I was saddened to discover, upon checking my favorite RSS reader that Sheldon Dorf, founder of the San Diego Comic Con which I have grown fond of passed away today (Yahoo News link). SAN DIEGO – Sheldon Dorf, who founded the world famous Comic-Con International comic book convention, has died. He was 76. A longtime [...]
I’ve blogged before about the power of Wolfram Alpha, Mathematica creator Wolfram Research’s powerful online “knowledge engine” which is capable of, among other things, balancing chemical equations, looking up star charts, doing math, and even looking up medical information. But it’s good to know that, despite the sophisticated computational engine which underlies it, Wolfram Alpha [...]
Despite not really knowing the lyrics, I’ve had a song playing on and off in the back my head since I got back from training. It was played in the background of the closing slideshow, and upon getting back, I must’ve spent at least one (frustrating) hour searching on Google combinations of words “I just [...]
A few weeks back, I wrote a quick overview of Clayton Christensen’s explanation for how new technologies/products can “disrupt” existing products and technologies. In a nutshell, Christensen explains that new “disruptive innovations” succeed not because they win in a head-to-head comparison with existing products (i.e. laptops versus desktops), but because they have three things: Good [...]
Back when I was still posting on Xhibiting, I was especially fond of interesting USB gadgets. Well, my good friend Anthony pointed me to this interesting gadget that he found out about through Engadget which takes my USB fascination to a whole new level: The product is from Thumbs Up! and apparently, after plugging it [...]
Businesses need to see the trends that will affect their performance, whether they be technical trends, business model trends, or economic trends. One trend which I haven’t seen as many companies factor in (although you see many governments talking about it) is age demographics. Completely ignoring my last post on the dangers of being obsessed [...]
It could happen to you too (HT: Megan McArdle). Symptoms include excessive desire to represent every decision and factoid in life in simple chart form, especially in PowerPoint slide form. Treatment: long vacation with deep exposure to how people actually talk and relate to other humans.
If you follow this blog at all, you’ll know that healthcare policy is a big interest of mine. Given that this was the focus of President Obama’s most recent address (and that this blog is my personal soapbox) I thought I’d chip in three thoughts to the blogosphere “marketplace of ideas” on the topic. The [...]
In educational circles, there’s always a philosophical debate between those educators who favor allowing their students to use tools like TI-89’s or computer algebra-capable software like Mathematica and those who don’t, with those favoring their use citing the ability of the tools to expand the scope of the curriculum, and with those opposed worried about [...]
Ed Glaeser was an economics professor of mine in college. He proudly called his class “boot camp” for economists and noted that while his class reviews always said that his class was “too difficult and too fast”, he never planned to change it. When I found out that he wrote a piece for the New [...]