Intense

(cont'd)

Engineer Jeremy Hollman was already disappointed in his job at Boeing at the age of 23. When Elon Musk recruited him with his radical vision of change in the aerospace industry, he liked it: "I thought it was an opportunity I could not pass up."

Young and single, he was willing to "give up any semblance of having a life in favor of working at SpaceX non-stop." He worked with the top engineer to create a new rocket engine. Then he loaded it in onto a U-Haul trailer behind a Hummer and drove 4,000 lbs of gear from CA to Texas for intense trial and error testing.

A great job, but super consuming, with failure after failure. "I was really, really frustrated and just tired and mad." His glasses fell down a flame duct and he had no time to go to the optometrist. His safety glasses got scratched. He "vented about this in the factory one night." Musk was nearby and heard it all.

Two hours later, Musk's assistant appeared with a lasik eye surgery appointment. He paid for the surgery. Hollman says, "Elon can be very demanding, but he'll make sure the obstacles in your way are removed."

from Elon Musk: SpaceX, Tesla, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

Start over

We all know Elon Musk somehow managed to really change both the space and car industries, and this while still in his 30's. He has super focus, drive, vision, and built a network of super talent around his goals.

He recruits fantastic people and inspires them, and then he makes fantastic work demands – which are also part of the legend. "Ulcer-inducing deadlines” and 100-hour work weeks make for some bad stories, but I'm going to share some good stories from that biography I'm reading . . 

After working so hard, sacrificing personal time, the employees of SpaceX had big investment of effort in their rockets. They were going where many had failed before and they wanted to succeed. 

"The failed launch [third rocket test] left many SpaceX exmployees shattered. "It was like the worst [blank] day ever.You don't usually see grown-ups weeping, but there they were. We were tired and broken emotionally." 

"Musk addressed the workers right away, and encouraged them to get back to work. He said, "Look. We are going to do this. It's going to be okay. Don't freak out."

SpaceX employee Singh says, "It was like magic.Everyone chilled out immediately and started to focus on figuring out what just happened and how to fix it. It went from despair to hope and focus."

from Elon Musk: SpaceX, Tesla, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

(cont'd tomorrow)

It's Not Me

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Written in the 1930's, How to Win Friends and Influence People still has good insights for today, like this one: Don't criticize or condemn people because none of them (including convicted gangsters in prison) blame themselves for anything.

That new Berlin airport (yesterday's post) seems like a thoroughly botched project that wasted billions of dollars/euros. But no one takes responsibility for it.

Germany's most famous architect designed the airport, was fired, and then wrote a book about who he blamed for the debacle. One of those was Rainer Schwartz, CEO of the airport management company. When his technical people said “we cannot do this,” his response was “I don't care.” He was fired when the airport spectacularly failed to open in 2012.

He sued for wrongful termination. He must have convinced them that he was not to blame, because he was awarded 1.14 million euros: another unexpected cost added to the ongoing mess that is Berlin Brandenburg International Willy Brandt Airport.

Note to readers in Germany - If you have any opinions on this, I'd welcome your comment

from Bloomberg

Reputation

When it comes to quality execution of quality plans, Germany has a reputation for excellence. So their new, ultra modern Berlin airport is a disappointment - an embarrassing disappointment.

Construction begun in 2006, it had to pass inspection in 2011 before opening. Its fire protection systems went "haywire" when a fire was simulated. A stopgap solution report came out six months later which was called "idiotic" by a physicist/MP of Berlin. But plans proceeded to a 2012 grand and extravagant opening.

The CEO of Berlin's airport authority refused approval and the opening was "scuttled." Since then careers have ended over this mess and the cost of the airport has tripled. Hard to believe, but now the "government spends 16 million euros per month just to prevent the huge facility from falling into disrepair."

Recent times have taken a toll on Germany's reputation for excellence.

from Bloomberg

(cont'd tomorrow)

Sleep at work

Silicon Valley has its legends. Companies that start up in the founder's parents' garage would be one. Employees who sleep at the office would be a second. You've heard about other executives who keep a cot at the office in case they don't have time to go home? This is the next level because at Google some have actually lived there.

One young Google programmer, Matt Weaver, swapped his 90-minute commute for an RV in the parking lot. To set a record, he lived his whole life at Google for a year and his record lasted 5 years.

Then quirky BenDiscoe arrived. He says that most people want “respect from their peers and to be considered normal. I never sought those things.” He ate all his meals at Google: “If you're bored of Google food, just move on to another restaurant,” he says of the 25 places to eat on campus. “It was awesome!” He broke Weaver's record in his van in the parking lot.

And of course, there's Elon Musk himself. He slept on a beanbag next to his desk. This week I'll be reading his no-doubt-interesting biography.

Not safe

Seven years without a failure, then boom - the rocket blows up two minutes after launch. The failure of one part (out of the gazillion parts that go into a rocket) means destruction, waste, loss of investment, loss of time.

On June 28, almost a month ago, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket exploded on its way to the International Space Station. Two and a half tons of supplies intended for the staff there was a complete loss. Thankfully, the rocket was un-manned so there was no loss of life, just a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars.



But space is a risky business. Does this quote sound familiar:

"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid."

Detection

Genetic engineering has its detractors when it comes to genetically modified food, though that's a debatable issue.

But there won't be much debate about the next generation of genetic engineering - because it's going to diagnose disease.

"[R]esearchers inserted the equivalent of a computer program into the DNA of the bacterial cells. The bacteria thus programmed detect the abnormal presence of glucose in the urine of diabetic patients. This work is the first step in the use of programmable cells for medical diagnosis.

Drug use

Between 2004 and 2013, the use of heroin rose in the U.S. overall by 60% according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control. Certain groups led the way - use by women doubled, use by whites doubled, and use by ages 18-25 doubled.

There's more: between 2002 and 2013, heroin-overdose-related deaths rose by almost 400%. Surprising, since I haven't read or heard anything about this up til now. At what point is it called an epidemic?

Looks like some new strategies in Mexico for getting drugs into the "veins of people across the United States" may account for at least some of it.

"Communities where heroin had never been seen before--from Charlotte, NC and Huntington, WVA, to Salt Lake City and Portland, OR--were overrun with it. Local police and residents were stunned. How could heroin, long considered a drug found only in the dense, urban environments along the East Coast, and trafficked into the United States by enormous Colombian drug cartels, be so incredibly ubiquitous in the American heartland?"

Klimt

Austrian artist Gustav Klimt created the painting in yesterday's post. This article from Huff Po makes it clear that he painted many others too, which you can see here.

"Woman in Gold" and "Tree of Life" (above) are representative of his "golden phase." Oil paint was combined with layers of gold leaf.

Here is the trailer for the movie "Woman in Gold," the painting of Maria's aunt Adele Bloch-Bauer:

Woman in Gold

Somehow, stories of escape from Nazi occupation of Austria (1938) came together for me this weekend. Last Friday's post was about a Jewish boy who escaped to Britain. Then that night my husband and I went to see "Woman in Gold" which turned out to be a Jewish woman's (Maria) story of escaping Austria about that same time.

Nazis began to isolate and bully Jewish Austrians. Police barged into Maria's family home and stole their art - paintings, jewelry, and a cello. (If you saw the movie "Monuments Men," you know that they stole thousands upon thousands of art pieces.)

"Woman in Gold" was a painting of Maria's aunt, a family treasure, which ended up after WWII in an Austrian gallery as public property. Maria wanted to get it back. She loved Austria, so why the hard feelings against the land of her birth? Some Austrians collaborated with the Nazis, betraying the Jewish community.

Another Maria, another movie example of escape - "Sound of Music." The Von Trapps abandoned everything to escape to the West when the new Nazi command in Austria "offered" Capt. Von Trapp a position in their military.

Pay it forward

In 1938 Austria was invaded by the Third Reich (Germany under Hitler). A Jewish child by the name of Weidenfeld was among a group of children rescued from Nazi occupation of his homeland and brought to Britain by Christians (Quakers and Plymouth Brethren).

That boy grew up in Britain, started a successful publishing company, and became a peer in the House of Lords. Today he's 95 years old, and says he has a debt to pay in gratitude for those Christians who rescued him from the Nazis.

He's going to pay it forward by helping about 2,000 Christians escape from Syria and Iraq. Thousands have been killed or driven away from their homes by the Islamic State (ISIS). For lots of information on this, click on "Iraq" under Labels to the right.

Share or not

Arguments for and against the sharing economy have gotten national attention since one politician made a major move against it.

I'd like to see sharing companies go on enabling ordinary people. Isn't diversity a good thing? People like options - customers have more choices in transportation, drivers have more choices for making money, travelers have more choices in where to stay at their destination.

We know a hard-working carpenter who sometimes uses his weekends to drive for Uber. It smooths out the cash flow when his free-lance carpentry business has a down month. For him, this is a simple solution.

It's a model that really works, and it works the most for the below-median income user. Let the simple idea keep working.

Buzzy

"Internet of Things [- it's] the buzzy term for the trend of connecting devices and data in the physical realm to the Internet."

In California the big new use for "connecting devices and data" is in agriculture, where 80% of water use by humans takes place. In the midst of a drought crisis, they need all the help they can get.

Farmer Richard Martinez "has to figure out where he can cut back on water just enough before it starts killing off his crops." That's tricky to do, so he has sensors for soil moisture (plus oxygen, humidity, etc) which can help him save 20-30% of his water usage by knowing exactly when and where to use his precious allotment of water.

More killing

Since they lost about 300 of their enslaved women and girls to a rescue by the Nigerian army, radical group Boko Haram continues to find more targets.

Ninety-seven people praying in a mosque were recent victims, all gunned down, all dead.

Nigeria's army reports that some arrests have been made, including a man who was involved in that kidnapping of hundreds of school girls last year. They also reported three times that they had killed Boko Haram's leader Abubakar Shekau, but that didn't prove true. So the military's questionable reputation continues.

Boko Haram's hideous history includes the murder of 13,000 people and the driving of 1.5 million from their homes.

Shopping ban

Another millenial decided to ax her spending habits. Single and about 27, she realized that her ~US$20k debt had not accomplished anything but was just frittered away.

When she faced the problem, she came up with her own solution (and, of course, blogs about it): a shopping ban. She used up her accumulated consumer stuff, she donated other stuff to charity, and she sold the rest. And - the big one - she stopped shopping.

The shopping-ban-year just ended. She says that it worked so well, and she so likes the results, that she's going for another year of it.

Wondering "How to Successfully Complete a Year-Long Shopping Ban?" She wrote out eleven one-paragraph steps with pictures here.

Oh, and that blog - she has "30,000 readers per month." She just quit her job and went free-lance.

Links today

Note - the links in today's post have been corrected. An article in Bloomberg should have been linked and now it is.

Empty homes

Japan has the world's fastest aging population because of low birth rate. People aren't aging faster, but rather there are fewer young people as a percentage of the country's people, and relatively more elderly. Two years ago I read What to Expect When No One's Expecting and posted some of the information under the label "Demography."

One developing symptom is the growing number of abandoned homes. By the year 2033, it's estimated that one-third of the nation's housing will be empty. Germany is experiencing that same empty-home thing, since their birth rate also is seriously low.

3D print parts

(cont'd)

Not only will 3D printing enable you do quirky things like make shoes for your kids (per yesterday's post), but 3D printing can optimize manufacturing and distribution of goods.

In his Forbes series on 3D printing (3Dp), Rick Smith explains its "disruptive" advantages over mass production. 3Dp does not require huge production quantities in order to reduce cost per unit, so you can make a small number or just one without price penalty. And it can be customized with no extra cost or effort. Just enter the software.

This stuff is not just theory. Ford Motors has been using it for some time to make part prototypes like engine covers for the Mustang and rotor supports for Fusion hybrid. A new intake manifold design can go from design to prototype in four days for $3000, rather than in four months at a cost of $500,000.

Now, that's disruptive - it's permanently changing the industry.

Watch this to see how 3Dp works:

3D printing

If you haven't run into 3D printing applications in your work, you'd be surprised at how "disruptive" that technology is becoming. Rick Smith says we will see it do these things in the future:

• print a replacement part for you when your home appliance breaks down
• print new shoes for your daughter when she needs a bigger size
• print custom knee replacements for each patient
• print a bullet-proof fabric using graphene
• print "complex functional living tissues"
• print pipes that automatically repair themselves

Here is his take on 3D printing:  "I believe, along with a growing number of leaders around the world, that 3D printing will change the way things are produced more in this century than the industrial revolution did over the last 300 years."

(cont'd tomorrow)

City wood

To take something that's overlooked and turn it into a product or service that has value to people in the marketplace - that's a special kind of innovation.

The "sharing economy" does that, i.e. turning unused assets into marketable assets.  Uber enables you to sell your free time as a driving service to people who need a ride. RelayRides enables you to rent your car (if it would otherwise be idle in your driveway) to a customer. 

Vancouver Urban Timberworks made a business out of a different overlooked resource. They provide free pickup of fallen city trees, which  they cut into timber and use to create custom projects for their clients. Trees that might have gone to landfill now become a valued wood creation for someone.

Sheerwind

SheerWind claims to be the next big step in wind energy.

What has been holding back windmill-type power production? It is inefficient. If you could wring  more of wind's energy out of natural wind, the superior efficiency would make it more competitive with fossil fuels. Sheerwind claims to do that by a big factor. No exposed blades could make it safer for birds.

According to this critic, it's all hype. Time will tell, since they now have two contracts to set up operations. If it works as promised, we'll hear about it.

Self-evident

Right, there's never a new post on Saturdays! Except today.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." So says the Declaration of Independence, approved and signed by the American founders in 1776.

Fortunately this truth was "self-evident" to the founders - to the benefit of millions upon millions of the world's people. But it was most definitely not self-evident to the rest of the world. What was self-evident to the rest of the world was that class and race made people fundamentally different.

The American declaration's creed is a corollary coming out of that Bible concept of imago dei - all of humanity was created in the image of God - which underlies all human rights.

Founder faith

In September of 1774, the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia to decide on a response to Britain's "Intolerable Acts." Things were tense, and they were told (incorrectly) that the British had already bombarded Boston, where some of their families were. 

The very first day it was suggested that they have a clergyman come and pray for wisdom for their meetings. Though their churches varied, Sam Adams settled it by saying, "I am no bigot, I can hear a prayer from a man of piety and virtue, who is at the same time a friend to his country."

So Anglican priest Jacob Duche came and read Psalm 35, the assigned Anglican scripture for the day. It's all about asking God for help against enemies.

In a letter to his wife, John Adams recorded the effect of that scripture and the prayers on the congress:

"I never saw a greater effect upon an audience. It seemed as if heaven had ordained that Psalm to be read on that morning . . . We prayed for America, for our Congress, for the Province of Massachusetts Bay, and especially for the town of Boston. Our prayers were enough to melt a heart of stone."

(from On Two Wings)

CA Drought

“We’re not just talking about an individual losing business here. We’re talking about a community of people, the 80 families we support.” These 80 full-time employees work on a cherry farm in California's Central Valley, a cherry farm that is in deep trouble.

California's drought is now the worst they've ever seen. That cherry farm used to hire 400-800 pickers at harvest time, but last year could only hire 25. "No water, no fruit, no pickers," says the farmer. 

Some think that the state is returning to a desert climate like what it used to be. Underground aquifers are being drained and they will be gone for good if they are emptied. 

“Water is politics,” said David Feldman, a social ecology professor and chairman of the Department of Planning, Policy and Design at UC Irvine. . . the way it’s managed is determined by power."

The Valley produces one-third of America's vegetables and two-thirds of its nuts and fruits.

He got out

The 1956 Olympics held in Australia had a fencing team from Hungary. Fencer Daniel Magay, along with the other athletes on that team, won a gold medal. Then-- he never went back home again.

Toward the end of World War II (1945), the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin invaded and occupied (took over) Daniel's country.

"Security"police  (oxymoron for sure) used "intimidation, falsified accusations, imprisonment, and torture to suppress political opposition". Daniel was afraid, and rightly so. It didn't even help if you were in the Communist party, since at least 7,000 middle and lower level party officials were "purged," i.e. killed.

Hungary staged a revolution in 1956, and was completely crushed by the Soviets. Daniel was out of the country at the Olympics , saw his chance to escape, and took it.

Here is Daniel telling his story, and what he's grateful for today: