Blog Posts

All my blog posts and articles

Page 55 of 142 (2823 total posts)

April 2013

We’re not going back to the moon

This is kind of depressing, but I don’t know why – but NASA administrator Bolden says that NASA has no plans to lead another mission to the moon within our lifetime: > “However, he made it clear NASA has no plans to lead its own human return to the Moon under his watch. “NASA will not take the lea...

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Control the Sun, really

Control The Sun! As you know, I am teaching a course at Olin College this spring – alas we are coming to the end. Anyway an important component has been a Lean Startup project, where students take invent a product and take it through a complete Lean Startup validation. Among many things that students do is to ‘go outside the building’ to validate their businesses. Do me a great favor and help a team of students validate their idea,“Sunrise Blinds”, and answer this super easy questionnaire!

Friedman, mentioning Olin College: again about inventing your own job

Tom Friedman, quoting Tony Wagner, describes what he thinks should be taught today (that isn’t really being taught:) > ““Today,” he said via e-mail, “because knowledge is available on every Internet-connected device, what you know matters far less than what you can do with what you know. The capac...

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March 2013

Olin College of Engineering

I don’t know if I mentioned that I’m teaching Engineering Entrepreneurship at Olin. What a cool school! While the two course have existed at Olin, I was asked to re-invent...

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Practice makes perfect?

I am (after 10 years) a beginner pianist who wants to improve. I practice, but not diligently enough. On average I think I practice 5 days a week, for about 1/2 hour, so that’s less than 3 hours a week. Clearly I could do better. But I...

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Who sets the price for Über rides?

I’ve used the now-famous internetty car service Über a couple of times. The prices for the two rides I took were about 20-25% more expensive than taxis. Which made me **wonder about how th...

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Sage on the e-stage?

There are fascinating shifts going on in higher education today, from MOOCs to the ‘flipped classroom’. A lot of action. I think we are looking at another text-book “Innovator’s Dilemma” scenario playing out: The established players (traditional universities), aware of a new way of delivering their...

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It’s very hard to know what’s true about government spending

I saw this in the Boston Globe this morning and I jotted it down because yet again a bit of totally counterintuitive and confusing info:  > “It is not like we have Soviet tank divisions at the German border poised to launch a sneak ­attack,” said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, an indep...

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LinkedIn invites are flooding in?!

I don’t know what’s going on, am I suddenly famous? LinkedIn invites are picking up. I think it’s more likely that LinkedIn has come up with a clever way to encourage people to link to others. I don’t know, but I am receiving LinkedIn invites, from people I never heard of before, and from other cities and even countries. Whatever, first I was feeling important, now I am starting to feel a little besieged!

February 2013

US Politics don’t have a left?

An interesting international perspective on politics: > “…So, believe me, US politics don’t have a Left. Looking at the presidential candidates, I am frankly appalled. None of them would be a viable politician in Sweden. They all support the death penalty, none advocates strict gun control and all make frequent mention of their religious beliefs in public. These are extremist stances. Not even the tiny Christian Democrat party mentions God publicly in Sweden, for fear of alienating the pragmatic rationalist majority….” (from Aardvarchaeology)

Aaron Swartz: continuing developments

In the continuing stories around Aaron Swartz and events that led to his tragic suicide recently: > “Many people speculated throughout the whole ordeal that this was a political prosecution, motivated by anything/everything from Aaron’s effective campaigning against SOPA to his run-ins with the FB...

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Yay! Coffee is good for me (again)

Well these stories appear from time to time, either saying it’s good or bad for you. What’s an addict to do? > “Coffee isn’t just warm and energizing, it may also be extremely good for you. In recent years, scientists have studied the effects of coffee on  various aspects of health and their results have been nothing short of amazing.” (from Lifehacker)

Kluge: Is that an obsolete term?

I was amazed today when in a group of 25 undergraduate engineering students, only three had heard the word kluge. When I explained what it was, it still did not ring a bell. When I asked how they refer to an ugly, clunky, scotch-taped solution, inelegant and embarrassing, but which basically works, they came up with “hack”. Query: Is the word “kluge” becoming obsolete among the geek community?