Well I’m not sure its THAT important to know what type of coffee I’m drinking. If I stood in line, then I know what I bought….overkill
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I found myself fascinated by China Shakes the World: A Titan’s Rise and Troubled Future – and the Challenge for America by James Kynge. Yet most of the time I was also infuriated over how America has fallen asleep regarding China’s threat to our economy. Kynge has written an excellent book that should be read by every school teacher, mayor and businessman.
It was my goal to finish this book before the end of the summer Olympic games. But I needed time to finish Randy Pauch‘s one of a king book The Last Lecture (review is here) so this week was plenty of time to complete this book.
Infuriating? Yes Kynge shares a startling story about how the Chinese almost secured the assets to the American company that produces stealth coating to the B-2 bomber. Yes THAT Stealth Bomber. Now are you interested in what Hynge has to say? It was Financial Time’s Book of the Year.
So how does America’s secret stealth technology (a skin made with highly specialized thermoplastics and composites which are radar-absorbent) come within arms reach of the communist Chinese? Did they try to steal it? No, they almost purchased the technology outright.
What about pirating and corporate espionage? China plays this game very well too. And based upon the communist’s approach to banking, well lets just say their idea of business as usual includes very loose, corrupt accounting…kinda reminds me of Enron.
If you are frustrated with the RIAA’s music lawsuits against college kids encourage the RIAA to go to source in this matter: China. The Chinese have truly become the world’s leading Pirate Nation. A word of note to the music and movie industry: Do you really believe your lawsuits against college kids is making a dent in your attempt to stop pirating? Go to China.
The Chinese impact
It’s not on the gold medal stand in women’s gymnastics. As the saying goes … if your not cheating, your not winning. Regardless, it was the American gymnast Sacromone who fell of the beam and floor exercise that cost the team gold medal. I know the Olympics bring out national pride. We all feel good about cheering for our athletes during the 16 days of competition. But what about the other 349 days of 2008?
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Microsoft & Seinfeld: Lame
After watching this clip I realized two things. The commercial lacks creativity and Seinfeld’s show closed before 9/11. Our world is a lot different today. The AD/PR firm should be fired. I thought there were creative types in NYC.
Have you ever been so moved by an event that you drop just about everything and rip through a book as quickly as possible? Along with millions of people (6.5 million actually) I watched Randy Pausch’s famous last lecture at Carnegie Mellon on September 18, 2007 and was very moved to read his bookThe Last Lecture.
It goes without saying that the news of his passing was very sad. And to make matters worse, I was unable to finish his book before his death. This has left me with a sense of being cheated in some way.
The book is very much the lecture with a bit more background on all his points from his famous presentation.
Randy wrote about one of the more important projects that has been handed over to a former student, Alice which is available at Alice.org.
Alice is a breakthrough 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing. And best of all for schools and educators, Alice is FREE.
This project helps young children learn computer programming. His description in this book has provided a bit of inspiration for me to talk with my niece Maya about becoming a computer programmer.
Thanks to Randy and his students, young girls including my niece will be able to learn computer programming and use this as a foundation for their education. His work lives on….and that’s a great thing.
Book website | Oprah Winfrey Show Appearance
Today WiscNet is offsite at the 10th annual Angelbeat conference at the Milwaukee Hilton City Center. The team is coming in from Madison and I was able to sleep in this morning until 5:30am and hang with Max for a bit before driving downtown. The agenda looks pretty good, should learn much today:
