Newsweek: America the Ignorant

Newsweek on-line has a slide show with unusual ideas that Americans believe. It is titled 'Silly Things We Believe About Witches, Obama and More.'

Forget the birthers, the creationists, and other religious and political fanatics, and similar fringe groups. Their ideas are not exactly motivated by hard facts.

Also, I am not surprised about the lack of education on religion, government, geography, and other subjects. That is a well documented issue. I also remember that while in college I was told by… enlightened students that Greece is in Southeast Asia (Asia, Europe… same deal), Greeks are black (Southern Europe, Mediterranean, North Africa, Africa!), and Greeks speak Latin (the expression ‘sounds Greek to me’ never really registered!), and other trivia of similar ‘quality'.’

However, the following really blows my mind:

In 1999 (eleven years ago!) 20% of Americans still believed that the sun revolved around the earth.

How is it possible to believe in something that was shown to be false almost 500 years ago? They have never heard of Copernicus and the heliocentric cosmology? Where do these people live? According to the poll they are all around me!

I guess I have lived a rather sheltered intellectual life because I have never met people with such extreme ideas. I should be thankful for that!

Best Places to Live 2010: Reading, MA

According to an article about the Best Places to Live 2010 that appeared in Boston Magazine Reading is the ‘more-affordable option’ to the Gold Standard Winchester!! According to the published blurb, Reading has ‘similarly strong schools’ and it is less expensive. (GK edit: A lot less expensive!)

Actually, Reading is a nice town that is close to ‘civilization’ (i.e. Boston), on major arteries (I-93 and I-95), has good schools that have been awarded the Blue Ribbon award (highest government honor for American schools – not sure about the real meaning of that one yet), has very good services, and is well kept (it better be with all the taxes that go to the town!)

Raytheon Company: Raytheon Distributed Common Ground System Featured in The New York Times

At the end of the day it is all about systems integration:
Raytheon Company: Raytheon Distributed Common Ground System Featured in The New York Times

Military Could Use iPhones to Track Friends, Enemies in War

Military Could Use iPhones to Track Friends, Enemies in War

That is some pretty cool technology developed by Raytheon. And if ever Raytheon goes into the video game business their developers could develop some great strategy games.

The original article from the New York Times appeared in the Bits Blog.

The press releases from Raytheon can be found here and here.

I would assume that Apple would need to make a more rugged version of the iPod to turn it into a useful tool in the battlefield (No Doubt Mission Assurance and everything.) The biggest struggle might be for Raytheon and the US government to convince the image-conscious Apple to go for something like that!

Yahoo Issues Takedown Notice for Spying Price List

Yahoo Issues Takedown Notice for Spying Price List

Once upon a time I respected and liked Yahoo! It seems that it has become much like the telecoms: they treat the customer like a commodity. Exploitation rules! And apparently that includes selling the privacy (whatever that might mean today) of their customers to the government (for now) and who knows who else in the future.

A number of 'lawful spying guides' are posted on Cryptome.org including Verizon, Nextel, GTE, etc.

Such pity...

Pacific Northwest Earthquakes Could Strike Closer to Home

Pacific Northwest Earthquakes Could Strike Closer to Home

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Leading the Way

That is the title of an article written by Graham Warwick that appeared in the Oct. 26 issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine. In it Raytheon (NYSE:RTN) Chairman and CEO Bill Swanson talks about disruptive and sustaining (incremental) technology innovation. Among other things he said:

“You want an organization where that’s cultivated, but no one side suffers at the expense of the other. I have watched organizations take away resources from the incremental innovation teams to fund those that are disruptive. What you can create are haves and have-not's and that is one way to destroy innovation. You need both.”

Spot on! I too have seen organizations pouring resources on disruptive half-baked ideas at the expense of upgrade releases that actually pay the bills. A good balance is needed.

Frequently these half-baked ideas generate a lot of excitement (possibly rightly so), they become part of the near term product roadmap, and counted on for millions of $ of revenue promised to stakeholders and shareholders. The problem is that more often than not there is no straight path between a widget with blinking lights that some wizard hacked together to address basic usage on a bench and an actual product that works properly per customer requirements (complete with proper HW, SW, safety, documentation, production testing, etc.) Program delays, resource crunch, added costs, etc ensue.

The end result is that the company hurts, the employee morale suffers, and over time upper management loses every bit of credibility. Of course, the mess could be avoided if the people that are selling the disruptive technology up were in touch with reality or if the people that are pushing down to get things out faster knew the difference between feasibility and productization.