Monthly Archives: May 2007

Career Guidance for This Century

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Guy Kawasaki interviews new Madison resident Penelope Trunk:

Question: Will getting an MBA or any other type of advanced degree be a good use of time and money since I can’t find a job?
Answer: No. If you can’t find a job, then you should invest in something like better grooming, or a better resume, or a coach for poor social skills. These are the things that keep people from getting jobs. Instead of running back to school, figure out why you can’t get a job, because maybe it’s something that a degree can’t overcome.
Grad school generally makes you less employable, not more employable. For example, people who get a graduate degree in the humanities would have had a better chance of surviving the Titanic than getting a tenured teaching job.

The Apollo Prophecies

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The Apollo Prophecies: Overview: The Apollo Prophecies Project has been in development and production since 2002, when it was started at Toni Morrison’s Atelier Program at Princeton University. Working with 15 students, Kahn/Selesnick built three major sculptural and architectural installation pieces, The Mind Rocket, Lunar Explorer and the Moon Cabinet. A revelatory text was created in collaboration with a brilliant physics graduate student, Erez Lieberman. This text was altered by Kahn/Selesnick so that American and Russian Astronauts involved in the 1960’s-70’s Aquarian lunar expeditions became Gods for the Edwardian expedition members who were waiting for them in their Mind Rocket. Initial props and costumes were drawn and created.

More in this video.

Posted in Art.

Clues About the Future of TV

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David Isenberg:

A recent article chronicles the telcos’ slow start in cable TV. I don’t think the telcos stand a chance of succeeding in cable TV. Instead, if they’re to succeed at all, they’ll probably buy or form alliances with existing cablecos. (Dale Hatfield put it most memorably when he said, “Duopoly is an optimistic assumption.”) But they’d better start swimming, because the times are a changing; I think four things will make the video entertainment space different in the near future: new devices, RSS, faster than real-time downloads and the end of the Kontent Kartel. Here’s an article I wrote last year for VON Magazine about that:

Informative, particularly in light of AT&T’s extensive lobbying to supply “tv” across their old Wisconsin copper network….

NY Times Announces that it will mine web customers’ data

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Keach Hagey:

In fact, some people at the paper’s annual stockholders meeting in the New Amsterdam Theatre exchanged confused looks when Janet Robinson, the company’s president and CEO, uttered the phrase “data mining.” Wasn’t that the nefarious, 21st-century sort of snooping that the National Security Agency was doing without warrants on American citizens? Wasn’t that the whole subject of the prizewinning work in December 2005 by Times reporters Eric Lichtblau and James Risen?
And hadn’t the company’s chairman and publisher, Pinch Sulzberger, already trotted out Pulitzers earlier in the program?
Yes, yes, and yes. But Robinson was talking about money this time. Data mining, she told the crowd, would be used “to determine hidden patterns of uses to our website.” This was just one of the many futuristic projects in the works by the newspaper company’s research and development department. Heck, she added, the R&D department, when it was founded several years back, was “a concept unique in the industry.”
These days, of course, all media outlets—not just the Times—are trying to bulk up their online presence, and many are desperately attempting to learn more about their readers’ habits and then target ads to them. The old-line newspaper companies in particular are under immense pressure to figure out how to make double-digit leaps in profits annually—something they didn’t have to worry about doing before websites spirited away huge chunks of newspapers’ classified advertisers.
Not that anyone would confuse an old-line media company like the Times with a modern data expert like Google, but Sulzberger himself made kind of a comparison earlier in the stockholders’ meeting. Morgan Stanley and other investors have ragged on the Times for having a two-tiered stock structure that protects the powerful voting shares from falling into the “wrong” hands. Sulzberger reminded the crowd that Google stock, that most coveted of Wall Street delicacies, also comes in two tiers.

True Broadband: Vermont vs. Wisconsin

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Tom Evslin:

An hour or so ago the Vermont House and Senate both gave final approval to a bill designed to make Vermont the nation’s first e-state. As defined in Vermont, e-stateness means cellular and adequate broadband coverage – fixed and mobile – everywhere in the state by 2010. The initial definition of adequate fixed broadband is 3 megabits per second service in at least one direction; but the bill contains a mechanism for ratcheting that up as requirements escalate. It is estimated that this requirement may be as high as 20 megabits in both directions by 2013.
Although the bill passed the Vermont House with an overwhelming 132-2 vote more than a month ago, it was by no means assured of passage. Vermont’s citizen legislature is hoping to adjourn for the year sometime tonight. There was a danger that the Senate would not have the time it needed to consider all aspects of this very large bill. But they did!

Quite a contrast to Wisconsin’s process, where AT&T’s stagnant infrastructure (and more importantly, their lobbying prowess) carries the day. Gotta love our forward thinking politicians.

Recent Rental Cars: 2007 Mazda Miata

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The rental car counter presented a simple choice for my “compact” reservation: Mazda Miata or Minivan. I put the top down and began my journey with an ’07 Miata. Quick summary: better than I expected, particularly in the acceleration department, but….. uncertain handling at upper end highway speeds.
Decent seats, useful controls, easy to use convertible top and…. 27mpg after a mix of highway and suburban driving. Unfortunately, I’ve yet to see a rental car without an automatic transmission. A six speed manual Miata would have been much more interesting.
Much more on the Mazda Miata here.

I-80: Inverse Traffic Therapy

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I read with interest two recent posts regarding Madison’s traffic congestion. I, too have a fleeting moment or two when I consider Madison’s growing traffic congestion. It is difficult to use the words “Madison” together with “traffic congestion” after one has experienced the real, big city version. The photo above was taken recently while stuck in traffic on I-80. We’re a long way from that. Regional growth certainly makes our transportation system a rather useful topic for discussion and action. My dream? TGV type train service connecting Chicago, Madison, Milwaukee and Minneapolis.

A Better Cheddar?

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George Raine:

On the outskirts of Modesto, John Fiscalini, with an assist from cheesemaker Mariano Gonzalez, makes the world’s best extra-mature traditional cheddar.
You can look it up. In the World Cheese Awards held in London in March, an 18-month-old cheddar from Fiscalini Cheese Co. was awarded the trophy in the category, the first time in the contest’s 20 years that a British entry didn’t win.
Down the road from Fiscalini Farms, in Hilmar (Merced County), Hilmar Cheese Co. operates the world’s largest cheese and whey-products manufacturing facility. The company makes 1.4 million pounds of cheese every day and will make 500 million pounds this year. It produces 1 out of every 8 pounds of cheddar and Monterey Jack made in the nation.
California cheese production is on a roll. The state is about to pass Wisconsin — America’s Dairyland — as the nation’s leading cheesemaker.

Stornetta’s – Northern California.