Page 58 of 141 (2810 total posts)
06/30 [EDUCATION] Is the innovators’ dilemma coming to higher ed? — An interesting fact: > “In the last years of the nineteenth century, Charles Dow created an index of 12 leading industrial companies. Almost none of them exist today….[…]… Four years after Dow invented his average, a group of 14 leading research institutions created the Association of American Uni...
06/15 Carrots vs. Sticks in affecting behavior — Instead of charging extra (‘congestion pricing’) to drive your car during rush hour, how about giving me a reward (a lottery ticket) for driving using less congested routes? That’s a clever idea that is being tested by a Stanford professor: > “[…]So this spring, with a $3 million research grant fr...
05/29 Happy Manhattanhenge — ManhattanSunset SmallToday (May 29) is Manhattenhenge. One of two days every year when sunrise and sunset are exactly aligned with the Manhattan (New York City, New York, USA) street grid. Just a fun fact.  > *“What will future civilizations thin...
05/28 Memorial Day — LastNightTogether “It is impossible to be unmoved by the juxtaposition of the eternal stone-faced warrior and the disheveled modern military wife-turned-widow, him rigid in his dress uniform, her on the floor in her blanket nest, wearing glasses and a baggy T-shirt, him nearly concealed by shadow while the pale blue light from the computer screen illuminates her like God’s own grace.” (from At War Blog)
05/27 What’s all the fuss about Facebook’s IPO? — I totally agree with Frank Bruni’s account of the Facebook’s IPO. It seems to me that if the current price of FB is pretty close to the offering price, then the bankers were doing their job. I mean, as I see it, their job is to open the stock at a price that’s as close as possible to it’s true pric...
05/25 [EDUCATION] Sign of change in the universe — I would love to see this trend accelerate: > “The five-year-old [Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship] program, [Wake Forest University’s]  most popular minor, requires students to learn the practical aspects of starting a business. It is a sign of change in liberal-arts colleges, which are...
05/16 Mark Twain: All Ideas are Second-Hand — I have often been heard to say: “Ideas are Cheap”, by which I mean to say that my admiration goes more with the implementation, the making real and tangible, of an idea than the idea itself. It’s much easier to come up with something that would be cool and useful (“A solar powered ambulance”, “a ret...
05/15 Social Networks: Good or Bad? — I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading about social networks in preparation for the 2012 edition of my Brandeis University Course, “Web and Social Applications“. This morning I was preparing lecture notes for “Current Issues In Social Networks”....
05/06 Field Of Dreams: Americans Elect — Americans Elect got Tom Friedman to endorse their effort to get a third party presidential ballot in November. He wrote about it and convinced me too that it was a good idea. A month or two ago I started having misgivings and now, it seems like things are really turning sour for Americans Elect.  A...
05/05 Warning Facebook users: Socialcam is dangerous — On Facebook you may see something like “George Harrison is watching a video on Socialcam” followed by a video. Beware because if you watch that video by clicking on it, ALL your friends will now see that you watched it too. On two occasions in the last few weeks, some pretty embarassing videos were watched by otherwise highly respectable people. Funny.
05/03 Funny: Are computers boys or are they girls? — A SPANISH Teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine. ‘House’ for instance, is feminine: ‘la casa.’ ‘Pencil,’ however, is masculine: ‘el lapiz.’ A student asked, ‘What gender is ‘computer’?’ Instead of giving the answer...