NUKEMAP

When the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb, Little Boy, on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945, it inflicted a huge number of casualties (~100,000 deaths) and completely leveled large portions of the city.

However, in the big scheme of nuclear warfare, this bomb and its cousin, Fat Man, which was detonated a few days later over Nagasaki, were relatively tame. Their explosive yield (15kt and 20kt, respectively) are a small fraction of the capability of the current American, Russian, or Chinese arsenals.

Fat Man

To give us all a sobering perspective on this, Alex Wellerstein created an interactive web site called NUKEMAP. Simply place the marker on your home (or any other location of your choosing), select a yield (or a specific bomb from the drop-down menu), and see the various damaging effects. Very interesting ...

Airport Codes

Following up my prior post about state's two-letter abbreviations (i.e., postal codes), here is a cool site that crowdsources the origins of airport's three-letter codes. For anyone who travels as much as I do, you might find this quite interesting.

Perfect Circles

Over the years, I have taught my kids the story of the Italian painter, Giotto. He may not be the most famous of the many talented Middle Age painters, but my kids were fascinated by the story of "the perfect circle". At one point the Pope asked Giotto to draw something to prove his skills as an artist, and Giotto proceeded to draw a circle so perfect that everyone thought he had used a compass.

My kids were naturally skeptical of their father's claims about perfect circles, until last week when my daughter found the following video on YouTube:

I was likewise fascinated, and it turns out that there may be even more background to this story.

Regardless, every now and then I catch myself trying to draw a perfect circle. Let's just say that I don't think Giotto has to worry about my outperforming him!

On Leadership and Space

Whether it is teaching entrepreneurship to students, analyzing leadership with colleagues, or discussing myriad issues with my three kids, I have always found a powerful tool in drawing parallels to popular culture. Points really seem to hit home when viewed through the lens of something that we otherwise feel is benign or simply entertaining.

About a year ago, Alex Knapp, a staff writer for Forbes, wrote three wonderful blog posts about leadership. The posts would have been fine as stand-alone analyses of sound leadership principles. However, what really drove home his points--and made the pieces such an easy read--was his framing the arguments within terms of two popular space media franchises, Star Wars and Star Trek.

Regardless of whether you are a fan of either series, his articles still focus on solid leadership advice.

	Five Leadership Mistakes Of The Galactic Empire
	Five Leadership Lessons From Jean-Luc Picard
	Five Leadership Lessons From James T. Kirk

Ed Lu & the B612 Foundation

On February 15, 2013, a small asteroid named 2012 DC14 passed extremely close to Earth, garnering global attention. Despite many "boy who cried wolf" accusations in the past, it seemed like this particular fly-by was getting too close for comfort, and people took particular notice of ongoing expert warnings of imminent natural catastrophes from a potential direct impacts.

Enter Ed Lu. He is a former NASA astronaut, who I had the pleasure of meeting during our 2012 Sea-Space Summit at Google's headquarters in Silicon Valley. He is dedicating his life to saving our planet from rogue asteroids.

Ed knows that we currently have the technology to divert any asteroid heading directly toward Earth. The challenge is giving ourselves enough of a warning. Therefore, in true entrepreneurial fashion, he helped launched the B612 Foundation. Named after the title character's asteroid home in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince, the Foundation has plans for a modern asteroid early-warning system based on a single infrared space telescope placed in orbit around the sun. Their "Sentinel Mission" would identify and map any potentially threatening asteroids.

To customize an oft-quoted phrase, "If the dinosaurs had had Ed Lu, the B612 Foundation, and the Sentinel Mission, they would probably still be around." Let's hope modern homo sapiens take advantage of our good luck.

MSN "News on Main"

Over the years, I have been interviewed many times for print, web, and broadcast news outlets. Perhaps I have become jaded, but I am not easily impressed with the end product from most media or journalists. It is rare to end with a piece that is factually accurate, visually compelling, entertaining, and informative. Of all the stories I have appeared in, my recent experience with MSN's News of Main is probably my favorite. They were extremely professional from start to finish, the crew they sent to conduct the onsite interviews was a pleasure to work with, and their finished product was well-structured and edited. Below are the two stories they ran, one focused on me personally and one focused on OceanGate as a startup venture.

Great Photos of 2012 (so far)

A friend pointed me to this cool site with some of the best photos of 2012 so far. Here are some of my favorites:

Gigapxl Project

I was recently introduced to the Gigapxl Project, which is REALLY cool ... even if you know very little about photography (like me). I won't do it justice trying to explain it, so I will merely encourage you to visit the site, learn more about their work, and enjoy the many stunning images. Below is a sample ... but to be truly appreciated you should click on them to see additional details.

Golden Gate Bridge at Sunset

SpaceShipOne and White Knight

Devil's Tower

Neil deGrasse Tyson Quote as Comic Strip

I recently discovered on the Web an extremely talented illustrator by the name of Gavin Aung Than. This guy is insanely good! I really like his Zen Pencils site, where he illustrates in comic book style some of the most famous quotes in history. My personal favorite is this one by Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Space Ipsum

During my third year of law school, I was Editor-in-Chief of our environmental law journal. That was my first exposure to the use of "Lorem Ipsum", which is a publishing technique that uses nonsensical Latin text as a placeholder while designing a page layout. Since similar text is used in Web development, there are apps and sites that will generate the text for developers (see, e.g., Lipsum). Now some creative space enthusiasts have created a text generator with a space theme: Space Ipsum. As a fellow space geek, I have to love the site. However, as an editor, I think it defeats the purpose of the Lorem Ipsum technique, because I catch myself reading the text rather than assessing the page layout. Oh, well. I guess it's the price we pay for following our passions!

Fun with "ANTIPODES"

My company's flagship submarine is Antipodes, so we get many questions about the name's origin. There are many historical answers, but here is my favorite:

The term "antipodes" comes from the mathematical field of geometry and refers to a point on a sphere that is diametrically opposed to another. For example, if you place the index finger of your left hand anywhere on a basketball and place the index finger of your right hand at the point on the basketball directly opposite along an imaginary line through the center, then your right index finger will be on the "antipodes" of your left index finger (and vice versa). Another way to imagine this is to look at a (now) old-fashioned desk globe that spins along an axis held by a stand at the North and South Poles ... they are each the "antipodes" of each other.


Enough math! What does this have to do with a submarine?!

Well, our planet is a sphere that happens to be mostly covered in water. Because of the geographic distribution of land mass, less than 4% of land has a land-based antipodal point. This means that just about every human settlement on Earth has its antipodes somewhere in an ocean ... which can be explored only in a submarine. Hence the name. Make sense?

Here is a map that helps visualize the rarity of finding land-land antipodal pairs:


For a fun interactive exercise, check out this Google Maps mash-up that allows you to find the antipodal point of any location on the planet!

"Dreamin' Steven"

I've had several people ask me about the title of my blog, so here's the scoop ...

My high school years marked an especially creative time in my life, when I wrote a number of stories, poems, and songs that I still carry with me. One particular short story, written during my senior year, was a reflection of my life at the time, and in retrospect has become a reflection of my entire life.

Patterned after one of my favorite books, J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, it was the story of a young boy who was prone to excessive day-dreaming. One day, he awakened from a particularly vivid day-dream where he rescued his grade-school teacher from a burning building and became a local hero. However, to his shock, he discovered that he had not been dreaming at all. In fact, his "real life" had finally mirrored his "dream life".

For me, the story represented a critical lesson that I have abided by since I wrote the story 25 years ago: we should never stop dreaming, because it is the only way that we can accomplish great things in our lives.

Yes, the title of the story was Dreamin' Steven.

Jedi Church ... Why Not?

It turns out that there is now an official "Jedi Church" ... and why not?

Sure, you have to get past the obvious tongue-in-cheek Star Wars movie tie-ins. But otherwise ... if you think about it, the underlying philosophical principles of the Jedi are not so completely out of whack with our current society. Given the political, economic, and sociological turbulence surrounding us across the globe, it seems to me that people are craving something new and refreshing to believe in. Perhaps a "religion" whose core tenets include beliefs that "there is one all powerful force that binds all things in the universe together" and "there is an innate sense of morality inside every one of us" is just the cure for what ails many people today. Folks tend to find solace wherever they feel most comfortable.

Hey, then again, as a disillusioned Catholic who married a Jewish woman and spent most of last year in Islamic countries, perhaps I'm not the best judge of religious doctrines?! After the latest Star Trek movie comes out in a few weeks, I might switch my affiliation to either "Vulcan" or "Klingon" (I don't think I'd fit in as well as a "Romulan"). ;-)

Common Craft

Since I'm such a visual person, I'm always impressed by people who are creative enough to visually explain complex concepts. The folks at Common Craft are exceptionally adept at this, as evidenced by this sample video:

In Memoriam ...

This past week marked the anniversaries of three tragic losses in the American manned space program: January 27 (Apollo 1 in 1967); January 28 (Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986); and February 1 (Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003). This is certainly a time for remembrance and also a time for looking ahead to make their sacrifices meaningful. Please visit this site to commemorate these three crews, as well as other cosmonauts and pilots who lost their lives in pursuit of our space-borne efforts.

To the stars through adversity - always exploring

Wordle

Check out this cool Web site for creating interesting word maps.

Twitter Life Cycle

I can't remember where I found this image, but I thought it was SO spot-on! Also, it led me to find a really terrific (old) site by Kathy Sierra called "Creating Passionate Users." There is some really good stuff in there.


Anyway ... for those who have yet to experience Twitter, it is a simple application based on answering one single question: "What are you doing right now?" A true example of minimalism (to accommodate SMS updates, posts are limited to 140 characters) and viral community-building (you can subscribe to "follow" other people's "Tweets"), this micro-blogging phenomenon has simply exploded worldwide. If you'd like, you can even follow me.

Project Virgle

If it weren't for the fact that Google is notorious for its April Fool's Day shenanigans, I don't know if many folks would've put it beyond them and Virgin to be completely serious about Project Virgle, a mock project to colonize Mars. Both companies (and their founders) have the financial resources to take on such an endeavor and have also demonstrated the desire to reach for space (Google with the Google Lunar X PRIZE and Virgin with Virgin Galactic).

Perhaps in a few more years?!

Bullrun 2007 on "Jay Leno's Garage"

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.

Did You Know 2.0

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.