A couple of stupendous spectacules!

Neil K. from South Devon sent me these, a little too late to put in my NY Post that came out yesterday.  But they were too good to leave to next week-end so here they are.  First Berlin.

Beginning with a countdown on a giant hourglass and a greeting from an “Android,” LG’s huge presentation took viewers on a thrilling 3D ride that included — among other things — whales, ice skaters, giant octopi and steaming jungles.

Second London.

One of the most amazing firework displays ever!

The man who put a ding in the universe!

Regular readers of Learning from Dogs know that my pattern is to write a single article each day with a focus on something light and airy over the week-end.  But I’m making an exception this Sunday, for two reasons.  The first was that I spent a couple of hours yesterday catching up on this week’s The Economist and especially liked the tribute to Steve Jobs; a small extract is below with a link to the full article.  The second reason was that friend, Neil K. in South Devon, sent me a lovely graphical tribute that I wanted so much to share with you.

So, first to The Economist article,

Steve Jobs

The magician

The revolution that Steve Jobs led is only just beginning

Oct 8th 2011 | from the print edition

Steve Jobs

WHEN it came to putting on a show, nobody else in the computer industry, or any other industry for that matter, could match Steve Jobs. His product launches, at which he would stand alone on a black stage and conjure up an “incredible” new electronic gadget in front of an awed crowd, were the performances of a master showman. All computers do is fetch and shuffle numbers, he once explained, but do it fast enough and “the results appear to be magic”. Mr Jobs, who died this week aged 56, spent his life packaging that magic into elegantly designed, easy-to-use products.

Read the full article on The Economist website.  The article finishes, thus,

Mr Jobs was said by an engineer in the early years of Apple to emit a “reality distortion field”, such were his powers of persuasion. But in the end he conjured up a reality of his own, channelling the magic of computing into products that reshaped entire industries. The man who said in his youth that he wanted to “put a ding in the universe” did just that.

Copyright © 2011 The Economist

Next, the graphical tribute received from Neil K.,

You may have seen this but what a simple and effective way to celebrate the passing of great man…  N

But not quite as you know it!

(And, once again, a thank-you to Dan G for the link!)

A fascinating insight and a reminder, courtesy of Alistair Cooke

Jeannie recently gave me the book Alistair Cooke’s America.  The book was published in 1973 and was born out of the scripts that Cooke wrote for the television series America: A Personal History of the United States shown in both countries in 1972.  I can’t recall when I first started listening to the BBC Radio programme Letter from America, broadcast by Cooke, but it was a long time ago considering that the 15-minute programme started to be broadcast on the BBC in March 1946, just 18 months after I was born!

Alistair Cooke Nov 1908 - Mar 2004

Anyway, the motivation to start into the book was born out of a desire to know a lot more about this new country of mine.  But quickly there was a fascinating detour.

Early in Chapter One, The New-found Land, Cooke writes of the consequences of the Turks capturing Constantinople:

In 1453, there was a decisive turn in the centuries of warfare between the Christians of Europe and the Moslems of Asia.  Their common market, bridge, and gateway was Constantinople, our Istanbul.  In 1453, the Turks conquered it, and in so doing shut off the commerce between East and West, the exchange of cloth, leather wines and sword blades of Europe for the silks, jewels, chessmen, and spices of Asia.  All things considered, the stoppage was much harder on the court treasuries of Europe that those of Asia and, in one vital item, harder on all Europeans.  That item was spice.

Cooke then writes about historic change often being caused by the denial of a simple human need.  Shortage of water, total absence of timber for the Egyptians since the time of Solomon, for example.

What I hadn’t realised that for Europeans, spices were regarded as “fundamental to human survival”.  That was simply because in the 15th century spices made food edible.  Cooke writes,

Even in rich houses, the meals came putrid to the table. (Dysentery, by the way, seems to have been considered through most of the last five centuries a hazard as normal as wind and rain.)

Think about that the next time you reach for the pepper!

That led me to think about the enormous benefit that electricity and therefore domestic refrigeration has had on the health and life expectancies of mankind.  It is almost inconceivable to imagine the consequences of a widespread loss of electricity for, say a week, let alone a few months.

Patrice Ayme wrote a guest post for Learning from Dogs that was published on the 26th.  In it he wrote,

But then, after an auspicious start, Mars lost most of most of its atmosphere (probably within a billion years or so). Why? Mars is a bit small, its gravitational attraction is weaker than Earth (it’s only 40%). But, mostly, Mars has not enough a magnetic field. During Coronal Mass Ejections, CMEs, the Sun can throw out billions of tons of material at speeds up to and above 3200 kilometers per seconds. It’s mostly electrons and protons, but helium, oxygen and even iron can be in the mix.

The worst CME known happened during the Nineteenth Century, before the rise of the electromagnetic civilization we presently enjoy. Should one such ejection reoccur now, the electromagnetic aspect of our civilization would be wiped out.It goes without saying that we are totally unprepared, and would be very surprised. Among other things, all transformers would blow up, and they take months to rebuild. we would be left with old books in paper, the old fashion way. A CME can rush to Earth in just one day. (Fortunately the Sun seems to be quieting down presently, a bit as it did during the Little Ice Age.)

So let’s just hope and pray that our continued interest in spices remains a flavouring desire and doesn’t return as a critical need for human survival.

By Paul Handover

Better navigational accuracy in the air may be approaching its limits.

For passengers travelling with scheduled airlines, times have changed, sadly, and no longer can you visit the flight deck, and see from there the views that pilots get.

New meaning to the term 'on track'.

It was not so long ago, that aircraft navigation was carried out using beacons on the ground, either on VHF, or Medium wavebands.

For longer trips with no ground aids a Navigator would plot your route using Astro (sun or the stars) navigation, until companies like Decca produced other radio systems to give you a position, but these from my memory had their problems.

Today in the modern aircraft we have Inertial Navigation Systems using laser gyros together with radio VHF back up, taking cross cuts from beacons, coupled with Distance measuring equipment to pinpoint your position, and now the magic Global Positioning System (GPS) with it`s startling accuracy.

Often with only 1000 feet between, you can see aircraft either above, or below you, often on the same track. This picture of an Emirates airline Airbus A380 was taken northbound over Turkey. The trails left behind are ice crystals which are left by the water vapour that passes through the engine, and freezes immediately at temperatures of some minus 60 degrees C.

The vortex from the wings causes the rotating trail from each engine to be disturbed, and if you pass through such disturbed air following the wake of another aircraft you often get a bump as your aircraft will be travelling at 500 MPH, some 7 miles per minute, a closing speed of 1000MPH if heading towards each other.

As the accuracy is so good these days, airlines have taken to introducing an offset of one or two miles to the left or right of track, just in case there is an error of timing, or in severe turbulence an aircraft could lose or gain the amount of separation which is between machines.

I think we get the best seats in the house!

By Bob Derham

[Bob is a Captain on a privately operated Airbus A319. Ed.]

Rice picker or samurai? You choose!

There are many people who might represent the subject of entrepreneurship. It is likely that a calm analysis of the candidates would select someone with a broad range of characteristics which had been identified as generally accepted as typical. But this would be to fly in the face of the nature of entrepreneurship itself!

How can the sense of the personal distortion of reality required to see a different path be communicated by someone identified as a “typical” entrepreneur?

With that in mind, the following video captures such a motivational performance that any selection process that might have been used has been abandoned in selecting Jason Calacanis, the controversial and abrasive founder of multiple “dot com” ventures, mainly in the broad area of web publishing.

Say what you like about his activities during his various ventures, and who knows whether it is as unprepared as it appears to be, his performance in this video is pure gold in the annals of motivational presentations for entrepreneurs. He starts slowly, sets the scene, describes his story and steadily builds momentum and intensity. As the stakes increase, so does the passion. Balanced by a substantial level of self-analysis, this is a gripping personal story. If you are interested in entrepreneurship, set aside the next half hour or so, sit back and enjoy this:

Calacanis’ own channel, TWiST (This Week in Start Ups), provides further description of the event portrayed in the video.

While many factors arise in describing entrepreneurs, the one issue that comes up time and again is the simple choice between two different paths. He captured that!

By John Lewis

We have ways of making you listen!

It is quite normal now to have diagnosis in hospital, by machine, the same as we have come to accept for cars and aircraft, but how about English Language Proficiency testing?

In aviation, the international language is English, and in 1997 the International Civil Aviation Organization recognised the need to establish a level of English Proficiency as it had been established that there had been numerous accidents and incidents as a result of a poor level of understanding between Pilots and Air Traffic controllers.

As of March 2008, a system of testing was introduced covering Comprehension, Pronunciation, Fluency, Structure, Vocabulary, and Interaction, with a rating of 1-6 where Level 4 is considered Operational. If of Level 5 you gain an extended period of 6 years between testing; and at Level 6 you are considered an expert, and the validity period is indefinite.

The method of testing is by an on-line computer voice activated exercise. You have a headset, and computer screen, and a keyboard, and a series of activities lasting around 30 minutes, and at the end you are marked by the machine and given your result.

The program is of American origin, my invigilator was from the Philippines, and the person in charge of the testing was German. Read the rest of this entry »

The Toyota Prius recall gets a few laughs.

2010 model Prius

Most of the readers of Learning from Dogs will be aware of the global embarrassment that Toyota is facing as a result of the recall of the Toyota Prius model.  As described partly on the UK website of Toyota:

Toyota have announced a recall on the latest, third-generation Prius built before 27 January 2010. This will involve 8,500 cars in the UK.

To date, there have been no accidents linked to this issue reported in Europe. No other Toyota or Lexus models are affected by this latest recall action in Europe.

Toyota GB would like to apologise to its customers for any concern this issue has caused.

The recall is being taken in response to reports of inconsistent brake feel during slow and steady braking on bumpy or slick road surfaces when the anti-lock braking system (ABS) is actuated.

Well a few days ago, a friend of mine sent me a text message on my cell phone.  It read, “Just driving my new Toyota Prius. Chat later, Can’t stop.“

And I see the Jeremy Clarkson/James May team from BBC’s Top Gear programme are also having a little poke at Toyota.  James May was reported to have said:

‘You have to laugh a bit don’t you,’

‘Maybe if you’re going to try to save the world through your car you have to accept that some sacrifices have to be made and one of them is stopping.’

James May

Society may be cooking up one hell of an issue.

Like most people if most western nations, for many years I had a cell phone, or a mobile phone as they are known in the UK.

I can recall a few years ago there being a scare in the UK about the microwave radiation hazard involved in using a cell phone but it certainly passed me by in terms of not really worrying about it.

Now a recent report in GQ Magazine seems to be gathering some momentum: once again, it’s about how your cell phone may be hazardous to your health.  It would be too easy just to dismiss this as just another poke at a very successful technology but something about this article caused me to write this Post – make of it what you will.

Here’s an extract:

Earlier this winter, I met an investment banker who was diagnosed with a brain tumor five years ago. He’s a managing director at a top Wall Street firm, and I was put in touch with him through a colleague who knew I was writing a story about the potential dangers of cell-phone radiation. He agreed to talk with me only if his name wasn’t used, so I’ll call him Jim. He explained that the tumor was located just behind his right ear and was not immediately fatal—the five-year survival rate is about 70 percent. He was 35 years old at the time of his diagnosis and immediately suspected it was the result of his intense cell-phone usage. “Not for nothing,” he said, “but in investment banking we’ve been using cell phones since 1992, back when they were the Gordon-Gekko-on-the-beach kind of phone.” When Jim asked his neurosurgeon, who was on the staff of a major medical center in Manhattan, about the possibility of a cell-phone-induced tumor, the doctor responded that in fact he was seeing more and more of such cases—young, relatively healthy businessmen who had long used their phones obsessively. He said he believed the industry had discredited studies showing there is a risk from cell phones. “I got a sense that he was pissed off,” Jim told me. A handful of Jim’s colleagues had already died from brain cancer; the more reports he encountered of young finance guys developing tumors, the more certain he felt that it wasn’t a coincidence. “I knew four or five people just at my firm who got tumors,” Jim says. “Each time, people ask the question. I hear it in the hallways.”

Read the rest of this entry »

On a more professional note …

In the various posts that I have contributed here on the “Learning from Dogs” blog, my approach to the general topic of integrity has been broadly related to people, their behaviour and their contribution. However, it is noticeable that I have barely mentioned any professional interests; so, this post relates to an area which I have usually discussed elsewhere: it is reproduced from my personal blog.

Go, Nokia, go!

You have nothing to fear and everything to gain!

The mobile internet is becoming mainstream, so the smartphone market is booming. Nokia occupy the strongest position in the smartphone market, has loyal customers and a reputation for phones that, relative to other mainstream phones, are user friendly.

So what is happening?

Read the rest of this entry »