The technology was originally developed to track missiles. Now, SportVU systems hang from the catwalks of 10 NBA arenas, tiny webcams that silently track each player as they shoot, pass, and run across the court, recording each and every move 25 times a second. SportVU can tell you not just Kevin Durant’s shooting average, but his shooting average after dribbling one vs. two times, or his shooting average with a defender three feet away vs. five feet away. SportVU can actually consider both factors at once, plus take into account who passed him the ball, how many minutes he’d been on the court, and how many miles he’d run that game already...
Sunday, December 30, 2012
NBA Tech
Saturday, December 29, 2012
When is TV going to be easy?
Want to resurrect the television market? Make a set my houseguests can use. Give it an on-off switch and maybe a volume rocker. Then move everything else to a smartphone app. And make it cross-platform. I tell that app what I want to watch—with voice or text input or gestures—and it figures out if the show is on cable or Hulu or iTunes or Xbox or whatever, then delivers the video in the highest-quality version available, based on my subscriptions...
Wired: Why you shouldn't buy a TV this year. Again.
Also see, No One Uses Smart TV Internet Because it SucksFriday, December 28, 2012
the Future of Special Operations
special operations commanders say the direct approach must be coupled with "the indirect approach," a cryptic term used to describe working with and through non-U.S. partners to accomplish security objectives, often in unorthodox ways. Special operations forces forge relationships that can last for decades with a diverse collection of groups: training, advising, and operating alongside other countries' militaries, police forces, tribes, militias, or other informal groups. They also conduct civil-affairs operations that provide medical, veterinary, or agricultural assistance to civilians, improving the standing of local governments and gaining access to and a greater understanding of local conditions and populations.
FP: Beyond Kill and Capture
Etiquitte Classes
I guess parents can buy their way out of doing anything these days:
These etiquette experts say that new approaches are needed because parents no longer have the stomach, time or know-how to play bad cop and teach manners. Dinnertime has become a free-for-all in many households, with packed family schedules, the television on in the background and a modern-day belief of many parents that they should simply let children be children.
NYT: Eat, Drink, Be Nice
Thursday, December 27, 2012
SSA Disability Payments
We have featured Ed Glaeser's unique analysis of conventional wisdom before (here and here) so his insights here should be no surprise. I wish his commentary was not so rare.
There are now 8.8 million workers receiving disability payments from Social Security. I find this number haunting.
The disabled are part of the far larger number of Americans who have left the labor force altogether since the recession, and who don’t seem to be coming back. About 88.9 million people in the U.S. are now out of the labor force, 2.4 million more than a year ago and 11.4 million more than in 2006. Thirty years ago, there was a 40-to-1 ratio between the total labor force and those workers receiving Social Security disability payments. Today that ratio is less than 18-to-1.
In November 1982, unemployment hit its postwar high of 10.8 percent, far higher than the current rate of 7.7 percent. But the total share of workers who are either unemployed or receiving disability payments from the government totals 12.6 percent today...
2013 Is the Year to Go to Work, Not Go on Disability
Tako
Hanlon knows cephalopods’ tricks better than anyone else in the world. And now, he’s on the cusp of unlocking the secret of their chameleon-like talents.Octopi: The New Kings of Disguise
Armed with a $6 million grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research, Hanlon and a team of engineers are building technology that will duplicate the cephalopods’ spectacular abilities. What could humans do with such talent? Imagine pattern-shifting clothes or cars that regulate their temperature by changing color. Thanks to Hanlon’s work, that’s just around the corner...
Ignatius on Afghanistan
In this season of good will, there is a rare bit of good cheer about the prospects for peace with the Taliban in Afghanistan. The reason seems to be that some Taliban leaders are concluding that they couldn’t win the civil war that might follow U.S. withdrawal of combat troops...
Encouraging signs toward peace in Afghanistan
John Miller, Cop and Journalist
A police reporter in New York for 20 years for various television stations, he was hired by William Bratton, New York’s police commissioner, in 1994 as a deputy commissioner. He went back to reporting at ABC in 1995 and became co-anchor of “20/20,” where he interviewed Osama bin Laden. He wrote a book on the Sept. 11 attacks and then went back to work for Mr. Bratton in 2003, this time in Los Angeles as head of the counterterrorism and criminal intelligence bureau, along with the major crimes division.Mr. Miller went on to the F.B.I. and the office of the director of national intelligence, where he worked as deputy director of the analysis division. But he found himself thinking about a return to reporting after Bin Laden was killed.
NYT: A TV Voice Rang True in Clamor of Shooting
Your Responsibility to be Fit
...Sandy Hook edition from PT365:
I do know that if I was in that school that day, and if I didn’t have my own CCW on hand, I would have put every second of physical training that I’ve ever done in my life, into a single life or death focus to get my hands on the shooter. Now I’m not stupid, I’ve see what a 5.56 round can do to a human body. I know that one hit in a vital area, and it wouldn’t matter what level of physical condition I’m in, it’s over for me and anyone else for that matter. However, I like to think that just maybe, because I’m in good condition that I could have weathered it, at least to let me survive till I could do something. Could there ever be a better reason to keep yourself in top condition? To maybe save the life of a innocent child? I think not.MGunz - Core Strength
Leadership as a Core Competancy
Successful practitioners of leadership know that to be an excellent leader, one does not necessarily have to be individually better than the individual team members. In fact, a leader’s functional superiority can sometimes hamper the success of the team. The leader’s sole measure of success lies in the success of the team. It is only through acknowledgment, aggregation, and integration of individually superior skills within the team that the team wins and the leader, in turn, becomes successful. Leading a team of high-performers requires the leader to be a relationship-builder and a fanatic of transparent communication, not an expert or skilled master of the team’s assigned function. Leadership is the most important competency of the leader, not demonstrated mastery of individual skills or possession of attributes related to team function.McChrystal Group
Friday, December 21, 2012
'The Guns at Last Light'
- About 10 percent of all American combat casualties during the war came during the Battle of the Bulge.
- The Red Army lost more soldiers at Stalingrad that the entire U.S. military did in the entire war.
The last of Atkinson’s marvelous World War II series: ‘The Guns at Last Light’
Gentile on 'The Generals'
Colonel Gentile, a strategic bombing expertwho also was a cavalry squadron commander in Iraq in 2006, concludes that I am both simplistic and dangerous...
...He also says the book is a regression from the works of John Keegan. Well, if I have to regress from anyone, I'll take Keegan. I am not as good a baseball player as Derek Jeter, either.
The Generals gets two thumbs down
Krauthammer on Sandy Hook
Every mass shooting has three elements: the killer, the weapon and the cultural climate. As soon as the shooting stops, partisans immediately pick their preferred root cause with corresponding pet panacea. Names are hurled, scapegoats paraded, prejudices vented. The argument goes nowhere...
The roots of mass murder
Leaders are obvious
A new study suggests we can identify the leader of a group of strangers by sight.
PopSci: We Can Spot Powerful Leaders In 2 Minutes
P.S. Is this news?Petzal on Sandy Hook
The second problem is one of casual gun storage. One of the more specious comments I've heard regarding the Sandy Hook shooting was that Nancy Lanza was "...a model gun owner..." because she took her son shooting. Although we do not yet know how Nancy Lanza stored her guns, presumably they were not stored securely enough to prevent her son from accessing them. If that was the case, she was not a model gun owner. In fact, she was the opposite if she had a disturbed kid and did not adequately secure her guns.
I’ve lived for years in a state with a safe-storage law, and I have no problem with it at all. So, my second proposal: When your kid steals your firearm and kills a bunch of people, you do not get to hide from the press and issue a statement through your attorney that you are baffled and saddened at how junior went bad. You get, instead, to go on trial as accessory to murder. If it’s found that you have not made a reasonable effort to lock up your hardware, you may then contemplate your negligence from a prison cell. Assuming, of course, your kid doesn’t kill you first.
Until Next Time
Robot Car Design
Forget the Jetsons: Smart Design’s Dan Saffer on how we should interact with the automobiles of the (near) future.
Smart Design On What We’ll Really Want From Robot Cars
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Nuts!
On Christmas Eve, 1944, General Anthony McAuliffe, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, issued a flier to his men. It was headlined “Merry Christmas,” and the general wrote, “What’s merry about all this, you ask? We’re fighting. It’s cold. We aren’t home.” He went on to praise Allied troops for stopping flat everything the enemy was throwing at them. Then he described a story that happened two days earlier.
Why Remembering Christmas 1944 Can Change Your Life
Parenting
And they’re both sweet, lovable kids. Being their father is the best. I’ve rearranged my working life to be able to spend more time with them in their formative years.
But they’re not listening to me.
Is there a Science to Parenting?
The Weapons Continuum
“Protection from unwarranted bodily harm” is a basic right that we all can claim. It makes sense that people should be able to possess a weapon appropriate to that end. But what sort of weapon? There are two important concepts that can help us make this determination: (a) weapon damage coefficient — basically, the extent of damage that the use of a particular weapon is designed to cause; and (b) minimum force necessary to produce a result — that result being protection against bodily harm...
Michael Boylan: The Weapons Continuum
Armed Citizens to the Rescue (maybe)
Here are two different takes on the question:
Slate: Do Armed Citizens Stop Mass Shootings? A history of intervention attempts.
Popular Science: Would Arming Teachers And Students Really Have Prevented A Tragedy?
The PopSci article is focused on a single study, but the Slate article presents a collection of facts and links.Lamborghini takes the high road...
...– both literally and figuratively – by hosting its Winter Driving Academy in the stunning alpine town of Cortina d'Ampezzo, just south of the Austrian border.
Most Dangerous People in the World
1: Qassem Suleimani
As the country most likely to spark a world war, Iran has to be considered the most dangerous country on the planet. And if you were looking for the most dangerous man in that most dangerous country, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone as ruthless and mysterious as Gen. Qassem Suleimani. Since Suleimani's promotion in the late 1990s to head the Quds Force — the combination special forces and CIA-styled group within the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps — he's unleashed terror against U.S. forces in Iraq; and in 2012, expanded Tehran's military aid to Assad while becoming the focus of rumors over who will become Iran's next leader.
The Platinum Age of Television
“Oh, I don’t watch television.”
Remember when your pretentious friends used to say that?
You don’t hear it so much these days. That’s partially due to the accessibility of TV content on different platforms--you don’t literally have to watch TV now to watch a whole lot of TV. But, more to the point, anyone who would make such a proclamation now would sound like a fool because TV has become the seat of entertainment excellence. In fact, we’ve lived through a renaissance that saw the most groundbreaking dramas in the history of television rolling out one after another in the last 15 years or so.
How Television Got To Be So Damn Good
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Mass Murderers don't need guns
Would the United States do well to emulate China and Japan, with their comprehensive bans on guns? Or is America a special case because of its Constitutional protections of gun ownership? And apropos of the Fujian attack described above, would you support similarly speedy trials and the death penalty for mass murderers of children?
China Calls for ‘No Delay’ on Gun Controls in U.S.
Crime is trending down
- All crimes have gone down. Way, way down. We don’t have a very clear explanation for why, but we’re grateful that the numbers are as good as they are.
- Lyndon B. Johnson’s Law Enforcement Assistance Administration poured millions of dollars into crime research and criminal-justice education for professionals. The field is now better educated, more professional, and more science-based than it has ever been.
- Criminology as a social science has seen tremendous growth, with ever stricter standards of adherence to the scientific method and rigor in research.
- Advances in forensic technology including DNA, improved labs, and databases like ViCAP for violent offenses and AFIS for fingerprints have vastly improved our ability to find perpetrators and hold them accountable.
Thoughts After Sandy Hook: We Are the Safest We’ve Been in 40 Years
Chronicler App
The solution has propelled him into the Kickstarter hall of fame and inspired thousands with a video debut on TED. The app makes it easy to take a one second video every day of your life and create a chronological collage of your time spent: pure, simple, inspiring and reminiscently beautiful.
1 Second Everyday App
The Israeli Method
This article was written by Uri and comes from his perspective as a now US citizen who works as an information security consultant. I’ve been very interested in the Israeli model after their procedures for handling airport security have started to become implemented at Boston Logan International Airport. Please join me in welcoming Uri back with his perspective on these recent events.
Can We Apply Israeli Principles and Proactively Protect our Loved Ones?
TBD: Soldier poets of the Great War (II)
This epitaph by H.W. Garrod, consisting of just two lines, strikes me as "soldierly" -- disciplined and brief. The second line is especially concentrated. I think it was Sen. James Webb who once observed that poetry is like combat in that poetry is compressed thought and combat is compressed action.
Tell them at home, there's nothing here to hide;Here's another soldierly quartet of lines, from F.W.D. Bendall:
We took our orders, asked no questions, died.
Sentry, sentry, what did you say
As you watched alone till break of day?
I prayed the Lord that I'd fire straight
If I saw the man that killed my mate.
Some soldierly lines of concentrated thought
Google tricks
A widescreen monitor, a tabbed browser, and other tech improvements haven't actually improved work and life for so many people--mostly because they don't know how to use them.
A Google Researcher Reveals 4 Crucial Things "Average Users" Should Know But Don't
Indiana Jones Mystery Solved
The university had received a package (above) that was addressed to “Henry Walton Jones, Jr.” Inside was a near-exact replica of the journal of Abner Ravenwood, which Indy uses in the film Raiders of the Lost Ark. Perplexed about its origins, the school posted on Tumblr and set up an e-mail tip line to try to find out if anyone could offer clues as to where the book came from. They also contacted Lucasfilm and an eBay user who had been selling similar replicas online. On Monday morning the university told Wired that they received an e-mail from the eBay seller, Paul Charfauros, informing them that he had gotten a letter from the U.S. Postal Service to say that one of his replicas — intended for a buyer in Italy — had been lost in the mail.
“Somewhere between Guam and Italy the replica fell out of its original external package and was lost in Honolulu, Hawaii,” Garrett Brinker, director of undergraduate outreach for the University of Chicago, told Wired. “Then for some reason, with fake postage, no tracking, not even a zip code — it looks like the Postal Service had to manually write in a zip code on the package — somehow without all of that the package landed in our laps in Chicago, Illinois.”
Wired: Mystery of the Indiana Jones Journal Solved: It Came From the Internet. And Guam
Car Accident Fatalaties
John Nelson’s charts and maps on traffic fatalities are a reminder that a good data viz doesn’t always require graphic design chops--or software.
Infographic: Showing When People Get Killed In Cars, Using Excel
Monday, December 17, 2012
How to ask a question
Great insight moves your career, organization, or business forward. The problem? Most people are terrible at asking questions. Learn from the pros how to do it right...
...Good questions can move your business, organization, or career forward. They squeeze incremental value from interactions, the drops of which add up to reservoirs of insight. Of all the skills innovators can learn from journalists, the art of the expert Q&A is the most useful.Details at the link below.
The problem is, most of us ask terrible questions. We talk too much and accept bad answers (or worse, no answers). We’re too embarrassed to be direct, or we’re afraid of revealing our ignorance, so we throw softballs, hedge, and miss out on opportunities to grow...
Don’t Ask Multiple-Choice Questions
Don’t Fish
Interject With Questions When Necessary
Field Non-Answers By Reframing Questions Later
Repeat Answers Back For Clarification Or More Detail
Don’t Be Embarrassed
The One Conversational Tool That Will Make You Better At Absolutely Everything
Mass violence info, sans media spin
What The Research Says About "Rampage Violence"
Studies of "rampage violence" have only been around for about a decade, but researchers are still working hard to understand and prevent it. Here's the current state of the field.and,
A Geographic Guide To American Mass Shootings
Hotel room security
Using an Arduino microcontroller and a few other components, almost anyone can build a device small enough to fit inside of a dry erase marker. This can then be used to unlock most hotel doors, including the dead bolt, in no time at all.Video
from ITS Tactical
Hyperlink Power
I never thought about it this way, but the internet environment has devised a pretty efficient control mechanism. I know because the only reason I found this site was a link on the Freakonomics blog.
It is not a high degree of trust – it’s not a million dollar handshake deal or giving offering your daughter’s hand in marriage. But every hyperlink from an established website or blog to a new one is a microtransaction of trust.The hyperlink, a icrotransaction of trust
It is in these exchanges that smaller websites and blogs can begin to grow and garner attention. This trust is why no legitimate blogger will ever accept paid post or links. It also highlights the meritocracy of the web. Wherein a single individual can, with time, capture the attention of tens of thousands of readers without the backing of media corporations.
But it all starts with trust.
Space Espionage
As we have said before (here and here and here) the Foreign Intelligence threat, economic and otherwise, is significant and unappreciated. So here is another update--this time from Wired's Danger Room:
In 2011, two Chinese nationals were convicted in federal court on charges of conspiring to violate the Arms Control Export Act after attempting to buy thousands of radiation-hardened microchips and sell them to China. The day the pair were sentenced to two years in prison for the plot, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Neil MacBride, called it an example of how “the line between traditional espionage, export violations and economic espionage has become increasingly blurred.”
It’s also an example of the increasing number of military and space technology espionage cases being uncovered in the U.S. each year, according to a new report from the Defense Security Service, which acts as the Pentagon’s industrial security oversight agency. According to the report, first noted by InsideDefense.com, industrial espionage has grown “more persistent, pervasive and insidious” (.pdf) and that “regions with active or maturing space programs” are some of the most persistent “collectors” of sensitive radiation-hardened, or “rad-hard” microchips, an important component for satellites. And now with North Korea having successfully launched its first satellite, it’s worth taking a close look.
‘Pervasive’ Industrial Spying Targets U.S. Space Tech
Gravity Light
Simple and effective--genius!
...the lamp generates enough energy for half an hour of light when holding weight for just a few seconds. With no batteries to run out, replace or dispose of, GravityLight it is complete completely clean and green and the use of LEDs means they don’t attract annoying mosquitoes like conventional bulbs.
Hire or Get Hired
Success hinges on finding great people, but killer candidates can be nightmare employees, and duds can morph into your biggest stars. Here are the 3 biggest hiring mistakes to avoid...
...Ask any executive to give you a list of his or her greatest business challenges, and most will put finding talented people right at the top. After three years spent running my own startup, I can tell you it’s one of the things that keep my cofounders and me up at night.How To Hire Someone You Won't Regret In A Month
As an MBA candidate at Wharton, I’ve been fortunate enough to learn some of the hiring and interviewing methods used by the world’s most successful companies. These methods have been tested, refined, and proven effective over decades. But I didn’t have to take Wharton’s word for it. I recently implemented what I learned at my own company, and we immediately saw results. Read on for the three insights I’ve found the most valuable.
Fresh air in your cubicle and the conference room (video)
PNC Bank’s new global HQ in Pittsburgh is going to be a skyscraper like no other--including the ability to open your windows and even take an outdoor walk, no matter what floor you’re on.
The Breathing Office Building
Change or Die
Few aphorisms so pithily capture the ethos of contemporary technoscience. "Change or die" evokes the making of new technologies in an environment of rapid disruption. Entrepreneurial, goal-oriented research upends the administrative and financial structures of entire industries. Simultaneous advances in a diverse range of fields intersect to produce research opportunities and new markets. Hybrid teams of experts coalesce and dissolve across disciplinary, institutional, and national boundaries. The result is a chaotic engine of accelerating progress that brings great reward to the survivors. It is an expression of Darwinian logic that applies to economics, to knowledge making, and, most of all, to the knowledge workers charged with living in a state of creative flow.
The Atlantic
Ignatius on Torture
Mark Boal, screenwriter of the new movie “Zero Dark Thirty,” says he wanted to tell a story that conveyed the moral complexities of the hunt to kill Osama bin Laden. The debate already churning around the film shows that he and director Kathryn Bigelow succeeded in that, and much else...
...President Obama was right to ban torture, but the public must understand that this decision carries a potential cost in lost information. That’s what makes it a moral choice.
The moral choices on interrogations
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Gun Buyback Success
Research suggests that other than making people feel like they are doing good, gun buyback programs do not prevent gun violence. And according to Jon Vernick, professor at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and
Research, "there's no evidence linking them to a reduction in street crime"
But here is a recent example of a positive (albeit, unintentional) outcome of a gun buyback program:
But here is a recent example of a positive (albeit, unintentional) outcome of a gun buyback program:
Connecticut woman turns in a rare WWII German rifle at gun buyback.
Saturday, December 15, 2012
The Silence and the Drones
The Silence and the Drones:
The controversy of the American targeted-killing program, and especially the resurgence of covert paramilitary and military action, has inspired a great deal of concern about the accountability and oversight of America’s supposed new ways of war. Does the lack of risk they offer encourage the Congress, media, and public to stay silent? One of the most prominent scholars of military robotics, P.W. Singer, recently put out an article that reiterated an argument he makes about the decline in the accountability of American wars, as exemplified in the drone program:
The controversy of the American targeted-killing program, and especially the resurgence of covert paramilitary and military action, has inspired a great deal of concern about the accountability and oversight of America’s supposed new ways of war. Does the lack of risk they offer encourage the Congress, media, and public to stay silent? One of the most prominent scholars of military robotics, P.W. Singer, recently put out an article that reiterated an argument he makes about the decline in the accountability of American wars, as exemplified in the drone program:
The Fighting Irish (Civil War)
The Irish Brigade suffered the third-highest number of battlefield casualties of any Union brigade. Of the 7,715 men who served in its ranks, 961 were killed or mortally wounded, and approximately 3,000 were wounded. The number of casualties was more men than ever served in its ranks at any one time. As a testament to the Irishmen’s bravery, 11 of the unit’s members were awarded the Medal of Honor.NY Times
Friday, December 14, 2012
TMQ: Ravens
Tuesday Morning QuarterbackSweet 'N' Sour Plays No. 1: Washington trailed visiting Baltimore 28-20, and had third-and-5 on the Ravens' 11 with 36 ticks showing in what turned out to be regulation. Phenom RG III just left the game hurt. Fellow rookie quarterback Kirk Cousins saw a defense that was expecting a super-short pass from a confused rookie. Nine Baltimore defenders were close to the line of scrimmage, just two in the deep field. Washington sent out four receivers; Baltimore rushed four, meaning seven to cover four; both Baltimore cornerbacks were in man-on-man, meaning five Ravens to cover the other two receivers. Pierre Garçon ran a down-and-out, touchdown. Then, a surprise quarterback draw for two, the game heads to overtime and Washington victory. Tout sweet!Sour for Baltimore was that cornerback Chris Johnson, assigned to man coverage on Garçon, simply stood there and let him run past. Johnson was busy making the high school mistake of looking into the backfield trying to guess the play, rather than staying glued to his man. But check the opposite side! Josh Morgan ran a down-and-in, and also was open -- because cornerback Cary Williams was making the high school mistake of looking into the backfield trying to guess the play. Meanwhile, three Baltimore defensive backs are covering no one at all. Both Baltimore corners acted like they were in short zones, releasing deep routes to safeties; the other Baltimore defensive backs acted like the cornerbacks were supposed to be in man. Whomever screwed up -- tout sour.Buck-Buck-Brawckkkkkkk: Scoring to take a 27-20 lead at Washington with five minutes remaining in what turned out to be regulation, coach Harbaugh/East faced a choice go for two or do the "safe" thing. A 29-20 lead puts the Nevermores in command. Doing the safe thing creates a 28-20 lead and two chances to stop the Redskins -- stop a touchdown, or if they score six, stop a deuce. But is there much risk in going for two and failing? Then the Ravens lead 27-20. If the Skins score to pull within 27-26 in the closing seconds, odds are they will not go for two to win, rather, will do the "safe" thing and proceed to overtime.Harbaugh/East did the "safe" thing, took the 28-20 lead, then lost in overtime. If he'd gone for two and failed, he personally would have been blamed for the loss; as it is, Baltimore special teams are being blamed. Reader Michael Kendall of Oneonta, N.Y., points out that Harbaugh could have gone for two confident that even if the Ravens missed, Mike Shanahan would have been afraid to go for two at 27-26, because then he would have been blamed for a Redskins lose.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Napoleon's Defeat in Russia
History has taught us that Napoleon, in his invasion of Russia in 1812, marched into Moscow with his army largely intact and retreated only because the citizens of Moscow burned three-fourths of the city, depriving the army of food and supplies. The harsh Russian winter then devastated the army as it retreated. The Russians’ victory, commemorated by Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, was one of the great upsets of military history...
...What incredible circumstances could have caused the defeat of one of the greatest armies on the European continent, led by one of the greatest generals of all time?
81lb Airplane
A team of Yamaha motorcycle designers have put their experience to the test in a new field by developing an ultralight airplane that’s powered by a simple set of pedals – just like your bike! Constructed from superlight polystyrene and carbon fiber, the plane weighs only 81 pounds despite a wingspan of 117 feet. Encouraged by mostly successful test flights, Team Aeroscepsy will attempt to set a new world record by flying Gokurakutombo (which means “happy-go-lucky” – and apparently also “happy dragonfly” in Japanese) 75 miles over the Pacific Ocean.
GM Leadership
Peter Drucker, one of the great thinkers about how corporations really work, in describing the Generals Motors of the 1940s, mentions that 95 percent of all decisions were left to the heads of the company's various divisions. "Hence central management refrains as much as possible from telling a division how to do its job; it only lays down what to do."
TBD
Louis C.K. does Proust
The Emmy-winning comedian, writer, and director plumbs his own psychological depths only to discover how deeply he loves the president—and loathes questionnaires.
Vanity Fair
Conductive Tires
Researchers power EVs with electricity transmitted from the road to steel belts in tires
TechReview
Horses, Kit, and Google
Now, only six years later, the miracle innovation is arriving. It is not only feasible with today’s technology but is already being introduced commercially, right under our noses. There is little doubt it will be the biggest innovation in transportation since internal combustion itself. It is cars that drive themselves.
Freakonomics
Church and State
Last week, a fourth-year cadet at West Point packed his bags and left, less than six months shy of graduation, in protest of what he portrayed as a bullying, discriminatory religiousness at the military academy, which receives public funding.
The cadet, Blake Page, detailed his complaint in an article for The Huffington Post, accusing officers at the academy of “unconstitutional proselytism,” specifically of an evangelical Christian variety.
NY Times
Smoke Detector Safety
The National Fire Protection Association states that nearly two thirds of home fire-related deaths occurred in homes that were either without smoke alarms or had non-functioning units.
While ensuring your smoke detectors are in working order is of the utmost importance, can the type of smoke detector you have actually alert you sooner than others to an impending fire?
ITS Tactical
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Noah's Ark
For a new theme park, Creationists (with a little help from a geneticist, some Amish men, and generous tax breaks) are building a replica of Noah’s ark—exactly as God instructed.
The Atlantic
Fight Gun Violence with Guns?
There are an estimated 280 million to 300 million guns in private hands in America—many legally owned, many not. Each year, more than 4 million new guns enter the market. This level of gun saturation has occurred not because the anti-gun lobby has been consistently outflanked by its adversaries in the National Rifle Association, though it has been. The NRA is quite obviously a powerful organization, but like many effective pressure groups, it is powerful in good part because so many Americans are predisposed to agree with its basic message.
America’s level of gun ownership means that even if the Supreme Court—which ruled in 2008 that the Second Amendment gives citizens the individual right to own firearms, as gun advocates have long insisted—suddenly reversed itself and ruled that the individual ownership of handguns was illegal, there would be no practical way for a democratic country to locate and seize those guns.
The Atlantic
Alaska Crime Story
For Mr. Keyes, the superficial facade of an ordinary life as a construction contractor and family man concealed the dark and cold interior life no one ever saw of a roving serial killer, rapist, arsonist and bank robber.
NY Times
The Rise of Rage Against the Machine
Change was in the air on Election Day, November 3, 1992. Before the night was out, the nation elevated to its highest office former Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, a populist and activist who would transform the presidency, the Democratic Party, and the country over the next eight years. Earlier that day, accompanied by far less fanfare, something similarly transformative happened: The self-titled debut by a relatively unknown band called Rage Against The Machine hit the shelves.
AV Club
TAOM: The Manly History of Cribbage...
...and How to Play the Game:
“While I was sitting there thinking of how Bill was a major artist and how even the knots he tied were artistic, he had somehow got ahead of me in the cribbage game, at which he was a chump. At least, I was a lot better than he was at cribbage, once the favorite indoor pastime of the woods. We even played it outdoors, and often on the trail one of us would carry a deck of cards and a cribbage board in his pack sack, and in the middle of the morning and afternoon we would straddle a log and have a game.” -A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean
NYT: Extreme Obstacle Course Races...
...Forge a Bond in Mud and Guts:
Extreme obstacle course races are becoming the macho sport of choice for Type A cubicle-bound masses yearning to breathe free.
Robot Mercedes
Mercedes' Next Flagship Does the Commuting for You:
The 2014 Mercedes-Benz S-Class will drive itself in traffic, bend its light beams around oncoming cars, prevent you from taking out a cow and have pyrotechnically deployed seat belts.
Hilarious Headlines
a collection of newspaper headlines that don’t quite accomplish what the writer set out to accomplish. Anyone who has ever written or published anything can surely sympathize — and laugh.
Freakonomics
PopSci: Love Of Spicy Food...
...Is Built Into Your Personality:
Love of spicy food isn't just desensitization, or cultural upbringing--it also has ties to who you are.
When I was a kid, I'd watch in awe as my dad ate dinner. It wasn't just the heaps of food piled on his plate that impressed me. (The words "portion control" had yet to enter the public lexicon.) What always made me shake my head in disbelief was his curious habit of alternating bites of his meal with bites off a jalapeno pepper. To save time, he'd simply hold the pepper in one hand and his utensil in the other. I should also mention that my heritage is Indian, and that my mom served up traditional spicy dishes on a nightly basis. But it was never spicy enough for Dad.
Gordion Knot of TV
TV is a Gordian Knot. Even from the standpoint of the consumer, the world is fragmented and confusing. We watch everywhere–on our phones, our tablets, our computers, or TV sets. We use a plethora of apps. Some of us are cutting the cord, deeming TV-over-the-Internet sufficient for our needs. Yet there is a constant hunger to simplify and to consolidate, to bring all the pieces of TV under one umbrella. One of my favorite lines I came across about the TV space lately was this: that fragmentation itself had become fragmented.
The problem is, what looks like Gordian Knot to the consumer looks like an even more confusing Gordian Knot to the folks in the business world trying to cut it. Nilay Patel over at the Verge has a very thoughtful look at how Apple or another tech giant could remake television.
MIT Tech Review
West Point Code Shows Which Terrorists Should Disappear First
Death by Algorithm:
The U.S. military and intelligence communities like to congratulate themselves whenever they’ve taken out a terrorist leader, whether it’s Osama bin Laden or Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, the bloodthirsty chief of al-Qaida in Iraq. Shakarian, a professor at West Point’s Network Science Center who served two tours as an intelligence officer in Iraq, saw first-hand just how quickly those militant networks regrew new heads when the old ones were chopped off. It became one of the inspirations for him and his colleagues at West Point to craft an algorithm that could truly target a terror group’s weak points.
TBD: West Point: How about less engineering...
...and more emphasis on negotiating skills and strategic and cultural studies?
By Luke HutchisonBest Defense department of military education reformation
When West Point was founded over 200 years ago, it was created
to fix a key problem in the Army, the lack of officers with engineering
skills. Without officers who knew how to
build roads, construct forts and fire artillery accurately -- the Army would be
completely ineffective. With no engineering programs at other American
universities and a problem that required more than basic training, Colonel
Thayer set out to make a rigorous academic program based on an engineering
curriculum. Today, West Point needs to
assess just like Colonel Thayer did over 200 years ago, what is required of its
graduates so that they will best contribute to the common defense.
Jimmy Kimmel Thinks Like a Freak
Jimmy Kimmel Thinks Like a Freak:
Starbucks recently came out with an ultra-high end cup of coffee. Wondering whether that cup of coffee was really worth $7, Kimmel took to the streets and ran some experiments. He didn’t however, do what you might expect. Rather, he pulled a page out of the old wine tasting experiment I ran twenty years ago. It is definitely worth watching.
Starbucks recently came out with an ultra-high end cup of coffee. Wondering whether that cup of coffee was really worth $7, Kimmel took to the streets and ran some experiments. He didn’t however, do what you might expect. Rather, he pulled a page out of the old wine tasting experiment I ran twenty years ago. It is definitely worth watching.
Being Filthy Rich Doesn't Buy Happiness...
...But Raises Do:
Folks who aren't motivated by wealth will preach that money can't buy happiness. Any Googler who made millions when his company stock went public might disagree. No matter which side you stand on, a new study shows that money can buy happiness.But it’s not Powerball winnings or a huge stock cash-out that brings joy; it’s a steadily growing income.
Interview: James Dyson
Twenty years after he launched his business—now a multinational enterprise with nearly 4,000 employees and $1.5 billion in annual sales—Dyson, at 65, still radiates a nuclear inventor’s heat. He’s the Jobs and Wozniak of home appliances, equal parts designer, engineer, and marketer. Before alighting on the design for his first bagless vacuum in 1983, he spent five years in his coach house on a farm in the Cotswolds, building 5,127 prototypes. When Dyson talks about that time, he mostly recounts his failures—and lavishes praise on his wife, Deirdre, an artist who supported him through his obscurity. “A painting can take a year, so she understood the primeval need to have a project, and that it might take a rather long time.” Even now, as a knighted billionaire, Dyson is still trying to prove to the world that his devices are game-changers. He’s not satisfied to come up with products that are incrementally better. With every release, he insists on atomizing entire categories through simple, lethally effective innovation.
Wired
The Scorpion and The Tortoise (Turtle)
I've always loved this story but I've never heard it performed. The story starts around 4:40.
The performer is David Rakoff and the clip is from an episode of This American Life
The performer is David Rakoff and the clip is from an episode of This American Life
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
More on conuslting
Listen to the Freakonomics management consulting podcast and then read the follow-up post.
Consulting costs have become a fixed cost (like audit, or advertising). For the budgeting cycle, it is copy/paste to the next fiscal year x 103 percent to adjust for inflation.
Illicitation tricks from Dick Cavett
Conversations Are Better Than Interviews
Get Reluctant People Talking By Taking the Focus Off Them
Lead with Statements Instead of Questions
and others...
Monday, December 3, 2012
Design a billboard, get results
Despite the billboard’s deserved reputation as an environmental eyesore, it is, if executed well, one of the purest and most concise forms of communication that has ever existed. Creating a memorable and motivating piece of communication that has only a second or two to make an impact certainly requires both brevity and clarity of thought.
A highway billboard typically has only three elements: a headline, a visual, and a reason-to-believe or call to action.
To Promote a New Idea, Forget the PowerPoint--Try a BillboardI once worked in an organization that was constantly falling behind its biggest competitor. It seemed that every meeting eventually turned into a debate over how we could catch up. Many solutions were suggested and a few rose to the top.
Soon the organization's members started taking sides and groups formed aligning around their favorite solution. I ended up with the we-need-a-simple-memorable-slogan camp. You see, our competitor had a 5-10 word purpose statement that was prominently associated with everything they made or did.
The leaders in my camp felt that the slogan was the key to the competitor's success--not the words themselves but the culture around them. The simple but meaningful statement was a public manifestation of a singular focus and commitment to an organizational goal--the keys to their success.
My organization hadn't yet decided what it was and, more importantly, what it was not. As a result we wasted a lot of time and effort on stuff that we were never going to be good at.
I haven't thought about the debate in a while, but this article brought it back and in a greater context. And no there was no happy ending. As long as I was there none of the senior leaders ever committed to any solution so the organization is still working to find its way.
Delegate, Achieve More
...you need to focus only on the items that add the most value to your organization. In general, these are the things that you, and only you, are capable of doing. You should delegate the rest.
Fast Company: The Beauty of Effective Delegation
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