World Cup: Spain Deserved To Win

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For once I was not going to take my chances. I was wrong about Brazil, I was wrong about Argentina, and I was wrong about Germany. When you can't beat them, join them. For the World Cup Final, I was throwing my hat for whichever team Paul The Octopus had picked, and Paul had picked Spain, so I was for Spain. But then I show up and during the first 10 minutes of the game it was so very obvious Spain was dominating the game.

Someone once asked me a long time ago, can we call you Paul? P for Paul, P for Paramendra. No, you can't call me Paul, I remember saying. What did I know?

This was the roughest game of the entire World Cup. There were so many fouls, countless yellow cards. The most brazen foul of the entire  Cup happened in this game. It was an out and out flying kick. That is a martial arts term. Bam, you hit the other person in the chest and he falls like a tree trunk. That dude was still holding his chest 60 minutes later.

The first 10 minutes or so Spain dominated. Then the game got rough all the way to half time. Then Spain dominated, and there was some rough play. But then the teams decided risking a red card was not worth it, and so there was some good play, and Spain dominated again.

By now I was all out for Spain. Forget the octopus, this team was good. Or maybe not forget the octopus. I was emotionally invested in Spain's success. During extra time I was pining for that one goal. And it happened. But before that someone on the Dutch team got a red card. That is how you give a game away. By getting a red card. 10 is a seriously small number on a soccer field. You end up with 10 players and the opposing team sees a big, gaping hole on the field, on your side.

I was scared it might go all the way to penalty kicks. Because then all bets are off. The team that dominated the game does not necessarily win the penalty kicks part. There it is pretty much a toss up.

But, thank God, the Spanish team scored.

After the goal, the goalkeeper started crying, more like bowling. And I am thinking, poor guy, he feels bad he lost the game for his team. But then I noticed the jersey. No, this was the Spanish goalkeeper. These were tears of joy. Another sign this was the team that deserved to win.

This should have been a 4-4 to extra time, not a 0-0 to extra time game. There were so many obvious misses by both sides.

But then the Spanish side scored one goal, and there were maybe three minutes left, and I was not worried for them. They were the superior team. They could hold the slim ground. And they did.

It is a new world order in World Cup Soccer. The superpowers of the previous decades all fell by the wayside. France, Italy, England, Brazil, Argentina, Germany. They all fell.

One reason this was such a rough game was because for the two teams this was very much a first. This was their one shot at glory, and they were going to kick balls and limbs, whatever got in the way. They might not even get into the Final next time. There was desperation.

The Spain-Germany game was the best game of World Cup 2010, and the Spain-Netherlands game was the most dramatic.

Can't wait for 2014. In 2014 I might want to watch the Group Stage games as a neutral observer before I pick my teams. Pick your teams at the onset of the Round Of 16. Ugh, my picks made me look like an amateur.

Spain: The Octopus Was Right, I Was Wrong
The Germans Called Me Robin Hood
Argentina Was Not A Team
Brazil: The Overconfidence Of A Soccer Superpower
Soccer And Latin America
Brazil
Walking On The Moon
Lionel Messi (2)
Lionel Messi
Young Folks
Walk In The Park
Freehand Exercise: 1,000 Push-Ups, 1,000 Squats, 1,000 Crunches
Brazil And Argentina: My Choices And Those Of My Favorite Actor
The Eyes Of Truth
Hey Now, Hey Now
Tomorrow
Samuel Eto'o

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Andy Grove On Creating Jobs

Image via CrunchBase

Andy Grove has done a good job of throwing light on a big problem. The Great Recession ended, the downslide stopped, but the jobs never came back. America still has an urgent need to move from 10% unemployment to 5%. I couldn't argue with the sense of urgency Andy Grove feels.

But Vivek Wadhwa offers better solutions. Vivek's thoughts are more forward looking. (Tweet from Vivek)

I was surprised by the stimulus bill in 2009. It was big on roads and bridges and so very small on broadband. Here was America's chance to make one big leap towards becoming a full fledged information economy, and it put most of that money into old school roads and bridges.

America has to think in terms of how to become a country that is 75% college educated. That asks for a rethink of what a college is in the first place. Universal broadband, textbooks online, journal articles online, lectures in video format online, massive online and offline socializing. There is much demand for jobs in the education and health sectors.

America has always created new industries, and it has to continue doing so. Even old jobs, and old products have to be imbued with new technology to create new stuff. Electric cars are still cars, but they are the new kind.

China seems to be taking the lead on one of those next generation industries: clean tech. But if America could have collaborated with Russia in space exploration during the thick of the Cold War, China and America are not even at war. Win win situations have to be created.

Putting the country to work with goals of universal education and universal health could lead to job creation programs like during the New Deal.

America used to be a country where most people were farmers. America could not forever have been a country where most people were factory workers. That would have been one stagnant country. The Great Recession has also been an opportunity to reinvent this country and take it onto a new path. It is time to create new companies, new jobs and new industries all over again.

The jealousy of hundreds of millions in China rising out of poverty is a false jealousy. That jealousy is self-defeating. Those are hundreds of millions of new consumers that America could take a bite at. Look at it that way.

Global Finance, Global Terrorism, Global Warming
Possible Pitfalls In Barack's Way
Stimulus: Make It A Trillion
Stimulus: Size Matters

BusinessWeek: Andy Grove: How America Can Create Jobs

Startups are a wonderful thing, but they cannot by themselves increase tech employment. Equally important is what comes after that mythical moment of creation in the garage, as technology goes from prototype to mass production. This is the phase where companies scale up. They work out design details, figure out how to make things affordably, build factories, and hire people by the thousands. Scaling is hard work but necessary to make innovation matter. ..... In 1968 two well-known technologists and their investor friends anted up $3 million to start Intel ..... We had to build factories, hire, train, and retain employees, establish relationships with suppliers, and sort out a million other things before Intel could become a billion-dollar company. Three years later the company went public and grew to be one of the biggest technology companies in the world. By 1980, 10 years after our IPO, about 13,000 people worked for Intel in the U.S. ....... Some companies died along the way or were absorbed by others, but each survivor added to the complex technological ecosystem that came to be called Silicon Valley. ...... Today, manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is about 166,000, lower than it was before the first PC, the MITS Altair 2800, was assembled in 1975 ....... Meanwhile, a very effective computer manufacturing industry has emerged in Asia, employing about 1.5 million workers—factory employees, engineers, and managers. ....... The largest of these companies is Hon Hai Precision Industry, also known as Foxconn. The company has grown at an astounding rate, first in Taiwan and later in China. Its revenues last year were $62 billion, larger than Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), Dell (DELL), or Intel. Foxconn employs over 800,000 people, more than the combined worldwide head count of Apple, Dell, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Intel, and Sony (SNE) . .......for every Apple worker in the U.S. there are 10 people in China working on iMacs, iPods, and iPhones. ..... Five years ago a friend joined a large VC firm as a partner. His responsibility was to make sure that all the startups they funded had a "China strategy," meaning a plan to move what jobs they could to China...... there was a time in this country when tanks and cavalry were massed on Pennsylvania Avenue to chase away the unemployed. It was 1932

BusinessWeek: Vivek Wadhwa: Why Andy Grove Is Wrong About Job Growth

his proposed solution—levying a tax on the products of offshored labor—will do nothing more than resurrect the ghost of the 1930s Smoot-Hawley tariff. Many historians credit this tariff with igniting a global trade war that contributed to the Great Depression. ...... We cannot recapture a bygone era. ...... Intel ... 72 percent of its revenue now comes from abroad. ....... I doubt that even the most depressed regions of America would want to be home to factories that pollute the environment, pay minimum wage, and work at the profit margins of these sweatshops. ...... From 1977 to 2005, existing companies were net job destroyers, losing 1 million net jobs per year. In contrast, new outfits in their first year added an average of 3 million jobs annually. ...... the cycle of destruction of old industries and the creation of the new has given the U.S. its greatest global advantage. Protecting old industries isn't the best way to reduce unemployment; it is a sure road to downsizing. ....... globalization will disrupt industries and cause job losses in one industry while creating jobs in another. ....... We need to have the concept of lifelong education become part of our culture. Education doesn't end when you graduate from college; that is when it begins. ....... most high-growth companies are founded by middle-aged workers who have extensive industry experience, want to capitalize on their idea, and want to build wealth before they retire ....... we need to recruit the world's best and brightest to the U.S. and do all we can to keep here those already in the U.S. ........ during the recent tech boom, immigrants founded more than half of Silicon Valley's startups. In recent times, they have contributed to more than a quarter of U.S. firms' global patents and helped boost U.S. competitiveness. These skilled workers tend to be highly educated, to understand foreign cultures and markets, and to be highly entrepreneurial. ........ building mechanisms to break the innovation logjam at the source—the nexus between the scientists who make the discoveries, the universities that market the discoveries to the world, and the entrepreneurs with domain experience who could take these discoveries and turn them into products. ...... China, India, and many other countries have learned the secrets of America's success—its open economy and capitalist ways. They are trying very hard to become like us. Let's not become like they used to be.

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