Keen On… Yossi Vardi: Cow’s-Manure-Over-IP (CMOI)

While I leave it, you will know when I tell you my experience in energy, but many years ago, I used to run the ministry of energy in Israel, and after I finished my term in the ministry of energy, I was asked to come to the World Bank. This was early 80’s when the World Bank created it’s energy department and when I came they asked me to write the report on non-commercial, non-conventional, indigenous, renewable, traditional, alternative energy resources.

So, I asked them What is non-commercial non-conventional indigenous renewable traditional alternative energy resources. And they told me that they want me to write a report on rice husks.

Rice husks?

Rice husks and I didn’t know what is rice husks. Rice husks are the stem, I would call it the stem of the rice, and this is being used as a source of energy in some developing countries. I told them I don’t know anything about rice husk. We don’t have it in Israel. So, they ask me to write a report on bagasse.

Do you know what is bagasse?

Bagasse?

Bagasse. Bagasse is the substance which is being left after you squeeze the sugar from the sugar cane, and you burn it, and it’s another source of energy but I didn’t know anything about this. So then asked me, “Well, if you don’t know about bagasse and about rice husks, then maybe you can write for us report about cow’s manure.”

Cow’s manure? You knew that one.

Yeah. Cow’s manure. I thought that that’s good cause when I was a kid I had lot of encounters. Is this energy resource as in Tel Aviv fields? And What were you doing as a youngster in Tel Aviv? I was encountering cow’s manure. And I like the topic. I immediately embraced it and dived into it.

The cow manure? The cow manure, and for one month I was the world expert on cow’s manure. I studied what you do with cow’s manure, how you collect it. By the way, do you know what is the difference between bullshit and cow’s manure? Cow’s manure doesn’t have the human touch that bullshit has, but that belongs to another thing.

So By the way, if you have a cow’s manure, Jewish mother joke?

No, but it goes separately, nevertheless you are disturbing my flow of cow’s manure folks. So, I spent the whole month studying how peasants are using cow’s manure,and then I found they are using it for four purposes: For cooking, for heating, for fertilizing, and for reinforcing mud bricks, because of the fiber.

And immediately I realized this is a problem of operation research, how you do an optimal location of cow’s manure? I wrote big report to the World Bank; whereby, I suggested that every peasant in the world will be given a scale and a satellite terminal because at that time there was no Internet.

And the World Bank will create a big computer in it’s basement. And every night every peasant will transmit to the World Bank how many cow’s manure they collected. And they will create linear programming calculation, and tell him how to allocate separately. Give the report to the World Bank, and they read it.

And they told me that they are going to ship me to Israel. They didn’t see the reason and how.

Shipped back, send me back home. Fire me.

You have been paid for this, right? Yeah, sure. I was paid for it to help the world resolve the, and this was very green. This is the source of green energy. So for one month, I was the foremost expert on cow’s manure and now is the internet, etcetera. I think if you merge internet into cow’s manure, because it’s also come in packets, you can create cow’s manure over IP.

And there is a lot of opportunities to merge the two things, and to use the Internet in order to resolve the world’s shortage of the cow’s manure. Thank you very much.

Thank you.