Monday, June 29, 2009

Ideas that Stick

One of those "everyone should read books". I am ristening to it again after about 2 years and it is just as good.

FORA.tv: "Chip Heath is a Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. His research examines why certain ideas - ranging from urban legends to folk medical cures, from Chicken Soup for the Soul stories to business strategy myths - survive and prosper in the social marketplace of ideas. These 'naturally sticky' ideas spread without external help in the form of marketing dollars, PR assistance, or the attention of leaders."


Sunday, June 28, 2009

Hulu's Overrated Web Design (NWS, DIS, GE)

Of course this is the case. If they don't like the show, they are not going to watch it. So, the even a little thought would suggest that this would be true: (From Clusterstock)

Hulu's Overrated Web Design (NWS, DIS, GE):
"Almost every show on Hulu that's been watched much at all has a rating between four and five stars. The user-ratings are a pointless, cluttering feature."

Thursday, June 25, 2009

1984 at Sixty

PatriotPost.US:
"George Orwell’s brilliant, bitter novel turns 60 this month, but after all these years it has lost none of its nightmarish chill.....“Nineteen Eighty-Four’’ was Orwell’s warning of what unchecked state power can become - a warning informed by the horrors of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, with their contempt for human life and conscience, their cult of personality, their unremitting cruelty and deceit. “I do not believe that the kind of society I describe necessarily will arrive, but I believe . . . that something resembling it could arrive,’’ Orwell wrote after the book was published. “I believe also that totalitarian ideas have taken root in the minds of intellectuals everywhere, and I have tried to draw these ideas out to their logical consequences."

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Freeways Without Futures | Congress for the New Urbanism

Sometimes deconstruction may be more economical than construction. Here is a list of 10 highways that we may be better off without. (of local interest? the Skyway in Buffalo made the list).

Freeways Without Futures | Congress for the New Urbanism:
"The “Freeways Without Futures” list recognizes the top-ten locations in North America where the opportunity is greatest to stimulate valuable revitalization by replacing aging urban highways with boulevards and other cost-saving urban alternatives. The list was generated from an open call for nominations and prioritized based on factors including the age of the structure, redevelopment potential, potential cost savings, ability to improve both overall mobility and local access, existence of pending infrastructure decisions, and local support."


HT to Clusterstock's Business Insider.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Interesting local history article

The Olean Times Herald has an interesting piece on Hinsdale. BE sure to check it out

"In the mid-1800s, Hinsdale was bigger than Olean,” Mrs. Dutton said.

According to the 1850 census, Hinsdale had a population of 1,302, a total of 403 more people than Olean.....The 1860 census indicated Hinsdale had a population of 1,708 people, a town still on the rise, Mrs. Dutton said."
and later:
"DUTCH HILL WAR: In June 1844, the only agrarian war to be fought in the history of Cattaraugus County was waged within the borders of Hinsdale, Mrs. Dutton said.

Agents of Holland Land Co. were looking to evict Jacob and George Learns, brothers who lived in Hinsdale, for defaulting on land payments, an undated news article from the time reported.

“The sheriff (George W. White) and six deputies began to remove the brothers’ belongings,” Mrs. Dutton said.

The seven men were surrounded by a mob of 150 farmers, some dressed as Indians, the article reads. The sheriff and his men retreated and Mr. White was beaten by the mob."
Cross-posted on ParkandShop.Blogspot.com and RandomTopics2.blogspot.com

German authorities warn of swine flu mutation risk | Health | Reuters

This could be really bad:

German authorities warn of swine flu mutation risk | Health | Reuters:
"Germany's federal agency for infectious diseases said on Tuesday there were signs the H1N1 swine flu virus had started to mutate and warned it could spread in the coming months in a more aggressive form.

Experts were concerned about how the flu was developing in Australia and South America, said Joerg Hacker, head of the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases."

Isolated Forest Patches Lose Species, Diversity

Isolated Forest Patches Lose Species, Diversity:
"A new study is revealing that decades of fragmentation of Wisconsin's forests have taken a largely unseen toll on the sustainability of these natural ecosystems.

The long generation times of trees and other plants have masked many of the ecological changes already under way in the patches of forest that remain, says study co-author Don Waller, a professor in the Department of Botany and Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at UW-Madison. 'Things may look healthy, but over time we see an erosion of biodiversity,' he says."

Friday, June 19, 2009

Jury rules against Minn. woman in download case - Yahoo! Finance

Wow...$80,000 per song?

Jury rules against Minn. woman in download case - Yahoo! Finance:
"A replay of the nation's only file-sharing case to go to trial has ended with the same result -- a Minnesota woman was found to have violated music copyrights and must pay huge damages to the recording industry.

A federal jury ruled Thursday that Jammie Thomas-Rasset willfully violated the copyrights on 24 songs, and awarded recording companies $1.92 million, or $80,000 per song."

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Wish Fulfillment? No. But Dreams (and Sleep) Have Meaning - TIME

Wish Fulfillment? No. But Dreams (and Sleep) Have Meaning - TIME:
"REM sleep appears to not only improve our ability to identify positive emotions in others; it may also round out the sharp angles of our own emotional experiences. Walker suggests that one function of REM sleep — dreaming, in particular — is to allow the brain to sift through that day's events, process any negative emotion attached to them, then strip it away from the memories. He likens the process to applying a 'nocturnal soothing balm.' REM sleep, he says, 'tries to ameliorate the sharp emotional chips and dents that life gives you along the way.'"

Richard St. John: "Success is a continuous journey" | Video on TED.com

Richard St. John: "Success is a continuous journey" | Video on TED.com:
"Richard St. John reminds us that success is not a one-way street, but a constant journey. He uses the story of his business' rise and fall to illustrate a valuable lesson -- when we stop trying, we fail."


Interview: Nate Hagens

This video has been around for a while, but definitely worth watching... fascinating and horrifying.

Interview: Nate Hagens: "Nate Hagens from The Oil Drum answers questions on people's acceptance of peak oil, its seriousness, EROEI, the credibility of biofuels and the role of the market."

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Iran Post election fighting

Tehran 24 blog:
"Police forces attack to people that protested the re-election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Angry people in many points of Tehran fired buses and police motorcycles and cars and fall into conflict with Special Police Forces."

Twitter is again changing how we learn of the world and I was up late last night watching TwitterFall on it. It was/is beyond fascinating (although the speed of new information seems to have slowed). Try it for just #iranelections here: twitterfall.

Actually pretty amazing. Yes you get much garbage and repetition as it is unfiltered and unedited, but very impressive on sheer information.

Some of the better people to follow for information on Iran on Twitter seem to be (again it is hard to verify)

Although these change regularly. If you have a good one, let me know

My favorite line from last night has to be : from @ravenb
"We're watching democracy in action & history in the making,which is at once inspiring yet heartbreaking."

A video:




Another UNEDITED Video: from an Iranian Neighborhood.

Andrew Sullivan writing for the Atlantic has also been absolutely on top of this with a good mix of "currentness" and
BTW if you want background on the elections from before the election, try here from MSNBC.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

The 10 Most Common Failures of Bad Leaders :: The Daily Stat :: June 4, 2009 :: HarvardBusiness.org

The 10 Most Common Failures of Bad Leaders :: The Daily Stat :: June 4, 2009 :: HarvardBusiness.org:
"JUNE 4, 2009 The 10 Most Common Failures of Bad Leaders: After scrutinizing 360-degree feedback data on over 11,000 leaders and evaluating the 10% considered the least effective, Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman found the 10 most common leadership shortcomings"

Friday, June 12, 2009

Can Small Changes Save Your Business, and the Planet? - Andrew Winston - HarvardBusiness.org

Can Small Changes Save Your Business, and the Planet? - Andrew Winston - HarvardBusiness.org:
"So go after disruptive innovations that radically change how you do things and leapfrog the competition. But at the same time, pursue the quick incremental wins — they may add up to something much more."

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Was There Really a Hawthorne Effect in the Original Hawthorne Studies? - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com

Was There Really a Hawthorne Effect in the Original Hawthorne Studies? - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com:
"We find that there actually wasn’t a Hawthorne Effect in the original data, at least not of the sort that you read about in virtually every introductory psychology textbook, where it is claimed that the workers’ output went up every time the lighting was changed, whether the change was to make the lights brighter or dimmer.

The Economist magazine has a nice piece on it."

Not totally sure why this is new. I know my professors (Kevin Murphy who then taught at the Simon School of the University of Rochester specifically) taught us that it never existed.

Monday, June 08, 2009

The New Presumption of Transparency - WSJ.com

The New Presumption of Transparency - WSJ.com:
"We live in a new era, as seen in such varied efforts to suppress information as expense fiddling by British parliamentarians, Beijing's censorship of Tiananmen Square, and libel laws that deter reporting on terrorism. A growing list of institutions and countries find themselves on the wrong side of this shift in expectations. Information that was once locked away is fair game, and anyone who refuses to play by the new rules is presumed guilty of having something to hide.....This trend against secrecy is in stark contrast to countries such as China, which censored coverage of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre last week. Beijing has done such a good job of erasing history that most young Chinese people know nothing about the 1989 crackdown. The PBS documentary "The Tank Man" made clear that the best and brightest interviewed at Beijing University had never seen the iconic photograph of a citizen facing down the tanks."

Saturday, June 06, 2009

Web 3.0 is about taming the deluge of data.: The Social Path

Web 3.0 is about taming the deluge of data.: The Social Path:
"So what will define Web 3.0?

The best explanation I've heard was from Andrew Keen, author of 'The Cult of the Amateur.' In a recent Social Media Club presentation here in Birmingham, Andrew broke out the Web's history like this:

Web 1.0: Mainstream media and retailers dominate, using traditional approaches to broadcasting and sales.

Web 2.0: Blogging, peer-to-peer sharing and Google empower the masses to communicate openly. The old guard struggles to remain relevant.

Web 3.0: Mainstreaming of social media creates a constant flow of information. Challenge for users and businesses alike is to harness the flood without drowning."

SSRN-Uninsured Americans vs. Insured Canadians: Who is More Satisfied with Their Health Care? by John Lott

SSRN-Uninsured Americans vs. Insured Canadians: Who is More Satisfied with Their Health Care? by John Lott:
"This paper finds that the vast majority of uninsured Americans are satisfied with their health care. Indeed, only 2.3 percent of Americans are both uninsured and very dissatisfied with the quality of the medical care that they receive. The paper finds that Canadians are much closer to uninsured Americans than to insured Americans in their satisfaction with their health care"

Test My Brain

VERY cool site!
Test My Brain:
"Test yourself and help us learn more about the mind and brain."

Friday, June 05, 2009

Stem Cells Cultured On Contact Lens Restore Sight In Patients With Blinding Corneal Disease

WOW. Talk about an exciting break-through!

Stem Cells Cultured On Contact Lens Restore Sight In Patients With Blinding Corneal Disease:
"In a world-first breakthrough, University of New South Wales (UNSW) medical researchers have used stem cells cultured on a simple contact lens to restore sight to sufferers of blinding corneal disease."

Thursday, June 04, 2009

EverymanTri: News Views and Interviews of Great Enduranc: Steve Larsen died of a heart attack caused by atherosclerosis

EverymanTri: News Views and Interviews of Great Enduranc: Steve Larsen died of a heart attack caused by atherosclerosis:
"Retired professional mountain biker, road biker and triathlete Steve Larsen, 39, died of a heart attack caused by atherosclerosis.

Steve Cross, the medical examiner who conducted the autopsy, said tests showed that Larsen had coronary heart disease, that resulted in a heart attack.
"

Monday, June 01, 2009

Psychologists Now Know What Makes People Happy | Simoleon Sense

Psychologists Now Know What Makes People Happy | Simoleon Sense:
"“Materialism is toxic for happiness,” says University of Illinois psychologist Ed Diener. Even rich materialists aren’t as happy as those who care less about getting and spending.

Life satisfaction occurs most often when people are engaged in absorbing activities that cause them to forget themselves, lose track of time and stop worrying. “Flow” is the term Claremont Graduate University psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced cheeks-sent-mee-hi) coined to describe this phenomenon."