Tom Evslin on the potential of Municipal Wifi as kicked off by Goo Gle and Earth Link. Big potential for Vo Ip Over Wi Fi... will Earth Link become a big Tel Co this way?

Phrase Of The Day: The War On The Net.

The Sam Sung Galaxy Tab 7" An Droid Tab Let has launched, well not really. The tablet will be out in Europe first, possibly with Italy as the first to nab it (in September), and the US will come later down the line.

• Good broad preview writeup.

• Price unknown. There are rumors of it costing more than the IPad, but that would be crazy.

• It's actually a phone, and will be sold by Tel Co-s. Will there be a Wi Fi-only version? This is too big to replace your phone, and who wants 2 Tel Co contracts?

  • If we had an Open Net, you wouldn't have to worry about this, and it would make sense to think of juggling multiple devices...

• comparing specs to IPad

• Tim Bray has the An Droid perspective. ICommented asking about non-Tel Co option. Also: A Tab Let is, crucially, a more shareable computer. A Lap Top, with its fragile hinge-ware and space-gobbling keyboard, is just not comfy to share. A tablet is easier to bring to the café, easier to hand across the table or along the sofa, easier to seize in the heat of the moment, easier to hold up in triumph, easier to set aside when you need to meet someone’s eyes. How big a market is that? Anyone who says they know is lying.

Steve Blank distinguishes the Product Manager's role in a Start Up vs Big Co.

Robert Paterson says we need reform in Educating Kids, at PEI and elsewhere. He's Fram Ing in terms of the Pioneering Spirit and skills that the founders of PEI had to display - appropriate to big change we're going through now.

Aug30: he thinks that a total Foc Us on getting everyone Read Ing is the first step, and getting lots of teacher-with-small-group attention is a key practice.

Aug30 again: he sees MIT's Open Courseware and the Khan Academy of what can replace the overpriced Text Book.

Aug31: he considers models tailored to gifted (TAG) and "concrete thinkers" (Vo Tech).

Sept01:

• he looks at the Tribal Ism associated with the House system at Harrow School (80 boys/house - Ecosystem Of Networks).

• he also looks at Englewood's attempts at improving their Cult Ure to avoid "the Culture of Cool Mediocrity" - create small groups of cross-age kids to build social cohesion.

Sept02: he suggests building on the School Bus as a tribe.

Neal Stephenson's Mongol Iad is launching. The company, based in Seattle and San Francisco, has developed what it calls the PULP platform for creating digital novels (EBook). The core of the experience is still a text novel, but authors can add additional material like background articles, images, music, and video. There are also Social Networking features that allow readers to create their own profiles, earn badges for activity on the site or in the application, and interact with other readers... The company promises to release a new chapter a week. Readers can pay $5.99 for a six-month subscription fee or $9.99 for a year... Stephenson isn’t writing the book alone. There’s a team led by a writer Mark Teppo; it also includes Greg Bear, author of Blood Music and other science fiction novels. Stephenson compared the experience to writing a TV show, and not just because it’s a team of writers. The Mongoliad will have an ending, but there’s room for sequels and other stories set in the world, so it’s kind of like season one of a show.

If you choose not to renew your subscription, you still have access to the stories which you received as part of your subscription when it was active; you just don't get any new stories. You'll have access to the 'Pedia, blogs, and some forums as well, and will be able to continue using any mobile apps you have purchased.

The user-editable Foreworld 'Pedia is the ultimate repository of all information about our world. Some of it coincides with the world you know. Some does not. We welcome your additions.

Fore World is the name of the shared universe created by the rest of the Foreworld Cabal. Foreworld is almost like the world we live in. It could even be the world we live in, perhaps. The Mongoliad is the name of the first novel set in this world.

You must be thirteen years old or older to use the service.

Subscribed! (Perhaps I'll let The Boys read over my shoulder...)

Wow, just discovered Neal Stephenson's Mongol Iad EBook plans.

Aug26 update: hmm, haven't heard anything since I signed up...

Some interesting Open Source projects of the moment (alphabetically):

• Ampli Fy

• Dia Spora

• One Social Web

• Plex Us

Let me know if there's another interesting P2 P system that handles, or can be easily expanded for, Structured Data.

Mon Grel2 has reached v1.0.

James Jay Lee took at least 1 person hostage at the Discovery Channel headquarters, making a variety of Ecol Ogy-related demands inspired by Daniel Quinn.

Julian Assange, head of Wiki Leaks, was charged with multiple counts of rape, then the charges were withdrawn.

Update: more info and links.

Aug29: more.

Adrian Hon says that games (Computer Game) can't Change The World - inspiring other people to Change The World doesn't count (as much). On the whole, though, Urgent Evoke – and the rest of these projects – appear to be more like networked creative writing exercises than games that improve the world in a direct, measurable way... I find games like World Without Oil and Urgent Evoke very interesting, because I like the idea of people writing about the future; you don’t know what you think until you’ve said it out loud, or better yet, written it down. In a way, these games help people think things through, which can only be a good thing. I also give a lot of credit to them for inspiring people, particularly younger people who spend a lot of time online (even if the player numbers need a lot of improvement).

The Democratic Party and the Barack Obama campaign won the game – they got Obama elected, one of the biggest achievements there is. Was there a big change in politics, in the way things are done in Washington? Some people say yes, other people say no. Did Obama’s election save the world? Clearly not; it hasn’t even saved the US. While major financial disaster may have been averted, the new healthcare bill hasn’t yet been passed (although I’m optimistic). Millions of people are unhappy with the massive bailout given to the banks, doing anything about climate change is still incredibly difficult, corporations can now buy ads to influence elections, and there’s the small matter of two wars going on. All of these problems are incredibly important – probably more important than the election. So where did all the Obama campaign volunteers go? Why aren’t they still making calls and knocking on doors in their millions? It’s because they’re tired, they’re uninspired, and they don’t feel they can make a difference any more... he beauty of Obama’s “Change” slogan was that it was something that everyone other than Republicans could agree on. But “save the world” is even better; everyone, even Republicans, can agree that saving the world would be a good thing. The problem is that when you start getting more specific – as Obama has done – two things happen: people start arguing, and they also get bored.

(Some interesting critique of the Real World Game mentality, including challenging its Extrins Ic-motivation mentality.)

It is people who save the world, each in their own way, through perspiration as well as inspiration.

See comments, esp by Jane Mc Gonigal.

Nathan Lewis summarizes/applies William Strauss' and Neil Howe's now-popular book The Fourth Turning (written in 1997). In their view, U.S. history (going back to English history) consists of cycles of about eighty years, or four twenty-year seaons... The most recent Spring was the 1945-1964 period. (So we're currently in a Winter starting in 2005 (Credit Crisis2008), set to last until 2024.) A Crisis emerges as previous issues that might have been ignored or deferred now become dire. The previous order, established in the Spring, crumbles and decays. The private sector no longer provides and adequate refuge from the decay of the civic and community sphere. A new order begins to emerge.

Obviously, we are in a winter period today. This is no mere "downturn," or even a "secular bear market." The last three Winter periods in American history, according to Strauss and Howe, were the Great Depression/World War II, the Us Civil War, and the Revolutionary War (American Revolution).

During the Winter period, the existing institutions and structures crumble due to their internal decay. Like the annual winter, this period can be tolerable, and even viewed as enjoyable and necessary, if you recognize its basic characteristics. The basic characteristic of the Winter period is that activity that is appropriate for the Spring, Summer or Autumn is a complete failure during the Winter. You don't try to grow crops in February. Nothing will grow. It is a period where the corrupt and decaying institutions of the past finally disintegrate down to compost.

I don't think that any new institution could be established today. The decay is simply too great. Whatever system might be set up -- a healthcare system, a high-speed rail system, or what have you -- would simply end up being another channel by which 90%+ of the resources are stolen, while no meaningful services are provided. That is the present pattern for everything, and it is not until that pattern arrives at its natural conclusion (implosion) that people will begin to behave differently.

• Unless maybe a new action will be a Civil Society facilitated by Dark Net... see z2010-08-30-RobbD2LongEmergency.

As it is, we still need to have a long discussion as to exactly what these new institutions -- a gold standard, some sort of healthcare system, perhaps another sort of retirement system, a solution to the problems of Suburban Hell -- should look like. We couldn't really accomplish any of that today, because there isn't a workable consensus on what to do. It will take another fifteen years or so of dealing with the Crisis for these ideas, which are now in their early stages, to ripen and spread.

I always say that you should imagine things that are different than they are today, and of course, much better. If we don't start imagining things that are worthwhile and successful, we might start imagining something that is rather more dangerous. Adolph Hitler got the whole German people to imagine conquering all of Europe.

John Robb thinks we're facing "D2", a new global Great Depression. Long Emergency? You can't outlast D2 by stockpiling canned goods/bottled water, buying gold, or arming yourself to the teeth (Survival Ism). It will stretch on for a decade or more. The way to survive, even thrive, during D2 requires a different approach. It requires a vibrant and productive local economy. It requires people with the skills/equipment to contribute to it and the wherewithal to defend it if necessary. Some interesting comments, esp as to whether Resilient Community-s need to stay hidden (Dark Net) to avoid getting drained by Big Gov.

The ACLU and CCR this morning filed a lawsuit on their own behalf against Tim Geithner and the Treasury Department. The suit argues that Treasury has no statutory authority under the law it invokes -- The International Emergency Economic Powers Act -- to bar American lawyers from representing American citizens on an uncompensated basis. It further argues what ought to be a completely uncontroversial point: that even if Congress had vested Treasury with this authority, it is blatantly unconstitutional to deny American citizens the right to have a lawyer, and to deny American lawyers the right to represent clients, without first obtaining a permission slip from Executive Branch officials. (Us Constitution, Anwar Al Awlaki)

Update: The Treasury Department indicated Tuesday it will grant two civil liberties groups a license to file a lawsuit on behalf of Anwar al-Awlaki, a militant American-born Islamic cleric who has reportedly been targeted for death by the U.S. Government... As they filed their lawsuit against Treasury Tuesday, the civil liberties groups announced that al-Awlaki’s father, Nasser, had retained them to help end a series of drone strikes that appeared aimed at killing his son. Anwar al-Awlaki was added to the Treasury Department’s sanctions list on July 16. ACLU and CCR lawyers said that meant they had to apply to Treasury for a license to perform legal services on the younger al-Awlaki’s behalf; they said they made the application on July 23 but didn’t get an answer from Treasury... “President Barack Obama is claiming the power to act as judge, jury and executioner while suspending any semblance of due process,” Vince Warren, Executive Director of CCR, said in a statement Tuesday. “Yemen is nearly 2000 miles from Afghanistan or Iraq. The U.S. government is going outside the law to create an ever-larger global war zone and turn the whole world into a battlefield. Would we tolerate it if China or France secretly decided to execute their enemies inside the U.S.?”

Aug31: update from Glenn Greenwald. This notion that the Constitution extends only to America's borders is rooted in pure ignorance of the law... What I've found most disturbing about this controversy from the start is how many Americans are willing to blindly believe the Government's accusations of Terrorism against their fellow citizens -- provided they're Muslims with foreign-sounding names -- without needing to see any evidence at all. The fact that this very same Government is continuously and repeatedly wrong when it makes those accusations does not seem to be even a cause for hesitation among this faction. See z2010-07-10-GovKeepsLosingGitmoCases.

The U.S. government has won just 14 of the 51 decided cases filed by prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

Cal Newport thinks in terms of having a Remarkable Life (vs Meaningful Life, Authentic Happiness, or whatever).

A remarkable life is one in which: (1) you do something Meaning Ful that you enjoy; (2) you have a flexible schedule that you control; and (3) you earn recognition and good (enough) compensation (Make Money).

The question at hand is how one constructs such a life. My argument is that this outcome can be understood as a reward. That is, society will reward you with a Remarkable Life if and only if you can offer in return a useful and rare service.

If you’re itching to make your life something amazing, consider spending less time daydreaming about defying the status quo and answering the critics of your decision, and spending more time gearing yourself up for the challenge of becoming so good that they can’t ignore you. Ultimately, it will probably be the latter that generates the remarkable results.

Nov'2009: a related post on the dangers of focusing on Pass Ion. My point here is that “passion” seems to be a common source of problems. For some, they have too many passions and don’t know where to focus their energies. For others, it’s the lack of a passion, or maybe a belief that their particular passion won’t bring them somewhere worth going... My alternative definition claims instead that passion is the feeling generated by mastery (Personal Mastery). It doesn’t exist outside of serious hard work... A mastery-centric view of passion says that aligning your life with passions is a good thing, but almost any superficial interest can be transformed into a passion with hard work, so there’s no reason to sweat choices such as an academic major or you first post-college career. Hmm, while Mastery seems to qualify as Intrins Ic motivation, I've never really bought into the Tom Peters Free Agent pep-talk of being the best darn insurance adjuster out there. I also wonder whether this can lead you off a Cliff (see Godin Dip).

Jan'2010: Get that Mastery via Deliberate Practice.

Jan'2010: He thinks that Self Determination Theory explains how to create a good life. To be happy, your work must fulfill three universal psychological needs: autonomy (control over how you fill your time - Agen Cy?), competence (mastering unambiguously useful things), and relatedness (feeling of connection to others)... There’s no reason to lose sleep over whether you’re “Passion Ate” about your major, or if your Day Job is what you really want to be doing with your life. Working Right trumps finding the right work... (To get those 3 things) you must accumulate your own career capital by mastering a skill that’s equally rare and valuable. It’s important, however, that you cash in this capital, once accumulated, for the right rewards. The word “right,” in this context, is defined by the traits of SDT. In other words, once you have something valuable to offer, use it to gain as much autonomy, competence, and relatedness as you can possibly cram into your life.

Apr'2010: the challenge in recognizing the cash-in opportunity. Here’s the catch: this option is unlikely to be presented to you. From the perspective of the talent marketplace, the only investment that makes sense is to double down on competence – the better and more respected you are, the more value you have in the market. The other spheres, though important to you, don’t arise naturally in this economic calculus. Because of this reality, in the heat of the moment, it will seem as if only Sotomayor-style, competence-centric paths are available. This is the competence trap: when you amass enough career capital to exert meaningful control over your life and career, the only investment presented as reasonable will be to further maximize your competence at the expense of the other areas of your life.

Aug'2010 - he says you can cultivate Pass Ion by giving yourself time (Sl Ack) for Unstructured Exploration, and then aggressively following up on something that catches your interest. And once you pick that path, Fo Cus on it to see if it sticks by culling distractions (this isn't just Deliberate Practice - he learned from Steve Martin that if you don’t saturate your life in a single quest, you’ll dilute your focus to a point where becoming outstanding becomes out of reach).

Maneesh Sethi has been written about by Timothy Ferriss and Cal Newport. They note that he wrote books on Computer Game programming and Web Design, but I hadn't caught a specific reference, so I went searching.

He first wrote Game Programming For Teens, now in 3rd edition 1598635182 - it uses Blitz Max (a BASIC that costs $80) as its Language For Learning Programming.

Later he wrote Web Design For Teens, 1592006078

Is Sustain Able food scalable to feed the world?

Gartner is defining 4 generations of Collaboration Ware. Gen1, states the report, covered the decade of 1990 to 2000 with the establishment of email and calendar software. Gen2 ran from 2000 to 2005 and added Instant Messaging (IM), web conferencing, and shared workspaces. Over the last five years, Gen3 has brought us tools for easy content creation, publishing, and sharing, including blogs, Wi Ki-s, Really Simple Syndication (RSS), and Social Networking, and for the most part, the Gen3 tools are still undergoing adoption, even as Gen4 is upon us... According to Matt Cain, Gen4 will mash up these individual applications in easy-to-use “Dash Board-s” from which all of your favorite collaboration tools can be launched. That’s right, he is predicting not so much a ground-breaking new approach to collaboration, but rather “more of a repackaging of existing collaboration.” (Portal Collaboration Roadmap?)

Interesting discussion of Open Stack, which recently switched its API from Amazon Web Services to Rack Space.

Theo Schlossnagle's presentation on Scalabil Ity looks good.

Max Indelicato thinks that mixing SQL and No SQL makes the most sense.

My SQL does transactions well thanks to Inno DB. It’s ACID compliant and has full transactional support.

Mongo Db, on the other hand, has neither ACID compliance nor full transactional support. In fact, it has no transactional support.

This is a no-brainer. My SQL is the more appropriate tool for the job of payment transactions. And that works out fine for us, because this is a Shared Nothing architecture – payment transactions have little to nothing to do directly with the recording of individual unique visitors or pageviews... I would take this even further and say that all user, account, and payment data in general should be housed within our My SQL database. Can the other stuff be done in Mongo DB? Yes, it can, but there are more logical relations between those three groups of data than there are between them and unique visitors/pageviews. Keeping related data together is what My SQL is good at, so let’s take advantage of that here.

Then he puts all the details data (he's using an Analytics system for this scenario) into Mongo Db.

Note that Theo Schlossnagle has said that he wouldn't trust My SQL for payment transactions, preferring Postgre SQL or others. But that was almost 2 years ago, so it's possible he's changed his mind... z2008-10-08-SchlossnagleCtoClub

On Aug27, Paul Graham tweeted Convertible notes have won. Every investment so far in this YC batch (and there have been a lot) has been done on a convertible note. (YCombinator, Convertible Debt)

Seth Levine examined various aspects of this: 1) it’s not at all clear that this trend is as definitive as Graham suggests; 2) it’s a mixed bag for entrepreneurs (more positive in the short run, potentially negative in the long term); and 3) it’s clearly not a positive trend for early-stage investors.

Fred Wilson doesn't use debt do far.

Bjorn Lomborg has a new Climate Change book coming out, Smart Solutions For Climate Change. Lomborg denies he has performed a volte face, pointing out that even in his first book he accepted the existence of man-made global warming. "The point I've always been making is it's not the end of the world," he told the Guardian. "That's why we should be measuring up to what everybody else says, which is we should be spending our money well."

But he said the crucial turning point in his argument was the Copenhagen Consensus project, in which a group of economists were asked to consider how best to spend $50bn. The first results, in 2004, put global warming near the bottom of the list, arguing instead for policies such as fighting malaria and HIV/Aids. But a repeat analysis in 2008 included new ideas for reducing the temperature rise, some of which emerged about halfway up the ranking. Lomborg said he then decided to consider a much wider variety of policies to reduce global warming, "so it wouldn't end up at the bottom".

The difference was made by examining not just the dominant international policy to cut carbon emissions, but also seven other "solutions" including more investment in technology, climate engineering, and planting more trees and reducing soot and methane, also significant contributors to climate change, said Lomborg.

The Philadelphia school district partnered with the nonprofit Philadelphia Academies, which has created nearly a dozen career academies at the city's High Schools. Operating as schools within schools, the academies work with area businesses to blend college prep and vocational (Vo Tech) education around careers ranging from electronics and the environment to business technology and tourism. In 1997, West Philadelphia High's Academy of Applied Automotive and Mechanical Science began a yearlong after-school project with an audacious goal: building an electric car... As a new take on vocational education, career academies are focused on academic rigor, not specific career paths. For that reason, they attract students of all ability levels and interests.

It was in 2006 that, thanks to the EV Team’s role in the Tour De Sol, Hauger got an e-mail asking for his input on a rough draft of the X Prize Foundation’s plans for one of its upcoming projects, the Progressive Insurance Automotive XPrize. “I knew immediately we had to participate,” Simon Hauger says... What about that strategy to produce 10,000 cars each year by 2014? That’s where the kids from Philly really shine. Many on the EVX Team specialize in the Market Ing angle. Watch Carter, Kamara, and Anita Davidson display their poise and confidence at a Philly car show; they know how to work a crowd. Listen to Hill’s speech before Ford Motor Company’s head honchos. Tour Philadelphia’s old Navy Yard with Davidson to scout sites for a potential Team EVX factory. They got through at least the early stages.

This list of Top10 Lost Technologies is pretty interesting: Stradivari Violins, Nepenthe, the Antikythera Mechanism, the Telharmon Ium, the Library Of Alexandria, Damascus Steel (Watered Steel), Apollo/Gemini Space Program Technology (Moon Mission), Silphium (Birth Control), Roman Cement (superior to Portland Cement), Greek Fire.

Dia Spora gave a status update.

Phil Jones ponders their potential.

• He also points at Ampli Fy.

Jason Kolb has left Cis Co. Hey, he's moving to the Chi Cago area....

Update: he is building Roundeux, a revolutionary new platform for content publishing which squeezes the most revenue possible from every visitor to your Web site. (Internet Marketing)

Ben Horowitz suggests how to scale your Start Up.

• Jason Kolb has some cool ideas about baking processes into your product/ecosystem.

Aug26: Ben continues with some practices for minimizing political Game Playing in your company (Start Up?). Build strict processes for potentially political issues and do not deviate. Smells like pseudo-Scientific Management. ICommented.

Cis Co is buying Latigent, co-founded by Jason Kolb. Latigent makes (made) business intelligence solutions primarily marketed at the Call Center market. I had a blast developing and supporting the product, it gave me a great opportunity to take some really cool technology coming out of the Web 2.0 revolution and leverage it for Enter Prise Business Intelligence.

Some interesting/scary notes on Secur Ity of the Auto Mobile's electronics. They also mention some external avenues of attack to hack into the car remotely. One is that things like music players become attached to the cars internal network, and that potentially includes things like iPhones which are connected to cell networks and have well-known vulnerabilities of their own. Also, some cars have remote cellular connection to services like onStar, which goes to a component on the car's internal network. And then they found no fewer than five wireless interfaces on the car, and, "While outside the scope of this paper, we wish to be clear that vulnerabilities in such services are not purely theoretical. We have developed the ability to remotely compromise key ECUs in our car via externally-facing vulnerabilities, amplify the impact of these remote compromises using the results in this paper, and ultimately monitor and control our car remotely over the Internet." The second paper looks specifically at wireless tire pressure sensors which are now being required on new cars. They show that the wireless interaction between the tire pressure sensors and the antenna on the back window of the car can be intercepted up to 10m away with a cheap antenna, and the protocol is not secure and can be intercepted and interfered with.

IWork's Pages app can output EPub.

The FCC announced its National Broad Band plan. The FCC has been leaking bits and pieces of the plan to the public over the past couple of weeks. And much of what is in the final version is not surprising. For example, the plan calls for expanding the $8 billion Universal Service Fund, which provides subsidized phone service throughout the U.S., to also include broadband. The plan also calls on the FCC to make 500MHz of new Wire Less spectrum available within 10 years for licensed and unlicensed use. The plan recommends that 300MHz of that spectrum should become available within the next five years. One of the most controversial issues to come out of the plan is the reallocation of wireless spectrum. While the report recommends that the FCC reallocate about 20MHz of underutilized government spectrum, it also recommends that the agency get about 120MHz of spectrum from TV broadcasters. Officials who worked on developing the plan said Monday that they hope TV broadcasters will voluntarily give up a good portion of the spectrum. The plan proposes incentives to encourage TV broadcasters in the biggest markets, where new spectrum will likely be needed first, to reauction their licenses. But TV broadcasters, who caught wind of the proposal months ago, have rallied to oppose it.... Officials said the plan is a road map. The FCC, the Obama administration, and Congress will now be tasked with taking action on the recommendations.

David Isenberg gives lots of links/summaries of the secret talks the FCC's Julius Genachowski is holding on Net Neutrality. We can only hope that these attempts to shine some sunlight into the secret negotiations at the FCC will shame Chairman Genichowski into standing up for the citizen-users of the Internet. And even if he does, we can expect that unless the telcos and cablecos get what they want — a legal way to use their last mile access to the Internet like a toll booth — they will lobby, litigate, legislate and use the best PR money can buy to distort the issue to the public. Until, that is, we the people reorganize the access providers into a utility-like provider of connections without ties to applications like TV, telephony, payment processing, etc. (Open Net)

Erica Goldson, gave a ripping High School valedictorian-graduation speech. I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work. But I contest that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer - not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition - a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave. I did what I was told to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker. While others would come to class without their homework done because they were reading about an interest of theirs, I never missed an assignment. While others were creating music and writing lyrics, I decided to do extra credit, even though I never needed it. So, I wonder, why did I even want this position? Sure, I earned it, but what will come of it? When I leave educational institutionalism, will I be successful or forever lost? I have no clue about what I want to do with my life; I have no interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I'm scared. (Educating Kids)

Reviews of Jared Diamond's Collapse by David Brin and Malcolm Gladwell.

Brin writes: Long ago, Arnold Toynbee wrote that Creativ Ity and will to overcome are critical to a civilization's success. And while Toynbee is fusty and dated, I find it odd that Jared Diamond never lists these two factors. Instead he proceeds, in five paragraphs, to shrug away technological innovation in general! This is especially troubling because he knows that pastoral-like prescriptions will not work on Planet Earth... Chastened by a century of lessons, modernists aren't asking us to buy new, ingenious solutions on faith. Skeptical criticism and accountability are pivotal success factors that both Toynbee and Diamond neglect to mention - traits that were lacking in every culture that failed. So by all means, let us argue and take care.

Gladwell writes: There are no fish bones in Norse archeological remains, Diamond concludes, for the simple reason that the Norse didn't eat fish. For one reason or another, they had a cultural taboo against it.... Why did the Norse choose not to eat fish? Because they weren't thinking about their biological survival. They were thinking about their cultural survival.... Diamond's distinction between social and biological survival is a critical one, because too often we blur the two, or assume that biological survival is contingent on the strength of our civilizational values. That was the lesson taken from the two world wars and the nuclear age that followed: we would survive as a species only if we learned to get along and resolve our disputes peacefully. The fact is, though, that we can be law-abiding and peace-loving and tolerant and inventive and committed to freedom and true to our own values and still behave in ways that are biologically suicidal. The two kinds of survival are separate.

Note this Mar'2003 Edge Org piece where Diamond critiques Joseph Tainter's Collapse Of Complex Societies: Joseph Tainter concluded that the collapses of all these ancient societies couldn't possibly be due to environmental mismanagement, because they would never make these bad mistakes. Yet it's now clear that they did make these bad mistakes. Separately, he summarizes: What I'm going to suggest is a road map of factors in failures of group Decision Making. I'll divide the answers into a sequence of four somewhat fuzzily delineated categories. First of all, a group may fail to anticipate a problem before the problem actually arrives. Secondly, when the problem arrives, the group may fail to perceive the problem. Then, after they perceive the problem, they may fail even to try to solve the problem. Finally, they may try to solve it but may fail in their attempts to do so. While all this talking about reasons for failure and collapses of society may seem pessimistic, the flip side is optimistic: namely, successful decision-making (Collaborat Ion). Perhaps if we understand the reasons why groups make bad decisions, we can use that knowledge as a check list to help groups make good decisions.

Sept'2005 - Ronald Bailey puts Diamond in the Thomas Malthus/Paul Ehrlich camp.

Feb'2010: Fabius Maximus notes the research contradicting Diamond's claim that deforestation was the prime driver of the collapse of Easter Island. Newly introduced diseases, conflict with European invaders and enslavement followed over the next century and a half, and these were the chief causes of the collapse. In the early 1860s, more than a thousand Rapanui were taken from the island as slaves, and by the late 1870s the number of native islanders numbered only around 100.

Paul Romer gave a talk at TED-Global about his Charter Cities concept. The video is online now. He's trying to encourage creation of cities like Hong Kong and the Special Economic Zone-s in Chin A. Urbanizat Ion without Slu M creation? Trying to get Urban Design right in advance (Big Design Up Front)?

A specific example he pitches is having the US turn the Git Mo land (after closing the prison) over to the Canadians to have them develop/manage it (because they'd be seen as a reasonable Third Party). This interview gives a little more context for that idea. In poorer countries that don't have the same kind of credibility with international investors, a more interesting but controversial possibility is that two or more countries might sign a treaty specifying the charter for a new city and allocate between them responsibilities for administering different parts of the treaty... Investors from the rest of the world could finance the Infra Structure for a new city in exchange for fee income from users (hmm, local Mono Poly creation? Company Town?) . Entrepreneurs and managers from the rest of the world might come and run the businesses that would hire millions of people. Many of these highly educated and experienced people might be emigres who left when the island turned to communism. These investors and these potential residents will come only if you can promise them the protections afforded by the Rule Of Law. By yourself, with the Cuban institutions that you control, there is simply no way for you to make a credible binding commitment to the rule of law. You could simply change your mind later. More importantly, your successor, whomever that may be, might want to back out of any promises you make. The only way for you and your contemporaries to make a binding, long-term commitment is to sign a treaty with a country like Canada and to use it as a third-party guarantor. In effect, what a treaty lets you do is leverage the existing credibility of Canadian institutions and bring in the rule of law... In practice, countries around the world, even countries that can't get along, still respect treaties. Cuba respects the treaty with the United States, even as they complain bitterly about it.

A big question is whether these cities would provide Democra Cy. Romer says that's just one possible Game Rule. The political model in post-WWII Hong Kong under the British was one in which residents could not vote but administrators were accountable to voters who weren't residents. It was a very interesting hybrid, and very different from authoritarian rule. This model could work well in some situations. Imagine Shiite and Sunni immigrants living in a charter city administered by Canadians. The immigrants might prefer to have Canadian voters hold accountable the people who run the police rather than having political contests between the Sunni and Shiites to see who gets to be in charge. If the contests are local, this can be very destabilizing and can lead to ethnic cleaning of neighborhoods.

Is Du Bai a good example?

Michael Strong made similar suggestions back in April.

Alex Steffen thinks this might offer good sites for Green Tech, New Urbanism, etc. And notes that "zones" could be created in Brown Field areas.

He has left his Stanford U professorship to focus on this. http://www.chartercities.org

Update: a good critique

Douglas Rushkoff's Program Or Be Programmed book is available for pre-order now (at 15% discount) (and is available as Paperback Book or EBook). Rushkoff picks up where Marshall Mc Luhan left off, helping readers come to recognize programming as the new literacy of the digital age––and as a template through which to see beyond social conventions and power structures that have vexed us for centuries. This is a friendly little book with a big and actionable message. Since the Real World is a Real World Game, you don't want to find yourself stuck as an NPC.

Phillip JEby has been experimenting with a diet regimen developed by Seth Roberts. (Physical Fitness)

He's been combining that with the weight-tracking process from the Hackers Diet.

May'2006 - Kathy Sierra is a convert. (And gives some details.)

• and so is Aaron Swartz.

  • Jul'2006 follow-up

• it's now out as the Shangri La Diet book 0399153640

Carlorie Lab has a long thread that's been updated a number of times.

Ash Maurya offers his template for documenting his Business Model hypotheses (Customer Development and others) for a Web App-focused Lean Startup. He calls this his Canvas.

He splits them by Product and Market focus, with the UVP (Unique Value Proposition) in the middle.

He thinks about them (and validates them) in this order:

1. Product: 3 top problems you're addressing.

2. Market: Customer Segments (Market Segment): Who are the customers/users of this system? Can they be further segmented? (He makes a separate Canvas for each target segment.)

3. Unique Value Proposition: Tag Line, Positioning Statement

4. Product's Solution: Minimum Viable Product feature-set

5. Product: Key Activity: user actions that drive revenue.

6. Market: free and paid Channels to reach people in your segment
7. Cost Structure: fixed and variable costs

8. Revenue Streams, Lifetime Value, Gross Margin, Break Even point, etc.

9. Unfair advantage (cannot be copied or bought): you might not ever have one.

Rob Fitzpatrick on the potential mismatch between a Start Up's Business Model and its founders' Val Ue-s. Startups function best when the stuff that makes you happy is also good for business. Knowing what worked for someone who cares about the same things as you is a solid head start... I sometimes meet Fast Company-style founders with Thirty7 Signals-style products and business models... Their next two years will be frustrating! They will overvalue investment and undervalue blog subscribers... It's worth occasionally re-considering what your business model is really all about. When your competitors are trying to eat you and you need to stretch your runway beyond any reasonable limit, everything outside the core (Fo Cus) is going to get cut. If the part of the business you loved is on the periphery, you're liable to lose it when things are already at their worst. Piv Ot-s are a chance to re-connect with your reason for starting the company. Sometimes it's right to pivot around your customers, and other times you may need to pivot on yourself... The goal, which I think is something founders should ideally resolve before employees and equity-holders begin limiting your maneuvering room, is to be able to stop saying "This is a good idea" and start saying "I love doing this." Your business will be better for it.

Being a Free Agent gives you challenges in Time Management, etc. I ran a shell script to compare my productivity (commits, ABTest-s, etc) prior and post quitting. I thought it would show me spinning my wheels. Turns out I am getting more done than ever. This is normally the point where I would paste a graph but, sorry, iPad. Suffice it to say I have run more A/B tests this summer than in the last year. (Interesting finding of today: Google Checkout really does increase conversion rates over having only Paypal as an option. I strongly suspected that, but now I know.) Sales are up, too. Why doesn’t it feel this way? I think after a couple of decades of living by the clock I have become habituated to measuring my productivity that way. Insane and irrational, I know.

Et Sy closed another investment round, at a pre-money valuation of $300M, triple the value from its Jan'2008 round. Etsy started turning a profit at the end of last year, just when Rob Kalin took over as CEO again.

Virtual School-s are running into resistance from Teachers Union-s. The same pre-teen who will happily while away hours playing Scrabble with her friends on Face Book dreads each Thursday afternoon, when she will be forced to laboriously write out a list of spelling words in silence alongside two dozen peers.

Online education’s biggest success to date is the Florida Virtual School (FLVS). Founded in 1997, FLVS was the first public statewide online education program in the country. Founder Julie Young had snagged a $200,000 “Break the Mold” grant from the state of Florida to experiment with online learning... The school employs 1,200 accredited, nonunion teachers, who are available by phone or email from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week. Kids take what they want, when they want.

Unlike FLVS, (private/for-profit) K12 provides full-time instruction. That means students from kindergarten through 12th grade can do their entire school year online. While the curriculum isn’t particularly innovative, the model is potentially far more disruptive than a program like FLVS. K12 takes children and teenagers out of school and away from traditional teacher-student relationships. The company has some partnerships with traditional public schools, but K12 primarily works by helping Charter School-s in states with lenient laws go virtual, accepting kids (and the money they bring with them) from all over the state... For good measure, Wisconsin announced plans to create an FLVS-like state-sponsored virtual academy, which will compete with K12 on lopsided terms and, unlike in Florida, be firmly under the control of the education bureaucracy.

Says Dreyer: “Many states say, ‘We hate the whole thing with these for-profit providers. We should just do it ourselves.’ But with the exception of FLVS, nobody has been able to do it. It’s complicated; it takes capital. It’s tough to do it from scratch. They don’t have expertise. It’s particularly tough in these times when there is no money.”

It’s not clear that the kind of socialization we’re currently offering kids in schools is doing them any favors. Even in schools where the quality of education is decent, enthusiastically partaking in it can make you a mockable nerd, even a target for daily brutalization. The problem is worse among minority populations at large urban schools... While the smartest kids face one set of troubles, the slower kids in the same classes have problems of their own, mutely letting lessons roll by because they’re afraid of asking a question and being called stupid. Learning online in the morning and then heading out to play in the park in the afternoons could be a much better alternative for both kinds of kids.

One promising idea is a hybrid approach, where kids get the socialization and adult supervision of a shared physical space but consume much of their actual instruction online. Of the million kids already taking classes online, some are just logging in from their bedrooms, but others are taking courses on computers in community centers (Public Space) or gyms or heading out to the strip-mall outposts of private tutoring companies.

Such hybrids are springing up around the country. Rocketship Education in San Jose, California, brings at-risk elementary students together in a safe, colorful, trailer-like modular space, with a small staff to keep an eye on the kids while they do lessons online. Dropout recovery programs such as Advance Path Academics catch kids who have fallen out of the system. Some of these programs, in which the content is administered primarily online, give kids physical spaces to learn in shopping malls. Kids in mentoring programs such as Group Excellence are offered a choice: they can opt for after-school tutoring in a physical space with free pizza, or take advantage of 24-hour support to do the same work on an iPhone, netbook, desktop, or even a Nintendo, whenever they want.

Internet access isn’t a barrier anymore. The digital divide has essentially closed. A 2009 Pew Research Center report found that 93 percent of Americans between the ages of 12 and 17 are online... The virtual charter school company Connections Academy supplies its 20,000 full-time students with computers as part of the package.

The first round of funding was awarded in April, and while the inclusion of online education in several of the winning proposals is encouraging, the grants heavily favor top-down, state-run online academies over virtual charters and other bottom-up options. Tom Vander Ark calls the online component of the Race To The Top finalists’ plans “lame.” On his blog, he explains: “Given less than optimal policy environments, state v-schools can and do play an important role in supporting blended environments and online options.” But “we’re a generation behind where we should be in terms of online tools, platforms and options—a state government caused market failure (Government Failure). Where competition is welcomed, we’ll see Innovat Ion.”

Ed Visions has a High School program available across Minnesota.

In Jan'2009 Nathan Lewis discussed buying Gol D bars via Com Ex and taking delivery to an independent depository. And: For quantities of less than 100oz., I would start to look at 1oz. coins like Krugerrands or Eagles. These have had a rather nasty premium to Comex gold recently -- as high as 30%. However, the premiums have come down a bit. I think that individuals who own hundreds of coins are selling them for a premium and acquiring Comex bars at lower prices. If you can find coins with a premium of 10% or less, I'd look into it. 5% is not bad. The premiums for Krugerrands used to be about 1%, if you are wondering. Keep coins somewhere safe and secret -- NOT a bank safe deposit box... I still think that Bullionvault (bullionvault.com) and Goldmoney (goldmoney.com) are superior to any form of paper gold, including ETFs, futures, Perth mint certificates, etc. etc. They are relatively cheap, liquid, and have lower transaction costs. However, there is something to be said for owning real metal directly.

• He also pointed to this Robert KLandis warning from 2007 about GLD SPDR paper. The same features that prevent it from ever becoming money, prevent it from realizing its full potential as a safe haven investment. More troubling still, we see reason to worry about the safety of the underlying metal, given the neighborhood where it is stored.

In Jun'2009 he raised bigger questions about the existence of Com Ex gold. First, there are indications that the seller side of futures contracts (such as Deutsche Bank in April) are having a difficult time making good on their commitments. Second, the information reported by the Comex regarding physical inflows and outflows is looking more and more like a convenient fiction. Third, there is some doubt as to whether there is gold in inventory -- as there absolutely should be -- to match existing warehouse receipts. Fourth, the Comex warehouse is one of the most secure forms of gold investment in the world. If they can't be trusted, what does that say about ETFs, pooled accounts, futures, forwards, options, and all the other forms of "paper gold" out there? Fifth, if it becomes clearer that there is no physical supply to meet physical demand, the dollar price of gold could go much higher.

Now he concludes that lots of Gol D "paper" (and Sil Ver) isn't actually represented by bullion. For many years, people assumed that the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA), the world's largest gold market, was a simple bullion market. Cash for gold. However, just in the past few months, more people are realizing that there is actually very little gold within the LBMA system... During the CFTC hearings, Jeffrey Christian of CPM Group apparently informed us that the LBMA banks actually have about a hundred times more gold deposits than actual gold bullion... Morgan Stanley paid several million dollars in 2007 to settle claims that it had charged 22,000 clients for storage fees on silver bullion that didn't exist... What about things like ETF-s linked to gold? Most of them also claim, as assets, these "deposits" at the LBMA banks. Conspiracy Theory?

There is an easy way to sidestep all the scams, frauds, and phony nonsense. Take delivery on your bullion, whether a 1 oz. Kruggerand or a truckload of 400 oz. institutional bars. Put it in an independent, insured depository that is not affiliated with any bank. Assay all the holdings for tungsten counterfeits. Then audit it periodically, for exact serial numbers and specified weights.

Aug update: hmm, what if I want to do this with an IRA/401k account? Nathan pointed me at Usa Gold.