Quickthink

A while ago, I got into a tough argument about Nokia. My point was that Nokia had missed the boat on smartphones. They got conservative (about cost cutting) just at the wrong moment and therefore, they didn’t get it that phones would become platforms. Well, I was laughed off the stage. My smarter colleagues said that I didn’t understand Nokia’s “second in wins” strategy.

Hmm … these days the talk is much different. Nokia has tried to catch up in the smart phone business and then as a desperation move, linked up with Microsoft.  But sorry, the competition in smart phones is very tough. And as BI reports, it may just be too little too late.

Boom! Some markets are like that these days.

Saveur offers a cool article about the antics of the chefs at Moto. One of them is micro-farming in the kitchen

In our former office space, we put in a grow room [called Moto Farm, pictured above]. We take all the food scraps from the kitchen and compost it with worms. That produces the soil, which we use to grow fruits and vegetables. It occupies a small footprint, ideal for growing medium products. This grows at 50 percent faster than even the world’s best indoor farms because kitchens are humid and warm with the perfect temperature for growing plants, and we have low voltage LEDs that are tuned to the perfect spectrum for growing plant life. These consume roughly 20 watts per panel and rotate, giving a little resistance to the plants. Rather than using fans, this uses a very low-powered source to move it. There’s a little container of water with a stick inside it that sprays up every five minutes using a mechanical sprayer. So there’s not very complex technologies for this aside from the LED.

Sö simple. Food scraps - compost - soil - a bit of tending - food - food scraps … nice cycle.  Hmm … why isn’t this part of my routine?

Oh dear. An appellate court in Bahrain has come down with its decision on charges against 18 Shiite doctors who were arrested during the recent unrest.  First the good news. The court dismissed charges against 9 of them and reduced the sentences imposed on the other 9. Now the bad news. The court did not seem bothered by the idea that the doctors were arrested while treating victims of violence during the unrest. Nor was there a response to the allegations by most of the doctors that they were tortured while in custody.  NYT reports.

 (A) statement, from the International Affairs Authority, said the doctors were not convicted for treating patients, but “primarily for their involvement in politicizing their profession, breaching medical ethics,” and “their call and involvement in the overthrow of the monarchy.”

Hmmm … so just what were the 9 doctors actually doing? If they were doing something bad (like assaulting security officers or refusing access to investigators) the above statement would probably have said so. But the whole thing remains suspiciously murky. One of the doctors said

“It’s a cocktail of baseless sentences,” Dr. Dhaif said in a telephone interview after the verdict. “They’ve reduced the sentences based on international pressure. We were arrested arbitrarily, and we were tortured. It’s all politicized, and based on revenge.”

My take - there is no sense trying to understand this decision from a strictly legal perspective. It reflects an attempted political balancing act - one the one hand, keeping the US just happy enough and on the other hand keeping the Shiites just frightened enough so that the monarchy can maintain its political control. Control is the key word here. Not absolute control, but control of the pace of reform events so that it does they do not endanger authority.

Is it right? Well, human rights and rule of law advocates have room to complain. Probably the more important question is, will it work? My guess is that it will — but only in the short run. Still, let’s hope for the best. And what would that be? That the parties can still somehow find a way back to dialogue rather than confrontation as the tool of choice for dealing with the crisis. And yes, Bahrain is still in crisis.

Cringely makes a good point in part3 of his series on crowdfunding today. New financial markets that are about to go mainstream will require new tools to make the systems workable.  Cringe is right that regulation — no matter how well thought out it is — won’t provide these tools. They will come from the system itself or from third parties. The interesting thing is that no one really knows what those tools will look like — yet.