Braves Baseball

Been a month or more and look who is in First place again looking very in control of their destiny? Well Kolb is no longer closing. Reitsma is showing why we loved having Smoltz in the pen and Smoltz is showing why he shouldn't have been there to begin with. Though I have to say... Smoltz's arm would likely not have taken two/three full seasons throwing deep into games. He is grinding it pretty hard like he has always done, and like it did before it will get his arm into trouble. He could gut through it to some degree as a Closer as he only had to grit his teeth and take the pain for one inning. But if he has trouble at the end of the year again I can tell you as a former Pitcher (College) that he is not going to be able to gut out dominating starts if his elbow flares up. I love Smoltzie, but I am concerned if he is going to be there at the end. If he is not it most certainly will not be for a lack of heart. There are few players in the game right now that have more love for what they do than John Smoltz. Add that to the symmetry of having Smoltz healthy when Huddy, Thompson and Hampton bit the dust for a while (and Horacio was iffy for a stretch) and it wouldn't surprise me to see them all hit their stride and Smoltz have to take a seat for a while. But thats just fatalistic talk. Smoltz has carried through fully healthy seasons, and as much as he has thrown, and as consistent as his stuff has been I doubt anything is bothering him at this point.

How about these Rookies ? Braves have now started 16 including the late coming Francouer who has simply been the best of the bunch and may well take home Rookie of the year honors on a half season of play. My first post about the Braves down there I mentioned Mondesi or Jordan have a comeback year being an important part of a successful braves title defense. Well its not Jordan or Mondesi but we certainly are getting the production I was thinking of, just from a very unexpected source. If the Braves win out and clinch number 14 and Cox dosn't get manager of the year its going to be a joke. With all the injuries and failed expectations Cox has simply picked up all the Lemons the season has thrown at him and opened a fricken Lemonade Stand. Now that being said I do kind of wish it one of those Veterens had managed to return to previous form as if we get to the Playoffs it could become problematic having such a Young team. They have plenty of talent and to spare. But young teams are prone to jitters and these guys are going to hit the post season and find that postseason Atlanta is a VERY different atmosphere than regular season. The 14 consecutive titles with only one World Series win makes for a very odd postseason feeling for this team and Veterans are simply better equipped to shrug it off and get on with playing the game. On the other hand the Rookies have put a spark back in this team that really hasn't been seen since the early 90's at the beginning of this ungodly run. So perhaps it is going to be a good thing. They certainly have the swager right now. But remember that Rookies tend to ride pretty high peaks and valleys, and they can crash and burn in a hurry.

Specifically regarding Francouer. The boy is a fantastic talent. But his extreme lack of patience at the plate will cost him by the end of the year. 120 at bats with no walks? He already has 20 some odd K's and that does not project well over an entire seasons worth of stats. Before long Pitchers are just not going to give him much in the zone to work with until he proves he can lay off. If he can't he is going to hit a serious cold streak before long unless he is a better bad ball hitter than Yogi Bera or Vlad Guerrero Combined.

Pitching. Rookies have come up big here too but here we HAVE to have at least three of the 4 we started with as our main guys going into the Playoffs. I am not saying we can't win with the youngsters. Just that there is simply no telling what you are going to get out of a young pitcher under that much pressure. And the results are rarely mediocre. Last time the braves really went to the Post season with a green pitcher in a key position was 91 with Steve Avery and he started from day one in the Rotation that year. For the three of the four. Smoltz and Huddy need to lead the way and toss a Coin between Hampton and Thompson. Personally I'd like Hampton to be sharp with his penchant for ground balls and ungodly competitive streak but I don't really give a flip as long as one of them is on their game. Then we can round out that forth slot if need be. Course give us all four and this lineup producing what it is capable of and I say we take the Series.

Thoughts on the Continuing power of Computers to change the world.

Computers are changing the world. But they have yet to really change it the way they are going to. The first wave of real change is the whole out sourcing fiasco. Companies are waking up to the fact that physical location is no longer important in a computer connected world. Take your average cube farm. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of workers sitting there peck peck pecking away occasionally getting up to go to the printer/water cooler/restroom. They spend their entire day sitting at their desk answering a phone and pecking away at a computer. Now here is the thing. Once upon a time this concentration of workers in a single area was a very important feature of the ability to get work done. Physically moving the resutls of one worker down the line to the next person in the chain was a physcial action and if they were located far apart then this would create a bottle neck for the work being done. Thus the office complex with dedicated floors and a processing chain that moves the companies work through the various floors. While the flow of information is still relevant... the need for physical proximity is now largely defunct. It is a legacy we cling to because it is the way it has "ALWAYS" been done. No more. Communications at the speed of light have changed what constitutes close proximity.

Some companies have begun to realize some of thus. For example they now understand they can move enitre cube farms all over the globe and still keep them interconnected in the same ways. Thus you can keep a management structure in Kentucky and a call center pool in Bangalore and keep them connected via a computer network. However, they are largely retaining the idea that you have to actually keep the workers concentrated in a single area. So they moved their prospective labor pool to bangalore along with that call center. What they have not taken to heart is that you can go one step farther in this regard. If you take your average cubical warrior and look at what they do you find something amazing. They could essentially be sitting anywhere they had a connection to the network, access to the needed software and still do their job. Thus not only can you distribute your departments but you can also truly distribute your labor pool. If you think about it... that blows the doors wide open on your potential labor pool from which to hire.

How so? If you adhere to the idea that you must physically concentrate your workers into a location (office) you have just limited your potential labor pool. IE there is a limitation to how far people can physically travel on a daily basis to work for you. Now we have learned that physical location is meaningless for a business that runs on computers so why not open yourself to the wider market of labor that is connected ? Some numbers. The worlds largest labor markets would be the worlds cities with the highest populations.

Now if you look at the Metro area populations and assume that this covers roughly the largest area from which you could concievably hire an employee from in a physical sense. In otherwords if you are located in that area and someone lives outside of that area the odds are they cannot commute to you place of business if you require a physical presence. Ok reffer to the chart and you find that Tokyo is the top place with around 37 million people of which a given subset will be potential employees with the skills you need.

Now lets look at a potential market of labor limited not by physcial space but by connectivity. Let us say that instead of needing a worker with X skills in Y location you need a worker with X skills with Y connectivity. We will say that Broadband solves Y connectivity. So now your potential labor pool are those that have the skills and a broadband connection. Check here for the numbers I will use to illustrate. In the US internet penetration is about 75%. Population is around 300 million. Broadband penetration is about 45%. So your potential labor market in the US is about 100 million. that is almost 3 times the potential market of having a business in the worlds largest metropolitan area. It also selects for a more tech oriented subset of the population so it is not unreasonable to expect that of that 100 million you will find a higher percentage of workers with the needed skills than you will in the metro area of tokyo. Remember those numbers are for raw population. That 100 million includes those tech savy enough to have a broad band connection. The 37 million in Tokyo just live there.

So in effect you can remove a great deal of the impetus for people to move to cities (JOBS) and the incipient drive up in realestate values that occurs in Metropolitan areas near desireable employment which in turn drives the higher metro sallaries (among other cost of living issues that all rise in areas with a high demand and low supply). You can redistribute work across the nation/world leading to more equitable access to work and probably re-stengthen Rural communities. Cost of living could decline dramatically, cost of labor (less dedicated infrastructure) could decline dramatically as well. Thus you can pay your employees the same thing without it costing you as much.. and sooner or later lower cost of living will lower the cost of sallaries as well.

Now the money issue is important. One of the reasons companies explored the option of going to Bangalore or South East Asia for manufacturing is because of the way international currency exchange works. IE what it takes for someone to live in South East Asia and India is a pittance in the international exhange market which is what leads to those asinine media headlines about paying an Indian call center worker a dollar a day/hour or some such. While it is true that the amount of money that person recieves would not buy much of anything if they came to America and exchanged their rupies for dollars it does not mean that they make less in their economy than a similar worker in the US. As a matter of fact a worker in an Indian Call center makes MORE money relative to their economy than a Call center worker in the United States. There those jobs are highly sought after where here theay are a bottom barrel option for fresh college graduates and out of work IT proffesionals.

Sooner or later that is going to have to change. The hallmark of currency systems has been standarziation over time to single currencies. IE in the US you can go look at the history whereby the states first used various international currencies, then developed their own local currencies and finally we established a fedearl system of currency for all states. Something similar is in process in the EU with the euro and over time we will see a move to standardize the international currency market. I think if the UN were an actual world government instead of a symbolic debating club we would have long since become embroiled in the debate of instablishing a universal international currency. Of course mose 1st world nations are scared shitless of such a concept and seeing as they have the power this is something they will not be easily swayed to do. The developed world has a very enviable position of advantage in the world economy curtesy of the strong value of their currencies.

So why is this issue of currency relevant to computers changing the world ? Well if my labor pool are those with Skills X and Bandwidth Y there is no dependent location limitation implied. IE there is no reason to limit yourself to the US broadband population with the skills you need. Given a potential employee wiith the skills you need and an insane exchange rate in your favor you can offer that people a pittance compared to what you would have to offer a US resident. And that causes problems. You see to protect somewhat from this there is very strong physical protections on who companies can hire. IE it is illegal to hire no visa mexican immigrants at cut rates and is all in all very easy to catch companies that do it if you have a mind to. Now imagine trying to enforce US (or any other nation for that matter) right to work visa laws if the workers are not physically located at the work site to be checked up on. It could probably be done but it would not be easy. And I would argue is largely pointless.

Without a solid consistent international currency we will remain in this mind set of having to PROTECT labor markets. The whole reason you have to protect them now has to do with currency exchange. The first force that looks like it might be a strong enough driver to break down the resistence to an internationall currency is going to be computers. The outsourcing has already begun, and the physical disbanding of office has as well (one new US airline does its reservation via people working at home). It is only a matter of time before the issues of who companies can and can't hire brings this issue to a head. The power of an international currecny should in tie serve to make it less and less important where you live in the world which will in turn dcrease the insane demands for the population to shift to the areas of strongest economy. In essence the combination of distributing work according to connectivity instead of physical location and establishing an international currency (thus NO more exhange at all) will more evenly distribute the world economy. In that case the places that will have immigration issues will be resort paradises as people will flock to desireable locations to ENJOY living in rather than desireable locations for access to good jobs. Access to a job will be a computer and good connection away which can be had anywhere. Access to a beach/mountain/river/lake etc are always going to be limited by physical location.

China Looking to Build New Cities

Well China is looking into building some new cities. Considering its Massive population and rapidly industrializing nature it is probably no surprise they are looking for a way to learn from the mistakes of heavily congested centers that grew up out of other industrialized processes. This brings up an interesting proposition. Namely the ability to design from the ground up a city to handle the needs of a 1st class modern urban center. '

So what would you do if you designed a city from the ground up? I know the number one thing on my list to solve. TRAFFIC. The city would be designed from the ground up to seperate different classes of traffic to enable all means of traffic equal access to all points (at least as much as is feasible). How might this be accomplished ?

Well the same way major highway interchanges have been managed. You have you use more than one plane to move traffic in. My idea would be essentially to build the city on top of its traffic circulation system. Down town buildings would have a common floor for pedestrian right of way for an elevated tube system for walking among the buildings. Outside of major commercial areas there would be a linked system of pedestrian right of way (greenways). These would at no point impinge on vehicle traffic nor would vehicle traffic be impinged by it. You would keep them out of plane.

To make that easier I would design the primary means of personal transport right of way to be for light vehicles. Think on a scale where something on the order of a Mini Cooper would be SUVish. Strict hp to weight limitations and design requirements determined by the ability of safety technology to prevent death in the worst case scenarios in the closed right of way. A lot of the problem of designing a safety system for current roadways is because there is a wide range of possibilities. IE you might encounter vehicles several times your size/mass at horriffic combined velocities. The power of a mass in motion increases acording to an exponential function rather than linear. Thus past a certain point it becomes essentially impossible to make a survivable safety system. Conversely there is a range of operation where if you control a few elements it makes it relatively difficult to die in a wreck even using reletively simple safey equipment..

To do this you need to keep vehicles in the same relative class. IE mass ranges need to be close and relative speeds need to be kept close. The limitations for the light class would be determined by the ability to survive all possible crash scenarios. IE head on against a wall, head on against another vehicle traveling at max allowed speed (a max speed determined by power to weight allowance), and intersecting vehicles (T-Bone wreck). Also roll scenarios etc. The light class would by no means be grounds for large styling changes. Also you would utilize out of plane traffic systems to keep differnt directions of travel from intersecting. IE cloverleafs and other continuous motion interchange systems. Light vehicles would make for far less structural requirements making it cheaper to create such interchanges. Additionaly limit this class to non polluting systems of power. Electrical/hydrogen etc...

Two, make your primary arteries for heavy traffic run underground. For two reasons. ONE less structural issues with a tunnel. Not saying it is easier but this would also limit eye sore factor and also enable you to channle exhaust for disposal rather than have it dispersed throughout the city. Again keep any intersecting traffic to an absolute minimum. This reduces the need for speed limits well below what the vehicle can handle. Also keep regual personal traffic seperated from larger more massive freight traffic. Again keeping vehicles withen a safe range of mass and always heading in the same relative direction at similar relative speeds. This eliminates an awful lot of the danger of traffic acidents. While it won't eliminate them it will reduce the number of serious acidents.

Lastly design a city from the ground up with a comprehensive public transportation system. One which has access to most destinations on a consistent predictable schedule in all its elements.

Done right then light vehicles and public transport would be the primary means of people moving for people that live in the city. Daily commutes in current car technology would be mostly for those with 20+ mile commutes (Golf cart that can go 45 miles and hour can cover 20 miles in under 30 minutes if there is no congestion ) and those who live in areas with low enough congestion that it just isn't a problem. Freight lines would be designed to reach commerical districts or perhaps distribution points that used lighter vehicles for last mile pallet delivery (smaller businesses).

Solving the traffic problem would be a major step to increasing the effiecincy of urban centers. Also making for more friendly pedestrian connection would make it easier for people to meet. IE they can meet in golf cart settings and in the massive pedestrian right of way infrastructure allowing easy access to public transportation and nearby points of intrest. Highways could be updated along a similar principle with a more complex run that included multiple right of ways which did not interfere with one another. Heavy traffic would likely remain at ground level (easiest place to support the weight on long runs. You then move the lighter traffic over/under it as it is easiest... probably over it since then you don't have to worry about the heavy support of the the freight traffic. Only the support of lighter vehicle traffic. I would suggest even including a minimal pedestrian right of way for hiking/biking.