Musings

General-purpose musings

There are 780 posts filed in Musings (this is page 25 of 78).

College and enterpreneurship

I read with interest PayPal co-founderPeter Thiel’s publicity stunt of paying 20 college students $100,000 each to drop out and innovate. He’s got a point when he says:

“Turning people into debt slaves when they’re college students is really not how we end up building a better society,” Thiel says.

Some of the most successful folks I know in the tech industry do not have computer science degrees. Most of them attended college and most have earned degrees, but many of their degrees are in fields other than computer science. In many cases they might as well have skipped college entirely.

I worked with one guy who was so smart it was freaking scary. He could code rings around our degreed developers and yet his formal education ended with high school (and half of that home-schooled). I’ve met enough of these folks that I can say with certainty that college is absolute a waste of time and money for some people.
Continue reading →

Air France 447 black boxes

Ages ago when I was taking ground school, thinking I would get my pilot’s license, I asked my pilot friend some questions about the mechanics of flying. To my surprise my friend, a retired Eastern Airlines Boeing L-1011 pilot, could not answer my simple questions. I wondered to myself how a seasoned pilot could not know the basics. It seemed to me that, like many things people do in their jobs, the skill of flying a plane becomes second nature to many pilots and they no longer have to think about what they’re doing.

Except when they do have to think. Like in an emergency.

The news today is that investigators of the doomed Air France flight 447 have found evidence that pilots were pulling the nose up on the plane in reaction to the stall warning.
Continue reading →

Shaken

Got a call tonight from my fellow coach of Travis’s T-ball team, which just wrapped up its season. He told me that his daughter was out riding her bike on Sunday and got hit by a car, sending her into the windshield! If it weren’t for the helmet she had been wearing she would’ve died instantly, he said. Instead, she suffered no brain damage but has a seriously broken leg that will take a long time to heal.

I was shaken when I heard that, as I’d just seen them the day before. She and my daughter, Hallie, had become fast friends during the games and practices. As a parent you try to protect your kids from harm but sometimes the unexpected happens.

I don’t know any more details about the accident but I am reminded of my recent post about many drivers just not respecting cyclists. This is one collision that could have had far more tragic consequences.

Please be careful out there. And hug your loved ones every day.

Fast food

Hamburger


On the way to Travis’s T-ball game, he asked me what fast food was. Surprisingly, I had to think about it. Like the famous definition of obscenity, it’s something that “I know it when I see it.”

So, what sets an Applebee’s apart from a McDonald’s? Or a Char-grill apart from a Mediterranean grill in a food court? And what category does Subway fall under? Is it the quality of the food, the speed of the food, or something else?

I decided that the best definition was that a fast-food place does not have a wait staff. Any place where you place your order at a counter (or drive-through) is fast food. If someone takes your order at your table, that is decidedly not fast food. Thus, even though Applebee’s are ubiquitous and the food is nothing to crow about, they are not considered fast food by my definition.

Leave it to six year olds to keep you on your toes!

The truly social network

The last movie watched on our Netflix subscription was The Social Network: a movie loosely based on Mark Zuckerberg’s founding of Facebook. While the movie didn’t always paint a flattering picture of Zuckerberg, it did repeat that he was interested in “openness, making things that help people connect and share what’s important to them, revolutions, information flow, minimalism.”
Continue reading →

Blind spots

Ghost Bike by Salim Virji


This weekend we visited a bicycle store on a quest to find a bike to fit our rapidly-growing daughter. While there, I remarked to the guy behind the counter about Raleigh being named as a bicycle-friendly city.

It was news to him, apparently. I know I’m tuned in to what happens with Raleigh but I figured someone working at a bike store would know about the bike-friendly thing.

“Well, someone should tell the drivers,” he responded. “So many drivers in Raleigh don’t respect cyclists.”
Continue reading →

Crackdown reins in Bahrain activists

Nowhere will America’s commitment to democracy be tested more than in Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s Central Command.

The once massive pro-democracy protests in Bahrain have been reduced to small clashes between youth and police in predominantly Shia Muslim areas.

Security forces have launched a crackdown on protesters marked by beatings and sweeping arrests. Nearly 1,000 demonstrators have been imprisoned, among them doctors, artists and lawyers.

via Crackdown reins in Bahrain activists – Middle East – Al Jazeera English.

Level that playing field

I read with concern today that the U.S. Post Office is closing a local mail station because of to the shrinking volume of mail being sent. Cited for this decline was the rise of email, online bill payment, and the growing use of commercial shippers like FedEx and UPS.

It’s a shame that private enterprise is allowed to compete with the government. These companies are using their commercial nature to unfairly compete with the public entities. If only there was a law that reigned in the predatory nature of private enterprise … you know, level the playing field, so to speak. Wouldn’t that be great?

Fallen wires

The tornado that ripped through Raleigh a few weeks ago left much debris and heartbreak for its citizens. It also left a few downed telephone lines, one of which has been lying in the road near my home since the storm struck. I pondered how anyone could find it acceptable for their phone service to be out for over two weeks.

Then I hit upon the answer: no one has landlines anymore.

That copper lying in the street is likely “dead” copper, having long ago beed disconnected in favor of cellphone service or a VoIP connection. AT&T hasn’t been in a hurry to rehang that line because it’s not making any money from it. I wondered how much copper still hanging on those poles is still being used, and if local telephone companies are on a slow march to irrelevance.

Or maybe it’s a quick march.

Weddings

There was a certain wedding early this morning in a country far, far away. While I’m happy for the couple, I remember how the couple in the last “royal wedding” turned out.

It’s fine to celebrate weddings, but one’s wedding day is just day one of a lifetime journey. In spite of the jitters some couples feel before their wedding, it will arguably be the easiest day of their marriage. When the admiring crowds have all gone home, the real work begins.

I can’t imagine how much harder marriage must be when working under the expectations of an entire country.