In Outliers, Gladwell talks about how Korean Airlines reduced its crashes from the most in the world to one of the safest airlines in the world. He argues that pilots from countries where it is difficult to question superiors suffer more frequent crashes than pilots from countries where questioning superiors is the norm. I bet [...]
Entries from January 2009
Were Flight 1549 Passengers Lucky the Pilot was American?
January 16th, 2009 · No Comments · Technology
Tags:Book Reviews·Technology
UW Grad New CEO of Yahoo
January 14th, 2009 · No Comments · Technology
Carol Bartz was named the new CEO of Yahoo! today, replacing Jerry Yang. I know nothing about her, other than she’s a UW grad, which is good enough in my book! Yahoo! faces huge challenges ahead and hopefully she can turn them around. EDIT: My brother informs me that Bartz gave a guest lecture in [...]
Tags:UW-Madison
Isreali/Palestinian Conflicts on Second Life
January 12th, 2009 · No Comments · Political Science & Economics
The biggest news over the last week has been Israel’s bombing and subsequent invasion of Gaza to try to stop Hamas from firing rockets into Israel. Israel’s response has led to outcry from countries sympathetic to the Palestinians’ plight and local protests in the Arab world, London and Florida, among other places. Now, these same [...]
Tags:politics·Technology
How Much Pollution do your Google Searches Generate?
January 11th, 2009 · No Comments · Technology
Alex Wissner-Gross, a physicist and owner of CO2stats.com, claims that every two Google searches uses as much energy as boiling a kettle of water. I have no idea if this is correct, but it seems very high to me. Experts have also claimed that the Internet industry produces about as much carbon emissions as the [...]
Tags:green·Technology
Floating Plastic Island 2x the Size of USA
January 9th, 2009 · No Comments · Technology
No, its not science fiction. I just finished reading the Economist’s special report on the world’s oceans. Its really good, worth the read, and best of all, its free on the Economist website. One of the articles describes an area in the Pacific ocean 2x the size of the United States that is completely full [...]
Tags:green
Would you Delete 10 Facebook Friends For a Free Whopper?
January 9th, 2009 · 1 Comment · Business & Advertising
While I probably haven’t eaten fast food in at least six months, Burger King is my favorite burger chain solely based on its innovative marketing. They are at it again with their Facebook application Whopper Sacrifice. WhopperSacrifice.com says: What would you do for a free WHOPPER? Now is the time to put your fair-weather web [...]