Month: July 2016

Women crisis promotions

In contexts as wide-ranging as the funeral business, music festivals, political elections, the military, and law firms, studies have found a tendency for women to be promoted in times of crisis. Women are given jobs that have a higher risk of failure — like, for example, cleaning up a dumpster fire. It’s called the “glass cliff,” an invisible hazard that harms women’s likelihood of success. “The only time to run a woman is when things look so bad that your only chance is to do something dramatic”.

IETF is past prime

So if the objective of the IETF is to foster the development of Internet Standards specifications, then strictly speaking it has not enjoyed a very stellar record over its 30-year history. Almost one half of these Internet Standard specifications were generated in the 1980s (42 RFCs have original publication dates in the 1980s), just 19 in the 1900’s and 26 in the 2000’s. There were none in 2010, 4 in 2011, 1 in 2012, 2 in 2013, 1 in 2014, and none in 2015. There have been 3 so far in 2016.

The Cult Running Japan

the bad news is that these clowns won the election

Nippon Kaigi used neto-uyo (cyber right wingers who troll anyone on the internet they feel writes negatively of Japan), intellectuals, politicians, and closet sympathizers in mainstream media to exert considerable influence on policy and public opinion. That included getting the Japanese government to reinstitute the Imperial Calendar, which was banished by the US occupation government. Sugano also credits Nippon Kaigi with politically resurrecting Prime Minister Abe, whose political career was considered dead after his abrupt resignation as prime minister in 2007.

Suburban Pokemon

you can’t have nice things if your chosen place of residence lacks the density.

Pokémon Go doesn’t appear to have taken off in rural Virginia quite the same way it has in every other corner of the universe. There are no hordes of fledgling Pokémon Masters like Ash Ketchum (protagonist of the immortal Pokémon animated series) crowding around street art or monuments, laughing about things like Pidgeys and PokéGyms. Looking at your smartphone screen, there is no map crowded with landmarks and Lure Modules. There is no one around you, and if there was, the map would appear mostly empty—just wide open spaces occasionally disrupted by a lonely equestrian statue that dispenses Poké Balls. Playing Pokémon Go is nearly impossible out in the sticks.

The Lazarus File

In 1986, a young nurse named Sherri Rasmussen was murdered in Los Angeles. Police pinned down no suspects, and the case gradually went cold. It took 23 years—and revolutionary breakthroughs in forensic science—before LAPD detectives could finally assemble the pieces of the puzzle. When they did, they found themselves facing one of the unlikeliest murder suspects in the city’s history. When Lazarus arrived in the interrogation room, Stearns and Jaramillo abandoned the story of a suspect talking about stolen art, and explained that her name had come up in a case involving an ex-boyfriend of hers, John Ruetten. Knowing she was married to someone else, they’d selected a place where they could speak privately, away from gossiping colleagues. Stearns and Jaramillo interviewed Lazarus for more than 1 hour, coming at her in an oblique manner that left it unclear whether they were speaking with her as a possible witness or a criminal suspect. The conversation meandered, but every digression led back, inevitably, to the murder of Sherri Rasmussen. It was only after Jaramillo asked Lazarus if she’d be willing to give them a DNA swab and noted, “It’s possible we may have some DNA at the location,” that she wanted to contact a lawyer. Declaring herself “shocked,” the veteran detective stood and walked out, 68 minutes after she’d sat down. Lazarus got only as far as the jail’s hallway, where she was stopped by other RHD detectives and placed in handcuffs.

Lilium

A start-up company—hosted in a ESA business incubator center released an idea for an egg-shaped 2-seater plane called Lilium that’s currently in the works. With a top speed of 400 kmh and a range of 500 km, the plane can travel between Munich and Berlin in 90 minutes. If the testing succeeds, this will be the world’s first vertical takeoff and landing aircraft for personal use.

and the first flight:

With the first flight now a memory, Lilium will run its aircraft through increasingly complex maneuvers, including the transition between vertical and horizontal flight, runs between cities, in inclement weather, and with a variety of degrees of automation. If all goes well, passengers will experience the flights in trials well ahead of the 2025 target for a fully operational service.