Blog Club

The Future of War, Made in America Again

Yesterday was a day of historic change for the World but it went largely unnoticed. While most of us in the Midwest enjoyed the Sun in the Spring sky after a grey Winter, the world changed. Yesterday our country ushered in a new era of War and of arms races. While not nearly as remarkable as the last time we did this in Hiroshima the implications will likley be as profound.

The Plane
The X-45A is a new unmanned robotic plane developed by Boeing. Funded by the Air Force, and NASA, the plane weighs about 8,000 pounds and has a 34-foot wingspan. The plane is now about two years old. If your interested in seeing the firstflight check out the Boeing video.

The Plain Problem
Yesterday, for the first time in human history, a unmanned aircraft dropped a smart bomb from the sky and came within inches of hitting its target.

Directed by remote control from eighty miles away the X-45 dropped a 250 pound smart bomb from 35,000 feet as it flew at 442 miles per hour. The bomb guided by global positioning satellites landed within inches of its target.

The problem is that yesterday we came a step closer to ushering in an era of drone wars. Killing without having to take on causalities has been around since the V2 but each year we lower the barriers and make the cost less for killing.

Jerryisms

Evidentially not only am I not feared in the workplace, I am actively mocked. Given that I run a fair number of meetings I end up talking a good deal. Unfortunately for me that sometimes means either: a) my mouth gets ahead of my brain, b) I mix metaphors, or 3) sometimes even I have no idea what I have just said.

It is not uncommon when I am running team meetings for a number of our group to begin furiously scribbling down some nonsense I've just spoken. For April 1st I came into the office to find a number of magnets with some of my more quotable moments.

Here they are:

*When somone doubted if we could get a project done in ten days I was quoted as saying, "Ten days gives us seven days to create the world and three days to watch it spin."

*Clearly my mouth was out in front of my brain when I said, "I tell you what I'm going to think; I'll wait to have the thought now."

*No one has any idea, including me, why I said this or what was meant by it, "It takes the right size spoon to measure the cup."

*After feeling uprepared in a number of meetings due to lack of data I remarked, "I'm tired of going into a knife fight with a spork."

So...which is your favorite?

Zen

The Lamborghini of Vacuum Cleaners

Yes, it has come to this I'm going to blog about a vacuum cleaner. The sad reality is I am actually very excited about my new vacuum and as pathetic as that may seem want to tell others why.

About two months ago I started seeing advertisements for a new vacuum made by the company Dyson. I decided to check out their web site because my old Hoover™ was just about to give up the ghost after about three years of fighting with cat hair. The Dyson Web Site blew me away. It was one of the best designed commercial product web sites (after all this is a vacuum) that I've seen in quiet a while.

The only thing that stopped me from rushing out and buying one was the steep entry price ($399). That's a brand new X-Box and at least two games (my equation of value) and enough to give me a little pause.

I decide on Tuesday to make the plunge and after a visit to Sears rushed home to see if I had just become the latest vacuum cleaner sucker born.

Apple and Pepsi: I fought the law, or we are the law?

I hate hypocrisy, even when the people being hypocritical are cool.

On Superbowl Sunday, Pepsi and Apple will unveil a new promotion allowing users who purchase Pepsi products to have a 1/3 chance of winning a retribution code for a free download of a song from the Apple I-Tunes store. In total the promotion is targeted to give away over one million songs. It is brilliant marketing, a million dollars (which is what a million songs would cost at the ninety-nine cent I-Tunes price) is not even a sneeze to the multi-billion dollar Pepsi corporation.

One of the featured ads called “I fought the Law” has sixteen of the teenagers sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The fade away image at the end of the ad reads “Download music at I-Tunes: Legally”

Can you imagine anything cooler than this, Pepsi and Apple implicitly thumbing their nose at the RIAA!

But wait a second; what’s the real point of this ad? Is it that these kids shouldn’t have been sued for just downloading music? Is it that they should have been sued and so now corporate mom (Apple) and pa (Pepsi) are presenting them with a way to support the oppressive copyright regime shoved down our digital throats through poorly thought out legislation like the DMCA?

Alma Mater: Infra Dignitatem

I hold my degrees from Eastern Illinois University (EIU), a small liberal arts college in Charleston, Illinois. To quantify small, the school got a fair amount of local press last year when enrollment swelled by 365 students pushing campus to over 11,000.

When I graduated from EIU the realization hit me that my degree and 50 cents would likely get me a Coke. I’m not sure that degrees from other schools would have amounted to a lot more. Actually, retrospectively EIU was a great school for me, not large enough to make me a Pez head in a giant lecture room but no so small that it felt like home schooling.

The thing that amazed me at the time, and does to this day, is the quality of the instructors in various departments. Academic jobs virtually disappeared in the early 80’s, a trend that continues to this day. That means if you scratch the surface at a number of smaller Universities you will find strongly credentialed instructors.

I have a love/hate relationship with the University. I must admit, at times, I find the need to mock it. Not for what it was, or what it is, but its own self-image.

HMO: Help Medicine Out {implied..By Not Getting Sick}

My personal health care over the course of the last decade has been handled through various Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs). I’ve used them because I don’t usually have a great deal of concern over who my primary physician is and thus far I’ve been very healthy.

Over the course of the last six months I’ve had some rather strange health issues and have become deeply disappointed in the reality of my HMO. I’m not going to mention it by name because they might have some strange Internet Bot waiting to swoop down on those who defame their service and drag them into civil court. But I do want to give you a flavor for what I see as their major problems.