This weekend's NYT carried an alarming feature article on the gross wastefulness of the data-centers that host the world's racks of server hardware. James Glanz's feature, The Cloud Factory, painted a picture of grotesque waste and depraved indifference to the monetary and environmental costs of the "cloud," and suggested that the "dirty secret" was that there were better ways of doing things that the industry was indifferent to. — Read the rest
Science Debate is a group that's working to get political candidates in the United States actually talking publicly about issues of science and technology policy. In 2008, they tried (and failed) to get Barak Obama and John McCain to agree to a live, televised science debate. — Read the rest
The Tax Justice Network's Estimating the Price of Offshore Revisted report says that over $21 trillion has been squirrelled away in offshore tax-havens by 90,000 super-rich tax-cheats (0.001% of the world's population). The crime was abetted by a network of "enablers" from banks like UBS, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs. — Read the rest
Ernest sez, "Disneyland is fighting a California appeals court decision that its rollercoaster-like rides (Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Matterhorn Bobsleds, etc.) must adhere to the same safety standards as public buses and actual railroads. The court decision would require rollercoaster operators in California to use 'utmost care and diligence' as opposed to merely 'reasonable care,' which is the current standard. — Read the rest
Looks like the fatal crash on Disneyland's Big Thunder Mountain was the result of poor maintenance. Disneyland's maintenance has been suffering ever since a group of McKinsey and ex-McKinsey consultants advised them to save money by cutting back on preventative maintenance and forcing out experienced, senior cast-members. — Read the rest
Good MSNBC piece on Disney's efforts to reinvograte itself and become profitable again. Here's my three-point plan for a Disney recovery:
- Be like Walt: invent a new, amazing thing (movie or ride technology) every year, so that the company becomes synonymous with innovation again (don't be like Roy: stop using IP to keep your competitors from cloning you, and invent new stuff to stay ahead of them)
- Be like Walt: fire all the McKinsey consultants involved in the running of Disneyland and hire back all the senior staff who were forced out as a short-sighted cost-savings measure (don't be like Roy: stop nickle-and-diming your staff; after all, they're in charge of putting the richest children on earth into threshing-machines for 12h a day)
- Be like Walt: rebuild Imagineering as an interdisciplinary skunk-works that creates brand-new, amazing, one-off stuff that builds your brand (don't be like Roy: stop subbing out your ride design and maintenance to outside contractors and buying off-the-shelf midway rides for your parks)
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(Thanks, Gary!
Disney is revamping the California Adventure, their brain-damaged theme-parklet next door to Disneyland. Built with the "assistance" of some high-priced McKinsey consultants (the same consultants who advised them to cut back on the maintenance regimen in Disneyland, a suggestion that has led to several near-fatal accidents and at least one fatality), the California Adventure is a prime example of what happens when a company abandons its visionary roots. — Read the rest
Disney is no longer going to allow the same firm to audit the company and provide consulting services (maybe they'll get rid of the schmucks from McKinsey who convinced them to build California Adventure while they're at it), despite a shareholder vote that gave the OK to continue doing so. — Read the rest
Ever since a group of McKinsey consultants recommended to Disneyland that they save money by slashing preventative maintenance budgets, accidents and even deaths at the Park have been way up (remember the woman who got her head bashed in a couple years ago when a stanchion for the Sailing Ship Columbia tore loose from the pier?) — Read the rest
