A new site!

There are some changes afoot in the online world of Kurt!

I've created a new site which will be the focus of the majority of my web publishing. Don't worry though, it's got an address that I'm sure all of you will be able to remember: kurtmuehmel.com.

Why a new site? I found that the purposes of this site and eandus.com were starting to get a bit mixed. Eandus was supposed to focus only on energy issues, which I now find too limited. On the other hand, this site was supposed to collect other interesting thoughts as well as provide more personal updates to family and close friends.

The new organisation will be as follows:

• kurtmuehmel.com: Environment, energy, economics, politics, etc
• kmuehmel.blogspot.com: Personal updates, funny things

Furthermore, to allow me to comfortably post more personal information, this site will no longer be publicly accessible. If you'd like to continue to have access to this site, just send me an email. If you don't have my email address but you think I have interesting thoughts on various subjects, it's best to direct your attention to kurtmuehmel.com. 

I plan to make the change around the New Year. Let me know if you have any questions!

Greetings from Berlin!

Currywurst at Checkpoint Charlie, 2010

Apartment sought, apartment found

Following about six weeks of searching and four visits, we've found a new apartment! It's the first time that we've gone through this process and from what everyone tells us, we got off easy. That said, the quantity of documentation required to rent an apartment in France is worthy of its own post (to be written shortly).

The new apartment is about 50% bigger than our current place, is in a better situated neighborhood and, most importantly, has a balcony along its entire length. The entire process went extremely quickly, with Esther calling in response to an ad on Thursday morning, her visiting Thursday afternoon, me visiting Thursday evening, the owner choosing our dossier on Friday afternoon, and us signing for it on Monday evening.

It's entirely empty (except some cabinets in the kitchen and the bathroom) so we're very quickly going to be in full furnishing mode, doing our best to avoid IKEA and to bring some character into the house. Given that it's a typical 1980's construction, "charming" doesn't come to mind when viewing the building from the outside, but it's well laid out inside and has wonderful views on the Haussmannian buildings across the wide, tree-lined boulevard. We will have plenty of space inside to organize it intelligently, it's just going to take some time to fill it all in.

Naturally, pictures will follow as soon as I have the chance to take some!

Hiking in the Vosges

A little behind on this one, but better late than never. In mid-May, Esther and I took a long weekend to go hiking in the Vosges Mountains in eastern France, near the border with Germany. It's a beautiful part of the world, though not always known for its beautiful weather, an aspect that we got to experience first hand. Despite getting lost in the fog on one of the days, it was a great few days hiking around and experiencing the local culture (an enjoyable mix of French and German).

Here is a brief collection of photos:

Hiking in the Vosges

How bad is BP's disaster in the Gulf?

Having a hard time imagining the scale of BP's disaster in the Gulf? Nothing like a few images to give you a better sense.

Here's the spill superimposed over Paris (and reaching from Le Mans to Belgium):

And here's the spill over Rochester, MI, reaching from Illinois to Toronto:

Beyond words, really. Have a try for yourself at http://www.ifitwasmyhome.com/.

Le Mans

I had the opportunity to take in the spectacle that is the 24 Hours of Le Mans again this year. Unlike last year, I was able to stay throughout the entire weekend.

The noise, the scale, the drunken Europeans, it was everything that it could possibly be. As usual, the pictures tell the story the best. Of the nearly 600 photos that I took, the most illustrative 115 are in the album below.

Here are a few samples:

Le Mans 2010

Economists: Stay away from my car!

I'm reading an article by an economist about how consumers incorporate fuel economy into their vehicle purchasing decisions. I was first skeptical when I read this:

"a. Model

Automobiles are purchased for the travel services they provide."

Really, is that all? What about style, image, fun?

Then I read this:

"Performance is measured by turning circle..."

That was it. Her one measure for "performance" was turning circle. Wow. It's no wonder that real-world buying decisions haven't been exactly what (most) economists have predicted.

A New Job! (February 2010 Edition)

I'm very hopeful that this is the last time that I'll be posting that title for a long time. After about 8 months, my time with UNESCO has come to an end and I'll be starting a new position tomorrow as an environmental consultant at BIO Intelligence Service. Very briefly, BIO helps public and private sector clients make  well-informed decisions about new products, services and policies by analyzing the relevant, environmental factors. As a consultant with them, I'll be doing research, writing reports, and generally geeking out on all things environment. Needless to say, I'm excited.

In all, my time with UNESCO was a very positive experience, though it certainly had its ups and downs. The United Nations System certainly needs competent, motivated (and young) people to fill its ranks, but there are a lot of barriers which prevent it from being an attractive option. That would be too much to get into now, but suffice it to say that I take my current professional transition as a positive career step.

Time to choose my socks for the big first day tomorrow...

Disturbing

For over a month, this poster has been plastered all over the Paris metro:

Needless to say, it was pretty unsettling to see that every morning, especially when the review blurb on the right-hand poster reads "We love to hate Esther." Hey, that's my wife you're talking about!

Thankfully, they're now all but gone, only a few stragglers remain, waiting to be covered by a poster for Alvin & the Chipmunks 2.

Catching Up

The bad news is that it's been a few months since I last posted anything here. The good news is that ti's been a pretty busy period meaning that I've taken plenty of photos. Let's do this chronologically:


Thanksgiving in Michigan

Thanksgiving in Michigan 2009

Esther and I went back to Michigan for Thanksgiving and enjoyed not only ten (more or less) relaxing days but also several gustatory delights including Thanksgiving dinner (of course) as well as Lazybones Smokehouse BBQ. Hands-down, the best BBQ I've ever had. It's enough to turn a vegetarian.

Christmas in Paris

Chistmas Breakfast 2009

Normandy - December 2009

It was a quiet Christmas in Paris this year. Esther and I enjoyed a delicious brunch at our house (first album) before heading out to Normandy for a few nights. In the larger town (Deauville) near the village (Villerville), there was something of an inexplicable parade. It had to do with the 150th anniversary of Deauville, but I have no idea why there was a guy riding a giant carousel horse. It made for interesting pictures though.

Day Trip to Strasbourg

Travels - Strasbourg 2009

While I had the week between Christmas and New Year's off from work, Esther did not so I had to keep myself busy. One way of doing so was to enjoy two of my favorite things about France, the high-speed trains and the diverse regional cultures. I booked a round trip ticket to Strasbourg (on the border with Germany) leaving early in the morning and returning late in the evening. The two-hour train ride was blissfully uneventful and much quicker than the four-hour drive (and with my young person's reduction card, a wash in terms of cost). I really enjoyed the city and the photos are all fully captioned, telling the whole story.

Into 2010
The new year has started without much change though it has been the occassion to think about my mid-term plans. As those develop, certain aspects will certainly be shared here. I'll do my best to keep this updated more often and wish everyone a very Happy New Year.

Old

I got old, and I noticed the moment when it happened. It's when, all of a sudden, there is a practice which is common among the youth of the day, that you find completely incomprehensible.

Here's what happened:

Reading a NY Times article a few weeks ago about teens and Twitter (by the way, do you all know that I tweet?), they mentioned the case of Kristen Nagy, 18, to illustrate the case of a teen who sends a lot of text messages, but doesn't use Twitter. How much does she text? Let me tell you. She sends 500 text messages per day!

What???

500 texts per day? Over the 16 waking-hours of a day, that's a little more than one text every two minutes. For 16-hours straight! If it takes you 15 seconds to send one text, that's more than two hours spent sending 15-second text messages, not including the time it takes to read the messages you receive.

Trying to understand this, I compared this to my experience. Esther and I have unlimited texting included in our plans to go along with our text-friendly phones. Sometimes, when we get really crazy, we might send 15 texts per day. But 500? That's simply incomprehensible. I can't even imagine why someone would ever want to do that. It's stupid. It doesn't make sense. It makes me a little mad. I just don't understand.

And that's it, now I'm old. Kids are doing something and I, despite all my blogs, Twitter feeds, RSS subscriptions and social networks, simply can't wrap my head around it. Does not compute.

I think it's only going to get worse from here.

Ravenchase, in the NYT!

The company that I used to work for, Ravenchase Adventures, just had an article published about them in the New York Times. It focuses on the trouble that such a company would have in this economic climate, but has an overall positive tone. I have a certain, extra measure of pride in this because, before I left the company, I was put in touch with the reporter who I in turn put in touch with the company president. It's like I'm almost famous!

My shallow pride aside, it's a really great company and I hope that this brings them some more well-deserved attention!

Promoting Corporate Excellence

Via kottke, I came across a stack of slides from Netflix on developing a corporate culture, embedded below.

Some highlights:

• Slides 24-29 on building a strong team. 
• Slide 33, on the difference between efforts and results.
• Slides 41-55 on the relationship between employee freedom, business complexity and the percentage of high performance employees in a company.
• Slides 76-84 on the responsibility of managers to create a context where high performance employees can thrive.

And many others on compensation, an innovative vacation policy, etc... I encourage you to look through them all. In short, I'm impressed. It strikes me as the sort of environment where high performance individuals will thrive in a cohesive and coherent way, leading to great results.

What frustrates me, though, is the outcome of all this incredible performance. After all this work, all this effort, how is the world different? Someone in Minnesota gets a DVD one day earlier than they would have otherwise. While the global energy challenge remains unresolved, while one billion people get by on less than $1 per day, etc...

The real challenge going forward is building a system wherein this level of performance can be sustained while providing benefit where it's most needed. I understand that Grameen Bank has had some success in this respect, but I want to see more.

Of course, I have nothing against Netflix, I wish them nothing but continued success. They're providing the world with an excellent organizational model, let alone a lovely DVD rental service.

Enjoy the slides!

Culture

View more presentations from reed2001.

To Versailles, Finally

Thanks to college friend Adam coming to explore Paris, I finally had an excuse to go see Versailles. Esther and I were thinking about going when I first visited her in 2005, but I had already seen another château and was getting frustrated with the ridiculous displays of wealth.

My impression after having seen the palace and its grounds is that I made a good choice in 2005. It is a pretty incredible on the part of Louis XIV to have responded to social unrest due to the injustices and excesses of his government to build an even bigger, less sustainable palace outside of palace. The guy had already been living at the Louvre, how much more can you want?

Apparently much more. Here's some photographic evidence:








It was, understandably, extremely luxurious, but it left me wondering what the ultra-wealthy are doing these days. There, at Versailles, the floors creaked, there was no impressive technology on display, it was all very traditional. What are the moderns doing with their disposable income?

More than anything, it made me want to go to Las Vegas to see what that example of excess and unsustainability looks and feels like.

Here's the full album:

Versailles with Adam

Never in America, or, The French and Taxes

As part of the economic stimulus package that the French government has put in place in the wake of the global recession, part of it was the reduction of the VAT (a sales tax, almost) from 19.6% to 5.5% for restaurants.

Naturally, most restaurateurs were ecstatic and went to the trouble of printing up new menus with the "Before" and "After" price. Not bad marketing all things considered, consumers like to know how much they're saving.

One evening while sharing a bottle of wine with a friend at a bar in the Marais called Les Philosophes, however, I noticed something curious. They had indeed printed up new menus, or at least a new front page, but it wasn't what I was expecting. The title read, "Restaurant contre la baisse de la TVA", or, "Restaurant against the lowering of the VAT."

What followed was a full page diatribe (Garamond, 10pt. type) on why they thought the lowering of taxes was a bad idea. I was already a bit too far into the bottle of red to be bothered to read the entire thing, but it really struck me as uniquely French: the government lowers the taxes and the citizens refuse.

Just like home, right?

New Layout

It's not just your eyes, I just updated the layout of the blog. Everything should be the same, just centered better on your screen which should allow the large pictures to display better on smaller monitors. Let me know what you think!

Le Mans!

So it's been a while since I've been back, but other things have been keeping me too busy to post here. That said, a brief review of an American at Les 24 Heures du Mans:

Le Mans, the city, is like most other provincial French cities, full of little squares and narrow streets:


That said, some things stand out:


Not the least of which being the British. Here they are camping out of the back of a Bentley. How quaint:


Then there is the track itself. It's a world apart from the narrow, Medieval streets of the town. In fact, it would be downright familiar to anyone who's been to a major speedway in the US.


Then, finally, there are the cars. Living in Paris, I've gotten accustomed to thinking that 45mph was fast. That quickly changed once the cars started going by.


Perhaps even more striking than seeing the cars fly by was hearing them. Specifically at Le Mans, you have four classes of cars running against one another at the same time on the same track. And even within those classes there are many variations. In short, the variety of exhaust notes was pretty incredible. The Peugeots that would ultimately win, for example were extremely quiet (for a race car) being turbo diesels.


The Aston Martin LMP1 cars, on the other hand, screamed like Tie Fighters. Literally.


The award for most incredible auto-aural performance, however, goes absolutely hands down to the Corvettes. My God, they shook the Earth when they went by, nothing sounded as amazing as those American V8s.


I may be a Detroit boy at heart, but there was still a certain appreciation for how the Europeans get around.

Rarely do three characters mean so much as they do in RS6.

In short, it was a great time with the friends, I highly recommend it. It is one of the motorsports experiences to be had, hands down.

Alright, that's enough car-obsession for the time being. Those true-fans who want to see more can check it out in the full gallery:

Le Mans 2009

A New Job!

That's it! I've signed my contract, received my badge and should be getting my email address tomorrow: I've started working at UNESCO!

UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. It's headquartered in Paris and works on those above-mentioned subjects; in general promoting science and education, protecting the environment, and preserving culture.

I am part of the Natrual Sciences Sector, in the Basic and Engineering Sciences Division, and part of the Renewable Energy Programme. My title is "Consultant" which is the do-all, limited-term contract that they give to someone with my level of education and experience. I'll be supporting all aspects of the Programme's work which mainly focuses on using renewable energy technologies to build capacities in developping countries. A big part of it is training the technicians to take care of the systems that we and other organizations install (which fits nicely with the 'Education' part of UNESCO's mandate).

I haven't been working there for very long so I can't give any deep impressions, but so far it's fascinating. I'm meeting a lot of interesting people, I spend my days reading about energy in general and renewable energy in particular (which sounds far more boring than it is for me), and it's now a lot easier to explain what I do when people ask.

All in all, I couldn't be happier with it. To new adventures!

It's About Time

What, dear reader, is this shockingly sub-par photo a representation of? Indeed, it is a train ticket for the French TGV. You see at the top that it starts at "Paris Mont 1" (that would be the Paris Montparnasse 1 station) and ends in two little words, indicated by the red arrow. What nice words indeed.

Yes boys and girls, it's time. It's been nearly three years that I've been in France and I've not yet made to the mecca of French motorsports events. It is time to rectify this rather serious oversight. Next weekend, two friends and I are off to Le Mans, to enjoy all of the insanity that a 24-hour auto race has to hold.

Thankfully, I'm going with a seasoned veteran who will be able to lead us around. I'm anticipating something like the Daytona 500 crossed with the Paris Metro during rush hour: pure insanity, so it will be good to have a guide. I will take plenty of pictures and, undoubtedly, bring back plenty of stories.

And yes, I do recognize the tension between my passions for renewable energy and for cars which get 6 mpg. It's just the way I is.

Pictures from the Phone

 

Living in modern times is nice, my phone can make pictures! Enjoy a view of Paris as the sun sets.