Life Distilled

Once again, Seymour Hersh produced an incredibly illuminating article on some of the secretive foreign policy the current administration has us engaged in. It really paints Iraq as a staging ground for a proxy war between us and Iran. Iran funds our enemies in Iraq and sends in troops to kill our soldiers. Meanwhile, we use the CIA and JSOC to destabilize the government and increase violence. So the question isn’t about when we’re going to attack Iran, it’s if and when they’ll choose to make it public.

Another depressing thing is the current crop of politicians still have not learned from our past mistakes. The dissidents and thugs they’re working with in Iran, like the MEK and PJAK, are of the same breed as those who they helped train and arm in 1980’s Afghanistan, only to have the guns pointed back at us on 9/11.

Another good point made in the article is that the Democrat-controlled Congress has known all about these activities and are happy to willingly play along. But it’s not just their egregious lack of objection. As they let these disgusting deeds go forth, both houses of Congress are silently pushing forward bills with inflammatory language to start the framework for the Iran War. Both bills have plenty of Democrat cosponsors. Make no mistake. This is the same “anti-war” Democrat party that voted for Afghanistan’s and Iraq’s invasion, and has publicly advocated bombing Iran.

As part of a business class I’m taking, I had to do a presentation on a current business topic. I chose Microsoft’s attempted takeover of Yahoo. The point of the presentation was that businesses aren’t always just the cold, calculating, rational entities we sometimes think of them as. They’re run by people, and as such are susceptible to human shortcomings; in this case egos and emotions.

Here’s a short timeline of the events that have happened:

• Early 2006: Disappointing Quarterly results drive Yahoo Shares down
• Late 2006: Yahoo and Microsoft begin private M&A talks.
• Feb 2007: Yahoo CEO Terry Semel dismisses takeover to Microsoft.
• Jun 2007: Yahoo shareholders question Semel’s decision
• Semel steps down, and co-founder Jerry Yangs takes CEO spot
• Feb 2008: Microsoft makes public $31/share offer, worth $44.6B
• Yahoo rejects the offer as too low
• MySpace and Yahoo discuss a deal
• Apr 2008: Microsoft give three week deadline and threatens a hostile takeover
• Yahoo immediately rejects offer
• Yahoo announces possible search deal with Google
• Sources say Yahoo and AOL are in merger talks.
• May 3 2008: Microsoft raises offer to $33/share
• Yahoo Asks for $37/share
• Microsoft calls off talks
• May 2008: Carl Icahn announces a new dissident board slate and that he now holds 4.3% stake in Yahoo
• Microsoft proposes an alternative deal for just the search business
• Yahoo Nominates its full board for reelection
• June 2008: Icahn and Yang debate in a series of public letters
• Yahoo announces a search deal with Google
• Yahoo says talks with Microsoft are definitively over
• Dozens of high profile employees leave Yahoo, leaving them crippled

Since then, both parties have reported come back to the table to talk a few more times, and Yahoo has been mustering all of it’s resources to avoid an Icahn takeover.

Information that has come out since the end of the deal details the steps Yahoo took to sink the deal. Most media sources cite Jerry Yang’s “irrational hatred” of Microsoft as the reason. Here are some of the ways Yahoo tried to torpedo the takeover:

• Talks with MySpace, AOL, and ultimately Google made it harder for Miscrosoft’s acquisition to pass regulatory hurdles
• Yahoo created various “poison pills” including making it attractive for Yahoo employees to leave post-merger, and making stock vest automatically
• Dismissing all offers, against the will of shareholders and opinions in industry

As evidence to the role egos and emotions played in the deal, here’s what the three biggest players in the deal have lost so far:

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO
Lost $3.3B between the beginning of 2008 and now in Microsoft stock, amounting to about ¼ of his net worth

Jerry Yang, Yahoo CEO
Lost out on $1.7B from rejected deal, which would have almost doubled his net worth

Carl Icahn, corporate raider
Lost about $250M in attempt to egotistically control situation himself

A company named Affinnova used MIT technology to develop an algorithm using more sophisticated polling. One particular application was to determine the respondent’s ideal VP candidate. Instead of just presenting a list of candidate names, respondents were presented with 20-25 rounds of questions about “larger concepts, including photos, biographical information and possible first-term priorities” to narrow down the field.

But even more than the methodology, the most interesting part was the result. The algorithm determined that the ideal running mate for both presidential candidates was actually the same person: Colin Powell.

I hadn’t thought of him as a possible 2008 veep, but he does seem compelling, especially on McCain’s side.

Here’s a happy little postscript to the Netflix post from a couple weeks ago: Netflix decided not to make mistake number four. Like Khrushchev standing at the brink of nuclear war, Netflix decided to swallow their pride, back down from their aggressive move, and keep their beloved Profiles. I hope this wins them more customer loyalty as a result. It’s certainly avoided a mass exodus of revenue.

Ever notice the rising moon this time of year looks much bigger than normal? I always figured it was some obvious (not to me, of course) optical illusion. Turns out this seemingly simple phenomena has no simple explanation. Pure lunacy, I tell you.

Here’s a rather depressing map of how much land our benevolent leaders control.

The LA Times caught up with Rafid Ahmed Alwan, more commonly known as “Curveball” where he lives in Germany. Much of the US government’s “proof” of Iraqi WMDs came from this man. In reading this piece, it’s clear even the thinest level of vetting never happened. He’s self-aggrandizing and his fellow employees at Burger King even knew that he was constantly lying. Here are some more gems:

He didn’t disclose that he had been fired at least twice for dishonesty, or that he fled Iraq to avoid arrest.

When a Western intelligence team interviewed Latif outside Iraq in early 2002, a year before the war, he warned that Alwan had been fired for falsifying invoices at work. Latif also denied that anyone produced biological weapons at the plant where he worked with Alwan.

“Rafid told five or 10 stories every day,” Freah said in an interview. “I’d ask, ‘Where have you been?’ And he’d say, ‘I had a problem with my car.’ Or, ‘My family was sick.’ But I knew he was lying.” He had a gift for it and “was not embarrassed when caught in a lie,” Freah said.

“During breaks, he told stories about what a big man he was in Baghdad,” said Hamza Hamad Rashid, who remembered an odd scene with the pudgy Alwan in his too-tight Burger King uniform praising Hussein in the home of der Whopper. “But he always lied. We never believed anything he said.”

Another Iraqi friend, Ghazwan Adnan, remembers laughing when he applied for a job at a local Princess Garden Chinese Restaurant and discovered Alwan washing dishes in the back while claiming to be “a big deal” in Iraq. “How could America believe such a person?”

By the time we get out of Iraq, more than a 100,000 people will be dead and more than a trillion dollars will be absolutely wasted, because someone couldn’t (or didn’t want to) pick up a phone?

Listen, we understand times are tough. We’re all trying to squeeze as much out of how little we have. But if you’re a business, be careful how you squeeze your customers. A classic example of what not to do is Netflix’s recent move.

Mistake One: Cutting Out A Killer Feature
In an email sent yesterday, Netflix unexpectedly announced they are eliminating one of their most beloved features, Profiles. This feature allows more than one person the ability to access an account. With a separate queue, a separate rating history. separate rental history, and separate set of friends, this allowed one account to service a single household.

If you’re just trying to create more value so you’re customers will pay more, create a new feature. Getting your customers used to getting something for free, then later charging for it is a recipe for ire.

Mistake Two: Treat Your Customers Like Idiots
In the email, Netflix stated this change was necessary to “continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers”. Huh? How is eliminating a core feature of your product necessary to improve the Netflix website? This is handwavey PR bull my two year old daughter could see through.

Mistake Three: Make Unilateral Decisions
After some initial questioning by Mike K from Hacking Netflix, the Netflix spokesman made it clear they had already made their “final decision”. Period. This sort of contempt for your customer’s opinions does not bode well for your future customer base.

Mistake Four: Ignore Customer Feedback
The tubes are abuzz today with the fallout from Netflix’s announcement. Hacking Netflix, The Consumerist, and ars technica all have some very critical comments about the move. An online petition has also sprung up with already more than 500 people declaring they will reduce or eliminate their accounts if Netflix goes froward with this decision. A couple commenters on various blogs have also reported exhausted phone CSRs reported they had received many calls today and that the contact forms on Netflix were being flooded.

Clearly Netflix has gotten the word. After making the first three mistakes, it remains to be seen if they make the fourth.

There have already been a couple excellent NK travelog posts on the interwebs (here and here), but they were only a few still images and after the fact thoughts. Since the DRPK is a scary place with harsh consequences, and they strictly prohibit all sorts of stuff, nobody’s ever done anything more.

But recently, a couple guys went in with a video camera, and got some pretty amazing footage. They even got busted with the camera a couple times, but amazingly kept going. These guys have no fear.

It’s pretty long, with the 14 parts weighing in over an hour, but totally worth starting from the begining. If you only have time for one episode, watch their trip to the Northern DMZ.

Who do you think is the bigger puppet?

Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev of puppetmaster Prime Minister Vladimir Putin

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of puppetmaster Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei