Techie Manager

Wow! This is so cool…from Wikipedia:
Blue field entoptic phenomenon
The blue field entoptic phenomenon or Scheerer’s phenomenon is the appearance of tiny bright dots moving quickly along squiggly lines in the visual field, especially when looking into blue light (such as the sky). This is a normal effect that can be perceived by almost everybody. [...]

Good essay from Steve Olson:
When did America become a nation of frightened wimps? When did we cross the line from courage to cowardice? Was it sometime in the 1990s? After the Oklahoma City bombing? After the Columbine shootings? After 911?
When did we decide to allow the police to smash into private homes without knocking and [...]

Wow - bizarre!
From spaceweather.com:
“We’ve never seen anything like it on any other planet,” says atmospheric scientist Kevin Baines of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It is a hexagon twice as wide as Earth encircling Saturn’s north pole. First observed by the Voyager spacecraft in the 1980s, the hexagon has been sighted anew by the Cassini [...]

From npr.org:
Maintenance crews in Washington state spotted a snow doughnut last week on the North Cascades Highway. At first glance, a snow doughnut may look like a man-made creation. But Mike Stanford, who snapped this photo, assures Robert Siegel that snow doughnuts are real — but rare — natural occurences.

Stanford, who has worked as [...]

Excellent Economist article on why the war in Iraq failed:
What went wrong? The most popular answer of the American neoconservatives who argued loudest for the war is that it was a good idea badly executed. Kenneth Adelman, he of the “cakewalk”, has since called the Bush national-security team “among the most incompetent” of the post-war [...]

From news.com:
The head of Google in Spain and Portugal has confirmed that Google is working on a mobile phone. “Some of the time the engineers are dedicated to developing a mobile phone,” Isabel Aguilera is quoted as saying on the Spanish news Web site Noticias.com.
Google spokespeople in the United States have repeatedly declined to comment [...]

WaPo book review for Stephen Prothero’s “RELIGIOUS LITERACY - What Every American Needs to Know — and Doesn’t”:
The United States is the most religious nation in the developed world, if religiosity is measured by belief in all things supernatural — from God and the Virgin Birth to the humbler workings of angels and demons. Americans [...]

Wow - very interesting. From OnStartups.com:
I’ve come across some new information that causes me to reconsider this point of view. Business Week posted an article recently titled “Ranking The States For The New Economy”, which cites a recent study by the Kauffman Foundation, a well-known private foundation that promotes entrepreneurship. The study [...]

Maybe it’s already too late…
Dear Mr. Gates, Mr. Ballmer, and the many good folks at Microsoft Corp.,
It’s time to sober up on Windows Vista. This just isn’t working out, and your users are getting frustrated to the point where they’re souring on Windows altogether. In case you haven’t seen some of the more noteworthy blog [...]

c/o Boing Boing and Wikipedia:

Term
Period

Puritan Generation
1588-1617

Puritan Awakening
1621–1649

Cavalier Generation
Glorious Generation
Enlightenment Generation
Awakening Generation
1618-1648
1648-1673
1674-1700
1701–1723

First Great Awakening
1727–1746

Liberty Generation
Republican Generation
Compromise Generation
1724–1741
1742–1766
1767–1791

Second Great Awakening
1790–1844

Transcendentalist Generation
Transcendental Generation
Gilded Generation
Progressive Generation
1789–1819
1792–1821
1822–1842
1843–1859

Third Great Awakening
1886–1908

Missionary Generation
Lost Generation
Interbellum Generation
G.I. Generation
Greatest Generation
1860–1882
1883–1900
1900–1910
1900–1924
1911–1924

Jazz Age
1918-1929

Beat Generation
Silent Generation
Baby Boomers
1914–1930
1925–1945
*1940s-1960s

Consciousness Revolution
1964–1984

Generation X
MTV Generation
Boomerang Generation
*1960s–1980s
1974–1985
1977–1986

Culture Wars
1980s–present

Generation Y
Internet Generation
New Silent Generation
*1970s–1990s
*1980s-1990s
*1990s or 2000s–?

Looks like I’m a Gen X‘er…