Invention: Self-Stirring Pot

Another addition to the list, Beautifully Simple Things I wish I had Thought Of (and that will probably make an enormous amount of money, a la Spanx):

Self-Stirring Whirlpool Pot

The Man's Library

100 Must Read Books: The Essential Man's Library (from The Art of Manliness)

I haven't reviewed the whole list yet but most of the ones you would expect are on it. I hope that it also reveals some hidden gems.

College Value, Part 2

In part one, we heard from Frank Bruni of the NY Times. Now, the engineers are speaking out. In IEEE's Tech Talk blog Prachi Patel asks, Is College a Good Investment?

Does it make economic sense to invest in a college degree? If you’re studying engineering or can get yourself into a private research university, especially an Ivy League school, the answer is a whopping ‘Yes!’... On average, engineering schools had ROIs of $603,362, more than double that for liberal arts schools ($245,943), and more than triple that of business schools ($141,014).

Emergency Get Home Bag

If you are stranded on a deserted island after a 3-hour-tour-gone-wrong, this bag probably won't help. But if your adventures are less 1960's sitcomy it might be a good idea.

Frank Deford, Sportswriter

I have always enjoyed Frank Deford's weekly radio commentary on NPR but I had no idea he has written, or done, so much.

Video: Civilization

In the tradition of Connections and American Experience PBS is airing Civilization: The West and The Rest, a companion TV series to Niall Ferguson's popular book by the same name.
If you are interested but don't have an hour, the author's TED talk (also an internet hit) hits all the high points.   

Rangers Lead The Way!

infidelsincorporated.com

Somehow this story flew under the Tako radar, but thankfully friend of the blog JR sent it over.

Army leaders have begun to study the prospect of sending female soldiers to the service’s prestigious Ranger school — another step in the effort to broaden opportunities for women in the military.

Leadership Lessons from Ike

The Art of Manliness: Leadership Lessons from Dwight D. Eisenhower #1: How to Build and Sustain Morale

Dwight D. Eisenhower had unarguably one of the longest and most taxing leadership roles in American history. For two decades, the lives of thousands, sometimes millions, of people and the fate of great nations hung on his decisions.
As Supreme Allied Commander during World War II, Eisenhower oversaw the greatest amphibious assault in history, organizing the largest air and sea armadas ever assembled and commanding 160,000 men in the momentous Operation Overlord.
After the success of that mission helped bring the war to a close, Eisenhower dreamed of going home to a happy and peaceful retirement. Instead, he went on to serve in five more globally pivotal positions: Head of the American Occupation Zone in Germany, Chief of Staff, president of Columbia University, Supreme Commander of NATO, and President of the United States of America.

States approve AVs

California is now the second state to make legal room for autonomous vehicles. 2 down, 48 to go.

Protect your Time

Good advice from Eli Broad: "Let's move on."

Time is the most valuable thing you have--and I’m not just talking about the minutes for which you’re paid. 

I try to be in control of all of my time--from the first hours after I wake, to the slower hours before bed, to all those little minutes that get eaten up by idle chatter during meetings. Being stingy with your time is the key to working 24/7 but still getting 8 hours of sleep, as I do almost every night. 

The best way to take control of your time is to know what you must do.
Thinking that everything is important, that every request from other people has to be answered with a yes, will make 24 hours seem inadequate. In fact, there are very few things that you truly have to do. This category should include only the things that make you run--the things you couldn’t live or work without. Nothing else comes close to being crucial.

Military-Business Cooperation

ThreatPost: U.S. Cyber Command Using Classified Intel To Scare CEOs To Action

The U.S.'s Cyber Command is using special, classified briefings with private sector CEOs to scare them into greater vigilance about the threat of cyber attacks

 This is a big step in the right direction for an inclusive and layered national defense.

Wise Browsing

Wired: How to Use the Internet Wisely, for Your Health and Your Country's

There's a lot of bad information out there online. This guide can help you avoid the crap and become a savvier citizen of our digital age.

The War is older than the Soldiers

The newest troops to deploy to Afghanistan can barely remember 9/11.

The newest wave of troops hitting the Afghan battlefields are 19 or 20 years old, meaning they were roughly between 8 and 10 when al Qaeda crashed planes into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. The fourth- and fifth-graders knew something big had happened but were often unable to understand why it mattered until years later. Such a mismatch hasn't happened since the country was founded, largely because its greatest wars have tended to be brief interludes, not semipermanent features.

Computers Do Lie

Two recent cases of banking IT errors illustrate the pitfalls of a computerized world. But what should be more concerning is the fact that the experts don't understand the errors.
Computers are making millions of decisions on their own and when they make a mistake we don't understand them enough to fix it.
Scary.

Bilingual is Better

A new study on the Benefits of Being Bilingual finds that in addition to being able to eavesdrop on unsuspecting strangers' conversations, being bilingual is very handy.  

-a team of psychologists led by Boaz Keysar at the University of Chicago found that forcing people to rely on a second language systematically reduced human biases, allowing the subjects to escape from the usual blind spots of cognition. In a sense, they were better able to think without style.

-The scientists also found that thinking in a second language reduced our cognitive inconsistencies.

-Nevertheless, learning how to cope with this constant interference – having to toggle back and forth between different forms of description – comes with lasting benefits.

Being able to communicate and relate to an entire group of people different from your own is pretty good to.

 

The Future (of cyber crime) is Now

It's not just your personal data that needs protecting, now your ideas are vulnerable too. Why steal a bank account number or diamonds from a jewelry store when you can steal a Billion dollar idea?

Kickstarter Data Breach Publishes 70,000 Startup Ideas

Be Active

healthveda.com

It doesn't take much to be healthy says Gretchen Reynolds, the author of “The First 20 Minutes: Surprising Science Reveals How We Can Exercise Better, Train Smarter, Live Longer,’’

Solar Powerhouse

Why SolarCity is succeeding in a difficult solar industry: The secret is using existing technology (from Technology Review)

After a steady stream of bankruptcies, poor earnings reports, and canceled IPOs for clean-energy companies, this week SolarCity bucked that trend by announcing that it had filed the necessary paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an IPO.

The key difference between SolarCity and many other clean-energy startups is that it isn't trying to take on incumbents with new technology. It makes money by deploying existing solar technology with a novel approach to financing...

Education Reform: MOOCs II

Harvard and MIT have jumped on the MOOC bandwagon and new startups are starting up everyday. 

"I believe we can work with a billion people around the world and change education in a fundamental way as it really hasn’t changed in 1,000 years," Anant Agarwal, who stepped down as head of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab to take the reins of edx, tells Fast Company.

The new nonprofit venture, dubbed edx, pours a combined $60 million of foundation and endowment capital into the open-source learning platform first developed and announced by MIT earlier this year as MITx.

Policing or War?

Richard Betts (via Abu Muqawama) on the difference: 

Some attempts to use force in this multilateral and limited manner – such as in the second phase of the Somalia intervention in 1993, “pinprick” punishments in Bosnia before 1995, or the initial assault on Serbia in 1999 – proved ineffectual and surprisingly costly. This was because the U.S. and NATO forces found themselves acting not as police suppressing individuals or small groups, but in acts of war, confronting organized mass resistance by force of arms. This was discomfiting to those who unleash force for humanitarian reasons because they do not like the idea of killing people and breaking things even for good purposes. They hope for clean application of force without casualties, or at least combat in which only the guilty are destroyed and large numbers of civilian deaths are an aberration.