Recently I was at an event where I heard this terrific quote from Dr. Dimitrios Niarchos, Director and Chairman of the National Center for Scientific Research ("Demokritos") in Athens, Greece. It's probably an oldie, but it was new to me:
"Research" is the transformation of money into knowledge.
"Innovation" is the transformation of knowledge into money.
Well said.
Last year, I was fortunate enough to join some high school buddies to participate in a cross-country car rally called Bullrun. The event featured almost 75 teams of exotic/luxury cars traveling from Montreal to Key West over 7 days.
One of the more interesting moments occurred before the rally even started. At the starting line in Montreal, two of the teams were discussing the 30-year old record for driving cross-country (from NYC to LA): 32 hours, 51 minutes. This was done in the 1970's during the Cannonball Run craze. One team bet the other $50K that they couldn't break the record, and the race was on. The two-man team drove from Montreal to NYC, launched on their record-setting effort to LA, and then managed to fly back to meet the rest of the Bullrunners to finish out the rally to Key West.
Yes, they broke the record with a time of 31 hours, 59 minutes. And yes, that means they averaged 87mph the entire way across the country (top speed of 160mph). Uh, no they somehow managed to avoid ALL COPS. (Why can't I do that?)
Anyway ... here's a recent interview they did with Jay Leno on his car enthusiast site.
Here is a phenomenal venture capitalist and public speaker talking about his two favorite hobbies: photography and rocketry. Enjoy!
This is an updated version of the powerful conversation-starter presentation making its way around the Web. [I've been a huge XPLANE fan for years, so I'm partial to this version!]
When you're done watching, join the conversation.
I'm not even going to try taking credit for this image, the caption, or the accuracy of each. However, it seems like everything is accurate. Cool!
Left: All the water in the world (1.4087 billion cubic kilometres of it) including sea water, ice, lakes, rivers, ground water, clouds, etc. Right: All the air in the atmosphere (5140 trillion tonnes of it) gathered into a ball at sea-level density. Shown on the same scale as the Earth.
At dinner a few weeks ago, one of my close friends mentioned something about the size of each party’s convention delegations corresponding to the relative size of each party’s voter registrations. I thought it was an excellent point, so I dug up the numbers. I actually found that she was not entirely correct, but in the process I found something else that I thought was interesting.
As of the 2004 elections, there were roughly 72M registered Democrats and 55M registered Republicans. She was right: the Democratic Party *is* bigger than the GOP.
However, the 2008 conventions will consist of 4,049 Democratic delegates and 2,380 Republican delegates. While the Democratic Party had only 31% more registered voters in 2004, it will bring 70% more delegates to its convention in 2008. Therefore, the larger convention size does NOT seem to correlate directly to the larger base of registered voters.
That being said … I think that these numbers show something much more fundamental about the Democratic Party. They don’t just believe in “Big Government” (as the GOP would have us think), but they believe in more “directly representative” government. Why do I say that? Well, according to these numbers, the Democrats will bring one convention delegate for every 18,000 registered Democratic voters while the Republicans will bring one convention delegate for every 23,000 registered Republican voters. One could interpret these numbers as supporting the notion that Democrats are 22% more “directly representative” in their convention than the Republicans.
I just love statistics … you can manipulate them to support just about any notion! ;-)
Most Americans know that the "Bill of Rights" consists of the first 10 Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Some may even know that there have subsequently been 17 additional Amendments approved by Congress and ratified by the States. Unfortunately, very few people actually know the connection between this last Amendment (the 27th) and the original Bill of Rights. However, I find it to be a fascinating story, both of from the perspective of political history but also from the perspective of how the American system of government was created and operates.
When the U.S. Constitution was originally adopted in 1789, there was significant concern that the newly created central (Federal) government would become too powerful if left completely unchecked. Therefore, twelve amendments were proposed specifically to create limitations and safeguards to protect individual citizens. Yes, that's right: 12. Ultimately, only the last 10 were ratified by the States during that early part of our country's history and became what we know today as the "Bill of Rights." The first two proposed Amendments were not ratified ... at least not then.
The first proposed Amendment pertained to the apportionment of the House of Representatives after each decennial census. Even though it was never ratified by the States, it is still technically pending ratification.
The second proposed Amendment pertained to the delay in effecting pay raises for Congress, providing that changes in salaries could only take effect after the next general election. Even though it was not ratified along with the rest of the Bill of Rights, it ultimately DID get ratified as what we now know as the 27th Amendment. As you can imagine, it was a very long (202 years!) strange trip.
Initially, the Amendment was ratified by only 6 States, which left it short of the 11 needed to be included in the Bill of Rights. Except for fluke ratifications by Ohio in 1873 and Wyoming in 1978, the proposed Amendment lay in a state of pending ratification until it was discovered by a Texas legislative aide named Gregory Watson. He made this the subject of an academic paper at the University of Texas at Austin (his professor gave him a "C"!), and then he later began a letter-writing campaign to get the Amendment ratified. When Alabama became the 38th State to vote for ratification on May 5, 1992, the Constitution gained its 27th Amendment. Subsequently, seven other States ratified the Amendment.
Yes, this could be seen as further evidence of how convoluted and bureaucratic the U.S. system of government can be. However, it also shows how flexible it can be and how much influence a single "common citizen" can have in shaping our democratic system.
