When Not to Be a Hero
You can’t always rely on a hero…
Switching focus away from individuals and towards the team is a non trivial exercise, but if the agile movement has brought us anything it is methods to engender collaboration, trust and team level thinking. via
Posted: March 10th, 2011
at 11:45am by mnp
Categories: life,"ninja",development
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Documentary : Starting-Up in America

Starting-Up in America is a documentary film by Tarik Ansari and Basil Glew-Galloway about the issues faced by international Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs with US Immigration.
Posted: March 5th, 2011
at 11:14am by mnp
Categories: hood status,life,politricks,documentary,development,ninjas are everyehere,entrepreneurship,jobs
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Women’s Rights: What’s in it for Men?
Mark Thoma, Professor of Economics- University of Oregon:
Our theory suggests that the historical advance of women’s rights in the West wasn’t due to a sudden enlightenment of mankind after millennia of patriarchy. Rather, it was driven by old-fashioned self-interest deriving from men’s concern about their daughters’ welfare and their descendants’ education.[5] But lest we lose faith in mankind, there is an upside. If our theory is correct, it implies that men in today’s developing countries can be given a stake in women’s rights. Ultimately, inducing developing countries to improve women’s rights on their own accord may be a more promising strategy than trying to impose gender equality from the outside.
From the perspective of the theory, what matters for the advance of women’s rights is the demand for human capital. The data suggest that the link between women’s rights and human capital is equally relevant today as it was in the nineteenth century: Figure 2 shows that in the cross section of rich and poor countries in the year 2000, gender inequality correlates with education even more closely than with income levels. (Source)
Steadying Yourself
In the recent months, being able to become aware of when I have these world-changing thoughts and being able to stop them in their tracks before they stop me moving forward has been something I've found myself needing to do time and time again. This applies to everything, too - keeping yourAinitial product minimal, going for smaller press before you've built up momentum, or even realising you canAget started without waiting for perfect conditions.
Working with others can help a lot. I've been delighted to have a great pro-active friend join me with my latest venture. However, it is worth noting that if you're working with someone else, one of you needs to stop those thoughts before they take up a lot of time. Inevitably the discussions start, and they're fun, but then comes the time to get working again.
In the end though, no one else is going to do it for you - you need to stop thinking about changing the world, and do the nitty-gritty to get one step further. I'll certainly need to come back to this article to remind myself. (Source)
Posted: February 13th, 2011
at 9:53am by Koookiecrumbles
Categories: life,development
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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
What follows is based on actual occurrences. Although much has been changed for rhetorical purposes, it must be regarded in its essence as fact. However, it should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It's not very factual on motorcycles, either.
And what is good, Phaedrus,
And what is not good…
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?
Posted: February 7th, 2011
at 10:10pm by Koookiecrumbles
Categories: life,design,education
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Today in History : Uncontacted Tribes
Learn about the myths and see some amazing photography from Survival International:
Posted: February 2nd, 2011
at 8:32am by Koookiecrumbles
Categories: life,mnp is for the children,photo,science,today in history
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Edison’s Predictions for the Year 2011 (1911)
What will the world be a hundred years hence?
None but a wizard dare raise the curtain and disclose the secrets of the future; and what wizard can do it with so sure a hand as Mr. Thomas Alva Edison, who has wrested so many secrets from jealous Nature? He alone of all men who live has the necessary courage and gift of foresight, and he has not shrunk from the venture.
Already, Mr. Edison tells us, the steam engine is emitting its last gasps. A century hence it will be as remote as antiquity as the lumbering coach of Tudor days, which took a week to travel from Yorkshire to London. In the year 2011 such railway trains as survive will be driven at incredible speed by electricity (which will also be the motive force of all the world’s machinery), generated by "hydraulic" wheels.
But the traveler of the future, says a writer in Answers, will largely scorn such earth crawling. He will fly through the air, swifter than any swallow, at a speed of two hundred miles an hour, in colossal machines, which will enable him to breakfast in London, transact business in Paris and eat his luncheon in Cheapside.
The house of the next century will be furnished from basement to attic with steel, at a sixth of the present cost — of steel so light that it will be as easy to move a sideboard as it is today to lift a drawing room chair. The baby of the twenty-first century will be rocked in a steel cradle; his father will sit in a steel chair at a steel dining table, and his mother’s boudoir will be sumptuously equipped with steel furnishings, converted by cunning varnishes to the semblance of rosewood, or mahogany, or any other wood her ladyship fancies.
Books of the coming century will all be printed leaves of nickel, so light to hold that the reader can enjoy a small library in a single volume. A book two inches thick will contain forty thousand pages, the equivalent of a hundred volumes; six inches in aggregate thickness, it would suffice for all the contents of the Encyclopedia Britannica. And each volume would weigh less than a pound.
Already Mr. Edison can produce a pound weight of these nickel leaves, more flexible than paper and ten times as durable, at a cost of five shillings. In a hundred years’ time the cost will probably be reduced to a tenth.
More amazing still, this American wizard sounds the death knell of gold as a precious metal. "Gold," he says, "has even now but a few years to live. The day is near when bars of it will be as common and as cheap as bars of iron or blocks of steel.
"We are already on the verge of discovering the secret of transmuting metals, which are all substantially the same in matter, though combined in different proportions."
Before long it will be an easy matter to convert a truck load of iron bars into as many bars of virgin gold.
In the magical days to come there is no reason why our great liners should not be of solid gold from stem to stern; why we should not ride in golden taxicabs, or substituted gold for steel in our drawing room suites. Only steel will be the more durable, and thus the cheaper in the long run.
Posted: January 24th, 2011
at 1:25pm by Koookiecrumbles
Categories: life,"ninja",development
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