COMPANY, BOSTON. TOLERANCES 1–20 MG, .1–15 MT. “ ‘mG,’ ” Logan read aloud. “Do you suppose that’s milligauss?” “I think so. And I think mT stands for microtesla.
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Lincoln Child (The Forgotten Room (Jeremy Logan, #4))
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Construction of the SS Morro Castle was begun by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company in January of 1929 for the New York and Cuba Mail Steam Ship Company, better known as the Ward Line. The ship was launched in March of 1930, followed in May by the construction of her sister ship the SS Oriente. Both ships were 508 feet long and had a breath of almost 80 feet and weighed in at 11,520 gross tons (GRT). The ships were driven by General Electric turbo generators, which supplied the necessary electrical current to two propulsion motors. Having twin screws both ships could maintain a cruising speed of 20 knots. State of the art, each ship was elegantly fitted out to accommodate 489 passengers and had a complement of 240 officers and crew. It is estimated that the ships cost approximately $5 million each, of which 75% was given to the company as a low cost government loan to be repaid over twenty years.
The SS Morro Castle was named for the fortress that guards the entrance to Havana Bay. On the evening of September 5, 1934 Captain Robert Willmott had his dinner delivered to his quarters. Shortly thereafter, he complained of stomach trouble and shortly after that, died of an apparent heart attack. With this twist of fate the command of the ship went to the Chief Mate, William Warms. During the overnight hours, with winds increasing to over 30 miles per hour, the ship continued along the Atlantic coast towards New York harbor. Early on September 8, 1934 the ship had what started as a minor fire in a storage locker. With the increasing winds, the fire quickly intensified causing the ship to burn down to the waterline, killing a total of 137 passengers and crew members. Many passengers died when they jumped into the water with the cork life preservers breaking their necks and killing them instantly on impact. Only half of the ships 12 lifeboats were launched and then losing power the ship drifted, with heavy onshore winds and a raging sea the hapless ship ground ashore near Asbury Park. Hard aground she remained there for several months as a morbid tourist attraction. On March 14, 1935 the ship was towed to Gravesend Bay, New York and then to Baltimore, MD, where she was scrapped.
The Chief Mate Robert Warms and Chief Engineer Eban Abbott as well as the Ward Line vice-president Henry Cabaud were eventually indicted on various charges, including willful negligence. All three were convicted and sent to jail, however later an appeals court later overturned the ship’s officers convictions and instead placed much of the blame on the dead Captain Willmott. Go figure….
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Hank Bracker
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Vala Afshar, chief marketing officer of Extreme Networks, is an interesting case study.3 Trained as an electrical engineer, Afshar joined Extreme Networks in 1996 as a software developer/quality service engineer, eventually transitioning to run the services business, becoming the chief customer support officer. In this role, Afshar became very active on Salesforce's Chatter, a private social network for business, and by 2011 had built a large internal following. As the chief information officer took note of Afshar's intracompany influence, he signed Afshar up for Twitter and gave him the mandate to interact with networks outside of the company. As Afshar prototyped his ideas in real time, he gained an external following. A publisher approached him about writing a book; his presentations on Slide-Share gained more than one million views; and he was promoted to chief marketing officer. Vala Afshar has become a thought leader, epitomizing a new breed of chief marketing officer, both highly social and highly technical—and Extreme Networks has unusually high name recognition for a $500 million company. Afshar's ability to shrink the space, getting immediate and actionable feedback, was pivotal in expanding his space into a high-profile public role. Fast feedback is also useful when it comes to identifying your distinctive strengths. Karen May, VP for people development at Google, invented a method she calls "speedback." It works like this: "partway through a training session she will tell everyone to pair off and sit knee to knee, and give them three minutes to answer one simple question: 'What advice would you give me based on the experience you've had with me here?' Participants say that it's some of the best feedback they've ever gotten."4 When we are willing to impose constraints—in this particular, instance, time—we have a better chance of identifying what is working and what needs to be changed.
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Whitney Johnson (Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work)
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consumer deals directly only with the local company that delivers the electricity on that final leg.
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Ted Koppel (Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath)
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Once it’s handed off to the local companies that transmit electricity to the local consumers, no federal regulations apply. At that point, it’s under state authority—fifty different jurisdictions, in which regulations focus almost exclusively on the financial side of the business.
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Ted Koppel (Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath)
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There are, as previously noted, more than three thousand electric power companies in the United States. Many of the smaller electric companies lack the resources and often the motivation to provide their operations with the best cybersecurity. Computer access to any one of them can provide access along the network to the SCADA and EMS systems that calibrate supply and demand for the grid as a whole.
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Ted Koppel (Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath)
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May 5th 2018 was one of the first nice spring days the beautiful State of Maine had seen since being captured by the long nights and cold days of winter. Ursula, my wife of nearly 60 years and I were driving north on the picturesque winding coastal route and had just enjoyed the pleasant company of Beth Leonard and Gary Lawless at their interesting book store “Gulf of Maine” in Brunswick. I loved most of the sights I had seen that morning but nothing prepared us for what we saw next as we drove across the Kennebec River on the Sagadahoc Bridge.
Ursula questioned me about the most mysterious looking vessel we had ever seen. Of course she expected a definitive answer from me, since I am considered a walking encyclopedia of anything nautical by many. Although I had read about this new ship, its sudden appearance caught me off guard. “What kind of ship is that?” Ursula asked as she looked downstream, at the newest and most interesting stealth guided missile destroyer on the planet. Although my glance to the right was for only a second, I was totally awed by the sight and felt that my idea of what a ship should look like relegated me to the ashbin of history where I would join the dinosaurs and flying pterosaurs of yesteryear.
Although I am not privileged to know all of the details of this class of ship, what I do know is that the USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000) first underwent sea trials in 2015. The USS Michael Monsoor (DDG-1001) delivered to the Navy in April 2018, was the second ship this class of guided missile destroyers and the USS Lyndon B. Johnson (DDG-1002) now under construction, will be the third and final Zumwalt-class destroyer built for the United States Navy. It was originally expected that the cost of this class would be spread across 32 ships but as reality set in and costs overran estimates, the number was reduced to 24, then to 7 and finally to 3… bringing the cost-per-ship in at a whopping $7.5 billion. These guided missile destroyers are primarily designed to be multi-mission stealth ships with a focus on naval gunfire to support land attacks. They are however also quite capable for use in surface and anti-aircraft warfare. The three ship’s propulsion is similar and comes from two Rolls-Royce gas turbines, similar to aircraft jet engines, and Curtiss-Wright electrical generators. The twin propellers are driven by powerful electric motors.
Once across the bridge the landscape once again became familiar and yet different. Over 60 years had passed since I was here as a Maine Maritime Academy cadet but some things don’t change in Maine. The scenery is still beautiful and the people are friendly, as long as you don’t step on their toes. Yes, in many ways things are still the same and most likely will stay the same for years to come. As for me I like New England especially Maine but it gets just a little too cold in the winter!
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Hank Bracker
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The biggest electric company in Germany was owned and financed by the General Electric Company of New York.
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David Talbot (The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles and the Rise of America's Secret Government)
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To date, there is no strong empirical support for claims that automating medical record keeping will lead to major reductions in health-care costs or significant improvements in the well-being of patients. But if doctors and patients have seen few benefits from the scramble to automate record keeping, the companies that supply the systems have profited. Cerner Corporation, a medical software outfit, saw its revenues triple, from $1 billion to $3 billion, between 2005 and 2013. Cerner, as it happens, was one of five corporations that provided RAND with funding for the original 2005 study. The other sponsors, which included General Electric and Hewlett Packard, also have substantial business interests in health-care automation. As today’s flawed systems are replaced or upgraded in the future, to fix their interoperability problems and other shortcomings, information technology companies will reap further windfalls.
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Nicholas Carr (The Glass Cage: How Our Computers Are Changing Us)