Accessibility, Crazy (Event Gripping) Ideas
Tom Peters’ discussion of the smart complexifier can be summarized in the following matrix (see also the full article in Tom Peters’ blog).
| Simplifier | Complexifier | |
| Dumb | Might actually be of help | Can be ignored without harm |
| Smart | Analyst from heaven | Analyst from hell |
This reminds me of the following classical matrix from the IDF, classifying army commanders:
| Lazy | Industrious | |
| Dumb | Harmless | Most damaging |
| Smart | Creative | Best kind |
Top 87 Bad Predictions about the Future lists several predictions, which proved wrong.
Yitzhak Rabin made another bad prediction in his autobiography – that independent satellite launch capability would not be feasible for Israel, and that its military value would not justify its cost. At 1988, Israel launched the Offeq 1 satellite using its own launch vehicle.
The next bad prediction, made by unknown opinion leaders, is that smaller countries, like Israel, would not develop their own independent manned space launch capabilities. Also, that only big countries would invest in building their own space stations and space colonies. The jury is still out about this prediction.
The mercantilistic definition of wealth is that the more gold bullions (or equivalent) you have, you are wealthier. The modern consumerist definition of wealth by possessions is similar.
Buckminister Fuller and Robert Kiyosaki define wealth in terms of the time you can survive without having to work.
A country is wealthier if it has better infrastructure (more capital invested in it), its workforce is more productive, its resources are efficiently allocated (by market forces and where they fail, by well-thought out regulations), and its leaders have the know-how to lead it.
The question about definition of wealth has practical consequences for young people, who have to decide about the moneymaking aspect of their future. The mercantilistic definition leads to legal and otherwise means of acquiring wealth, lacking considration of other people and of the environment. Viewing wealth merely as survival time ignores risks which could wipe out part or all wealth, encouraging people to take big economic risks, which eventually ruin several of them.
Once someone has enough wealth to sustain him indefinitely, the useful definition of wealth for him changes from one of accumulation into one of reducing as much as possible the likelihood of losing it due to misfortune or natural disasters.
Thus, once someone has enough wealth to sustain him indefinitely, he had better start working on converting his wealth into environmentally sustainable one. He should also put some of his wealth towards insuring the rest of it – by taking out insurance, by acquiring an home in another country and investing there, by diversifying his investments – according to their risk profiles – even when this causes reduction of return on his investments.
In his personal life, he can start training in survival skills.
Similarly, a developed (wealthy) country can start protecting its residents against natural disasters. Its residents can start training in whatever skills required for quick recovery from disasters. Infrastructures can be upgraded to prepare better for natural disasters, including whatever is required for speedy and relatively painless recovery in the aftermath of such disasters. Infrastructures, which are vulnerable to natural disasters (such as dams), can gradually be decommissioned.
This is an answer to the question what should someone, who already has all the wealth he needs in the world, do with his “excess” wealth. It also answers questions about the future economic path a developed country should take to keep its residents gainfully employed.
Authors: Evelyn Ehrlich, Ph.D., and Duke Fanelli.
English edition originally published by Bloomberg Press (2004), ISBN-10: 1576601560.
The book was translated into Hebrew by Esti Vachtel, and the Hebrew edition was published by Triwaks Enterprises/Matar Publishing House at 2006. The Hebrew translation is excellent.
The target audience for the book are financial service providers. Their point of view is also the one expoused in the book. The book does not teach them how to cheat their customers, but it hints at the annoyance of legislation limiting telemarketing and spam E-mail.
The original reason for my reading the book was to learn how we are being cheated by financial service providers. However, the book turned out to be unsuitable for this purpose.
The book provides good introduction to marketing in general, dividing it into the following sub-topics:
According to the book, marketing of financial services differs from marketing of other products or services in the following ways:
The book ends with an appendix, which illustrates how four financial service agents succeed by applying the principles expoused by the book to their specific circumstances.
During the Second Lebanese War, more than a year ago, I discovered the world of Arab bloggers – from Lebanon, Egypt and other countries. After the war ended, I continued to follow the Rantings of a Sandmonkey, a blog very critical of the Arabs, Islam and Arab politics.
I followed this blog until May 2007, when he stopped blogging due to some problems he was having and whose nature was not precisely disclosed.
Today I was happy to find that he resumed blogging at August 2007. I was amused by his rant about the political antics of misguided do-gooders messing around with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
October 15th, 2007 was proclaimed as Blog Action Day, with the environment as this year’s topic.
In previous blog entries (Question which I asked myself en route to Olamot 2006 and Housing 100 billion humans on Earth – another take), I considered the problem of housing 100 billion (1011) humans on Earth without ruining its ecology or making it uninhabitable for plants and animals. Now I would like to consider whether it would be feasible to house this number of humans deep in Earth, leaving most of its surface free of humans, for animals and plants to freely roam.
The total surface area of the Earth is 510 million km2, of which about 150 million are land. Let’s assume that we’ll use only 200 million km2, of which 150 million km2 are below land, and 50 million km2 – below water.
We’ll also assume that the average volume needed per capita, including recreation, food producing farms, and factories, is area of 1km2 times height of 5 meters. Thus, to house 100 billion humans over an area of 200 million km2, we’ll need 500 layers.
Since the plan involves digging of giant caves inside the Earth, each layer height will have to consist of 5 meters of inhabitable space plus unknown height of supporting structure, which we’ll assume to be 15 meters. Thus, the total height of 500 layers would be 10km.
Assuming that the top layer will be at small depth from the surface, the bottom layer will be at depth of about 10km. The geothermal gradient of the Earth’s crust is approximately 20 Kelvins (20°K) per 1km depth. So, the temperature at bottom of the living space will be about 230°C (about 500°K). Therefore, a mechanism for cooling the caves will be needed. This mechanism will, however, provide the humans with geothermal energy, estimated to be 63mW/m2. Over an area of 200 million km2, total geothermal energy will be 12.6×1012W, or 126W per capita.
Of course, the problem of constructing and maintaining structures able to withstand the pressures at depth of 10km as well as survive the movements of the Earth’s crust’s tectonic plates, needs to be solved.
The Lord God:
| Original Features | 10 |
| Special Powers | 10 |
| Messianic Qualities | 10 |
| Overall Coolness | 10 |
Source: The 40 most memorable aliens
Modularity is the most successful software engineering practice ever. Unlike other practices, it is practically never abused.
One day I was asked when is it bad idea to modularize software. Of course, for every good thing there are always pathological or contrived circumstances, in which it turns out to be a bad idea. Software modularity is no exception to this.
To be able to present and understand complicated algorithms, they need to be modularized. Then, when wishing to optimize such an algorithm, one typically confines himself to local optimizations, rather than to global optimizations.
When global optimizations are needed, the algorithm developer has to forsake modularity, and the resulting algorithm becomes very big and difficult to comprehend.
Due to the way the human brain works, modularity is always good in source code level. However, it needs language support, such as support for macros and in-line functions to allow compilation into efficient machine code.
On the other hand, one can expect the software development environment to have source code pre-processing tools, which work around any language support deficiencies. Nowadays, it is not a big deal, unless one works for a mentally retarded software development operation.
In machine code level, software modularity means usage of DLLs, inter-module interfaces, plug-ins, etc.
This kind of modularity can be bad, if a module interface overhead directly affects a system bottleneck. A system bottleneck could be CPU time, memory consumption, I/O, database accesses, network latency/throughput, etc.
A good system design implements machine language level modularity when the overhead is not critical to performance; and optimizes the interfaces away where system bottlenecks occur.
Arie Hashbia translated the book into Hebrew, and the Hebrew translation was published at 2007 by Korim (1995) LTD. The original was published by Bantam Dell Pub Group (2003), ISBN-10: 0553815229.
The book provides a fascinating account about world discoveries made by Chinese sailors before Columbus and his colleagues.
It is often overlooked that the European usage of the term “discoverer” is in legal context, rather than being a statement of fact. This is much like assigning a patent to someone, who has the rights over an invention, rather than to the true inventor.
In practically all cases, lands discovered by “discoverers” were already populated by native humans. Those natives are presumably descendants of the original and true discoverers, whose accounts were lost to history.
To be a legal discoverer, one usually needed to be sponsored by a king, bring with him ships, and know how to negotiate agreements with the natives. Even Europeans like Leif Ericson, who discovered new lands without having been sponsored by a king, are not regarded as official discoverers.
Therefore, the claim that China discovered the world does not really contradict the claim that certain Europeans are “discoverers” of certain parts of the world.
The ideas given by the book are hotly disputed, and I am sure that the dispute is abetted by some oversights and shortcomings of the book, even though in general it respects the scientific method. The following details some problems, which I found in a single reading of the book.
Note: the style comments apply to the Hebrew translation of the book, which I actually read. The original English version of the book may be free of those style problems.
In spite of the general respect to the scientific method exhibited by the book, there are some methodological shortcomings.
Answers to the following questions would have expanded the book’s scope, so they are suitable for follow-on work.