Another thought re general airline crappiness. Before Microsoft and Apple standardized the OS in the 1980’s, the tech world was a total mess. Drivers had to be custom-written for every device. Nothing communicated with anything else. In the 2000’s and beyond, Apple has continued the process of vertical integration to the point that they actually own the chip design teams, and have contracts on the finishing metal technologies they may use.

What if an airline said “we’re going to solve problems by vertically integrating. We’re just going to buy our own airports that are seldom used, have a few gates, and suffer no delays.” Could they do it – would there be enough capital in the model? There are hundreds of large airports in the U.S. that are virtually abandoned, like Plattsburgh, NY.

Easyjet in Europe is doing something similar – flying into these airports. They don’t own them, though.

One of the things I’ve learned, partly from talking to a lot of older tech execs, is that to survive with a startup, a marriage, and kids, and making the assumption that you take care of your kids, you have to minimize travel. It’s just a requirement. This post from from Kedrosky and this one from Mike Arrington show why. If you travel all the time, and deal with commercial airlines, you’ll end up with 2 of the 3. But not all 3.

David Boies, on putting fear and prejudice on trial:

“In a court of law you’ve got to come in and you’ve got to support those opinions, you’ve got to stand up under oath and cross-examination,” Boies said. “And what we saw at trial is that it’s very easy for the people who want to deprive gay and lesbian citizens of the right to vote [sic] to make all sorts of statements and campaign literature, or in debates where they can’t be cross-examined.

“But when they come into court and they have to support those opinions and they have to defend those opinions under oath and cross-examination, those opinions just melt away. And that’s what happened here. There simply wasn’t any evidence, there weren’t any of those studies. There weren’t any empirical studies. That’s just made up. That’s junk science. It’s easy to say that on television. But a witness stand is a lonely place to lie. And when you come into court you can’t do that.

“That’s what we proved: We put fear and prejudice on trial, and fear and prejudice lost,” Boies said.

I generally eschew meetings, especially if they are more than 3 people, total. I have found that I like meetings with one or two other people, because everyone gets a chance to express their views. Because you can listen 7 times faster than you can talk, if you never get a chance to talk, it is difficult to stay engaged, and the meeting becomes a colossal waste of time, not just for one person, but for many. So there is a waste multiplier in large meetings.

If it gets beyond 3 people just have a bbq or a picnic or something fun. No one’s going to be paying attention to work details in a meeting that size anyway, so why bother pretending?

Chinese children study classical music at six time the rate of U.S. children (though we spend six times as much on our military, so there). Chinese children learn intense concentration and focus by doing so.

I ran into this link from Jeff Matthews this week. It was good to see. I’ve learned a lot from Buffett, but one thing I’ve noticed is that he doesn’t take his own advice when it comes to facing the music on difficult questions, especially at the shareholders meeting. Charlie Munger never did either.

I went to the shareholders meeting in Omaha for a few years about a decade ago, and I noticed that they would both dodge or refuse to answer questions that were in any way critical of them or Berkshire. It’s interesting to see that Jeff Matthews noticed this as well.

One of the great things about working at a startup, or working as your own contractor, is that you get to make your own IT decisions. Larger corporations, understandably, have to force a certain amount of standaridzation, or their IT people would go insane. But in a smaller firm each person generally makes these decisions himself/herself. This can lead to a lot of productivity as well as general happiness.

It’s a level of freedom you take for granted after a while in a small co.