Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Marwan Muasher and Rami Khouri Speak With Charlie Rose


Rami was one of my brothers' friends in high school. If he ever finds his way to this blog, I don't think he'd mind my mentioning that he was the only guy I knew who had learned all the words to Bob Dylan's, "Like A Rolling Stone". Playing guitar was a necessary aspect of teenage activities at the time. Here, I find myself overly critical of my sentence structure since Rami was the editor of the Jordan Times for years. I haven't seen him since high school except on TV.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Square.....Smooth, Even, Steady


Jack Dorsey was on The Charlie Rose Show talking about the future of Twitter and Square; two of his teams' creations. It'll be free to get the smart phone plugin, then there'll be a fee of 2.75% and that's it!
The complexity with computer banking gone!
As is usually the case with ideas that seem too simple, I over think them and am concerned about the "what ifs" as far as security and "there's gotta be more to it." The simplicity is the result of extreme complexity ruled by organized programming; Jack Dorsey's specialty and passion, by the sound of it. Twitter was borne of the same passion to organize complexity into simplicity. Charlie asked Jack to give an example of what he meant about simplifying complexity. Jack said that he liked to think about the complexity of a city, such as New York. There are thousands of activities all over the city which, with the help of a GPS in a smartphone could be mapped in realtime. I'm afraid that the significance of that statement is a little vague to me, but then I thought about the beautiful 3 D statistical maps lining the walls of the computer room at a University I attended ten years ago and realized that now these are a realtime proposition! What a tool!
Ah yes. I'm reminded of the special company lecture I went to a decade or more ago where a Nobel Prize Winner for Superconductivity was describing how it worked and it sounded so simple when he said it. I had complete confidence I could relay that information to my friends, but found out that I really only retained a smidgeon of the data and it sounded like hogwash when I grappled for context. Without a doubt, Tony Rose was asking questions of a genius who thinks in a plane invisible to me, I'm afraid. But I'll willingly use the products!

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Huayra Pronello Ford On The Track In 1969 in HD

This is raw footage; not for the feint of heart!



If Pagani names its next supercar "Huayra," it'll have more than just something to do with wind. In the 1960s, Ford of Argentina and motorsports designer Heriberto Pronello teamed up on a racing prototype for the "Can-Am of the South."

Pronello, an accomplished motorsport designer and longtime friend of Horacio Pagani, started working on the car that would become the Huayra Pronello Ford race car in 1966. By 1969, he'd turned out a strange monster whose prospects looked promising. Powered by a five-liter Ford V8 producing 430 hp, the Huayra was the fastest car in both qualifying and race in nearly all of Argentina's Turismo Carretera races in 1969. Driver Carlos "Picho" Pasqualini set a track record at The Autódromo Ciudad de Rafaela with a top speed of 216 mph.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Victor Davis Hanson Reassures Us With The Big Picture

Victor Davis Hanson has given us an erudite analysis that trumps the regular blather than clutters our poor overworked minds. The unfortunate fact that history repeats itself has driven me to dust off a few formerly overlooked books. Media availability has reached fire hose proportions lately and sometimes I feel a little waterlogged. Hence, I seek out gems of wisdom to attempt to filter through the clutter. Mr Hanson hangs his hat at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University. He's the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institute. I won't bore you with an analysis, but rather link to his concise summary here.
He was interviewed this morning on the Dennis Miller Radio Show out here on the left coast of our fair continent: Sharp mind. Hope you enjoy it!