Dec 252012
 

(From my FaceBook status) On the day that I was 18, I went to the Old West Gun Room in El Cerrito, California and bought my first 22 rifle. I was so happy and proud to be able to pull the trigger and see objects many dozens of feet away from me jump to my will. When I was in graduate school at UC Berkeley, I bought my first 45 caliber semiautomatic pistol, a Colt 1911 Gold Cup. Yes, I love guns. I love the sound of their report. I love the smell of the gunpowder. I love to observe the […]

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Jun 102011
 
Further musings on TMI and Fukushima in the Mercury News

Q&A with Nat Goldhaber on the Three Mile Island crisis By Peter Delevett Mercury News Columnist Nat Goldhaber may have the most offbeat resume of any venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. In early 1979, he was a few weeks into a job running energy policy for Pennsylvania’s new governor — a post for which he cheerfully admits he was unqualified — when the Three Mile Island meltdown happened. The front-row seat to America’s worst nuclear disaster helped shape Goldhaber’s subsequent career as an energy investor, but it wasn’t even the most colorful chapter in his career: That honor belongs to founding […]

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Dec 172010
 
A complicated week

The hardest of all possible actions as a Venture Capitalist is to shut down a company, especially one that you believe has unique technology and a real future.  But from time to time it happens.  Your fund can simply no longer afford to keep the company afloat, even if there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel. Sadly, it is starting to look very much like I will have to do just that with one of my favorites. And it hurts.  Oh well… We sure as hell gave it the old college try. Meanwhile, our other companies are […]

Jul 202010
 
Gerson Goldhaber 1924-2010 RIP

There is a wonderful Jewish tradition: the deceased must be laid to rest within 24 hours after the time that they expired. Of course, in California this cannot be accomplished. First, a death certificate must be issued by a physician and then transmitted to the funeral home that in turn transmits it to the burial ground. In addition, death taxes are required to bury the dead. A kind of parking permit for eternal rest. All this takes at least 48 hours, and sometimes longer. So the Jewish requirement for burial within 24 hours can never be successfully completed because of […]

Feb 092008
 
Remembering Maharishi

Maharishi died in Holland on Tuesday, Feb. 5 2008. I spent ten years working with Maharishi from 1965-75 and again on and off for the following ten years. Maharishi personally changed our times, making the inner spiritual world relevant and meditation a household word. I miss him even though I had little contact with him in the last five years. But, just knowing he was there in Holland, working 20 hours a day trying to make the world a better place was a comfort; as he used to say, “like a child who knows mother is at home.” I am […]