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Why Not Take One Day…To Change the World?
By Shlomo Maital
The young ladies in the picture are from a school in India. I’ve written about it before. Dr. Balish Jindal, an Indian family physician, took Prof. Scott Plous’ Social Psychology course on Coursera (MOOC – massive open online course, free), and as part of it, was asked to spend one day doing something ‘compassionate’ – a Day of Compassion. Dr. Jindal used the day to speak to girls in an Indian school about sexual abuse. The result changed their lives – and Dr. Jindal’s. She won the prize, from among the entire registered class of 260,000 (the largest course in all of Coursera), for the most impactful “Day”.
According to the BBC: One day last year a doctor walked into a school near her clinic in a rural area near New Delhi in India and taught 2,000 girls how to protect themselves against sexual abuse. Dr Balesh Jindal’s talks evolved into being constantly on call at her surgery for girls and their mothers and to teaching boys from impoverished backgrounds how to respect women. She is paving a new way for women to protect themselves in India, where there has been anger at a number of high-profile rape cases and concern about the availability of sex education.
I’ve had the privilege of exchanging emails with Dr. Jindal. She is indeed remarkable, but of course she doesn’t think so. She regarded her “Day” as routine – and it probably was.
As for Prof. Plous: He says, “It doesn’t matter who you are, or what you do….You don’t have to be a physician or in education. Anyone can look at what they can do and if they are dedicated enough they can make a difference in just 24 hours,” he adds. Prof Plous says he asks students to think about the person they were during the 24-hour period and if they preferred that person, to “break down the barriers” between the compassionate and every day version of themselves.
So — Why don’t all of us, each of us, take one day, a Day of Compassion, to change the world? Imagine — what if only one per cent of the world, 70 million people, did this? The world would never be the same.
You can read more about this at:
Too Small to See? A Nobel for 3 Who Pioneered
By Shlomo Maital
The 2014 Nobel Prize for chemistry was won by two Americans and a German: Eric Betzig, Stefan Hell and William Moerner. Their work greatly extended our vision into the smallest of molecules, in part enabling nanotechnology.
Hell, born in Romania, heads a Max Planck Institute in Gottingen, Germany. Moerner is from Stanford University; and Betzig, from the Howard Hughes Institute in Virginia.
According to CNN: “Back in 1873, science believed it had reached a limit in how much more of a detailed picture a microscope could provide. At the time, microscopist Ernst Abbe said the maximum resolution had been attained.” As with so many Nobel prizes, the three winners simply did not accept the statement, “we’ve reached the limit — no more can be done.”
The three scientists, according to the Nobel Prize Committee, did this: “….Due to their achievements, the optical microscope can now peer into the nanoworld,” the committee said. “The importance can’t be overemphasized: Now, scientists can see how proteins in fertilized eggs divide into embryos, or they can track proteins involved in Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s diseases.”
Betzig and Moerner found a way to make single molecules ‘glow’ using fluorescent microscopy. Hell found a way to use two laser beams to make the molecules glow. This is creative thinking. Rather than conventionally illuminate molecules with photons, why not make the molecules themselves into little ‘lamps’?
“Guesswork has turned into hard facts and obscurity has turned into clarity,” the Nobel Committee added. The work of the three has “blurred the boundary between chemistry and biology”, by enabling us to see right inside single molecules.
Thank you, scientists!
Too Big to Succeed? Carve it up.
By Shlomo Maital
Over the years, in working with big companies, I’ve learned how difficult (impossible?) it is for huge organizations to sustain creativity and innovation. In a recent magazine column, I wrote about Intel, and how a young rather junior Israeli engineer kept Intel from abandoning its CISC technology, leading to the highly successful Pentium. This occurred only because Andy Grove, then CEO, was willing to listen to those below him. Many CEO’s of huge MNC’s simply are not able or willing. Creative people get lost in the swamp of organizational bureaucracies.
A new fashion is developing to grapple with this problem. Split huge companies, elephants, into smaller pieces, rabbits. Like on Thanksgiving (always the 4th Thursday in November – Nov. 27, this year, in America), big companies are being carved up like turkeys, in the hope the pieces will be tastier than the whole bird.
eBay is divesting PayPal. Now, HP is splitting into two. HP stock soared on the news. Shareholders are delighted. It’s an act of creation – making something out of nothng.
I am very doubtful. Many industries have seen a wave of ‘consolidation’ – mergers. A merger is when two sick companies merge, to create one really BIG sick or sicker company. This is what happened in the airline industry.
Now this is being reversed. Reverse mergers. Very very profitable for Wall St. investment banks that shepherd the process, for a huge fee. HP is a company that lost its way, under very poor management, until Meg Whitman. But it will not solve its problems by splitting them into small pieces. You cannot make a company healthy by combining it with another; nor can you make a company healthy by carving it up like a turkey. The pieces are still turkey.
Long ago, management educators taught that ‘structure is not strategy’. The way you structure the pieces of a company is NOT a strategy. Companies that seek innovation by restructuring rarely succeed. Because the DNA, the company culture, remains.
Let’s wish HP success. But I’m very skeptical.
Lighting Up Our World with LED: 2014 Nobel in Physics
By Shlomo Maital
Three Japanese scientists have won the 2014 Nobel Prize for Physics, for their contribution – lighting up the world with LED – light emitting diode technology.
According to today’s New York Times: The three scientists, working together and separately, found a way to produce blue light beams from semiconductors in the early 1990s. Others had produced red and green diodes, but without blue diodes, white light could not be produced, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in its prize citation. “They succeeded where everyone else had failed.” The Nobel committee said that light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, would be the lighting source of the 21st century, just as the incandescent bulb illuminated the 20th.
The New York Times noted: “The LED lamp holds great promise for increasing the quality of life for over 1.5 billion people around the world who lack access to electricity grids,” the Nobel committee said. “Due to low power requirements, it can be powered by cheap local solar power.”
According to Wikipedia, “a light-emitting diode (LED) is a two-lead semiconductor light source: basic … diode, which emits light when activated. When a voltage is applied to the leads, electrons are able to recombine with electron holes within the device, releasing energy in the form of photons. This effect is called electroluminescence, and the color of the light (corresponding to the energy of the photon) is determined by the energy band gap of the semiconductor.”
The three Japanese scientists managed to achieve “the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes, which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources.” Previously, light was created with LED technology, but in colors that did not enable replacement of the Edison incandescent bulbs.
Nakamura worked for a time for a Japanese company, Nichia. Nichia awarded him…$200 for his invention. Nakamura left the company in 1999 to join U. of California, Santa Barbara, and sued the company for a fair share of the immense royalties. He settled for $8.1 million.
The ORIGINAL GPS: Our Brain
By Shlomo Maital
The 2014 Nobel Prize for Physiology & Medicine has been announced. It is shared between John O’Keefe, American-born scientist at University College, London; and a husband and wife team, May-Britt and Edvard Moser, at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway.
Here is what they discovered:
O’Keefe: How do we know where we are? How can we find the way from one place to another? And how can we store this information in such a way that we can immediately find the way the next time we trace the same path? This year´s Nobel Laureates have discovered a positioning system, an “inner GPS” in the brain that makes it possible to orient ourselves in space, demonstrating a cellular basis for higher cognitive function. In 1971, John O´Keefe discovered the first component of this positioning system. He found that a type of nerve cell in an area of the brain called the hippocampus that was always activated when a rat was at a certain place in a room. Other nerve cells were activated when the rat was at other places. O´Keefe concluded that these “place cells” formed a map of the room.
In other words: many many centuries before GPS technology was invented, our BRAINS developed their own internal GPS mapping system. Amazing?
Moser’s: More than three decades later, in 2005, May-Britt and Edvard Moser discovered another key component of the brain’s positioning system. They identified another type of nerve cell, which they called “grid cells”, that generate a coordinate system and allow for precise positioning and pathfinding. Their subsequent research showed how place and grid cells make it possible to determine position and to navigate.
The discoveries of John O´Keefe, May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser have solved a problem that has occupied philosophers and scientists for centuries – how does the brain create a map of the space surrounding us and how can we navigate our way through a complex environment?
For those who are religious and believe in the Creator, this amazing capability of the brain to orient us using specialized brain cells, and creating grids, GPS coordinates and maps, is a fine example of the miraculous nature of the human brain. Congratulations to these scientists for helping us understand how this works!
Does YOUR doctor listen to you? But, really listen?
By Shlomo Maital
Does your doctor listen to what you say? I mean, REALLY listen? And ask you a lot of questions?
I’ve just finished reading a fascinating book, Reaching down the Rabbit Hole: A Renowned Neurologist Explains the Mystery and Drama of Brain Disease, by Dr. Allan H. Ropper, and Brian David Burrell. (St. Martin’s Press, 2014). Basically Burrell, a wonderful writer, was a fly on the wall, and wrote down stories about how Ropper figured out what went wrong with people’s brains.
A key point Ropper stresses is this: The technology for scanning brains has advanced tremendously. MRI and CT scans reveal a great deal. But nonetheless, a great doctor still needs to listen to the patient, observe and ask questions. Dr. Ropper writes:
“Many [patients] have driven for an hour or two, even three, to [Boston], and they want to be heard. What they hope, what they expect, what they decree, is that we take the time to listen, because the act of listening is therapeutic in itself. When we do it right, we learn details that make us better doctors for the next patient. The residents may not get this yet. They are focused on diagnosis and treatment, on technology, on scales, titers, doses, ratios, elevation, and deficiencies. All well and good, I tell them, but don’t forget to listen!
Does your doctor listen to you. Really listen? If not – and who can blame them, many times they are required to see X patients per hour, leaving no more than 10 minutes per patient — try to find one who does.
As I’ve noted before, even in modern medicine, technology comes last, not first.
America’s 3 % Economy: Why It Is In Deep Trouble
By Shlomo Maital
Writing in the latest TIME magazine issue (Oct. 6), Rana Foroohar explains why the U.S. economy is in deep trouble – and why many are distressed that nobody seems to be tackling the core issues.
Foroohar says it has taken 41 months to replace the jobs lost in the “Great Recession” (2008-11). This is more than three years, far longer than in previous recessions.
But, which jobs?? Mostly, burger flippers, at $8/hr. “That’s a problem in an economy that’s made up chiefly of consumer spending. When the majority of people don’t have more money, they can’t spend more, and companies can’t create more jobs higher up the food chain. So, poor job creation and flat wages are holding back a stronger recovery in consumer spending.
Foroohar concludes: “If this trend is left unchecked, we are looking at a generation that will be permanently less well off than their parents.” This is disastrous, because there is an intergenerational contract, in which older generations offer younger generations the hope of better lives, jobs and strong futures. This is the first time the opposite is the case. We are giving our children a far worse economy and society than the ones we received.
This is by far the core issue today facing America –not ISIL. Let’s focus on the real issues. America’s real enemy is at home, not abroad – its own failing economy. A general estimates the war on ISIL could cost as much as $10 b. This is money needed for schools, colleges, research, innovation and technology. ISIL, the Islamic State, is hurting America deeply simply by diverting resources into jet fuel, smart bombs and cruise missiles. Boots on the ground? America needs special forces to ‘light up’ with lasers the true problem – education, poverty, and above all, low-wage jobs.
Are You Kidding? Alas, Scientists Rarely Are
By Shlomo Maital
A friend drew my attention to an article in Chronicles of Higher Education, by Tom Bartlett, Sept. 29, about the utter lack of humor in scientific research proposals, and in general, among scientists. (An exception is the late Nobel physicist, Richard Feynman, whose book was titled, Mr. Feynman, You Must Be Joking!). Bartlett asked the editor of the leading economics journal, American Economic Review, whether “she could think of any joke, any tiny moment of amusement, one solitary witticism that has passed across her desk. Anything, even if it was rejected.” “I can’t think of a single thing,” replied Prof. Goldberg, confirming economics’ nickname as the ‘dismal science’.
Why is this a problem? Why shouldn’t science be utterly serious? Isn’t humor frivolous? The answer is no. Research on creativity shows that among people seeking ideas, humor, and in general a light, playful attitude, are powerful contributors to an ambience that generates great ideas. Show me a stiff, and I’ll show you someone without ideas, in all likelihood.
Bartlett provides an example.
“Stephen Heard once wrote a paper about how pollen spreads among the flowers of a certain endangered plant. In it he speculated that the wind might play a role by shaking loose the pollen. To support his point, he cited “Hall et al., 1957″—a reference to the songwriters of the Jerry Lee Lewis hit “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.” But a reviewer nixed Heard’s little joke. “Although I appreciated the levity of the reference,” he wrote, “I think it is not appropriate for a scientific publication.”
That reviewer reminds us of the two old grumps in The Muppets, whose total lack of humor was in itself hilarious. I myself encountered this, in submitting research papers; anything in my writing style that sought to be interesting, journalistic, was instantly shot down, like a shoulder-guided missile homing in on a helicopter.
Hey, reviewers! Lighten up! Loosen up! We need new thinking, new ideas. Absence of humor often means absence of open-ness to anything unusual or weird. Even Einstein told jokes (bad ones – see above).
Smoking Gun – How the FED Pampered Goldman Sachs
By Shlomo Maital
Carmen Sigarra is a veteran lawyer, who worked for the Federal Reserve, overseeing banking operations, specifically Goldman Sachs. She was fired and is now suing the Fed.
During her stay at the Fed, she recorded nearly 50 hours of sessions in which Fed examiners checked Goldman Sachs transactions. She has now released these tapes, and they will be the subject of an upcoming episode of This American Life, on PBS (American public radio). Don’t miss it!
What emerges is a picture of lax regulators, overly delicate with how they treat Wall St. Big Money, especially Goldman Sachs. It demonstrates the culpability of the Fed in the 2008 financial collapse and crisis. Blame the Fed is the title of an article I published in Barron’s, and these tapes confirm it. Blame Goldman Sachs too – they are not blameless.
Specifically, one transaction that illustrates the whole picture was this: the embattled Spanish bank Santander was being pressed by European regulators to boost its capital – that is, to have more liquid cash on hand, in case its assets declined in value. To avoid doing this, Santander needed to get some assets off its books. So it asked Goldman Sachs to babysit them – keep the assets on Goldman’s books. For a hefty fee, of course. Goldman agreed… it’s legal, (but shady, said the Fed examiner. Legal, but shady. That is the mantra of many people on Wall St.).
Goldman attached a clause: The transaction was subject to Fed approval. So the Fed could have killed this ‘shady’ transaction. But of course they didn’t. And it went ahead. And so did many many many other similar, much worse transactions.
What do we learn? Wall St. has immense power. The alleged independence of the regulators, the Fed, is a fiction. This is why another financial collapse, totally different in nature, could well occur.
Why We STILL Need America – and Obama
By Shlomo Maital
As a child, I recall listening to The Lone Ranger on the radio. The Lone Ranger wasn’t alone; his Indian friend Kemo Sabe rode with him. Together they fought evil, injustice, crime and helped the helpless.
Today America is again The Lone Ranger. Ebola outbreak? America sends 3,000 soldiers to set up as many as 17 emergency treatment centers in Liberia. Why? No other country can or will. And Ebola is a threat to all of Africa and perhaps the world. Liberia is an entire nation under lock-down! And health workers and journalists are murdered in Guinea, by suspicious villagers who think they are bringing the disease rather than fighting it.
ISIS? (Obama is right. It is really ISIL, Islamic State in the Levant, because ISIL believes they will establish the Caliphate throughout the Mideast, including Lebanon and Israel. What you call things DOES matter!). America to the rescue, leading a ‘coalition’, but have no doubt, most of the military action will be American. Because Europe has given up defense spending and prefers to shelter under American defense spending.
If there is a major humanitarian disaster somewhere in the world, that takes resources and abilities, it will be largely America to the rescue.
So, yes, we can criticize America, Americans and their leader President Obama. But as many have noted, at present there is no other country who can come close to replacing America, in its will and ability to come to the rescue, like The Lone Ranger. And yes, America does stumble, fail to fully understand the cultures in which it operates, and yes, it does endlessly debate its decisions to intervene abroad. But in the end, like The Long Ranger, America is there.
So – thanks, America. We really do give you a bad rap.
TIMnovate 