Riding Man ~ An Especially Flaming Bicyclist!-)

Riding Man a kinetic pyro-sculpture at Burning Man 2006...

Prefab ~ Kirsner on Factory-Built Housing...

Great to see Innovation Economist Scott Kirsner spotlighting urban innovations, specifically the power of prefab housing in today's piece on This new house...

Frenk @ Media ~ Empowerment Thru Knowledge

This coming Wednesday November 18, 2009 from 11a to 12noon in Bartos Theatre, the MIT Media Lab's Social Health Initiative hosts Harvard School of Public Health Dean Julio Frenk for a talk on Empowerment Through Knowledge: Determinants of Progress in Global Health.

"The MIT Media Laboratory is launching a Social Health Initiative, and a series of inaugural keynote lectures. Our goal is to create a network of organizations and tools that help people thrive, staying healthy and happy during their entire lives. Because social health is intimately intertwined with social support, adequate wealth, self-determination, and security, a successful social health system must take a holistic view of life."

The transformative implications of consumer-centric and systemic-holistic health are enormous. This is a must-see event and the Social Health Initiative is worthy of your close attention.

New Inhabitats ~ Green Live-Work Alternatives

Clickon the latest goodies (and crazy ideas) from Inhabitat...

Puppies Behind Bars ~ Prisoner Responsibility...

Glad I picked up the USAToday and read Joshua Hatch's piece Prison pups serve those who served about Puppies Behind Bars, a program which allows-encourages prisoners to train dogs to perform valuable tasks. This is great both because of the helpful abilities of these hounds, but because -- in the essential words of one prisoner -- taking on this responsibility is "Making me a better person". According to organizer Gloria Stoga...

"Prisoners are great puppy raisers, Stoga says, because "they put their all into each and every dog." Unlike professional trainers, she says, prisoners "have a real need and desire to prove they can do something right. Here is a chance for someone to say, 'You succeeded.' " "There's a level of responsibility that's involved, like having a little baby," says Eric Jenkins, 37. Convicted in a 1992 fatal shooting, Jenkins got into the program in 2007. He's training his second dog, a 3-month-old golden retriever named Skamper. "It compels you to extend yourself and not think only of yourself. I have to think about him first," Jenkins says, stroking Skamper's head. An inmate in the program -- who still has to do a regular prison job -- spends 24 hours a day with the dog. He must learn basic veterinary care, keep a journal and be an assistant to a primary trainer for at least six months before he gets his own puppy."

This is valuable and rehabilitative stuff.

EDC ~ Non-Profit MIT Educational Spinout...

Great to hear a nice snippet of news about the Newton, MA based Education Development Center (EDC) -- that Clinton lauds Newton group's Philippines project. EDC is a...

"...global nonprofit organization that designs, delivers and evaluates innovative programs to address some of the world’s most urgent challenges in education, health, and economic opportunity."

In addition to doing important work in these fields, EDC is one of the key -- and oft underappreciated -- non-profit spinouts from MIT. Others include MITRE, Draper, Society for Organizational Learning, OneLaptopPerChild, and most recently Learning Unlimited. EDC started back in the Sputnik era when MIT physics Professor Jerrold Zacharias and colleagues crafted...

"...a new high school physics curriculum, PSSC Physics. This curriculum, funded by the National Science Foundation, focused on science as the product of experiment and theory, constructed by real people. EDC introduced it successfully in schools across the country and eventually in many parts of the world."

As I can personally attest, PSSC Physics was great stuff, a curriculum I benefited from at Los Altos High before coming to MIT as an undergrad to study engineering! More generally, EDC has become today a multi-division organization pursuing hundreds of programs with over a thousand employees worldwide.

"More People, Faster" ~ Nokia's Entry Phones...

Compelling piece by Nathan Wyeth on NextBillion.net about Nokia Releases New Phones. Nathan asserts...

"Not only should other multinationals be learning from Nokia's success in emerging markets, I think the development community should be treating its product releases more like the wealthy public treats the release of a new iPhone -- with excitement and attention to its details. [...] these price drops in handsets alone -- an almost 40% reduction from Nokia's least expensive phones two years ago -- will reach more people, faster, than any of the innovative approaches profiled elsewhere on NextBillion.net. For better or worse if I had to choose the single organization driving the most market development at the base of the pyramid globally, it wouldn't be the Gates Foundation or Grameen, it would be Nokia. While the company is losing out in the smartphone market it's shipping almost half a billion handsets a year, accounting for their 60% market share in India and 45% market share in China. They intend for Nokia Money to reach 300 million people by 2011. As a benchmark, the global microfinance industry has something shy of 150 million clients."

Great example of transformative innovations changing people's lives for the better. Anyways, see here the entry-level Nokia 1280... And also see here pieces by Nokia's Jan Chipchase about Lessons for the Design of Mobile Money Services.

Tinkering ~ DIY Renaissance in WSJournal!

Thanks to Lemelson-MIT Invention Program Executive Director Joshua Schuler for spotting today's WSJournal piece Tinkering Makes Comeback Amid Crisis by Justin Lahart. All about the DIY build-it movement sweeping our planet. Cool associated video featuring interesting examples, including MIT alumna Limor Fried and her adafruit business...

Plan Ceibal ~ One Laptop Per Uruguayan Child!

Thanks to Adrian Garcia for spotting this OLPC video about the Uruguayan Plan Ceibal -- deploying one laptop for all children and teachers! Ceibal stands for "Conectividad Educativa de Informática Básica para el Aprendizaje en Línea", which can be translated as "Basic informatic educative connectivity for on-line learning".

Jason Kelly ~ Ginkgo BioWorks Co-Founder...

Excellent to have MIT alum entrepreneur Jason Kelly on MaximizingProgress.tv tonight! Jason's co-founder with four other MIT alums of Ginkgo BioWorks, a biological engineering firm dedicated to "...making biology easier to engineer. Ginkgo offers technology to speed the construction of DNA and enable reliable, rapid prototyping of engineered biological systems." Their offices and lab space are located in the Marine Industrial Park in Boston, an up-and-coming biotech hub. During our conversation, Jason described the exponential Synthetic Biology revolution and the powerful role of extracurricular activities like iGEM 2009, the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition, in accelerating this movement. His own path is quite interesting too: as an undergrad at MIT, Jason pursued degrees in Chemical Engineering and Biology -- since there was no Biological Engineering degree yet -- and then a PhD in... Biological Engineering! Among his outside activities, Jason is a co-founder of OpenWetWare, a community of life sciences researchers exploring ways to conduct science more effectively, as well as serving as Judge in iGEM.

Droplet Dynamics ~ SloMo TimeWarping Water!-)

Thanks to Paul from GeekPress for spotting Jeff's TimeWarp perspective on water droplet dynamics! Stunning...

Financing Neuroventures ~ VC Panel @ NTV09

Great guest panel of venture capitalists joined us in our MIT Neurotechnology Ventures class last night...

Dr Jonathan Behr ~ PureTech Ventures ~ Senior Associate charged with unearthing and evaluating venture creation opportunities. Part of the founding team of Endra and technical consultant to Enlight Biosciences, both PureTech portfolio companies. Earned his BS at Rice University and his PhD at MIT, both in Biological Engineering.

Dr Mikhail Shapiro ~ Third Rock Ventures ~ Senior Associate focusing on new company formation and due diligence. Co-Founder of Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems, a neurology medical device company, and Epernicus, an enterprise software company. Holds a PhD in Biological Engineering at MIT and a BSc in Neuroscience from Brown University.

Dr Ann DeWitt ~ Flagship Ventures ~ Senior Associate. Previously at 3M and co-founder of Novophage Therapeutics. Has a BS from the University of Illinois, Urbana and a PhD in Chemical Engineering with minor in Biology from MIT, and MBA from Harvard Business School. While at Harvard, she was the Lead Organizer for the Biotech Track of the MIT $100K Business Plan Competition.

Wide-ranging advice including the power of networking, the need for best-in-class advisors and team members, the role of intellectual property, and more. We also discussed the challenges and opportunities in pursuing neuropharma and neurobiotech versus more consumer neurotechnologies and the impact of regulatory structures. Fascinating stuff!

MIT G-Lab Africa ~ Global Health Delivery!

Check out the Projects Map for MIT's G-Lab Africa class which specializes in understanding and improving Global Health Delivery... The students all travel to these project locations for the better part of January 2010 after spending Fall 2009 in class with MIT Sloan's Anjali Sastry and a great set of guest speakers and preparatory exercises.

Benevolent Dictators? ~ Kagame, Atatürk, and...

Interesting to read in Cashewman today Manpreet Singh's guest piece Rwanda’s Paul Kagame: The Benevolent Dictator?

"Plato said that the best form of government would be a benevolent dictatorship, and this is, in effect, what Rwanda has. Kagame is officially elected, but he has 95% approval -- indicative of a stifled political process. When I’ve spoken to Rwandan friends about this, no-one has a bad thing to say about Kagame. But it’s hard to have a debate when the opposing voice isn’t allowed to speak."

And this is in the context of strong performance...

"It’s fifteen years after the genocide in Rwanda, and seven years since Paul Kagame assumed office as President. In that time, Rwanda has thrived. Kagame has actively pursued pro-business policies, making Rwanda attractive to international companies, and to large funding organizations. As a result, Rwanda has shown year-on-year GDP growth of over 7%, for the past three years."

Other past transformational strongmen include Atatürk in the post-Ottoman period and the Meiji Restorers in post-Shogunate Japan. And yet we also have tragic failure modes, like what happened with the Shah as he drove for modernization in Iran or more visibly the malevolent dictators of North Korea, Cuba, Zimbabwe, etc. Each seemed to start on a good path and then flipped a bit. What checks & balances are in play in today's Rwanda?

Vital Den Bosch ~ Before & After Images...

Thanks to David Hembrow for spotting Mark Wagenbuur's videos comparing contemporary Den Bosch with historic imagery...

"The city of 's-Hertogenbosch closed the historic inner city for motorized traffic. This used to be different. From the 1960s the city looked like one big parking lot. Now we only see pedestrians and cyclists in the historic center that since long has become a shopping area. You can still park your car near this center, but it is very expensive. This encourages people to come by bicycle. If they can not do that, or if they do not want to, there are "transferia" at the edges of the city near the motorways."

The Pile ~ MIT SMR Reviews Mgt Readings!

MIT Sloan Management Review summarizes their advice on the most useful management reading over the past week in a new Sunday column called -- what else -- The Pile! Hilarious! And timely. Their latest tips: A More Practical Creative Sabbatical, Success and the Power of Research, and How To Write a Great Novel.

Fairytale Electronics ~ Eng Visits MIT Media Lab

In her latest video episode, Diana Eng at FairytaleFashion.org explores simple, playful, and wearable electronics with MIT Media Lab grad student Karen Brennan of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group and Professor Leah Buechley of the High-Low Tech Group...

"I Am..." by Trisha Meili ~ Exceptional Woman!

I just woke up to another compelling episode of the Sunday morning Magic 106.7 radio show, Exceptional Women, this time with co-host Gay Vernon interviewing Trisha Meili, better known as the "Central Park Jogger" who was so brutally assaulted in 1989. After 14 years of recovery and relative seclusion, Trisha realized that as part of her own healing process she needed to share her story and wrote I Am The Central Park Jogger: A Story of Hope and Possibility. In the book and now in motivational talks, Trisha today shares lessons-learned about recovery and resilience and...

"...how to manage through unpredictable change, whether personal, professional, economic or spiritual. Her story has encouraged people worldwide to overcome life's obstacles -- regardless of what they might be -- and get back on the road to life."

Hearing Trisha's poignant examples -- both personal, in recovering from her physical and neurological trauma, and as shared by others on the mend -- in this mornings conversation with Gay was inspiring. Great show, great guests!

Walls ~ Beyond Berlin, Let's Tear More Down...

Just watched History's Rise and Fall of the Berlin Wall which showed just how clearly the Cold War of West vs East was a contest between freedom and oppression, between civilization and barbarism, and between right and wrong. Epic stories of escape and ingenuity and daring combine with political lessons which still hold in these perilous times when our secular enlightenment civilization has to fight off collectivist statism on the one hand and mystical fundamentalism on the other. FYI, the BBC Mundo offers us a special report on many additional walls which need tearing down...

Jackass German ~ The New "Foreign" Minister;-)

How embarrassing for Germans!-) Their new "Foreign" Minister got on his high horse and rudely refused to either listen to or answer a BBC reporter's question in English. Why? Because it was a press conference... in Germany! Der Spiegel's Cathrin Schaer writes that Germans Poke Fun at Their New Foreign Minister. Decide for yourself by viewing the live event... Nevermind the fact that post-WWII the Allies should have just insisted that the new language for the conquered people should be English. Or that the EU's dominant language is... English. Or that the dominant language for business is... English. Or whatever. In any case, there are language schools available for such Germans...