Goodbye 2008!

I was going to try and write something profound, but for some reason words are eluding me this afternoon.  All I can say is that I am reminded of what I wrote a year ago, "Yes, 2008 is definitely looking up, and I can only hope it's filled with as many pleasant surprises as 2007!" and think of the phrase, "Be careful of what you ask for, because you will get it."

2008 began with a new apartment, and ended with a new relationship, neither of which were even on my radar screen a year ago, and now I look ahead with nervous anticipation at what 2009 may have waiting in the wings.  (All of it good, but no doubt a lot of it also completely unexpected.)

All I can say for certain on this last afternoon of 2008 is that one year from now I will be changed—and changed for the better—from whom I am today.  I look forward to the wonderful new chapter in my life that meeting Ben and beginning our journey together has brought, and eagerly anticipate to the changes that will be brought about in our country by a having new President in the White House.

(Unlike some of my fellow bloggers, I'm still willing to cut Obama some slack; he's a newbie and is bound to make some horrific errors as he gets his footing as our elected leader.  If, however, two years from now he's still making the sorts of mistakes that have some of my copatriots up in arms, I will have to reconsider.  But for now…I'm willing to just wait and see how it all plays out.)

So with that thought, I sincerely wish all of you a Happy New Year, and hope the next twelve months will be as good to you as the last twelve months have been to me!

To Be Filed Under Cool

I've often wondered why this hadn't been done…

From I New Idea:

LG Display has developed a 14.1 inch LCD panel for notebook PCs that are illuminated by sunlight instead of the backlight unit (a backlight unit is an illumination source used in LCDs. It is usually made up of several fluorescent lamps, a light guide reflectors, and brightness enhancing films) when used outdoors. This is the first LCD panel to allow users to easily switch from backlight use (transmissive mode) to outdoor reflective mode with the touch of a button. The display's outdoor energy consumption falls to one fourth the level of indoor energy consumption, providing a significant increase in battery life.

In addition, this new product resolves visibility issues with a contrast ratio exceeding 9:1 when used outdoors in reflective mode. The display's contrast ratio ranges from just 2:1 to 3:1 for conventional notebook PCs when used outdoors, implying difficulty in viewing the screen. During CES 2009, LG Display will showcase its new 14.1 inch sunlight Illuminated LCD for notebook PCs, as well as its newest cutting-edge display technologies featuring improved motion picture response time (MPRT), eco-friendly displays and more at the Bellagio Hotel.

Time to Reboot America

From Thomas L. Friedman:

It actually started well, on Kau Sai Chau, an island off Hong Kong, where I stood on a rocky hilltop overlooking the South China Sea and talked to my wife back in Maryland, static-free, using a friend's Chinese cellphone. A few hours later, I took off from Hong Kong's ultramodern airport after riding out there from downtown on a sleek high-speed train—with wireless connectivity that was so good I was able to surf the Web the whole way on my laptop.

Landing at Kennedy Airport from Hong Kong was, as I've argued before, like going from the Jetsons to the Flintstones. The ugly, low-ceilinged arrival hall was cramped, and using a luggage cart cost $3. (Couldn't we at least supply foreign visitors with a free luggage cart, like other major airports in the world?) As I looked around at this dingy room, it reminded of somewhere I had been before. Then I remembered: It was the luggage hall in the old Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport. It closed in 1998.

The next day I went to Penn Station, where the escalators down to the tracks are so narrow that they seem to have been designed before suitcases were invented. The disgusting track-side platforms apparently have not been cleaned since World War II. I took the Acela, America's sorry excuse for a bullet train, from New York to Washington. Along the way, I tried to use my cellphone to conduct an interview and my conversation was interrupted by three dropped calls within one 15-minute span.

All I could think to myself was: If we're so smart, why are other people living so much better than us? What has become of our infrastructure, which is so crucial to productivity? Back home, I was greeted by the news that General Motors was being bailed out—that's the G.M. that Fortune magazine just noted "lost more than $72 billion in the past four years, and yet you can count on one hand the number of executives who have been reassigned or lost their job."

My fellow Americans, we can't continue in this mode of "Dumb as we wanna be." We've indulged ourselves for too long with tax cuts that we can't afford, bailouts of auto companies that have become giant wealth-destruction machines, energy prices that do not encourage investment in 21st-century renewable power systems or efficient cars, public schools with no national standards to prevent illiterates from graduating and immigration policies that have our colleges educating the world's best scientists and engineers and then, when these foreigners graduate, instead of stapling green cards to their diplomas, we order them to go home and start companies to compete against ours.

To top it off, we've fallen into a trend of diverting and rewarding the best of our collective I.Q. to people doing financial engineering rather than real engineering. These rocket scientists and engineers were designing complex financial instruments to make money out of money—rather than designing cars, phones, computers, teaching tools, Internet programs and medical equipment that could improve the lives and productivity of millions.

For all these reasons, our present crisis is not just a financial meltdown crying out for a cash injection. We are in much deeper trouble. In fact, we as a country have become General Motors—as a result of our national drift. Look in the mirror: G.M. is us.

That's why we don't just need a bailout. We need a reboot. We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover. That is why the next few months are among the most important in U.S. history. Because of the financial crisis, Barack Obama has the bipartisan support to spend $1 trillion in stimulus. But we must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we're borrowing from our kids' future, is spent wisely.

It has to go into training teachers, educating scientists and engineers, paying for research and building the most productivity-enhancing infrastructure—without building white elephants. Generally, I'd like to see fewer government dollars shoveled out and more creative tax incentives to stimulate the private sector to catalyze new industries and new markets. If we allow this money to be spent on pork, it will be the end of us.

America still has the right stuff to thrive. We still have the most creative, diverse, innovative culture and open society—in a world where the ability to imagine and generate new ideas with speed and to implement them through global collaboration is the most important competitive advantage. China may have great airports, but last week it went back to censoring The New York Times and other Western news sites. Censorship restricts your people's imaginations. That's really, really dumb. And that's why for all our missteps, the 21st century is still up for grabs.

John Kennedy led us on a journey to discover the moon. Obama needs to lead us on a journey to rediscover, rebuild and reinvent our own backyard.