Do You Think Facebook and Twitter are Examples of Innovation That Matters? Think Again!

Watch, learn what innovation and the human intellect can do.  (And do NOT stop before the end!).

The Ugly Pus of the Bush II Dynasty Starts to Ooze

Some of the really ugly aspects of the Bush II realm are starting to emerge finally, and they are presenting the Obama administration with some ugly choices in some areas because the administration is basically bound to defend the acts of prior administrations in most cases. 

One of the ugliest is the CIA's "role" in the Bush-era war on terror, which paints neither the US government, nor the CIA in particular in a particularly flattering light.

Out There

If you have not run into his work previously, Chris Hadfield is a Canadian astronaut who fulfilled his childhood dream with two shuttle missions and has the talent and more importantly the personal insight to share with us what it is like.  If you are not among the 21 million plus viewers, here is his cover of David  Bowie's Space Oddity - it was filmed on a shuttle mission, then the music track added after he returned.



There is another video though that shows his real thoughts and values to us.  It is a TED Talk and he goes into a lot of what it is like to perform this unnatural act of space flight, enjoy the unusual splendor of it all  --- and then have a potentially catastrophic event happen "up there".

I dare you not to get chills during the launch sequence at 3:10, or to not think just a bit differently about things (like the universe) when he describes "looking down at the rest of everything" at 7:40.

The Beginning...No I Mean the REAL Beginning!

This is getting close to some pretty incredible stuff.  One of the basic problems/quests of astrophysics has been to discover evidence of the theorized "Big Bang" birth of the universe.  It looks like now they are a big step closer (sorry any Bible-thumping "the world is only 6000 years old and probably flat" types):




If you have seen "Close Encounters of The Third Kind"...yes, this is also evidence that Einstein was "one of them".

To H**l with SATs, ACTs, Give Me Thinkers!!

There is a lot of fluff flying about as to redoing the SATs and possibly the ACTs in reaction to that. The SAT's decision to do away with the essay portion of the tests is possibly the most colossally stupid move that they could have made. 

I swear...I would like to take all of these "universal test" organizations into a waterproof room and then fill it with water!.   They are SO out of touch with the real world.

I have been involved in hiring on and off for the last decade either as an advisor to a hiring manager or a hiring manager myself.  And I can tell you plainly, I have never been so disappointed with the candidates presented to me.   I mean, most recruiters are absolutely, completely worthless, lets face facts - it is an easy field to get into and you don't even have to really understand who you are recruiting.

But the candidates they do send are even worse.  We live in a flat world which is a world of ideas which people much smarter than me have written about. 

We live in a world where ideas are really the only marketable item for the future...and  our college graduates cannot express their ideas in any intelligible format (believe me I have tried to extract/read them).  

If you have the greatest idea in the world you have to be able to intelligently express it, support it, and define it in terms the world will understand and accept.  

Facebook/Twitter ain't going to make it folks....