Bruce Keener’s Lifestream

It's so great of Thom Bresh to put this together. Buster mentored Brooks, and was proud of the role he played in bringing out the youngster's talents. It is good to see that Brooks is keeping on with his picking. Before he passed, Buster mentioned to me that Brooks was setting the guitar aside a lot, and letting his hormones take hold of him (natural for his age, of course). No doubt that he took Buster's death hard, and it appears to have motivated him to keep Buster alive in our hearts. He's well-qualified to do so. A great talent.

The year is 1963. It’s November. At 1:40 PM ET, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite comes on the air. “In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in downtown Dallas. The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting.” Rapidly, everyone in America descends upon the closest television set to tune in.

In the article from which this quote is taken, MG Siegler, one of the more level-headed bloggers at TechCrunch, attempts to make the point that Twitter is now the new Walter Cronkite.

I disagree. It turns out that I was one of the millions who watched Walter Cronkite make the various announcements about President Kennedy in November 1963. If you weren't there, you can't imagine how moving it was, even for a youngster like me (I was a freshman in high school, and school had been let out because of the reports of Kennedy's shooting).

Would Twitter have had the same impact as Cronkite back then? No, and it doesn't today either. In those days, news was actually news, not a production that lasted 24 hours a day, mixing in dribble with serious facts. The evening national news last 15 minutes. Yes, 15 minutes. That's because it covered what was worth reporting, and did not have the fluff to value ration of 98% that the current media, and especially Twitter, has. When Walter Cronkite showed up on your TV screen in the middle of the day, it meant something significant had happened.

Today Twitter does serve as a news outlet for many, but that's because they are sickly glued to Twitter as many of their waking hours as they can be, sucking in information and bullshit at an incredible rate, and sometimes catching a news story in the stream.

I appreciate the technology we have now. But, let's not try to make it more than it is.

For example, it is estimated that some 20% of individual human genes have been patented already or have been filed for patenting. As a result, research on certain genes is largely restricted to the companies that hold the patents, and tests involving them are marketed at prohibitive prices. We believe that this poses a very real danger to the development of science for the public good.

An interesting article on how gene research, and other science, is shackled by intellectual property "rights."

Some fine pickin, dontcha know

Executives should read fewer management books. I don't mean that reading is a waste of their time; on the contrary, they should read more. The question is what to read. My own view is that only one book in 20 should be a business book.

That may sound odd coming from an author of three management books, but I'm convinced that you can improve your leadership capabilities by drinking deeply from the well of great books that have been published in a wide variety of disciplines. For one thing, the business and management genres offer precious few superb books with new insights, good writing, and timeless value. I can think of fewer than 10 published in the last 50 years.

Excellent book recommendations by management guru Jim Collins. I plan to work my way slowly through the list. Perhaps there are some in the list you will also want to read.

After reading a recent post by Steve Souders concerning a free tool called dynaTrace Ajax, I was intrigued. It claimed to provide full tracing analysis of Internet Explorer 6-8 (including JavaScript, rendering, and network traffic). Giving it a try I was very impressed. I tested against a few web sites but got the most interesting results running against the JavaScript-heavy Gmail in Internet Explorer 8.

Sounds like a great tool for working with Internet Explorer to test a site's performance.

You have 3 brains — In my book, Neuro Web Design: What makes them click? I talk about the idea that you really don’t have one brain, you have three. The “new brain” is the conscious, reasoning, logical brain that you think you know best; the mid brain” is the part of the brain that processes emotions, and the “old brain” is the part of the brain that is most interested in your survival.

From reptiles to people — If you look at brains from an evolutionary perspective, the “old brain” developed first (hence the name “old brain”!). In fact, that part of our brain is very similar to the brain of a reptile, which is why some people call it the “reptilian” brain.

“Can I eat it? Can I have sex with it? Will it kill me?” – The job of your old brain is to constantly scan the environment and answer the questions: “Can I eat it? Can I have sex with it? Will it kill me?” That’s really all the old brain cares about, is food sex and danger. When you think about it, this is important. Without food you’ll die, without sex the species won’t continue, and if you are killed the other two questions don’t matter. So animal brains developed early on to care intensely about these three topics. As animals evolved they developed other capacities (emotions, logical thought), but they retained a part of their brain to always be scanning what is going on for these three critical questions.

For the guys in the crowd, now you know why you think with your pecker: it's actually the reptile part of your brain at work.

It could be that everyone will figure out how to play nicely with each other, and we'll see a continuation of the interoperable web model we've enjoyed for the past two decades. But I'm betting that things are going to get ugly. We're heading into a war for control of the web. And in the end, it's more than that, it's a war against the web as an interoperable platform. Instead, we're facing the prospect of Facebook as the platform, Apple as the platform, Google as the platform, Amazon as the platform, where big companies slug it out until one is king of the hill.

I've listed a summary quote, but you should read the entire O'Reilly article: an important read.

SOMETHING big is out there beyond the visible edge of our universe. That's the conclusion of the largest analysis to date of over 1000 galaxy clusters streaming in one direction at blistering speeds. Some researchers say this so-called "dark flow" is a sign that other universes nestle next door.

Interesting. Not conclusive, although could become so with more data and work. Could turn into evidence that our universe is but one of many.

Yes it's true, Basecamp to-dos are getting due dates. Putting the finishing touches on it now:

For those of you who use Basecamp, you'll be pleased to know that it is getting due dates for Todo's. Great addition!

[Disclosure: I am a Basecamp affiliate.]