Stanton Champion

In the world of chocolate snobbery, few if any chocolates surpass the flavor of Amedei Chuao.  Seventypercent.com rates it as the #1 chocolate in the world, and most anyone who’s tried it would agree.  Like all of the world’s best chocolates, this one is grown in Venezuela.  Specifically, it’s grown in the little village of Chuao which has been described as the perfect climate to grow the perfect chocolate.  Amedei has exclusive rights to all chocolate grown in Chuao.

Sadly, Amedei Chuao is almost impossible to find.  There’s not a lot of it made in the world, and it’s pretty expensive compared to most other quality dark chocolates ($12-$15 for a bar).  I had never tried it myself…until recently.  I visited a tiny chocolatier in Newburyport, and after eating a couple of their truffles, I nearly walked out before I noticed the Amedei logo on a shelf.  Upon closer inspection, I saw little individually wrapped Chuao pieces lined up in a box like tiny dominos.

Stunned at the magnitude of my find, I gingerly took a wrapped piece of the blessed chocolate and carried it over to the cashier like holy communion.  After paying ($0.90 for something the size of a single Hershey square), I took it outside, carefully unwrapped it, and took a bite.

It started very plainly.  The chocolate had a nice texture, but the flavor didn’t appear until the third or fourth chew.  Then suddenly fruit flavors burst from the chocolate with tastes of molasses and plum.  The flavors were perfectly balanced, and there were no weird bitter flavors like those found in other quality dark chocolates.

Amedei Chuao is the best chocolate I have ever tried.  Nothing compares.  Nothing.  Sadly, I am now permanently spoiled.

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Flying has rapidly become a commoditized game.  Lately, every airline has decided that it’s a race to the bottom with ticket fares, and there is no way to make ordinary travelers pay more for anything.  When they do identify perks, they’re always for things like snacks, baggage, and comfort.  The problem is, most people are willing to forgo those things, or they believe so strongly that they’re entitled that airlines can’t charge for them for very long.

So I have a new idea, and one that I think I would pay extra to have.  Airlines have become incredibly inefficient with delayed flights, cancellations, and poor customer service.  I would pay extra to have none of that be a problem.  Here’s my thinking:

• I want a ticket that guarantees that I will arrive at my destination, no matter what.
• If I don’t arrive on the same day, I start getting a percentage of my ticket refunded.  After 36 hours, my ticket is 100% refunded.
• If the airline can’t reasonably get me to my destination on my preferred day of travel, then my ticket will entitle me to a free hotel room, food, and a seat on the next possible flight to my destination.  This would be true for any kind of delay or cancellation, be it weather, mechanical, etc.

That’s it.  I’ll pay extra for absolute peace of mind that when I enter the airport I will get where I’m going.  And if I can’t get where I want to go, I will be accommodated.  I figure my willingness to pay for this would be around $15-20 a ticket, give or take a little.

Now, the airlines will of course market this as some kind of add-on.  “Would you like to purchase Get There insurance for $20?”  This, I think, is the wrong way.  The right way is to create a category of ticket and give it some name like “Peace of Mind.”  Make the tickets only available through the airline website and not through the ticket aggregating sites.  Maybe add an extra perk, like a free snack.

I think this would sell nicely.

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After saying such bad things about the iPhone 3G, I thought I would point out that the new 2.0 firmware is nice.

“Hello!” from the new iPhone Wordpress application.

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The iPhone 3G is very nice, but there are also some disappointments.  Perhaps the biggest for me is that it won’t charge using the iPod interface in my Audi A3.  Actually, it won’t charge in a lot of things (lots of cars and quite a few docks) because Apple decided to change the charging standard at the last minute.

It turns out that Apple dropped the Firewire charging circuit on the 3G model in favor of using a dedicated USB circuit.  Any device that uses the Firewire pins to recharge an iPhone/iPod will not charge the iPhone 3G.  Firewire charges with 12V while USB charges with only 5V.  Most cars have 12V internal systems, so their iPod chargers use 12V because it’s incredibly convenient.

I haven’t bought my own iPhone 3G yet, but it now seems like I’ll have to wait until an adapter appears.  Fixing this shouldn’t be too hard, and it sounds like the kind of thing Belkin will create and charge $30 to buy.  Still very annoying.

Details here.

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It’s been all over the news, but I wanted to write my own brief note about the death of Michael DeBakey.  The man practically created heart surgery, helped make the Texas Medical Center into the largest medical complex in the world, and saved numerous lives.  The Houston Chronicle has an outstanding obituary that captures the life history of a very incredible surgeon.  Rest in peace Dr. DeBakey.  We live in a much better world because of your efforts.

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Small cars are flying off of car lots as Americans are running towards fuel saving vehicles.  Here in Massachusetts, Toyota dealers can’t keep Corollas on their lots for more than a few days.  Gasoline consumption has dropped nationwide, even in Texas!  So will this save us from higher gas prices?  Maybe, but higher mileage is both a blessing and a curse for energy policy.

Let’s do a simple example:

Let’s say you drive a small SUV.  If you drive 10,000 miles a year and get an average of 20 mpg, then you will consume 500 gallons of gas a year.  At $4.50 per gallon, you can expect to pay $2,250 a year for gas.

Now let’s say you decide to buy a more efficient sedan, so you find a vehicle that averages 25 mpg.  Now you’re only using 400 gallons of gas a year, and at $4.50 per gallon you can expect to pay $1,800 a year for gas.  That’s a savings of 100 gallons and $450 per year.

The Blessing

For drivers today, increasing mileage offers a tremendous blessing.  A simple move of 5 mpg, from 20 to 25 mpg, saves 100 gallons of gasoline per year.  The change is even larger if they’re moving from 15 to 20 mpg: then they save 167 gallons a year!  Simply trading in a big SUV for a small SUV can mean big fuel savings and a dramatic lowering in overall gasoline consumption.  There are so many low mileage cars on the road today, and so many attractive higher mileage car options, that as people continue to shift to smaller cars we can expect big drops in national gasoline consumption in the coming years.

The Curse

If you’re paying attention to the math, the curse should be obvious.  Improving gas mileage suffers from the law of diminishing returns.  A 10,000 mile per year driver saves 100 gallons of gas moving from 20 to 25 mpg, but the next 5 mpg has a lower return.  Moving from 25 to 30 mpg only saves 67 gallons of gas.  In fact, to save another 100 gallons of gas, the driver would have to find a car that averaged 33.3 mpg.  Suddenly, saving fuel becomes a lot harder.

Moving from an SUV to a sedan is one thing, but moving from a sedan to a compact is a lot harder.  And after you move to a compact, then where do you go?  Oil is a finite resource, and prices only increase in the long run.  How is our long run transportation going to work?

Here’s some final food for thought.  Let’s say you manage 50 mpg, which means if you drive 10,000 miles you use 200 gallons of gas a year.  How do you save that next 100 gallons?  You need a car that gets 100 mpg.  We have a hard enough time moving people from 15 to 20.  What makes us think we can move from 50 to 100?

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For anyone who knows Shannon Hughes, she appeared in the most recent episode of NOVA along with her research group at Princeton.  Her group’s research has been in using digital image analysis techniques to detect art forgeries (really interesting stuff, actually!), and NOVA highlighted their work in helping the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam differentiate between real and fake paintings.

Shannon is featured as unnamed female grad-student in Ingrid Daubechies’ group on the Princeton team (starting about 3/4 of the way through the video).  For those of you familiar with Shannon’s “unique” laugh, you can hear it near the very end of the video if you listen carefully.

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Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch is saying exactly what I’ve been saying for a while now: voicemail is dead.  His reasoning is pretty straightforward, but it basically boils down to email is far superior and voicemail is simply irritating.  It’s days as a productivity tool have long passed.

I would actually go further.  Why have phones on your desk at work at all?  If the people in your company carry cellphones, especially a new iPhone, they have a tool that can do IM, email, web browsing, and SMS.  If having a real PBX phone system is important to your company so that everyone’s phone number looks the same, just forward those numbers along to everyone’s cell phones.  The amount of money people spend on buying expensive desk phones, especially for people who don’t spend their day using the telephone, is staggering and tremendously wasteful.

Once you know that everyone has a cellphone, voicemail becomes pointless.  If I don’t pick up?  Text me.  Use the same number.

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