SharkJumping

As a 1990 Columbia College graduate, I can only gape in amazement at the spectacle this week of President Bollinger inviting Iranian President Ahmadinejad to speak on campus, and then starting the festivities off by repeatedly and personally insulting Ahmadinejad.  I can imagine the intense pressure Bollinger was under from various special interest groups, but it's simply embarrassing to invite a world leader over for an event just so you can call him names - and this comes from a university president known as a Free Speech crusader.   

The Iranian President was going make a complete ass of himself anyway (Holocaust is a theory, there are no gays in Iran, etc), but Bollinger managed to actually make Ahmadinejad into a more sympathetic character with the juvenile attacks, and it made the US look even more backwards than normal in the Muslim world, which is saying a lot given our recent track record.

What's even more astonishing is the number of posts in the Columbia alumni forum which actually supported the insults and which have been comparing Ahmadinejad to Hitler, among other dictators.  There are days when Americans act like small town bigots, but I just never thought the Bollinger would be one of them - it's a sad day for Columbia and I would prefer if we changed leadership since it's clear we don't have the intellectual or moral strength in the current President.

We launched phase 1 of our Meez Casual Game channel last night - you can see it here.   The first set of games come from well known casual publishers as well as from top flash developers, and they all trigger different emotions in your Meez as you play them - we're bringing identity and emotions to casual games.  Now wait until you see what we do next...

As word has leaked out today due to regulatory filings, we closed a $5M+ financing round with Battery and Transcosomos for Meez here at Donnerwood, and we also completed a key corporate acquisition in August, so it was a busy month.

Now we're focused on rolling out additional features and partnerships to drive Meez avatars farther into the mainstream, and to continue to increase our revenue through our integrated advertising program which has worked so well with Clinique, Metropark, Marshalls, Panasonic, Hairspray movie, etc.

Given that the most recent Pew Internet study indicated that only 9% of Internet users have created an avatar, we all have a rich market to mine in the next few years.

As was announced everywhere earlier this week, the Google founders & CEO have struck a $1.3M deal with NASA to park their corporate jets at Moffet Federal Air Field, a pristine gov't airfield 2 miles from Google headquarters - see NYT article here, and exact locations -

This is no longer news.  What's astonishing about it is the amount of jealousy that it has triggered among what I call the "geekerati" of Silicon Valley, especially the wealthy venture capitalists who work just a few miles away on Sand Hill Road.  It was one thing when the G founders bought at 767 - that just showed they had more money than anyone else, which may be obnoxious, given the "Do No Evil" mantra (imagine the Terra Pass carbon offset required), but that was just cash, like any other random sheik from the UAE could do. 

What's causing waves here is that this deal is about INFLUENCE, and not cash since no one else could even get this deal done.  It may be that Google has pillaged AMES for a series of employees and discussed building a campus there, but this was the first known instance of the founders getting absolutely preferential treatment in this manner - thus the Valley jealousy and incredible banter about it.

So why the absurdity title?  Here is the big issue.  We all know that Moffet is the most desired real estate in the entire Valley, and that landing rights are insanely valuable, not just from a time perspective (longer runway than SFO, few other planes), but more importantly, from a bragging right perspective.  There are at least 100 people in the Valley who simply have too much money to spend in their lifetime - since most of them have private planes, why doesn't the government open up the bidding on a limited number of slots at AMES? 

Does anyone realistically think that Larry Ellison, Jim Clark, or any random very wealthy Benchmark or Accel partner wouldn't bid more than $1.3M to park their jets there?  I have no doubts that 20 wealthy folk would pony up $5M each per year to park their jets, brag to their friends, and show off to their mistresses - that's $100M a year, far better than the lousy payment NASA is getting now.  So why does the Google gang get this deal?  I love the chutzpah personally, but as a US tax payer, it strikes me like so many other no-bid deals one finds in 3rd world countries, or wherever Halliburton is bidding in the US - let's open it up to a true free market rather than favor one player.