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Dave Davison at Thoughts Illustrated recently featured the “Powers of 10” video by IBM; by today’s hyperkinetic attention span, it might be considered “long” but the impression it makes is very powerful, particularly on those not well acquainted with physics.  Dave justly called it “9 Minutes of video you will never forget”. Here it is:

One of the themes that I stress with my students, when we are trying to analyze a primary source, is the danger of relying upon one’s own habitual perspective and frame of reference. An important element of a mental perspective is scale and the general tendency of people to visualize new concepts only in terms of the scale in which they go about their daily lives without any comprehension of alternate orders of magnitude leads to serious logical errors. The distortion becomes still worse, when matters of science or economic policy or planning are involved and the person trying to analyze is equally unable to conceive of using different time frames.

RECOMMENDED READING

First, I’d like to welcome two fine new blogs to the economy-sized Zenpundit blogroll:

Kings of War

The Grand Strategy Blog

And now, on to the recommended reading portion of our post.

SWJ BLOG – “COIN of the Realm“

Wizards of Oz – “Trafalgar Day“

Citizen Netmom -“Liveblogging: EdEvangelist Ian Jukes “

Curzon of Coming Anarchy – “Technology lessons from the Iraq war” and “Superstates“

HNN – “The Beginning of the End of the Facade of Russian Democracy“

Russia Blog – “Does Putin Seek to Retain Poweror Preserve His Legacy?” and “Kremlins: KGB, Gulags, Putin is Evil…blah, blah, blah…“

Ross Mayfield – “Choice Drives Change” (hat tip to Chris Anderson)

Thoughts Illustrated -“Innovation-What’s Luck got to do with it?“

History Unfolding -“Rivers in Egypt“

Charlie Rose TV interview of Col. David Kilcullen ( Hat tip to John Robb)

That’s it!

RECOMMENDED READING

An unusually high quality selection – any of them in a normal week would merit consideration for the “top billing!” designation. An embarrassment of riches!

The actual winner of the title is Art Hutchinson of Mapping Strategy, for intellectual firepower on a topic that is generally misunderstood:

Top Billing! Art Hutchinson – “What Can and Cannot Be Predicted (and Thoughts On Telling the Difference)” (Hat tip to Wiggins at OSD )

Swedish Meatballs Confidential -“Perception Management Fur Alles – Dones, Doings and To-Do’s“

John Robb – “UNLEASHING THE DOGS OF WAR“

Dave Schuler – “Gripes About Public Discourse“

Fabius Maximus – “News from the Front: America’s military has mastered 4GW!Part II of a Series“

Dave Davison – “Paul Saffo – Mapping the Cone of Uncertainty “

Steve DeAngelis – “America Remains in the Broadband Slow Lane” and “WiMAX and the Evernet“

Ross Mayfield – “Decoupling Decision Rights and Decentralization“

Dr. Chet Richards and Maj. Don Vandergriff – “Summary Report
2007 Boyd Conference“

Garr Reynolds – “The creativity imperative: nurturing what is our nature“

I also endorse the video clip of thought leader Tony Buzan, featured by Garr ( Dan of tdaxp, Don Vandergriff, if you happen to read this, you two in particular should view the segment)

RECOMMENDED VIEWING

A little change of pace.

Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett at TED (TED videos are usually outstanding – someday I’ll have to finagle an invite to TED). Tom’s presentation skills have really been honed in the sense of taking insider mil-issues and getting the concepts across to a lay audience, slick and fast, on their level, without oversimplifying. It’s an artful trick that takes considerable practice to master, much less make look easy.Conversations With History, featuring Christopher Hitchens.

Hitchens is always an erudite interview, this is no exception.

On a lighthearted note, some pedagogy from the masters of slapstick. ;o)

300 REVISITED

The DVD release cometh….

ADDENDUM:

“And Then We Will Fight In The Shade” -review of 300 at Chicago Boyz