May 31, 2007

The Nebraska Model

TIME just published an interesting article about Nebraska's answer to No Child Left Behind.

They've bucked the trend of kow-towing to federal No Child Left Behind mandates for standardized, and many would say inferior, testing in favor of a more flexible, comprehensive, and bottom-up approach. That bottom-up part is the crux of the matter - I continually see systems designed top-down that are forced by their own need for uniformity into inflexibility that fosters resistance from users. In spite of the fact that organizations see and agree with the writing on the wall regarding information and communication technologies and networks, they betray their fundamental misunderstanding of them by using them only as larger and faster tools for gathering data or disseminating information using the same clunky hierarchical model.

Nebraska is essentially acting like any of the successful user-driven networks out there (flickr, deli.cio.us, Mozilla, etc.), communicating expectations, but then sitting back and letting good processes driven by smaller networks (in this cases school districts) percolate to the top. Add their QA methods which are both internally-reinforcing and externally-audited, and it sounds like it's a system that greatly outshines the lumbering NCLB it replaced.

May 30, 2007

fotD 14

This is a hybrid observation/cheer:

We're considering private Montessori school for our daughter. When I asked at each of the three schools about computer training, I was disappointed to find out that it is perfunctory at best. At the third, and otherwise best school, I couldn't have missed the administrator's condescension, as if I'd suggested we teach nothing but Intro to Excel at a liberal arts college.

None of the three seem to recognize the astonishing potential of information and communication technologies, and I fear they're inculcating their students with the same derision for them. I imagine kids being kids they'll get past a lot of that, but they'll also miss out on thinking about networks, peer to peer models, and information sharing if they only chat and go to myspace on their own. Every day I come across something that makes me wish I was in high school again, with nothing but time to explore this explosion of opportunity that is more and more truly only limited by one's imagination.

Regardless, I thought of this because flickr is down (I was going there to join a group based on Moo cards) and when I was directed to their blog for info I came across these stats that speak of nothing more than immersion:
  • Our networking gear moves 12,000 photos a second -- at peak, that's 2,654,208,000 bits each second (8:20 PM)
  • We set an all-time upload record yesterday: 2,070,075 photos in 24 hours! (8:40 PM)
  • The Flickrverse has 8.5 million registered members (9:00 PM)
And here's the fotD copied from that blog post. I'm looking forward to seeing the big version once flickr's back up:

May 23, 2007

Deja vu all over again

In case you're loosely following the dustup in Lebanon right now, hearing who's involved, and having trouble consistently fitting the players into our overall Middle East strategy vis a vis Iraq like I have been, read this post from Balloon Juice.
Assuming that invading Iraq had something to do with 9/11 (unlikely but hell, they all claim it does), that basically means that everything that we did since jilting the Afghan war went directly to serve not one but both of our major adversaries in the mideast, al Qaeda and Iran. We basically rewarded them for attacking us. Our leaders have pulled off a disaster hat trick that may yet put the Athenian Syracuse expedition to shame.
Our current policy is as quixotic and self-defeating as the worst of our Cold War decisions where we routinely supported very bad people who hated us because they partly fit into a certain geopolitical niche. It's obvious from decisions like these that there is no overall end goal and that we are most definitely on the defense, merely putting out spot fires while the entire forest readies to explode in our faces.

May 18, 2007

leaf blowers...

...the symbol of all that's wrong with us.

What a stupid tool. As loud as a jet-ski and their whole purpose is to move dirt from my area onto yours. One of my idiot neighbors is doing his impersonation of half the country by first blowing off his sidewalk and then taking the act down the driveway, into the street, and all the way across to the other side where he's blowing a bunch of dust out of the street into the other guy's yard. A perfect Rorshach for a society that can't be bothered to clean up after itself, preferring just to push the problem away.

Since when do we need machines to impose our crap on those around us? I wish we'd just fling it like chimps. At least then I could keep my windows open in the evening.

tl5

"A liberal man is too broad-minded to take his own side in a quarrel."

- Robert Frost

Aye, there's the rub.

GAME ON!

When there's no rule specifying email signature usage or format at work, some people add little quotes or if they're really gung ho (or in a position that requires they appear to be), the organization's motto (ours changes annually, and has been getting worse every year).

Some examples from my inbox:
"[our org name]… where customers drive!"

"From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free. " -Jacques Cousteau (1910-1997)

This year's motto (I swear this is actually posted after people's contact info):
It's all about our Customers
It happens because of our People
It happens in the Details
It happens with Fast Starts, Teamwork, and Precision
It only happens if we deliver

Deliver as Promised!
...Succinct, huh? We were going to get it printed on T-shirts, but no one is tall enough.

Because there isn't a bandwagon around that we won't perversely drive into a wall of immaturity, some of us have started a new game, involving ludicrous or undermining quotes, the higher-placed the recipient, the better. Who'll blink first?

Some early installments:
"It is only out of sheer morbid curiosity that I am allowing this freak show to continue."

"She's polishing the brass on the Titanic, man." -Tyler Durden

Please feel free to play amongst yourselves, spreading the happy light to all the dark corners of the world. (Hey, that's a good one! I'll have'ta try it.)

May 17, 2007

an excellent way to spend one's time

I've stopped taking the 'up' elevator at work. This, in addition to my walk to and from my car every day gives me an opportunity to read on my PDA. Sometimes I get lucky with the articles I glean and get something like this from Slate.

Three guys rode their bikes from eastern Europe to western China with a ridiculously small amount of cash in their pockets and not a ton of prior planning, it sounds like. Great ingredients for an adventure.

May 16, 2007

W. T. F?!

GM's rolling out the only Buick I would ever even consider buying. Unfortunately, I live in the U.S. where it won't be available.

Just for fun, read the below sentence from the Winding Road article and fill in the country name that I've removed. Are we talking about China or the US?
The Buick LaCrosse hybrid will be GM's first hybrid model available in ______, a land where the technology remains all but absent in production vehicles.

May 14, 2007

MAN I wish I had more time...

...especially when I see things like this.

Based on the couple of names in that list I recognize, and the general 'wow, never heard this before, but I LIKE it' quality of Pandora, I'd love to spend some time following those links and listening.
So what does an old company with a product that comprises 95% of one of its divisions do when faced with superior new technology and a lot of media exposure and supplier requests for it?

A smart company evaluates its place in the world, tweaks its strategy to address supply as demand creeps up, and hopes to stay ahead of the curve. A really smart company *cough*Phillips*cough* prepares to shift all its production away from its 95% gorilla to the new technology, integrates the shift with its overall strategy, and then lobbies to have the 95% gorilla outlawed, cutting similarly-placed but slower-moving competitors off at the knees.

Dumb companies amp up their ad budget, beg the President for subsidies, keep selling the gorilla, and get sold for $25B less than they were bought for a decade before.

A Tesla in every garage

$150M in the bank after another round of funding. C'mon, IPO... baby needs a new pair'a shoes!

The first production run has sold out, and orders are being taken for the 2008 model Roadsters. 2010 should see a sedan incorporating what's been learned which the rest of us can afford. The day will soon come when people hear the word 'Tesla' and picture neither Nikolai nor a really crappy hair band.

In case you've missed my previous posts on this car (Mal, I'm talking to you):
  • 100% electric
  • 0-60 in under 5 seconds
  • 200 miles per charge
  • less than 2 cents per mile
and it looks like this:


May 10, 2007

carpe yoko

There was a little park on a triangle-shaped block between my parking structure and my building; the area is laughably called Times Square. Typically Detroit-dingy, but with the spring came a good effort from the half a dozen or so very large trees that stood there. I never walked past the park until after they tore down the Lindell AC almost a year ago as I used to park on the opposite side of my building; but on sunny days you could see the green leaves high up, tucked back in there as it was.

When I first started making the walk that way, I frequently saw a guy pull up on a bike to a ratty-looking sapling at the north tip of the park, lean very close to the tree for a second, get back in his saddle, and ride away. He wasn't a jobless guy on a bike; he was the earnest bike-commuter type. After a few episodes wondering if he was kissing the tree I noticed that he was talking to it, just briefly. Once I realized that, the flashbulb went off and I noticed the large cut stone sitting in front of the tree. Almost the size of a park bench, which also sat in front of the tree. I don't know how I'd missed seeing it, but I had. There was a plaque on the north side of the stone that more or less said,

The Wish Tree
Whisper your wish into the bark of the tree.
- Yoko Ono, 1993
So this guy was really earnest. There couldn't have been that many wishes soaked into the bark of the forlorn, stripped little twig. Besides the cyclist, I only ever saw homeless sitting on a nearby bench, either staring silently or laughing with friends, and they didn't seem the Yoko-Ono-wishing types.
I thought the whole thing, in that crappy but green little place, was so earnest and absurd and anemic that I wanted to take a picture, but never got around to it. As tall posts for chain link were first bolted to the sidewalk across the street, then to the edge of the parking lot on the other side, and bollards were added to the south end of Times Square (seriously, it's not even square), I had to skirt farther away from the park, assuming that the new construction (a transit facility of some sort, to go with the People Mover station and depot already east of the park) was going to fill the block that used to hold Lindell, and that the construction equipment and inevitable porta-johns would probably tear up the grass a bit.
Not to worry. In a day, the workers had destroyed every tree there, and in one more, the lawn and broken little trisection of sidewalks were ripped out too. I couldn't see because of some equipment and mesh in the fence, but I imagine the sapling went the same way as must have the rock. Plenty of room for porta-johns now.
So what did they do with the rock? I don't care about Yoko Ono or her irrelevant art, but I can't help but wonder if any of the workers paused to notice its plaque if/as they scooped it up with a front-loader and dumped it on the rest of the debris, and I wonder what the cyclist kept wishing for.

May 8, 2007

Live Earth

LiveAid's all grown up. Huge list of bands. Not sure which makes me feel worse that I'm missing, this or Bonnaroo.

Your tax dollars at work, 2

This is so mind-boggling I had to share it. Awhile back I posted about the $5 fee I incurred through our online travel system to be reimbursed only $7. There was an email in my box this morning that details 'hidden' fees that evidently we've also unwittingly been charged for months now by this system. Given how much people in my organization travel and voucher for it (a LOT), I could only guess what this nationwide roll-out has netted for this 'provider.' Here's the redacted text of the email:

FEES, FEES, FEES... YOU GOTTA KNOW YOUR TRAVEL FEES!
While a $13.75 fee will automatically be generated and included when a voucher is created in the __ system, there are, unfortunately, a number of hidden fees that need to be accounted for when you travel and voucher through __. When filling out your voucher, it is your responsibility to include the following fees, where applicable:
1. _______ Fee* - If you are booking your trip through the __ travel system - eg. airline, hotel and/or rental car reservations - ___ will be charged a $4.50 fee. This fee does not show up anywhere, but you need to include this fee on your voucher as a separate line item. To do this, click on "Add Expense" at the bottom of the "Transportation and Other Expenses" page and follow the prompts.
2. Ad___ure Travel Fees - The following fees, if applicable, will appear on your Ad___ure Travel confirmation and need to be included on your voucher like the _____ Fee described above. Please look for them at the bottom and include them on your voucher.
$25.00 - Did you call Ad___ure Travel to make your domestic air reservation? If so, include this Full Service Domestic Fee.
$30.00 - Did you call Ad___ure Travel to make your international reservation? If so, include this Full Service International Fee.
$15.50 - Did you travel via Southwest or AirTran? Did you click on the Technical Assistance button on the website? If so, include this Technical Assistance Fee.
$5.75 - Did you book your airfare/hotel/car online at the same time? If so, include this Electronic Booking Fee.
$3.50 - Did you only book your hotel online? If so, include this Hotel Only Electronic Booking Fee.
$6.50 - Did you call Ad___ure Travel to make your hotel reservation only? If so, include this Hotel Only Full Service Fee.
$2.50 - Did you only book your car rental online? If so, include this
Car Only Electronic Booking Fee.
$5.50 - Did you call Ad___ure Travel to make your car rental reservation only? If so, include this Car Only Full Service Fee.
$3.00 - Did you request a paper ticket? If so, include this Paper Ticket Service Fee. (This should rarely occur.)

EXAMPLES: If you make all of your reservations online, you will incur and need to voucher only the $4.50 _______ and the $5.75 Electronic Booking Fee.If you call in to make a reservation, you will incur and need to voucher the $25.00 Full Service Domestic
Fee.

Remember, if you make any reservations online, you MUST include the $4.50 _______ Fee and then whichever Ad___ure Travel Fees apply, if any.

I was just notified that every time we mention the provider's name in casual conversation, we have to mail them $10, so I've deleted all references to them above. This little blog just can't afford the overhead.

I especially enjoyed the tone with which this was all delivered. 'Hey, it looks like we and the taxpayer will be getting royally screwed to use a system that doesn't work as well as the one it replaced, and we thought you should know all about how much it will cost, but really you can't do anything to change or avoid the situation so there you are. And if where you are isn't where you live, that'll cost $20. One more thing: the system doesn't work well enough to know when you've accumulated those fees, so you have to add them on yourself.'

* - This redacted name is very odd - it's pretty much a surname - the owner of the company?

May 5, 2007

It's about time...

...someone recognizes my far-from-averageness.

When I checked my friends section of Netflix, it told me that a friend and I "liked Brokeback Mountain a lot more than most people. You're definitely far from average!"

*all warm and fuzzy and Sally-Field-ish* They noticed!

I suppose this kind of clumsy pandering is inevitable as orgs try to push the data they have through limited utilities to make me feel both good about myself and grateful to them for noticing. Look for more along the lines of:

"You put 'Infinite Jest' in your wishlist! Everyone thinks you're really smart!" - Amazon

"We see that you bought that one and only super popular song from the White Stripes and the rest are teenage bubblegum from the 90s: everyone is secretly jealous of you. Would you like free podcasts from Mitt Romney?" - Apple

"You surf more porn than a 14-year-old boy on a snow day. You... are a total... stud." - Google

May 4, 2007

I love this game

Now you're getting socked, by Natalie Dee

I didn't realize this would be NNUTS2.

Whoah.

I'm not even a gaming-guy (made evident by my very use of the phrase 'gaming-guy'), but this makes my pulse race. I know a few people who will positively fall over at the thought of it.
But I can say (because this feature has been discussed) that the one thing that completely blew me away (aside from the graphics, animation, level design and new vehicles and weapons) was the ability to record a game and play it back on Xbox Live, freezing the action at any point and flying around the scene, Matrix style.

This type of capability will fit in nicely with a trend I read about awhile ago of movie theaters using their screens and size to host gaming, XBox, MMORPG, and otherwise. And think of the ramifications once people comfy with this idea talk to the young guns in movie production. Fight or battle scenes won't be choreographed so much as played out, any number of times, to find the perfect representation (4D rendering, if you will) that can then be jiggered into film-quality footage. It sends the creative mind reeling with possibilities.

Oh... and it's already been named. Machinima. This just became my NNUTS2 entry.

Rethinking our strategies

How is it that the administration hit a home run with their strategy for one department (Homeland whatever) but completely forgot how well that strategy worked when it could've been used in another one (Defense)? Defective Yeti gets it:
The US says it has killed yet another "senior al-Qaida leader". Not bin Laden, someone a few boxes down on the org chart.

You can tell that the folks running this war have spent their entire lives in politics or the military. If they had spent some time in the business world, they'd know that the quickest way to cripple an organization is to increase its ranks of middle-management, not thin them.

Instead of firing laser-guided missiles at these guys, we should be sending them laser pointers and complementary copies of Powerpoint.

a fast breeze up yer kilt

Sweet. From one great movie to what I hope will be another.

Skirting below the blockbuster radar, a movie called The Flying Scotsman about Graeme Obree, the Scot who out of the blue destroyed the one-hour record as an amateur in 1993. I first heard about him in Outside Magazine. Seems his motivation for riding was that it was pretty much the only thing keeping him sane.

I was trying to place where I'd seen Jonny Lee Miller, the star, before, but IMDB beat me to it - Sick Boy in Trainspotting, another all-time favorite.

May 1, 2007

There's a worm in my apple

...or, Two darlings of my crowd fall short

The board of directors of Apple, Inc. unanimously voted April 16th to reject two proposals that call on Apple to strengthen their policies on toxic chemical use and ewaste recycling. One of those board members is Al Gore.

Even as other computer companies have started to address the waste problems inherent in rapid hardware obsolescence and the chemicals and heavy metals used in their products, Apple has dug in its heels, earning itself a 2.7 out of 10 points in a recent Greenpeace study. You can say, sure, this is Greenpeace we're talking about, the folks that drive Zodiacs in front of whaling harpoons and all that, but Dell and the majority of other companies surveyed scored a 5 or higher. So why not Apple, embraced as a quintessential new economy company? They even tout their store's green roof (in Chicago or NY?) - given their persistent support of irresponsible dumping is that mere green wash?

And what in the world is Gore's motivation? It's easy to brush off the squawking finger-pointing of the naysayers toward his 50 gajillion-square-foot house that has a larger carbon footprint than mine; really rich people have big houses, after all, and he probably runs a number of organizations out of his, as well as using it as a convention center. But how could Mr. Green justify the inconvenient fact that he just voted down these two proposals, especially after he promised last year to help strengthen Apple's environmental policies?

I hope we will hear more on this - Steve Jobs will be making an announcement before this month's shareholders' meeting, but given his board's vote, it likely won't be good. Why hasn't a company that basically transformed its core skill into design rather than computing used the environmental challenge to showcase its design skills, when that's a growing industry ripe for the domination?

...and Wolfy got to run the World Bank

Four years ago, today.

Since then:
  • "A State Department report on terrorism due out next week will show a nearly 30 percent increase in terrorist attacks worldwide in 2006 to more than 14,000, almost all of the boost due to growing violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. officials said Friday."
Analysis:

"You're doing a helluva job, Bushie!"