Nostalgia Sunday – Little Israel

August 9, 2009 - 11:37 PM by Rachel Neiman · 1 Comment
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture 

Maybe it’s because cable TV has been running “Pleasantville”, or maybe it’s because I was going through a bunch of old stuff. Suddenly, I was seized with a desire to visit the Israel we once pictured in our mind’s eye…

Little Israel_school_sm (For full-sized version click here).

After school maybe do some shopping…
Little Israel_shops_sm (For full-sized version click here).

Or go to the movies…

Little Israel_cinema_sm (For full-sized version click here).

And maybe even take a drive!

Little_Israel_cars_sm (For full-sized version click here).

Go ahead, don’t be shy! Print, cut out and glue your own Little Israel.

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Israel trumps Detroit?

December 14, 2008 - 3:45 PM by Harry · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, Environment 

For the second time this year (the first being in July) influential New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman mentioned Shai Agassi’s ambitious company Better Place. Better Place aims to build an electric car network that helps the world lower their dependency on oil. Israel jumped on the bandwagon early and recharging stations are being built as we speak.

The water locked islands of Hawaii recently signed to create the network in their state. Hawaii’s signing by Gov. Linda Lingle servers two purposes. The first is helping the state meet its goal of slashing fossil fuel use 70 percent by 2030, the second being a showcase of sorts for the electric car to the millions of tourists who visit Hawaii every year.

“If we can get them into electric cars when they rent, we do two great things,” Agassi said. “One, we avoid emissions and, two, we use the opportunity to educate them, to teach them in Hawaii how it needs to be done in the rest of the world.”

Friedman also said column said something that really resonated with me and I’m sure will likely resonate with many of my generation.

…our bailout of Detroit will be remembered as the equivalent of pouring billions of dollars of taxpayer money into the mail-order-catalogue business on the eve of the birth of eBay. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into the CD music business on the eve of the birth of the iPod and iTunes. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into a book-store chain on the eve of the birth of Amazon.com and the Kindle. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into improving typewriters on the eve of the birth of the PC and the Internet.

That’s exactly it. Friedman completely nails it. Detroit is a dinosaur refusing to change, giving only cursory nods to the way of the cleaner automobile. Get on the train or get run over. I don’t believe pumping money into Detroit is necessarily a bad idea, it’s where the money is going that is the bad idea. If the money is just to keep the companies afloat so they can produce their same gas guzzling vehicles, then no, the government shouldn’t bail them out. If the money is going to be invested in the industry to help produce more gas efficient vehicles that will help alleviate the grip of foreign oil then I am certainly game.

Back to Better Place’s role in Israel. The “pay as you go” model of leasing has serious legs to stand on here. When I heard Agassi speak over the summer I brought up the issue of the outrageous taxes on automobile purchases here and whether the electric car will be accessible to “Israel Israeli.” He explained to me that President Clinton said to him that his plan will only succeed when Joe Sixpack, the guy who just buys cheap clunkers gets interested. It was at that point that Agassi developed his “subscription” model. Users (I think we should call them such just because it sounds cooler) will have the option to either buy or lease a car and then “buy miles” much like we buy minutes for our cellphones.

And Shai, I know I asked you after I heard you speak over the summer to be beta tester. Offer still stands. We can use a new car.

Image of Shai Agassi courtesy of Viernest from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

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