Category Archives: Current Affairs

Amazing Time-Lapse Videos of Earth Changing

Current Affairs, ,

Watch from space as Las Vegas grows from 1984 to now. Or watch as a glacier shrinks, and the Amazon jungle recedes. Watch Dubai grow. 

Time Magazine and Google have combined to create this Time Lapse site Earth Engine site, offering time-lapse photography of the earth changing from 1984 through 2012, using NASA technology and satellite pictures, plus Google’s Google Earth technology. 

Time Inc Google Earth Engine

What you see is, well, take a look … this is a great use of technology, good for the organizations that put it up there, and good for it’s educational value. Well done. 

Save the Patient. Make Exorbitant Profits. Is This Okay?

Business Ethics, Business Planning, Current Affairs, , , ,

How do you feel about projecting excessive profitability in a health care business plan?

Over the weekend I saw the pitch for a brilliant business plan, with great technology, for developing medical electronics that could significantly reduce some kinds of complications in some kinds of surgeries.

Soaring Health Care Costs Time Magazine Bitter Bill

“The world needs this,” I thought. “I hope these people succeed. I hope they get the investment they need.”

But then they got to the financial projections.

Their sales forecast soared to tens of millions of dollars, but their technology was so good that it seemed credible. They had PhDs and patents and a strong team. No problem there. 

But they also projected 80-85% EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes). And that got my attention. It’s not just my chronic skepticism about absurdly high projected profits in business plans; it’s also about intentions, exploitative pricing, what Wikipedia calls price gouging. And about ethics. 

It reminded me of the Steven Bill cover story in Time Magazine a couple of months ago, called Bitter Pill. Or if you want the short version, watch this Jon Stewart interview with Steve Brill. He says: 

It’s the people who organize the care, who sell the equipment, who sell the drugs; they’re the ones making the money. 

Later I asked the inventor about the ethics of pricing. He understood the problem. He gave me a sensitive respectful answer. He said he trusted his more-businesslike co-founders who set the prices. He explained that pricing is set by the whole system, pretty much what Brill’s piece suggests. He didn’t say that profits from this one product would go straight back to research for other products, more inventions, and more improvement in surgical equipment. Insurance companies set the price. His company can beat the existing costs with something much safer. So, if they can execute their plan, they’ll make huge profits. 

Medical costs will still go down, if it works, because it reduces complications. Patients will benefit too, with less pain, illness, and death. But according to their own numbers, they could charge a third of their planned price and still make healthy profits. 

What do you think? 

(Editorial note: I’m not giving specifics on purpose. I don’t want to make this about a specific company. And at this point it’s all hypothetical anyway, just a few numbers in a business plan.) 

How to Fix the USA: Excellent TED Talk

Current Affairs, ,

If you’re a citizen of the USA you should spend the minutes to listed to to Lawrence Lessig’s TED talk, “We the people and the republic we must reclaim.” This is completely bipartisan, spans liberals and conservatives, and addresses problems that affect all of us, regardless of views on any specific issue. 

I’m embedding it here, but if you don’t see it, please click this link to watch it on YouTube instead. 

What Part of the Word Publishing Don’t You Understand?

Current Affairs, Twitter, ,

Warning: this is probably just a waste of time, but still, I was curious, then fascinated, as I read Investigative Journalist Claims Her Public Tweets Aren’t ‘Publishable;’ Threatens To Sue Blogger Who Does Exactly That on Techdirt. 

Lawsuit over published tweets

My first reaction:

It’s publishing. Look up the definition. Published and not publishable are opposites. 

It’s an interesting story, though, followed by some lively comments. 

One note that might be relevant: I visited the Twitter account in question. It’s locked. Does locking the account make it not published? I don’t know. 

Still, can I say something in public and sue you for quoting me? Seems oddly illogical. 

The World is Dead. Long Live the World. Carved in Stone.

Current Affairs, , , , ,

The truth is, the Mayans never thought the world was going to end on Dec. 21, 2012. That was just the end of the 13th and beginning of the 14th* baktun, a unit of time on the Mayan calendar, 394 years.

I was at a Mayan ceremony celebrating the beginning of the new baktun, in Xcaret, Mexico. That’s a picture of it here, from by cell phone, in the audience. Xcaret Mexico Mayan Celebration New Baktun 12-22-12 

Imagine yourself way back in the eighth or baktun, having your calendar all finished and painstakingly carved in stone for four 394-year baktuns to come. Wouldn’t you consider it done for a few generations, and go back on to something else?  You’d assume not that the world would end, but that in the intervening 1000+ years, somebody else would add some more baktuns in plenty of time.

After all, carving into stone is very hard.  Relax, have a Balché. They can do those other baktuns later. 

Over the holidays I had the good fortune to spend my Christmas week with (some of) my family in my country-in-law, Mexico. In fact, we spent Dec. 21 together in the same place we spent New Year’s of 2000, Puerto Aventuras, in the heart of the Mayan world, on the Mayan Riviera. And both times, Y2K and Dec. 21, 2012, the world didn’t end. 

(Perhaps the world should encourage us to go back there the next time people say it’s going to end. We could be persuaded. I think we’re good luck. That is, if the world is superstitious.)

We arrived on Dec. 20, on the brink of the end of the Mayan calendar and the end of the world. Supposedly. However, what we found, much to our delight, was an overwhelming consensus — local experts, local academics, taxi drivers, restaurant owners, merchants — that the whole thing was completely misreported. It was never an end of the world. It was always the beginning of a new age, or epoch, or, in Mayan, baktun.

On the 22nd, a beautiful day on the Caribbean, we attended the Mayan ceremony shown here. Celebrating a new beginning. 

It’s about time. 

Let’s All Demand Killer’s Names Not Be Published

Current Affairs, ,

Here is something we all could do to make these horrific multiple murders less likely to happen:

Let’s not publish killers’ names or pictures.

Let’s all agree. Sign petitions. Make demands. Tell the New York Times and Huffington Post and Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, and all the newspapers, all the new channels, all the online news, all the bloggers:

Let’s not publish killers’ names or pictures. 

This could happen. There is precedent for it: Media don’t publish names or pictures of rape victims. Thank God for that. And it was done by general agreement, and there is no downside; everybody wins. Free press isn’t compromised when it’s a voluntary restraint. So too, media could agree not to publish the names or pictures of these killers. We don’t have to pass a law about it (although we ought to). We just have to make it the ethical norm.

Let me be clear: I am no way suggesting that this idea replace the need for better laws on guns, or that this is instead of better laws on guns. I don’t want to be guilty of suggesting we outlaw costumes in theaters instead of guns. This would be in addition to that. And this, unlike gun laws, is something concrete that we can do. We could be effective.,

All we really have to do is agree, enough of us, vocally enough, on this simple rule:

Let’s not publish killers’ names or pictures. 

What we’d get from that is a reasonable chance to change the equation the next time some sick person gets the impulse. Obviously nobody knows what strange combination of factors converge as a person commits these horrific acts; but there’s an obvious possibility that one of the influencers is getting worldwide attention, being famous, being a celebrity.

We all know the strange power and attraction of celebrity. And we can all guess how that influences the killers.

With some of these killers, it’s not just 15 minutes of fame; it’s forever. There are serial killers who are better known in our society than some great leaders.

And the attention on serial killers. Think of some huge box office moves focusing on serial killers. Think of the network television series focusing on serial killers. Now think of what’s in the mind of the next person who might be capable of committing a monstrosity like last week. What’s the chance that the attention, the celebrity, the “everybody knows my name” factor mixes into the concoction of self pity, rage, and revenge that has them grab a gun.

We could change that part of the equation, all of us, by getting together and insisting:

Let’s not publish killers’ names or pictures. 

So what do we do? We join up. We start saying it. I’ve never been a movement kind of a person, so I don’t know how we get going; but maybe you do. Where to we start the petition? How do we organize it? If you think it’s a good idea, then help me get going on this.

And what about a hashtag? #nofame4killers is the best I can come up with. Can we do better?

Pop Quiz: Greatest Challenge in Workforce Planning

Current Affairs, Economics,

According to this infographic, summarizing more detailed research, the greatest challenge is finding and hiring the right people. Which I think would have been true last year, five years ago, and 20 years ago too.

The greatest uncertainty: the economy.

I got this infographic today from the Compliance and Safety Blog:

What Obama Win Means for Small Business and Entrepreneurs

Current Affairs, , , ,

I just posted Now Let’s Hold Both Parties Accountable for What They Do to Small Business on the smplans.com blog. It’s a riff on Sarah Needleman’s excellent summary on WSJ.com, called Clarity for Small Firms. I hope you can see that one; I’m not sure about the pay wall. She summarizes the situation for taxes, fiscal cliff, government spending, access to capital, jobs, energy, and net neutrality. Nobody is saying election campaigns clarify anything all that much, but still, a lot was said. 

I hope you click to see my post on the smbplans.com blog, and maybe look as well at what we’re doing there with social media business plans.