If you aren’t, you should be reading Om Malik. And this post, like many others, is excellent.
First what is Amazon Go: It is an 1800 square-foot retail outlet in Seattle with no staff, where you can grab and go and where you get billed directly to your Amazon account. It offers everyday grocery staples, ready-to-eat meals, snacks and Amazon Meal Kits.
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The current retail industry insiders will come up with excuses around why Go won’t work and why Amazon hasn’t figured out the complexity of the problems. Just like they said Amazon Cloud is for kid-apps and it wouldn’t scale and won’t be a real business. I was an Amazon skeptic in 1998. By 2002, I had changed my mind. I am a Bezos Believer.
Maybe this Kasparov guy knows a thing about dictatorships and immigration. Just maybe…
Monstrous and ahistorical. Such immigrants have been making America great for centuries because they had the freedom to work hard and create a better life for their children here. https://t.co/dMKOY9IbLD
AG Jeff Sessions on immigration reform: "What good does it do to bring in somebody who's illiterate in their own country, has no skills, & is going to struggle in our country & not be successful? That is not what a good nation should do, and we need to get away from it." pic.twitter.com/JwOBmbAG0P
I try to avoid politics on this blog, but it is difficult. As a fairly liberal guy, I found it strange to be following David Frum, Jennifer Rubin and Max Boot. But lately Bill Kristol has become the voice of reason.
Strange times…
Ryan and McConnell say they won't allow a vote on a DACA/border bill because Trump won't sign it. Why not have the debate and vote, see what the numbers are and then let him veto or not? It's called the legislative process and it's what Congress did when it was a co-equal branch.
Every history student knows about the tragedy of the commons. When farmers shared grazing land, no one had an incentive to avoid overgrazing, and without individual incentives, the commons degraded until it was useless.
We talk about this as if it’s an inevitable law, a glitch in the system that prevents communities from gaining the benefits of shared resources.
Of course, that’s not true.
Culture permits us to share all sorts of things without having them turn into tragedies. People are capable of standing up to the short-term profit motive, we’re not powerless. We can organize and codify and protect.
It requires us to say, “please don’t,” even more than, “not me.” Culture can be the antidote to selfishness.
I don’t typically promote our company on this blog, but the 2018 version of the RMIS Report came out and Origami Risk killed it again, just like last time. For those not in the insurance industry, RMIS stands for Risk Management Information System. Dave Tweedy and Pat O’Neill are the two leading independent consultants in this area and they put out a full review of RMIS software.
There are four major independent RMIS vendors, Origami Risk, Riskonnect, Marsh ClearSight and Ventiv Technology. First the vendors were rated on Customer Experience, Implementation Experience, System Wide Functionality and System Attributes. The first two categories were determined by actual client responses, the last two are based on the evaluation by Tweedy/O’Neill:
From the client responses, they also calculate the Net Promoter Score (NPS).
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a prominent customer satisfaction metric. User Survey respondents were asked “How likely is it that you would recommend the system to a friend or colleague in the industry? (Scale: 0 – Not at all likely to 10 – Extremely Likely).
A promoter is someone who answers 9 – 10 and a detractor is someone who rates you 0 – 6. Passives are 7 – 8. NPS is simply the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors:
The SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket is basically three times more powerful than anything they’ve launched before and is the most powerful rocket today. It was raised vertical for tests at Kennedy Space Center:
When it launches, the two outer boosters will detach and land almost simultaneously at Cape Canaveral, while the center core will attempt to land on the floating barge in the Atlantic. Almost like this:
Because Elon Musk has a sense of humor, he will be sending his very own original Tesla Roadster into space:
And Elon thinks there’s a fairly real chance the first Falcon Heavy launch will explode:
“I hope it makes it far enough away from the pad that it does not cause pad damage. I would consider even that a win, to be honest,”
This is crazy cool stuff, whether it succeeds the first time or not.
Preet Bharara is the former US Attorney fired by Donald Trump, supposedly due to not returning the president’s phone call. He now has a very interesting podcast:
“I have absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department,” Trump tells @nytimes. “But for purposes of hopefully thinking I’m going to be treated fairly, I’ve stayed uninvolved with this particular matter.” @nytmike@shearmhttps://t.co/qGfuB3G4Mx
Bart Starr (15) sneaks into the end zone for the winning touchdown in the Green Bay Packers’ 21-17 victory over the Dallas Cowboys in the 1967 NFL Championship Game, better known as the Ice Bowl, on Dec. 31, 1967 at Lambeau Field. (Photo: Associated Press)
Eight Packers and four Cowboys who took the field that day would be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Both coaches would be enshrined, too. The Packers had guile and experience and a field general named Bart Starr. The Cowboys had youth and superior team speed and their “Doomsday Defense.”
Yes, it would have been a great game on any day, in any kind of weather.
It would be played, though, on New Year’s Eve day in Green Bay, in the kind of weather that tested the limits of what a man could endure.
The official low temperature at Austin Straubel Airport that day was 17 below zero.
Wakeup call:
I guess it was Meredith who got the wakeup call at the hotel in Appleton, something like, ‘Howdy doody, Packer backers, it’s 7 o’clock in the morning and it’s 16 below.’ He said, ‘Sixteen below what?’ She said, ‘Go outside and you’ll find out.’ He went outside and said it was like getting hit in the head with a two-by-four.”
Game time temperatures:
“It was 13 below at kickoff, 20 below at halftime and 22 below when the game ended. That’s crazy. We shouldn’t have played.
Packer fans:
When we came out to take pre-game warm-up, there wasn’t a person in the stands. It was completely empty. We went back into the locker room and came out 15 minutes before kickoff and there was not an empty seat.
The field:
During the summer preceding the ’67 season, Lombardi spent $80,000 on an underground heating system, a first in the NFL. A grid of electric coils, buried inches below the surface of the Lambeau Field turf, were designed to keep the grass soft and provide a good playing surface in cold weather.
There was one problem, though. The field was covered overnight with a tarp, which trapped the heat and created condensation. When the tarp was removed before the game, the moist turf immediately started freezing.
Don’t put your lips on it:
We used a metal whistle in those days. I think it happened to (referee) Norm (Schachter) and Bill Schleibaum, the line judge. They tried to blow their whistles and the metal stuck to the their lips and pulled the skin right off their lips.
Again, Packer fans…
You can’t explain to people who haven’t been in that kind of weather how cold it was. Seeing those people in the stands … we didn’t have a choice, but what the heck were they doing out there?
Old school…
The thing I vividly recall, the offense is running on the field and the punt return team is running off and Ray Nitschke was on the field, screaming at the offense, ‘Don’t let me down! Don’t let me down!’ He was an intimidating figure. He had no teeth, snot was coming out of his nose, there was blood and mud on his uniform.
Final drive, Packers down 17 – 14:
Starr called the Packers’ final timeout with 16 seconds left and trotted to the sideline to confer with Lombardi. He told the coach that if he called a wedge play – a handoff to Mercein – he thought he could keep the ball, shuffle his feet and dive into the end zone behind the blocks of Bowman and Kramer.
Lombardi’s response?
“Then run it, and let’s get the hell out of here.”
Packers running back Mercein:
I was convinced I would be getting the ball. We didn’t have a whole lot of plays for short yardage. We had a couple dives and we had a wedge play. Bart said, ‘Brown 32, wedge right.’ I never heard him say, ‘I’m keeping the ball.’ I had 34 of the 68 yards on that drive. I thought that was going to be the cherry on the cake.
Packers win:
It was the greatest drive I saw in Packer history. And I covered a lot of games. Less than 5 minutes to play, they’re losing 17-14 and they go 68 yards. There were no mistakes, no fumbles, no dropped passes. Nothing. Nobody is ever going to have a drive like that in those conditions.
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