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One could argue that true genius in business is more about giving consumers things they don’t even know they want than about giving them what they want or say they want. I remember the first time I saw the Apple iPod. I went online immediately and ordered one, even though in those dark ages I had to purchase third-party software to make it run with my PC. I also remember when the Sony Walkman and the CD player and disk were both introduced, and although I was slower to get those, I marveled at the genius of the people who gave us such elegant solutions to problems most of us were only dimly aware we had. [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
Apple,
CD,
Courier,
iPad,
iPhone,
iTouch,
Microsoft,
Sony,
Walkman,
Zune
In my most recent post – What Governments Do Well – I suggested that governments can usually be expected to make a hash of anything they attempt, and the bigger the ambitions the more spectacular the failure. As a rule of thumb, I think this is true, but occasionally governments – even multiple governments acting in concert – can achieve something miraculous and worthwhile. This happened yesterday in Geneva, when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – a 27 km underground particle accelerator – combined two opposing beams of sub-atomic particles travelling at near light-speed in an attempt to simulate events that occurred in the nanoseconds following the Big Bang in which the universe was created. The particles collided at seven trillion electron volts (TeV), or half the collider’s design capacity of 14 TeV, and not only did the collision generate masses of useful data, it failed to produce a world-destroying black hole, as some observers had feared. [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
CERN,
European Union,
inefficiency,
Large Hadron Collider,
limited government
First we had the Shoe Bomber, and now we have the Underpants Bomber, at least according to the pictures in the New York Times, which showed parts of the incendiary device still attached to the man’s undershorts, conclusively answering the question “Boxers or Briefs?” and offering, perhaps, a little more information than some of us need.
Now we learn of new, apparently capricious and random, security procedures and restrictions imposed on already suffering air travelers. Since I spend a good part of my professional life at 30,000 feet, this is of more than academic interest. I’ve already read about full body searches of Orthodox priests and five-year-old girls and international flights on which the entertainment system has remained shut off, though that is certainly preferable to screening Hannah Montana. I have seen other stories of flight attendants ripping blankets and pillows out of passengers’ hands and forcing them to remain seated for the last 90 minutes of flight, and of seven-hour delays going through airport security as each passenger is frisked. Maybe this is intended to reassure the flying public that Homeland Security has everything well under control, but to me it smacks of panic and desperation and a complete lack of leadership and vision. [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
Air travel,
airport security,
Director of National Intelligence,
Entebbe,
flight attendant,
Homeland Security,
Israel,
pants bomber,
TSA
Here in the United States we are entering the July 4th holiday weekend, in which we celebrate our country’s independence from Britain in 1776. We are really celebrating our country’s declaration of independence, set out in a remarkable document drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson and signed by the members of the Continental Congress. When the Declaration of Independence was signed, we had already been at war for more than a year and would continue to fight for another seven years until the British left New York City, their last stronghold.
What started mainly as a dispute over taxes became something more. As Jefferson wrote “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” [click to continue…]
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America,
freedom,
ideals,
independence,
July 4
Any time you can piss off the Communist party, the labor unions, and the Chamber of Commerce in one speech, you know you must have said something right. Trevor Manuel, South Africa’s Finance Minister for the past 13 years and now President of the powerful National Planning Commission, managed to achieve this in a speech he delivered last week to the meeting of the World Economic Forum in Cape Town, in which he castigated COSATU, the national umbrella labor union, for calling strikes to advance its socio-economic agenda, while at the same time slamming business leaders for failing to stand up to union extortion. [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
class warfare,
South Africa,
Trevor Manuel
