Fix Earth First - Remember, "The World Solved the Ozone Problem"

A very good and timely point:

"Fix Earth's climate crisis instead of dreaming of other planets, urges Nobel prize-winning astronomer"

'Earthrise' - Earth from the Moon, Apollo 8 mission, 1968

By Olivia Campbell - The Independent

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/2019-nobel-prize-physics-chemistry-climate-change-global-warming-a9237346.html

___
And that's got to be Now!

But while it certainly can seem impossible, another article I saw this morning provides a basis for hope. In an editorial yesterday, the New York Times made the point,

"The World Solved the Ozone Problem. It Can Solve Climate Change"
"The same tools that fixed the ozone hole — science, innovation and international action — can address it."

By The Editorial Board
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/07/opinion/sunday/ozone-climate-change.html
___
One of the most hopeful examples of the kinds of solutions we'll need may be efforts in process all over the world to extract all the carbon back out of the air.  As we now fully understand, that's what has trapped all the extra heat from the sun here, melting the glaciers and raising sea levels.

That could make all the difference, and clearly would if it worked well enough. Of course, that's over time, if not in time to avoid a lot more of the kinds of impacts and resulting troubles we're seeing.

But having let it slide so badly, it seems like the current population of Earth has an obligation to at least do everything possible to get things significantly moving back in the right direction.

UNDO-ing Plastic: At The Source

As I've been documenting just one small corner of our problems with plastic pollution — the fact of the vast patches of plastic garbage in the world's oceans — it's equally important to keep the focus on solutions.

They do exist (Bucky Fuller said so), and while we don't expect any particular new deconstruction of technology to restore the planet back to Eden overnight, it's almost always a much better use of our time and attention to be part of a solution.  That's even if its effect is no more than a nudge in the right direction (which, let's be realistic, may be the best we can expect at this point).

But it is still worth doing – any part of the right direction feels better than just moving further into the wrong ones.

Trying to address the source of the problem is usually a good way to go.  So here is just such an effort:

The "Think Beyond Plastic Business Accelerator," in Menlo Park, California, (of course,) calls itself the world’s first such incubator to focus on eliminating plastic pollution.  The company helps startups to develop affordable, sustainable alternatives to plastic, meeting the specific needs of large companies.

"Plastic may be toxic, and it lasts forever, but it’s also extremely convenient.  ...If you want companies to stop using plastic, you need to offer viable alternatives—and provide assistance to the startups coming up with them."

"A NewBusiness Accelerator Takes on Plastic Pollution"
By Caroline Winter, Businessweek, July 14, 2014

In here:
The OceanS' Floating Garbage PatcheS – Yes, it's worse than you thought

Fun Facts' About The Great Pacific Garbage Patch & Co.

Will The Solar Rise Again in NY State?

Try, try again - only a few years back, a big push for developing solar industry in New York's Hudson Valley and elsewhere melted down, between China underpricing the world for solar panels and the failure of a deeply politically conflicted U.S. government to resolutely fund the growth of sustainable energy.  But Governor Andrew Cuomo sure seems serious about it, and he just seriously upped the ante again.

"The already-impressive NY-Sun Initiative is about to become one of the most ambitious solar programs in the nation, with the governor committing, through a filing with the state’s Public Service Commission, $1 billion to the program—that’s right, $1 billion—over the next 10 years."
 – Natural Resources Defense Council, Pierre Bull’s Blog, 1/8/14

SUNY Buffalo's 750 kilowatt Solar Strand,
the switch just flipped on in December, 2013

From the Spring of 2012, Cuomo's NY-Sun Initiative brought together and pumped up existing programs of the NY State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), Long Island Power Authority (LIPA), and the New York Power Authority (NYPA), to create one, well coordinated and funded solar energy effort.  The launch came paired with the Public Service Commission's approval of NYSERDA’s request to double funding for customer-sited solar electric systems to $432 million over the next four years.

Last month the Governor added another $108 million in funding over the next two years for residential and commercial solar energy projects, bringing the total budget for the next two years of NYSERDA alone to $216 million.

The NY-Sun Initiative had the stated intention of "doubling the amount of customers' installed solar power in a year, and quadrupling it by 2013."  As of December, according to the Governor's office, a total of 299 megawatts of solar photovoltaic capacity has been installed or is under development, more than was installed in the entire prior decade, said to be greenhouse-gas equivalent of taking 29,000 cars off the road.

Due largely to the initiative, the state rapidly moved up the national charts of installed solar power ranking, as of the third quarter of 2013:

 “With enough solar to power more than 30,900 homes, New York currently ranks 12th in the country for installed solar capacity," According to the Solar Energy Industries Association (via Thinkprogress.org). "There are more than 411 solar companies at work throughout the value chain in New York, employing more than 3,300 people."

But the goal is even more ambitious: to install 3,000 (MW) of solar across New York, enough solar, they say, to:

• power 465,000 homes,

• cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2.3 million tons annually —subtracting the exhaust of almost 435,000 cars — and

• create more than 13,000 new solar jobs.

A win-win-win?  Sounds great, like it always has...

____

Photo:

SUNY Buffalo's 750 kilowatt Solar Strand 

"'SolarStrand' Opens as New Gateway to UB Campus"

3,200-Panel Photovoltaic Array at the State University of NY at Buffalo.  Built in partnership with, and $7 million from, NYPA's Renewable Energy Program, which is now under the umbrella (solar-panelled, we're sure,) of NY-Sun.

More links:

"Governor Cuomo Announces Additional $108 Million Commitment to Solar Industry Through NY-Sun Initiative" - Gov.'s Press Office

cleantechnica.com/2014/01/13/new-york-governor-announces-1-billion-commitment-clean-energy/ _

Filing with the state’s PSC

Related, in this blog:

"Green" Lights in Europe, Asia, But Not U.S. (2011)

Steve Jobs' Parents' Garage Now A Landmark

The Los Altos, California, Historical Commission recently voted to designate 2066 Crist Drive -- the house where Steve Jobs grew up, with the legendary garage where Apple Computer was born -- as an "historic resource."

It's not the only famous garage of its kind in Silicon Valley, but between Jobs' astonishingly long line of successful breakthroughs and the fact that Apple has been bobbing in and out of the top spot of most valuable company in the world (jostling past Exxon Mobil and the stragglers, Microsoft, Wal-Mart and IBM), it'll do for the symbol of them all.

That garage, built in 1952, would 24 years later become the lab where he and co-founder Steve Wozniak assembled the first 100 Apple I computers. "Woz," of course, was the engineer who imagined and created the working computer that put the stars in Jobs' eyes, and made them both stars in the process.


The garage's other historic function was as the office -- the space where Jobs met with their first investors.

The first 50 computers created by Jobs and Wozniak were sold to an electronics store in nearby Mountain View for $500 each. The rest were assembled for their friends in the Homebrew Computer Club, part of the tech ecosystem the two Steves were nurtured by. Today, original Apple I's sell for tens of thousands. One was auctioned off a few years ago for more than $200,000.

That little garage simply reminds us that the power of a great idea -- put into effect with a committed team, solid planning, and persistent followthrough -- can create the largest effect out of very humble beginnings.

___

(This post first appeared in Mitch Ditkoff's "The Heart of Innovation," one of Guy Kawasaki's top blogs on innovation on Alltop.com.  Mr. Ditkoff also writes for Huffington Post.)

(Photo by gflinch, on Flickr, under Creative Commons license)

Good Guys Finish First, Too: Ray Allen Hits Record 3

[Thursday night, 8-something:] Just watched Ray Allen hit his 2,561st three-pointer, breaking Reggie Miller's all-time record, and in a game against the Lakers in the Boston (TD) Garden, no less. "All-Time" here should be understood to mean, "in 32 years," since the three-point shot only dates to 1979 in the NBA.

Ray Allen is by all accounts a real stand-up guy, and Reggie Miller, on the scene as a TV announcer, spent the whole first recording-breaking half sending up Allen's hours of work perfecting his craft. He's at the top of his game at age 35, a real old-timer by NBA standards, so it's worth noting how he's gone about it.

The new record holder is interviewed and says that what inspired him, when he first came into the league 15 years back, was seeing how long before a game Reggie would be out there practicing. So Miller explains that he in turn got the idea from watching Larry Bird, hours before gametime…

Later in the broadcast, Miller explained that, "it was all about having the whole court free" so you could practice taking shots from all different spots on the floor. (Ah-ha! That little mental-vision jolt you get from an expert insight.) And it's always about that 10,000 hours.

These are guys who take around 1000 practice shots a day. Miller spent the entire night repeating variations on the phrase, "those long hours in the gym, working on your shot." Because as all these gentlemen have made obvious again, for whatever craft we can talk about, that's how it's done.

A CLEAR-Headed Idea for Reducing Emissions

Two U.S. Senators have proposed what looks like a brilliant framework for not only reducing carbon air pollution, but putting some money directly into our pockets, and doing it with what sounds like a refreshingly simple system.

(Are you kidding me? Can I be forgiven for fearing, in these nutty times, that it's too good to be true? Well, I just read this morning that the White House and Senate allies decided this week, "to press ahead with a scaled-back energy bill," and they didn't mention this one, so it might turn out to be. Nevertheless:)

In December, Senators Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) introduced the Carbon Limits and Energy for America's Renewal (CLEAR) Act. They wrote,

"Our concept is simple: Instead of cap-and-trade, our approach is 'cap-and-dividend,' with the dividends going where they belong: into the pockets of hardworking Americans."

"The legislation would set up a mechanism for selling "carbon shares" to the few thousand fossil fuel producers and importers through monthly auctions. Seventy-five percent of the auction revenue would be returned to every citizen and legal resident of the United States through equally divided rebate checks -- averaging $1,100 for a family of four each year. The remaining 25 percent would finance clean-energy research and development…" and more.

This would be done "without disrupting the economy, using a gradually declining 'cap.' The concept is to gradually accelerate emission reductions," aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 20% by 2020, and 83% by 2050.

Quotes from "A cap-and-dividend way to a cleaner nation and more jobs," Cantwell and Collins' Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post, Friday, 6/18/10.

There are literally a host of good ideas contained in this one bill, beyond the obvious lure of a check from the guv'mint, for a change: transfer money directly from those who profit from polluting to those who suffer from it the most. Set a predictable price for carbon that everyone can plan on, one that's market-driven within set limits, and all with a minimum of government involvement since an independent trust would be set up to handle the auction. (A few nods to the Republican side of the aisle, there — bully! Let's get everybody on board.)

And how about these perks? "We create a level playing field instead of providing pollution credits to whichever entities have the best lobbyists," the Senators write. "The act cuts out Wall Street speculators and price manipulators. It minimizes destructive price volatility."

And, perhaps most radically of all, the actual bill is only 39 pages long! That means all those members of Congress will be able to actually have a concept of what's in there, for a change. (Candid Representatives have admitted there's no way you can know all the provisions in your common 2,000-page bill.) Between the few pages and the mechanism proposed, it also means that special interests wouldn't have anywhere in the system to hide big payouts to themselves.

The idea is that now that companies will have to pay for the carbon they allow into the atmosphere (that we're all breathing, and in effect swimming in together), they will be economically incented to reduce that output. At long last they'll find the will and the way to do what they'd put off for as long as possible, simply due to the cost. Polluting did not figure into their bottom line — aside from compliance costs during earlier eras when the EPA was actually on the job. Now it would.

By golly, they even made a cute little video for YouTube to explain it:

"How the CLEAR Act Works" (PDF, from cantwell.senate.gov/)

First saw it here:
"Double Dividend: Make Money by Saving Nature"
George Lakoff, Huffington Post

Photo from Wikipedia —
the controlled demolition of four giant coal smokestacks, known locally as the "four sisters," in a Toronto suburb (2006). The plant was labelled a heavy polluter by the Ontario government; and we who live downwind, to the east, thank you.

VIDEO: Tim-berrrr! (53 sec., no sound)

Related, here:
Posts tagged "Green tech"

Giant Shipper Finds "Slow Is Better," Cheaper

Now that oil is back in the news with a vengeance, exacting the price for our dependency on both the fuel and the money to be made from it, I kept thinking about this piece from earlier in the year about a revolutionary move of the leading container shipping company.

"Slow Trip Across Sea Aids Profit and Environment," Elisabeth Rosenthal, NY Times, 2/16/10.

The world-spanning Danish line Maersk, socked with $145 barrels of oil in 2008, cut their fuel consumption by almost one third with a daring manuever: cutting the top cruising speed of its ships by half.

"Reducing engine load dramatically decreases fuel consumption," a Maersk presentation explains, because, "fuel consumption and CO2 emissions increase exponentially with speed." Maersk was able to cut their fuel needs on major routes by as much as 30 percent, a major savings. But just by that, the company also managed an equal cut in their ships’ emissions of greenhouse gases.

On many routes, it doesn't even take any more time(!) — cut-off, transit and arrival schedules remain the same since technology now allows for a better distribution of speed, thus gaining back what had been wasted "hurry up and wait" time.

(Of course, when you think of it, this isn't really an entirely new principle to any of us, because we've all heard from way back that driving at 55 gives you the best fuel efficiency and gets you there just some minutes later. But that doesn't mean some of us aren't still looking for the chance to really open 'er up anyway.)

"Where the previous focus has been on 'What will it cost?' and 'Get it to me as fast as possible,' " Maersk’s director of environmental sustainability explains in the NYT story, there's now a third dimension: 'What’s the CO2 footprint?' " Maersk's pitch to shippers includes the offer that, " We will significantly reduce your carbon footprint," claiming that, "Super Slow Steaming alone easily reduces a customer’s whole annual supply chain by 13%."

"Slowing down from high speeds reduces emissions because it reduces drag and friction as ships plow through the water," says the NYT's story, and points out that the same holds true for airplanes, which could easily reduce their emissions by taking it slower, say by 10%.

This is an especially welcome innovation at a time when worldwide consumption is growing so fast; the container ship trade grew by eight times between 1985 and 2007, especially long-haul shipments of goods from Asia. Maersk says their fleet of 545 ships makes a port call every thirteen minutes. So their shift to Slo-Mo has an impact, even more so as a gauntlet thrown to their competition — not, God forbid, because it's the Right Thing To Do or anything, but because it'll save them money, too.

Hey, whatever it takes.

But here's another excellent and really intriguing example of how progress doesn't always come from charging ahead — maybe just as often, it can be achieved by dropping back a step.

• Maersk vessel photo page

Related, sort of, here:
On Slow-blogging
Posts about Green Tech

New Points on Local Green Map, Prism Solar Ribbon Spinoff

Added a few newsy spots to my Sustainability 'Heat' Map of Hudson Valley, explained and windowed-into in the preceding(/following) post.

The biggest news recently was Prism Solar Technologies' announcement Tuesday that they'll receive $3.6 million in federal money to spin off their R&D on a new form of photovoltaic technology in the Hudson Valley. They predict the new company will create 300 jobs over the next three years.

The new flexible solar ribbon cell is highly efficient, lightweight, made with much less waste, and has other unique characteristics, but its flexibility that's the main attraction. That allows countless applications, from the hood of a car to the outside face of a building, from cellphones and laptops to equipment for the U.S. Military, which has shown interest. Congressman Maurice Hinchey announced the grant with Prism Solar CEO Richard Lewandowski.

"Prism Solar gets $3.6 million in federal funds" - Poughkeepsie Journal, Sarah Bradshaw, 8/11/09

"Solar company to create spin-off, create 300 jobs" - Mid-Hudson News

= = =
…And I added these two places to the map:

"Green Living" index, Times Herald Record

The venerable Times Herald Record, published from Middletown, NY and in its modern form at Recordonline.com, covers all things renewable in the region with its page on "Green Living - local coverage of the green revolution." It's a handy spot from which to keep updated on all recent related activity.

Author Joanne Michaels' "Hudson River Valley Farms"

Joanne Michaels' latest book, published July 2009, is "Hudson River Valley Farms - The People and the Pride Behind the Produce." This beautiful book, thanks to the wonderful photography of Rich Pomerantz, is portrait of 44 farms from Westchester to Albany, taking the reader on an amazing journey through the heart of the Hudson Valley. The appendix covers close to 100 farmers' markets in eight counties, including driving directions.

Joanne, the former editor of Hudson Valley Magazine, has published numerous books which draw our attention to the profound beauty of the region, including "The Hudson Valley & Catskill Mountains: An Explorer's Guide," and coauthoring with renowned photographer Hardie Truesdale the stunning "Hudson River Journey" and "Adirondack High."

Joannemichaels.com

Pres. Obama on the Tonight Show

In observance of the fact that this man practically IS the news these days, given the mind-boggling situation that our society is in, here's the full interview of the Prez by Leno on the Tonight Show. Obama spends much of the time speaking plainly about all the issues of the day, the nature of the overall financial crisis, the AIG and other bailed-out bonuses, and the whole sordid lot. It's a great opportunity to hear directly and at length -- not just in soundbites -- how he's thinking about what he's doing for the country.

Sure enough, two months into the job and the man is getting loudly criticized all over the place -- and not just by the Party Of No, but by all those whose job it is to stir things up and get people arguing with each other. So much for bipartisanship; but who could possibly be surprised, in a culture that's become so intensely critical and uncooperative?

In here, Jay asks Barack (who's been a guest on the show before and seems right at home,) how he's adjusting to his new life, and Obama tells us that Washington is like a reality show where everyone is Simon. Ouch! Towards the end of the interview, pressed for news on the urgent, much-discussed issue of the new White House Pet, he relates a Beltway aphorism: "They say if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog."

Appendix: found this excellent defense of the President's efforts on the link tree today:
"Obama's multitasking with a smile is driving detractors crazy"
By Bob Ray Sanders, McClatchy Newspapers

Related, here:
"10 Most 'Accountable' Big Companies"

Barack Obama, President-Elect of the United States(!) (Nov. 5, '08)

"Slow-Blogging" 2009

The only appropriate way for me to start posting in the new year, on the 15th day of that year, is to hearken back to something I bookmarked for this purpose a couple months ago on the concept of, what else but Slow Blogging. Clearly, I'm a grizzled veteran of this only recently-named approach.

Web-logging began as one of those breathlessly, literally up-to-the-minute Internet phenomena, where the idea was not only of posting every day, but of how many times per day you could publish. Never mind that these rapid-fire essays contained only the barest minimum of thought; the point was they were so timely.

But as we've now seen, especially in these past few months, perhaps we need to incorporate a bit more reflection into our culture's modus operandi. It turns out that, even in a world wired with communication speeds of gigabits per second, Haste Still Makes Waste. Just lots more of it now, and much quicker.

I found this approach to online writing in a November 21, 2008 article about this "small, quirky movement" in where else but the New York Times (slow blogging about Old Media -- even worse!), "Haste, Scorned: Blogging at a Snail’s Pace." I was relieved to find some brethren whole-heartedly embracing this approach.

"Slow bloggers believe that news-driven blogs like TechCrunch and Gawker are the equivalent of fast food restaurants," author Sharon Otterman writes, "great for occasional consumption, but not enough to guarantee human sustenance over the longer haul."

Not convinced, O thou wired child of our frenzied times? About the slo-mo thesis, or the relevance of quoting hopelessly out-of-date Old Media? I give you these words of none other than A-list blogger Om Malik, writing about the reporting on the Mumbai terror attacks in his native India, in a post titled "With Twitter, a Desperate Need for Context":

"Even with all the news coming at me from the local Indian channels by way of streaming on the web, no one was offering context, analysis or a comprehensive overview of what was unfolding around them. It wasn’t until The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times offered up their reports that the whole time line and sequence of events started to make sense."

Ah-ha! Take that, New Media bigots. But my point isn't either/or; the point, as ever, is balance. There's no way around the fact that we live in a hyperdrive world, and we've got to keep up or be left behind. But neither has the world fundamentally changed so much since Aesop posited that, as my grandfather was found of quoting, "Slow but steady wins the race."

Related, here:
Twittering on about Facebook

Illustration by Milo Winter in a 1919 Aesop anthology,
from Project Gutenberg via Wikipedia

"Can America Invent Its Way Back?" & "No Time to Forget Innovation"

Extracts of today's and another recent post I put together for the Heart of Innovation, the blog of Idea Champions.

Nov. 24 '08 -
"Can America Invent Its Way Back?"

A recent article in BusinessWeek by Michael Mandel asks this highly relevant question, noting that while the U.S. has spent almost $5 trillion on research and development and on higher education, "employment in most technologically advanced industries has stagnated or even fallen."

Mandel's focus is on the new field of "innovation economics," which studies what forms of funding drive successful innovation.

The first launch at Cape Canaveral, 1950 (NASA)

Nov. 4 '08 -
"It's No Time to Forget About Innovation"

Writing in the New York Times, Janet Rae-Dupree reminds us that even or especially in times "of corporate belt-tightening," companies reduce their efforts to strengthen innovation at their own risk. For example, "a large acquirer's interest in a start-up or smaller company is binary in nature: They either want you or they don't, based on the innovation you have to offer."

Hard times can be the source of innovative inspiration... Some of the best products and services come out of some of the worst times.

"That's Why He's A Great Player"

Once again, the somehow perennially useful reminder that you'll miss 100% of the shots you don't take. (Who first said that, I wonder?) Here it was the other day, voiced in the form of the champion Boston Celtics' coach Doc Rivers commenting on the amazing Paul Pierce. The Celtics' leading scorer had been in a slump recently, but on this night...

"The Raptors... were up by as many as 16 points but fell, 94-87, last night thanks in no small part to the 22-point period Pierce assembled as a part of a 36-point bailout. ...It was, as Doc Rivers said, the kind of night the Celtics had been waiting for out of their captain. Every shot seemed like a big one in a quarter that saw Pierce hit seven of nine attempts and drill two from 3-point range.

"Rivers never had any doubt that Pierce would keep shooting. Mostly because Pierce guaranteed as much in one of their huddles.

"'That's why he's a great player,' Rivers said. 'That's why great players are great players. The average player could not have withstood that. The average player misses shots and he shuts off.

"'The great player misses shots and he starts thinking the odds are on his side.'"

("After playing just 28 minutes against Detroit Sunday, Pierce said he could have played for hours, especially now that he had found his rhythm.")

"Pierce scores 32 in Celtics 94-87 win over Raptors" --
"Their captain became a quarter-master," by Julian Benbow, Boston Globe, 11/11/08

"Paul Pierce For Two" - Photo posted to Flickr by TimDD
(Okay, that pic is from a Lakers game, not this one;
but how much better is one of Pierce blowing by Kobe?)

(...Just like ol' Mr. Hank Aaron, who tipped our hat to early in the year. In baseball terms it comes out as "Just Keep Swinging.")

Barack Obama, President-Elect of the United States(!)

First of all… Whew!

If you write, you kind of have to write on a day like this, an historic occasion if ever there was one. Like the fall of the Berlin Wall, this is something I never thought would happen in my lifetime, and it is due both to the moment and, significantly, to the extraordinary character of Barack.

Maybe it was close earlier, maybe the Democratic candidate would have won anyway just on the strength of being the Anti-Bush, but there were two factors that decisively tipped it Obama's way. McCain's choice of the beauty pageant queen for his VP did send the hearts of the faithful to flutterin', but once revealed in Katy Couric's pivotal interview, Mrs. Palin caused everybody else to seriously doubt his judgment, and turn even conservative stalwarts like Christopher Buckley (William F.'s son, no less,) against him.

The other, less self-inflicted blow (given his legislative participation in the debacle,) was that little dust-up recently in the markets, the timing of which turned out so poorly for his campaign. Once again, It Was The Economy, Stoopit.

Note, though, that the all-but-complete count as I write this is roughly 53 million Democratic votes vs. 46 million Republican. That many people, a little over 46 percent of the voting population, voted for the maverick military-man version of the same old thing.

So how wise has it been of Obama, even through his victory speech, to strike a conciliatory, inclusive tone, recognizing the strong, deep differences that divide the people in this country, even as we face the same set of problems -- excuse me, "challenges." (Because it turns out, it actually does make a difference how we phrase these situations to ourselves.)

Yes, I got the chills, again, from his acceptance speech, especially when the crowd kept calling back, "Yes, we can!"

Some favorite views of the day:

History in the making: News headlines across the US - slide show, Boston Globe

Reactions from around the world - slide show, Huffington Post

World welcomes Obama with open arms, demands - Amanpour, CNN.com

What the world expects - BBC correspondents

"The Sweat That Eureka Demands"

(Extract of a recent, very up-to-the-minute post of mine in Idea Champions' "The Heart of Innovation"... a couple weeks back:)

Serious about doing something innovative? Be prepared to spend many long, focused hours working on it (and working and working and reworking...)

Thomas Edison  (Wikipedia)

"We want to believe that creativity and innovation come in flashes of pure brilliance," Janet Rae-Dupree writes in the New York Times. But, "Innovation is a slow process of accretion, building small insight upon interesting fact upon tried-and-true process. Just as an oyster wraps layer upon layer of nacre atop an offending piece of sand, ultimately yielding a pearl, innovation percolates within hard work over time."
...
(As one of the greatest inventors in memory, Thomas Edison, knew so well:)

In an interview in Harpers magazine, February 1890, (stay tuned here at Heart Of Innovation as we present the latest, greatest breakthroughs! ; ) Edison explained his method:

"I would construct a theory and work on its lines until I found it was untenable. ... I speak without exaggeration when I say that I have constructed 3,000 different theories in connection with the electric light, each one of them reasonable and apparently likely to be true. Yet only in two cases did my experiments prove the truth of my theory."

(More of "The Sweat That Eureka Demands" here...)

Related, here in Rosswriting: 
inventors (tag)

Just Keep Swinging

In the process of backing up my machine here (since I'm taking it in for a repair before the service contract is up,) I came across one of those inspirational quotes that you save to get you through discouraging interludes.

This, from one of baseball's greatest hitters, is one that I found printed across the top of the local paper's sports page a few years back, right over the scores from the various high school teams. At the time, I really needed not just to hear this, but to keep it in the forefront of my thoughts. So I taped it at the top of my monitor, where it always fed me a little encouragement and direction every time I looked up.

"My motto was always to keep swinging. Whether I was in a slump or just feeling badly, the only thing to do was keep swinging."

- Henry Aaron

Now, here's a guy who, I think we can say, probably had a lot more reason to feel downhearted at times than most. As I'm sure most people realize, when he was on his way to breaking Babe Ruth's career home run record, he was receiving death threats and hate mail on a regular basis.

After the last game of the 1973 season, having reached 713, one short of the record, Aaron stated that his only fear was that he might not live to see the next season. So when he said, I just keep swinging, that was quite a statement.

(I suppose it was stressful to be receiving threats of indictment while going after Aaron's record, but I don't think they quite compare.)

1974 baseball card uploaded to Flickr by brettbigb

The 5 C's for a Team, from Nate McMillan (and 1)

Yes, another one of those lists... (one of the many ways that enumerate how relentlessly numbers-oriented our society is. Seems like everywhere you look, lists are being published of the Five This and the Ten That -- excuse me, that's the Top Five and the Top Ten.)

Still, this concise list of "the Five C's," five qualities for players on a winning team to focus on, rang all the right bells for me. I noticed this particular story, though, because these conceptual-vitamin C's come from a basketball coach I'm familiar with, whose team is overachievingly hot. And that mostly matters because all through his 12 years as a point guard on the Seattle Sonics, Nate McMillan really played the game "the right way."

McMillan has now been coaching the regional rival Portland Trailblazers (22-13) for two years, and his motto was voiced in a Portland Tribune story last month about their upstart success.

"Coach Nate McMillan cited an adherence to the 'five C’s' – calmness, clarity, consistency, connectedness and communication – as an example of the team’s progress. 'We started communicating better, and the result was, we raised our level of play and had a nice comeback,' McMillan said."


Calmness,

_Clarity,

__Consistency,

___Connectedness,

____Communication.

Beautiful. Touches all the bases -- excuse me, that should be, "moves the ball around to find the open man."

It's interesting to note that the first three really begin with the effort of the individual. Once those basic qualities are put in action by each of the team members, that's the point from where connection can start to come into play.

To that list, I'd only suggest adding Caring.

How do I justify that? Folks, I only need point to the other conference and historic Boston, where Exbibit A now reigns: Mr. Kevin Garnett is unquestionably the driving force behind the Celtics' current 29-4 record, not only league-leading but putting them as a team in some pretty rarified historical company. And it doesn't look like anybody could care more than he does.

The guy is so passionately motivated, and equally on each end of the floor, that his teammates just can't help getting inspired and energized by it, and, to put a technical hoops term on it, just play their butts off out there.

Yes, there are a couple other All-Stars on there, Pierce and Allen, and [blah blah team talk], but it is Garnett's evident passion and drive that's the difference between a good team and the great one they're playing as right now.

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Putting up a few more shots:

Nate McMillan was always one of those quiet "hustle guys" for the Sonics, the kind that the casual fan might not notice, but who would always seem to be coming up with key defensive plays, rebounds, loose balls -- the effort plays -- getting the ball to the stars for dramatic scores, while dropping in a few three pointers at crucial moments.

The consummate team player, he was a repeat on the all-NBA Defensive 2nd team (i.e., one of the top ten defenders -- dammit, there it is again!), and the Sonics' franchise leader in assists and steals when he retired in 1998, having spent his entire pro playing career in Seattle. By then he was known as Mr. Sonic, and the next year they retired his number, only the team's fourth up to then.
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There's nothing like a winning streak to support whatever philosophies the winners work by: as of today the Blazers just won nine of their last ten games; and this with a young, "rebuilding" team that no one expected to hear from this season. Especially when they got the #1 pick in the draft last year, but then the poor guy went down with an injury -- for the year).
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Let me ask an important question that's been on my mind with this:
why isn't there ever a Top Eight or Eleven or Seventeen of anything?
If it's always Ten, don't you suspect that they either add or drop one or two to make it fit? And then where do those missing elements wind up?
(Omigod, it might be that one left-behind Reason #11 that's been the missing link all this time!)
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Sports Illustrated article: "In his own words: Blazers coach Nate McMillan"

Related, here:
Dance vs. Hoops
(...for which I 've taken a lot of heat from dancers who, like, didn't get it. It's satire, people!)