Apple vs Exxon

I have been reading a book authored by Steve Coll entitled Private Empire, ExxonMobil and American Power. It details a lot of that corporations' commercial, political, environmental and humanitarian history over the past thirty years.

The book raised several questions in my mind: Can any entity of that size, be and stay “clean?” Can dealing with governments, politicians, suppliers, sub-contractors and human populations be any different for Apple than it is for Exxon Mobil? How can the macro challenges of making a profit for those two companies really be different from each other?

America loves its biggest corporation - Apple^*, and hates its second biggest – Exxon Mobil^*. Around the world we have tigers in our tanks and iPhones in our pockets. Is it simply the “cool” factor that differentiates the two? Is one really “cleaner” than the other?

I thought I would do a simple comparison: What is the carbon footprint of an iPhone vs the carbon footprint of one gallon of gasoline?

Here is a link to Apple's site about their emissions: http://www.apple.com/environment/ Here they tout the decrease in their carbon footprint as a percentage of total revenue. (Might this decrease be more driven by their revenue increases than the carbon emission decreases?)

Here is a link to Exxon Mobil's Corporate Citizen Report: http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Files/news_pub_ccr2011.pdf  Here they tout the decreases in their emissions based on their comparison year 2000 baselines.

Both web links read like corporate speak to me so I went looking for other data. I came across the Carbon Disclosure Project https://www.cdproject.net/en-US/Pages/HomePage.aspx. (Here is a Wkipedia link about the project http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_Disclosure_Project.) I signed up and went diving for data.

Yearly data is listed there for Exxon Mobil but Apple stopped participating in the project in 2010. Now, I am sure Apple has a litany of good corporate bureaucratic reasons not to participate but it makes me wonder, what they are hiding?

I did find a Pacific Gas and Electric statement http://www.pge.com/about/environment/calculator/assumptions.shtml based on an USEPA publication that “Burning 1 gallon of gasoline produces 19.4 lbs CO₂.”

Apple http://images.apple.com/environment/reports/docs/iPhone5_product_environmental_report_sept2012.pdf  lists iPhone 5 as have "Total greenhouse gas emissions: 75 kg (165.347 lbs) CO2e" over its life cycle. I did not see a definition of  "life cycle."

How do we compare apples to gas cans?

George W Parker

Disclaimer time. I do not own stock in either company. (I wish I did.) I do not receive any remuneration in any form from either company. (Again, I wish I did.) I do buy Exxon Mobil gasoline. I do own an old iPhone my daughter uses as an iTouch. I need to also state that I am inherently skeptical of any information offered by any company for public review.

War Stories

Sometimes you have an idea and you work on it and work on it and it just doesn't go where you planned. The following is one of those. I'm posting it because of the time I invested in it.

There are many kinds of war stories:

The philosophical explanations like The Art of War by Sun Tzu and On War by Carl von Clausewitz.

The histories such as Livy's The War with Hannibal or Shelby Foote's The Civil War: A Narrative which are literature.

Biographies of favorite generals like Caesar Napoleon, Patton and Sherman fill library shelves.

“I was there and this is what happened” histories written by those favorite generals trying to explain away there miscalculations.

Fascinating reads like Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant and With the Old Breed: Peleliu and Okinawa by Eugene Sledge. These are few and far between.

The one thing that these types have in common is a rational effort to describe the facts and acts of war. But I don't believe anyone would argue that war is rational.

Apparently it takes the guise of fiction to present its irrationality. The Red Badge of Courage by Steven Crane, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, and The Thin Red Line by James Jones for example.

Prowling the imagination, divorcing one's self from the rational portrayal of the facts so you can better present the irrational behavior of men (and now women) under terrible stress appears to better present the actualities of facts. 

General W.T. Sherman is quoted as saying, “I tell you, war is hell!” It needs to be written that way.

Difficult Novels

Have you read a difficult book lately?

There are lots of top ten “Hard to Read Novels' lists out there, some of which are filled with heavy content and others which are filled with heavy volumes. Following is a link to goodreads Most Difficult Novels as voted by its membership. http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/827.Most_Difficult_Novels

Most of my successful difficult reads came when I was younger and before family and career took over my priorities. Once that happened I had to become more judicious with my time. (Time is money after all.) I've had to weigh the perceived value of the content against the actual value of my time, determine its ROI. For me, the hard to read novels lose out here.

As an example I'll pick on Finnegan's Wake. I would like to read it. I have tried to read it. Can there be anything in its content worth my time and effort to extract it? For me that answer was “no” - two different times. Rightly or wrongly, I've decided the value in reading the novel is in the deed.

I think accessibility is important for a writer. As a writer, if you want to be read, you have to be readable. I also think that James Joyce would say that he is accessible to his readers.

George W Parker

Kipling and Frogs

There was an episode of PBS Nature on the other night entitled The Thin Green Line. It was about frogs and the unique position they hold in nature because they literally have a foot both in the water and on the ground. The show described the habitat encroachment, herbicide/pesticide challenges and natural attacks (a fungus called Chytrid ) that are part of their everyday battle. The images of a line of frogs fighting for their existence conjured by the title are very powerful.

Coincidentally I was reading James Jones' The Thin Red Line. This story is about a WWII US Army company on Guadalcanal. For some reason this title's imagery for me has always been a line of dying, bleeding men. Not nearly as heroic a fight as I see with the frogs.

That is what I love about literature, the way you can layer meaning on top of meaning. With a little background history on the title I now suddenly see the frogs as doomed players in a Greek tragedy.

Now, I don't know if the frog documentary writers, directors, producers were referencing Jones' novel or if they were aiming back to where Jones got his title line, Kipling's Tommy.

Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep 

Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;  

An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit  

Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.  

Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?" 

But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,  

The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,  

O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll. 

Adding the Kipling perspective brings human disrespect and unconcern to the plight of the frogs and our shared environment.

You know, I hope the documentary writers, directors, producers have never heard of Jones or Kipling. I hope they just thought it was a cute title. I prefer to think of the frogs as heroic winners in their battles.

George W. Parker

Updike

Browsing the library shelves the other day I stopped at the John Updike novels. By my count he wrote 27 novels. I've never read any of them.

(I think that when writers reach a certain number of novels they begin to repeat themselves. Two obvious examples of why this is a foolish thought are Mark Twain and Jack London.)

So I thought maybe it was time to take a look at Updike. Two of his Rabbit novels won Pulitzers. I pulled Rabbit at Rest from the shelf and read the inside front flap. It didn't instill confidence in me. It was like reading Cliff Notes.

(When I read the inside cover of The Maltese Falcon it doesn't talk about the moral void Sam Spade lives in. It talks about a group of ne're-do-wells and a priceless statue from the Knights of Rhodes. I like an exciting story. I think I can find the human condition within by myself.)

I took a look inside. There were things like, “He looked over and watched her tuck back a stubborn fluttering wisp of half-gray hair from her sun-toughened little brown nut of a face.” I can't handle that many adjectives. It's like they're being shot out of a machine gun.

I put Rabbit back to rest. I'll try him again someday. Things change.

George W. Parker

Penn State - A Choice of Words

Since the business at Penn State is back in the news I thought I would re-post this from a previous blog:


I thought it would be appropriate to pile on the Penn State mess for my first blog post. But I wasn't sure that "mess" really conveys all that is involved with this.


So I looked up mess ... "an unpleasant or difficult situation." That seems to be an understatement for the affair. 


Affair... I won't even list a definition for that. That just so doesn't fit all the trouble up there.


Trouble... "to disturb the mental calm and contentment of; worry; distress; agitate"... Well that sits a little better considering all the worry and distress and everyone's agitation over the problem.


Problem... "any question or matter involving doubt, uncertainty, or difficulty"... There is certainly a lot of doubt with Penn State's imbroglio.

Imbroglio... "an intricate and perplexing state of affairs; a complicated or difficult situation" ... Again with the "difficult" and "situation" words.

Situation... "the state of affairs; combination of circumstances"... Even when you add "difficult" that doesn't really seem to cover this business.

Business... I went to the twelfth definition of "business" to get this... "of, noting, or pertaining to business, its organization, or its procedures". 

I think "business" is the correct label here. Penn State had a systemic failure within its organization to identify, correct and prevent any such "situation" as this. Obviously its procedures were geared to protecting itself, its employees and its reputation from anything and everything. Even the firings this past week were more about protecting the brand than cleaning up this business.



Thanks to Dictionary.com for the definitions.
George

Content Providers - You

I'm willing to bet you are member of a no cost content distribution network. I participate in several. They have names like Facebook, Goggle+, YouTube, Pinterest and Twitter. They make (or try to make) their money selling ad views to their content providers, aka, you. We like their services (generally) and we like their pricing (free.) They like our free content and our page views.

I've been using Twitter to initiate updates across my accounts because they seemed to be capable of playing well with others. Up until Friday that is when they and Linked In broke up.

The big boys don't want to play well together. They keep trying to herd us into exclusivity contracts with them so they can "manage" (control) our page views. Personally I don't like being herded. It's becoming like the early home computer wars, everyone wants you locked in with them

At some point someone is going to enter the field and offer a central content distribution system that integrates with everything and everyone. You can think of them as an ubiquitous, all pervasive content outlet, kind of a Visa or MasterCard for content. The other branded credit cards (content networks) will still be out there but we'll all rely on our Visa and MasterCard.

This Twitter – Linked In spat is not anything I won't get over. It's not my first breakup and probably not my last, but it is annoying. Now I have to re-evaluate my personal content distribution work flow. 

Don't forget you and your content are the value of these networks.

George W. Parker