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c007938d46fe9f7b933e66dbe850055c | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chaddscott/2019/03/05/renoir-and-degas-bring-highlights-of-french-impressionism-to-florida/ | Renoir And Degas Bring Highlights Of French Impressionism To Florida | Renoir And Degas Bring Highlights Of French Impressionism To Florida
Pierre Auguste-Renoir, Tamaris, France, c. 1885. Oil on canvas. Minneapolis Institute of Art,... [+] Bequest of Mrs. Peter Folliott; 2006.9.2 Minneapolis Institute of Art
Florida has established itself as a global destination for contemporary art. Modern masters? Not so much.
The great American collectors of modern art in the early 20th century–the collectors of Monet, Cezanne, Matisse and Picasso–left their collections to museums in New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. As a result, for everything Florida has to offer visitors from beaches and theme parks to fishing and golf, those hoping to pair their suntan with the Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, Fauvists or Cubists are usually out of luck.
Not now. Two exhibitions across the state highlighting the work of a pair of modern art titans provide a rare opportunity.
At the Polk Museum of Art at Florida Southern College in Lakeland, roughly midway between Orlando and Tampa on Interstate 4, Edgar Degas, The Private Impressionist showcases works on paper not only by Degas, but several of his best-known contemporaries including Mary Cassatt, Cézanne, Jean-Auguste-Dominque Ingres, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
Meanwhile, on Florida’s Atlantic coast, the NSU Art Museum Ft. Lauderdale counters with William Glackens and Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Affinities and Distinctions, an examination of both artists’ later works.
“The work of both artists developed continually, and their late styles, which are the focus of this exhibition, developed after trips to Italy (in 1881 for Renoir and 1926 for Glackens), where they saw the work of Renaissance artists,” NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale Sunny Kaufman Senior Curator Barbara Buhler Lynes said. “Although Renoir’s late style (1890-1919) is well known, this exhibition is the first to define Glackens’ late style (1925-1938), which develops in response to his new awareness of classical and Italian Renaissance art.
If you are unfamiliar with William Glackens, he is recognized as one of America’s leading first-generation modernist painters. His work became well known in 1908 with his inclusion in a seminal exhibition by a group of artists who would go on to be known as “The Eight.” Joining Glackens in the New York exhibit were George Bellows, Arthur B. Davies, Robert Henri, Ernest Lawson, George Luks, Maurice Prendergast, and John Sloan.
William J. Glackens, Soda Fountain, 1935. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Joseph E. Temple Fund and Henry D. Gilpin Fund
The NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale holds an unparalleled collection of Glackens’ art thanks to bequests of more than 500 pieces of his work and that of his contemporaries from Glackens' son and later estate.
William Glackens and Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Affinities and Distinctions features 25 works by each artist and visitors will recognize, with good reason, how Glackens’ late period recalls Renoir.
“When Glackens turned in the late 1890s from his distinguished career as an illustrator to devote himself to painting, his palette was based on that of the dark colors of Manet’s, but it lightened significantly in 1908 in response to Glackens’ new awareness of Renoir’s work, which he saw in the first exhibition of Renoir’s work in America in 1908,” Lynes said. “By the 1910s, Glackens became known as the ‘American Renoir,’ and the exhibition also explores Glackens’ response to being known as such.”
Renoir (1841-1919) and Degas (1834-1917) both enjoyed long lives. As founding members of the Impressionists, exhibiting together during the 1870s and 80s with Monet and Pissarro, living, working and socializing in the same Parisian circles for many years, they were acquainted with each other for more than four decades.
Edgar Degas, The Private Impressionist was organized by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, in association with Denenberg Fine Arts, West Hollywood, California. The exhibit sheds light on one of Degas’ many artistic talents for which he is exalted inside the art community, but often overlooked outside of it.
“It’s amazing that when most people think about Degas they think about his paintings—certainly his most beloved artistic output—but Degas really prided himself on his drawing skills above all else,” Curator and Director of Galleries and Exhibitions at the Polk Museum of Art Alex Rich said. “Visitors get to see that talent throughout the show, from the exquisite early drawings from his teenage years that start the installation to the late lithographs and etchings that feature some of Degas’ most familiar themes. Degas’ precise linework consistently reveals an artist who grounded himself in academic study of human anatomy and behavior.”
Edgar Degas, Study for Dante and Virgil, 1857-58. Courtesy of Landau Traveling Exhibitions
Coming from the private collection of art historian Robert Flynn Johnson, many of the works in the show have rarely or never been seen publicly prior to the exhibit which includes drawings, etchings, lithography, monotype, photography and sculpture by Degas.
What does the variety of mediums Degas employed tell us about the artist?
“Impressionism, at its core, is about the world of the present moment and artists’ desires to bring it to life in their work in an honest and immediate manner,” Rich said. “Just as Degas reveals an imperfect Paris that doesn’t conform itself to the edges, say, of a canvas–look at all awkwardly posed and severely cropped figures–his experimentation in media sought to find the best ways to evoke a modernizing world and to keep challenging himself in the striving to do so.”
Even for a Ph.D. and longtime Degas fan and student like Rich, the exhibit opens new insights into his genius.
Through our exhibition of his work I learned how deft Degas’ hand was as an artist, how passionately he felt about his legacy as a draftsman, and—as I hope visitors to the show quickly realize—how much more immediate it feels to be in this master’s presence when you are looking at his work on paper. While I always teach my students about Degas’ being ‘besties’ with Mary Cassatt, I learned that Degas knew and looked up to so many artists! I love that he admired Édouard Manet so much. The spectre of Manet as the father of modern art is a total preoccupation of Degas, as seen in the show.”
Edgar Degas, The Private Impressionist can be seen at the Polk Museum of Art at Florida Southern College through March 24. William Glackens and Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Affinities and Distinctions runs through May 19th at the NSU Art Museum Ft. Lauderdale before heading to the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
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06106a3bbe66f8fbb628b50cce6aacf4 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chaddscott/2020/01/15/the-worlds-greatest-modern-art-where-you-least-expect-to-find-it/ | The World’s Greatest Modern Art Where You Least Expect To Find It | The World’s Greatest Modern Art Where You Least Expect To Find It
DETROIT, MI - A man looks at a paintings by van Gogh at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) on ... [+] September 3, 2013 in Detroit, Michigan. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images) Getty Images
Great art can be found in surprising places. Remai Modern in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan proves that.
Almost 1700 miles west of Toronto and nearly 1000 miles east of Vancouver, Remai Modern opened in October 2017 with the goal of bringing the global art world to the Canadian plains. Its exhibition of “The Sonnabend Collection” through March 22 does so.
With more than 100 pieces by 68 artists, including iconic works from Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, “The Sonnabend Collection” represents the largest showing of international modern and contemporary art ever in Saskatchewan.
“Remai Modern was purpose-built with exhibitions like ‘The Sonnabend Collection’ in mind–we are the first art museum in Saskatchewan with the capacity to deliver exhibitions of this scope and historical importance,” Rose Bouthillier, curator of exhibitions at Remai Modern said. “As much as you can read or learn about these moments in art history, encountering the work in person opens up so much more through direct experience.”
Installation view, The Sonnabend Collection, Remai Modern, Saskatoon, 2019-20. Works by Andy Warhol ... [+] (left wall and foreground), George Segal (background) and Roy Lichtenstein (right wall). Blaine Campbell
Developed through the vision of influential art dealer Ileana Sonnabend (1914-2007), her husband Michael Sonnabend (1900-2001) (she was previously married to famed dealer Leo Castelli from 1933-1959), and their adopted son Antonio Homem, the collection is among the most significant private holdings of modern and contemporary art in the world. This marks the Collection’s first exposure in Canada and its most comprehensive presentation to date in North America.
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Ileana Sonnabend proves that the most important players in the art world aren’t always artists. Through their galleries in Paris and New York, the Sonnabends fostered creative exchanges and new audiences on two continents.
“She introduced American artists to Europe and vice versa at a time when the art world was much less internationally connected,” Bouthillier said.
She took the work of Warhol and Lichtenstein, among others, to Europe during the 1960s. In the 1970s, she turned Americans on to the likes of Georg Baselitz.
Where can you see this work now?
Everywhere.
While New York was, and remains, the unquestioned capital of the art world, art lovers today needn’t visit the Big Apple to experience the world’s greatest art in person.
“The art world is becoming increasingly de-centralized and the potential of museums like Remai Modern is to join a global conversation from our unique perspective,” Bouthillier said.
Jasper Johns, Figure 8, 1959, encaustic on canvas, 51 x 38 cm. On view during "The Sonnabend ... [+] Collection" at Remai Modern. © Jasper Johns / VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SOCAN (2019)
Remain Modern represents one of many museums with world-class holdings in Modern art found in locations not traditionally associated as hotbeds of the genre.
Technically speaking, Modern Art refers to the period bracketed by the rise of Impressionism in the 1860s through Pop Art ending about 1970. While the terms “modern” and “contemporary” when referring to art are often used interchangeably, “contemporary” specifically defines work from the 70s through present day. Julie Mehretu is a contemporary artist. Picasso is a modern artist.
Here’s proof you don’t have to visit New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco to enjoy great Modern Art.
The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Warhol’s birthplace, holds the largest collection of his artworks and archival materials.
The Andy Warhol Museum may be larger, due to his gargantuan output, but the Clyfford Still Museum, opened in 2011 in Denver, hosts the world’s most intact public collection of any major artist. The Abstract Expressionist thought the best way to experience his art was by seeing it all in one place and his will stipulated that his estate be given in its entirety to an American city willing to establish a permanent museum dedicated solely to his work.
Florida, St. Petersburg, Salvador Dali Museum. (Photo by: Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group ... [+] via Getty Images) Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Another single-artists institution, The Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, includes over 2,400 works from every moment and in every medium of Salvador Dalí’s career, including oil paintings, original drawings, book illustrations, prints, sculpture and photos.
Did you know the Baltimore Museum of Art holds over 1,000 works by Henri Matisse, the largest holding of his art in the world? This material is joined by masterpieces from Picasso, Cézanne, and van Gogh.
Man Pointing' sculpture in the Baltimore Museum of Art. (Photo by: Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal ... [+] Images Group via Getty Images) Universal Images Group via Getty Images
While on the subject of van Gogh, one of his most recognizable paintings, “Night Café,” can be seen in New Haven, Connecticut. In addition to the iconic van Gogh, the Yale University Art Gallery’s prodigious holdings include as a particular strength artwork from 1920 to 1940.
Collected and donated by the Société Anonyme, an artists’ organization founded by Katherine S. Dreier and Marcel Duchamp with Man Ray, this remarkable collection comprises a rich array of paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures by major 20th century artists including Duchamp, Constantin Brancusi, El Lissitzky and Piet Mondrian.
The Johnson Collection in Spartanburg, South Carolina holds 1,200 objects chronicling the cultural evolution of the American South with especially meaningful examples created by women and African-Americans.
Few institutions anywhere top the Detroit Institute of Art in the arena of Modern Art created by black artists. In 2000, the DIA established the General Motors Center for African-American Art, the first curatorial department at an encyclopedic museum dedicated to the collecting and scholarship of African-American art. DIA also boasts Mexican artist Diego Rivera's Detroit Industry fresco cycle, which Rivera considered his most successful work, and a van Gogh self-portrait which was the first painting of his to enter a U.S. museum collection.
The McNay Art Museum in San Antonio owns van Gogh and Rivera as well. Inside the walls of this stunning Spanish Colonial-Revival house, which has the distinction of being the first Modern Art museum in Texas, can be found Monet, Modigliani, Maurice de Vlaminck, Edward Hopper, O’Keeffe, the smallest Pollock you’ve likely ever seen and one of the earliest Picasso paintings on public view in the U.S.
CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA, UNITED STATES - 2017/12/05: Firebird sculpture at the Bechtler Museum of ... [+] Modern Art. (Photo by John Greim/LightRocket via Getty Images) LightRocket via Getty Images
The Bechtler Museum of Modern Art in Charlotte, North Carolina has as its calling card European Modernism rarely seen in America. The collection includes works by the most important artists of the mid-20th century including Joan Miró, Alberto Giacometti, Picasso, Alexander Calder, Jean Tinguely, Max Ernst and Le Corbusier.
The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum in St. Louis displays essential paintings from Picasso, Ernst, Marsden Hartley, Willem de Kooning, Pollock, Max Beckmann and Robert Rauschenberg.
The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas–founded by Walmart heiress Alice Walton and opened in 2005–merits a mention if for no other reason than its acquisition in 2014 of O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 for $44 million. The purchase remains a record price for a female artist.
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63b5670349ea5e03f4259969e624fa4d | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chaddscott/2020/04/29/frist-art-museum-hopeful-jmw-turner-exhibit-can-be-extended-beyond-may-31-closing-date/ | Frist Art Museum Hopeful J.M.W. Turner Exhibit Can Be Extended Beyond May 31 Closing Date | Frist Art Museum Hopeful J.M.W. Turner Exhibit Can Be Extended Beyond May 31 Closing Date
J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851). 'The Deluge,' exhibited 1805 (?). Oil on canvas, 56 1/4 x 92 3/4 in. ... [+] Tate: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856. © Tate / Tate Images
Museum officials spend years planning for the special exhibitions visitors line up for. Coronavirus related closures at art museums around the globe have laid those effort to waste.
These exhibits often represent once in a lifetime opportunities for local communities outside the world’s art capitals to experience humanity’s greatest masterpieces. Such was the case with the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, Tennessee’s “J.M.W. Turner: Quest for the Sublime.”
Nashville was the only U.S. stop for the show featuring over 70 oil paintings, watercolors and sketches from the hand of arguably Britain’s greatest painter. The works on view were drawn from the artist’s bequest to the state following his death in 1851 out of London’s Tate museum.
The exhibit opened February 20 with a scheduled closing of May 31. That timeline collapsed when the museum indefinitely closed its doors in response to the COVID-19 pandemic on March 15.
Today, the Turners in Nashville, like the rest of the world’s greatest artwork, hang unseen. Almost.
“The only people who get to see it now are security guards, and they're really enjoying it - it's sort of a contemplative type of exhibition anyway,” Frist Art Museum Chief Curator Mark Scala said jokingly.
Levity aside, Scala described the shutdown as “heartbreaking.”
”I've always believed that a work of art really only comes to life when it's being looked at, (now) we have this beautiful exhibition languishing in our galleries,” he said.
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J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851). 'Small Boats beside a Man-o’-War,' 1796–97. Gouache and watercolor on ... [+] paper, 13 7/8 x 24 1/4 in. Tate: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856. © Tate / Tate Images
Frist Art Museum, along with the nation’s other top institutions, plans its exhibition schedule three or four years in advance. That time frame is required for a variety of reasons, beginning with budgetary planning. Top traveling shows cost money to host, often well into six figures. Budgets must be built years in advance to accommodate them.
Additionally, many exhibitions like this one tour the nation and world. The artworks in “Quest for the Sublime” spent 2019 on view in Lucerne, Switzerland and Munster, Germany. The tour concludes at the Quebec Museum of Fine Arts. That degree of institutional coordination doesn’t occur by the seat of your pants.
“From the Tate side, they have to look at when their staff can pull projects together, when their conservators can review paintings, and make sure that they're safe to travel,” Scala said. “They have to look at things like what other loan commitments have (they) made already.”
Publishing an exhibition catalogue, as this show has, takes additional time. Then there’s all the practical logistics of drawing up and signing contracts, acquiring insurance coverage, lead time for marketing, packing, shipping, unpacking and hanging the work in its temporary home.
Sending 70 priceless artworks constituting a chunk of Great Britain’s cultural heritage around the world requires extensive care, dollars, planning and attention to detail.
Apply this across the art world and it all adds up to an intricately weaved web of exhibitions involving thousands of artworks traveling between hundreds of museums around the world. A web obliterated by COVID-19.
Frist officials have been in discussions with their counterparts at both Tate and the Quebec museum about extending the show in Nashville beyond the end of May.
“There are certain things that have to happen in order to enable the exhibition to be extended,” Scala said. “Tate has to approve it formally, I think they're very supportive of the idea, but they have to run this past their loans committee and get the green lights.”
Factoring into that decision will be the number of works in this exhibit which are on paper, roughly 50%. Works on paper are more fragile and sensitive to light than works on canvas, restricting the amount of time they can spend on public exhibit.
J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851). 'Lausanne: Sunset,' 1841–42. Graphite and watercolor on paper, 9 7/8 x 14 ... [+] 3/8 in. Tate: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856. © Tate / Tate Images
“If we extend our (Turner dates) and Quebec extends theirs, are there works in the collection that have been committed to other venues and are those commitments still in place considering the impact of the COVID-19 on every museum’s programming,” Scala wonders. “And then Quebec has an exhibition now that they would like to extend through as much of the summer as possible in order to get the get the impact of that show and so they have to be able to extend their current show before they can commit to the later date for the Turner show.”
All of which would be challenging enough if any one of these museums knew when they would be able to reopen to the public, which none of them do. Nor will they open on the same schedule. Frist, Tate and Quebec could reopen months apart.
While many states have cautiously begun limited business reopenings, with their art museums perhaps not far behind, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City hopes to be able to open on July 1, but no sooner, and that’s only a hope.
Would a reopened museum awaiting delivery of an exhibition from another museum which has yet to reopen allow that museum to keep the same show to provide its guests additional time to view it? This theoretical scenario is especially acute for Frist which has no permanent collection to fall back on to fill its galleries. All it does is exhibits and all of them are up in the air for the time being.
“We keep a running document called ‘curatorial updates’ and it's not just for the Turner show, but for every project that there are changes in and these changes actually are happening weekly,” Scala said. “You know you've got a Plan A, Plan B and Plan C and then the sands shift again and you have to go back to Plan A, so it's a really interesting process for people who make their livelihood by planning carefully and thoughtfully.”
Thankfully, Scala does see cooperation across institutions.
“It's been so gratifying because everybody's working in good faith,” Scala said. “You’ve got these contractual commitments for dates and scheduling and shipping and everything and everybody realizes now we're just working together, trying to make the best of this situation.”
Should the Frist Museum reopen before May 31, or officials there reach agreement with Tate and Quebec to extend the show until it does reopen, guests will enjoy rare treasures from one of the masters of early 19th century Romanticism, a true prodigy.
As a watercolorist, Turner has never been surpassed. In addition to his smaller watercolors, fully realized, large oil paintings will be found. The roadmap these pictures show toward Modernism and Impressionism are unmistakable.
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49cf6ca969d1137c972ba622d22a1b78 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chaddscott/2020/07/30/nari-ward-takes-denver-at-museum-of-contemporary-art-and-beyond/ | Nari Ward Takes Denver, At Museum Of Contemporary Art And Beyond | Nari Ward Takes Denver, At Museum Of Contemporary Art And Beyond
Nari Ward, "We the People," 2011. Shoelaces. Courtesy of MCA Denver. Wes Magyar
There should be people here. Instead, there are only traces.
Shoelaces. Baby strollers. Baseball bats.
Lives lost?
Perhaps.
The absence gives Nari Ward’s work a post-apocalyptic feel. His installations ache for humans.
What happened here?
What happened to these people?
When Ward created these works beginning in the early 1990s, the answer could have been the AIDS or crack epidemics. A modern reading calls to mind COVID-19 and police brutality. The universal messages inherit in Ward’s work remain as current today as they were when he launched his career.
“Nari has been making work that reckons with (America’s racial inequality) for decades, the rest of the world is just catching up to him now,” Nora Burnett Abrams, MCA Denver’s Mark G. Falcone Director, told Forbes.com.
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Visitors to MCA Denver can catch up now through September 20 during the exhibition “Nari Ward: We the People,” organized by the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. The exhibit features a selection of sculptures, paintings, videos and large-scale installations from throughout Ward’s career.
The show’s title references a signature piece, the opening words of the United States Constitution “drawn” in imitation of that document’s iconic handwritten lettering with shoelaces.
Yes, shoelaces.
Nari Ward, "We the People," 2011, detail. Shoelaces. Courtesy of MCA Denver. Wes Magyar
“He wants anyone who encounters the work to connect with it and by using materials like shoelaces, that everyone can relate to, whether or not you have a background in contemporary art, it allows you a way into the work,” Abrams explains.
The shoelaces also act as stand-ins.
“Many of them are bright and vibrant and every color imaginable, every pattern imaginable, in a sense you can see them in a celebratory way of embodying the many different types people who live in this country and who are citizens as indicated by the preamble to the Constitution,” Abrams said of the laces. “On the other hand, it has a very mournful quality to it, there is a common memorial association of throwing shoes–via the shoelace, dangling over telephone lines–in urban areas to mark the passing of a life at that spot.”
The Jamacian-born Ward who now lives in Harlem has accumulated a staggering stockpile of found objects–humble objects–like shoelaces. And baby strollers. It took him roughly three months to acquire the 365 baby strollers used in the installation Amazing Grace (1993), another desolate work which begs onlookers to ask, “Where are the people?”
“In so many of his works, it’s about summoning a bodily presence–embodying without a body–calling out the bodies of the past and bringing them into the present,” Abrams said. “(Amazing Grace) is very much about the loss of life that you saw behind these strollers.”
Amazing Grace, which also incorporates used fire hoses, was transported to Denver packed in crates occupying an entire semi-truck. With Ward and his assistant unable to travel due to coronavirus, the intricate installation was done via Zoom and Facebook with the MCA Denver team on one end and the artist on the other.
While the strollers and hoses occupying the center of the installation have specific placements, the remainder are determined collaboratively between the artist and institution. With the artwork being exhibited in different institutions, different sized rooms with different dimensions, it’s never displayed exactly the same twice.
Nari Ward, "Amazing Grace," 1993. Baby strollers, fire hose, and audio component. Courtesy of MCA ... [+] Denver. Wes Magyar
Ward’s work confronts racism and power, migration and national identity, and the layers of historical memory that comprise our sense of community and belonging. All topics now on the front burner of American society. Abrams believes Ward’s art “catalyzes conversation” around these issues, challenging audiences to investigate how we arrived here as a country.
“He’s described ‘We the People’ as a sleepy phrase, it’s not something that we hear in common parlance as we go about our lives; it’s jarring to see that phrase, which is so powerful in the American psyche, rendered in the way he’s rendered it and I think it forces us to think about it in a far more rigorous way than we have been,” Abrams said. “I think that is at the heart of his practice, finding these moments of the past and waking them up from the past so we can see how relevant they are today, understanding and connecting with a shared history, not viewing it as separate, but viewing it as a collective is an important and vital way for us to come back together as a country.”
Ward’s artwork can also be seen in Denver outside the MCA, most dramatically in the form of a major new public work, LAZARUS Beacon (2020), a multi-story projection for the city’s 325-foot-tall Daniels and Fisher Clocktower. The video is based on poet and activist Emma Lazarus's sonnet “The New Colossus,” published in 1883, that appears on a bronze plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Ward’s text-based work isolates and highlights the subjects of this poem, among them the “tired” and “poor.”
A wall-sized version of the work can be seen at MCA Denver.
Projections of LAZARUS Beacon (2020) can be seen Tuesday through Sunday, August 1 through August 30, from 8:30 pm- 10:30 pm.
Nari Ward, "LAZARUS Beacon," 2020. Courtesy the artist; Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, and ... [+] Seoul;and Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, Beijing, Les Moulins, Habana, and Roma. Orange Barrel Media
Simultaneously, Ward and MCA Denver have partnered with Orange Barrel Media, IKE Smart City and the Denver Theatre District to launch a companion public art project throughout downtown Denver, on view from July 1 to September 20.
It is estimated these projects will reach a daily audience of 385,000 and a total audience of more than 31.5 million throughout the run of the exhibition.
Images of Ward’s shoelace wall-drawings will appear in both their original color and in black-and-white versions on massive digital billboards and the screens of OBM’s IKE Smart City pedestrian kiosks. Orange Barrel Media worked directly with the artist to select images appearing throughout downtown Denver including images of protest signs and the Black Power fist, text-based pieces featuring iconic song lyrics relating to social change such as “We Shall Overcome” and “Blowin’ in the Wind,” as well as the last words of abolitionist John Brown as he was led to his execution: “This is a beautiful country.”
Outdoor digital screen locations can be found at the Westin Hotel, Denver Performing Arts Center, Colorado Convention Center and Denver Pavilions. IKE Kiosks are located throughout downtown on 16th Street between Wynkoop and Broadway as well as 14th and Curtis, 15th and Curtis and 15th and Champa.
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b6cf37cfd705cabb61cd9f6142eae12e | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chaddscott/2020/09/27/ugly-story-from-american-history-inspiring-stories-of-art-on-view-at-shofuso-japanese-house-and-garden/ | Ugly Story From American History, Inspiring Stories Of Art, On View At Shofuso Japanese House And Garden | Ugly Story From American History, Inspiring Stories Of Art, On View At Shofuso Japanese House And Garden
Shofuso Japanese House and Garden. Shofuso and Modernism: Mid-Century Collaboration between Japan and Philadelphia at Shofuso Japanese House and Garden, September 2 – November 29, 2020 japanphilly.org
The Underground Railroad will always serve as America’s greatest example of ordinary citizens sticking their necks out to help those suffering under the crushing weight of the nation’s racist institutions. Another example can currently be found in a most unusual place, the Shofuso Japanese House and Garden in Philadelphia during its new exhibition, “Shofuso and Modernism: Mid-Century Collaboration between Japan and Philadelphia.”
Organized by The Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia (JASGP) with support from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, the exhibition celebrates the friendships and transcultural exchanges between Junzo Yoshimura (1908–1997, Japan), George Nakashima (1905-1990, US), Noémi Pernessin Raymond (1889-1980, France) and Antonin Raymond (1888–1976, Austria-Hungary), through their collaborative architectural projects.
Their brilliant artwork takes on added dimensions when their remarkable back stories are discovered.
Shofuso and Modernism: Mid-Century Collaboration between Japan and Philadelphia at Shofuso Japanese ... [+] House and Garden. Shofuso and Modernism: Mid-Century Collaboration between Japan and Philadelphia at Shofuso Japanese House and Garden, September 2 – November 29, 2020 japanphilly.org
The married Raymonds first visited Japan in 1919 to work for Frank Lloyd Wright on the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. They subsequently set up their own architectural offices in Tokyo in 1922, where they would live and practice for the next 18 years.
Yoshimura started working for the Raymond's architectural office in 1928 when he was still a student and continued to work with the Raymonds until 1941.
Nakashima started working at the Raymond's firm in 1934 until his return to Seattle in 1941. Shortly after returning to the U.S., the Nakashima family was sent to the Minidoka internment camp in Hunt, Idaho.
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Following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, 120,000 people of Japanese descent living on America’s West Coast were sent to internment camps. They were American citizens, like Nakashima, his wife, also of Japanese descent, and their baby daughter.
In 1943, the Raymonds interceded and successfully vouched for the Nakashimas, thus allowing the family to take refuge at the Raymonds’ Farm in New Hope, Pennsylvania where they would eventually settle and set up Nakashima’s house, studio and workshop.
George Nakashima and his wife, Marion Okajima, were both American citizens, both born in the United States. Both were college graduates with degrees from prestigious universities, George with an undergraduate degree from the University of Washington and a master’s degree in architecture from MIT, Marion a degree from UCLA – exceedingly rare for a woman in 1940s America. George Nakashima had traveled the world as an American citizen.
That didn’t matter.
Both had Japanese ancestry so they were rounded up by the U.S. government and their freedom was taken away. No crime was committed. No trial was held.
The Raymond’s, neither of whom were born in the United States, but both possessing the golden ticket to opportunity in American–being white–possessed the influence to free the American-born and interned Nakashima’s.
For concise examples of America’s history of institutional racism, this story is as clear-cut as you will find.
George Nakashima, 'Mounted Bitterbrush, ca 1942, Idaho. Bitter brush and walnut, 24 x 15 x 10 ... [+] inches, collection of Mira Nakashima. Courtesy of the Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia. Photo by Laszlo Bodo
Nakashima was able to make the most of his terrible situation.
While interned, he met Gentaro Hikogawa, a Shokunin (master craftsperson) trained in traditional Japanese carpentry. Under his tutelage, Nakashima learned to master traditional Japanese hand tools and joinery techniques. The knowledge would go on to inform and distinguish his furniture for the remainder of his life.
The ugliness of Nakashima’s treatment stands in stunning contrast to the beauty, tranquility and peacefulness visitors to Shofuso will find this fall.
Designed by Yoshimura, Shofuso was constructed for the Museum of Modern Art in New York as the third installment of “The House in the Museum Garden” outdoor exhibition in 1954. The well-traveled house was built in Japan using traditional materials and techniques, shipped and then reassembled in New York for the showcase, all before being moved to its current location in West Fairmount Park, Philadelphia in 1958.
Shofuso provides an authentic re-creation of what is regarded as a definitive, and highly influential, movement in Japanese architecture.
“Classic Japanese architectural forms have long been regarded by many Western architects as being of greater relevance to contemporary problems than much of the Western tradition itself,” MoMA Curator of Architecture Arthur Drexler is quoted as having said at the time.
Strangely enough, as poor as America’s treatment of its own citizens of Japanese descent was during the war, not long after, the country became enamored with Japan.
“While Japan was still recovering from the war, Japanese culture was becoming very popular in the US,” Yuka Yokoyama, Curator, Associate Director of Exhibition and Programs at Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia, told Forbes.com. “The year Shofuso was exhibited at MoMA in 1954, Japan had an enormous cultural impact on New York City through exhibitions of artists such as Ruth Asawa, Saburo Hasegawa, Isamu Noguchi, Kenzo Okada and ceramicist Rosanjin.”
Shofuso House and Garden. Shofuso and Modernism: Mid-Century Collaboration between Japan and Philadelphia at Shofuso Japanese House and Garden, September 2 – November 29, 2020 japanphilly.org
“Shofuso and Modernism: Mid-Century Collaboration between Japan and Philadelphia,” explores the creative relationships which shaped and influenced Yoshimura’s life through archival images, objects, and artifacts from the artist alongside Nakashima and the Raymonds.
“Shofuso represented the pinnacle of Japanese craft and helped an American audience begin to understand Japanese culture as a whole,” Yokoyama said.
Nakashima would become a superstar. One in a million artists become household names, Nakashima became one as a furniture maker. Unusual in the extreme.
As with all great artists, he was able to take the unique combination of influences and experiences from his life and create in a way the world had never known before.
“George Nakashima's work stands out because all of these life experiences are reflected in his work and are based on a deep respect for craft traditions and the process of making,” Yokoyama said.
How was he directly influenced by what he saw and learned of Japan? Perhaps Antonin Raymond provides the best answer.
“There is a strong Japanese influence in my work, but it is one of spirit and not of form,” he is quoted as having stated. “Should we be too afraid of precedent or influence we could do nothing at all; it does not matter from where we take anything, but what we do with it.”
“Shofuso and Modernism: Mid-Century Collaboration between Japan and Philadelphia” will be on view through November 29.
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aff054739948cc8495da8ecc75829001 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chaddscott/2020/12/12/betye-saars-sketchbooks-at-morgan-library-and-museum-jenny-saville-paintings-at-gagosian-highlight-new-yorks-holiday-season/ | Betye Saar’s Sketchbooks At Morgan Library And Museum, Jenny Saville Paintings At Gagosian, Highlight New York’s Holiday Season | Betye Saar’s Sketchbooks At Morgan Library And Museum, Jenny Saville Paintings At Gagosian, Highlight New York’s Holiday Season
Betye Saar, Spread from Mexico sketchbook, June 1975. Gouache, watercolor, and pencil. Courtesy of ... [+] the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, California. © Betye Saar. photo © Museum Associates/LACMA
Betye Saar’s The Liberation of Aunt Jemima (1972) skewers America’s history of using overtly racist imagery for commercial purposes. The assemblage represents one of the most important works of art from the 20th century.
This summer, at the height of nationwide protesting related to a string of racially motivated attacks at the hands of police against Black people, Quaker Oats “liberated” Aunt Jemima as well, finally removing a caricature of the Black mammy figure from its line of pancake mix and syrups after over 130 years, admitting to its offensive, racist underpinning. Uncle Ben was similarly “liberated.”
The Liberation of Aunt Jemima can be found in the permanent collection of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, in Berkeley, CA, presently closed due to COVID.
A revealing look into its maker’s mind, however, can be seen now at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York through January 31, 2021. “Betye Saar: Call and Response” makes history as the first exhibition to focus on Saar’s (b. 1926) sketchbooks and examine the relationship between her found objects, sketches and finished works.
This exhibition offers the first public opportunity to view Saar’s sketchbooks—illuminating, in the artist’s words, “the mysterious transformation of object into art.”
While the assemblages in the Morgan’s exhibit feature from later in Saar’s extraordinarily long career, echoes of The Liberation of Aunt Jemima are apparent.
Betye Saar, "Supreme Quality," 1998. Washboard with stenciled lettering, soap bar with printed paper ... [+] label, metal figurine with toy guns, tin washtub, fabric, clock, and wood stand. The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Mortimer and Sara Hays Acquisition Fund. Photography by Tim Lanterman, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. © Betye Saar. Photography by Tim Lanterman, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.
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“In the late 1990s, Saar made a concerted return to the image of the mammy in a group of works incorporating vintage washboards,” Rachel Federman, who curated the Morgan's exhibition, told Forbes.com. “We have several of these works, and their corresponding sketchbook pages, in the show. Other works, like Serving Time (2010), extend the critique of The Liberation of Aunt Jemima to male figures and the crisis of mass incarceration.”
Saar emerged in the 1960s as part of a wave of artists, many of them African-American, who embraced the medium of assemblage.
Her creative process starts with a found object: a piece of leather, a cot, a tray, a birdcage, an ironing board. The objects she chooses are ordinary, used, and slightly debased—things most people would pass by, many acquired at flea markets and secondhand stores. After identifying a primary object that “calls” to her, Saar surveys her stockpile of other found materials for use in combination.
Once she has arrived at a vision of the final work, she “responds” with a sketch laying out her ideas for the finished piece.
Hence the show’s title, “Call and Response.” The objects call, Saar responds.
“The sketch is to remind me how [a piece] is going to look when I get it put together,” Saar has said.
Saar kept such sketchbooks throughout her career. She has also kept more elaborate travel sketchbooks containing exquisite watercolors and collages from a lifetime of journeys worldwide.
“Betye Saar: Call and Response” presents Saar’s sketches and corresponding assemblages alongside approximately a dozen of her travel sketchbooks. Selections cover a broad span of her career, from the 1970s through a sculptural installation made specifically for this exhibition.
The sketchbooks allow guests a peek inside of Saar’s creative mind, providing a level of intimacy with the artist not always available from finished works.
“Most of the sketchbooks were not created for public display,” Federman notes. “They are drawn roughly in ballpoint pen or pencil, and accompanied by notes, like a reminder to herself to order the printed labels for A Loss of Innocence (1998). The travel sketchbooks are more finished, but they chronicle her impressions of the places she's visited; Saar is an avid traveler.”
These gems alone are worth going out of one’s way to see.
Betye Saar, Page from Haiti sketchbook, July 24, 1974. Watercolor, ballpoint pen, and ink. Courtesy ... [+] of the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, California. © Betye Saar. Courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, California.
The exhibit additionally displays collages from the Morgan’s collections that have never before been displayed. As a supporter of Saar's work, the Morgan acquired a series of six collages in 2017 now on view in full for the first time. A Secretary to the Spirits (1975) is the outcome of an invitation by author and activist Ishmael Reed (b. 1938) to create a series of collages for his poetry book of the same name.
Saar’s input on the exhibition, organized by Carol Eliel at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, was extensive throughout. Eliel worked closely with Saar to develop the checklist and Saar visited the Morgan in 2018, corresponding with Federman over the course of the planning for the Morgan’s exhibition. The two discussed the gallery design, colors and changes to the checklist which included A Secretary to the Spirits.
“Despite being assembled from found objects, Saar's assemblages and collages are so expertly crafted and formally impressive that it can be difficult to imagine the process behind them,” Federman said. “The sketchbooks show her putting the pieces together on paper, trying out titles and sometimes rejecting them, or calling on a memory–like ‘an old blues song’–to guide her. Her process is both intuitive and formally rigorous, and the sketches provide a window.”
As the 94-year-old Saar and The Liberation of Aunt Jemima prove, her and her work are timeless.
“I've gained a greater sense of Saar as an artist very much of her time–the Black Power and feminist liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s played a formative role–but also one who speaks urgently to the times we are in right now,” Federman said.
Jenny Saville, "Prism," 2020. Pastel on linen. 78 3/4 x 63 in 200 x 160 cm. © Jenny Saville Photo: ... [+] Prudence Cuming. Courtesy Gagosian. © Jenny Saville Photo: Prudence Cuming. Courtesy Gagosian
New York’s museums and galleries always put their best foot forward during the holiday season. While COVID has muted the museum blockbusters (one exception being the Mexican muralist exhibition on view now at the Whitney Museum of American Art) a number of gallery shows merit close attention. Benny Andrews at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, Thorton Dial at David Lewis gallery and an exhibition of new paintings by Jenny Saville (b. 1950) at Gagosian (980 Madison Avenue) titled “Elpis.”
“Elpis” refers to the Greek personification of hope left behind at the bottom of Pandora’s box.
Saville has firmly established herself as one of the most important, exciting and critically acclaimed painters working today. Saville’s monumental portraits explore the human body, capturing a unique kind of realism specific to the 21st century.
Saville’s painting is steeped in a multitude of times and places. Working with expressive and energetic brushstrokes, she creates dramatic juxtapositions of color and shimmering light effects that recall Byzantine icons and mosaics. Saville also illuminates some of the works in “Elpis” with gold oil bar, invoking the precious metal’s association with divine embodiment, a tradition dating back to the ancient Egyptians.
The raw, chromatic vitality of Saville’s new works was largely inspired by her recent travels to Australia, where she encountered the luminous, fleshy palette of Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s virtuoso paintings. For the fiery-toned pastel painting Prism (2020), Saville combines her tribute to the Indigenous Australian artist with another: she created this work using a set of crayons purchased from Henri Roché’s La Maison du Pastel, a famous art supply store in Paris once frequented by Edgar Degas.
“Elpis” will be on view until December 22.
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9ec3055572a6f4e853df9c56e64721c3 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chaddscott/2020/12/17/norton-museum-of-art-launching-cutting-edge-app-to-engage-new-audiences-with-contemporary-art/ | Norton Museum Of Art Launching Cutting Edge App To Engage New Audiences With Contemporary Art | Norton Museum Of Art Launching Cutting Edge App To Engage New Audiences With Contemporary Art
Norton visitors use Norton Art + with Nick Cave’s 'Soundsuit' (2010). Photo credit: Eric Mika / Local Projects.
A passion for art can be cultivated in countless ways. It can come from a parent, a teacher, a movie, a poster.
The Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida hopes to cultivate future generations of art lovers with an app as it enters its 80th year. On January 2, 2021, the Norton will launch Norton Art+, an augmented reality (AR) app that creates interactive experiences with contemporary art.
Designed to engage young audiences and their families with contemporary work, the app focuses on six works in the Museum’s collection: Nick Cave’s Soundsuit (2010), Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen’s Typewriter Eraser, Scale X (1999), Ugo Rondinone’s MOONRISE. east. November MOONRISE. east. July (2006), Danh Vo’s We the People (detail) (2011), Pae White’s Eikón (2018), and Rob Wynne’s I Remember Ceramic Castles, Mermaids & Japanese Bridges... (2018).
Norton Art+ is included with museum admission, available in English and Spanish, and will be accessible on iPads provided by the Museum. To ensure the safety of visitors, all iPads will be sanitized between uses and stored in a case with ultraviolet lighting to further disinfect the devices.
The project was made possible by the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation, which has a history of supporting the institution. It donated $1 million to the Norton in 2019 to support free Saturday admission.
“In imagining the Norton Art+ experience, we were inspired by the way technology can create an entry point for new museum visitors,” Annabelle Garrett, Trustee of the Norton Museum of Art, speaking on behalf of the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation, which gave a $1 million for the creation of this app. said. “Creating an interactive, engaging art experience demonstrates that there’s no one way to look at art, and that all perspectives and encounters are welcome. We’re thrilled to partner with the Norton on this initiative and hope this app can be a template for museums across the country.”
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The project was conceived two years ago with the app being designed by New York-based experience design studio Local Projects in collaboration with the Norton’s curatorial and education departments.
Norton visitors using Norton Art + with 'Typewriter Eraser, Scale X' by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje ... [+] van Bruggen (1999). Photo credit: Eric Mika / Local Projects
“Norton Art+ offers young audiences exciting new ways to engage with six important works of contemporary art in the Museum collection,” Glenn Tomlinson, William Randolph Hearst Curator of Education, told Forbes.com. “Technology is a great way to engage museum audiences, and the accessible, unique activity created for each artwork helps to introduce the artist’s process, sources, or intent to young guests–and for children, the adults who accompany them). In turn this engagement can spark dialogue, further exploration, and curiosity about contemporary art.”
Through the app, young audiences are invited to learn through play by engaging with the ideas and concepts in contemporary works and deriving context and meaning from the interaction.
Seeing Soundsuits
“Seeing Soundsuits” allows visitors to experience the wonder of Nick Cave’s identity-masking work, Soundsuit (2010). The AR interaction transforms visitors proximate to the iPad into a moving AR Soundsuit, and underscores for young people the idea behind Cave’s work that masking markers of identity and bias allows people to see those around them in new ways.
Drive the Eraser
“Drive the Eraser,” activates Typewriter Eraser, Scale X (1999), the monumental sculpture by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen that anchors the Norton’s entrance plaza designed by Foster + Partners. Addressing the themes of scale and function, this AR interaction invites visitors to “drive” a miniature version of the eraser around the Museum’s fountain to erase a scattered array of virtual letters. The eraser grows in scale with each letter erased, eventually matching the size of the sculpture, and revealing a quotation by the artist.
Moonrise Expressions
“Moonrise Expressions,” invites visitors to interact with Ugo Rondinone’s anthropomorphic MOONRISE sculptures (2006) in the Norton’s sculpture garden. Using the iPad, museumgoers are able to control the expression of the sculpture in AR by changing their own. Upon selecting their favorite expression, they may texture the sculpture using their fingertips (as Rondinone did) and place the work in a virtual sculpture garden filled with other visitors’ creations.
Out of Many, One
Inspired by Danh Vo’s We the People (detail) (2011), “Out of Many, One,” invites visitors to “pick up” an AR model of Vo’s sculpture and find its location on a virtual 3D-model of the Statue of Liberty. Subsequently, additional virtual pieces from Vo’s series will appear with brief histories of their locations.
Abstract Mirror
For Norton Art+, Pae White’s large-scale tapestry Eikón (2018), commissioned by the Norton for its Ruth and Carl Shapiro Great Hall, is transformed into an AR experience that invites iPad users to crinkle and create their own foil artwork. Audiences explore the concepts of perspective and reflection by using the iPad to scan the artwork and see the foil transform into a perfectly smooth mirror – revealing the room and its vertical window in crisp detail. By tapping the artwork, visitors start crinkling the foil, progressively turning it into an abstraction that resembles the work in front of them.
Norton visitor using Norton Art + with Pae White ’s 'Eikón' (2018). Photo credit: Eric Mika / Local Projects
Bubble Creation
“Bubble Creation” is focused on I Remember Ceramic Castles, Mermaids & Japanese Bridges... (2018) by Rob Wynne, a large-scale work commissioned by the Norton for its three-story Muriel and Ralph Saltzman Stairway. Through Norton Art+, visitors manipulate in AR molten glass to pour their own unique globule, mirroring the process used by Wynne to create the work. They can then install their “bubble” into a larger AR version of Wynne’s work.
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c37c1a3028d6235720fe90a4d9632251 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chaddscott/2021/02/10/dartmouth-selects-snhetta-to-lead-70-million-renovation-and-expansion-of-its-hopkins-center-for-the-arts/?sh=3335896f2051 | Dartmouth Selects Snøhetta To Lead $70 Million Renovation And Expansion Of Its Hopkins Center For The Arts | Dartmouth Selects Snøhetta To Lead $70 Million Renovation And Expansion Of Its Hopkins Center For The Arts
Exterior view of the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College. Dartmouth College / Eli Burakian
Dartmouth has selected design practice Snøhetta to lead a renovation and expansion of its Hopkins Center for the Arts. Dartmouth plans to raise approximately $75 million for the project, with $70 million earmarked for design, construction, and other related development costs, and $5 million dedicated to programmatic growth.
While still in the early stages of design development, construction is currently slated to begin in late 2022 the college announced today.
Since opening in 1962 as the first major university-based arts center in the U.S., the Hopkins Center—long known as “the Hop”—has been recognized for its groundbreaking approach to arts education and the presentation of performances by leading and emerging talents across dance, music, theater, film and other creative disciplines. The upcoming expansion, led by Snøhetta’s New York City office, is part of a broader re-imagining of the Hop to support greater and more ambitious creation of cross-disciplinary work onsite and to meet the growing demand of Dartmouth students and faculty for artistic expression and experiences.
“The Hop was built at a time when the focus was on welcoming students and patrons to watch and experience the arts on our stages and halls. We are now creating a program that enhances this legacy by placing a greater emphasis on the production of work onsite and encouraging broader participation, collaboration and creative exchange,” Mary Lou Aleskie, director of Dartmouth’s Hopkins Center for the Arts, told Forbes.com. “To enact this bold new vision, we need our building to have more flexible and versatile spaces that support interdisciplinary forms of expression.”
An aerial photograph of the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College. Dartmouth College / Eli Burakian
In active collaboration with Dartmouth leadership, Snøhetta will expand the Hop’s existing physical footprint, which is currently nearly 175,000 square feet, and also redesign the flow and function of interior and exterior spaces.
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Among Dartmouth’s particular design priorities are:
Creation of three new recital halls and teaching studios, including a flexible, multi-purpose performance space Incorporation of state-of-the-art technologies that will allow the Hop to document, share and broadcast Dartmouth-originated works across the world Enhancement of the acoustics, flow and wayfinding throughout the building Enhancements to community, social, and study spaces, including the beloved Top of the Hop Substantive upgrades to rehearsal rooms Introduction of a new, more welcoming entry for ease of arrival and orientation
Dartmouth selected Snøhetta for the Hop project because of its extensive experience in honoring historic architecture and seamlessly merging it with forward-looking design. The firm’s expertise in creating dynamic relationships between interior and exterior spaces and with existing built and natural landscapes was equally important to the decision.
Snøhetta designed SFMOMA Expansion in San Francisco, California. Courtesy Henrik Kam
“We were particularly drawn to Snøhetta’s transdisciplinary approach to architecture and landscape design and to their incredible track record of reimagining historic buildings as 21st century cultural centers,” Aleskie said. “It’s essential that we respect and maintain key aspects of our Wallace Harrison-designed building, while also creating new interior and exterior spaces of welcome and vibrancy that will meet the needs and interests of students, faculty and visiting artists and our many audiences.”
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art expansion, the National September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion and the upcoming Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library are among the countless high-profile public projects the firm has taken on.
“We are also focusing on the idea of ‘welcome’ and Snøhetta is known for creating open and inviting spaces,” Aleskie said. “While the original Hopkins Center was intended to be an umbrella for various art forms, over the years, the navigation within the building has been disrupted and the building has grown less cohesive. The new Hop will be welcoming and accessible, inviting students and community members alike into spaces that allow for socializing and inspire engagement.”
The Hop lives within the Arts District at the heart of Dartmouth’s academic community, which also includes the Black Family Visual Arts Center, a $55 million project completed in 2012, and the Hood Museum of Art. A $50 million redesign and expansion of the Hood Museum was completed in early 2019.
Where does this extraordinary emphasis for the arts spring from?
“Dartmouth President Phil Hanlon has underscored how the arts foster creativity and engender empathy. When the Hop was created, it was placed right in the center of campus on the college green, unusual then and now for a university arts center,” Aleskie said. “The idea of the arts as a connector of people and ideas is even more essential now as we work to promote understanding one another across differences and to combat social inequities.”
Hanlon is a Dartmouth alum.
The re-imagining of the Hop marks a new milestone in Dartmouth’s decade-long, $180-plus million investment in its Arts District, and is also part of the college’s eight-year, $3 billion “The Call to Lead” fundraising campaign. One goal of “The Call to Lead” is creating opportunities for every Dartmouth student to have a substantive experience in the arts. The re-imagined Hopkins Center will help drive this vision of accessibility and inspiration.
The Hop has served as the early training ground for a number of alumni who have gone on to have distinguished careers in arts and entertainment, including actor Connie Britton and film and television producers Mindy Kaling and Shonda Rhimes.
Musicians practicing inside the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College. Dartmouth/College Robert Gill
“I’m most excited about seeing what ideas and projects are generated by the vastly more functional, flexible and inspiring spaces that Snøhetta will create, including a dance studio, a music/media studio, and a black box theater that will serve as a laboratory for our students and resident artists,” Aleskie said. “I’m looking forward to seeing how these new environments will encourage collaborations and interdisciplinary projects from across campus, and how the new Hop will serve as a platform for students to study, explore, play, share and learn from adventurous artists and each other.”
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0a59ef727422abfeddd9a9e87d87f736 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chaddscott/2021/03/29/mississippi-museum-of-art-hoping-new-audiences-find-themselves-reflected-in-artwork-of-dusti-bong-and-betye-saar/?ss=arts&sh=33df22e42836 | Mississippi Museum Of Art Hoping New Audiences Find Themselves Reflected In Artwork Of Dusti Bongé And Betye Saar | Mississippi Museum Of Art Hoping New Audiences Find Themselves Reflected In Artwork Of Dusti Bongé And Betye Saar
Dusti Bongé (American, 1903 - 1993), Sunflowers and Squash, P - 92, 1944. Oil on canvas, 16 x 20. Collection of the Dusti Bongé Art Foundation.
No museum in the nation offers a more progressive presentation of the work of female artists this spring than the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson, Mississippi.
Surprised?
It does so by highlighting Dusti Bongé (1903–93) and Betye Saar (b. 1926), a pair of artists who worked on the vanguard over long careers–for Saar, a career which continues.
Considered Mississippi’s first artist to work consistently in a Modernist style, Bongé has been mostly omitted from histories of mid- and late-20th century art despite her having shown at Betty Parsons’ gallery in New York along with Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg and Clyfford Still. The Los-Angeles based Saar, one of the most significant artists working in assemblage and collage today, is best known for incisive works confronting and reclaiming racist imagery, prominently, The Liberation of Aunt Jemima.
In showcasing these two powerhouse women, the Mississippi Museum of Art welcomes new audiences by reflecting experiences in the artists and artworks displayed not traditionally seen in their galleries.
“Betye Saar: Call and Response”
Betye Saar (American, b. 1926), Sketchbook, 1/ 14 / 10. Ballpoint pen, marker, and colored pencil on ... [+] paper. 5 ½ x 4 in. Collection of Betye Saar, courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, CA. EX.8646. 29
“The opportunity with a Betye Saar exhibition is the first act of presenting, which is allowing folks to see themselves reflected in artworks and have some type of sharing around historical art that might speak to folks of color in a way that peaks curiosity, makes connections for their own personal histories, while also empowering those to dig in a little deeper about what the artist is trying to speak on,” MMA’s Chief Curator and Artistic Director of the Museum’s Center for Art and Public Exchange Ryan N. Dennis told Forbes.com.
Jackson’s population is 80%-plus African American.
“Betye Saar: Call and Response” originated at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and traveled to the Morgan Library and Museum in New York before coming to Jackson. The Morgan Library’s presentation of the show was reviewed by Forbes.com. It will be on view at MMA from April 10 through July 11, 2021.
This is the first exhibition examining the relationship between Saar’s found objects, sketches and finished works, thereby shedding new light on her distinctive practice which addresses spirituality, gender, family history and race. The exhibition features a selection of sketches and approximately 18 corresponding assemblages and collages alongside approximately a dozen of her travel sketchbooks. Selections cover a broad span of her career, from the 1970s through a sculptural installation made specifically for this touring exhibition
These sketches form an essential part of what she considers the mysterious transformation of object into art and provide a window into her creative process. As such, the exhibition’s appeal extends beyond its social commentary.
“This is Betye's exhibition as an artist who is showing her sketchbook, and there's something about the kind of process and action that’s taking place within this exhibition that I hope people can just connect to being an artist,” Dennis said. “You can enter into this show with the heavy handedness of race, gender and all the things, but you can also enter into this exhibition and just enjoy sketchbooks, seeing how sketchbooks turn to objects and vice versa.”
Betye Saar (American, b. 1926), The Edge of Ethics, 2010. mixed media assemblage. 4 10 ½ x 9 ¼ x 5 ½ ... [+] in. Collection of Betye Saar, courtesy of the artist and Roberts Project s, Los Angeles, CA EX.8646.30
“Piercing the Inner Wall: The Art of Dusti Bongé”
Bongé’s background will find resonance with additional visitors. A native Mississippian, Bongé lived in Chicago and then New York before returning to her home state to raise a family with her artist husband. Two years after coming back, Bongé’s husband died from ALS, leaving her to bring up a young son as a single parent while also juggling a career.
“What's really beautiful about the story of Dusti (is) her relationship with family,” Dennis said. “So much of how she entered into painting was through a lot of inspiration from her husband.”
Bongé’s story further breaks from artistic tropes in that her husband, Archie Bongé, was highly supportive of her work from the outset, beyond supportive, in fact, to the point of nearly pushing her toward a career in art.
“I am married to a musician and I think about how much my husband has influenced my ear, my improvisation in terms of the way that I process with artists,” Dennis reflected on her connection to Bongé’s story. “I think Dusti can be approached… (as) multifaceted–it’s about painting, it’s about being a woman, it's about being a single mother, and then it’s about family-making alongside an artmaking process that I think a lot of people relate to.”
Dusti Bongé (American, 1903 - 1993), Self Portrait - The Balcony, 1943. oil on canvas, 20 x 16. Collection of the Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, Gift of the Dusti Bongé Art Foundation, Inc. 1999.015
“Piercing the Inner Wall: The Art of Dusti Bongé,” (through May 23, 2021) was organized by the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans where the show debuted and was reviewed by Forbes.com in 2019. The exhibition comprises 65 paintings, 29 works on paper, and three sculptures drawn from private loans and public institutions including works from the Museum’s own collection offering an expansive, thorough journey through the artist’s career which spanned decades and included many of the 20th century’s key artistic movements from Surrealism to Abstract Expressionism.
“She was always experimenting and honing in on a craft, but really starting out from a place of curiosity which I really enjoy seeing throughout the show,” Dennis said. “I think the beauty of Dusti Bongé is in her experimentation with pigment, paper, paint, etc.; I think you can move through the galleries and admire someone who is improvising and really experimental in her own way–it’s not like some radical paintings, but I think that she was moving through her life and experimenting, experimentation is also very intentional and I think that the paintings reflect that.”
The Mississippi debutante and the L.A. radical, two brilliant artists united by time and place in Jackson proving art museums can provide welcoming entry points for a broad range of guests.
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7de24c7928e5ebca1bd394587a3ba335 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chaddscott/2021/04/21/see-paris-and-paradise-between-orlando-and-tampa-in-central-florida/?sh=7a885858694d&fbclid=IwAR3KaowWAoT14a_Qfc3uYNswO6e9kU_WFXyYhENno1yN5lvA-gFilBRVca0 | See Paris And Paradise Between Orlando And Tampa In Central Florida | See Paris And Paradise Between Orlando And Tampa In Central Florida
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, "La Troupe de Mademoiselle Eglantine," Color Lithograph, 1896, 24x32 ... [+] inches. Courtesy of PAN Art Connections, Inc.
Screaming kids. Long lines. Predatory pricing.
Nope. Nope. Nope.
Sunburn. Crowds. Noise.
Nope. Nope. Nope.
Between the amusement park madness of Orlando and Tampa, unexpected respite can be found just off traffic-choked Interstate 4 in Central Florida.
More than respite, the Polk Museum of Art in Lakeland offers escape via “Toulouse-Lautrec & the Belle Époque” on view through May 23.
As the 19th century turned into the 20th, Paris was it. The center of the world for arts and culture and theater and nightlife and fun. This is the Belle Époque (beautiful age) of contemporary imagination.
Absinthe. The Folies-Bergére. Montmartre. Matisse, Picasso, Modigliani and Gertrude Stein’s salons.
The joie de vivre was not exclusive to the aristocracy. The best and bawdiest experiences were found in the cabarets, street cafés and bars frequented by the working class. This bohemian, artsy, YOLO subculture was intimately captured by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec.
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With over two hundred works displayed throughout the Museum, “Toulouse-Lautrec & the Belle Époque” transports visitors to the avant-garde subculture of 1890s France through the artist’s illustrations of the period. Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) created an incredible array of works over the course of a brief, decade-long career, from paintings and drawings, to his most famous and recognizable prints, posters and advertisements which have been turned into millions of posters, magnets and coffee mugs in the proceeding century.
In his art, Toulouse-Lautrec depicted the vivid world of Paris at the turn of the 20th century, recreating the spaces, subjects and entertainments he loved most. Lautrec was more than a chronicler of this period, he was a participant. That’s what made him such an effective chronicler. These were his friends. These were his hangouts. This was his lifestyle.
The brothels, the prostitutes, the bars–Lautrec wasn’t an outsider looking in, he was an insider looking around.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, "Divan Japonais," Color Lithograph, 1893, 38x24 inches. Courtesy of PAN Art Connections, Inc.
Toulouse-Lautrec’s background and upbringing in aristocratic French society stands in stark contrast to the bohemian world he came to embrace and depict in his celebrated work. Stunted in his own growth as a child–his parents were first cousins and a genetic deformation led to broken bones in his legs which limited his height to about four-and-a-half-feet–shunned from elite society, Toulouse-Lautrec used commercial media—most notably advertising—to help collapse the lines that separated what was deemed “high” and “low” art of the time and share widely the nonconformist side of the French capitol in which he felt most comfortable.
“Despite his noble lineage, Toulouse-Lautrec used his art to advertise the anti-elite world of artistic Paris. His Paris was the Paris of outsiders, creatives and entertainers,” Alex Rich, executive director and chief curator at the Polk Museum of Art, said. “Toulouse-Lautrec is recalled today as the illustrator of Montmartre, the district of the Moulin Rouge, the cancan and cabarets.”
A combination of alcoholism and chronic illness took Lautrec’s life at just 36; his Belle Epoqué would continue on for another decade before being consumed–along with most of Europe–by the horrors of World War I.
Mayfaire by-the-Lake
R.L. Alexander, 'Procession of the Swan Queen,' Oil on panel, 2021 Mayfaire by-the-Lake Featured ... [+] Image. Gregory Mills
After a one-year pandemic interruption, the Polk Museum of Art is excited to again host its annual Mayfaire by-the-Lake fine art festival along the shores of Lake Morton May 8 and 9 from 9 am to 4 pm daily. Mayfaire by-the-Lake, held each year on Mother’s Day weekend, started as a small craft show on the Lakeland Library lawn in 1971 and has grown to be one of the most prestigious juried outdoor festivals in Florida.
This year, more than 150 artists will be showcasing their work across 13 different media, from ceramics, painting, and woodwork to photography, sculpture, glass and more.
While admiring artists' work, festival visitors can also stop by the Library lawn to take in live musical performances and dine at specialty food trucks. In addition, Mayfaire will offer free art activities for children of all abilities and the Polk Museum of Art will be open to all guests to tour “Toulouse-Lautrec and the Belle Époque.”
Before leaving Lakeland, be sure to at least drive through the campus of Florida Southern College where, in 2012, the Florida Southern College Historic District was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service for being the largest single-site collection of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture in the world.
Natural Florida
Purple passion flower at Bok Tower Gardens. Chadd Scott
Thirty miles from Lakeland, Bok Tower Gardens presents an exceedingly rare sight: natural Florida. Florida the way it used to be. Pre-European contact Florida.
A wonderous, butterfly- and wildflower-filed sliver of virgin sandhill pine forest exists at Bok Tower Gardens with a gentle 2.5 mile walking path winding through it. See longleaf pine trees with needles over 12 inches long, gopher tortoises, songbirds, raptors and butterflies–so many butterflies–including the zebra longwing, the state butterfly.
Walk the Pine Ridge Preserve Trail which traverses this landscape and imagine tens of millions of acres of it across central and north Florida before the land was covered with asphalt. Imagine it thick with woodpeckers. Imagine it teeming with Florida panthers, black bears and bobcats. Imagine the region’s indigenous people thriving here from the bounty of the land.
Consider this landscape. Search for its beauty.
When it begins to look as beautiful as any snow-capped mountain peak or rushing waterfall, you’ve gotten it. You’ll be one of the special few who does.
Bok Tower Gardens’ conservation efforts further include an endangered plant garden on-site and a fully-formed rare plant conservation program which extends far beyond Central Florida.
Tiger swallowtail butterfly at Bok Tower Gardens. Bok Tower Gardens
Lengthen your stay at Bok Gardens by fueling up with lunch at the on-site restaurant for fresh, hot sandwiches and cold craft beer.
Springhill Suites Lakeland is the area’s newest hotel and conveniently located for access to all the nearby destinations, including the theme parks (less than an hour drive to Orlando, just over 30 minutes to Tampa).
Start your day in Lakeland with Black and Brew Coffee House and Bistro. For an authentic pick-me-up, orange groves line the entrance to Bok Tower Gardens. If you hit the season right and carefully pull over to pick a few, no one will mind.
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514f6b1adc134b52b05b8f85511e6074 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chaddscott/2021/04/28/mural-park-represents-lasting-legacy-of-inaugural-enlighten-arts-festival-in-atlantic-beach-fl/?sh=1ad8bcd2588e | Mural Park Represents Lasting Legacy Of Inaugural “enLIGHTen” Arts Festival In Atlantic Beach, FL | Mural Park Represents Lasting Legacy Of Inaugural “enLIGHTen” Arts Festival In Atlantic Beach, FL
Mayport Road mural park in Atlantic Beach, FL created during "enLIGHTen" Art Festival 2021. Toni Smailagic
ArtRepublic’s inaugural “enLIGHTen” Art Festival held April 22-25 in Atlantic Beach, Florida was intended to feature 20 mural artists, each painting a section of wall on a derelict storage facility along Mayport Road. As word spread through the graffiti community about the project, other artists began showing up. Some coming from as far as Miami, 350 miles away.
ArtRepublic founder Jessica Santiago didn’t turn any of them away.
The resulting mural park injects a vibrant burst of color and energy into an otherwise non-descript stretch of busy road that counts a psychic, old-school seafood market and arts co-op among the neighbors.
The finished product is unprecedented for the Jacksonville area, reminiscent of street art’s modern epicenter at Wynwood Walls in southern Florida. It should serve as an example for public officials, private business and residents in the area about the transformative power of art, inspiring each to become a catalyst for the next civic art project, and the next, and the next.
While isolated murals do exist throughout the wider northeast Florida community, nothing approaching this vision or achieving this scope has taken shape there yet. Miami, the Palm Beaches and St. Petersburg are all national destinations for mural art. Perhaps “enLIGHTen” will serve as Jacksonville’s street art “big bang.”
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Where murals go up, walls come down
Mayport Road mural park in Atlantic Beach, FL created during "enLIGHTen" Art Festival 2021. Toni Smailagic
“We believe that public art has the power to transform communities everywhere,” Santiago said of ArtRepublic, her Jacksonville-based public art commissioning and consulting firm. “Our passion is elevating wellness and spirit through bringing large-scale art experiences to all the places where people are.”
She has a long history of working with top local and international artists and put those contacts to use for the Atlantic Beach mural park.
Numerous local artists including Philip Bennett Walker (Atlantic Beach) and Mobarick Abdullah III (Jacksonville Beach) were joined by a cadre of nationally recognized muralists from Miami–Ahole Sniffs Glue, Urban Ruben, Golden305–and New York–Sen2, BKFoxx–to work on the walls.
“I really hope that (the murals) brings everybody together, brings a lot of business to the neighborhood and makes everybody just come together as one,” Lewis Washington, owner of Voo-Swar Restaurant and Lounge at 51 Roberts Street, adjacent to the mural park, told Forbes.com.
Voo-Swar’s history makes for another compelling reason to visit.
Established by Washington’s father, Earnest “Mr. E” Davis, who lived next door and died in 2019, Voo-Swar has been a pilar of the area’s Black community since opening. That opening predates integration. Voo-Swar first welcomed guests in 1963, one year prior to the passage of the Civil Rights Act which ended segregation in public areas and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
That history, along with the flavors of proceeding decades serving some of the area’s best ribs, chicken wings and burgers, is infused in the walls. Little of this Florida remains in a state controlled by developers hell bent on squeezing out the old for the new.
Voo-Swar is a living, breathing relic. A treasure. A portal to the past alive in the present.
Sit at the bar. Drink a beer. Shoot a game of pool and imagine the joyful times shared here and the hard times discussed here.
Davis built Voo-Swar with his own hands. It opened with a dirt floor. He scrounged building materials from castoff supplies out of construction projects around town.
Washington is the youngest of his 12 children and the only one interested in putting in the hard work to keep this legacy alive. He’ll be there if you visit. Working the grill. Serving drinks.
Voo-Swar Restaurant and Lounge with freshly painted mural in Atlantic Beach, FL. Toni Smailagic
The mural park has a surprisingly multi-generational, family atmosphere as well. Many of the artists brought spouses and kids along with them to paint.
Cristhian Saravia (Golden305) was there with his daughter, Ange (Ange305).
“As long as I keep doing this, I’m keeping my (graffiti) culture alive,” Saravia told Forbes.com. He was especially excited about the many up and coming local artists who were participating. “This is what I love. When I say culture, I mean the street art culture, the art culture in general, Hip Hop.”
Saravia began painting as a 10-year-old in Venezuela during the mid-80s, a time when street art and murals were outsider movements, associated with dangerous neighborhoods. Graffiti writers were viewed as criminals. Now, graffiti and street art are the most popular forms of art in the world and no major city in America is without at least dozens of murals, some, hundreds.
“I get goosebumps–I want this to stay alive, to be longer lasting than me,” Saravia said. “My daughter paints graffiti, I want to keep the graffiti culture alive, I want her to be part of it, but I want her to understand where she comes from. She’s 17 and started painting with me when she was 13 so she doesn’t understand that culture, how it started, but I’m making sure I pass it on to her.”
The immediate impact of the project on its community was experienced as Saravia was talking.
“Look at that,” he said, pointing to a young white woman and her three children exploring the murals. “You’d never see a mom by herself with three kids just walking around here before we painted it.”
Digital exhibition
Can Buyukberber digital art projection, "Primordial Force," at One Ocean Resort & Spa in Atlantic ... [+] Beach, FL during "enLIGHTen" Art Festival. ArtRepublic
In addition to the murals, “enLIGHTen” Art Festival featured a major digital light and sound projection at the host One Ocean Resort & Spa. The installation was created by Istanbul’s Can Buyukberber with audio from philosopher Alan Watts.
While “Primordial Force” has come off public view in Atlantic Beach, the murals remain. Make it a point to see them, take plenty of pictures, have lunch at Voo-Swar and dream that this could be the start of something big for public art in northeast Florida.
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b20855e52b5693f35e280683bdf9b31b | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2015/06/05/twenty-years-of-bose-einstein-condensation/ | Twenty Years Of Bose-Einstein Condensation | Twenty Years Of Bose-Einstein Condensation
Twenty years ago, in the summer of 1995, I was a young grad student having just finished my second year at Maryland, and one morning I packed into the conference room at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg (where I worked in the group of Bill Phillips) with most of the rest of the Atomic Physics division to hear a primitive teleconference from our counterparts in Boulder. I don't remember the exact date of the teleconference-- I think it was in early July-- but the event that led to it took place twenty years ago today, June 5, 1995, when physicists in the group of Carl Wieman and Eric Cornell at JILA (a joint institute between NIST and the University of Colorado) produced the first Bose-Einstein condensate in a dilute vapor of rubidium. This was the end of a quest spanning decades, all the way back to the first proposal of BEC in 1925.
Physicists are forever dividing the world into two classes of things, and one of the most important distinctions is that between fermions and bosons. Fermions are particles that obey the Pauli Exclusion Principle-- or, more formally, particles described by Fermi-Dirac statistics-- and are thus forbidden from being in exactly the same state (same energy, momentum, spin, etc.) as another fermion. The component particles of ordinary matter-- electrons, protons, neutrons-- are all fermions, and this fact is responsible for all of chemistry. As you move up through the periodic table, each electron you add "fills up" an energy level, meaning that the next electron must go into a higher state-- if you took chemistry in high school or college, and remember drawing arrays of little up and down arrows, that's Pauli exclusion in action. The chemical properties of an element are determined by the state of the last few electrons added, and thus all the rich phenomena of chemistry are really due to the fermionic nature of electrons.
(Silly joke: Two electrons walk into a bar, and the first orders a gin and tonic. The second says "Aw, man! That's what I was going to have...")
The other category of particles, bosons, are named after the Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose, who sent one of history's greatest fan letters to Albert Einstein in 1925. Bose, then lecturing at a new university in Dhaka, had worked out the statistical properties of fundamental particles that were not subject to the Pauli prohibition against being in the same state, and tried to get a paper on the subject published with no luck. So he sent a copy to Albert Einstein, then as now the most famous physicist in the world, and Einstein immediately recognized the importance of the work. Einstein wrote a follow-up paper of his own, and arranged for both to be published in Zeitschrift für Physik. As a result, the rules followed by this class of particles are known as Bose-Einstein statistics.
The big difference between bosons and fermions is that bosons are perfectly happy to occupy the same state. In fact, they prefer it. A large collection of bosons will happily pack together into a single state, generally referred to as a Bose-Einstein Condesate. The most familiar example of this is a laser-- photons are bosons, and a laser can be thought of as a gigantic number of photons all condensed into a single quantum state: all the same color, moving in the same direction.
The fundamental components of ordinary matter are fermions, but it turns out that if you stick two fermions together, the combination will behave like a boson (provided you're at low enough energy for there to be no danger of splitting the particles apart). Thus, you can imagine making a BEC with pairs of material particles. And, indeed, this is what happens in ordinary superconductors-- at very low temperatures, the electrons can "pair up" thanks to interactions with the atoms in the solid, and the pairs can form a BEC. This process is described by "BCS theory" named after John Bardeen, Leon Cooper, and Robert Schrieffer, who shared a Nobel for it in 1972. You can also make a BEC inside liquid helium, and this is responsible for its superfluid properties.
The criterion for forming BEC is, very loosely, that the quantum wavelength of the bosons in your sample has to be comparable to the spacing between the atoms. The wavelength increases as the temperature decreases, so this means you need a cold and dense sample, which is why the early examples are in condensed matter systems-- helium becomes superfluid at a temperature of just a couple degrees above absolute zero (around 2 kelvin), and BCS superconductors are only a little warmer. Any substance known becomes a solid or a liquid at such low temperatures.
The first BEC image from Wieman and Cornell in 1995. Image via Wikimedia.... [+] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bose_Einstein_condensate.png
There's no reason in principle, though, why you couldn't make a BEC in a gas of atoms. There's a bit of needle-threading involved-- you need the wavelength to be long enough to start to overlap with neighboring particles, but the density to be low enough that the particles don't all clump together thanks to their mutual interactions-- but it can be done if you work at a low enough density, about one one-millionth that of air. The only catch is that you need temperatures measured not in degrees above absolute zero, but billionths of a degree (nanokelvin).
That may sound crazy, but it's not impossible, and difficult-but-not-impossible problems have an irresistable attraction for experimental physicists. Dan Kleppner at MIT started trying to make a BEC of hydrogen a very long time ago, but things really took off in the 1980's after the development of laser cooling, which uses the momentum of light to slow the motion of atoms. A clever arrangement of laser beams can cool a vapor of atoms to temperatures of a few microkelvin with surprising ease (my advisor, Bill Phillips, shared the 1997 Nobel in Physics with Steve Chu and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji for helping develop these techniques). And, crucially, these atoms remain a gas, at densities a billionth that of air.
Laser cooling provides a starting point for pursuing BEC in atomic vapors, but it's not the whole story. The sample needs to be cooled and compressed beyond what can be done with lasers alone (save in certain special elements), and around the time I started grad school a huge effort was underway to develop the necessary techniques to cool and compress a trapped sample of atoms-- this was half-jokingly referred to as the "Holy Grail" of atomic physics, a name which has been nearly as overused as "God particle" for the Higgs boson.
Two of the biggest competitors in the race for the "grail" were the Wieman and Cornell group at JILA in Boulder, and Wolfgang Ketterle's group at MIT. Wieman and Cornell got there first, in the summer of 1995, condensing maybe 100,000 atoms of rubidium to make the first dilute vapor BEC ever observed. The key evidence is in the photo above, which shows 3-d plots of the density of atoms in (L to R) rubidium clouds just above, just below, and well under the temperature at which BEC occurs. The just-above photo shows a smooth, round distribution of atoms reflecting the fact that atoms are moving at many different velocities. Just below the transition, a large "spike" appears in the center of the cloud, which represents the condensate; the broad distribution is still present, but now you have a large collection of atoms in the center of the trap all with exactly the same velocity. And well below the transition, the "thermal cloud" is gone, and only the BEC remains.
The oblong shape of the "spike" reflects the shape of the trap used to confine the atoms, and was one of the key bits of evidence that they really had a BEC. I vividly remember the explanation from the teleconference-- it's a consequence of quantum confinement. To make the images they used to spot the BEC, they turn off the trap and let the atoms expand, and they expand more rapidly along the direction where the trap squeezes them more tightly.
Wieman and Cornell got there first, and the discovery was huge news-- the paper was featured on the cover of Science, and jokes about BEC turned up in the monologues of late-night talk shows ("Scientists in Colorado announced that they made the coldest substance in the known universe. They then tricked their little brother into sticking his tongue to it."). Ketterle's group at MIT got a BEC soon afterward using about a million sodium atoms. There was a bit of controversy at the time when Randy Hulet's group at Rice University claimed to also have a BEC, in lithium; the system they were using to trap and cool atoms didn't let them expand the cloud of atoms to get the same clear and unambiguous images as the JILA and MIT groups, so while they probably had a BEC, they couldn't prove it to everyone's satisfaction.
(Wieman, Cornell, and Ketterle shared the 2001 Nobel in Physics for BEC, a well-earned honor for all.)
Since then, dozens of groups all around the world have made BEC, in dozens of different elements. For a while, there was a "BEC Homepage" with an updated tally, but they stopped updating years ago, because there were too many to keep up. I think BEC may have been made on every continent save Antarctica at this point, but that's only because nobody has come up with a really good motivation for making one at the South Pole.
The race for and discovery of BEC triggered an explosion in atomic-physics research, and BEC is one of the major areas in the field. Next week, I'll be in Ohio for the annual conference of the Division of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics (DAMOP), and it's hard to find a time slot in the program that doesn't feature any BEC talks. BEC and its fermionic cousin, the "degenerate Fermi gas" are incredibly useful for studying analogues of condensed matter systems-- with clever applications of lasers and magnetic fields, you can arrange the atoms in all sorts of interesting patterns, and tune their interactions, simulating different types of solids in an easy-to-access, easy-to-modify form. The range of physics enabled by BEC experiments keeps expanding, with BEC sources being proposed to study gravitational interactions and exotic physics through atom interferometry.
(I've written about a lot of this stuff at my other blog; here's a slightly dated overview of ultracold atom physics from 2011. Or just go there and search for stuff...)
BEC in atomic samples is one of the biggest things to hit the field of atomic physics since, I don't know, the Bohr model. And if dilute-vapor BEC can be said to have a birthday, this is it. So, here's to 20 years of great physics-- the condensates themselves may not be old enough to drink legally (in the US, anyway), but physicists and fans of physics should hoist a glass in their honor.
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f59e9217dc7bfa8087e9d1a364885056 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2015/06/26/going-to-an-academic-conference-here-are-some-tips/ | Going To An Academic Conference? Here Are Some Tips | Going To An Academic Conference? Here Are Some Tips
I just finished my fourteenth year as a professor at Union College, which means it probably shouldn't seem weird that I get asked for career advice. And yet, it still kind of does. Some of this is a stubborn unconscious insistence that I'm not actually middle-aged, but a big part is that I don't feel like I have that much useful advice to offer. That is, my academic career track has been sufficiently idiosyncratic that I sometimes feel like I'm coming from an entirely different world than the people asking for advice.
Of course, this is true of basically everybody in academia. That's the nature of the beast, as it were-- getting a Ph.D. requires you to become the World's Leading Expert in a subject that nobody else cares about to anywhere near that extent. Getting a faculty position demands that you pursue research interests that don't quite line up with anyone else's (while not being too far away from the consensus of what's interesting enough to be funded and published). We're all unique and special here, which means none of us are actually that special, so we might as well offer whatever we have.
Still, there are times when I really do feel like I've walked in from a completely different universe. An example of this (not a direct request for advice, because I wouldn't share those) is the ongoing series of posts at the Owl Meat blog on "Harsh Truths and Bad Conferences." The author isn't anyone I know, but comes from a field not that distant from my own:
OK, let me start this by saying that I’m a PhD student in Condensed Matter Physics. I’ve been lucky to attend a lot of conferences (9 as of writing) during my PhD and it’s taken me a long time to realise I actually don’t like them. At first I figured it was just my own shortcomings because, hey, no-one else seems to have any complaints about them. It’s only when I started asking questions with other students, who are comfortable opening up to you as a peer, that you realise you’re not alone. I’d like to have an open discussion: Conferences can be terrible, at least in my field, and over the next few blog posts I’ll outline the reasons why.
At this point, the posts are Part 1: Presentations, Part 2: Social Events, and Part 3: Poster Sessions; more may well be on the way. And, as I said above, I'm not certain how to respond, because this is so remote from my own experience.
I mean, that's not entirely true-- God knows, I've seen my share of bad conference talks and awkward poster sessions-- but on the whole, I've seen more good presentations than bad, and generally find going to conferences a rewarding and enjoyable experience. And it's really hard to figure out how much of this is my particularly privileged path through academia (my Ph.D. advisor was a capital-N Name in the field), a fortuitous choice of subfield (AMO physics is exceptionally collegial), or just a matter of personality (I'm fundamentally a glass-half-full kind of guy, inclined to look for the best angle on everything).
That said, what's in those posts sounds genuinely awful, and some of that reflects failures on the part of the academic system. So, here's an attempt at some general advice for conference organizers, faculty, and students on things to do to make the conference experience better (and I'll also point to Kieran Healy's advice, which is shaded more toward humanities but still excellent):
Physicists at the Converge conference in Waterloo. Photo by Chad Orzel.
For Conference Organizers
First and foremost, think carefully about who you invite to speak and how you organize those presentations. There's not much you can do to manage the 10-minute contributed talks that are the majority of presentations at APS meetings (which are really just advertising, anyway), but some of the bewilderment described in the blog could be alleviated by choosing good speakers to introduce the programming track on a given subfield, and putting them near the start of the meeting. There are people out there who will give a good semi-pedagogical introduction to any field you might think of; bring them in, and have them give invited talks early in the meeting.
You should also think about offering targeted programming. DAMOP opens with a Graduate Student Symposium every year, and has usually had a special undergraduate session. The Division of Nuclear Physics has an extensive conference experience for undergrads program, bringing a large number of undergrad researchers to their annual meeting, and providing special presentations and social events for them. This makes the meeting much more enjoyable for those students.
And when it comes to poster sessions, make sure you provide adequate space. DAMOP has gotten a lot better about this recently, but I've been to a lot of poster sessions in rooms that were way too small-- hot, crowded rooms full of rows of poster boards with barely enough room between them for two people to squeeze between them. That's a brutally unpleasant experience, and should never happen.
(One other poster thing that might be worth exploring would be a local contact with a print shop like Kinko's, to print posters on-site for a small fee, and save people the trouble of wrangling poster tubes through airports and the like. I know individual researchers who do this on their own, but it might be useful to organize it at a conference-wide level...)
And one of the Owl Meat posts links to this blog post from a sociology student, which includes a photo of posters stacked one on top of another. For the love of God, people, don't do this. I mean, what were they thinking to have two rows of posters, one of them below waist level? No, no, no.
For Faculty
Don't send students to conferences alone. A lot of the complaints in the Owl Meat posts, particularly the one on social events, sound like the result of a sink-or-swim approach. and, you know, don't do that. Especially to young students.
This is an area where I was extremely lucky as a grad student-- I worked in Bill Phillips's group at NIST, which is an extremely well-connected group, so they knew lots of people at any conference we went to. And the senior staff in that group are also terrifically nice people, who I could count on to introduce me to other people at the meeting.
(This didn't always work that well-- I've met former Energy Secretary Steve Chu exactly once, at a reception for the 1997 Nobel winners at the National Academy of Science. One of the senior staff at NIST introduced me, and then asked Chu how his trip in from the West Coast had been. Chu replied that he was really jet-lagged because their flight was horribly delayed, and then their hotel room wasn't ready, so they spent several hours sitting in the lobby of the Watergate waiting on their room. "You should've claimed to be a plumber, and just broken in," I suggested, and he looked at me like I had three heads...)
As a result, within a few years, I knew lots of people to talk to at conferences, which made going to meetings a much more enjoyable experience, both socially and professionally. I had a good sense of who was doing similar work, and even if I didn't know them directly, I usually had a second-order connection to draw on, making it easier to connect.
Part of the job of a professor is to train students to be productive members of the community, and part of that is helping to integrate them into the community. So, don't abandon your students at conferences-- introduce them to people, invite them to dinner, and generally check that they're having a good experience.
Also, make sure your students are prepared. I said above that there isn't much the conference organizers can do about contributed 10-minute talks, but this is something that can be handled on the faculty level. If you're sending students to a meeting to present their work, make sure they'll present it well. I never gave a presentation as a grad student without at least one practice talk before we left Maryland, and usually there were two or three rounds of practice. Public presentation is a skill that can be taught, and it's part of the job of faculty to do that.
For Students
Don't go alone. If the meeting is big enough to send grad students to, somebody you know must also be going-- other students from your research group, or other groups in the department. Make sure you connect with them before the meeting, and arrange to meet up at the meeting. Go to each other's talks and posters (and fetch drinks and snacks for your friends when they're standing by their posters), and generally support each other.
Talk to people. This is a tough point, because I come at it from a position of significant privilege-- I'm a reasonably outgoing person, and I'm a white guy, so very few people will be taken aback if I walk up to them and start talking. (Not because of stereotyping, anyway; I'm also very large, so I occasionally have people get startled because of that...)
Even taking that into account, though, physicists are generally a good deal more sociable than our pop-culture reputation. There are only a handful of people who will be actively rude to grad students who approach them with a question, and they're mostly famous professors. Students and post-docs are often happy to have somebody else to talk to, so do that.
This is a hard thing to do, I know. I'm reasonably outgoing, as I said, but even so I find it very difficult to walk up to a total stranger and strike up a conversation. I've gotten better at it over the years, but it's still a little terrifying to walk up to somebody and say "Hi, you don't know me, but..." (which I had to do multiple times at the conference I attended earlier this week).
(This is one of those areas that is highly variable with personality. One of the alternative approaches suggested in the Owl Meat posts is a "speed dating" format, which just sounds horrific to me. For some people, the idea of formally mediated discussion is attractive as a way to get over social barriers. For me, having to do the same 2-minute introduction to what I do over and over again is just exhausting; I'd much rather do it only a handful of times as a lead-in to longer conversations.)
In the end, education is about stretching your personal and intellectual boundaries, and to a certain extent, you just need to do your best to power through.
That said, be aware that conferences aren't forever. Some people just really, truly, hate the experience, and if you're one of those, that's okay. My boss when I was a post-doc doesn't like going to conferences at all, so he doesn't do it much-- if he's invited to give a prestigious talk, he'll fly in the night before, and fly home right after his talk. He prefers to send students or post-docs in his stead, though (which was great for me when I was a post-doc, because I got to go to some really cool places). There are other people in the field you never see at conferences, who are nevertheless successful enough to be reasonably well known as researchers.
So, while conferences are a significant part of early-career academia, this too shall pass. If it helps, you can view them as a necessary evil, like qualifying exams and the snake fight at your thesis defense. If you can get through those, you can get through the hassle of academic conferences, and then stop.
Which again, is not to excuse bad behavior on the part of conference organizers and faculty. There are things that they can and should be doing-- and the better ones are doing-- to make conference attendance a more pleasant experience for everyone. If these meetings are going to be an essential part of academic science, they need to be done right.
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d018f9cd49649daca878fa3a7d653c98 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2015/07/09/the-one-thing-everybody-should-know-about-relativity/ | The One Thing Everybody Should Know About Relativity | The One Thing Everybody Should Know About Relativity
Yesterday, I wrote about the core concepts needed to understand quantum physics, which is one of the two pillars of modern physics. The other, of course, is the theory of relativity, the full and complete version of which celebrates its 100th birthday this November (we usually talk about relativity as two pieces, Special Relativity and General Relativity, but really, it's all one thing-- "special" here means that it's a special case of the general theory). That deserves a post of its own.
Relativity has an intimidating reputation ("You need to be, like, some kind of Einstein to understand it") but as you might guess from the post titles, on a philosophical level, it's much simpler. Giving a sense of the underpinnings of quantum theory requires listing off a bunch of separate principles-- I had six items in yesterday's post-- but all of relativity flows from a single, simple idea that could easily fit on a bumper sticker:
The Laws Of Physics Do Not Depend On How You're Moving
Once you have that, all the weird stuff you may have heard about-- clocks running slow, E = mc2, the bending of light by gravity-- follows as a direct logical consequence of that principle. Which isn't to say that it's easy-- expressing this in full and correct mathematical terms requires quite a bit of work, and explaining it without math easily fills a whole book-- but on a conceptual level, the origin of relativity is really simple.
Let's take a really quick look at how this plays out in a few areas.
Space and Time
The first weird things that people learn about relativity are usually that moving clocks run slow, and moving objects shrink. This might seem like it contradicts the simple principle that I just said is the heart of the theory, because measurements of time and distance are pretty fundamental to our understanding of the world. The principle of relativity, though, is more fundamental than our experience of space and time, and the differences between moving observers are inevitable, once you properly understand what it means to measure space and time.
The basic idea of relativity dates back to the 1600's, when Galileo Galilei used it in arguing for the heliocentric model of the solar system. One of the attempted counter-arguments against heliocentrism was that if the entire Earth were moving, we would surely feel it, but Galileo pointed out that there is, in fact, no physics experiment you can do that can distinguish absolute motion. Dropping things, throwing things, jumping back and forth in the sealed cabin of a ship feels exactly the same whether the ship is anchored in calm seas, or sailing smoothly.
In the centuries separating Galileo from Einstein, the laws of physics expanded to include more than just the mechanics known to Galileo. In particular, the laws of electromagnetism were worked out, culminating in Maxwell's equations in the 1860's. These posed a bit of a problem, though, as they predict a single, constant speed for light, while Galileian common sense would seem to suggest that the speed of light should depend on the source. The famous Michelson-Morley experiment attempted to measure a change in the speed of light depending on the Earth's motion around the Sun, but failed to find any change.
Einstein's relativity explains this through the principle of relativity: the laws of physics do not depend on how you're moving, and the laws of physics include Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism. Which means that the speed of light must be exactly the same, no matter how you're moving. Einstein showed that this is inevitable when you properly understand the meaning of measuring space and time.
When I teach this, I always ask students to explain how to measure the length of an object, which gets me some weird looks. After they say "Well, you measure the distance between the two ends," I agree that that's the start, but point out that they're missing a key condition: the length of an object is the distance between its ends at a particular instant in time. Which means that the positions of the front and back ends need to be measured at precisely the same time, and that, in turn, requires that you have a way to determine the timing of two events that take place at different positions-- a set of clocks, say, each showing the correct time at its location, and all synchronized with some master clock.
But, as Einstein pointed out, such a network of clocks must be synchronized with each other by some real physical process. The most straightforward way to do the synchronization is by sending light pulses back and forth, using the constant speed of light to your advantage, but while this works to synchronize clocks for two stationary observers, a third observer moving past will see them change positions while the light pulses are in flight. This changes the distance covered by the light, and leads to the clocks being improperly synchronized. This improper synchronization by itself leads to the weird space and time effects of relativity, which you can demonstrate with trains of imaginary clocks.
Strange as it may seem, then, the slowing of clocks and shrinking of distances is, in fact, a consequence of the principle of relativity. The laws of physics can not depend on how you're moving, which means that everybody in the universe must measure the same speed of light. But this, in turn, means that it's impossible to have a single universal time that all observers will agree upon, and without that, it's impossible to have absolute length measurements that all observers will agree upon.
This does not, however, mean that everything is chaos and everybody gets to make up their own rules for space and time. The mathematical equations of relativity predict exactly how these measurements vary depending on the relative speed of the two, and these predictions have been tested to exquisite precision using experimental atomic clocks.
The time difference between a stationary clock and one moving at a few meters per second agrees beautifully with the predictions of relativity. Measurements of the lifetimes of subatomic particles moving at high speed in ion storage rings confirm that this works just as well at speeds approaching the speed of light. Relativity in physics isn't completely free-form relativism, but a rigorous and well-tested scientific theory.
E=mc2
The first consequence of the principle of relativity, then, is that measurements of times and distances vary between moving observers. You can describe this as a mixing of space and time-- what one observer sees as a difference only in space (two events taking places in different positions at exactly the same time), another observer will see as a difference in both space and time (the two events are still separated in space, but no longer take place at the same instant). One of the first to pick up on this interpretation was Einstein's former professor Hermann Minkowski, who in 1908 grandly declared that:
Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.
In practical terms, the effects of relativity on space and time are small enough at everyday speed that we continue to treat the two separately. In the realm of physics, though, Minkowski is absolutely correct-- what we see as space and what we see as time are two aspects of the same thing, which physicists give the depressingly literal name "spacetime."
Minkowski's approach to spacetime can be expressed in geometrical terms, and many discussions of relativity rely heavily on "Minkowski diagrams," plots of space and time showing events as perceived by individual observers. Einstein initially regarded this geometrical approach somewhat coolly, but soon realized that it was essential for extending his 1905 theory of relativity ("Special Relativity," because it only works in the special case of motion at constant relative speed) to include acceleration and gravity (about which more later).
Before we get to General Relativity, though, Minkowski spacetime provides a nice conceptual way to understand the world's most famous equation, E=mc2. This is the one result that almost everyone can correctly attribute to Einstein, stating that mass and energy are equivalent to one another.
The surprising thing about this relationship is that it holds for objects that aren't moving. In fact, the form that's usually given is a simplification of the full equation giving the energy of a moving object (E=γmc2, where the lowercase gamma depends on the relative speed of the object and the observer measuring its energy). In classical physics, we think of energy as something associated with moving objects, but in relativity there's this extra energy associated with a stationary object, simply by virtue of it having mass-- the "rest energy" of a particular object.
This is a very strange idea, but we can understand where it comes from thanks to Minkowski's unification of space and time. The ordinary kinetic energy that we associate with a moving object is due to its motion through space, but relativity tells us that space and time are different aspects of the same thing. And while a stationary object may not be moving in spade, it's nevertheless moving through spacetime, progressing into the future at a rate of one second per second. That motion through the time part of spacetime is what gives massive particles the rest energy that we measure in physics experiments.
Bending Light
Einstein's first papers on relativity were published in 1905, but the full theory wasn't really complete until 1915, when he published what we now call General Relativity. The intervening ten years were filled with a lot of false starts and mis-steps, as he had to laboriously learn all the necessary mathematics with the help of his friend Marcel Grossmann. This process was described in a very nice lecture by Jurgen Renn at the Convergence conference a couple of weeks ago.
The mathematics of General Relativity is exceptionally complicated, but its origin springs from the same basic concept described above: the laws of physics do not depend on how you're moving. The 1905 theory covers only constant motion, but the 1915 theory extends this to include acceleration and gravity. Einstein traced the origin of this to what he called "the happiest thought of my life," sitting in a chair at the Patent Office. Like many people daydreaming at work, he was thinking about a person falling out a high window, but rather than imagining the defenestration of a particular unpleasant individual, Einstein was thinking about the physics. Specifically, the fact that the person falling would not feel any sensation of weight while falling.
This happy thought is an expression of what's now called the "equivalence principle," and shows that the effects of gravity are indistinguishable from the effects of acceleration. Just as there's no experiment you can do in the sealed cabin of a ship to determine whether the ship is moving or at rest, there is no experiment you can do in a small sealed room that will tell you whether you're at rest in a world with no gravity, or freely falling in a world where gravity acts. That equivalence set Einstein on the path to including gravity in relativity, and led to the best theoretical explanation we have for the force of gravity.
One of the easiest ways to see how this plays out is through the bending of light. We start by imagining a dog floating weightlessly in a small sealed room. For some obscure reason, there is a laser pointer mounted on one side of the room, shining horizontally across the room, striking the opposite wall at the same height above the floor.
Rather than taking a pleasant vacation in a space capsule, though, this dog has in fact been trapped in a falling elevator by an evil cat. The dog, like the falling person in Einstein's happy daydream, has no sensation of gravity while falling, but the cat sees the elevator accelerate downward. Both dog and cat must agree, though, that the light hits the opposite wall at the same height above the floor of the elevator, which means that according to the cat, the light has to follow a curved trajectory as it crosses the elevator. The only difference between the world seen by the dog and the world seen by the cat is that the cat is aware of the presence of gravity; thus, gravity must bend light, in order for physics to be working the same way for the weightless dog and the weighted cat.
This is one of the simplest examples of the equivalence principle in action, and also the basis of the most famous proof of relativity. The bending of light in earthbound elevators is far too small to measure, but a truly gigantic mass can deflect light by a more substantial amount, say, when it passes close to the surface of the Sun. In 1919, an expedition led by the British astronomer Arthur Eddington photographed a total eclipse of the Sun, and showed that stars close to the disk of the Sun appeared to be displaced slightly from their normal positions. The amount of the displacement precisely matched the prediction of Einstein's theory, and catapulted him to international fame through wonderfully hyperbolic newspaper headlines.
You can see the origin of some of the other prominent results of general relativity through similar Equivalence Principle arguments, but this post is already running long, so I'll just point out again that I wrote a whole book on this. And there's more to General Relativity than just the Equivalence Principle, involving four-dimensional geometry of curved surfaces, and tons of math. All of it can be traced back to that happy thought, though, which in turn is an extension of the single simple principle at the heart of relativity: the laws of physics do not depend on how you're moving.
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dfe1c25b27dae0503299fafd345db4b8 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2015/07/16/the-physics-of-submarine-navigation-and-prison-tunnels/ | What Submarine Navigation Can Teach Us About Building Luxury Prison Tunnels | What Submarine Navigation Can Teach Us About Building Luxury Prison Tunnels
One of the most colorful stories getting press these at the moment is the escape of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, a drug kingpin known as "El Chapo," from a Mexican prison. El Chapo made his getaway through an elaborate tunnel stretching nearly a mile. This wasn't a simple Tim-Robbins-with-a-rock-hammer hole, but a relatively luxurious route with its own lighting and an escape motorcycle on a track. It was presumably started at a construction site nearly a mile away from the prison, and dug to a point under the prison bathroom, with the connection to the inside being the last bit done.
A motorcycle adapted to a rail is seen under the half-built house where drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo"... [+] Guzman made his escape through a tunnel from the Altiplano maximum security prison in Almoloya, west of Mexico City, Tuesday, July 14, 2015. A widespread manhunt that included highway checkpoints, stepped up border security and closure of an international airport failed to turn up any trace of "El Chapo" Guzman by Monday, more than 24 hours after he escaped through an underground tunnel in his prison cell. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)
This raises the obvious question of how you accomplish such a thing. The obvious answer is "Large sums of money," some of that presumably going to prison officials, but there's a bit of a science hook here in that it's difficult to imagine how you would steer such a tunnel to end up precisely where it needed to be. (Coincidentally, I recently started playing Minecraft with my six-year-old daughter, and can thus confirm the difficulty of navigating underground, at least in a simulated world of big pixellated cubes...)
I've never broken out of prison via an elaborate tunnel (as far as you know...), but I do know a tiny bit about the navigational problem. The lab where I worked as a post-doc received a good deal of funding from the Navy, and some of my colleagues had to give tours to admirals on a regular basis, because of their interest in the problem of submarine navigation. In the same way that someone digging a tunnel to rescue a Mexican drug lord wouldn't want to just pop up to the surface to check their progress, submarines are supposed to stay submerged. And while they can send out sonar pings to determine what's around them based on the echoes that come back, they prefer not to.
Crew members stand on top of USS Columbus (SSN-762) submarine as they sail through the Panama... [+] Canal's Miraflores Locks en route to the Pacific Ocean in Panama City, Friday, July 10, 2015. (AP Photo/Arnulfo Franco)
So, how do you navigate from inside a sealed can underwater? You can't just whip out your GPS phone, or even rely on a compass, but it's possible to quietly steer a submarine from point A to point B given good maps and two physics tools: a gyroscope, and an accelerometer.
There are lots of toy gyroscopes on the market, and these use the physics of angular momentum to produce an almost magical effect, where a spinning gyroscope supported by one end of its axis won't fall over, but instead precesses in a horizontal circle. This is probably the most impressive trick we do in our introductory Newtonian mechanics courses, and I made a computer simulation of the spinning wheel (with GIF's!) back in March to show how this works (there's also a follow-up post talking more about the forces involved).
The original idea of a navigational gyroscope is the same as the toy: a heavy, rapidly-spinning object. The difference is that rather than mounting it so that only one end is supported, leading to the precession effect, you mount it on a gimbal system so that it's effectively supported right at the center of mass. In this case, the gyroscope axis will remain pointing the same direction in space at all times, no matter how you move the mount around. The physics principle at work is the conservation of angular momentum: the spinning object has angular momentum pointing along its axis of rotation, and the total angular momentum of a system can only be changed by exerting a torque, a force acting at some distance from the center of rotation. Given good enough bearings in your gimbal mount, the torque produced by the mount is will be negligible, and the angular momentum will retain the same value and more importantly point in the same direction as long as the object keeps spinning. Align the axis with true north when you're in port, and it will continue to point north as your submarine sails around.
Of course "given good enough bearings" is doing a lot of work in the sentence above; it's impossible to make perfectly frictionless bearings to hold a real spinning object, so any physical gyroscope is limited by the inevitable drag. Happily, though, there's a way to make a "gyroscope" with no moving parts, thanks to the Sagnac effect.
A schematic showing a Sagnac interferometer, used to measure small angular accelerations. From... [+] Wikimedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sagnac_interferometer.svg
The Sagnac effect lets you use the interference of light to measure rotation. If you take a beam of light and split it in two, then send those two beams around a closed loop in opposite directions, what you get when you recombine them depends on the "phase" between the light waves. If the peaks of one wave fall in the same places as the peaks of the other, you get a bright beam at the output; if the peaks of one fall in the valleys of the other, you get nothing. This phase turns out to be sensitive to the rotation of the loop-- light traveling in the same direction as the rotation needs to go a little farther to catch up to the spot where it entered, while light in the opposite direction gets back to the start a little "early." If you turn on a Sagnac interferometer while your submarine is in port pointing in a known direction, and carefully track its output, you will know exactly how much the sub has rotated from its original direction. This serves the same function as having a mechanical gyroscope always pointing in a particular direction.
The sensitivity of a Sagnac interferometer depends on the total area enclosed by the loop, which can be expanded tremendously by making the loop out of a long optical fiber, with laser beams traveling in opposite directions. Such a system is colloquially known as a "fiber gyro" or a "laser gyro," and they're common in a lot of navigation systems these days.
The other tool you need to navigate effectively is an accelerometer. As the name suggests, this measures acceleration, that is, how much the velocity of something changes. Relativity tells us that it's impossible to detect absolute motion without some external reference, but also that the effect of acceleration is indistinguishable from that of gravity, and that's something you can measure inside a sealed-up submarine. When you accelerate forward, it feels like the force of gravity has acquired a small backward component. If you keep careful track of how big that backward component is, and how long it lasts, you'll always know how fast you're moving relative to the place where you started.
There are lots of ways to measure acceleration, but the basic principle always involves a mass on a spring of some sort. When the velocity of the support changes, the spring stretches and pulls the mass to catch up; you can measure either the stretch or the oscillation that results from the catch-up portion, and that gets you the acceleration. Accelerometers can be made on a tiny scale, with microscopic cantilevers of silicon serving as both "spring" and "test mass," and these are integrated into things like cars (to trigger air bags in the event of a collision) and smartphones (which is how your phone can tell which way it's oriented, and flip the screen image accordingly).
The gyroscope-and-accelerometer combination lets you know what direction you're pointed, and how fast you're moving. Keeping track of that information over time tells you exactly where you are-- if you accelerated to three miles an hour pointed due north and traveled that way for one hour, then turned west and traveled for an hour and twenty minutes, you know that you're five miles from your start point, in a direction about 37 degrees north of west. (The interested reader can verify this calculation for homework; send it to Rhett Allain for grading...)
So, why was the Navy funding research into atomic physics? Well, you can make both rotation and acceleration measurements using interference of light waves. The sensitivity of these devices, all else being equal, gets better as you make the wavelength shorter ("all else being equal" is doing a lot of work there, but this gets the key idea). As we know from basic quantum physics, though, material objects also have wave nature, so you can make an interferometer using not light waves, but atoms. Send two beams of atoms around a closed loop in opposite directions, and you can use the Sagnac effect to make an atom laser gyro; use a different type of interferometer and you can make an atom acceleromter; stack two accelerometers on top of each other, and you can measure a gradient in the acceleration of gravity, which can be used to detect things like undersea mountains. And one of the great things about doing interferometry with atoms is that the wavelength of a typical atom at a reasonable velocity is really, really short-- comparable to the wavelengths of x-rays, but much easier to work with.
Now, there are a lot of technical issues to be overcome-- it's not a simple matter of pulling out a laser and sticking in an atom source-- but at least on paper, it's possible to make atom-based sensors that are better than laser-based ones. That improvement in navigation would be worth a great deal to the Navy, so they funded my boss's research (and that of several other groups) to see about going from nifty-idea-on-paper to useful-navigational-product. That was fifteen years ago; there's now at least one company, AOSense, working on making commercial products out of this (my boss is on the board there, and at least one of his Ph.D. students who I overlapped with works there now).
Now, would any of these technologies really have been used by El Chapo's associates to direct their prison tunnel? Probably not-- tunnel diggers would move a lot more slowly than a submarine, so the need for an accelerometer would be less intense (though they might've used an accelerometer-based sensor to pace off the distance they traveled), and a compass would probably work well enough in a tunnel to keep track of the direction. But, hey, it's a nice news hook to talk about some cool bits of navigational physics...
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38ede35c6fbf226a502286bbeae98001 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2015/09/01/the-surprisingly-complicated-physics-of-how-i-didnt-lose-my-phone/ | The Surprisingly Complicated Physics Of How I Didn't Lose My Phone | The Surprisingly Complicated Physics Of How I Didn't Lose My Phone
Today is the first day of second grade for SteelyKid, and yesterday I took her and her brother, The Pip, to the outdoor pool for an end-of-summer swim. While loading them into the car on the way home, I set my phone on the roof of the minivan to free up my hands for strapping The Pip into his car seat. And then forgot to pick it up again.
I realized what I'd done a few blocks from home, and when I got out of the car, I called to Kate on the porch that I was going back to the pool, because I'd left my phone on the roof. "No, it's right there," she said. And, indeed, there it was, still on the roof more or less where I'd left it.
My phone on the roof of my car, where it somehow managed to stay for the whole drive home from the... [+] pool. (Photo by Chad Orzel)
That's kind of amazing, so to celebrate, it seems appropriate to write something about the physics involved. Because that's the kind of nerd I am...
There are two key issues here, friction and acceleration. Like any object, my phone does not spontaneously start moving without some force to make it move. When I started the car, backed out of the parking space, and pulled onto the road home, the car was accelerated by the engine supplying force through the tires, but the phone on the roof was dragged along by friction between the phone and the car. The relevant force in this case is what we call "static friction" in introductory physics, whose signature feature is that it has a maximum value. This is a very familiar effect if you've ever moved furniture-- when you try to, say, push a refrigerator across the kitchen, you need to supply a fairly substantial force just to get it to start moving. That's the maximum static friction force; once the fridge starts sliding, you're in the regime of "kinetic friction," and that force is generally smaller, which is why it takes less of a push to keep something moving than to get it started.
In order for the phone to stay on the roof, the acceleration of the car needed to be small enough that the force needed to accelerate the phone (which we know from Newton's Laws is the mass of the phone times the acceleration of the car) was smaller than the maximum possible force of static friction. This was managed partly because I drove pretty slowly on the way home-- the parking lot was crowded, and the route home runs through a residential neighborhood-- and thus never accelerated in a dramatic way that would lead the phone to slip. It's also partly thanks to the rugged plastic case on my phone, which you can sort of see in the picture. The plastic of the case is textured and a little "sticky," making the maximum force of friction fairly big, even though the roof of my car is very smooth.
Gallery: Great Books For Non-Physicists Who Want To Understand Quantum Physics 11 images View gallery
If you've ever taken high school or college physics, you've probably heard the term "coefficient of friction," which is the heuristic model physicists use to describe frictional forces. We tell students in the intro course that the frictional interaction between two surfaces is determined by the force acting between them (for a horizontal surface like the roof of my car, this is pretty much the weight of the phone) and a single coefficient that tells you how much friction you get for a given force between two particular surfaces. If the surfaces are relatively smooth and slippery-- polished wood sliding on metal, say-- the coefficient is small and the maximum force of static friction is small, while a different pair of surfaces-- rubber car tires on blacktop, say-- will give a large coefficient and a large maximum force of static friction.
I call this a "heuristic," because it's a really simple model that we use mostly because it makes for relatively simple homework problems. It boils everything down to only two factors, but in practice it only mostly works (years ago, we tried a lab measuring coefficients of friction, and it was always a disaster). You have to fall back on this sort of thing, though, because working out the exact details of how friction comes about is an impossible problem-- two macroscopic surfaces in contact with one another involve uncountably gigantic numbers of atoms on either side, each interacting with their counterparts on the other surface in ways that depend on the exact atoms involved and the distance between them. It's impossible to keep track of all that, so we sweep it under the rug marked "coefficient of friction" and push through that chapter as quickly as possible.
Of course, there's no way that physicists could leave something like that alone, so there are people investigating these interactions in great detail. I'm particularly fond of some recent experiments (one, two) by Vladan Vuletic's group at MIT, which used ultra-cold ions to investigate the microscopic physics behind friction. The basic idea is in this video from MIT and the accompanying press release:
Rather than looking at two real surfaces, which is incredibly messy, Vuletic's group simulates the interaction between two artificial "surfaces." One of these is a "crystal" consisting of a handful of trapped ions held in place by forces from high-voltage electrodes, and the other is an "optical lattice," a pattern of bright and dark spots made by a laser tuned to interact with the ions. The ions feel a force pulling them toward the bright spots, so the lattice acts like a perfect surface opposite the ions, with equally spaced "atoms" tugging on the ions.
Vuletic's experiments simulate friction by changing the ion trap to "drag" the ions over the optical lattice, and looking at the "stick-slip" motion. When the ions and the lattice are at rest, the ions will settle into positions as close to the bright spots of the lattice as they can manage. When the ion trap starts moving, they stick in those positions as long as possible, then dramatically slip to the next bright spot in the lattice. During the slip, they absorb and emit a lot of light, and Vuletic's group uses the resulting flash of light to detect when a given ion has "slipped." Tracking this microscopic motion as they slide the ions back and forth over the lattice lets them measure the resulting force of friction.
This toy model lets them investigate all sorts of cool behavior relating to the origin of friction. With a single ion in the trap, they vary the relative speed of the ions sliding across the lattice and the strength of the lattice interaction, and identify four different types of microscopic behavior, leading to forces that depend on velocity and temperature in distinct ways. With multiple ions in their trap, they investigate how the frictional force depends on the spacing between ions and lattice sites. If the ion spacing is matched to the lattice spacing (that is, the distance between ions is an integer multiple of the spacing between bright spots in the lattice), the force is a maximum, as the ions have to "slip" in unison, but when the ion spacing is mis-matched to the lattice (the spacing between ions is an integer-and-a-half times the spacing between bright spots), the force is a minimum, as the ions "slip" one at a time.
The amazing level of control they have of their trapped ions and their lattice laser lets them study these interactions with incredible precision. And factors like lattice spacing and interatomic interactions are the microscopic details that we gloss over by talking about a "coefficient of friction," helping determine why some materials slide smoothly while others stick.
So, even a question as simple as "Why didn't my phone slide off the roof of my car?" turns out to depend on rich and fascinating physics on the atomic scale. The fact that we can now study this in such incredible detail is yet another demonstration of why this is a great time to be working in physics.
Mostly, though, I'm just grateful that all those atoms came together in such a way that I don't have to buy a new phone...
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e384e78b60e3b126bd9f66093ced6f63 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2015/09/10/why-every-college-student-needs-to-take-science/ | Why Every College Student Needs To Take Science Courses | Why Every College Student Needs To Take Science Courses
My "day job" is as a physics professor, and one of the things those of us in the business agonize about is the steep drop-off in students taking physics at various levels. Using statistics from the AIP, nearly 40% of high-school students take physics, while putting together enrollment numbers and the total college population suggests that the fraction of college students taking physics is a factor of ten smaller (this is a crude estimate, and seems low but not wildly implausible). Very few of those take anything beyond an introductory course required for some other major-- years ago, I went to a conference on introductory physics teaching, and the factoid I remember is that only around 3% of students who take the intro course go on to take another class.
The problem is particularly acute for physics, because we have a (not undeserved) reputation as the hardest and most mathematical of the sciences, but it's part of a more general phenomenon. Lots of students take science in high school because it's required (either formally as a graduation requirement, or informally as a "you need to take this set of elective courses if you want to get into a good college" kind of thing), then run away as fast as they can when they get to college, and have (nearly) full control of their course selections.
Students who aren't already planning to major in science often regard it as a waste of their time, a message unfortunately echoed by powerful politicians. Most colleges and universities have some sort of "general education" requirement forcing students to take at least a couple of math and science courses, but many non-science majors will take the barest minimum, and work very hard to put those off as long as possible. Disgruntled spring-term seniors who don't want to be in the course but can't graduate without it are a regular and unpleasant feature of our "Gen Ed" courses in physics and astronomy.
This approach is a major mistake, and having offered some advice to future science majors, let me offer some encouragement for non-scientists facing the prospect of having to take science in college. There are lots of reasons why you should take science, or at least shouldn't avoid it; here are a few.
The passage tomb at Newgrange, outside Dublin (photo by Chad Orzel).
Science Is What Makes Us Human Academics studying art and literature aren't shy about claiming fundamental status for their subjects, regularly declaring that art and literature capture something essential about the nature of being human. They've even successfully branded themselves as "the humanities," as if all other areas of study are inhuman and alien.
In fact, though, science is every bit as fundamental to the human experience as art. Art scholars will point to ancient paintings and sculptures as evidence of the fundamental human drive to make art, but science is a necessary precursor to those. Before some proto-human could paint hand prints on a cave wall, they needed to figure out what rocks to grind up to make the pigment, and how to mix them with ash and animal fat to make paint. That process demands reasoning that is fundamentally scientific.
Branding aside, the scientific mode of thinking is not alien and difficult-- scientists are smart, but not that smart. When you actively avoid engaging with science, you're cutting yourself off from a deep and fundamental part of the human experience.
Science Is More Familiar Than You Think Following closely on the previous point, I would argue that scientific thinking, broadly defined, is an essential part of all manner of everyday activities. Things that non-scientists do for fun and relaxation are, in fact, making use of the same reasoning process as scientists making discoveries. Hobbies like stamp collecting, hidden-object games, or playing sports draw on the same process that scientists have used in the past to make great discoveries.
Yes, science requires a good deal of specialized background knowledge; so does anything worth doing. The core process is fundamental and universal, though, and if you focus on that, you'll find that science is not so different from ordinary hobbies. If you understand how to play cards, you can understand the path to dark matter, and pretty much any of the other great discoveries that have reshaped our understanding of the universe.
(As you can tell from those links, this is a Thing for me-- I have a whole book about the ways scientific thinking shows up in everyday activities.)
Leah Roth (2R), a junior biology and pre-medical major, attends physiology class before soccer... [+] practice April 15, 2015 at the University of Mary Washington, a coed school and Division III member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, in Fredericksburg, Virginia. The 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup, hosted by Canada, will be held from June 6th to July 5th. AFP PHOTO/BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI (Photo credit should read BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)
Turnabout Is Fair Play At this point you might be thinking "You may be right that I can use scientific thinking, but I'm not comfortable doing that." And, sure, personal inclination plays a big role.
But then, the same thing is happening to many of your classmates who plan to major in science. Those same general education requirements that make English majors take science classes force science majors to take English classes. And in the very same way that many future literary scholars find it uncomfortable to work in an explicitly scientific mode, many future scientists find it uncomfortable to grapple with the fuzzy ambiguity of literature. If anything, the non-scientists often have it easier, because science departments generally offer special courses tailored for the interests of non-majors. Pretty much any college or university will have some variant of "Physics for Poets," but it's exceedingly rare to find anyone offering "Poetry for Physicists."
So, yeah, you may not necessarily find the scientific mode of operation congenial. But some of your classmates feel the same way about whatever you're majoring in, and they have to take those classes, too. It's all part of the essential process of " making yourself into the person you want to spend the rest of your life with."
In this April 3, 2009 photo, Vassar College biology and cognitive science professor John Long,... [+] second from right, and his students look on as swimming robots navigate in a science lab pool in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Long is among a small group of researchers worldwide building robots that can do things like shimmy through water or slither up shores to aid the study of biology and evolution. They believe the practice is likely to grow as technological advances allow robots to mimic biological actions far better than before. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)
College Science Is Not High School Science A lot of the apprehension new college students bring to math and science classes stems from bad past experiences. These often result from teachers with limited resources, sometimes working well outside their own areas of expertise, forced to teach a prescribed curriculum aimed toward a particular test.
Many of these constraints will be different at the college or university level. If you take physics in college, you'll be taking it from a physicist, not a biology education major who needed to pick up the physics class because the district can't afford a separate physics teacher. The people teaching your classes will be genuine experts in the subject matter in ways that high school teachers often are not. And the available resources for labs and hands-on investigation are often far better than you'll find at the high school level.
More than that, if you're taking one of the targeted "gen ed" courses for non-majors, you'll be getting the "Good Parts Version" of the subject in question, a selection of the most interesting topics presented in an accessible way. Last fall I taught a non-majors course on relativity, where in a single course we got to topics that only show up in senior-level electives in the major sequence. You don't need to go through two courses' worth of blocks sliding on inclined planes before getting to talk about black holes and wormholes.
You may think you don't like science based on bad experiences in high school, but it may just be that you don't like high school science. What you see in college is a very different thing, and you may well find it more appealing, even inspiring.
The road ahead will be rough, and science will help you navigate it. (Photo by Chad Orzel)
Even If You Don't Care About Science, Science Cares About You There's really no way to avoid an "eat your vegetables" item on a list like this, so, well, you need to eat your vegetables. By which I mean that even if you don't personally find science congenial, your future life will be affected by scientific issues in a deep and profound way, and you need to understand at least a little bit about it to make informed decisions.
The biggest challenge facing future generations will be dealing with climate change and its consequences, which is fundamentally a scientific issue. In coming decades, critical policy decisions will need to be made-- about energy sources, mitigation strategies, etc.-- and getting those questions right demands some scientific information. Public health is another huge issue, requiring informed decisions about how to fight pandemic disease, an aging population, etc. There are even strong scientific components to economic and ethical issues like the societal displacement caused by increasing automation and computerization of, well, everything.
Scientific knowledge even comes in to more personal decisions. Scientific thinking will help you avoid all manner of medical quackery and other scams, which can have disastrous consequences.
Successfully navigating the road ahead will require making informed decisions. This will demand not just trivial knowledge of facts, but some understanding of scientific standards and methods for evaluating information. This is acquired in, yes, science classes.
So, for these reasons (and many more), I would urge all students to take science classes in college, and take them seriously. They'll connect you with an essential part of the human experience, they'll probably be better than you fear, and they'll help you gain essential skills for navigating the future. Science courses aren't an arbitrary bullshit requirement imposed to protect faculty jobs, they're a necessary step in helping you become a better citizen and a better human being.
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35247a3108c6f4161acdad0eee31dcea | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2015/12/09/holiday-gift-physics-the-flying-turtle-scooter/ | Holiday Gift Physics: The Flying Turtle Scooter | Holiday Gift Physics: The Flying Turtle Scooter
As we enter the winter solstice holiday season, I'm sure many readers are grappling with the question of what sort of gifts to get kids. There are any number of concerns that enter into this: What does the child like? Is a potential toy age-appropriate and safe? Will the potential gift both foster positive behavior and endear the giver to the child? And, most importantly: Does the gift in question involve physics in some way?
(Well, OK, I regard that as an important consideration. Happily, I can find physics in just about anything...)
One good option that successfully meets all of these criteria is the Flying Turtle scooter that SteelyKid got last year, seen in action here:
This is a pretty cool little toy: It's a low seat on wheels with a set of handlebars on the front, that kids propel forward by wiggling the handlebars back and forth. Really, that's all-- just watch the video.
Now, obviously, there's some physics in this. But exactly how it works is a little puzzling, and not especially helped by the "How's It Go?" explanation on the manufacturer's FAQ page:
We’re still trying to figure this one out! The unique method of propulsion has made our scooter the subject of studies in Experimental Nonlinear Physics around the world. The scientific explanation goes something like this: “The front wheels of the machine are connected to the handlebars by a lever, in such a way that they are located behind the axis of rotation of the steering column. This means that a torque applied to the handlebars will cause a lateral friction force by the wheels on the ground, a force parallel to the axle and perpendicular to the direction the wheels are rolling. If a component of this force points to the back of the car, the reaction force of the ground on the car (by Newton’s “action/reaction” law) points partly forward and accelerates the car. This is the force that drives the car forward and it ultimately comes from the force you exert on the handlebars, magnified by the lever advantage, which is 2 or 3 for the Flying Turtle®”.
That's in the "almost-but-not-quite sensible" zone of a lot of attempts to explain the physics of sporting goods, but it misuses a couple of terms-- I doubt very much that there's anything "nonlinear" happening here-- and is vague on some other key points. So I spent a bunch of time this Thanksgiving watching SteelyKid ride it around and pondering the mechanics. I'm still stuck on one point, but I think I can offer a more detailed take on their explanation that might clear some of it up.
The key to the whole thing is that the wheels attached to the handlebars are offset from the pivot point. A schematic diagram of the key bits looks like this:
For clarity, we'll think about the starting position with the handlebars and wheels centered and the scooter at rest. When the rider twists the handlebars to the left, the whole thing wants to rotate in a counter-clockwise direction, meaning the back end, where the wheels are, wants to shift to the right. Friction with the floor tries to prevent the wheel from sliding, and if the wheels were exactly on the shaft to the handlebars, that would be the end of it.
But the wheels aren't centered, they're off to either side of the main shaft. And that means that the wheels aren't trying to move just to the right, but also along the direction of the shaft, along a circle centered on the pivot point. The right-hand wheel wants to go both right and forward a little, while the left-hand wheel wants to go both right and backwards a little. This is the key to propelling the scooter forward.
If we focus in on the right-hand wheel, we see that the force from the axle (dark blue arrow in the right half of that diagram) goes to the right and forward. We can break this force up into two components, one directly to the right, and the other directly forward, represented by the light-blue and green arrows, respectively.
The other force at work here is friction, which tries to prevent the wheel from moving. In the side-to-side direction, this is easy, but the wheel can roll forward, which drastically reduces the effective frictional force in that direction. The effective friction force is just the dark-red arrow, which is equal in magnitude to the light-blue rightward component of the force from the axle, but in the opposite direction, canceling it out. That leaves the forward component of the force unaffected, and so the scooter accelerates forward.
(If you want to be really picky about it, the force of friction is, in fact, perfectly successful at preventing the bit of the wheel in contact with the floor from sliding forward. The force from the axle isn't applied directly at that point, though, but up at the hub of the wheel. And whenever you have two forces offset from one another, that produces a torque that causes the wheel to start rotating. Conceptually, though, it's basically like having friction only side-to-side, not front-to-back.)
What about the lever business in the explanation on the manufacturer's web site? That's mostly accurate-- because the shaft out to the handlebar is longer than the shaft back to the wheels, when the rider applies a twisting force, that produces a large torque. At the back end, where the wheels hit the floor, this is effectively like having a bigger sideways force applied, so all the arrows get bigger. A relatively small wiggle back and forth translates to a relatively large forward force-- probably not as large as you could get by applying the same push directly to the ground, but that's less fun.
So, a leftward initial twist of the handlebars produces some forward acceleration. When the rider wiggles the handlebar back in the other direction, you can repeat all of this for the left wheel, and again find an effective net force in the forward direction, continuing the acceleration. and SteelyKid merrily trundles across the kitchen and down the hall.
So, what's the point I'm still stuck on? Well, the analysis above looks at the right-hand wheel, which wants to roll forward. If you were to do the same thing for the left-hand wheel, you'd find that it wants to roll backwards. Which might make you think that the whole thing should just stay put.
That's a little too simplistic, though, because it implicitly assumes that the pivot point is fixed. But it's not-- it's mounted to the seat, and rolls with it. So, in practice what happens is that the right wheel rolls forward while the left wheel stays more or less where it is. The right way to think about the whole thing is in terms of torque, treating the location of the left wheel as the fixed point about which everything rotates, not the pivot on the shaft.
The thing I'm stuck on, though, is why the left wheel stays fixed. Because all of the same argument above would work taking the right wheel as fixed, only the scooter would move backwards in that case. And yet, that never seems to happen-- wiggling the handlebars always moves it forward, never back.
This lingering confusion is almost certainly a result of thinking about the whole thing like a physicist who normally works with frictionless spheres, not an engineer who deals with real wheels. If anyone reading this knows the obvious point I'm missing, feel free to leave a comment to enlighten me.
That one sticking point aside, though, I would happily recommend this as a toy for any small children or physicists on your holiday gift list. It's fun to ride, and provides a great example of the way that even three centuries on from Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica classical physics provides fun little puzzles to think about.
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d8ffb8f70cfdf827ad5cc84d9a99649b | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2015/12/17/football-physics-sports-and-philosophies-of-timekeeping/ | Football Physics: Sports And Philosophies Of Time(keeping) | Football Physics: Sports And Philosophies Of Time(keeping)
Football, at least the American game, is an extremely Newtonian game-- my occasional whimsical attempts to explore different rules of physics notwithstanding, more or less everything that happens on the field can be explained with classical physics. Which makes it a good vehicle for exploring principles of mechanics, but does sort of limit the range of topics for an ongoing series.
Which is not to say that football doesn't provide some opportunities to talk about more exotic forms of physics. It's just that such discussions have to be more metaphorical than strictly literal. But if you're okay with metaphor, football can provide an excuse to talk about extremely Big Questions. For example, comparing football to other sports gives a nice metaphorical way to talk about approaches to the nature of time.
ARLINGTON, TX - SEPTEMBER 13: (L-R) Head coach Tom Coughlin of the New York Giants greets Eli... [+] Manning #10 before a game against the Dallas Cowboys at AT&T Stadium on September 13, 2015 in Arlington, Texas. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)
As I said, NFL football is a very Newtonian game, so it seems fitting that it has a solidly Newtonian approach to time. The game follows a very rigid schedule-- four fifteen-minute quarters in a regulation game-- and the time remaining is displayed for all to see on a giant clock on the scoreboard. Every player on the field and every fan in the stadium knows exactly how much time is left.
(Which is not to say that timekeeping in football is simple-- there are a bunch of rules about when the clock starts and stops, and managing those adds a layer of complexity to the game. As fans of the New York Football Giants know all too well, having lost at least three games this season because of clock-management errors that left the opposing team enough time to drive a game-winning score.)
This is very much like the classical conception of time in physics. From the days of Galileo and Newton on down through Einstein's era, time was imagined as a universal and absolute quantity. Metaphorically, it was as if the universe ran to the tick of a single master clock, started at the moment of creation and in principle knowable by everyone in the universe.
French referee Benoit Bastien looks at his watch during the French League Cup football match Rennes... [+] against Toulouse on December 15, 2015 at the Roazhon Park stadium in Rennes, western France. AFP PHOTO / DAMIEN MEYER / AFP / DAMIEN MEYER (Photo credit should read DAMIEN MEYER/AFP/Getty Images)
As physics expanded beyond basic mechanics, though, the idea of universal time began to cause problems. In particular, the new physics of electromagnetism runs into trouble with the principle of relativity.
This conflict can be resolved by disposing of the idea of time as a universal absolute. Unfortunately, the idea of universal time also has a powerful appeal on a philosophical sort of level, so many physicists were reluctant to let it go, even when physics was clearly pointing that way. This led to the development of what you might call intermediate theories, between Newtonian absolute time and Einstein's relativity. Two of these, by the Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz and the French polymath Henri Poincaré, were essentially complete as far as the mathematics of relativity were concerned, but viewed the changes in the rate at which time passes for a moving observer as a "local" effect. Their theories included additional postulates beyond the two used by Einstein (which really was only one repeated for emphasis...) that basically amount to preserving a preferred universal time while concealing it from all moving observers.
The sports analogy here would also be to timekeeping in football, but in this case the European version. Soccer (and also rugby) runs on a strict clock, but time is kept by the referee on the field. TV broadcasts show a clock, but it's only an approximation to the official time, leading to the phenomenon of "injury time," where the running clock seen by fans has passed the normal limit for a game, but play continues because the true time kept by the referee has not yet been exhausted. This adds an extra element of suspense at the end of a close game, because unlike American football (and other Newtonian-timed games like basketball), nobody knows exactly when the game will end, only that the end is near.
Chess star Bobby Fischer of New York, left, and Russian world champion Tigran Petrosian are seen... [+] during their fourth game of the semi-final series for the world chess title, Oct. 13, 1971, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. (AP Photo/Domingo Zenteno)
Of course, the full modern theory of relativity dispenses with the notion of universal time altogether, something that is clearly stated in Einstein's first papers on the subject in 1905. Einstein's approach is more simple and elegant, and this is a large part of why he gets primary credit even though Poincaré and Lorentz had most of the math before him. (It doesn't hurt that Einstein extended his work to General Relativity, either...)
Since Einstein's day, we have known that time is very much an individual thing. The rate at which a particular observer experiences time depends on how they are moving, where they are located relative to massive objects, and so on. Two randomly chosen observers will disagree about the precise timing of events at different positions, and can even disagree about which happened first. This all seems very strange, but it's fully confirmed by experiments.
The best sports analogue for this is chess. Chess matches feature a prominent clock, measuring the time taken to make moves, but each player has their own clock, and keeps their own time. Which means that, if you look at the individual clocks, the two competitors will disagree about the duration of the match, just like observers in relativity.
(This post was inspired in part by Jesse Richman's suggestion at the Washington Post to apply this sort of individual timing to political debates. I can't imagine this ever actually being adopted, but as someone who occasionally teaches relativity to political science majors, I think it would be an awesome example...)
CHICAGO, IL - SEPTEMBER 28: Chris Denorfia #15 of the Chicago Cubs watchies his walk-off home run... [+] leave the park against the Kansas City Royals at Wrigley Field on September 28, 2015 in Chicago, Illinois. The Chicago Cubs won 1-0 in eleven innings. (Photo by Jon Durr/Getty Images)
Of course, there's another aspect to time in modern physics, namely the notion of deep time embedded in Big Bang cosmology. Going back to antiquity, the universe was believed to be old, but bounded by time spans that were basically comprehensible on a human scale. Probably the most (in)famous example of this is the chronology of Bishop Ussher, who basically added up the ages of all the named individuals in the Bible to determine the date of the Creation (Saturday, October 22, 4004 BC, to be specific).
Starting in the 1800's, though, the idea that the Earth is vastly older than recorded history began to gain scientific popularity, though it took a long time before the billion-year time scales suggested by geology could be reconciled with physics-- see, for example, the story of Lord Kelvin's attempt to estimate the age of the Earth. As we've learned more about physics and astronomy, though, numerous lines of evidence have converged on an impressively precise value for the age of the universe as a whole: 13.799±0.021 billion years. We can reconstruct a good deal of that history in detail, and continuing observations of distant galaxies and nearby comets and asteroids are helping fill in the gaps.
The sports analogue to the idea of deep time would be baseball. A baseball game isn't played for a fixed time, but for a fixed number of innings, which can be as long or as short as the skills of the players allow. This adds its own sort of drama, in things like walk-off home runs, where a game in the late innings can be ended with a single swing, sometimes in immortal fashion:
To old-school baseball fans, the lack of a running clock is a big part of the romance of the game-- it takes as long as it takes, and that's all there is to it. Younger, more impatient fans find the leisurely pace maddening, and there are endless debates on sports media about what, if anything, should be done to speed baseball up.
Of course, the current age of the universe is not the longest time scale conceived in modern physics-- since the discovery of dark energy in the late 1990's, we've known that the universe will expand and cool forever, making it impossible to define a sharp end of time. Cosmologists can (somewhat) sensibly talk about eventual endpoints like the final evaporation of supermassive black holes, on a time scale of 1060 years or even longer. I'd love to give a sports analogy for this, but I don't understand Cricket any better than I understand dark energy, so I'll just stop here...
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47d6f70b4e7deb9eeafae786bdb9c2f7 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2015/12/22/the-expanse-and-the-physics-of-stealth-in-space/ | 'The Expanse' And The Physics Of Stealth In Space | 'The Expanse' And The Physics Of Stealth In Space
A key plot point in the pilot of The Expanse involves a stealth ship, lying in wait for one set of unsuspecting protagonists to come along, at which point it unleashes destruction that will turn out to have disastrous consequences for everyone involved. This is a classic space-opera trope, which is basically just an update of the classic adventure-story trope of having people jump out of hiding to attack the heroes. Only in space, there's not all that much for people to hide behind (though it does happen-- there are a whole bunch of hidden-ship tricks in the Star Wars movies, from the Millennium Falcon ducking into an asteroid field to the hidden battle fleet in Return of the Jedi), so it's pretty common to invent technologies for hiding ships in plain sight.
As common as it is, though, the idea of stealth in space is inherently kind of problematic. It's a lot harder to hide something out in space than many authors seem to think, because of physics.
One of the spaceships in 'The Expanse.' Image from NBCUniversal.
It might not seem like that big a deal to hide something in space. After all, in the immortal words of Douglas Adams, "Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is." There's no end of room to hide in, and it's really dark, so, you know, you just paint your ship black and stay out of the way. That sorta-kinda works, provided your ship is fairly small-- the odds of it passing in front of something bright enough to see easily and blocking the light are pretty minimal. After all, it's exceedingly difficult to detect even really big things that aren't making any effort to hide-- every year or two, there's a story about some big-ish asteroid being detected just before it zips past the Earth. We even struggle to find things that are the size of entire planets (maybe).
Of course, it's a little more complicated than that, because if you're doing space battle scenes, you've got less space to work with than the entire Solar System. A lurking attack ship out in the Kuiper Belt just isn't a credible threat shipping in the Asteroid Belt. The range of useful places to hide is much smaller if you want to be able to attack the people you're hiding from.
There's also the issue that people who are expecting to (maybe) be attacked would probably be actively searching the immediate neighborhood, not just passively looking for reflected light or obstructed starlight. The obvious way to do this is something analogous to radar: you send out pulses of light, and look for the light that bounces back from nearby objects. Since light travels at a constant speed, knowing how long it takes the light to go out and come back tells you how far away something is, allowing you to build up a map of your immediate neighborhood. In space, you need to sweep a larger volume airplanes and weather radar on Earth need to worry about, but the basic principle is the same.
INDIAN SPRINGS, NV - SEPTEMBER 14: An F-117A Nighthawk flies by during a U.S. Air Force firepower... [+] demonstration at the Nevada Test and Training Range September 14, 2007 near Indian Springs, Nevada. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
Of course, hiding from radar is something we already know how to do. The term "stealth ship" is a reference to modern military aircraft like the "stealth fighters" developed by the US Air Force, after all. These use a combination of special shapes (surfaces put together in ways meant to reflect radar pulses off at an angle, rather than back to the emitter) and special materials to evade radar detection.
These sorts of techniques could be adapted to the problem of evading radar in space, as well, and in the original books, there's a nod in this direction. In a later volume, a key plot element is the theft of special radar-absorbing paint, which is then put to nefarious purposes. And with travel in vacuum removing the need for space ships to be aerodynamic, it might be easier to construct ships whose shape deflects radar in useful ways.
There's one final obstacle to hiding ships in space, though, that comes from fundamental physics. While you can avoid radar pulses sent out by other ships, it turns out that there's no way to avoid having your own ship emit radiation that another ship could detect. Not if you want to keep people alive inside your ship, anyway.
One of the spaceships from "The Expanse." Image from NBCUniversal.
The key issue here is the phenomenon that launched quantum physics, namely black-body radiation. The most familiar form of this is the glow of a hot object, so you see it every time you turn on an incandescent light or cook breakfast. This radiation is a very simple and universal phenomenon, and the exact spectrum of the light emitted depends only on the temperature, not the composition of the object, or how it's heated.
While you need to get objects very hot before they emit enough light in the visible part of the spectrum for us to see, every object, regardless of its temperature, will emit thermal radiation with a blackbody spectrum determined by its temperature. This applies even to exotic objects like black holes-- that's what Hawking radiation is all about-- and the universe as a whole is permeated by the Cosmic Microwave Background, which fits perfectly to a blackbody spectrum with a temperature about 2.7 degrees above absolute zero, leading to the most iconic xkcd comic ever drawn.
Any object at a temperature higher than that background will emit radiation with a black-body spectrum showing a higher temperature. And the amount of power radiated also increases rapidly with temperature-- the Stefan-Boltzmann law tells us the power goes like the fourth power of the temperature, so if you double the temperature, you get 16 times as much radiation.
What's this have to do with stealth in space? Well, a spaceship that's trying to hide will still be emitting thermal radiation, and would show up very brightly in the right regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. And there's no way to turn this off-- it's a consequence of the fundamental structure of quantum mechanics. The only way to truly avoid detection would be to arrange for the outside of the spaceship to be at almost exactly the same temperature as the Cosmic Microwave Background, but since you want the inside of the ship to be at a temperature comfortable for the humans inside, this is a very tricky thing to do. You can try to pile on massive amounts of insulation, so the outside surface is at a lower temperature, but then you make your ship enormous, and thus harder to hide.
(This sort of thermal radiation shifting is the basis of a recent failed search for alien civilizations. One popular idea about suer-advanced aliens is that they would make what's known as a "Dyson sphere" enclosing their home star, to capture all of the energy normally radiated out into space as light. While this would block the visible light, though, the sphere would necessarily be at a temperature above the background, and glow brightly in the infrared; the recent search looked for an excess of infrared light of the sort you might expect from Dyson spheres enclosing normal stars, but didn't see any.)
So, in the end, perfect concealment in space would be impossible thanks to fundamental physics. You can make it difficult to detect a ship, but in the end, the black-body radiation would give you away.
Does this means that The Expanse's stealth ship is a great big failure? Not really, because detection via black-body radiation would be very difficult in practical terms. Astronomers have to work extremely hard to get good maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background, because at such low temperatures, the amount of power involved is tiny and the universe is full of other, hotter objects that make all sort of extra noise to deal with. And the stealth ship that kicks off the action on the show doesn't need perfect concealment, just pretty-good concealment-- long enough for an ambush. Once they fire up their engines, everybody sees them, it's just too late to do anything about it.
Even noted stealth-in-space curmudgeon James Nicoll allows that this is mostly OK (though he has other science issues with the book...). It's a great excuse for a blog post about more fundamental physics, though...
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df764f105725ac7bcfbfd6e5db80e4c4 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2015/12/23/why-does-rudolph-have-a-red-nose/ | Why Does Rudolph Have A Red Nose? | Why Does Rudolph Have A Red Nose?
An original Santa Claus and Rudolph puppet from the TV special "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer", are... [+] seen on display at the Time and Space Toys booth during the Mid-Ohio-Con comic book convention in Columbus, Ohio, Sunday, Nov. 25, 2007. Kevin Kriess, owner of the Pittsburg, Pennslyvania, store found the puppets and had them restored after they were used as toys. (AP Photo/Paul Vernon)
It's basically impossible at this time of year to avoid hearing the song "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," the touching tale of an Arctic herbivore whose nose emits red light. This might sound vaguely horrifying, but the song has a happy ending as spelled out during the bridge before the final verse:
Then one foggy Christmas Eve, Santa came to say: "Rudolph with your nose so bright, won't you guide my sleigh tonight?"
Now, this story raises all kinds of questions, most of them beyond the scope of this blog-- I'm a physicist, Jim, not a specialist in the biology of mutant caribou. There is, however, a good physics angle to this, namely why is his nose red specifically? Is there some particular advantage to having a red nose, rather than, say, blue or green in the specific scenario described here?
Now, you're probably thinking "You idiot, it's just a song. It's 'red' because that scans better." But in fact, there is a good solid physics reason to think that a red nose might be a better choice for leading the way through a foggy Christmas Eve. It's also connected to the physics of blue skies and colorful sunsets, and our understanding of all of it tracing back to a particular bit of Christmas physics magic known as "dimensional analysis."
A foggy Christmas Eve eve near Chateau Steelypips. (Photo by Chad Orzel)
Fog is, as you undoubtedly know, a vast collection of tiny droplets of water suspended in the air. The individual droplets are basically invisible, but collectively, they have a big effect on the transmission of light through the air, making it difficult to see very far. Not only does the fog attenuate light coming to us from distant sources (like the lights of the school bus in the photo above), but it adds a bunch of noise to what we see by scattering light from nearby sources back at us. This is why fog is a visible phenomenon, albeit one that's pretty hard to photograph effectively.
One of the earliest good explanations of the physics involved in this comes from an 1871 paper by the British physicist John William Strutt, better known to history as Lord Rayleigh. In "On the light from the sky, its polarization and colour" Rayleigh offers an argument as to why the sky appears blue, tracing it to the scattering of light by microscopic particles in the atmosphere. Rayleigh shows by a simple and powerful argument that such particles are much more likely to scatter blue light than red light. The argument is so simple, in fact, that it doesn't require any knowledge at all about the particles themselves or the details of their interaction with light-- all you need to know is that they're very small.
Rayleigh's argument runs basically like this: knowing that light is an electromagnetic wave, we can think about the light scattered by a single small particle in terms of an incoming light beam, and a scattered light field. What we really care about is the intensity of the scattered light some distance away from the particle, and conveniently there are only a handful of physical parameters that can possibly affect this: the intensity of the incoming light, the size of the particle, the composition of the particle (which we can describe by its index of refraction), the wavelength of the light, and the distance from the particle to the spot where we measure the outgoing field.
Now, it's fairly obvious that the outgoing intensity must be proportional to the incoming intensity-- the brighter the light you shine in, the brighter the light you can get out-- so that's easily accounted for. And Rayleigh pointed out that for a particle smaller than the wavelength of light, every piece of the particle experiences exactly the same incoming electromagnetic field, and should produce the same outgoing field in response. All those outgoing waves will add together smoothly, so the scattered field should be proportional to the volume of the particle-- the bigger it is, the more stuff there is scattering light, and the stronger the field going out. The intensity of the light is the square of the field, so the scattered intensity should depend on the square of the volume.
That takes care of two of the five parameters that might matter for the scattering calculation-- the strength of the incident field, and the size of the particle. We also know from basic physics principles that the outgoing intensity has to decrease with distance according to an inverse-square law. This is basically a conservation-of-energy argument: the total energy in the outgoing light at some distance away from the particle is just the intensity at that distance multiplied by the area of a sphere of that radius centered on the particle. If you increase the distance, the area increases like the square of the radius, but the total energy can't change, which means that the intensity must decrease by the same factor.
That's three of the five possible parameters accounted for, which might seem hopeless. But Rayleigh pointed out that the two remaining parameters are measured in very different units. The wavelength of the light has units of length (obviously), but the composition of the particle can't depend on its size, so the index of refraction that we're using to describe it can't involve units of length. Which means we can look at what we do know, and use that to figure out how the scattered light depends on the wavelength.
So, we know that the ratio of the outgoing intensity to the incoming intensity can't have any units (because it's just a fraction), and also the two things we determined above: 1) It must depend on the square of the volume (measured in cubic meters squared, which is meters to the sixth power), and 2) It must drop off like the square of the distance (meters squared). So, the units on the ratio before accounting for the wavelength looks like (meters)6/(meters)2 (something to do with wavelength)= (meters)4 (something to do with wavelength). We need all the units to cancel out, so "(something to do with wavelength)" must be "1/(wavelength)4." According to Rayleigh's argument, then, the scattered light intensity must depend on one over the fourth power of the wavelength.
We don't know how this depends on the composition of the particles (it's a little complicated, as it turns out), but the beauty of this is that we don't need to. Rayleigh's argument gets the correct wavelength dependence, which is what we really care about here, and it does it in a way that's so simple and powerful it almost seems like magic. This kind of dimensional analysis is a powerful tool for thinking about physics, and Rayleigh scattering is one of the best examples of its use.
Santa's sleigh guided by a red-nosed reindeer. (Image from Wikimedia Commons user Peripitus, of the... [+] 2008 Norwood Christmas Pageant.)
What's this got to do with neon-nosed reindeer? Well, red light is at the long-wavelength end of the visible spectrum, with a wavelength of about 600 nanometers. The inverse-fourth-power dependence of Rayleigh scattering means that we expect small particles to scatter a bit more than five times as much blue light as red; this, in turn, means that red light should travel five times as far as blue light (wavelength of about 400 nanometers) through air with small suspended particles in it.
Now, Rayleigh wrote his paper many years before Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was invented as a marketing gimmick for Macy's, so he wasn't thinking about it in terms of physics. Rather, he was thinking about the color of the sky-- the blue color we see when we look up on a nice day is just scattered sunlight from tiny suspended particles in the atmosphere, which scatter much more blue light than red. This is also why the setting sun looks red to us-- at sunset, light from the sun is passing through a good deal more atmosphere, and all that extra air is scattering blue light off to the sides. Sunsets look red because the shorter wavelengths from the sun have been used up making blue skies for people to the west of us.
But we're writing a silly Christmas blog post here, so we can use the same basic reasoning to think about the best way to guide Santa's sleigh. And Lord Rayleigh's argument from 1871 suggests that, given a herd of flying caribou whose noses emit different colors of light, your best bet for leading the way through a foggy Christmas Eve at ludicrous speed would be the one whose nose glows red. Thus, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer goes down in history, while Ernest the Blue-Nosed reindeer languishes in obscurity.
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(Strictly speaking, it's actually not that strong an effect for real fog-- Rayleigh's argument depends on the particles being very small compared to the wavelength of light. For larger particles, like the water droplets in fog, the situation is more properly described by Mie scattering, which doesn't depend as strongly on wavelength. Which is why fog and clouds appear white-- they scatter pretty much every wavelength of light that hits them. But working out the details of Mie scattering requires complicated calculations, and those aren't nearly as much fun as Rayleigh's cool dimensional analysis trick....)
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ab295d191f60003ec57532ac47b6527a | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2016/01/07/football-physics-will-the-best-team-win/ | Football Physics: Will The Best Team Win? | Football Physics: Will The Best Team Win?
The NFL regular season wound down this past weekend, followed as usual by a spate of coach-firings and other reshuffling among the weaker teams in the league. Meanwhile, the twelve teams that made the playoffs-- the Carolina Panthers, Arizona Cardinals, Minnesota Vikings, Washington Racial Slurs, Green Bay Packers, and Seattle Seahawks in the NFC, and the Denver Broncos, New England Patriots, Cincinnati Bengals, Houston Texans, Kansas City Chiefs, and Pittsburgh Steelers-- prepare for the playoffs that start this weekend leading up to the Super Bowl in early February. This will, nominally, determine the best team of the year, the only one entitled to call themselves champions and make ludicrously tacky rings to mark that victory.
Of course, a popular topic of debate across sports radio and the like is whether the Super Bowl champion can really be considered the "best" team of a given year. Many people will argue that the NFL playoff structure does not, in fact, do a good job of picking out the best team, many of them fans of the New England Patriots.
The reason for this is that the NFL uses a "single elimination" playoff system, where the losing team in each stage is done for the year, while the winner advances to the next game. Everything thus turns on the result of a single game, which is great in terms of drama, but allows for shocking upsets as when the previously undefeated Patriots lost to the New York Giants in the Super Bowl, thanks in large part to a wild catch where David Tyree trapped the ball against his helmet. The Giants team barely squeaked into the playoffs, but thanks to a combination of good play and great luck, they ended the season as champions. Almost no-one, not even a hard-core Giants fan like myself, would argue that the Giants were the best team in the NFL that season-- that Patriots team was unquestionably one of the all-time greats-- but the inexorable logic of the single-elimination playoff made them champions.
The NFL uses the single-elimination format for much the same reason that they only play one game per week-- the toll the game takes is such that you can't really play it much more often. And doing a multi-game playoff at a rate of one game per week would take way too long. The other three major professional leagues, though, use multi-game series, and you will often hear baseball or NBA basketball fans argue that a best-of-seven series is the best way to determine which team is "the best."
The logic here is pretty clear-- increasing the sample size makes for a better test. A single game between two teams can easily be influenced by random chance, but if one team beats the other four times in seven tries, that seems more meaningful. Only, it turns out that the difference isn't quite as big as you might think.
The basic problem here is one that crops up a lot in physics, thanks to the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics (it's what saves relativity, in fact). Given a situation with two possible outcomes that are not equally probable, and a finite time in which to make measurements, how confident can you be that you're correctly estimating the actual underlying probability distribution? And it turns out that if you're talking about a seven-game series to determine which of two teams is "the best," the answer is "not all that confident."
It's not especially difficult to calculate the probability of particular outcomes, but it's even easier, given modern computing technology, to just simulate the results. You can do it in an Excel spreadsheet-- create seven columns of random numbers between 0 and 1, call it a "win" if the value is above some threshold, and tally up how many times a given team wins at least four out of the seven "games." Then repeat that a whole bunch of times. Here are the results for 500 "seven-game series," showing the number of wins for the "weaker" team when the "better" team has a 60% chance of winning any given game:
(There are, of course, a whole bunch of simplifications going into this-- the assumption that the win probability is fixed and unchanging across games being the biggest. That's a huge assumption, as any fan of an injury-plagued team will be happy to explain at length, but it's useful for making the basic point.)
You can see that, on the whole, the better team tends to win this simulated series, but the probability that the weaker team pulls off the upset is surprisingly high. For this particular batch of data, they pulled it out 138 times out of 500, or about 27% of the time. That's better than one chance in four of crowning the wrong team the champion. The seven-game series is more likely to get the "right" result than a single game, but not by nearly as much as you might think.
(And it should be noted that a 60-40 margin would in most situations be called a commanding advantage-- the biggest blowouts in presidential election history weren't much worse than that. At the championship level, you would hope that they two finalists would be matched at least that well.)
We can use this sort of thing to look at the "upset probability" for various levels of advantage for the better team, and find that as you expect, the probability of getting the "wrong" champion decreases as the gap between teams gets bigger:
Still, the probability remains pretty high even for big differences in quality. A 70-30 advantage still has about a 10% chance of the weaker team winning the series. You need to be above an 80% chance of winning a single game before the best-of-seven series has less than a 1% error rate.
So, if you're a football fan stuck listening to baseball fans talking about how the World Series is better than the Super Bowl, or a college basketball fan beset by NBA fans arguing the superiority of their playoffs over the single-elimination format of "March Madness," you can actually draw some strength from statistics. While a seven-game series will be slightly more successful at crowning the "right" champion, for reasonably well-matched teams, it's not a huge improvement. And you can easily argue that the increase in drama is more than worth the tiny loss of statistical power.
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3447d9a3d69440a2cd55e66961cce014 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2016/01/13/the-photogenic-physics-of-soap-bubbles/ | The Photogenic Physics Of Soap Bubbles | The Photogenic Physics Of Soap Bubbles
One of the tricky things about work-life balance as a physics professor is that physics is absolutely everywhere, and lots of little things can prompt a long excursion into scribbling diagrams and equations on paper in a coffee shop. Take, for example, this photo:
The Pip enclosing himself in a soap bubble at the local science museum. (Photo by Chad Orzel)
That's our four-year-old, who goes by the nom du Net "The Pip," enclosing himself in a soap bubble at MiSci, our local science museum. He finds these exhibits endlessly entertaining-- he would haul the rope up to raise the hoop, making a cylindrical soap bubble around himself, which would then shrink inwards until part of it reached him, whereupon it would pop, and he would giggle and start over.
I took that photo mostly because it's a cute picture, but there's also a lot of science in it. And, yeah, maybe I shouldn't be surprised to find science in a picture at a science museum, but still, it's served as a source of physics-y distraction for the last several days.
This was kicked off by a question at dinner, when Kate asked "Why did the bubble take that hourglass shape, anyway?" Which led to this:
Scribbled diagrams to help myself understand the hourglass shape of the soap bubble. (Photo by Chad... [+] Orzel)
The one thing that I know about the shape of soap bubbles is that the film tries to minimize its surface area. That's why even if you use a square frame (which they had in another part of the exhibit), when you blow through it, you get spherical bubbles. A sphere gets you the maximum enclosed amount of air for the minimum surface area, so free-floating soap bubbles always want to be spheres, and partial bubbles on flat surfaces form hemispheres. At a microscopic level, the soap molecules in the film are strongly attracted to one another, and try to pull together as close as they can, which leads to a shrinking surface area until the air inside pushes out strongly enough to stop them pulling in any tighter.
I was thrown for a moment because it initially seemed like the curved shape ought to have a larger surface area than a straight cylinder. After all, if you were some sort of microscopic soap creature starting at the top hoop and walking to the bottom, your walk would be longer if you were on the hourglass shape than on the flat cylinder.
But this was just me falling victim to the Wrath of Khan fallacy, namely thinking in an insufficient number of dimensions. What matters here isn't the length, but the area, and that depends on both the vertical and horizontal directions.
The right way to think about it, and what you'd do in a calculus class if you needed to find the area of the hourglass shape, is to break the shape up into a bunch of hoops stacked one above the other, then add the areas of each hoop. The area depends on both the vertical thickness of the hoop and the radius, multiplied together. For the straight cylinder the radius is always the same, so it's a really easy calculation.
For the hourglass shape, though, the radius of the hoops varies as you move up or down the cylinder. Figuring out the exact area would be an annoying calculation requiring you to know the exact function describing the radius at a given height (it's probably something like a catenary, but I don't care enough to figure it out), but it's easy to see that the total area must be smaller than for a straight cylinder. The hoops in the middle of the bubble have a radius that's much smaller than their counterparts at the same height in the straight cylinder, meaning that the surface area is less. And there are no hoops anywhere where the radius is larger than for the straight cylinder, so the total area must be smaller.
Thus, the nifty hourglass shape you see in the picture is, like the spherical shape of a floating soap bubble, just a matter of minimizing the surface area. While the bubble starts as a straight cylinder, it can reduce its surface area by shrinking in the middle, so that's what it does. For any given height of the hoop, there will be some optimum curve where the area is an absolute minimum, and that's the shape the bubble will take.
(It might be fun to try varying the height, and see if it's possible to make it pinch all the way in and collapse to two flat disks. The museum staff take a dim view of adults fighting off kids who want to play with the exhibits, though, even if those adults are Professional Scientists....)
As a physicist with a background in optics, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention one other aspect of the physics of soap bubbles, namely the pretty colors. You can see these most clearly to the lower right in the photo, just behind The Pip, zoomed in here:
Close-up of the irridescent colors of The Pip's big soap bubble. (Photo by Chad Orzel)
While the soap and water mix that makes the bubble is basically transparent, when you make it into a thin film, you get these bands of color, thanks to the wave nature of light. We can see (and photograph) a soap bubble due to light reflecting off it, but the light reflects off both front and back surfaces. That means that when you're dealing with a thin film, you need to add together two sets of waves, and this leads to interference phenomena-- if the waves reflected off the front surface and the waves reflected off the back surface have their peaks in the same spots, you see bright light, but if the peaks of one fall in the valleys of the other, they cancel out and you see nothing.
The condition to see bright light depends on the wavelength, which means that only certain colors will be reflected. Somewhat loosely speaking, you see strong reflection of a particular color when an integer number of wavelengths fit along the path that the light takes through the film, as seen in this image from Wikimedia:
Diagram showing the constructive interference of waves from top and bottom surfaces of a thin film.... [+] (Image from Wikimedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thin_film_interference_phase_1.svg )
This depends on the wavelength of the light and the thickness of the film-- this is how you measure the thickness of coatings deposited on glass films or semiconductors-- and also the angle of the path. If you come in more or less straight on, the path length is just twice the thickness, but light at a very oblique angle will spend considerably longer inside the film.
That makes the color reflected by a given film vary from place to place, which helps explain the colored bands in the photo above. Toward the top, the bubble is nearly face-on to the camera, and reflects violet light, with a very short wavelength. As you move down and to the right, the angle becomes more oblique, and the colors run through the rainbow to red, with the longest wavelength in the visible spectrum. Then they start over again with violet, as the length of the path due to the changing angle increases enough to fit one additional wavelength of violet light inside.
So, as I said at the start, there's a good deal of physics hiding in what at first just looks like a cute-kid photo. Teasing it out is a good deal of fun, but does have an unfortunate tendency to distract me from other things I really ought to be working on...
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8419c19a9a8065e7bbca05410b7bcc32 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2016/03/22/how-do-physicists-know-what-electrons-are-doing-inside-matter/ | How Do Physicists Know What Electrons Are Doing Inside Matter? | How Do Physicists Know What Electrons Are Doing Inside Matter?
One of the big themes of the talks I went to at last week's March Meeting was the exploration of exotic materials, with names like "topological insulators" and "Weyl semi-metals." While there are a whole slew of jargon-y names associated with this stuff, the basic idea is the same for all of them: you use the interactions within the material to create a situation where the electrons inside behave as if they have odd properties. You can make the electrons move as if they have zero mass, or move in ways that depend on their spin, or behave as if they have only one magnetic "pole," or any of a whole bunch of other odd effects.
Of course, this leads to the obvious question of "How do they know what the electrons are doing?" After all, electrons inside a chunk of semiconductor are not easy to see. That's one of the principal advantages of ultra-cold atomic analogues to condensed matter, after all-- you can take pictures showing where the atoms are and what they're doing. Electrons, on the other hand, move around extremely quickly, especially inside materials. So, how do physicists know what those electrons are doing?
The answer is pretty much the same as for any other quantum system in physics: we throw stuff at it, and look at what comes out.
Schematic of the experimental set-up for ARPES. Public-domain figure from Wikimedia:... [+] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ARPESgeneral.png
The best-known example of this process is, of course, high-energy nuclear and particle physics, where you throw subatomic particles together at high speed, and try to deduce their composition from the stuff that comes flying out when they shatter. You can somewhat flippantly apply the same description to the much more sedate business of atomic and molecular spectroscopy, though: you shoot in particles of light (photons), and look at the light that comes back out, and from that you can deduce how electrons inside an atom or molecule are arranged.
The principal technique used to study most of these condensed-matter systems lies somewhere between these extremes. Like the atomic physics version, the particles shot in are photons of light, but the pieces that come out are electrons that were originally components of the material being studied. It goes by the name "Angle-Resolved Photo-Electron Spectroscopy" or ARPES, which is reasonably self-explanatory if you're familiar with physics jargon: "photo-electron" means "electrons knocked out by light," "angle-resolved" means you keep track of the direction at which those electrons leave the material, and "spectroscopy" means you measure their energy.
Of course, it might not be clear how that combination of things tells you what's going on inside a material, so let's take a closer look.
Cartoon showing the key idea of ARPES. Left: The photo-electric effect, where incoming photons knock... [+] loose electrons. Top right: The photon energy excites an electron bound inside the material to a free state; the difference between the input photon and the final electron tells you how it was bound. Bottom right: The photon momentum is small compared to the electron momentum inside the material, so the departure angle tells you the original momentum.
The key to the process is the photoelectric effect, which was Einstein's radical contribution to physics: his 1905 "heuristic model" for the ejection of electrons when light falls on metal introduced the idea of light as a particle to modern physics. In his model, each photon carries a specific amount of energy, some of which is needed to rip the electron out of the metal. The maximum energy of an electron leaving the metal is just the difference between these two, and should depend on the frequency in a nice, linear manner. Robert Millikan's experimental confirmation of that frequency dependence confirmed the photon picture, and locked up Nobels for both Einstein and Millikan.
Since Einstein was just making a heuristic model, he swept all the details of the material into a "work function," a single energy characteristic of a given material. In modern condensed matter physics, we understand the origin of this much better, so we can get more details from measurements of the electron energy. Electrons inside a material are shared among many atoms, leading to energy bands, and because of quantum symmetry you can never have two electrons in exactly the same state. As a result, the electrons inside a macroscopic chunk of matter will "fill up" the available energy bands, with the last electron added having a fairly high energy, called the "Fermi energy." The difference in energy between the incoming photon and the emitted electron, then, tells you something about this "Fermi energy"-- it's how much energy you need to put in to get the most energetic electron inside the material to come out.
This might seem like just a change in terminology from "work function," but a more complete model of the behavior of materials tells us that the energy of that most energetic electron depends on what direction it's moving relative to the crystal structure of the material. And that's the extra information you collect with ARPES that makes it such a powerful tool. Photons carry energy and also momentum-- that momentum is what atomic physicists use to cool atoms with lasers-- and both of those things get transferred to the electron when it absorbs a photon. While the energy is enough to move the electron from a bound to a free state, though, the momentum is only a small fraction of the momentum that electron already has (typical Fermi energies are around 10 electron volts; the momentum of an electron with that energy is about 300 times larger than the momentum of a photon with the same energy).
So, while the energy of the photon moves the electron out of the material, its momentum changes very little. Which, in turn, means that it's still moving in more or less the same direction that it was originally headed. So, if you measure both the direction and the energy, you learn how the energy varies depending on direction, which gives you a pretty complete understanding of what those electrons are doing inside the material.
(You might reasonably ask "what about the Uncertainty Principle?" at this point. The Uncertainty Principle famously limits what we can know about the position and momentum of an electron, but it's not a major problem here. The momentum of an electron at the Fermi energy is very large-- if you convert it to a speed it's around 0.5% of the speed of light-- and ARPES doesn't measure the position any better than the size of the laser spot. You'd need to nail down the position to within a few atomic widths before quantum uncertainty got to be a problem.)
Energy vs. momentum for electrons in graphene, measured by ARPES. Figure from Richard Hatch:... [+] https://rchatch.wordpress.com/graphene/
The result of an ARPES measurement, then, is a map of electron energy as a function of momentum, like the figure above showing energy vs momentum for graphene at different temperatures, from Richard Hatch's page on graphene. This might seem kind of abstract-- we can't use it to draw one of those "Family Circus" cartoons showing an electron meandering around its atomic neighborhood, or anything. But remember, these are quantum particles, so it's not experimentally meaningful to talk about a trajectory for a single electron. In fact, these sorts of graphs of energy vs. momentum are exactly what you can calculate for these materials, so these ARPES spectra make for beautifully direct comparisons with experiment.
Now, of course, there are limitations to this. You need a really well-defined photon energy for this to work, which means hard work making synchrotron sources and ultraviolet lasers. And this works best for samples that are pretty thin-- if you try to probe deeper inside the material, the electrons interact with a bunch of stuff on the way out, so the exit direction isn't as clean a measurement of the initial momentum. There are ways to work around that, but it's one of the factors pushing a lot of research toward the study of "surface states" in relatively simple materials rather than, say, soot. When you've got a hammer, you deal with as many nails as you can first before you start messing around with screws.
But, if you've ever wondered on hearing a story about some exotic new physics happening inside a sheet of graphene or a chunk of superconductor, "How do they know what the electrons are doing?," well, now you know the answer. If you throw light at the material and keep careful track of the direction and energy of the electrons you knock out, you can learn almost everything you'd like to know.
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e2026f4bb7a2b91f3e23dd256f772429 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2016/03/31/how-tropical-birds-use-quantum-physics/ | How Tropical Birds Use Quantum Physics | How Tropical Birds Use Quantum Physics
As I noted yesterday, one of the central features of condensed matter physics is the existence of band gaps, ranges of energy that no electron can possibly have inside a solid. This arises from the wave nature of electrons, and has a bunch of applications in the electronics industry. The emission of light as an electron drops from a state above the gap to one below it is the basis of LED's and diode lasers, and manipulation of band gaps in different materials is critical for making diodes and transistors on computer chips.
The core physical idea, though, is not restricted to electrons inside solids, and very closely related physics shows up in some surprising places. Such as, for example, the feathers of tropical birds, which wouldn't have their brilliant colors without the physics responsible for band gaps.
SteelyKid (age 7) with a couple of lorikeets at the Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa, FL. (Photo by Chad... [+] Orzel)
People are often surprised to learn that many of the colors we see in bird feathers are not, in fact, due to colored pigments, but a result of the wave nature of light. The iridescent colors you see in peacocks and hummingbirds, for example, are produced by thin overlapping layers of nearly-transparent material. Light reflecting off one layer will interfere with light from a deeper layer, either reinforcing the wave or wiping it out depending on the wavelength and the angle of reflection. That's what gives these colors a sort of shimmery effect, shifting as you move around to different angles.
Other birds, however, have blue feathers that contain no blue pigment, but do not shift color as you change the angle. Those feathers, if you look closely enough-- like, scanning-electron-microscope close-- turn out to be made of a spongy network of rod-like filaments. Which gives rise to a sort of band gap, only for light, not electrons.
Views of a blue macaw feather at increasing magnification, up to the electron micrograph at bottom... [+] left. Bottom right: a theoretical model of the feather as a photonic crystal. Figure 1 from Yin et. al, PNAS http://www.pnas.org/content/109/27/10798.full
Understanding these "photonic band gaps" was one of the subjects of the March Meeting talk by Eli Yablonovitch of UC-Berkeley, whose research group has been working on these materials for a long time in a more physics-y context. The physics problem they look at is the control of one of the most quantum of quantum phenomena associated with light, spontaneous emission.
Way back in 1917, Albert Einstein wrote a paper laying out The Quantum Theory of Radiation (PDF). It's a great piece of work-- Dan Kleppner's appreciation of it (PDF) is a good read-- and spells out the three processes by which light interacts with atoms, illustrated here:
Cartoon of absorption and emission of light by atoms. (Figure by Chad Orzel)
The top part shows a cartoon version of absorption, where a photon of light encounters an atom in a low-energy state, which absorbs the energy of the photon and moves to a higher-energy state. On the bottom are the two emission processes Einstein discussed. On the left, we have stimulated emission, where a photon encounters an atom that's already in a high-energy state and triggers it to emit a second, identical photon and return to the low-energy state. And on the bottom right is spontaneous emission, where an atom in a high-energy state decides of its own accord to emit a single photon and drop to the lower-energy state.
Einstein's paper is the first introduction of stimulated emission (which is an incredibly important process, as it supplies the last three letters in the acronym LASER: Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation), but from a math and physics standpoint, that process is actually really easy to understand-- I make undergrad physics majors work out a simple case of stimulated emission as a homework problem. Spontaneous emission, on the other hand, was an obvious empirical fact even in 1917. It turns out, though, that spontaneous emission is really difficult to understand mathematically, and the details weren't really nailed down until the 1960's. Somewhat loosely speaking, you can think of spontaneous emission as being a little like stimulated emission triggered by quantum vacuum fluctuations.
Gallery: Six Things Everyone Should Know About Quantum Physics 6 images View gallery
Given that, it might seem like trying to control spontaneous emission, as I alluded to above, would be a fool's errand. And it's true that if you're talking about a single, isolated atom, there's not a lot you can do. You have to work pretty hard to deal with single, isolated atoms, though, and once you start bringing more atoms into the picture, it turns out that there are tricks you can pull that let you modify the rate of spontaneous emission by atoms by a surprisingly large amount.
One thing you can do is just to exploit the physics of large collections of atoms. If you prepare a bunch of identical atoms in exactly the same state, you can get collective effects in the absorption and emission of light that either make emission faster ("superradiance") or slower ("subradiance") depending on exactly how they interact. There's a recent demonstration of subradiance with (you guessed it) cold atoms that shows this very nicely.
The other thing you can do is to modify the environment of the atom. Spontaneous emission is, loosely speaking, stimulated by vacuum fluctuations, but if the atom isn't in a vacuum but inside some other material, you can change its interaction with light in profound ways. In fact, if you put an atom in a high-energy state in a material where the wavelength of light it "wants" to emit is forbidden, you can (in principle) shut spontaneous emission off completely. The atom wants to drop to a lower-energy state and emit light of a particular wavelength, but there's nowhere for that light to go, so the energy has to stay in the atom. Or, if you prefer, because the material excludes those wavelengths of light, the vacuum fluctuations you would need to trigger spontaneous emission just aren't there. (Personally, I slightly prefer the former phrasing, but I've seen this talked about both ways...)
Illustration showing how to make a photonic band gap material by drilling holes in a block of... [+] material. Image from Yabolonovitch group, http://optoelectronics.eecs.berkeley.edu/cylin11.gif
And that's the sort of thing Yabolonovitch's group has worked on. They found a way to make materials with "photonic band gaps," ranges of wavelengths of light that simply cannot propagate. One of the simpler examples is a block of material with holes drilled through it at very precise angles. The key idea is the same physics that gives you electronic band gaps in solids-- light traveling through the material reflects off the sides of the holes, and for wavelengths that match the spacing between holes, the reflected waves interfere with the incoming wave, and prevent light from moving through the material at all.
Of course, as with a lot of other neat ideas in physics, nature got there first. Specifically, in the form of those non-iridescent colorful bird feathers. The spongy web of filaments that you see in electron micrographs of these feathers looks an awful lot like what's left over when you finish drilling holes in a block to make one of Yabolonovitch's photonic band gap materials. Light at particular wavelengths simply can't move through that material, which means that light of those wavelengths falling on the feather has to be reflected, giving it a characteristic color. There's a very nice paper from 2012 where they analyze the structure of blue feathers from a scarlet macaw and show that modeling the feather as a photonic band gap crystal lets them predict the wavelengths of reflected light amazingly well.
So, the next time you admire the brilliant blue feathers of a parrot or a blue jay, take a moment to appreciate the surprisingly rich physics involved. Colorful birds, diode lasers, and computer chips all trace their origin to the physics of band gaps.
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06fac5cb5142abd5d078eb80fa1d77b1 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2016/04/13/how-to-use-a-laser-pointer-to-measure-tiny-things/ | How To Use A Laser Pointer To Measure Tiny Things | How To Use A Laser Pointer To Measure Tiny Things
Like a lot of people, I own multiple laser pointers. These come in handy when I do public speaking for work, but that's only once a month or so. And with the sad passing of our dog back in December (she was the best), we can't make her chase the glowing spot around the room any more. So you might be wondering why I still keep lasers lying around.
Of course, this is not a unique situation. After all, one of the scientists who made the first working laser, Irnee D'Haenens, famously called it "A solution looking for a problem" (attribution from here). In physics, of course, the principal application of lasers has been to enable extremely precise measurements, and this can be extended to household applications, as well. With a laser pointer and a bit of ingenuity, you can make reasonably accurate measurements of things that are too small to measure with more conventional tools.
Lego holders for measuring laser diffraction by hair. (Photo by Chad Orzel)
One of the canonical examples of a very small thing that you encounter on a regular basis is hair. In popular science writing, anything with a size measured in micrometers is almost inevitably compared to the thickness of a human hair, which is somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 microns.
That's also pretty close to the limit of naked-eye vision, which makes it difficult to get a sense of finer distinctions than that. If you have hair from multiple different people, for example, it's kind of hard to say how their sizes compare just from looking-- visibility of individual hairs is only an imperfect guide, as that's complicated by the issue of color.
You can, of course, get out some magnifying apparatus, and try to look a little closer, but that's hard to do quantitatively. Here's a composite image showing hairs from me, my wife Kate, and our seven-year-old daughter "SteelyKid," whose digital microscope I borrowed to make the image:
Top to bottom: my hair, Kate's hair, SteelyKid's hair. The grid lines on the background are spaced... [+] by 5mm. (Photo by Chad Orzel)
You can use the lines on the background to scale the image, and get a size measurement from that, which says these are (from top to bottom) 99, 105, and 93 microns wide. This isn't much of a difference, and it's hard to say how much this is affected by position relative to the background (my hair is short but tends to curl a bit, making it hard to keep flat.
A laser, however, offers a way to measure the thickness of a hair using a yardstick. As a demonstration, I borrowed some of SteelyKid's Lego bricks to build both a holder for a laser pointer and a frame I could tape three pieces of hair to. Shining the laser onto the hair (as seen in the photo above) and then onto the wall of our dining room produced clear patterns of bright and dark spots, seen here:
Diffraction patterns from (top to bottom) my hair, Kate's hair, SteelyKid's hair. (Photo by Chad... [+] Orzel)
The physics here is the wave phenomenon known as diffraction. Light waves from the laser encountering the hair can pass around it either on the right or on the left on their way to the wall. Those different paths have different lengths, and there are places on the wall where one path is half a wavelength longer than the other, meaning that the peaks of the waves that followed that path fall in the valleys of the waves from the other, and cancel out. The exact position of these dark spots depends on the distance to the wall, the wavelength of the light, and the thickness of the hair (it's essentially a single slit diffraction pattern; the hair is kind of an inverse slit, but the math works out the same way).
The wavelength of a green laser pointer is around 532nm, and the distance to the wall and spacing between dark spots are easily measured with an ordinary meter stick, so this can be turned around to determine the thickness of the individual hairs. And I hope you'll agree that the spacing between dark spots in these diffraction patterns is more clearly different than the thickness seen in the microscope images. Using Tracker Video to measure the spacing gives me values of (from top to bottom) 83, 107, and 89 microns for my hair, Kate's hair, and SteelyKid's hair. That ordering seems pretty plausible, as numerous family members have remarked that SteelyKid's hair is sort of a cross between ours (as you would expect)-- it's straight like Kate's hair, but closer in color and texture to mine.
So, there you have it: a reason to keep lasers around the house. If you've got an object that's too small to easily measure by eye, you can get a good measurement of its size using a laser pointer, a meter stick, and the physics of diffraction.
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(Yesterday's blog post about radiation pressure forces was weirdly well-timed to go with the StarShot announcement. I'll be absolutely stunned if this one happens to coincide with big news, though...)
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49b8a7949466330840ee00b20010ac8f | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2016/04/15/dont-just-talk-about-science-with-your-kids-do-science-with-your-kids/ | Don't Just Talk About Science With Your Kids, DO Science With Your Kids | Don't Just Talk About Science With Your Kids, DO Science With Your Kids
President Barack Obama listens to sisters Kimberly Yeung (R) and Rebecca Yeung (L) explain their... [+] science project while touring exhibits at the White House Science Fair April 13, 2016 in Washington, DC.(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Our daughter, "SteelyKid" is seven, and has developed a fondness for "fact books" in the Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not vein. One of the tidbits she got from this possibly reinforced by stories about Scott Kelly's year in space is the claim that you're taller in the morning than in the evening, because your spinal column compresses after a day of walking around upright. We had a lot of conversations of the form:
"Dad, did you know you're 1% taller in the morning than at night?" "Yes, I did. Do you know why I know that?" "Because I told you?" "Exactly."
Of course, this is also an empirically testable claim, and while a 1% difference may not sound terribly significant, it's actually readily measurable. An average American adult is more than five feet (60 inches) tall, so a 1% reduction in height is about half an inch. I'm considerably taller than the average American adult, which ought to make the measurement even easier. So we did some science, marking my height on the door frame where we measure the kids last night before bedtime, and this morning before breakfast:
Marks on the door into our library showing my height in the morning and evening. (Photo by Chad... [+] Orzel)
(SteelyKid's four-year-old brother, The Pip, looked at these marks, and commented: "Daddy, you're nearly as tall as the door. Only a little more growing to do!")
According to these, I was 77 and 3/8ths inches this morning, and 76 and 13/16ths last night. That's a change of about 0.73% (a hair more or less depending on which height you use in the denominator), which is well within the acceptable uncertainty for a "Weird Facts" book pitched at second-graders. So, in the parlance of Zombie Feynman's favorite show (also one of SteelyKid's favorites): CONFIRMED.
I mention this not because it's a particularly impressive experimental achievement, but precisely because it's not a particularly impressive experimental achievement. It needed a tape measure, a stepstool, and remembering to re-measure my height the next morning. But both of the kids were really excited by the whole idea, and SteelyKid was pretty fired up (in a groggy early-morning kind of way) to see her fact book vindicated by measurements that she helped make.
And that's the point. The White House Science Fair was this week, which prompted a much-discussed essay by Carl Zimmer on issues of inequality in science fairs, something I held forth at length about on Twitter. There are a lot of very real issues and frustrations around the whole issue. (See also Rhett Allain's comments about problems with the format, from several weeks ago.)
It's important to remember, though, that science doesn't have to be complicated and resource-intensive. Science fairs can be cool and fun and get you an invitation to the White House, but science is just a process for investigating the world. You look at the world, think about why it might be that way, test your model with experiments and observations, and tell other people the results. This can involve complicated paperwork, elaborate protocols, and access to professional-quality labs, but it can also involve a step stool and a tape measure.
The most important thing kids, and adults for that matter, can get from science is not a set of facts, but a mindset: the idea that questions about the world have answers, and that you can find those answers through careful thinking and empirical testing. The best way to develop that is not just talking about science, but through actually going through the process when the opportunity presents itself. Obviously, you're not going to be able to test every single scientific claim you run across-- particularly not the exotic animal facts that are another staple of conversations with the kids, who are also fond of Wild Kratts-- but when you run across an everyday sort of claim, it's worth a little time to dig out a tape measure and make a real test. You're not likely to make any earth-shattering discoveries this way, but you'll help kids build a mindset that will set them up for future success, in STEM careers or basically any other path they want to pursue.
The scientific reasoning process is the most powerful tool we have for figuring out how the world works and using that knowledge to our advantage. And it's a tool all of us can (and do) use, regardless of age or available resources. So when you have the chance, don't just talk about science facts with your kids, get out and do some science.
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4422f147f8924f4527b28f79680ccf0a | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2016/04/18/how-quantum-physics-starts-with-your-toaster/ | How Quantum Physics Starts With Your Toaster | How Quantum Physics Starts With Your Toaster
Quantum physics has an intimidating reputation, thanks in part to the tendency of pop-physics writers (myself included) to over-emphasize the weird and counter-intuitive aspects of the theory. This leads lots of people to think that the theory is very remote from everyday experience, something you only need to worry about in the context of a physics lab, a particle accelerator, or some extreme astrophysical scenario like the event horizon of a black hole.
If you think about it a bit, though, you'll realize that this can't be true. Physicists inhabit the same everyday reality as everyone else, and we don't just make stuff up for no good reason. As weird as it is, you have to be able to trace the origin of quantum physics to macroscopic everyday phenomena, whose explanation set physicists on the road to the exotic explanations that sell popular-audience books.
The historical origin of quantum physics, in fact, is in a phenomenon that you see any time you cook breakfast: the red glow of the heating elements in a toaster. The glow of a hot object is a very obvious and universal phenomenon: you heat something up, and it will glow first red, then yellow, then white. The exact color doesn't depend on the composition of the object (provided you can get it hot enough, that it), or how you heat it, only the temperature. Get a chunk of glass and a chunk of iron to the same temperature, and they'll emit exactly the same spectrum of light, despite their very different physical properties. The spectrum has a simple characteristic shape, with a peak at a single wavelength (the peak wavelength getting shorter as the temperature increases), dropping off very rapidly on the short-wavelength side but with a longer tail on the long-wavelength side.
This kind of universal behavior is irresistible for physicists, because it suggest some simple and elegant underlying principle that would describe this behavior. And, in fact, there is a very simple and elegant way to work out what colors you would expect for thermal radiation; it just happens to fail spectacularly. The right explanation, which Max Planck worked out in 1900, is the launching point for quantum physics, but it's worth explaining the simple, elegant, and wrong approach because it makes clear why Planck had to do what he did.
If you're going to have a simple explanation, you need to start with a simple model, and like a lot of physics approaches, the starting point here might seem stupidly simple. The key simplification to latch onto is the fact that the radiation doesn't depend on the composition-- every hot object glows the same way. This means you don't need to worry about the details of the substance, and can just think of it as an ideal "black body," which will absorb any radiation that falls on it. This doesn't mean it doesn't emit light-- obviously it does-- it just decouples the emission from the incoming light-- you don't need to worry about reflection or details of absorption, etc. All the light energy coming in gets absorbed, and some other light goes out, carrying enough energy to maintain a particular equilibrium temperature.
A nice toy model for thinking about this is a box with a tiny hole in it. Light that goes into the hole will bounce around inside the box a bunch of times before it finds its way back out (if it ever does), so it's essentially a perfect absorber. Light emitted by the box will bounce around inside as well, and constantly be replenished, so the light leaking out should just be thermal radiation, having nothing to do with the incoming light.
This might not seem like a helpful change of scenario, but a box full of waves is something physicists know how to deal with-- it's essentially a pipe organ. When you look at what sort of waves exist inside the box, you find a discrete set of "standing wave modes" whose wavelength is related to the size of the pipe. Some of the simpler ones are shown in this image:
The key is that the waves need to meet some condition on the boundary-- generally we talk about the wave amplitude being zero at the walls-- and you can only do that at both ends for a limited set of wavelengths. You can count these up, and assign numbers to them, and you find that the wavelength of the nth mode looks like the length of the box divided by n.
So, if you want to try to predict the spectrum of black-body radiation, this box-with-a-hole pictures gives you a simple and elegant procedure for doing that: you just count up all the possible standing wave modes, and give each of them an equal share of the heat energy contained in the object. The amount of light in a given range of wavelengths, then, will be determined from the light energy contained in modes in that general area of the spectrum.
(Now, you might object here that we're re-introducing a property of the object, namely its characteristic size, but we're looking for a general shape here and at light wavelengths that are generally very much smaller than the size of the object, so that's easily finessed. You could also point out that there are an infinite number of modes but, you know, that's why we have calculus...)
So, you can do this mode-counting thing, and the number of modes for a given wavelength range looks like this:
At the long-wavelength end, this does about the right thing-- there aren't many modes, so you get a long tail. But there's no peak, here-- the number just goes up, and up, and up as you go to shorter wavelengths. That's because of that 1/n behavior-- not only are there an infinite number of short-wavelength modes, they get closer and closer together. The simple and elegant toy model for black-body radiation suggests that any hot object should spray out an infinite amount of gamma rays, which is not exactly what you want for a toaster oven.
This line of argument was most clearly laid out by Rayleigh and Jeans, and gets the great-name-for-a-band label "The Ultraviolet Catastrophe." It's a good simple illustration of the basic problem confounding physicists of the late 1800's who were trying to explain the spectrum of black-body radiation.
The solution to the problem came from Max Planck, who had already found an empirical formula that fit the shape of the spectrum. He was looking for a way to derive that from basic physical principles, which meant he needed to find a way to get rid of a lot of short-wavelength radiation. He managed it through a desperate mathematical trick.
Planck associated the radiation with imaginary "oscillators," each of which produced only a single wavelength, with a corresponding frequency (these are inversely related, so long wavelength equals low frequency, and vice versa). Then he assigned each of these a characteristic energy, equal to the frequency multiplied by some constant. And finally, he added the quantum hypothesis that gives the theory its name: the energy emitted by a particular oscillator can only be an integer multiple of the characteristic energy. You can have one "quantum" of energy, or two, or three, but never one-and-a-half, or π.
This fixes the "ultraviolet catastrophe" (though that term actually post-dates Planck's model), because the characteristic energy increases as the wavelength gets shorter. You do the same basic thing as before, counting modes and allocating each of them an equal share of the heat energy available at a given temperature, but as the frequency increases, you hit a point where one "quantum" of energy at that frequency is greater than the available share of thermal energy. That acts to cut off the radiation at short wavelengths (high frequency), giving you a spectrum with a single peak. The long-wavelength tail is due to the fact that the number of possible modes decreases at longer wavelengths, just like the Rayleigh-Jeans argument, and the rapid drop at short wavelength comes from the quantization of energy.
(This was a desperate trick on Planck's part, but doesn't come completely out of nowhere-- assigning a characteristic energy unit to a given frequency and working with discrete multiples of that is a kind of book-keeping trick that shows up in a lot of situations. Planck hoped he was doing just that, and would be able to use calculus to take a limit as the energy unit became infinitesimally small, recovering a continuous distribution. That doesn't work, though-- you need the constant that converts frequency to energy to have a small but finite value to get the right formula.)
So, Planck's model introduces the idea of energy quantization as a real thing, and his success in deriving the black-body formula made him one of the most eminent physicists in Europe. He's remembered these days as the father of quantum physics, with the constant h that he introduced to connect frequency and energy called "Planck's Constant" in his honor. There's a bit of irony in this, though, as he was never especially fond of his desperate trick, and hoped that somebody would find a less radical way to get the same results.
The next step, the one that really catapulted the idea of energy quantization to prominence in physics came from an obscure patent clerk in Switzerland, who applied Planck's idea to light, dispensing with the imaginary oscillators. One of my favorite footnotes to early 20th-century physics is that when Planck wrote a letter of reference for Einstein, he specifically disclaimed Einstein's quantum model of the photoelectric effect, saying it "shouldn't be held against him," because he had so many ideas that a few were bound to be bad. Ironically, the quantum model of the photoelectric effect is the one theory specifically mentioned in Einstein's Nobel Prize citation.
But that's a whole other story. The important thing here is illustrating how the origin of quantum physics is found in your toaster. The red glow of a hot object is an obvious and universal phenomenon, and the simple and elegant explanation of it fails catastrophically. The only way to really understand the thermal radiation that helps us toast bread is by introducing quantum ideas to physics. So, contrary to the popular impression, quantum mechanics isn't something exotic that only shows up in complicated experiments. Every morning when you wait impatiently for your food to cook, you're staring right at the place where it all begins.
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The Admissions office at Union did an on-campus event this past Saturday for accepted students to visit and get a look at the place. While this is undoubtedly more convenient travel-wise, the obvious drawback is that we don't run Saturday classes. So, they recruited a couple of faculty to do "mock classes" for accepted students to help them get a sense of what college classes are like. I was one of those asked, and having put in the work to make slides and stuff, I figured I might as well re-purpose them into a blog post, so this post is an approximate version of my "mock class."
This is basically an expanded and more pedagogical version of the first third of my TEDx talk from this past fall:
That features two more examples of everyday phenomena rooted in quantum physics, so if you like this sort of thing, well, there's some more of it...
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6b878400856db4417ab7136671a88f76 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2016/08/02/four-things-you-should-expect-to-get-out-of-college/ | Four Things You Should Expect To Get Out Of College | Four Things You Should Expect To Get Out Of College
The calendar has just flipped over to August, which means we're climbing up to one of the two big annual peaks of college stress. The first, calendar-wise, comes in February/March when admissions departments send out acceptance letters and students have to make a choice; the second is in late summer, when those students confront the reality of actually starting college. (There's a third stress peak in late fall when students are deciding where to apply, but it's small compared to the other two...) As someone who is prone to offering unsolicited advice (one, two, three, four, five previous advice posts), this seems like an opportune moment to write something taking an extremely big-picture view of the whole business.
The Nott Memorial on the Union college campus. Photo by Chad Orzel.
A letter from my college alumni association recently reminded me that I'm rapidly closing in on 25 years since my college graduation, and I've been a college professor for fifteen years now. Which puts me in sort of a weird position, both looking back nearly a quarter-century at my own education, and forward at what my students will be facing in the future. Given that context, what I'm talking about here isn't advice for the first year, or even the full span of a college education. I want to offer some thoughts on what it is that you get out of going to college in the long term-- on the time scale of a career, not one job. That's a hard scale to think about when you're in your mid-forties, let alone your late teens, but since events and decisions made when you're 19 have a huge effect on your life when you're 45, it's worth trying to take that view now and again.
(And because this piece will inevitably reflect my own background and biases, let me state right up front that what I'll say here primarily applies to "traditional" students: recent high-school graduates heading off to a four-year college for the first time. Some of these points will very obviously be less relevant to, say, a 30-year-old heading back to school after a stint in the military, but I think some of it will still be useful, even if just as an aid in understanding the psychology of the annoying kids in your classes...)
So, to put it bluntly, what's the point of this whole business? That is, why do we send kids off to college? What is it that the students get out of this whole thing? As someone who has spent more years in the world of higher education than out of it, I think there are four main things that students should expect to get out of going to college.
The Physics building at Williams College. Photo by Chad Orzel.
1) Subject-Specific Knowledge
The most obvious outcome of a college education is detailed knowledge about some specific subject. If you get a four-year degree, that degree will be in something: Physics, Political Science, English Literature, Business, Art History, Journalism, Mechanical Engineering, whatever. At some point in your college career, you'll have to declare a major (at least one), and if nothing else, people you deal with in the future will expect you to have some specific and useful knowledge in that subject.
So, if you're a student facing college, make sure to give this choice careful thought. Pick something that suits your interests and skills-- if you struggle with math, you probably shouldn't try for a degree in theoretical physics, and if you can't draw a straight line using a vector graphics program, studio art's probably not for you. And once you make the choice, you should commit to it, and make sure to actually learn about that subject.
This is less of an issue in science and engineering, where major programs tend to be rigidly hierarchical until fairly late in the sequence, but every program has some elements of free choice. Make sure that the choices you make are getting you something besides an easy grade-- it's almost always more useful to take a hard elective in a sub-topic you don't know much about than an easier class that you can just skate through.
Choice of major subject is, of course, the surface level at which lots of college discussions happen-- politicians and parents will try to push students toward more obviously "applied" areas. The most frequent question I get from parents at Admissions events is "Will she be able to get a job with this degree?" While this is a legitimate area of concern, it's also somewhat overrated, as you can tell from the fact that I've made it only one element of this list. Major selection is important, but as long as you pick something and commit to it-- don't be one of those students entering your final semester with a random grab-bag of courses asking the Registrar and Dean to find some program they can be made to fit so you graduate on time (yes, we get those, with depressing regularity)-- it's not that important. What really matters for building a career is that you demonstrate the ability to acquire coherent and in-depth knowledge of some subject to a level that merits a college degree.
Campus buildings at Williams College. Photo by Chad Orzel.
2) Learning Skills
Even the most rigidly tracked majors will leave some room for outside classes, and all but the most narrowly focused technical schools will require you to take some courses in areas outside your major. A lot of students view these as capricious, annoying requirements to make their lives harder, and try to find a way to meet the minimum standard with minimum effort, but this is a mistake. Classes outside your major aren't a stupid waste of time, they're an essential part of college education, and a foundation for future success.
It's not just that science has useful lessons for non-scientists or that scientists benefit from arts and literature, though those specific bits of knowledge are important. The larger benefit of these classes comes from learning how to learn.
That may sound annoyingly circular, but the point is that different fields of study necessarily involve acquiring and sharing knowledge in different ways. Some subjects are built around lectures and homework problems that duplicate examples from lecture; others are built around class discussions and open-ended papers. Some classes demand mostly reading and thinking; others force you to make stuff.
When you eventually graduate and get a job, one of these modes will probably be the most immediately important, which is why you major in a specific subject, with its particular set of standard practices. But on the time scale of a career, unless you plan to retire from the exact same job you start in, you'll eventually need to operate in new ways, and different contexts. And that's where those non-major classes help. Being forced to think, act, and learn in the characteristic manner of several different fields, not just your narrow major area, helps build some flexibility that will serve you well down the road.
So, the concrete advice here regarding non-major classes ("general education" or "distribution" requirements) is: Take these classes seriously, and try to stretch a little. Don't just take classes or professors with a reputation for being easy, take ones that have a reputation for being good, even if they're difficult. And take at least a few things that are very far from your major area.
This may not seem to have an immediate payoff, but it's a good investment for the future. A random theater class taken as a sophomore probably won't help you land your first job, but the extra flexibility you gain from studying a range of subjects will help as you move on to the second (and third, and so on...) and have to master a new set of skills and responsibilities.
A softball game at Union College. Photo by chad Orzel.
3) Adult-ing Skills
Even the most rigorous academic program will involve large stretches of time spent outside of class, and even factoring in homework and sleep won't fill all the hours of the day. In a lot of discussions, this part of the college experience gets treated as ancillary at best. Non-academic activities are talked about as a distraction from "real" education, if not an active impediment to it. In fact, though, this is one of the most important parts of a college education.
This is the item that's most specific to "traditional" students, most of whom will be living away from home and family for the first time. And for a lot of those students, what happens in the classroom will be less of a challenge than managing time and activities outside of a purely academic context. Setting and maintaining a reasonable schedule of classes, studying, and other activities; managing personal relationships with other students, and navigating the various distractions that come with those; just keeping themselves properly fed and clothed when parents aren't around to do laundry and make dinner. Those are all skills that are essential for a fully-functioning adult member of society, and those are all things that "traditional" students learn in college.
Now, you might reasonably ask whether you need to send tens of thousands of dollars to some academic institution to acquire these, rather than, say, picking them up while drawing a salary at a job or doing military service. And in that financial sense, everything but the classes is absolutely secondary-- most of the price tag is for the facilities and faculty needed for formal education.
At the same time, though, the residential-life side of college provides an important safety net for people who are still learning how to be adults. And that makes a big difference-- exceeding your time-management skills for a semester or so might hurt your GPA, but you're not going to get fired or starve. A typical dorm room might get a little messy, but living in space maintained by a college or university prevents a fall into the risk and squalor you can easily find on the private housing market. And so on. Mistakes made while figuring out how to manage life on your own are much less likely to wreck your future, or anyone else's.
The concrete advice for students here is to keep in mind that learning to function as an autonomous adult is part of the process. You're not quite standing entirely on your own, but you should at least make the attempt-- your parents shouldn't be swooping in to fix problems on a regular basis.
Obviously, there's a fine line to be walked here-- self-sufficiency is the goal, but that doesn't mean you have to do everything entirely on your own. That's also part of becoming an adult-- learning to recognize when you need somebody else's help to get through whatever's going on. Fortunately, a college or university environment comes with a lot of people who can do just that-- faculty and staff who can help you choose classes and navigate academic requirements, residential staff who can help resolve problems with dorms and facilities, counselors and medical staff who can help with physical and mental health. And you'll be surrounded by fellow students who can help in a more informal way with all that stuff. Which brings us to the last item:
The graduation of the class of 2016 at Union College. Photo by Chad Orzel.
4) Personal Relationships
While most discussions of higher education focus on the formal and physical aspects-- the classes, libraries, and laboratories, and also dorms, gyms, and dining halls-- in a lot of respects, the most important part is the people. Looking back 25 years to my time in college, the things I learned in class are important (especially as my day job involved teaching some of those same things to a new generation of students), but the most enduring influence on my life is probably social. A major chunk of what I got out of going to college is found in the relationships I've built with people I first met during those years.
There is, of course, a formal educational component to this-- it's important to have good relationships with faculty who will serve as references down the line when you need a job or apply to grad school. And this often comes up in discussions of higher education, particularly more elite colleges and universities, in a sort of cynical sense-- the idea of being able to tap into "old-boy" alumni networks for favors and jobs and so on.
While those things are real and important, the biggest impact is often less quantifiable and more personal. The people you meet in college will influence you for the rest of your life, whether you're talking about romantic partners, roommates and teammates, or just people you sometimes hang out with. They can be useful contacts when finding a new job, or investors in your great idea, or just someone to catch up with when happen to be in the same city. You'll go to their weddings, they'll sleep on your couches, you'll randomly bump into them in airports and say "Holy shit, how've you been?" They'll be friends and mentors, there to offer a helping hand or a sympathetic ear, and you'll do the same for them.
(Again, this is not stuff that you can only get at college; you can meet people and build relationships if you just go straight to work, too. And some of this is just a function of a particular time of life-- I know people who aren't really in touch with anyone they met as undergrads, but who still have great friends made in the same time period through other activities. It's part of the package of things you can get by going to college in the "traditional" manner, though, so makes sense to include here.)
As with any social phenomenon, exactly who will turn out to be important to you, and how, is impossible to predict. My concrete advice here, then, is just to remember that the people around you matter. Which is not to say that you should stress out about the long-term potential of every social interaction-- really, don't do that-- just that you should treat people well, and not just in terms of immediate utility, because those relationships might matter someday. And if you're just keeping your head down, going to class and doing your assignments with minimal interaction, you might be missing out on one of the most influential aspects of going to college in the first place.
So, there's my really big-picture, long-term advice about the most important benefits of going to college, for those heading that way in the near future. It's awfully easy to get hung-up on short-term anxieties, and details that really won't make that much difference. Try not to lose too much sleep over small stuff, though-- you won't be able to completely, but try. You're looking to gain some specific subject knowledge, mental flexibility and ability to learn, basic life skills, and solid personal relationships. Do those things well, and you'll have a good experience, and a good base for a successful life.
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60148781c4f40cc0fa3db7631a9f20f6 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2016/09/28/how-the-history-of-measurement-shapes-the-language-of-physics/ | How The History Of Measurement Shapes The Language Of Physics | How The History Of Measurement Shapes The Language Of Physics
In the last few weeks I've been working on a slightly more formal version of this post on black-body radiation for use in something else. One of the tricky things in writing about the development of Planck's black-body model is that there are really two parts to the model, and one of them makes more sense when described in terms of the wavelengths of light involved (the mode-counting bit), while the other makes more sense when described in terms of frequencies (how the quantum hypothesis cuts off short-wavelength radiation).
Now, to a physicist or serious student of physics, this isn't that big a deal. Frequency and wavelength are inversely related through the speed of light -- wavelength times frequency equals the speed of light -- so we switch back and forth between them in a very casual way, because it's a straightforward matter to convert from one to the other mathematically. It's one of the many kinds of literacy physics demands. It's sufficiently ingrained that we often don't even notice we're making the shift.
The electromagnetic spectrum, from Wikimedia:... [+] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:EM_Spectrum_Properties_reflected.svg
For readers who aren't experienced physics students, though, or who aren't comfortable with math, this can be very confusing. So one of the things I've been struggling with in writing up the detailed explanation is figuring out where the switching is genuinely essential, and where I need to re-word my explanations to avoid a jump in terminology.
Thinking about this made me notice another quirk of the way we talk about physics, though, which is the way we use different terms to discuss different types of light. The default terminology is different for different parts of the spectrum, in ways that reflect the history of measurement technology.
In physics terms, all forms of light are electromagnetic radiation, and can be described in terms of both frequency and wavelength as needed, and also in terms of the energy carried, thanks to Max Planck's quantum hypothesis (and Einstein's extension thereof). All of these are appropriate for light over a gigantic range, from the low-frequency, long-wavelength cosmic microwave background radiation up to the high-frequency, short-wavelength limit of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays, with visible light somewhere in the middle. The default terminology we use for talking about these, though, varies.
A military scientist operates a laser in a test environment. Image by US Air Force, via Wikimedia:... [+] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Military_laser_experiment.jpg
Ask a physicist about light in the visible region of the spectrum, and the description you'll get is most likely to be in terms of the wavelength -- our eyes readily detect light from a wavelength of around 400nm (deep violet) to about 700nm (deep red). In that region of the spectrum and a bit outside -- from about 100nm up to maybe 10,000nm (usually "10 microns," because we prefer to deal in numbers that don't need commas), wavelength is the default description. We could describe visible light in terms of frequency -- the visible range is something like 450 THz (in the deep red) to 750 THz in the deep violet), where one terahertz is 1,000,000,000,000 oscillations per second -- but it's unusual enough that when I need the endpoints in frequency terms, I always need to re-calculate them from the wavelength values that I know right off the top of my head.
The reason for this has to do with the way we measure these things. Frequencies in the optical range are generally too high to count the oscillations directly, so when we need to measure light in the visible range (and a bit to either side), we use wavelength-based methods. These generally involve interference of waves -- bouncing light off a diffraction grating in a spectrometer, say, or passing it through a Michelson interferometer -- and end up separating things spatially. What you measure is a distance -- the separation between bright lines in a spectrometer, or the distance a mirror moves in an interferometer -- and that naturally leads to a description in terms of wavelength.
TOPSHOT - The Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) is seen on its first day... [+] of operation in Pingtang, in southwestern China's Guizhou province on September 25, 2016.The world's largest radio telescope began operating in southwestern China on September 25, a project which Beijing says will help humanity search for alien life. / AFP / STR / China OUT (Photo credit should read STR/AFP/Getty Images)
Down in the radio range, on the other hand, the description is almost always in terms of frequency, whether in science or pop culture -- the numbers that show up on your radio receiver are the frequency of the waves carrying the signal to you. Thus, my local(-ish) alternative radio station, WEQX, is found by tuning an antenna circuit to resonate at 102.7 MHz, several million times lower than the frequency of visible light. We could describe this in terms of wavelength -- WEQX's music arrives on waves with a wavelength of a bit under 3m -- but we generally don't.
Again, this is largely a reflection of measurement technology. Frequencies in the megahertz range are relatively easy to count directly with modern electronics -- a cheap(-ish) student oscilloscope will display nice sine waves up into the AM and FM bands, and if you spend a little bit more you can look at waves up into the microwave range. Put that together with the slightly inconvenient wavelengths -- you wouldn't want to have to measure 100MHz waves by moving an interferometer mirror 10 feet -- and it's easier to talk about light in this range of the spectrum in terms of frequency.
(There's a sort of transitional zone of high-ish frequency where some discussion of wavelength is still common -- radio astronomers will talk about the "21-cm line" in hydrogen, which is around 1,400 MHz in frequency. You'll also see some very long-wavelength light discussed in frequency terms -- "Terahertz radiation" was a hot buzzword a few years back. But for the most part, radio/microwave people default to frequency, and infrared-to-ultraviolet people default to wavelength.)
(The long wavelength of radio waves does have some significant consequences, though, especially in astronomy. It's the reason we can build gigantically huge radio telescopes, like the 500m dish in China that just started operating. If you want to make a curved mirror to make a nice image from incoming light, you need the surface to be smooth, with variations that are small compared to the wavelength of light you'll be focusing. Radio waves, with wavelengths at a substantial fraction of a meter, are thus way more forgiving than visible light, enabling construction on a grand scale.)
A worker from the State Radiation Ecological Reserve tests radiation levels at a farm in Vorotets on... [+] April 21, 2011 close to the 30km exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. April 26 marks the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. One fifth of Belarus' agricultural land was contaminated following the blast at the nuclear reactor in the Ukraine and around 70% of the fallout fell in Belarus.AFP PHOTO / VIKTOR DRACHEV (Photo credit should read VIKTOR DRACHEV/AFP/Getty Images)
At the very high frequency, short wavelength level, everything gets quantum. For light in the x-ray to gamma-ray portion of the spectrum, people don't talk about frequency or wavelength, but energy. The annihilation of an electron and a positron, for example, will produce two photons with a wavelength of 0.0024nm or a frequency of 120,000,000THz, but nobody uses those values. Instead, they talk about photons with an energy of 511,000eV (one electron volt is 0.00000000000000000016 joules).
Again, the reason for this has to do with measurement technology. The frequency of visible light is way too high to count electronically, and x-rays are ludicrously out of range, while the wavelength is inconveniently short for measuring in diffraction experiments, smaller than the spacing between atoms in a solid. Neither the frequency nor the wavelength is easy to measure, so those quantities don't get discussed much.
The energy of these photons, though, is high enough to be directly measurable. An x-ray or gamma-ray photon hitting the right material will knock electrons loose (the iconic clicking of a geiger counter comes from electrons knocked loose by this radiation), which produces a cascade of visible light whose total intensity is proportional to the energy of the incoming photon. So as you move from ultraviolet light into x-rays and on into gamma rays, the default description is in terms of energy, not wavelength or frequency.
(Again, there's a sort of transitional zone in the extreme ultraviolet/ soft x-ray regime, where people will describe x-rays in terms of wavelengths in Angstroms or ultraviolet photon energies in eV, but in general, once you're solidly below 100nm, the default description shifts to energy.)
This is one of those things that physicists just learn to deal with, and there's some mixing and matching that goes on. As a post-doc, I worked on experiments with ultra-cold atoms where we cooled and trapped the light with infrared lasers we talked about in terms of wavelengths, and then did final manipulations with radio-frequency sources described in MHz. The disconnect in terminology between those regimes is just One Of Those Things.
It's sort of bewildering to outsiders, though, even sometimes for physicists from a different subfield. And, unfortunately, the different terms in different parts of the spectrum probably helps fuel one of my sci-fi pet peeves, where authors who want to sound science-y will have characters talk as if "light" and "electromagnetic radiation" are different things. The divergent terminology especially demands care when writing for non-scientists; thus, my recent grappling with black-body radiation. As much as it's making work for me, though, I find it fascinating that the whole source of the problem is the embedding of measurement technology in the language we use.
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56a33be306cc2c54ee705e3d676c632c | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2016/10/18/science-needs-the-nobels-more-than-movies-need-the-oscars/ | Science Needs The Nobels More Than Movies Need The Oscars | Science Needs The Nobels More Than Movies Need The Oscars
Last week, the Nobel committee announced that the 2016 Literature Prize would go to Bob Dylan, "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition", nominally bringing the Nobel announcement season to a close. Of course, giving the Nobel Prize to an American musician rather than a more traditionally "literary" figure has generated a bunch of grumpy commentary about how this wasn't an appropriate choice. And, of course, he wouldn't be Bob Dylan if he just immediately and graciously accepted, so nobody knows whether he'll show up to get his prize.
In this Feb. 13, 2011, file photo, Bob Dylan, center, performs at the 53rd annual Grammy Awards in... [+] Los Angeles. Dylan won the 2016 Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday, Oct. 13, 2016, a stunning announcement that for the first time bestowed the prestigious award on a musician for "having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition." (AP Photo/Matt Sayles, File)
A lot of the grumbles have an air of sour grapes, originating with novelists and playwrights who might've considered themselves candidates had Dylan not been selected. A few take a different tack, arguing that giving the Nobel Prize to someone who already enjoys worldwide fame and fortune, as Dylan does, is sort of pointless. My favorite in this line of commentary is Leonard Cohen's observation that giving Dylan a Nobel is "like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain."
I'm a big Dylan fan, so I'm happy to see him honored (and hope he decides to do something much weirder and Dylanesque than declining the prize-- showing up and only performing Christmas songs would be way more amusing), and I don't have much time for the arguments that songwriting is fundamentally undeserving of the prize. The Mt. Everest argument, though, reminded me of an earlier piece about the science Nobel Prizes, in which Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus ask, Does science need the Nobels?
The case for not needing the Nobels is, basically, that the winner-take-all nature of an annual prize awarded to no more than three people does a disservice to the collaborative nature of modern science. And beyond that, some complain that the Nobel tends to go to people who are already prominent in their field, rather than elevating more obscure figures. Which is reminiscent of the Dylan-as-Everest complaint.
My immediate reaction on seeing that headline cross my social media feeds, though, was to turn it around and ask an analogous question: Do movies need the Academy Awards?
In this March 2, 2014 file photo, an Oscar statue is displayed at the Oscars at the Dolby Theatre in... [+] Los Angeles. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the winners of its annual Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting, Thursday, Sept. 29, 2016. (Photo by Matt Sayles/Invision/AP, File)
That is, from a strictly utilitarian standpoint, all awards shows are kind of unnecessary, and suffer from many of the same problems as the Nobels for science. Movie-making is also a highly collaborative enterprise, and it's not clear to me that giving an Oscar to a single actor for an outstanding performance isn't doing a bit of a disservice to all the other people who work to make that performance a success, from the other actors and the director down to the people who handle the costumes and props. Making a big movie requires a seemingly endless list of people, as anyone who's ever waited around to be disappointed by the end-credits Easter egg in a Marvel movie knows. And many of those people can have an enormous influence that you don't necessarily notice -- I greatly enjoy Tony Zhou's "Every Frame a Painting" series of videos on film-making, and his pieces on the importance of editing and music are eye-opening.
(The Academy Awards mitigate this a bit by giving a long list of technical awards to all these categories of movie-making activity, but those are often relegated to a quick scroll during the telecast where they hand out the big and important awards that everyone will talk about the next day.)
From the Dylan-as-Everest standpoint, though, the Academy Awards seem even more pointless. After all, movies occupy an enormous position within modern entertainment culture, and most Oscar-winning actors and directors have already attained considerable wealth and fame, to a degree unmatched by all but a tiny number of celebrity scientists. Giving them prizes on top of that isn't that much different than handing out Nobels to the leaders of giant research groups who already dominate their research fields.
And yet, despite those obvious issues, they continue to hand out Academy Awards every year. There are a bunch of reasons for this, one of the big ones just being that it's fun to have an event where everybody dresses up and honors what they consider exemplary work. (Which is why there are so many types of prize ceremonies out there, from cultural titans like the Oscars down to local trade association "Person of the Year" awards...) More than that, though, the Oscars are important because even though most movie actors are already famous, outside of a tiny number of Star Wars-level global cultural phenomena, you can always get (and benefit from) more public attention. Giving a particular actor or director an Oscar (or even pointedly not giving them one) drives conversation about that person in the following days, and will bring that performance and that person to the attention of casual moviegoers who would otherwise only vaguely be aware of them. As culturally pervasive as movies are, the day after the Academy Awards is the one day of the year that you're guaranteed to see actors and directors mentioned on the front page of the New York Times, and that additional attention matters, even for people who are already famous.
American William D. Phillips, left, receives the Nobel Prize in Physics from Swedish King Carl XVI... [+] Gustaf, right, at the Concert Hall in Stockholm, Sweden, Wednesday December 10 1997. Professor Phillips, of National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, MD, was awarded with his fellow American Chu and Frenchman Cohen-Tannoudji for their development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.(AP photo/Jonas Ekstromer)
That's the feature that the Nobels bring to science -- the ability to generate widespread buzz. And that's why I would say that science needs the Nobels much more than movies need the Oscars. The least famous actor nominated for an Academy Award is almost certainly better known to the general public than the most prominent scientist to win a Nobel in any given year. The one day out of the year when you're guaranteed to see a physicist mentioned on the front page of the New York Times is the day after they hand out the Nobel Prize in Physics.
(Which is why it's so maddening to me that the coverage of this year's prize has been so skeletal -- this year's award went to a game-changing development, and it deserves wider attention and explanation. Though I suppose that did indirectly boost my own explanation, by leaving a vacuum for my post here, which has gotten a gratifyingly large number of views.)
That kind of global media attention matters to movie stars, and it matters even more for scientists. Modern media culture doesn't provide all that many opportunities to put awesome science in front of millions of non-scientists; the Nobels are one of the few sure chances, and we should embrace that.
Which is not to say that they don't have problems -- there's really no good reason to limit the prizes to three individuals in this age of giant experimental collaborations, particularly since the Peace prize routinely goes to organizations rather than individuals (you can put an individual face on organizations easily enough, as in the case of Al Gore's share of the 2007 Peace prize). And the continued failure to honor one of the many deserving women in physics has dragged on for so many years despite regular media complaints that it's hard to see as anything other than deliberate, perversely stubborn sexism on the part of the Swedish academy.
Those issues could be fixed in a relatively straightforward way, though. The stature and exposure that the Nobels bring, on the other hand, can't easily be replicated. For that reason, as flawed as they are, science still needs the Nobels, even more than movies need the Oscars.
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2032feb668d86754bcc8205e7194f8d3 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2018/02/06/why-vacations-are-essential-for-physics/ | Why Vacations Are Essential For Physics | Why Vacations Are Essential For Physics
Ein Regenbogen spannt sich am Samstag, 3. April 2010 ueber der Duene der Nordseeinsel Helgoland.... [+] (apn Photo/Axel Heimken) A rainbow is pictured above the Dune of the North sea island Helgoland, northern Germany, on Saturday, April 3, 2010. (apn Photo/Axel Heimken)
In the summer of 1925, a young German physicist named Werner Heisenberg had a big problem. Two big problems, actually. On a professional level, he was struggling to understand the intensities of spectral lines. This was the era of the "old quantum theory," and the Bohr-Sommerfeld model of the atom was reasonably successful at determining the allowed states of electrons orbiting an atom. Atoms absorb or emit light when moving between these states, and thus the model was reasonably good at predicting the frequencies of light that a given atom would absorb or emit. Heisenberg was trying to figure out why some of those lines are stronger than others, absorbing or emitting light more readily, and he wasn't making much progress.
On a personal level, he also had a major problem: hay fever. That summer in Göttingen was particularly brutal for young Heisenberg's allergies, and he was thoroughly miserable. To get away from the pollen plaguing him, he decamped for the remote island of Helgoland to rest and recuperate.
This change of venue turned out to be the solution not only to his personal health problem, but his professional problem as well. While on Helgoland, Heisenberg was struck by the insight that many of the quantities he was struggling to describe within the Bohr-Sommerfeld model were not things any physicist could ever hope to measure directly. Inspired by this, he decided to reformulate the problem only in terms of measurable quantities, and after a period of furious work found himself with a collection of tables of numbers describing the relationships between states of the electron in the atom. On his return to Göttingen, Max Born saw a resemblance between Heisenberg's tables of values and the matrices studied by some of their colleagues in math, and in short order Heisenberg, Born, and Pascual Jordan had formulated matrix mechanics, the first consistent description of what would grow into modern quantum mechanics.
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That same year of 1925, some distance to the south, an Austrian named Erwin Schrödinger was also working on the problem of quantum states within atoms. He was taking his inspiration from the wave nature of the electron, introduced a few years earlier by Louis de Broglie. Schrödinger was trying to find an equation to describe the behavior of these waves that would also be consistent with Einstein's special theory of relativity, but kept running into mathematical obstacles.
After months of frustration, in December 1925 he put aside his work, and went off to a remote mountain cabin on a ski holiday with one of his many mistresses (Schrödinger was a serial philanderer, who later lost a position at Oxford because he was openly carrying on a relationship with both his own wife and the wife of a colleague). While in the mountains, he spent the days skiing, and stayed up late working on physics-- one version of the story has him plugging his ears with pearls to block out distractions while he worked. He abandoned the idea of incorporating relativity-- guessing that the relativistic effects would be small, and could be approximated later-- and by the time he returned to Vienna he had a non-relativistic wave equation, now known as the Schrödinger equation, that allowed him to correctly describe the states of the electron in hydrogen in terms of the electron waves proposed by de Broglie.
(There's a great secret history to be written about this episode in physics, because the exact identity of Schrödinger's companion during this ski trip remains a mystery. He kept extensive diaries detailing his many assignations over the years, but the volume covering the crucial period has been lost. Many versions of the story describe her as "an old girlfriend," but given his history that doesn't narrow the field all that much.)
The clear moral of these stories is that it's critically important to give physicists ample vacation time, because that's when the real breakthroughs happen.
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I was reminded of these because of the latest kerfuffle in academic social media, kicked off by a controversial tweet by Nicholas Christakis declaring that students and postdocs need to be working 60+ hours per week if they want to compete in academia. Lots of people are blasting this as both unhelpful and unhealthy, and others are rightly questioning the validity of those work hours. The best of the latter is the advice reported by "Plant Doctor" Rachel Melnick, namely that if you're spending much more than 40 hours a week at work, you're probably wasting a lot of time.
The other angle on this that I like, though, and the point where the stories of Heisenberg and Schrödinger become relevant, is a comment made by Stephen Vaisey noting that in a lot of academia, the boundaries between "working" and "not working" are pretty fluid. Heisenberg and Schrödinger were pretty clearly "not working" by the standards Christakis and others seem to be using-- they weren't clocking in at the lab-- but their vacations led to discoveries that revolutionized physics. Even when they were away from work, though, they kept working, and the change of scene may have helped enable their discoveries.
I'm not remotely in the same league as Heisenberg and Schrödinger (though I'm probably a better experimentalist than either...), but I've seen some of the same thing in my own career. When I was a post-doc, I butted heads a bit with my boss, who firmly believed that any problem could be solved by just staying in the lab until it was solved. I knew myself well enough by that point, though, to know that after 8-10 hours of banging up against a single problem, I'm pretty well done, and need to recharge. I can continue to function on a routine basis, but if you want innovative solutions, I need to get out of the lab and rest for a bit. And, indeed, some of my best ideas for fixing lab problems came while I was walking home after a long day, or while walking in the next morning.
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These days, most of my work is in the area of writing, where the problem of what really counts as work is even more pronounced. I recently submitted a book manuscript to my editors, and the writing process for it was anything but steady and linear. There were many days where I'd sit down for my official writing time, and spend it alternating between reading physics papers and idly clicking around social media. At the end of writing time, I'd have a few sentences, maybe half a page of new text.
After a few days of that, though, I'd usually have a day or two of rapid productivity, banging out a couple thousand words of new text to finish up a chapter. Followed by another period of reading and Twitter-ing, then another burst of writing, etc.
This is not a new development-- the book in question is my fourth-- but it's still frustrating even from the inside. It's very easy to beat myself up during the days when I retweet more text than I write, and feel like I've just been wasting time. I've learned, though, that some amount of puttering about on social media is actually essential-- it's not really wasting time, it's giving myself time to digest stuff and shuffle pieces of an argument around until they click together in an order that makes sense to me. Once that happens, the chapter feels like it writes itself.
The critical piece of this is knowing yourself and how you work best, which is why I often hesitate to give specific advice in these academic-twitter arguments. There are people like my old boss, and maybe Nicholas Christakis, who really do work in a monotonic and monomaniacal manner: stay in the lab, working on the same problem until it's fixed. Other people perform better with regular breaks to do something else while they let other mental processes work in the background to come up with the next thing to do.
If you're the sort of person who finds your greatest productivity comes from spending sixty consecutive hours in the lab, by all means do that. If, on the other hand, you find that your best work comes in shorter bursts with breaks in between for digesting and processing, do that.
And whichever camp you find yourself in, make sure to respect the freedom of folks from the other to do what they need to. If your young post-doc comes in with red eyes and a runny nose and asks to go to Helgoland, let him. It might turn out to be one of the best personnel moves in the history of physics.
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bc39c36856941de8a13a822c2bc41eda | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2018/12/04/three-ways-quantum-physics-affects-your-daily-life/?sh=5edb756b44b7 | Three Ways Quantum Physics Affects Your Daily Life | Three Ways Quantum Physics Affects Your Daily Life
Quantum physics is arguably the greatest intellectual triumph in the history of human civilization, but to most people it seems like it's too remote and abstract to matter. This is largely a self-inflicted wound on the part of physicists and pop-science writers: when we talk about quantum physics, we usually emphasize the weird and counter-intuitive phenomena: Schrödinger's cat in a superposition of "alive" and "dead," Einstein's objection to God playing dice, the weird long-distance correlations of quantum entanglement. These things are exciting because they're exotic, but investigating them in the lab requires isolating very simple quantum systems, and it can be hard to see any connection between these phenomena and everyday life.
In fact, though, quantum physics is all around us. The universe as we know it runs on quantum rules, and while the classical physics that emerges when you apply quantum physics to enormously huge numbers of particles seem very different, there are lots of familiar, everyday phenomena that owe their existence to quantum effects. Here are a few examples of things you probably run into in your everyday life without realizing that they're quantum:
close-up shot of young man drinking coffee and taking toast from toaster Getty
Toasters: The red glow of a heating element as you toast a slice of bread or a bagel is a very familiar sight for most of us. It's also the place where quantum physics got its start: Explaining why hot objects glow that particular color of red is the problem that quantum physics was invented to solve.
The color of light emitted by a hot object is an example of the sort of simple, universal phenomenon that's catnip for theoretical physicists: no matter what an object is made of, if it can survive being heated to a given temperature, the spectrum of light it emits is exactly the same as for any other substance. That sort of universal behavior drew in a lot of really bright physicists in the late 1800's, but none were able to crack the problem.
The fact that the light was independent of the composition suggested a simple universal approach: You tally up all the colors of light that an object might emit, and give each of them an equal share of the heat energy contained in the object. The problem with this is that there are a lot more ways to emit high-frequency light than low-frequency light, which suggests that rather than a pleasant warm res glow, your toaster should be spraying x-rays and gamma rays all over the kitchen. That's clearly not happening (a good thing!) so something else must be going on.
The solution to this problem was found by Max Planck, who introduced the "quantum hypothesis" (giving the eventual theory its name) that the light could only be emitted in discrete chunks of energy, integer multiples of a small constant times the frequency of the light. For high-frequency light, this energy quantum is larger than the share of heat energy allotted to that frequency, and thus no light is emitted at that frequency. This cuts off the high-frequency light, and leads to a formula that matches the observed spectrum of light from hot objects to great precision.
So, every time you toast bread, you're looking at the place where quantum physics got its start.
One hanging eco energy saving light bulb glowing and standing out from unlit incandescent bulbs on... [+] dark blue background , leadership and different creative idea concept. 3D rendering. Getty
Fluorescent Lights: Old-school incandescent light bulbs make light by getting a piece of wire hot enough to emit a bright white glow, which makes them quantum in the same way that a toaster is. If you have fluorescent bulbs around-- either the long tubes or the newer twisty CFL bulbs, you're getting light from another revolutionary quantum process.
Way back in the early 1800's, physicists noticed that every element in the periodic table has a unique spectrum: if you get a vapor of atoms hot, they emit light at a smallish number of discrete frequencies, with a different pattern for every element. These "spectral lines" were quickly used to identify the composition of unknown materials, and even to discover the presence of previously unknown elements-- helium, for example, was first detected as a previously unknown spectral line in light from the Sun.
While this was undeniably effective, nobody could explain it until 1913 when Niels Bohr picked up on Planck's quantum idea (which Einstein extended in 1905) and introduced the first quantum model of an atom. Bohr suggested that there are certain special states in which an electron can happily orbit the nucleus of an atom, and that atoms absorb and emit light only as they move between those states. The frequency of the light absorbed or emitted depends on the energy difference between states in the way introduced by Planck, thus giving a set of discrete frequencies for any particular atom.
This was a radical idea, but it worked brilliantly to explain the spectrum of light emitted by hydrogen, and also the x-rays emitted by a wide range of elements, and quantum physics was off to the races. While the modern picture of what's going on inside an atom is very different than Bohr's initial model, the core idea is the same: electrons move between the special states inside atoms by absorbing and emitting light of particular frequencies.
This is the core idea behind fluorescent lighting: Inside a fluorescent bulb (either long tube or CFL) there's a little bit of mercury vapor that's excited into a plasma. Mercury happens to emit light at frequencies that mostly fall in the visible spectrum in a way that can fool our eyes into thinking the light looks white. If you look at a fluorescent bulb through a cheap diffraction grating like you'll find in novelty glasses, you'll see a few distinct colored images of the bulb, where an incandescent bulb gives a continuous rainbow smear.
So, any time you use fluorescent lights to light your home or office, you have quantum physics to thank for it.
High angle shot of an unrecognizable young businesswoman working on her laptop in her home office Getty
Computers: While Bohr's quantum model was undeniably useful, it didn't initially come with a physical reason as to why there should be special states for electrons within atoms. That didn't come for almost ten years, but once the idea got locked it, it turned out to be the basis for the most transformative technological revolution of the last century.
The radical idea that provided a physical basis for Bohr's special energy states came from Louis de Broglie, a French Ph.D. student from an aristocratic family. He suggested that just as Planck and Einstein had introduced a particle-like nature for light waves (where a beam of light can be thought of as a stream of "light quanta" each carrying one unit of energy for that frequency), there might be a corresponding wave-like behavior for particles like electrons. If you give electrons a wavelength that depends on their momentum, you find that there are "standing wave" orbits where the electron wave completes an integer number of oscillations as it goes around the nucleus, and these have exactly the right energies to be Bohr's special states in hydrogen.
This wave behavior is something that can be directly measured, and it quickly was in both the US and UK. Thinking about those waves led Erwin Schrödinger to his wave equation, and thus one of the main approaches to the full modern theory of quantum mechanics.
The wave nature of electrons profoundly changes our understanding of how they move through materials, leading to our modern understanding of energy bands and band gaps within materials. We can use this physics to control the electrical properties of semiconductors, and by sticking together bits of silicon with the exact right admixture of other elements, we can make tiny transistors that form the basic bits used to process digital information.
So, every time you turn on your computer (say, to read a blog post about quantum physics), you're exploiting the wave nature of electrons, and the unprecedented control of materials that allows. It may not be the sexy kind of quantum computer, but every modern computer needs quantum physics to work properly.
Author copies of the US edition of BREAKFAST WITH EINSTEIN. Chad Orzel
These are just a few of the ways that quantum physics shows up in the course of your everyday life. If you'd like to see these discussed in much more detail, along with several other topics that I may return to in later posts, you should check out my new book, Breakfast with Einstein, available now in the UK from Oneworld Publications and next week in the US from BenBella Books. Just in time for all your winter solstice holiday gift-giving needs...
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a89b1a43d2896329a11797687ff1cf16 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2019/09/17/many-worlds-but-too-much-metaphor/ | Many Worlds, But Too Much Metaphor | Many Worlds, But Too Much Metaphor
As someone who spends a good deal of time writing, I’m generally fond of language and literary devices as part of the science-communication toolkit. Tricks like analogies, similes, metaphors, and all the rest have considerable power when it comes to speaking to people, and not making use of them would be foolish.
That said, there are times when these tools sort of tip over into becoming counterproductive. That is, it can be helpful and vivid to use a metaphor in describing a physical theory, but taken too literally, this can actually create more confusion as people latch on to ancillary features of the metaphor and try to take them too literally. A classic example of this is the “rubber sheet” analogy for spacetime curvature in General Relativity, where the warping of space by mass is visualized as being like the stretching of an elastic sheet with a mass pulling it down. This is a vivid image and can be useful for getting the basic idea, but some people will take it too far and start thinking that the universe is literally stretched in some other direction, or asking about the elastic properties of the sheet, and so on. (As memorably spoofed in this excellent xkcd cartoon.)
I’m increasingly convinced that the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics is one of these places. The very name of the theory is derived from a vivid metaphor for its approach, but I think that metaphor is too often taken too literally, in a way that practically begs for unhelpful diversions into arguing about what are really ancillary elements of the metaphor.
Cover of Sean Carroll's SOMETHING DEEPLY HIDDEN Dutton Books
The proximate cause of this is reading Sean Carroll’s new book, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime (well, the first two-thirds of it, anyway, which is where the bulk of the MWI description is), and discussions of it on social media, but it’s not a problem particular to Carroll– this is something that’s been bugging me since I was writing about it in How to Teach [Quantum] Physics to Your Dog, a bit over ten years ago. I actually like the start of Carroll’s presentation quite a bit, where he casts MWI as “Austere Quantum Mechanics,” with the only postulates being that the universe is described by a wavefunction, and that the wavefunction evolves according to the Schrödinger equation.
That austerity is the core of MWI, and central to its appeal. It’s a theory that avoids the “measurement problem” of quantum mechanics by pointedly not introducing some new phenomenon that changes the wavefunction in a mysterious way at the instant of a measurement. Quantum wavefunctions evolve smoothly and predictably at all times, and there’s an undeniable elegance to that.
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The problem is that after that austere beginning, Carroll dives back into the somewhat baroque metaphor that’s grown up around the simple initial idea, talking at great length about branches of the wavefunction that contain copies of everything in the universe that differ only in the results of particular measurements. This language is really an additional interpretive superstructure on top of the actual austerity of MWI, an extended metaphor for the experience of observers within the theory. It’s also where everything goes wrong, from the standpoint of communication.
Talking about “parallel worlds” or even “branches of the wavefunction” as real separate things invites a whole bunch of questions that are really about the metaphor, not the theory, and thus ultimately unproductive. It brings in the fundamentally aesthetic objection that all these “extra universes” run afoul of Occam’s razor, and questions about why making copies of everything doesn’t violate some other principle of physics, and what triggers the making of copies, etc. These aren’t dumb questions, given the language in which MWI is often presented, but they’re fundamentally questions about the language in which MWI is presented, not the austerely quantum central idea.
That is, of course, a strong claim for me to be making, and suggests that I have an approach I think would be better, and of course I do. I think that most popular treatments of MWI lean into the “parallel universe” language way too much, when in fact it’s just a bookkeeping trick.
null Getty
That is, the right way to think about MWI– or at least the approach to it that allowed me to make my peace with it– is just the “Austere Quantum Mechanics” approach. You have a collection of quantum things– maybe particles, maybe fields, whatever suits your fancy– that are described by a wavefunction, and those things evolve according to the Schrödinger equation. As these quantum things evolve and interact, they necessarily end up in complicated superpositions of multiple states, superpositions that are entangled with each other. It’s still all one giant wavefunction, though– no branches, no copies, no extra universes– it’s just not one that you would want to attempt to write down on a sheet of paper. But that’s fine– the universe is under no obligation to operate in a manner that allows humans to conveniently write down a description of it.
However, being lazy humans, we often want to write down descriptions of things, and so we use a bookkeeping trick: we choose to pull out pieces of that one giant wavefunction and treat them as if they exist in isolation. This, strictly speaking, isn’t a complete and correct description, in the same way that your household budget, strictly speaking, isn’t completely separable from the rest of the global financial system– if you’re making payments on a loan, you’re directly or indirectly affected by the complicated assets and obligations of the bank you owe money to. But for the purposes of keeping your household books balanced, you can bracket all the bank stuff off as an external influence whose internal details don’t matter, and work only with the tiny piece of the system about which you have direct knowledge.
The same trick works with the giant unwieldy wavefunction of the universe. Strictly speaking, the state of every quantum object is at least potentially bound up with every other one, in a way that defies compact description. It’s even worse than accounting, because while banks are classical objects, quantum objects can affect each other in a non-local way. Happily, though, in the same way that you can get away with thinking about only the one set of financial accounts about which you have detailed knowledge, we can carve out a tiny piece of the universal wavefunction and treat it as an isolated system where we have detailed knowledge of the specific outcomes of measurements. We bracket everything else off as “the environment” which is a black box in the same way that “Seventh National Bank” is in finance.
Niels Bohr (L) and Werner Heisenberg on vacation (Photo by ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty ... [+] Images) ullstein bild via Getty Images
How can we get away with this? Ironically, the key to understanding it comes from two guys who come in for a lot of abuse in most pop-quantum books: Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. Bohr and Heisenberg get disparaged as anti-realists for running off into a weird “does the Moon exist when nobody’s looking?” land of observer-created reality. While they arguably took it too far, though, their initial insight is a critical one: It makes no sense to talk about the properties of a thing unless you also talk about how you are going to measure those properties.
How does this help with MWI? The problematic aspect here is that the wavefunction of the universe has everything in complicated superposition states, but when we select out a tiny piece of it as our system of interest, we often see that system only in single states, not a superposition of multiple states. The question that’s too often un-asked, though is: What measurement would you do to demonstrate that your system is really in a superposition?
The answer to this doesn’t need to be a procedure specific enough to actually do the experiment; a general outline would be sufficient. And, in fact, we have a couple of centuries of experience at doing exactly this: When we want to show that something has been in two states at the same time, we do an interference experiment. We put our system of interest in a superposition of two states, arrange for those two states to evolve at slightly different rates for some time, and then bring them back together and measure the final state. If a superposition exists, there will be some oscillation in the probability of a given final state that depends on the differential evolution in the middle. This takes lots of forms– if the two states of the superposition correspond to passing through spatially separated slits, it’ll show up as an interference fringe pattern in space; if they’re two states of a cesium atom in an atomic clock, it’ll show up as a varying probability of ending up in one of those states as you adjust the frequency of your microwave oscillator.
Quantum physics books with dice. Chad Orzel
In every case, though, you’re measuring a probability. And not even a Bayesian can accurately measure a probability from a single experiment. To get a good measurement of a probability of some outcome– let alone the variation in probability that is the signature of a superposition state– you need a large number of repeated measurements. And those measurements have to be made under the same conditions every time.
That’s the key feature that lets you carve out some parts of the giant wavefunction of the universe and choose to treat them as systems in definite states, while others need to be treated as full quantum superpositions. The vast majority of the universe that we’re bracketing off as “the environment” affects the measurement conditions, which changes the probabilities you’re measuring. If the interaction with the environment is small, though, you can ensure that the conditions are close to identical for enough trials to unambiguously see the changing probabilities that show a superposition exists. That subpart of the universal wavefunction needs to be dealt with as a fully quantum system.
If the interaction with the environment is strong and poorly controlled, though, the conditions of your measurement change enough from one repetition to the next that you’re not really doing the same measurement multiple times. If you could know the full state of the environment for a given trial, you would predict one probability, but knowing the full state of the environment for the next trial would lead you to predict a different probability. In the absence of that knowledge, adding together repeated results just gets you junk– you won’t see a clear dependence on the different evolution of the different states in the superposition, because it’s swamped by the unknown effect of the environment. If you can’t see the interference effect, that system “looks classical,” and you can treat it as having a definite state.
That process of interaction with the changing state of an unknown environment gets the name “decoherence,” and it’s what enables the bookkeeping trick that lets us split off pieces of the wavefunction and consider them in isolation. If the piece you’re interested in is big enough and interacts with the environment strongly enough, there’s no hope of doing the interference measurement that would show it’s in a superposition state. If you can’t do a measurement that would show the existence of the other piece(s) of the superposition, you can safely treat it as being in a single definite state.
It should be emphasized, though, that this is just bookkeeping, not a real separation between “copies of the universe,” or even copies of the system of interest. There’s only one universe, in an indescribably complex superposition, and we’re choosing to carve out a tiny piece of it, and describe it in a simplified way. It’s not even true, strictly speaking, that the results of a given experiment for a particular object are unaffected by the presence of the other parts of the superposition for that specific object. If you could do the full probability calculation for the whole wavefunction, including all of “the environment,” the probability you would predict for that experiment would include a contribution from all the various states that are superposed. In the absence of that complete knowledge, though, you can get away with ignoring them, because you’ll never be able to repeat the measurements in the way you would need to see the influence.
(If you would like a version of this picture that includes a more detailed physical example, this is essentially the picture I give in How to Teach [Quantum] Physics to Your Dog That version is more humorous and less exasperated.)
A shopkeeper doing his monthly financial planning and bookkeeping Getty
Thinking about MWI in this way– as a bookkeeping trick to simplify an otherwise incomprehensibly vast wavefunction– clears up most of the typical objections that arise from taking the “separate worlds” metaphor too literally. There’s no “Occam’s Razor” problem because there’s only one wavefunction obeying one set of rules. There’s no issue with “creating copies” of everything, because there are no copies: there’s one universe, with one set of components described by one wavefunction. It’s not even a problem that the criteria for “splitting” are kind of nebulous, because it’s clear that it’s a fundamentally arbitrary process– the choice of which pieces to isolate and discuss is purely a matter of bookkeeping convention for the convenience of puny human physicists.
So, that’s my argument for why the way we talk about the Everettian interpretation of quantum mechanics sucks, and should be revisited. Please note that I’m not saying that Sean Carroll or any of the other super-smart people who spend time and energy thinking about and working with MWI are Doing It Wrong in terms of the physics– mathematically, thinking of the different pieces we can carve out of the giant wavefunction of the universe as separate branches works perfectly well. That’s how you keep the books. All I’m arguing is that, on a conceptual level and in terms of the language used to communicate to non-experts, we should do a better job of making clear that it is just bookkeeping.
That’s also why, despite a general distaste for the (over)use of abbreviations and acronyms in physics, I’ve been using “MWI” through most of the above. I’d suggest that it continues to work perfectly well as a shorthand reference for this particular take on quantum theory, it just needs a slight tweak. Rather than “Many-Worlds Interpretation,” I’d go with “Metaphorical Worlds Interpretation,” to reflect the fact that all the different ways of cutting up the wavefunction into sub-parts are fundamentally a matter of convenience, a choice to talk about pieces of the wavefunction as if they were separate, because the whole is too vast to comprehend.
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02b8d164094a81d8f5f6b90d7006089c | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2020/04/09/how-do-you-teach-science-labs-while-social-distancing/ | How Do You Teach Science Labs While Social Distancing? | How Do You Teach Science Labs While Social Distancing?
My “day job” is as a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Union College in Schenectady, NY. We’re a small liberal arts college with an engineering program, which makes us pretty unusual, but solidly in the “elite private college” sector of higher education: our primary selling point is that we offer small classes (introductory physics courses are capped at 18 students per section), and close contact with faculty (we don’t have graduate students to serve as teaching assistants, and the same faculty teach both lecture and lab in the intro courses). We’re almost entirely a residential college; a few of our students are local and live at home, but the vast majority come from well outside the Capital District of New York; in fact, we have a significant population of students from overseas. That residential experience is also a big part of our educational package: we bring in exceptional students and surround them with other exceptional students, and those relationships with classmates are an important part of the experience.
The deserted central quad of Union College on April 7, 2020. Chad Orzel
So, as you might imagine, the COVID-19 pandemic has hit us pretty hard. The college closed abruptly on March 12, sending students home to complete their Winter term exams remotely, and our entire Spring term (started March 30, running into early June) is being completed remotely. This is a dramatic change for a community that places a high value on close contact and interactions. Like everyone else, we’re scrambling to figure out how to make Zoom work, and how to connect with our students when they’re scattered all across the globe, and unable to meet in person.
This is particularly challenging for those of us who teach lab sciences. My department had to cancel one upper-level lab class altogether, as it required access to our particle accelerator, which obviously wasn’t a thing that was going to happen. In other cases, though, we’re finding ways to muddle through, and I thought it might be interesting to share some of the things I’ve done to adjust my class to this (hopefully temporary) new world.
(Obligatory disclaimer: What I’ll describe here will reflect my own experience and opinions, and should not be taken as any kind of official position on the part of the college. It’s purely for illustration, a kind of snapshot of what it’s like to try to navigate through this pandemic without writing the whole term off.)
I was both lucky and unlucky in that my course for the Spring term is a team-taught science-for-non-science-majors class: five of us (an astronomer, a biologist, a chemist, a geologist, and a physicist) are each doing a two-week module on our topic, with a relatively large class broken up into groups of about a dozen to rotate through the modules one at a time. On the “lucky” side, this means I only needed to prep two weeks worth of class material (that I’ll re-use five times); on the “unlucky” side, this is supposed to be a lab course, giving these students some hands-on experience with the process of scientific discovery, so I had to figure out a way to do that without being in the same place as the students.
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Laser pointer in a LEGO brick holder being used for an at-home diffraction experiment. Chad Orzel
Happily, the topic for my module is the early history of quantum mechanics, so two of the three labs I had in mind used relatively simple equipment: the first lab I had planned was demonstrating the wave nature of light by repeating the famous “double slit” experiment, and the third was a look at the quantum nature of atoms by studying the spectrum of light emitted by various elements. While it’s nice to do these in a proper lab setting, these are both experiments that can be done outside the lab, with relatively simple equipment: as noted here, you can demonstrate the diffraction of light using a laser pointer, and for the spectroscopy activity you can use a simple diffraction grating slide.
Of course, most people aren’t nerds like me who have a collection of laser pointers of various colors (I think I have eight or nine total), and the students in a science-for-non-scientists course are particularly unlikely to have these lying around. And while some people in the business world keep laser pointers for giving presentation, basically none of them keep diffraction gratings on hand to investigate the spectra of various light sources.
Laser pointer and diffraction grating sent to students for at-home lab activities Chad Orzel
So, I ended up going to Amazon for these items. I ordered a hundred diffraction grating slides, and two dozen laser pointers that are sold as cat toys (two of them together with a fuzzy cat toy were about $10 with Prime shipping), and sent a diffraction grating to every student, and a laser pointer to those who said they couldn’t borrow or buy one on their own. The first lab activity was just to send the laser pointer at various obstacles— a thin vertical object like a needle or a piece of hair, a narrow slit in a piece of paper, and a pinhole in a piece of paper— and take cell-phone photos of the resulting diffraction patterns. This has worked about as well as can be hoped: the students have all seen the patterns they were expected to see, and some of the set-ups that they’ve used have shown some impressive ingenuity.
The third lab is to make a spectrograph out of the diffraction grating and a cardboard tube: covering one end with a piece of paper with a small slit in it, and taping the diffraction grating to the other end. Looking through this at a light source will break the light up into its component colors, and shows a clear difference between sources based on getting something hot enough to glow (which emit a broad, continuous spectrum) and those based on the emission of particular atoms (which emit a unique pattern of discrete lines at particular wavelengths).
Sample spectra from several different light sources as seen through a homemade spectrograph. Chad Orzel
This is an activity that we often do in gen ed labs, but in a normal lab setting we have access to a range of special lamps containing particular gases to show the effect. With students constrained to be at home, it’s much harder to find good sources, but there’s a clear and dramatic difference between incandescent bulbs and compact fluorescent bulbs (which use a mercury vapor and some special coatings to produce light at blue, green, and red wavelengths in a combination that appears white to the human eye). This one’s much more of a challenge, and we’re not far enough along for many students to have done the activity, but I hope it can make the point.
Of course, not every quantum lab can be converted to work with easy-to-find materials. The experiment I planned as second in the sequence of the class was to look a the photoelectric effect, which showed that light has particle character. And, unfortunately, I couldn’t think of a good way to deal with this one in a hands-on activity. So in that case, we had to resort to simulated data analysis: I made up a spreadsheet with slightly idealized results (though I added some noise to the data) and asked students to copy the data and look for patterns in the numbers. So far, this is working all right, though what I’m learning is mostly that “non-science majors” covers a wide range, from arts majors who have never used a spreadsheet, to economics majors who can run rings around me in Excel.
Screenshot of a video tutorial on how to analyze simulated data from a photoelectric effect ... [+] experiment. Chad Orzel
The biggest challenge, of course, is working out how to connect with the students, particularly in the current strained circumstance where many of them are taking our remote classes while sharing a house and an Internet connection with parents who are under work-from-home orders and siblings who are also going to school online. Plus, they’re in a range of different time zones. All of which combines to make it extremely difficult to get everyone together for a lecture or discussion at the assigned class hour.
My solution has been to push everything to “asynchronous” mode: I pre-recorded all my lectures (again, I’m exceptionally lucky in that I only needed to do two weeks worth of material) and put them on YouTube (on the theory that Google’s bandwidth is effectively infinite, while I am less confident regarding the capacity of our local servers...). Students can work through these at whatever time and pace works best for them, without needing to worry about being online at a particular time to listen to me. For the live interaction part, I’m spending several hours a day doing open Q&A on Zoom, at three different times of day (one in the morning, one early afternoon, one in the evening) when students can drop in and ask questions.
Again, this is working out... okay. About three-quarters of the students in the first group to do my module have stopped in at least once, and I’ve had some good conversations with them via Zoom. It has meant a lot of very dull hours sitting at my computer with a Zoom meeting open in one corner of the monitor, just in case somebody shows up, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how much writing I’ve managed to get done in this mode.
Anyway, that’s a bit of a snapshot of how we’re dealing with this strange world of trying to provide meaningful hands-on experience of the scientific process to students when we can’t be in the same room with them. While the above focuses on my specific experience, from conversations with my colleagues teaching the other modules of this course and other courses in our department it’s clear that a lot of the elements are broadly shared. Faculty are taking advantage of materials that students have at home (the widespread availability of smartphones with built-in cameras, accelerometers, and timers is a huge help for teaching intro physics), and cobbling together simulations of experiments that require apparatus you can’t find outside of labs we don’t have access to. And we’re all getting better at teleconferencing— why, the other day, we almost got through an entire meeting without anybody trying to talk but forgetting that their microphone was muted.
Students and faculty at a poster session during the Steinmetz Symposium at Union College. Chad Orzel
I spoke to a reporter about this awkward transition last week, and he asked whether this experiment with online education will have a lasting impact, which is an interesting question to consider. I think there are probably a few positive aspects that we’ll take out of this— everybody is getting better at dealing with video content, and I can see myself doing a good deal more with phone-based data acquisition in the future. And there’s certainly a place for some asynchronous instruction, making course content accessible to students outside of the defined class hours, as a supplement to in-class lecture that makes some room for additional discussion and hands-on work during class time.
Ultimately, though, I don’t think this is likely to push us entirely online or anything like that, for the reasons I mentioned when describing the college at the start of this piece. In the end, education is not just about factual content, but about relationships: between students and faculty, and between students and their classmates. Those interpersonal interactions are a huge part of the college experience, helping shape the education of every student. This is obviously particularly important the elite small college corner of academia where I work, but it’s true across the board— the difference between a small liberal arts college and a large public university is really just a shift in the balance between interaction-with-faculty and interaction-with-fellow-students. No matter where you are, your education will be profoundly shaped by the people you spend time with, both in and out of the classroom.
So, while I think we’ll come out of this with some improved technical skills in a few specific areas, I think that when it’s safe for students and faculty to gather in the same place again, we’ll all leap at that opportunity. We’re working hard to make this period of enforced online education as good as it can be, but in the end there’s just no substitute for being together. Until then, we’ll do our best to stay safe and healthy and look forward to better days.
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5a4a0ee87fd42dd0fa1b2c8c8ad18052 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2020/05/29/book-review-quantum-legacies-by-david-kaiser/ | Book Review: Quantum Legacies, By David Kaiser | Book Review: Quantum Legacies, By David Kaiser
David Kaiser and the cover of his new book; image by Donna Coveney, from MIT press release. Donna Coveney
I greatly enjoyed David Kaiser’s How the Hippies Saved Physics (here’s my review from 2011), so when I ran across a mention of this new book with “Quantum” in the title, I immediately sought out a copy. This sort of thing is highly relevant to my interests.
Kaiser is a professor at MIT with a joint appointment in both physics and history of science, and as you would expect this collection of essays splits time between those two fields. The book contains a handful of pieces relating to Kaiser’s work in physics, chiefly about a “cosmological” test of quantum physics, using light from distant quasars as a random number generator for a Bell’s Inequality test (I talked briefly about this idea in the context of football in 2015). There are also a larger number of pieces primarily about the historical and social context of physics, mostly in the mid-to-late 20th century. Almost all of these were previously published (I think there’s only one that doesn’t have a “A version of this previously...” note), mostly in non-technical outlets (The London Review of Books features prominently, as he had a regular gig with them for a while).
The strongest material here charts the changes in the landscape of physics after World War II: the rise and fall of physics enrollments and employment, and the rise and fall of Big Science projects like the (cancelled) Superconducting Supercollider. Some of this is familiar from Hippies, but some is new, and all together it paints a very compelling picture of how strategic decisions at the public policy level shaped the way physicists have gone about studying the universe. I would disagree a bit about some of the details— Kaiser’s physics background is in particle theory, so he’s more pro-accelerator than I am, and there’s a thread in the history of quantum that I’ll take issue with in a different post— but it’s a good story well told. This thread also includes my single favorite piece from the book, using a chance collision between topics to unpack the history of particle cosmology.
The second interesting theme in these pieces, as noted by Ash Jogalekar in his review, has to do with physics publishing. Again, part of this is recycled, but the story of Frijtof Capra’s Tao of Physics is fascinating enough that I was happy to read it again. The chapter on the writing of the (in)famous Gravitation by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler was new to me, though, and really interesting.
All in all, this is a very solid work both in terms of the history and the physics discussed in it, and Kaiser is a very engaging writer. As you would expect from an actual (albeit part-time) historian, the pieces are also extensively documented with citations of the original sources (something I appreciate greatly after a lot of time spent trying to chase down the sources of colorful anecdotes that seem like good material for my own book-in-progress...). If you’re interested in (non-technical) writing about physics, and particularly about the historical context of the field, you should check it out.
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69a92f745b6b3765dcc7e10c1aae1ebc | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chancebarnett/2015/06/09/trends-show-crowdfunding-to-surpass-vc-in-2016/?utm_campaign=The%20Exponential%20View&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20newsletter | Trends Show Crowdfunding To Surpass VC In 2016 | Trends Show Crowdfunding To Surpass VC In 2016
By 2016 the crowdfunding industry is on track to account for more funding than venture capital, according to a recent report by Massolution.
Just five years ago there was a relatively small market of early adopters crowdfunding online to the tune of a reported $880 million in 2010.
Fast forward to today and we saw $16 billion crowdfunded in 2014, with 2015 estimated to grow to over $34 billion.
In comparison, the VC industry invests an average of $30 billion each year.
Meanwhile, the crowdfunding industry is doubling or more, every year, and is spread across several types of funding models including rewards, donation, equity, and debt/lending.
And now under new laws enacted in 2013, equity crowdfunding has sprung forth as the newest category of crowdfunding and is further accelerating this growth and disruption (in disclosure I'm part of this market as the CEO of equity crowdfunding platform Crowdfunder.com).
Finance Meets The Collaborative Economy
If we look at what is driving this growth and change... we see that the collaborative economy has brought new disruptive models to giant existing industries like real estate and transportation, leveraging automation and the internet to create massively scalable businesses.
For some notable specific examples see this visualization of the sharing economy with data from Mesh Labs founder Lisa Gansky, and the recent Venture Beat report led by Jeremiah Owyang showing 17 new billion dollar valuation companies created within the sharing / collaborative economy.
Many of these collaborative economy companies reached over $1 billion valuations within four years or less.
Next up in the crosshairs of the collaborative economy? The Finance industry - and the growth rates are already exponential. We’re seeing the disruptive power of collaboration online being unleashed on angel and venture capital via new laws and top crowdfunding sites focused solely on equity crowdfunding.
Here are the recent crowdfunding industry growth figures, as reported by Massolution in their 2015 Crowdfunding Industry Report.
Will Equity Crowdfunding Overtake Angel and VC?
The World Bank estimated that crowdfunding would reach $90 billion by 2020. If the trend of doubling year over year continues, we'll see $90 billion by 2017.
To put that in perspective, venture capital averages roughly $30 billion per year and in 2014 accounted for roughly $45 billion in investment, whereas angel capital averages roughly $20 billion per year invested.
Equity crowdfunding, the newest category of crowdfunding, opened up publicly in September of 2013 under Title II of the JOBS Act and, while restricted to accredited investors only, has grown to an estimated $1 billion invested online. In 2015 the estimate is for over $2.5 billion to be invested through equity crowdfunding.
If equity crowdfunding doubles every year like the rest of crowdfunding has, then it could reach $36 billion by 2020 and surpass venture capital as the leading source of startup funding.
It's important to understand that crowdfunding isn't a stand alone funding source. Equity crowdfunding currently includes angel investors and VCs participating online as well. Rather, crowdfunding can be seen as a methodology inclusive of individual and institutional investors like VCs.
There's just one big difference...
Equity crowdfunding platforms can scale, depending on their model.
VCs can’t scale.
What's more, the current equity crowdfunding market is limited to accredited investors only. But what happens when an entirely new class of investors of potentially 250 million Americans poised under Title III and Title IV of the JOBS Act are empowered to participate and invest for the first time under new equity crowdfunding laws?
The potential growth and impact could be staggering.
Of course, these new laws aren’t without their critics or risks for investors, as some have pointed out. One of the loudest anti-crowdfunding voices has come from state securities regulators who are largely bypassed by new federal exemptions.
In attempt to proactively address some of these concerns and criticism voiced to equity crowdfunding with non-accredited investors, some new legislation has been in the works on Capitol Hill.
One bill seeks to dramatically increase liquidity opportunities for crowdfunding investors by creating what are being called ‘venture exchanges’ where equity crowdfunding investors can sell and trade shares of private companies.
How Will Angels & VCs Respond To Equity Crowdfunding?
What will the market for startup investing and small business finance look like as equity crowdfunding continues to grow? And are VCs embracing the changes?
Notable venture capitalist Tim Draper stated in a written interview that “...equity crowdfunding gives entrepreneurs access to a new group of investors who might be great assets to their business. I welcome investing in crowdfunded companies. It means that a company has a large number of promoters before I even invest.” (Disclosure: Tim Draper is an investor in Crowdfunder.com, and AngelList.)
Some angels and VCs have begun integrating equity crowdfunding as a step in their investment strategy. Paige Craig, a prolific LA-based investor and General Partner of Arena Ventures, one of LA’s newest venture funds, aims to "activate 10,000 angel investors" alongside the investments they make, using leading equity crowdfunding platforms.
Paige elaborated on the Arena Ventures strategy saying, "I don't see equity crowdfunding as a tool, but rather a place for true partnership where a fund or VC works in partnership with equity crowdfunding platforms to produce a new form of venture finance."
Paige Craig went on to say that "funds bring stability, deep pockets and predictability; they are managed by teams of dedicated investing experts who spend every waking moment finding great founders and helping them scale their companies. At the same time equity crowdfunding opens up startup funding to rest of the world - letting engineers, finance pros, real estate, entertainment, small business and Fortune 500 execs participate in the next wave of innovation. When you combine the stability and expertise of a VC firm with the enthusiasm and rich experience of the crowd you get a powerful new force in the funding ecosystem. I don't know what to call this new model but we believe in it so much it's exactly what we're doing at Arena Ventures."
One of the less talked about impacts the VC world could see from equity crowdfunding involves transparency on investor or fund performance and value-add, which Mr. Craig pointed out saying that "the best equity crowdfunding platforms are (or will be) sharing true performance and historical data on their investors and a lot more. The VC world right now is very murky. As the startup ecosystem participates in these Crowdfunding platforms and shares data the public as well as the LPs, investors and founders will finally get honest access to everyone's performance."
But not all VCs want to share the fruits of their labor, and not all founders are comfortable with the more public nature of online fundraising. Equity crowdfunding won't be for everyone. Expect to see VCs still keeping some deals exclusively for themselves.
Fundraising For Startups Has Never Been Better
The lines are being blurred across the early stage investment ecosystem - some equity crowdfunding platforms are effectively becoming venture funds of their own. Meanwhile, VCs are integrating equity crowdfunding into their investment processes due to the marketing and strategic benefits it can bring.
A giant new capital market is taking shape before our eyes, and it is just the early days.
What is for sure is that as access to VC-led deals is rapidly increasing for everyday investors and angels, and as equity crowdfunding platforms continue to aggregate investors - the real winners today are the high growth entrepreneurs who have more sources and channels for finding capital than they’ve ever had.
Follow me on Twitter @chancebar
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*Disclaimer: I’m the CEO of Crowdfunder.com, have been a participant in JOBS Act legislative and regulatory efforts, as well as a startup founder and early stage angel investor.
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657ee669995b1bf50faae24bed80a3c4 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chantaldasilva/2021/03/19/more-than-45000-sign-petition-calling-on-uk-to-stop-housing-asylum-seekers-at-military-barracks/?sh=32cfa89418c0 | More Than 45,000 Sign Petition Calling On UK To Stop Housing Asylum Seekers At Military Barracks | More Than 45,000 Sign Petition Calling On UK To Stop Housing Asylum Seekers At Military Barracks
Asylum seekers housed at the Napier Barracks in Folkestone, Kent, England, walk through the site on ... [+] February 1, 2021. AFP via Getty Images
Immigration advocates handed Britain’s Home Office a petition with at least 45,000 thousand signatures on Friday calling on government officials to stop using military barracks to house asylum seekers.
The petition was delivered to the Home Office as more than 500 people joined a virtual “#CloseTheBarracks” rally, with former immigration minister Caroline Nokes, Holly Lynch, shadow immigration minister, and Stuart McDonald, shadow spokesperson for home affairs, helping lead calls for the Home Office to stop using the Napier barracks in Folkestone, Kent, to house asylum seekers.
“This was a political choice,” Lynch said of the Home Office’s decision to house asylum seekers in military barracks in the first place. “We won’t rest until this type of appalling accommodation is closed,” she promised asylum seekers and advocates present at the rally.
Calls for Napier’s closure came as the Home Office shut down a sister site in Pembrokeshire, Wales, with the last of the asylum seekers who had been housed at the Penally barracks having been moved out of the camp as of Friday.
According to asylum seekers who had previously been housed at the site, its remaining residents have been relocated to alternative accommodations in Cardiff and Swansea.
“As a result of your rallying, protesting and supporting, Penally camp is now closed,” one asylum seeker, who asked that their name be withheld over fears speaking out could impact their immigration case, said at the rally. “We need your continued support to help us close Napier as well,” they said.
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On Wednesday, the Home Office announced that while it would be shuttering Penally, it would continue to house asylum seekers at the Napier barracks, despite an inspection of both camps finding them to be “impoverished, run-down and unsuitable for long-term accommodation”.
The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration’s inspection also found that a recent Covid-19 outbreak at the Napier barracks, which saw nearly 200 asylum seekers at the camp infected with the deadly virus, was “virtually inevitable” due to the dormitory style of accommodations.
It further made clear that the Home Office had pushed ahead with using the dormitories to house asylum seekers, despite warnings from public health officials that doing so would be against Covid-19 guidance, contradicting Home Secretary Priti Patel’s claims that her department had acted in full cooperation with coronavirus guidance.
Continuing to house asylum seekers at the camp, Lynch said, is “not just inhumane - they’ve put people’s lives at risk”.
“At no time did public health authorities ever think this was a good idea,” she said.
In a separate interview, McDonald said he was “horrified” that it “doesn’t appear to be the plan to stop using all military barracks as soon as possible”.
“Obviously, the fact that they seem to have been forced or decided to close Penally is good,” he said. “But this whole agenda of essentially, ‘we are housing asylum seekers in military barracks...should have been binned before it gained any traction”.
“Even a child will tell you that when you are dealing with pandemic like this, when everyone’s going about their business trying to stop it...you just do not use this type of accommodation,” he said.
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a733a9cf5b98ef478b27b5a615ae6055 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chantaldasilva/2021/04/16/biden-keeps-trump-era-refugee-cap-breaking-election-promise/ | Biden Keeps Trump-Era Refugee Cap, Breaking Election Promise | Biden Keeps Trump-Era Refugee Cap, Breaking Election Promise
President Joe Biden speaks from the Treaty Room in the White House about the withdrawal of US troops ... [+] from Afghanistan on April 14, 2021 in Washington, DC. Biden has said he will maintain former President Donald Trump's record-low refugee cap. Getty Images
President Joe Biden appeared to break an election promise on Friday as he announced that his administration would be maintaining the record-low refugee resettlement cap introduced by his predecessor, former President Donald Trump.
In an emergency determination, Biden said said the admission of up to 15,000 refugees “remains justified by humanitarian concerns and is otherwise in the national interest”.
The president did say, however, that if the 15,000 cap is met prior to the end of the fiscal year, admissions could be increased “as appropriate”.
Still, the 15,000 cap, which set a record low when it was first introduced by Trump, has come as a major disappointment to immigration advocates, who supported Biden’s 2020 campaign promise to “increase the number of refugees we welcome into the country”.
Biden campaigned on a platform that condemned Trump for having “steadily decimated” the US’s refugee program.
In his immigration plan, his campaign team had accused Trump of having “reduced the refugee resettlement ceiling to its lowest level in decades and slammed the door on thousands of individuals suffering persecution, many of whom face threats of violence or even death in their home countries”.
It also promised that Biden would “set the annual global refugee admissions cap to 125,000 and seek to raise it over time commensurate with our responsibility, our values and the unprecedented global need”.
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In February, the president signaled that he would at least lift the refugee cap up to 62,500, bringing it closer to historical levels.
Now, immigration advocates have been left disappointed by the president’s apparent failure to keep either vow.
"This is incredibly disappointing,” Ali Noorani, President and CEO of the National Immigration Forum, said in a statement released on Friday. “ The United States is the most powerful nation in the world and we can’t do better?"
Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also condemned the move, writing on Twitter that Biden’s decision was “completely and utterly unacceptable”.
"Biden promised to welcome immigrants, and people voted for him based on that promise," she said.
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af636879335a486ed9fc5009c999bed4 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chantaldasilva/2021/05/03/biden-administration-to-reunite-four-families-separated-under-trump-as-over-1000-still-apart/ | Biden Administration To Reunite Four Families Separated Under Trump As ‘Over 1,000’ Still Apart | Biden Administration To Reunite Four Families Separated Under Trump As ‘Over 1,000’ Still Apart
A woman protesting family separations at the border holds her sign over Highway 101 as a coalition ... [+] of activist groups and labor unions participate in a May Day march for workers' and human rights in Los Angeles, California on May 1, 2021. AFP via Getty Images
Four families forced to live apart for years after being separated at the US-Mexico border under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration rule will be brought together this week in what Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has called the “first of many” reunifications.
Speaking at a media teleconference on Sunday evening, Mayorkas said the reunifications would take place over the next two days and were “just the beginning”.
“We continued to work tireless to reunite many more children with their parents in the weeks and months ahead,” he said.
The number of families yet to be reunited, however, appears to be higher than previously thought, with Mayorkas and Michelle Brané, the executive director of the Biden administration’s “Family Reunification Task Force” revealing that officials have identified more than 1,000 families who could still be separated.
“There are over 1,000 families that we know of that remain separated or that we believe remain separated,” Brané said during the teleconference.
The family reunification task force chief said that the Biden administration has faced an uphill battle in trying to piece together incomplete data handed over by the Trump administration.
“The records that we have are not complete,” she said. “What we have are the numbers that were confirmed as reunified in the summer of 2018 and then no information on who may have been reunited since then, other than a few cases.”
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Among the four families who will be reunited this week are a mother who was separated from her children at the US-Mexico border in late 2017 after the family fled from Honduras.
After years apart, she and her children, who are currently in the US, will be reunited “in the coming two days,” Mayorkas said.
A mother and son from Mexico who have been separated since late 2017 will also be reunited over the coming days, the DHS chief said.
The families, who Mayorkas said were “cruelly separated at the United States and Mexico border under the previous administration” include “children who were three-years-old at the time of separation” and “teenagers who have had to live without their parent throughout their most formative years”.
Mayorkas said the task force “is dedicated to finding every family and bringing them an opportunity to reunite and heal”.
In order to heal, the DHS secretary said families would need support and protection from the US.
As such, Mayorkas said reunited families will be extended support and humanitarian parole to remain in the country on a case-by-case basis.
“Stability and resources are needed,” he said. “These families need that to heal and we are making our determinations on an individualized basis at this point”.
The DHS chief also championed his department’s efforts to address the rise in arrivals of unaccompanied migrant children at the US border.
Within the span of a month, he said the DHS has been able to reduce the number of unaccompanied children in the custody of the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency by “approximately 84 percent”.
“The progress we have made is dramatic,” Mayorkas said.
The DHS secretary said the Biden administration had made sweeping changes to “reengineer” the US’s system for providing shelter and care for unaccompanied children.
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d8ecfdf3d93e1a4ec6e54577c820f990 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlesbeames/2020/04/16/the-silver-lining-of-new-space-bankruptcies/?sh=3e44e0f31aa0 | The Silver Lining Of New Space Bankruptcies | The Silver Lining Of New Space Bankruptcies
Image of a satellite in space Pixabay
When any company considers bankruptcy protection, clearly something is not going to plan. Bankruptcy can be an ugly situation for the employees and shareholders of a company, as well as other companies dependent on it. It is arguably the most visible symptom of a business not organized to survive the current market. Surviving this current economic standstill is hard enough but organizing new companies to lead change is next to impossible. This and a large dose of fortune’s fickleness, leads companies of all different sizes to file for bankruptcy roughly 20,000 times every year.
But there's a silver lining. A free market and the associated continuous elevation of our standard of living depends on it. Bankruptcy protection laws allow companies to suspend payments, renegotiate contracts and generally restructure for another shot at success in the future. Government policymakers, many of whom have modest experience in commercial business, must recognize this fact as they determine their role in the future space industry. The ugliest thing is not bankruptcy; it's the government thinking it must prop up business ideas that are not viable.
Out of the first wave of next generation space companies, some embraced the financing model of Silicon Valley, securing funding through venture capital (VC) firms. Plenty of these endeavors needed extensive investment over many years to design, produce, launch and operate constellations of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of satellites. Because of these timelines, companies’ VC investors cannot assess profitability until hundreds of millions of dollars are spent and begin losing confidence before real revenue begins. The most recent and visible example is OneWeb’s bankruptcy announcement. When companies are unable to finance an idea to completion, projects are abandoned with little residual value left. This has also been true for some of the next generation launch companies, save for those backed by a billionaire or their government.
The next generation space ecosystem doesn’t always require billion-dollar VC investments to generate revenue and flourish, as the majority of companies haven’t required it. The government policymakers must focus on these small companies and sole proprietorships that design, produce, integrate and operate next generation space systems. Some are suppliers to both legacy space companies and VC backed failures. Many, like Tethers Unlimited and TriSept, Inc., were bootstrapped, winning small projects and leveraging them into bigger ones. Others have leveraged small private investors to expand their operations. Together, these companies routinely engage in mutually beneficial contracts and partnerships and are organically growing the new U.S. economy.
Today, the future is bright in the U.S. space industry. Innovation and entrepreneurship are at an all-time high, and the government is already taking notice. NOAA recently awarded several contracts for its future architecture, and most of the winning companies were next generation space companies. Today’s commercial space companies are able to deliver and operate an on-orbit, fully capable satellite that lasts five years for less than what their predecessors spent to just write a proposal only 10 years ago. These companies and their suppliers have not only democratized space data but also the space business itself. The newest small business entrepreneurs are creating profitable businesses with an idea, some sweat equity and very minor outside investment.
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So what must the government’s role be during this economic meltdown? Put simply, it must ensure liquidity of these small businesses, the Space Force’s intellectual backbone, with government backed low interest loans. It must also recommit itself to leveraging them to meet current and future mission needs with low-cost commercial space products and services. Awarding contracts to deliver systems and solutions from next generation companies unambiguously communicates to investors where to anticipate commercial utility in a hybrid space architecture. With that information, banks and investors can confidently allocate funding without disproportionately distorting either the military or commercial marketplaces. The alternative is government executives trying to armchair quarterback VC fund managers, which is a fool’s errand at best. As we see with so many VC backed failures, fund managers themselves are too often barely qualified to direct the money they have and are certainly unqualified to anticipate or decide the direction of the future of warfare.
In the aftermath of quite a few VC backed companies going bankrupt, very little can be said publicly about them without fear of lawsuits and countersuits. Next generation space companies don’t have to follow that Silicon Valley tech model, and many don't. An economy of hundreds of product and service suppliers enable today’s bold space entrepreneur to create a profitable and expanding company with grit, a little deferred gratification and some investment from friends and family.
If you believe in capitalism and the entrepreneurship that fuels it, bankruptcy isn’t entirely a bad thing. The regulators and policymakers in Washington must continue to foster a climate of repurposing resources through bankruptcy laws and buying goods and services from viable commercial U.S. companies. By doing so, entrepreneurs will learn from the past and come back stronger than ever, either in the same industry or in something new. And when they come back, they just might have alternatives to wasting most of their time raising billions from the dreaded “vulture capitalists,” which is quite the silver lining indeed.
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da314ae16b7b6b3642aeb1e568711a1c | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlesbeames/2021/03/22/talking-about-climate-change-is-no-longer-enough-nasa-hints-the-time-is-now-urgent/ | Talking About Climate Change Is No Longer Enough: NASA Hints The Time Is Now Urgent | Talking About Climate Change Is No Longer Enough: NASA Hints The Time Is Now Urgent
The time is now to address climate change. Getty Images/iStockphoto
The past year has seen another round of record-breaking high and low temperatures, a tumultuous hurricane season, apocalyptic wildfires, and torrential flooding. In a year where Texas literally froze over, however, this ceases to be a conversation limited to elevators, barber shops and first dates. The time for small talk is over – let’s talk about our changing climate.
According to Council on Foreign Relations, even if all goals of the Paris Climate Agreement were achieved, it still would not be enough to avoid the global average temperature from rising and the devastating environmental consequences that come with it. We are very likely to suffer more unusual weather events (weirder climate is a term I like) in the coming years and the warming of the climate that seems to cause it will continue into the foreseeable future. Dr. Karen St. Germain, NASA’s Director of Earth Sciences, said to me this week, “These risks extend to every part of the U.S. and the world, to every economic sector, and to nearly every aspect of human well-being.”
Of course, we are pretty sure another Ice Age will eventually come too, but that isn’t likely for a while. Another magnetic pole flip is also something else scientists are researching the likelihood of. As each of these trends are tracked and we increasingly experience weirder climate, policymakers must no longer deny the urgency and lead. They must plan the necessary actions needed for an increasingly unpredictable, and likely daunting, environmental future. Weirder climate, as it seems to be happening, will be inducing interconnected global problems requiring individual and group action. Space systems can be integral to understanding, planning, and adapting to our changing environment.
Pushing past the remaining few who still dispute the causes, our policy leaders must move on from that debate and decide what the government’s proper role must be in leading humanity to better survive. Coastal seas are rising, extreme weather events are becoming more common, and migrations of refugees due directly or indirectly to these events are in mass exodus.
Anticipating weather before it happens has proven to be economically and operationally useful, but what is especially important today is to realize that we cannot go back to a pre-industrial age world – we have to put together a viable apparatus to help everyone adapt. Everyone from senior government leaders to small business owners now have a responsibility to learn, organize, plan, and act on a comprehensive strategy of adaptation to survive.
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Many changes have occurred to the climate over the hundreds of thousands of years modern humans have been roaming the planet. In fact, most of what we look like, where and how we live, and what we eat has been shaped by climate changes. Evidence indicates, though, that epoch-level changes such as glacial stages and massive flooding very likely exacted enormous casualties. There have been “dramatic advances in technology and commercial sector investment that are creating new ways to observe and understand the earth,” Dr. St Germain says.
In this modern era, we have the technology to both understand and predict our world and, more importantly, to plan and adapt for our survival and future prosperity.
The military, ever pragmatic despite the political crossfire that seems to consume everything, has been steadfast in planning for this, under the leadership of the Trump administration and now under President Biden. Sea lanes are already opening in the Arctic that will trigger territory disputes, coastal military bases will likely need to be moved, and more robust weather prediction will become a necessity. Secretary of Defense Austin has signaled it as a key goal and has commissioned a group to further accelerate implementation plans already being executed.
We need an urgent sense for a holistic government approach that picks up where military needs end and sees the goals we set through to completion. Every person in civil government will need similar tools to help them make the right decisions their citizens expect.
We do not need Apollo program funding levels to get this done. What we need are the right kinds of public-private partnership policies. “Working together, we can create the observations at the accuracy, time and spatial scales the U.S. will need to build resilient communities, support sustainable agriculture, assess air quality and biodiversity, and manage water resources,” Dr. St Germain says. Policies such as these would accelerate introduction of existing commercial technologies into a favorable commercial space ecosystem. Partnerships today will lead to a marketplace of systems, services, and ideas for a space century.
To apply world class AI to the challenge, more data is the first step. Our government needs to begin procuring extremely low-cost off-the-shelf systems and services that collect useful space data and encourage open-source analysis; much like was done with Landsat data beginning in the 1970s.
Whether through a commercial data service or outright procurement of low-cost commercially sourced satellite constellations, this data must be provisioned urgently so that state and local governments, and eventually like-minded nations can begin sharing insights with analytics companies. These next generation analytics companies will be essential in the adaptation of every sector of the economy for this rapidly approaching new normal.
Earth Day is coming again soon, and with it the usual yawn, “Yeah, we really should do something about that!” Let this be the year we finally address the urgency of our situation and agree to plan for our adaptation. We have no choice if we are to overcome the tsunami of “weirder” climate events that have already begun.
Even among the biggest proponents of the Paris agreement, the consensus seems to be that there is nothing we can really do to actually stop a climate shift. We need our public and our policymakers to stare that fact in the face and devise a plan to actually deal with it, rather than buying a hybrid car and calling it good. Our grandchildren will thank us for it.
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02f772a7b8ffc684cf21367600d607f3 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlesbramesco/2015/08/17/sesame-street-goes-to-hbo-raising-question-of-moral-obligation-in-business/ | 'Sesame Street' Goes To HBO, Raising Question Of Moral Obligation In Business | 'Sesame Street' Goes To HBO, Raising Question Of Moral Obligation In Business
Sesame Street is an American children's television series created by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd... [+] Morrisett that premiered in 1969. Sesame Street is entertaining and educational TV shows for young children, with some focus on preschool too. In 2009, Sesame Street’s 40th anniversary, won Lifetime Achievement Emmy Award. Over the years Sesame Street won 8 Grammy Awards and 159 Emmy Awards. The various characters were very popular; Muppets were puppet characters working with the people characters. Sesame Street Photos and Sesame Street images. xentertainmentcollectionx
On Thursday, The New York Times ran an item announcing that the nonprofit group Sesame Workshop had inked a deal to sell the exclusive first-run rights to its flagship property, seminal children's program Sesame Street, to HBO. Under this deal, the new adventures of Elmo, Grover, Bert and Ernie, Oscar the Grouch, Big Bird, and the rest of the urban-puppet gang would run first on HBO alone, and then they'd air on their original home of PBS nine months later. In addition, the beefed-up budget will expand the regulation 18-episode season of Sesame Street to nearly twice that length at 35 new episodes per year. At Vox, Todd VanDerWerff succinctly lays out the financial physics of the arrangement, explaining that the move to HBO could be a saving grace for Sesame Workshop, which had been struggling with money troubles since online-streaming behemoths and YouTube decimated the DVD sales that had kept the studio afloat. The Times item cites a figure that PBS provides approximately 10% of Sesame Workshop's revenue, the remainder coming from open-market merchandising, from home-viewing to the ceaselessly cackling Tickle Me Elmos that drive parents to the brink of hara-kiri every holiday season. VanDerWerff goes on to detail PBS' distribution of government-allotted funds, which chiefly serve to keep struggling local stations afloat instead of financing house-made content. The network tends to acquire shows produced and developed by independent studios and then actually purchases the rights to air the episodes. (In VanDerWerff's more direct words, "PBS doesn't own Sesame Street".)
HBO, flush with capital from their subscription-based business model, can afford to keep Sesame Street in the black. What would seem like good news all around comes parceled with troubling implications, however. VanDerWerff's piece also briefly addresses the moral component of this deal, noting that many low-income families — the very audience for whom Sesame Street was conceived in the first place — may not have access to premium cable. (Signifiers of upper-middle class bourgeois affluence don't get much clearer than an HBO subscription, except for maybe owning the full box set of The Wire.) It'd be no fair to slough off the blame for this on avarice from Sesame Workshop heads, though, they're just trying to keep their heads above water. And it's true that little ones without the distinct privilege of parents with HBO won't be entirely bereft of felt-puppet fun, just a little behind the times. After all, it's not as if three-year-olds gather around the apple juice on Monday morning to talk spoilers for that week's Sesame Street.
And yet the scenario as a whole illustrates a troubling narrowing of the space between a rock and hard place that can force any sort of independent entity in the entertainment industry to loosen its principles. Every enterprise sets out with a litany of goals, many of them surely commendable, but only a single, solitary need: to make money. Too many studios have learned the hard way that the toll booths on the high road can be prohibitively expensive, and sometimes less-than-savory methods may be required to keep the motor running.
In no small way, this is why public arts funding exists. The National Endowment for the Arts backs projects with social or creative merit so that the production teams won't have to worry about compromising their artistic scruples. For a nation as obscenely wealthy as the United States, the budget for the National Endowment of the Arts is embarrassingly small, currently standing at $146 million. More troubling still, that figure is the result of a steady decrease in recent years, down from 2010's $167 million and 2011's $154 million, having plateaued after a dip in 2013 with $138 million. And that sum has always been under attack from conservative political forces, operating under the reasonable-sounding but actually quite toxic rationale that art that can't survive in the marketplace is art nobody wants, and as such, undeserving of funding from the federal government. In 1981, Ronald Reagan originally intended to completely abolish the NEA upon entering office, but abandoned these plans due to urging from close advisors. Conservative ideologues have habitually attacked the NEA for sponsoring provocative or otherwise abstract artworks, most notably objecting to the purportedly sacrilegious photograph "Piss Christ", which displays a Jesus Christ figurine hanging upon a small model crucifix submerged in a glass of the photographer Andres Serrano's own urine.
The NEA generally keeps out of high-profile film releases, and understandably so; the likes of Jurassic World hardly need support from the government. Furthermore, any attendant controversy would be magnified on a massive scale if the culture clash took place on a stage as prominent as the neighborhood multiplex. Hungary, for instance, disbursed capital from its national film fund to back an excellent film called White God last year, in which dogs rise up and attack the brutish human owners in an allegorical triumph of the working poor over the moneyed powers that be. Imagine, if you will, the unholy hurricane of fecal matter that'd be stirred up if it came out that the American government had funneled money into Hollywood to finance a film promoting what are ultimately Marxist ideals. That situation alone sounds like an entry from Bill O'Reilly's dream journal.
The irony, of course, being that subversive or challenging art is a huge part of why the NEA exists — because it's something any country with as much fabulous wealth as America ought to have, even though it's not necessarily lucrative. In the simplest possible terms, the NEA's a bad investment. The likelihood of the American economy getting the money devoted to NEA-funded productions back is extremely slim, but at a certain point, a higher obligation transcends mere numbers. Whether it's a kids show with animals that act like people or a Hungarian art film with animals that act like people, the world needs art, and creators must be able to comfortably fill that need without feeling the gas-burners of commerce turned up beneath them.
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883259a16bc796bf3333c8288b3d17cc | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charleskadlec/2011/04/25/an-all-in-bet-by-fed-chairman-ben-bernanke/ | An "All-In" Bet By Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke | An "All-In" Bet By Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
When Ben Bernanke hosts the first ever press conference by a Federal Reserve Chairman on Wednesday, the subtext will be all about trust -- trust in the Fed and the future value of the dollar.
He and his audience are well aware that the danger signs of higher inflation are swirling about – higher energy and food prices, rapidly rising commodity and precious metal prices, and a steady fall in the value of the dollar on foreign exchange markets. But Bernanke is likely to repeat his previous public statements that these price increases are transitory. By so doing, he will attempt to keep inflationary expectations low by promising that the Fed’s efforts to stimulate the economy through an aggressive program of quantitative easing will prove to be non-inflationary.
Just as important, he is likely to repeat his claim first made in his December interview on 60 Minutes that the Fed has the tools and the ability to keep its promise of controlling inflation should he conclude that inflation has, in fact, broken out.
Adhering to these positions may prove to be an "all in" bet by the Fed Chairman. Individuals, companies, and governments all over the world look like they are about to call his bluff. Unless the Fed takes immediate steps to strengthen the dollar, expect distrust in the dollar to grow with a consequent continued slide in its value.
Count me among the skeptics on both promises.
First, the rate of consumer price inflation including energy and food has accelerated into the mid single digits. The three-month annualized increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) has gone from 2.9% in September, to 3.3% in December, to 6.1% in March.
The acceleration in more sensitive producer prices has been even more startling, with the three month annualized rate of advance in the Producer Price Index for Finished Goods rising from 4.1% in September, to 9.2% in December and a stunning 13.1% for the three months ending March.
Moreover, Bernanke’s position that these price increases will prove transitory are contradicted by the continued fall in the value of the dollar on commodity and foreign exchange markets. Gold prices had begun to stabilize near $1400 an ounce in the first quarter. But, the past several weeks have seen price increases accelerate again, taking the price of gold to above $1500 an ounce and oil prices north of $110 a barrel.
Second, I sincerely doubt that Bernanke will be able to keep his promise to control inflation quickly once he finally admits it has arrived. The reason is a fundamental flaw in the traditional thinking at the Fed which equates an increase in the Fed Funds rate, per se, with an inflation reducing "tightening" of monetary policy.
In a breakthrough study, Dr. John P. Hussman of the Hussman Funds points out that an increase in the Fed Funds rate alone would increase, not decrease, inflationary pressures. His study documents that a higher Fed Funds rate would increase the velocity of the monetary base. An increase in velocity means that the same monetary base would support a higher level of nominal GDP. The only way to produce a higher level of nominal GDP with the same level of real output is through an increase in the price level – in other words, more inflation
In a chilling warning, Hussman writes:
"In order to achieve a non-inflationary increase in yields even to 0.25%, the Fed will have to reverse the entire amount of asset purchases it has engaged in under QE2. Indeed, the last time we observed Treasury bill yields at 0.25%, the monetary base was well under $2 trillion."
The Fed may be able to mitigate the need to shrink its balance sheet by increasing the interest rates it pays on bank reserves – something it did not do in the past. Those higher rates would encourage banks to maintain their excess reserves at the Fed, thereby slowing the increase in velocity associated with a higher Fed Funds rate. But, for the Fed to avoid making an inflationary mistake requires Bernanke and his colleagues to get it exactly right, even as a growing number of people become less willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
The fundamental challenge that Bernanke now faces is this: Nothing stands behind the value of the dollar other than people’s willingness to trust its worth. Reputations – and trust -- are built by making and keeping promises. They can take years to develop, but only a short time to destroy.
Once promises begin to be broken, reputations and trust begin to decline and people begin to "hedge their bets." At some moment, a tipping point is reached where the individual or company is no longer trusted and their reputation is lost.
Breaking both the promise that inflation is under control, and the promise to control inflation once it has broken out, will not only undercut the Fed’s reputation, it will also undermine trust in the future buying power of the dollar.
As people trust the dollar less, they will drive prices higher as they seek to rid themselves of the falling currency. Lenders will demand higher interest rates to protect themselves against the uncertainty of its future value. Rising inflation and interest rates feed the distrust, potentially producing a vicious circle of accelerating inflation and interest rates.
The last time the Fed destroyed trust in the dollar was the 1970s. The end result was double-digit inflation, record high interest rates, a global run on – and near collapse – of the dollar. How close we are to a re-run of this scenario will be determined not only by what Bernanke says during his press conference, but also by the skillful actions that he and his colleagues take to demonstrate to millions of people all over the world that the dollar is a currency worthy of their trust.
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cd8207e1684bf8df01f154c02027c671 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charleskadlec/2011/10/03/president-obama-community-organizer-in-chief/ | President Obama: Community Organizer In Chief | President Obama: Community Organizer In Chief
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In Barack Obama's keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, he rebuked "those who are preparing to divide us," and famously declared, "there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino and Asian America; there's the United States of America."
Paradoxically, his unifying speech seven years ago and his divisive rhetoric of today both reveal the president's governing philosophy, at its very core, is that of a community organizer. The only thing that has changed is the reality of how the economic policies of a community organizer when applied at the national level are themselves, inherently divisive.
Once elected president, Obama's vision of the United States as a single community collided with one of the fundamental goals of a community organizer, to gain political power for the purpose of transferring resources from those outside the community to those inside the community. By so doing, the community organizer accomplishes several objectives.
First, he serves his community by increasing the resources in that community, from increased government services to expanded payrolls.
Second, the community organizer increases his or her power by direct or indirect control of who benefits from those additional resources and by becoming the spokesperson for the community.
The challenge that Obama faces as president is that the community now consists of the entire United States. When seen through the lens of a community organizer, the vision of a single American community must fracture into those who are inside the community, and therefore deserve favorable treatment, and those who lay outside the community, and who rightfully should fund the community organizer's goals. As the president makes clear:
Teachers are inside the community; oil companies are outside. Unions are inside and deserving of government spending; those who make more an $200,000 a year are outside the community and deserve higher taxes The rich who raise money for his campaign are inside the community, and their businesses, such as Solyndra, deserve massive government subsidies. No effort is made to close the loopholes that are exploited by General Electric to avoid paying any federal income taxes. Instead, its chairman, Jeffrey Immelt, a major Obama fund raiser, is appointed by the President to chair his "jobs council." By contrast, successful entrepreneurs, highly paid corporate executives and owners of corporate jets not connected to the Obama campaign are targeted with higher tax rates, fewer deductions and increased regulatory burdens. Owners of windmills that kill thousands of birds a year, including bald eagles, are not prosecuted under the migratory bird act. But the Obama Justice Department has sued seven oil companies in North Dakota for allegedly causing the death of 28 migratory birds.
President Obama's stimulus plan supported those he favors with targeted and temporary tax cuts, and spending to support state and local government payrolls and the creation of "green jobs." But when the community is the U.S., every dollar transferred to some group must, by necessity, come at the expense of someone else in the community. For every winner, there is a loser.
As economic policy, this fails because shuffling resources from one group to another cannot increase the aggregate resources available to the community. At best, aggregate demand is transferred to those who are favored, from those who are not. The fact that the U.S. borrows billions from non U.S. residents does not change this result. Every dollar borrowed brings with it a future tax liability.
Ironically, as social policy, community organizing at a national scale also fails. While it is true that roughly 50% of Americans do not pay taxes, it does not follow that they escape the consequences of the community organizer's policies. For example, higher unemployment rates have hurt most the least skilled, and the African-American community with its Depression level unemployment rate of nearly 17% has suffered disproportionately from the failure of the Obama's massive increase in government spending to stimulate the economy.
Second, many of those who are inside the community today because they make less than $200,000 a year aspire to make more than that amount in the years ahead. This is particularly true of the baby boomers as they hit their peak earning years of between 45 and 65.
And finally, squandering resources -- such as losing more than $160 billion on mortgage loans guaranteed or owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reduces the wealth of the entire community, leaving fewer resources for governments to actually provide good highways and bridges. Think of it: Just to replace the $530 million in taxpayer money lost on Solyndra alone, 500 Warren Buffets would have to pay $1 million each in higher taxes. And, not so much as an apology from the president or his secretary of energy for losing the money. Just a call for higher taxes on those "who can afford it."
President Obama's 2012 campaign strategy, too, comes right out of Saul Alinsky's classic guide for community organizers, Rules For Radicals. In his demonization of "the "rich" and his charge that Republicans are putting politics ahead of the country, Obama is employing Alinsky's thirteenth rule: "pick the target, personalize it, freeze it, and polarize it.
Although this strategy may be successful in rallying the base of the Democratic Party, it violates two of Alinsky's other admonitions. The sixth rule is: "A good tactic is one that your people enjoy." Based on the tepid support Democrats in the House and Senate have given Obama's "jobs bill" it appears that the president has run afoul of this rule. And, by launching his campaign more than a year before the election, he has ignored Alinsky's seventh rule: "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag."
Perhaps more damaging to President Obama's sinking popularity is the growing realization that, as Hayek warned in The Road to Serfdom, laws designed to achieve distributive justice must favor some Americans over other Americans. By treating people differently such laws lead to the breakdown of the Rule of Law. As such, the policies of a community organizer at the national level risk sacrificing one of the principles of liberty -- that all are equal before the law.
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b5d68bf109d3928b4f2d453c637936b8 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charleskadlec/2011/11/21/social-justice-greed-and-the-occupy-wall-street-movement/ | Social Justice, Greed And The Occupy Wall Street Movement | Social Justice, Greed And The Occupy Wall Street Movement
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
“It seems to be almost a law of human nature that it is easier for people to agree on a negative program – on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of those better off – than on any positive task.” Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
Occupy Wall Street (OWS) has provided a rare up-close and personal look at a social system animated by the desire for political power that disrespects, if not completely disregards, fundamental property rights. What we can see is a society that fosters squalor, theft, rape and pillage and a political movement based on the very greed it claims to abhor.
The OWS movement began with an idealistic impulse which a majority of Americans support. The grievances against the bailouts of banks, auto companies, and major corporations including GM, Chrysler and GE are real and justified. But, idealism and good intentions cannot excuse the results produced within the OWS community itself, nor the substance of its political agenda.
To excuse or glance over this reality is to avert one’s eyes to the inevitable consequences of a social philosophy that believes human rights can be detached from property rights. We are told that if humans would just be willing to share in the pursuit of the common good, harmony and social justice would prevail. Instead, what we observe is absent the right to property, all other human rights – including the right to one’s body – gives way to the rule of force.
Disregard, if not the abolition of property rights, is at the heart of the OWS movement. The attack on property rights begins with the act “to occupy,” that is to take possession of someone else’s property through the power of the mob. And, it is manifest in the communal nature of OWS movement.
The first and most obvious result is the squalor of the camps, from accumulation of trash and litter, to the lack of sanitation. Nor should we be surprised by the growing lawlessness of the movement or the crimes committed within the OWS community itself. Laptop computers quickly disappeared from Zuccotti Park because they were stolen or the occupiers stopped bringing them. That is what happens when no one's property is safe from theft or abuse. A world without property rights quickly runs out of capital, because capital cannot exist without the protection of individual property or the state asserting property rights in its own name. The consequence is poverty for all but the political elites.
The worst crimes, however, were committed against individuals, including sexual assaults and rape. But these crimes, too, are symptomatic of a society that eschews private property. As John Locke wrote:
“Though the Earth and all inferior Creatures be common to all Men, yet every Man has a property in his own person. (emphasis in original) This no Body has any Right to but himself.”
In other words, the first and most precious property right is your ownership of your own body. This sounds strange to our modern ears, but it goes to the very essence of why property rights are at the very foundation of liberty, and why those who seek power over other human beings advocate abolishing private property.
With the exception of small communes, usually organized around religious principals, the abandonment of our right to private property puts at risk our life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Without property rights, there is also little commerce. Commerce exists where individuals are free to enter into mutually beneficial exchanges. Absent the ownership of property, there is nothing to exchange. Therefore, the movement was dependent upon outside resources. Unlike most gatherings of thousands of people, OWS has been a scourge on the businesses surrounding Zuccotti Park.
A society without property rights also shows little compassion for those outside the community who are in need. The homeless who were attracted to Zuccotti Park by “free food” and tents were not welcome to share in the relative abundance of the protestors.
Finally, the OWS movement demonstrates that “social justice” is based on unjust policies similar to those they condemn. The protestors rightfully assail the bailouts of banks and Wall Street executives, but their solution is more of the same including bailouts for student loans and individuals who took out mortgages on houses they could not afford.
In truth, the OWS protestors are only skirmishing over the distribution of the spoils system they claim to abhor. Their demands for higher tax rates on the "1%" shows their desire to join those who pillage through the power of government. They call it social justice. But its credo is the same as the crony capitalists who exploit the American people through government handouts: Both seek to use political power to satisfy their needs by taking the income of others rather than through voluntary exchanges. In each case, its true name is “greed.”
As such, OWS is the antithesis of the civil rights and anti-war movements. Those were rebellions against oppressive government policies and grounded in the fight for liberty. Interfering with the right of thousands of honest Americans to go peacefully to work is not the same as demonstrating against the injustice of Jim Crow laws by riding in the front of the bus. Nor is demanding more government handouts and higher taxes the equivalent to demanding a stop to the shedding of blood and treasure in a far off land that the American people no longer believed was vital to the national interest.
The great irony is those protesting are suffering the most from the very policies they largely support: The massive increase in government spending; the de facto government take-over of the health care and financial services industries; the blocking wherever possible of the production or delivery of traditional energy – from new EPA mandates designed to force the shut-down of coal fired generating plants to the postponement of the Keystone XL pipeline; and the threat of higher tax rates on those with the income and capital to create private sector jobs.
Faced with the failure of the Obama Administration's grandiose plans to produce either jobs or a more just society, they choose to blame those who have figured out a way to manage, if not prosper, under the rules that the OWS crowd supports – ever heavier government regulations and taxes. They applaud when the government forces insurance companies to keep them on their parents health plans until they turn 27, but complain that they have no job and have to live at home.
Sadly, they either refuse or are incapable of seeing the connection between the two.
The nation's ills will not be solved by shutting down businesses and empowering government to take even more resources from the private sector. The answer lies in more liberty and less government control of the economy and our lives. To change America for the better, occupy Pennsylvania Avenue.
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5b75d0b84a3180bd33de71118445f445 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charleskadlec/2011/12/19/an-international-gold-standard-beats-the-rule-of-the-governing-elite/ | An International Gold Standard Beats The Rule Of The Governing Elite | An International Gold Standard Beats The Rule Of The Governing Elite
Image by Cornell University Library via Flickr
“Overall, the evidence is that today’s (international monetary and financial) system has performed poorly against each of its three objectives, at least compared with the Bretton Woods system, with the key failure being the system’s inability to maintain financial stability and minimize the incidence of disruptive sudden changes in global capital flows.” Bank of England Financial Stability Paper
Ever since President Richard Nixon in 1971 killed the Bretton Woods international monetary system by breaking the link between the dollar and gold, the U.S. economy has experienced slower growth, higher average inflation, higher unemployment rates, more bank failures and a series of financial crises that, in total, have reduced our income by about a third.
Now, a Bank of England study with the ambitious title, “Reform of the International Monetary and Financial System,” shows that the entire world economy has suffered a similar fate.
The paper’s authors, Oliver Bush, Katie Farrant and Michelle Wright break new ground by documenting the extraordinary short fall of the world economy under the now 40-year old mix of floating, pegged and fixed exchange rates.
When compared to the Bretton Woods system, in which countries defined their currencies by a fixed rate of exchange to the dollar, and the U.S. in turn defined the dollar as 1/35th of an ounce of gold:
Economic growth is a full percentage point slower, with an average annual increase in real per-capita GDP of only 1.8% World inflation of 4.8% a year is 1.5 percentage point higher; Downturns for the median countries have more than tripled to 13% of the total period; The number of banking crises per year has soared to 2.6 per year, compared to only one every ten years under Bretton Woods;
Moreover, abandoning the gold standard in favor of free floating currencies was supposed to eliminate currency crises and lead to an automatic adjustment in trade imbalances. Instead:
The number of currency crises has increased to 3.7 per year from 1.7 per year; Current account deficits have nearly tripled to 2.2% of world GDP from only 0.8% of GDP under Bretton Woods.
These results demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that the experiment with floating paper currencies has been a disaster for the people of the world. Had the trends under Bretton Woods continued, the average person’s real income would be nearly 50% higher, the increase in prices would be nearly 50% lower, trade imbalances would be nearly one-third smaller and the world economy over the past four decades would have suffered through 4 instead of 104 banking crises.
Yet, instead of delving into how the Bretton Woods system did so well, the authors search instead for how those in power can better manage the current non-system. Here, for example, are the four reasons they offer for why the current system has performed so poorly:
“Missing markets” in emerging market economies, including the “absence of deep and liquid local currency bond markets, the lack of hedging instruments and inadequate insurance markets among others.” “International institutional frictions,” such as China maintaining an artificially low exchange rate in order to promote export led growth. “Imperfect information,” including asymmetric information, legal uncertainties and differences in accounting practices. The authors believe this leads to increased leverage because it keeps regulators and investors from properly assessing risk of bank lending practices. In addition, it leads to a disorderly adjustment process. When things go wrong, everyone tries to hit the exits at the same time and the simultaneous large increases in credit spreads accentuate the banking crisis. “Nominal rigidities,” especially downward price and wage rigidities that interfere with the adjustment in relative prices necessary to bring trade accounts toward balance.
As a consequence, their proposed solutions do not address the underlying instability of the current system of floating paper currencies that bob about on foreign exchange markets whipped this way and that by forces that have little, if any correlation to the so-called underlying fundamentals.
For example, they propose countries reduce the need for accumulating foreign exchange reserves by creating “exchange rate insurance” individuals, businesses and governments can use to protect themselves against gyrations in their home currency’s value. Nominal rigidities need to be corrected, they say, by more flexible exchange rates, completely ignoring how volatile exchange rates contribute to “missing markets.” Financial crises can be ameliorated by new global financial safety nets. And, the risk of sovereign debt defaults needs to be addressed by creating debt instruments that promise to pay a return based upon the performance of the issuing countries’ GDP.
Finally, the governing elite (my characterization) need to be given more power to manage the world economy and financial markets. The first stage in this effort would be to identify when “global outcomes are suboptimal and countries’ policies are leading to significant cross-border externalities.” It only gets more utopian from there.
Too bad. The author’s suffer from what Friedrich Hayek so aptly called the “fatal conceit.” Their recommendations indicate wise men and women can and should manage the world economy, if only given the proper information and tools. In their framework, money is something to be manipulated to achieve superior economic outcomes and smooth adjustment processes. That these recommendations are completely contradicted by the results of their own research reveals the ability of intellectuals to perpetuate the self-delusion that they are smarter than markets.
The results of the BOE paper indicate that the real task at hand is to create a 21st century international gold standard that would promote trade and prosperity throughout the world. Such a system would provide a stable and secure international monetary system by defining each of the key currencies, specifically the dollar, euro, pound, yen and yuan, respectively, as a unit weight of gold. Other major countries, including Brazil, Canada, India and Russia would be invited to join in defining their currencies in terms of gold. Smaller countries would then be free to fix their exchange rate to any one of the gold backed currencies.
The notion that such an impersonal gold standard actually produces better results than smart men and women with the power to manipulate interest rates and currency values may be counter-intuitive. But, the facts speak for themselves. The gold standard provides the financial stability in which the spontaneous order of the market place empowers individuals to outperform those who would rule them.
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798e490a94ed3d44b64ed0fc979e5613 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charleskadlec/2012/03/12/the-house-gop-authors-a-jobs-recovery/ | The House GOP Authors a Jobs Recovery | The House GOP Authors a Jobs Recovery
Speaker of the House John Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and their fellow House Republicans should claim credit for this jobs recovery. It never would have happened had they not stopped the counter-productive fiscal policies of the Obama Administration -- starting with blocking the job killing increase in personal income tax rates that otherwise would have taken place on January 1, 2011, and then last fall refusing to vote for yet another round of wasteful “stimulus” spending and money losing investments in “green jobs.”
Remember last August when the Administration charged that the House Republican show-down over increasing the federal government’s debt limit without meaningful spending reductions threatened the recovery and Vice President Joe Biden called opponents of an increase in the debt limit “terrorists”? And then how the President last fall demanded House Republicans pass “now” $400 billion in new stimulus spending, relabeled a “jobs bill,” or be held accountable for the coming slow-down in economic growth?
Well, here is what putting a stop to Obamanomics has produced: The strongest six months of employment growth since the President took office.
According to the February employment report released last Friday, non-farm payrolls have increased by 1.2 million jobs since last August. By contrast, between the beginning of Obamanomics with the passage of his stimulus bill in March 2009 and August, employment fell by 1.3 million. That’s right, just saying “no” to bad policies has in six months recovered nearly all of the jobs that had been lost in the prior 2.5 years.
In addition, the official unemployment rate in February was 8.3%, down from 9.1% in August while the U-6 measure of unemployment, which includes frustrated job seekers and those who are being forced to work part time has fallen to a still high 14.9%, compared to 16.2% in August. Both measures of unemployment are now at their lowest level since the Obama administration launched its trillion dollar increase in government spending and investments in “green jobs.”
February’s 227,000 gain in non-farm payrolls made it the third consecutive month in which non-employment growth has exceeded 200,000, the amount generally considered necessary to bring down the unemployment rate. It was also the second consecutive month in which the work-force grew, and the second month since last July in which the civilian labor force participation rate increased.
The improving jobs picture is consistent with a growing body of academic research that demonstrates increased government spending reduces, rather than increases, economic growth. Summarizing the research in his December, 2010 Wall Street Journal article Stanford Professor Michael Boskin wrote:
"But economic theory, history and statistical studies reveal that more taxes and spending are more likely to harm than help the economy. Those who demand spending control and oppose tax hikes hold the intellectual high ground."
The massive increase in federal spending under Obamanomics, for example, appears to have sucked the job creating strength out of the rest of the economy. Between February 2009 and August, 2011, federal employment increased by 52,000. But, total government employment fell by more than half a million employees as state and local governments, faced with the failure of the stimulus program to produce growth, were forced to cut payrolls in order to balance their budgets.
During that same period, private sector employment fell by 834,000. And, lest you think that all that “investment” in infrastructure and shovel ready jobs worked, employment in the construction sector alone fell by more than 900,000.
Meanwhile, the non-provable claim by the advocates of Obamanomics, that the increased spending saved jobs, is belied by what has happened since the policy was stopped. Since August, federal employment has fallen by 26,000, but the rate of layoffs in state and local government has slowed by half. And, private sector employment has surged 1.3 million workers.
But, there is much left to be done. The rapid growth in the regulatory burden under President Obama, and the Administration’s weak dollar/high oil price monetary policy are on-going impediments to full employment, especially among minorities and those without college educations. The unemployment rate for blacks stands at 14.1%, nearly double the unemployment rate for whites, and those without a college education are more than twice as likely to be unemployed as those with a diploma.
Moreover, when compared to the results produced by Reaganomics -- a combination of a strong dollar, across the board reductions in marginal tax rates, deregulation, and slowing the growth in non-defense spending -- Obamanomics has produced 15 million fewer jobs. To close that gaping jobs gap will require the same policy mix that worked not only under President Reagan, but also under President Kennedy and to a significant extent, during the last six years of the Clinton Administration.
The first step is for the leadership of the House Republicans to regain their footing by taking credit for the economic success of their policies. As my fellow Forbes.com columnist, Ralph Benko wrote at the time of the show-down over the debt limit increase, the public discrediting of the left’s Narrative -- that the federal government’s “management of the economy,” including massive increases in deficit spending, are central to our prosperity -- undercuts the very legitimacy of the Progressive movement. More than anything else, the experience of the last six months demonstrates yet again the natural ability of the private sector to recover once government gets out of the way.
The next step is for the Republican Party to fashion a positive growth message focused on increasing the liberty and security of the American people by shrinking the size and scope of government. Channelling Reaganomics, that includes stabilizing the value of the dollar as the first step toward a 21st century gold standard, reforming the corporate and personal income tax codes with lower tax rates and fewer deductions, cutting back the regulatory state, and stopping the growth in federal spending.
By so doing, Republicans can offer the American people a modern narrative of constitutional, limited government committed to liberating our natural ability to create a better life for ourselves, our families and our communities.
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730f3344100f71cad523ed0294590c48 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charleskadlec/2012/09/25/will-china-bashing-cost-mitt-romney-the-election/ | Will China Bashing Cost Mitt Romney The Election? | Will China Bashing Cost Mitt Romney The Election?
(Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)
Governor Mitt Romney’s campaign for President made a potentially fatal error on September 13th by moving to the left of President Barack Obama on the emotional issue of trade with China. On that day, the Romney campaign released a major press release attacking Obama for not labeling China a “currency manipulator.” Claiming China is cheating, Romney is promising the American people he will seek to force the Chinese to allow the dollar to fall in value relative to the Chinese yuan.
Last January, I warned Romney’s support for a weak dollar policy relative to China would prove to be the economic Achilles Heel of his campaign. And, unless he changes course, that appears to be exactly what is happening.
Ever since the Romney campaign’s China bashing initiative, the momentum has shifted to President Barack Obama. Within six days, Michigan, then Wisconsin went from “toss up” to “lean Obama” according to the Real Clear Politics (RCP) electoral map. And, in RCP’s latest no toss-up results, President Obama now is expected to roll up a 347 to 191 majority in the Electoral College by winning all of the swing states. According to Intrade, odds of President Obama being re-elected have shot up about 10 percentage points to 70%.
Moreover, the shift in favor of Obama came at a time when the latest economic data point to continued slow economic growth and high unemployment, unrest roils the Middle East and anti-Americanism is on the rise throughout the Muslim world, and the Obama Administration appears ill prepared to defend its diplomats, embassies or America’s interests and ideals. It also began before the secret recording of Romney’s comments about the “47%” of Americans who believe they are “entitled” to government assistance, which did not become public until the evening of September 17th.
No doubt, focus groups and other campaign research support the China bashing initiative. And, Obama was quick to respond to the attacks by filing a complaint in the World Trade Organization claiming Beijing is unfairly subsidizing exports of auto parts. But, putting trade restrictions and a weak dollar at the center of an economic policy agenda has never proven to be an effective path to the White House. Americans reflexively support the idea to defend American jobs, but their common sense also informs them to be suspect of policies that would reduce competition and lead to higher prices.
Here is the circumstantial evidence the China bashing is hurting Romney’s appeal. During the week ending September 21, he gained strength at the national level, pulling even with the President in the Rasmussen and Gallup tracking polls, even as he has fallen behind in the swing states. Simple math therefore indicates that Romney is moving ahead of Obama in the non-swing states even as he falls behind in the critical ones.
And, it is in the swing states that voters have been most exposed to the Romney focus on China bashing as his key policy to create 12 million new jobs.
Greater insight is provided by a poll commissioned by the Ohio Newspaper Organization of 861 likely voters in Ohio conducted between September 13 and 18. As reported by the Cleveland Plain Dealer that poll showed Obama leading Romney 51% to 46% (margin of error +/-3.3%).
The single most important issue: the economy. According to Eric Rademacher, co-director of by the University of Cincinnati’s Institute for Policy Research which conducted the poll, 95% of those who said Romney would do best on the economy choose him, while 96% of those who said Obama would do best on the economy pick Obama.
On the critical issue of who can be trusted to improve economic conditions, Obama leads Romney 49% to 44%. That is an extra-ordinary turn-around from a Rasmussen national poll on September 13th which showed Romney ahead of Obama on this crucial question, 50% to 43%.
Given the status of the economy, how could this be?
The answer can be found in the Romney campaign’s initiative to attack Obama for not being tough enough on China’s trade policy. On September 13, the first day of the poll, the Romney campaign released the ad, “Failing American Workers,” which accuses Obama of failing to keep China from increasing its manufacturing jobs during a period in which manufacturing jobs in the U.S. were in decline. Romney says: “It is time we stand up to the cheaters, and protect jobs for the American people.” On September 15th, the ad, “The Romney Plan” starts with Romney saying: “Trade has to work for America. That means cracking down on cheaters like China and opening new markets.”
Ever since those ads began to run, Romney has been losing ground and the President’s rating on his handling of the economy has been on the rise!
The reason: Romney’s attack on China as a currency manipulator indicates he will be for an even weaker dollar than President Obama. And, there is nothing that threatens the middle class more than a decline in the value of the dollar.
First, the dollar’s decline reduces the real value of wages as the price of imports – and internationally traded goods, most importantly oil and food – rise.
Second, a weaker dollar erases the value of savings, especially dollars held in savings deposits or checking accounts.
Third, the historic record is overwhelming that, while intuitively appealing, a weak dollar does far more harm than good. The dollar has fallen more than 70% against the Japanese yen and German mark/euro since President Nixon began to devalue the dollar in 1971. Yet, the merchandise trade account has gone from a minor deficit to a massive 3% of GDP. Since 2003, the Chinese yuan has appreciated more than 30% against the dollar. The Chinese are as competitive as ever. But, the real median household income has fallen to its lowest level since 1995.
A falling currency drives capital away, and therefore is a threat to U.S. manufacturing jobs. Just as investors avoid companies whose stock is falling in price, so too, capital tends to flee weak currency countries. For example, as the risk that Greece would leave the euro went up, the amount of capital leaving the country increased and the economic activity declined.
Though more subtle, the same has been true of the U.S. During the weak dollar 1970s, the unemployment rate rose to 7.1% from 4.9%. Under the weak dollar policies of Bush 43 and Obama, the unemployment rate increased to a peak of 10% in 2009 from 4.0% in 2000, and has remained above 8% for 43 consecutive months. Moreover, during the 2000-2007 expansion, the 10% increase in industrial production was a full 8 percentage points less than the expansion in real GDP, indicating that the falling dollar destroyed rather than increased manufacturing jobs.
Accosting China for selling quality goods in the U.S. at a competitive price suggests Romney views the economy from a businessman’s perspective, as a zero sum game where one company’s success comes at the expense of it competitors. However, what drives economic growth and job creation is the discovery of mutually beneficial exchanges – “win-win” opportunities -- whether that be with the purchase of an iPhone or the discovery of a lower priced good of equal value at the local super store, or to contribute to the success of a company by providing it your skills and intelligence in exchange for compensation.
Just because most American voters may not be able to explain much of this, it doesn’t mean they do not understand it. They have lived under a weak dollar for 12 years and suffered its consequences. That is why Governor Romney’s promise to deliver even more of the same is driving swing voters into his opponent’s camp.
Finally, blaming China for the loss of American jobs leaves on the cutting room floor those policies that would improve America’s competitive position relative to China and the rest of the world, including Romney’s pro-growth energy plan and calls for reforming the corrupt and dysfunctional corporate and personal income tax systems.
Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush all were weak dollar Presidents. Each of them were unpopular when they left office. Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were strong dollar Presidents, and remain popular to this day. Yet by all accounts, Romney is fully committed to the negative sum policy of bashing China, instead of the positive sum pro-growth policies in his quest for the Oval Office. If so, such a strategy will go a long way toward explaining why the American people may decide they trust the President with all of his policy failures more than the challenger from the world of business.
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89601fd607b9477b9a9ca437132bb4d5 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charleskoppelman/2017/04/02/how-noosa-and-halo-top-are-disrupting-the-american-dairy-in-record-time/ | How Noosa And Halo Top Are Disrupting The American Dairy... In Record Time | How Noosa And Halo Top Are Disrupting The American Dairy... In Record Time
Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
The American dairy is one of the most competitive spaces in the food industry, long dominated by giants who have the scale to quickly and widely distribute a product with a very short lifespan, in a sector where consumer brand loyalty is legendary. Perhaps the most competitive product lines within this increasingly cut throat category are yogurt and ice cream, and yet two backyard brands, born out of the curiosity and imagination of a single young founder, have catapulted to the top, taking on giants like Yoplait, Chobani, Haagen Dazs and Breyers in just a few short years- -and all through the power of creative disruption.
Noosa Yoghurt was co-founded in 2009 by Koel Thomas, who discovered the creamy whole milk yoghurt, sweetened with passion fruit, while on a visit to her homeland of Australia. She returned home to Boulder, Colorado, made a deal with a local dairy, built a yogurt factory right next door, and began marketing Noosa in the US. Advent International acquired Noosa in 2014 to expand their production capacity, and sales this year are expected to hit 9.3 billion.
Halo Top Ice Cream is marketed as the ice cream that’s so good for you that you can eat the whole pint in one sitting. One
lived on nothing but Halo Top ice cream for 10 days and actually lost weight. Halo Top was invented in 2010 by former attorney Justin Wolverton who came up with the recipe while experimenting with his new Cuisinart in his own kitchen trying to come up with sugarless desserts to satisfy his own sweet tooth. From these humble beginnings, Halo Top has shot to the top of the freezer case in record time. Halo Top sales in 2016 jumped about 2,500% from the year before. And they did all of that without spending on any traditional marketing.
So how did Noosa and Halo Top manage to disrupt the American dairy in record time? Here are a few ideas:
View your product through fresh eyes: Rather than trying to compete on the same playing field as other brands, both Noosa and Halo Top reimagined their offerings through an entirely new lens. Halo Top uses top shelf whole ingredients, and no artificial substances of any kind, yet still manages to weigh in under 400 calories a pint. And in a category dominated by low fat products, Noosa is a creamy whole milk yoghurt that is part of a new whole fat trend that is starting to filter down from more specialized market onto mass market shelves. And while most yogurt flavors are created in focus groups, Noosa curates their flavors through the lens of travel, making a yogurt company into an experience company. Noosa’s “flavor trek” line offers unique global flavor combinations like pear cardamom or raspberry habanero that are inspired by the founder’s own world travels. Both brands have achieved first and best in class as a result of seeing their products through fresh eyes and offering consumers something new and unique.
Good worth of mouth begins in the kitchen, Noosa and Halo Top both place an emphasis on top quality, full flavor products made with seasonal and sustainable, whole ingredients. Both products really do deliver on their brand promise right from the very beginning of the production line- -in the kitchen. Both companies were able to maintain their level of quality and still manage scale as start ups, because both companies owned their own production line from farm to kitchen to grocery shelf. This allowed both brands to succeed without having to spend any money on traditional advertising. Word of mouth from happy customers did it all for them.
Innovation applies to packaging too: Just like the titan yogurt disruptor Chobani, and their now famous flip top yogurt cups, Noosa and Halo Top both owe some of their success to innovative packaging. When Wolverton was designing his packaging, he thought first about how to stand out on a crowded freezer shelf. He settled on doing something different, and in a category which usually features pictures of the product on the package, Wolverton chose bright colors, simple patterns, his signature golden lid halo, and a transparent expression of the products calorie count and ingredients as a an innovative way to showcase the product. Noosa completely reinvented the shape of the yogurt cup, making it wide, flat, and providing a larger canvas for toppings.
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a6e60425a1a58a52d86bce5f4fbb2be6 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlesradclyffe/2021/04/20/tesla-texas-crash-why-autopilots-are-always-to-blame/ | Tesla Texas Crash: Why Autopilots Are Always To Blame | Tesla Texas Crash: Why Autopilots Are Always To Blame
My heart sinks when I write about AI going wrong. Behind every headline is a lost child, spouse, parent or sibling; a grieving family. I feel weighed down by their loss, but motivated strongly to help galvanise the tech industry towards solving these problems.
Initial reports into the accident on Saturday, 17th April seem to suggest two things:
No-one was sitting in the driving seat, and The ‘Autopilot’ was switched off
To be clear, if the Autopilot was switched off - then it certainly can’t be to blame for this accident, but my beef is less about whether Autopilot technology has reached human driving ability levels or not - but the effect that having a system in a car called Autopilot has on the psychology of those in the vehicle (and perhaps the cause of this any many other reports of Tesla drivers moving out of the driving seat while in motion).
SEAL BEACH, CA - AUGUST 15: A damaged Tesla, right, and Honda Civic, sit on tow trucks after a ... [+] collision in the HOV lane on the northbound 405/22 Freeway in Seal Beach after a fatal traffic accident on Monday. According to CHP, the accident happened when a Chevy Tahoe crossed the double yellow lane and entered the number two HOV lane. The Tahoe rear ended a Tesla which was pushed in to a Honda Civic. Two young girls were in the back seat of the Tesla. A 7-year old was killed and a 13-year old was injured and is in critical condition. ///ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Slug: TrafficFatailty.0816.jag, Day: Monday, August 15, 2016 (8/15/16), Time: 10:59:09 AM, Location: Seal Beach, California - Traffic Fatality - JEFF GRITCHEN, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER (Photo by Jeff Gritchen/Digital First Media/Orange County Register via Getty Images) MediaNews Group via Getty Images
Here’s where I’m going to invoke the wrath of the Musk-eteers. Before you all send me hate mail, let me just say that I’m a big fan of the man myself. When he sent the Roadster to space wearing a Stig helmet and “Don’t Panic” on the dash, I thought this was genius. Yes, it’s probably unwarranted space debris and a bit of a juvenile prank, but it captured the imagination of millions - and gave us a glimpse into the mind of an entrepeneur at the top of their game and firing on all cylinders.
Musk himself has said that we need to be “super careful with AI” and that it is “potentially more dangerous than nukes”. He’s right, and that’s why we also need to be careful about how we market AI.
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Elon Musk, Co-founder and CEO of Tesla, leaves following a talk during the World Artificial ... [+] Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai on August 29, 2019. (Photo by HECTOR RETAMAL / AFP) (Photo credit should read HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images) AFP via Getty Images
The technology industry has a long tradition of naming things in unhelpful ways. There are two culprits:
The first (and more mundane) is the naming convention of products in a purely descriptive sense. Steve Jobs once quipped that if Hewlett Packard were to bring Sushi to market, they would brand it as “cold dead fish”. Many products are simply labelled by the function they perform or features they offer. Unhelpful, unsexy, but the safe approach.
The second (and more dangerous) is the naming convention of using metaphors to explain products. Data Warehousing is an old fashioned example. It speaks (somewhat) to what is going on, but is a very poor analogy as the real world warehousing is solving a very different problem (supply chain) to the digital version (archive and storage). Data Science is a more recent example. There is very little ‘real’ science going on in data science, and the level of professionalism that one sees in the scientific endeavour of companies such as Du Pont or Merck is a world removed from the hack-y, hipster horseplay that epitomises startups.
The 49th International Air Show Le Bourget is world's largest aeronautics and aerospace exhibit. ... [+] Aircraft that fly into Le Bourget for the show range from the very old to very new. Boeing shows off its new long range Dreamliner 787. The aircraft is Boeing's most fuel efficient and is the world's first to use composite materials for most of its construction. Chief test pilot for Boeing Dreamliner Captain Mike Carriker in the flight-deck of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. (Photo by John van Hasselt/Corbis via Getty Images) Corbis via Getty Images
And so, why is Autopilot always to blame? The clue is in the name. I don’t yet have my professional pilot’s licence but I know enough about the capabilities and limits of real Autopilot systems to know that we are far from the mythological utopia where human pilots can simply sit back, kick back and let the machine do all the hard work. Yes, there are situations where airplane autopilots can fully control the plane, and even land it - but the reason why it is OK to allow the term ‘autopilot’ to be used in this context is because it is a partnership between a highly experience and professional human operator and a machine. The human knows the limits of the machine, there is (certainly in a commercial plane context) redundancy in a human co-pilot, and most importantly - any transition between automatic system and manual control is measured, anticipated and seamless.
Now contrast this with the ‘Autopilot’ system in a Tesla. The technology is breathtakingly incredible, and potentially transformative; but the problem is with the human operator who is almost always NOT a professional driver, doesn’t have redundancy (in terms of a co-driver who can take over at any point), and doesn’t offer measured, anticipated and seamless transfer of control. They therefore shouldn’t be lulled into thinking they are or have any of these things - an unprofessional driver should never be in a cockpit with an Autopilot, unless of course that Autopilot can do every thing the human can do, in all situations.
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - JANUARY 9: Interior on a Tesla Model X full electric luxury crossover SUV car ... [+] with a large touch screen and carbon look dashboard on display at Brussels Expo on January 9, 2020 in Brussels, Belgium. The Model X uses falcon wing doors for access to the second and third row seats. (Photo by Sjoerd van der Wal/Getty Images) Getty Images
While we’ll never know why there was no driver in the driving seat of this tragic Tesla crash, what we can be sure of is that being in a car that has an ‘Autopilot’ will create a false sense of security to the occupants and unless anticipated transfer of control can be solved is always going to cause problems in the machine to human transfer because the human will take time to dial back into the situational context.
The solution? Call these systems what they are. Semi-Autonomous Limited Function Autonomous Modes. SALFAM might not be as sexy as Autopilot, but if Elon and others are serious about saving lives - I bet this one change would do exactly that.
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fd2a46e3e4830c3be74d1dff3def823e | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlesrtaylor/2019/04/30/what-makes-a-csr-message-resonate-with-millennials-and-generation-z/?sh=1da905cf7fc7 | What Makes A CSR Message Resonate With Millennials And Generation-Z? | What Makes A CSR Message Resonate With Millennials And Generation-Z?
A group of Millennials. Getty
As marketers continue to devote considerable effort to figuring out consumer behavior patterns of young consumers, more attention has been focused on corporate social responsibility in marketing. As I have written elsewhere, the issue is complex, yet it is pretty clear that the Milton Friedman’s view that companies best serve society by making products efficiently and offering them at affordable prices is not widely held by Millennials. For example, a 2016 Cone Communications study found that 75% of Millennials indicated that they would take a pay cut in order to work for a socially responsible company.
It might seem that appealing to consumers more interested in corporate social responsibility (CSR) would be straightforward – the company’s efforts in this realm might simply be emphasized. Yet, it is well documented that Millennials are known to be more price sensitive and less brand loyal than their older counterparts. Moreover, balancing a profit motive and taking stands on a social issue is tricky. With this in mind, it is important to consider what types of promotion of CSR efforts are effective in targeting younger consumers.
Academic research suggests that authenticity, fit between the company and the cause, and the company’s commitment level play a role. To get insight into the topic I interviewed MaryLeigh Bliss, VP of Content and Editor-in-Chief at YPulse, a firm specializing in research on young consumers. Bliss believes that Millennials do care about what the brand they buy stand for, citing a YPulse study showing that they try to buy from companies who are socially responsible and whose values line up with their own. Yet, she also acknowledges that the importance of CSR to young consumers does not mean that promoting these efforts is always easy. In navigating this complex terrain, the following points should be kept in mind.
MaryLeigh Bliss, VP and Editor-in-Chief, YPulse Ypulse
1) Young Consumers Expect Companies To Be Socially Responsible. Many Will Not Pay More Because Of CSR Efforts.
With expectations now higher for companies, price premiums may not be part of the equation associated with a company being socially responsible. As YPulse’s Bliss states:
“Because it has become an expectation that brands will have social good efforts tied to their products, not all young consumers are willing to pay more for them. In addition, we're talking about a very price-conscious generation. They're generally thinking of price first, quality second, and the values of the brand someplace after that. That being said, there is some openness to an increase in price in exchange for making a positive change in the world. “
She cites eco-friendly products as a niche where one of the company’s studies showed that over a third would pay 10% more for eco-friendly products. While there are some openings like this, the bigger issue is that at the same price point, Millennials and Gen-Z may favor a brand they associate with CSR.
2) Authenticity Matters A Great Deal, But It Is Very Complex
Consistent with prior research, Ypulse’s research shows that authenticity is of paramount importance to Millennials in judging CSR efforts and promotional campaigns. Bliss states, “We know that authenticity is incredibly important to Millennial consumers - though we've found that's not the exact word they think of when describing what brands appeal to them. Instead, they think of a brand that is true to themselves, which is something we measure in our brand tracker. That ongoing survey interviews over 80,000 13-39-year-olds annually to assess their relationship to and affinity for brands. Questions about whether a brand is trustworthy, supports causes, is recommended to others, and has a bright future are specific examples of the 16 core diagnostics that determine a brands’ success among young consumers.”
YPulse’s tracking studies show that Dove, Nike and Netflix are companies that score among the highest on the "true to themselves" and that, not surprisingly, these brands are also highly popular with young consumers. Bliss does offer one very concrete piece of advice for companies trying to build authenticity stating, “in terms of CSR, it's key for brands to take direct, clear action to support the causes that they say they support: 93% of 18-36-year-olds agree, "If a brand voices their support of a social issue, they should also be making an active effort to help the cause."
3) Not All Young Consumers React the Same Way To CSR Programs, But There Are Some Commonalities
Based on YPulse’s panel studies, Bliss believes some generalizations about attitudes toward CSR programs. She states, “We always look at differences between age groups and gender and usually find slight variations on the same theme. For example, the majority of both males and females tell us that buying products from brands that have social good components makes them feel better about spending money - but females are slightly more agree to this than males.” However, she cautions, “But of course there are times that different segments of Millennials do not agree. Interestingly, to continue comparing genders, the majority of males (57%) agree that brands should only get involved with causes that are directly related to the products they sell, while the majority of females disagree with this same statement. So while they both want brands to be involved in social good, they might not agree exactly on the way that brands do so.
It seems to me that the take away from the above generalizations is that CSR is highly important to young consumers, but that it is also delicate. Companies that commit to issues that resonate with a large number of consumers and are viewed as authentic enhance the chance of a successful campaign. Efforts that are short-term or cursory are likely to be a mistake.
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9be43a9814075d74089931f53fa6e1d5 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlesrtaylor/2019/06/25/how-a-chocolate-covered-yogurt-bar-hit-big-with-millennials/?sh=4d2579ba155e | How A Chocolate-Covered Yogurt Bar Hit It Big With Millennials | How A Chocolate-Covered Yogurt Bar Hit It Big With Millennials
In the floundering yogurt category, Sergey Konchakovskiy founder of CLIO, a brand of strained Greek yogurt bars has built a feel-good success story. Capitalizing on young consumers’ desire for a healthy alternative to traditional desserts, the brand has experienced a rapid increase in sales, rising 275% from 2017 to 2018 while selling millions of boxes of the chocolate covered bars. Meanwhile, the brand has quickly gained distribution and in retailers such as Walmart, Costco and several major grocery chains.
CLIO Greek yogurt bars CLIO
Ironically, the newfound success of the brand has come at a time when the boom in yogurt sales appears to be over. The Wall Street Journal reports that yogurt sales fell by 6% last year, with sales of Greek yogurt falling even more (11%). Various reasons have been given for this decline, including an overwhelming selection, the desire of Millennials to try options that go beyond the traditional and a belief among some that plant-based yogurts are healthier.
Sergey Konchakovskiy, founder and CEO of CLIO CLIO
So how did CLIO pull it off? It is an American dream story fueled by ingenuity and sound marketing practices. However, the path to success was anything but standard. Sergey Konchakovskiy grew up in Ukraine and graduated from medical school in Kiev. However, he never practiced medicine. Instead, following his parents immigrating to the U.S., he moved moving over to the accounting/financial control area, first working for Entenmann’s and then Wonderful Company. While this background was helpful, the main motivation for developing the CLIO product was an accident. One evening at home, Konchakovskiy watched his young children find left-over yogurt in the refrigerator and observed them started to play with it as the texture was like PlayDough. As a father wanting his children to eat healthy snacks that they would enjoy, he thought back to his youth in Ukraine, remembering the simple chocolate-covered bars called “sirki” made of soft cheese that were a welcome treat during the Soviet era. Wanting to develop something different, he set out to make a unique product that was both tasty and nutritious by combining Greek yogurt and the texture of cheesecake with a chocolate outer shell.
CLIO Snacks Flavors CLIO
Rather than positioning his product as a breakfast option as with traditional yogurt, Konchakovskiy smartly got the idea to position CLIO as a tasty but healthy grab-and-go product that can be enjoyed for dessert or at any time the consumer wants and indulgent snack. This positioning encourages multiple uses per day and has especially responded with younger buyers. The “healthy” portion of the selling proposition as the product is 75% yogurt, is loaded with probiotics, contains 140 calories and has less sugar than standard yogurt. At the same time, the bars come in multiple flavors, including peanut butter, strawberry, vanilla, blueberry, honey, hazelnut and espresso.
It is notable that the brand is indexing high with Millennials and young consumers. Kochakovskiy's take on this is that: “People want healthy foods, but they won’t sacrifice taste and convenience. Clio delivers the health benefits that you know and love from Greek Yogurt (8+ grams of protein and billions of probiotics per bar), but brings an unexpected, indulgent cheesecake-like experience that keeps people coming back for more.”
When asked what makes him believe that CLIO is not a fad, Konchakovskiy is adamant, asserting, “People love Clio. The consumer response has been amazing. Believe it or not, we have heard directly from fans that they’ve cried tears of joy because they cannot believe they can indulge without feeling guilty. Clio solves this major problem for people- the desire to indulge without feeling guilt - and brands and products that serve emotional needs have longevity."
Konchakovskiy also argues that the brand's technology allows for endless innovation. He observes, “The proprietary process we developed will allow us to continually deliver against this all treat, no cheat need, and bring people products they love and feel good about eating.”
Time will tell the degree to which the CLIO brand will grow going forward. It is clear, however, that developing the idea by combining his Ukranian roots with food industry trends in the idea generation phase of the new product development was brilliant. Further, creating unique positioning in the very crowded yogurt category was wise. Ingenuity and the effective adoption of standard marketing principles. This looks like one for the textbooks.
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afed00a92cce4906c2fde1b81dc8ce42 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlesrtaylor/2019/10/11/making-a-splash-california-extra-virgin-olive-oil-producers-and-labeling/ | Making A Splash: California Extra Virgin Olive Oil Producers And Labeling Issues | Making A Splash: California Extra Virgin Olive Oil Producers And Labeling Issues
Cobram Estate Extra Virgin Olive Oil Luisa Brimble
As many consumers have become more concerned about health, Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO) is experiencing sales growth in the U.S. California-based companies are driving this trend, with more than 400 growers crafting 75 olive varieties. While the overall olive oil market is essentially flat, there has been robust growth in premium California EVOO oils, driven by a reputation with consumers for being healthy and fresh. Indeed, freshness is important to consumers in the premium segment, some of whom argue EVOO should be sold in the produce section of the supermarket.
Several premium California EVOO brands are getting rave reviews, but the high demand has created an associated controversy in that some competitors are labeling their products “California-grown” when the production process actually involves blending oils from other areas, including Spain, North Africa, and Argentina, among others. As a result, a bottle of olive oil may be advertised and branded as “California,” but the fine print on the back label may indicate that the oil comes from multiple countries.
Battles over the legality of region or country of origin labeling are nothing new. For example, after protracted regulatory battles, in California, wine is regulated such that 75% of the grapes used in production must come from the state or region (e.g., on the label). Moreover, in the last few decades, the World Trade Organization has been issuing regulations pertaining to the protection of the right to label a product based on geographical origin (e.g., the body ruled that only Champagne grown in that region of France can use the name Champagne). However, the fact that there has been controversy over labeling elsewhere is not helpful for EVOO producers.
Olive production at Cobram Estate Cobram Estate
With no federal regulation specifically governing labeling geographic origin in the olive oil industry, some premium California brands of EVOO, have taken matters into their own hands. Specifically, the California Olive Oil Council (COOC), the national trade association for producers has created the COOC seal for EVOO, which is designed to assure buyers that the brand they buy is extra virgin olive oil, is grown in California, and has come from the most recent harvest in the state.
One company that has obtained the label is Cobram Estate, a company initially founded in Australia that expanded to California in 2015. The company's U.S. operation works directly with California farmers to grow a high-quality product and is vertically integrated, owning nurseries, orchards, processing, bottling, and laboratories in Woodland, CA. Marissa Gomes, Vice President of Marketing for Cobram notes that growth in the EVOO market has been rapid, “The California olive oil category really only started around 10 years ago and has grown significantly to over $100M, which is about 10% of the total U.S. Olive Oil retail sales,” she says, “in the past 52 weeks, the total U.S. Olive Oil category has declined. However, the California Extra Virgin Olive Oil segment has experienced YOY growth of over 5%. Gomes also observed that growth has been driven by consumer preference for quality but that transparency in labeling has been needed to protect consumers who are paying premium prices.
The COOC seal is designed to help to ensure consumers that what they are buying is fresh, high quality, and made in California. Adam Englehardt, President of U.S. Operations for Cobram Estate states, “It’s important that consumers read the fine print to understand the source of their olive oil. If you want to purchase an authentic, 100% California Extra Virgin Olive Oil, you need to look on the back panel and check the product’s country of origin. It’s that simple.” Englehardt notes that his company’s brands also place the harvest date as a further assurance of freshness.
Going forward, Cobram Estate and several other EVOO producers would like to see the FDA adopt the California standard at a national level. Gomes says that the general issue of misleading labels is highly problematic for both companies and consumers: “Misleading labeling is rampant in the category, unfortunately. There is often a disconnect between the perceived country of origin and then what is actually listed on the back panel. For example, something may have a very Italian name and brand identity but when you turn it over to review the back panel, you find out that it’s actually sourced from multiple countries in Europe or Africa. In my opinion, it’s deceptive and asking the consumer to work too hard at the grocery shelf to understand what they are buying.”
Overall, sales from California producers account for only about 5% of the overall U.S. market segment, though these olives skew toward the premium segment. As such, in the absence of stricter federal level requirements, the COOC represents a good mechanism for helping premium segment consumers identify California grown EVOO brands.
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0c25cffcccc065ed411cf3f409e42fb0 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlesrtaylor/2020/10/02/the-growing-importance-of-the-home-for-young-consumers/?sh=58efb937f548 | The Growing Importance Of The Home For Young Consumers | The Growing Importance Of The Home For Young Consumers
More young consumers are enjoying their time at home. getty
A new report by youth marketing experts YPulse titled “No Place Like Home” provides significant new insights on how the Covid pandemic has changed how Gen-Z and Millennials view the homes. The following statement summarizes key findings: “As young people look to their spaces as mental health retreats, at-home items and services that comfort, declutter, or foster a feeling of escape that from the outside world will resonate.” The opportunities for marketers are clear and will be elaborated on below.
YPulse previously observed that millennials have homebody tendencies, with a majority preferring to go to a café or watch Netfix at home as opposed to going to a party on a Saturday night. A recent survey confirms that this sentiment was present even prior to the pandemic, with, “…67% of 19-37 year olds telling YPulse in January this year that they would rather stay in on the weekends than go out.”
MaryLeigh Bliss, Vice-President for Content, YPulse YPulse
Both Millennials and Gen-Z (widely regarded as the most stressed out generation in history) are seeing the home as a refuge from the outside world, as many have felt stressed by issues such as climate change, the 2008 recession, student debt, and now Covid-19.
YPulse and it’s Vice President for Content, MaryLeigh Bliss predict three major trends pertaining to young people and attitudes toward home going forward that are worth looking at and considering into how they affect marketers. They are:
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1) Shifts in How Young People Use Their Homes Will Create Opportunity For Marketers
With a strong majority of Millennials and Gen-Z having the goal of owning a home, how they use that home will be of interest to markets in many product categories. YPulse points out several Covid-related shifts in emphasis among the younger consumers in terms of how they will use space, including heightened demand for:
Fully equipped home offices (seating, lighting, desks, temperature control), with many indicating a preference to work at home even after the pandemic. Home fitness space and equipment, with 63% indicating that when the pandemic ends they would prefer to exercise at him. Private outdoor space, with many preferring having their own private space even after Covid passes as opposed to using public parks for this purpose Cooking supplies and well-equipped kitchens. While the demand for eating out does not appear to have done away, there has been an uptick in the number reporting that cooking is a hobby. Play space for children; this has been spurred by many dealing with home schooling while trying to keep them busy via fun and productive entertainment.
Clearly, each of these trends creates opportunities for brands in these categories.
More young consumers are taking up cooking as a hobby getty
2) Renewed Emphasis on Comfort, Simpler Design, and Home Improvement
YPulse reports that Covid has led to 80% of young people self-quarantining and, 83% reporting that their home has provided them with comfort during the pandemic. In addition, 71% actually indicate that they actually enjoy being able to spend additional time at home. This “shelter from the storm” as YPulse puts it, brings comfort to young consumers, who describe their ideal home as being comfortable, cozy, safe, calming, and quiet. Accompanying these feelings is a desire for simplified décor that is calming and reflects a less cluttered environment. The report also suggests that “Cozy, homier ads are more relevant than ever to young consumers,” advice that would appear very sound going forward.
The “comfort” element of the home is making young consumers more likely to indicate they want to engage in do-it-yourself home improvements. The report indicates that 64% of young consumers say they are more interested in-home improvement than before Covid. DIY may be especially important in the short-term, as these young consumers look to make improvements while limiting expenditures, and may become a longer-term trend as well.
3) A Shift from Urban to Suburban and Rural Living
The report observes that while about 3 million Millennials have moved back with their parents during the pandemic, a majority live on their own. Prior to the pandemic, 34% of Millennials and 8% of Gen-Z consumers owned their own homes, with and additional 46% of Millennials and 9% of Gen-Z being renters. Clearly, it is a goal of both of these generations to own their own home in the future, with 85% of young people reporting that they plan to eventually buy a house.
Once the pandemic ends, this desire to should produce good times for the housing market. Assuming a reasonably healthy economy and no dramatic changes in federal tax code, it remains likely that once the crisis passes that there will a boom in Millennial wealth, leading to an even better housing market.
Ypulse’s report indicates that 48% of those ages 19-37 who rent or live with parents are putting off home ownership because of Covid. So where will they live? A notable trend that is that more urban Millennials are considering or planning a move to a suburban or rural area. YPulse’s data shows that the top reasons for this sentiment are lower housing costs, low crime rates, being close to friends, being able to afford a larger home, and having more outdoor space. Unless the significant violent crime increases taking place in many major cities can be held in check via policy changes, it would appear that this trend could be exacerbated as real estate experts are already reporting exodus from many major cities as a result of increased crime and high tax rates. As YPulse’ report states, “Moving out of cities is also becoming a dream as some plan for a new future.” If more work remains remote post-Covid, this may become a very realistic dream for many young people.
CNNViolent crime rises during pandemic as confidence in police takes a hit. Why? It's complicated.
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0d999d96e1d280b9dae7870db2811a62 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlesrtaylor/2021/04/12/why-hideki-matsuyama-is-the-next-sponsorship-superstar/ | Why Hideki Matsuyama Is The Next Sponsorship Superstar | Why Hideki Matsuyama Is The Next Sponsorship Superstar
Hideki Matsuyama laughs with 2020 Masters champion Dustin Johnson of the United States during the ... [+] Green Jacket Ceremony after Matsuyama won the Masters. (Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images) Getty Images
While Hideki Matsuyama already had lucrative endorsement deals with companies including Lexus, Nomura Financial, and Oakley prior to the 2021 Masters Tournament, there is a consensus among sports sponsorship experts that his earnings will skyrocket. Indeed, recent estimates of his lifetime earnings potential from sponsorships after his win at Augusta range from $600 million to $1 billion.
In analyzing Matsuyama’s future, there is a very strong argument that his earning potential is every bit as high as touted. In addition to his current sponsorships, global brands, especially those with a major presence in Japan, are well advised to sign him to a long-term contract. Keeping key marketing principles in mind, there are four main reasons for Matsuyama’s endorsement star power:
1) Matsuyama has top level talent in a sport where endorsers have a long life-span
Matsuyama’s Masters win was very well earned and not a one-time fluke. He had already won five times on the PGA Tour and eight on the increasingly competitive Japan Tour. He currently ranks #14 in the world golf rankings and has ranked as high as #2 in the past. This distinguishes him from Y.E. Yang, the first Asian winner of a golf major by virtue of his victory at the 2009 PGA Championship, as Yang achieved modest success in relative terms. At age 29, Matsuyama is entering the prime of his golf career. In golf, unlike most other sports, the senior tour allows players to remain directly visible well into their 50s and even 60s. And the game’s biggest stars—think Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, and Gary Player—all have been sponsorship gold well into old age.
2) Matsuyama has the traditional characteristics of a great celebrity endorser
Kelman’s model of Source Attributes and Receiver Processing Modes has been widely applied (see Andrews and Shimp’s IMC textbook) to help understand what makes for a strong celebrity endorser. Three source factors- credibility (including expertise and trustworthiness), attractiveness (similarity, familiarity, liking), and power have are believed to have an impact on the effectiveness of a message.
Matsuyama arguably scores very high on all of these dimensions. As a highly successful professional, both in terms of achievement and financial gain, he has strong credibility across a number of product categories that appeal to golf fans, who skew high income. Matsuyama, while by all accounts a quiet individual, has an attractive persona—he is in good shape and energetic, has a wife and young daughter, and has stayed away from controversy. In his remarks after the Masters, he made it clear that he wants to set an example for youngsters in Japan.
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Matsuyama poses with his caddie, and the Masters Trophy after winning the Masters at Augusta ... [+] National Golf Club. Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images) Getty Images
Clearly, the Masters win has raised his familiarity among consumers and the general public. While similarity depends on the target market perception, he will clearly resonate with Japanese consumers, Japanese-American consumers, and on some level many other Asian consumers around the world. While it is true that individual Asian countries/cultures are quite distinct from one another, it is also the case that Matsuyama is known to be unassuming and down-to-earth, even driving a minivan according to Golf Digest—traits that have broad appeal.
Finally, Matsuyama’s status in the top echelon of golfers undoubtedly gives him power and there is little doubt he will be flooded with endorsement requests to choose from across a broad array of product categories that appeal to golf fans: golf equipment, sports apparel, automobiles, financial services, air travel and tourism are among the most obvious, but his appeal is likely to be widespread.
3) Being the first Japanese winner of the Masters helps with messaging
There is little doubt that being able to market perseverance and breaking down obstacles is often a recipe for success. While there have been other examples of Asian players breaking through on the global sports stage, including Lin Na of China winning the 2011 French Open and Naomi Osaka winning the 2018 U.S. Open in tennis, Matsuyama’s win is arguably the highest profile triumph by an Asian male athlete in a globally followed professional sport in history. Thus, it is an important “first” coming at a time when diversity has become a key trend in many parts of the world, and one that is very marketable.
4) Japan remains a key market globally and this matters to global marketers
Matsuyama waves after winning the Masters golf tournament. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip) ASSOCIATED PRESS
Dating back to Kenichi Ohmae’s 1985 specification of the “Global Triad” of Western Europe, Japan, and the United States being at the nexus of the world’s economy, Japan has been a major economy on the world stage. While the triad model is now obviously dated with the growth of China and many other countries/regions, Japan nonetheless remains a key player in the global market. As a result, major global companies, whether Nike, Siemens, KPMG, Louis Vuitton, or Nestle, must be attentive to the Japanese market.
While some have raised the issue of Matsuyama not being fluent in English as an obstacle to his sponsorship potential, Japan’s status in global marketing makes this issue less important. Of course, it is also possible that Matsuyama will try to learn more English as Chinese mega-endorser Yao Ming did. Even if not, however, companies serving the global market are well advised to have mega-stars from multiple markets—and especially those that are large consumer markets. Matsuyama’s prowess in Japan can be supplemented with using him as part of a team in advertising in other markets, and licensing agreements may be especially attractive.
Matsuyama, unlike some other high-profile PGA stars, has also left the door open to playing in the Tokyo Olympics this summer. Whether he wins or not, his visibility at the event will be tremendous. However, should he win, his stock will rise to astronomical levels. Potential sponsors should pay attention.
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c868a7274c39257c3021c1f15eff0b80 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlesrtaylor/2021/05/04/breaking-down-myths-about-marketing-to-older-consumers/ | Breaking Down Myths About Marketing To Older Consumers | Breaking Down Myths About Marketing To Older Consumers
Active agers staying home and staying fit during COVID-19 lockdown getty
Much of what we read about older consumers casts an image of people who are past their prime and set in their ways. For marketers, the group is often thought to have limited appeal as a result of being brand loyal in many product categories as well as being technologically limited. However, if one digs a little deeper, the reality is that older consumers are often unwisely stereotyped, leading to the group being underserved in many product categories. I recently talked to Jeff Weiss, CEO of Age of Majority, a market research and consulting firm specializing in consumers 55 and older, who enlightened me on the extent to which older consumers are underserved by marketers.
Age of Majority conducted a study of marketers and asked them what they thought the split of consumer spending was across Millennials, Gen-X and Boomers. Marketers collectively estimated that Millennials were responsible for 38% of all consumer spending when, in fact, they accounted for only 18% of spending. This finding reflects just how much how the spending power (and market influence) of older active consumers is being undervalued.
Jeff Weiss, President and CEO of Age of Majority. Harbinger Communications Inc.
Central to Age of Majority’s philosophy is the notion that it is a mistake to group all older consumers together. The company points out that there is a large group of “Active Agers,” defined as: “Adults 55 and over who are mentally, physically, socially and digitally active.” They account for 75% of all people in this age group.” Weiss notes that while Active Agers may have challenges in one or more of these areas, they want to deal with and/or overcome those challenges to get the most out of life. Active Agers should be highly appealing to marketers as they comprise a group of about 75 million consumers who control approximately 70% of all wealth and account for over 40% of all consumer spending in the United States.
While a majority of consumers 55 and over are Active Agers, they are split between Boomers (25% of whom conform to the traditional image of “seniors” within society, being somewhat detached) and active member of the Silent Generation, and there are key sub-segments within this group. As a result, the company has successfully generated insights from its proprietary online panel of called Revolution55 (www.revolution55.com) that includes more than 2,500 Active Agers from across the U.S.
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Age of Majority’s research provides solid data that that shoots down several myths about older consumers. These include:
Myth #1: Older consumers are loyal to most brands and have no desire to try new things—and hence are not attractive to market to.
A survey conducted by Age of Majority’s with the Revolution 55 panel documents that more than half (52%) of the group indicated that they are open to switching brands and trying new things. Moreover, in some sub-segments among Active Agers, large majorities report that they frequently switch. Overall, results show that the categories where Active Agers are most prone to switch brands are home appliances, home electronics, packaged food, and footwear.
Weiss notes that the brand switching myth does not stand up to scrutiny. He says, “I laugh at this myth for a couple of reasons. First, younger consumers are fickler than ever so the belief that you can get them young and keep them as consumers is a myth. There are many examples of brands that have tried and failed. Second, just because you are older doesn’t mean you don’t want to try new things. Take me, for example, who went skydiving for the first time to celebrate my 55th birthday and entry into the world of Active Agers. And while there are brands that we love and are loyal to, isn’t that the same for most people regardless of their age?”
Contrary to popular belief, active agers have a significant level of techlogical savvy, use social ... [+] media, and make many purchases online. getty
Myth #2: Older consumers are technologically challenged and averse to trying new technologies.
Clearly, the Covid-19 pandemic has altered the use of technology for older adults—both in terms of the number of Active Agers adopting more technology into their lives and how they are doing it. Weiss observes, “Shifts that might have taken years to transpire took one year and there is no turning back from tech for older consumers of all ages who have enthusiastically adopted digital practices. Even my own 90-year-old mother, who uses her iPad to FaceTime with me every day, won’t go back to her old ways even when we can see each other face-to-face on a more regular basis.”
Age of Majority’s studies show that for active agers: 92% bank online; 91% own smart phones; 90% research and purchase products online; and 84% regularly post on social media. In addition, majorities own and use computers (89%), smart phones (58%), and tablets (54%). Moreover 34% use wearable technology and 25% use smart speakers. Overall, 70% of Active Agers are avid users of technology on a daily basis.
Myth #3: Older consumers are depressed and inactive.
The “old people are depressed” myth is particularly egregious and simply is inconsistent with research evidence for most older consumers. While there may be some truth to the stereotype for the 25% of over 55 consumers that Age of Majority classifies as “Traditionalists.”
Age of Majority’s data shows that 95% of all Active Agers exercise outside of the home or in-home at least weekly, with 29% exercising daily and 45% exercising a few times per week. These numbers may even compare favorably to those for younger consumers.
Weiss points out that academic and industry studies simply do not support the myth. “There is a belief that people get more depressed as they get older as there isn’t much to live for,” he asserts, “The reality is that people are happiest as they get older as they have the time, money, and desire to live life to the fullest. Academics have found increasing evidence that happiness through adulthood is U-shaped—life satisfaction falls in our 20s and 30s, then hits a trough in our late 40s before increasing until our 80s.”
Weiss believes that these findings make intuitive sense, “This makes sense when you think about all of the stresses that individuals generally face in their 40s—family, career, marriage, housing, etc. As people get older, they have less stress and fewer regrets and they don’t care as much about what other people think. Their expectations also change, and it is easier for them to savor the simpler moments and pursuits like hobbies, volunteering and spending time with grandchildren. For marketers, this means that they need to change how they portray and market to older consumers.”
Myth #4: Targeting to older consumers alienates younger consumers.
Academic research on portrayals of the elderly in advertising has gone largely dormant over the past decade. However, we do know from past research that portrayals of older consumers are relatively infrequent compared to their proportion of the population. Weiss believe the myth of alienating younger consumers is a result of there being so few good examples of brands that have done a good job in marketing efforts that appeal to Active Agers without turning younger consumers off. Ad agencies do tend to be populated by relatively young staff compared to other industries, which may be a contributing factor.
Age of Majority’s research has found that 55% of people under the age of 55 (including 61% of people 35-54 and nearly half (48%) of people 18-34) said seeing older people in marketing wouldn’t impact their purchase decisions at all, and 8% of people under 55 said this would increase their likelihood of purchasing a product/brand.
Weiss sees a major opportunity for markets rooted in societal changes such that for many older people looking younger is not a key life goal, which used to make it acceptable for marketers to target older consumers using young, attractive models. “Today we are in the midst of a change that I call reverse aspiration,” he states, “Basically we are seeing younger adults who are looking to their future and they either see Active Agers who are loving life, or they see the Traditionalists who are struggling. They are making conscious efforts now so that they can live a long and healthy life and they are inspired by people and brands that can help them on that journey.”
As an example, Age of Majority did research for a new nutritional beverage developed to help address sarcopenia (the loss of muscle mass that speeds up after age 40). The product was tested for its appeal and while it was found to be high for people 55 and over, it was even higher among women in their mid-40s. This identified a much larger opportunity for the brand that initially thought it was competing against adult nutritional beverage brands, Boost and Ensure.
Myth #5: Younger consumers feel better about how they look than older ones.
Recent years have seen older consumers become more likely to accept aspects of the aging process and rather than long to be young again, instead strive to be the best version of themselves at a given age. Weiss’ view is that this allows older consumers to feel better about their appearance:
“While there are still older adults who are desperately trying to look as young as they can through various means, including plastic surgery (and we know that procedures do not always work out that well), today’s older consumers are much less focused on looking younger compared to earlier generations. This does not mean that Active Agers do not care about how they look; instead, they want to look and feel as best as they can regardless of their age. In a nutshell, they are not aspiring to youth but to be the best version of themselves. In contrast and largely based on social media and the need to be liked, today’s younger consumers (in general) are much more focused on how they look to others, which often drives a considerable amount of stress throughout the course of a normal day.
The result of the how older and younger consumers view themselves respectively is that Active Agers are more likely to feel good about their appearance compared to 18-34 year-olds. This was confirmed in our launch research three years ago. We often see marketers using younger models for their campaigns and based on other research we have done Active Agers relate better to people that look more like them.”
Conclusion
As Age of Majority’s insights indicate, older consumers should not be grouped together or thought of in terms of dated stereotypes. The Active Agers group is large in size, has huge purchasing power collectively, and offers enormous opportunity to marketers. It should be stressed that, like any other age group, it is not homogenous and needs to be segmented. I have always viewed it as somewhat remarkable that in an era of marketing where it is important to successfully target distinct segments with products and services that meet consumer wants and needs that there is a tendency to try and group huge age cohorts together. Age of Majority’s research underscores the fallacy of such efforts.
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ec6b1dcb5a7e5954ebc4a93373364024 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlestiefer/2015/10/15/for-modis-indianext-weeks-pakistan-u-s-nuclear-weapons-talks-may-lower-the-chance-of-nuclear-war/ | Pakistan-U.S. Nuclear Weapons Talks May Lower Chance Of Nuclear War With India | Pakistan-U.S. Nuclear Weapons Talks May Lower Chance Of Nuclear War With India
Nawaz Sharif comes to Washington October 22. His visit may bring to a head the secret U.S.- Pakistan talks, just now made publicly known, dealing with Pakistan's consideration of deploying tactical nuclear weapons among its army facing India.
This is life and death for India. Tactical nuclear weapons are provided, in theory, to army units for use during regular military campaigns, just like those army units might use conventional weapons. But by using these during a conventional war with India, Pakistan’s army would escalate an ordinary battle up to the nuclear level, potentially leading to an exchange of strategic nuclear weapons. The lives of millions could be at risk, and, in the worst case – an all-out nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan -- incalculable scores, if not hundreds, of millions of lives.
India and Pakistan each have large arsenals of strategic nuclear weapons. These are controlled directly from the top of the armed forces. Hopefully, they have strong control systems, and exist only to deter the use of such weapons by the other country. But, tactical nuclear weapons are different. They are small, short-range nuclear weapons, and their use may get delegated down the chain of command. A relatively small army unit, during the heat of battle, might possess such a weapon and have the discretion to use it. And, a Pakistani army unit with such a weapon might have a jihadist element in it -- say, a commander who happens to have a fanatical hatred of India -- that could divert the tactical nuke for its own radical purpose, unconcerned with the looming awful prospects in any use.
Some Indian observers consider a U.S.-Pakistan deal unwelcome and, in any event, unlikely. They say it would be unwelcome because Pakistan seeks to be on the road to a nuclear deal with the United States like India’s own. This is unwelcome because they point to the proliferation of nuclear weapons by Pakistan as showing its unreliability. And, they say it would be unlikely because Pakistan has great national pride in its nuclear weapons program, considering that program its real defense against invasion from India, and so Pakistan would not accept limits. In other words, if Pakistan wants to deploy tactical nukes, well, Obama is not going to talk them out of it.
Modi may have to take the stance, for domestic consumption, that any such U.S.-Pakistan deal is unwelcome. But it would be a valuable step forward if Obama could get Pakistan to agree to formal limits of any kind on its nuclear weapons. Having the subcontinent so heavily armed with nuclear weapons, yet far outside the nonproliferation regime, makes it seen by some as the most dangerous confrontation on the planet.
And tactical nuclear weapons are the place to make a start on controls. One can imagine how the discussion about such weapons has been taking place in Pakistan. Would it be primarily by the civilian Sharif administration? Maybe. But it would also be a discussion within the military.
Pakistan has, or will very shortly have, a strategic triad of nuclear weapons – on planes, missiles, and (Chinese-built) submarines. But, the army may well be arguing that if India invades – which has to be the center of Pakistani military planning – Pakistan cannot use its strategic weapons because India would retaliate in kind. That is what it means for India to have a strategic triad and second-strike capability. But, the army argument may go, Pakistan could halt an invasion by India by using tactical nuclear weapons, and India would not respond because there had not been a strategic attack on Indian soil. The explosion might be set off against Indian forces on Pakistani soil, not killing a single Indian civilian.
Before we call such reasoning a kind of unimaginable madness, let me mention that the United States itself, during the Cold War, had a very large tactical nuclear arsenal. It included the "Davy Crockett recoilless rifles," by which a unit of just two soldiers could respond to a Soviet invasion of Western Europe by nuking the Soviet army with a small nuclear weapon. The "Davy Crockett" was one of many U.S. tactical nuclear weapons. So it is not impossible that Pakistan might deploy these.
The United States should never have had them. No one should. Let us hope the talks between Sharif and Obama can prevent that now.
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65a8373897a9c54614ea864c019d9a01 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlestiefer/2016/05/01/the-house-of-representatives-just-fashioned-a-heavily-overspending-pork-filled-defense-bill/ | The House of Representatives Just Fashioned A Heavily Overspending, Pork-Filled Defense Bill | The House of Representatives Just Fashioned A Heavily Overspending, Pork-Filled Defense Bill
House Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-TX) speaks to reporters at the Rayburn House Office... [+] Building, February 26, 2015 in Washington, DC. . (Photo by Evy Mages/Getty Images)
This past week, the House’s armed services committee wrote, and reported out, the $610 billion FY2017 spending bill (“defense authorization”). Unleashing itself from past constraints, it diverted for pork spending a big piece of a $90 billion fund – by a striking threat to short-change the troops in the ISIS and Afghan field, leaving them without authorized food or ammunition part=way into the fiscal year.
The unspoken logic for causing the troop support to lapse, had two cynical pillars. Chairman “Mac” Thornberry (R-Tex) can milk the fisc, in this election year, of $18 billion for the contractors in Representatives’ districts, fortifying the wastrels’ re-election. Second, in case Trump (or, for that matter, anyone else who was hawkish) got elected, the necessity of an early-2017 troop survival bill would arm Trump instantly, upon election, to ram through whatever U-turns he wants in military affairs.
Where is this below-the-radar funding shift? Excuse a bit of background. The spending caps (policed by “sequestration” across-the-board cuts), inherited from last year, sets the limit on military spending. Congressional Republicans oppose lifting the military cap, especially if, as Democrats insist, the price is also lifting the domestic cap.
Part of that defense budget goes to actual war funding (called the “Overseas Contingency Operations”) – funding for combat operations, not big-ticket military hardware. This OCO funding is accepted as a rough planning estimate of the cost of fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria, fighting in Afghanistan, some forward positioning in Europe to warn Russia, and so forth.
However, Chairman Thornberry robbed the OCO funding of $18 billion to spend on long-term hardware purchases. The bill expressly provides that funding for actual war operations will lapse after six months.
Where does the shopping list come from? Partly, Chairman Thornberry goes to the Navy, Air Force, and Army extra “wish lists” (these are formally described as “unfunded requirement”). Every weaponry dollar on these wish lists was rejected even by the open-handed Defense Department – in other words, they are deemed unneeded when compared to what Defense decided it needed.
Here are the high notes for the overspending:
11 new, unsought F-35 Joint Strike Fighters. The F-35s have been plagued with problems and doubts. The Defense Department weighed in budget terms how many to buy, but the services are pleased to have Thornberry bust the budget to buy them. The F-35s are produced by Lockheed in Ft. Worth, Texas, conveniently kin to Chairman Thornberry’s Panhandle district.
An East Coast missile defense that the Defense Department opposes. Maybe the Committee know more about the location of North Korea than the rest of us do. A $2 billion boost in the shipbuilding budget, beyond what Defense asked. This includes another unsought Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) – a ship the Secretary of Defense has cut down in a blistering memo. Overriding the Administration attempt at retiring Carrier Aircraft Wing 14. The Pentagon found there were not enough carriers to need this aircraft wing. It is not fully staffed and has not been activated since 2011. It is based in Lemoore, California, so its Congressman is David G. Valadao (R-CA), a member of the Appropriations Committee who will no doubt be able to use his post to help the funding. The shipbuilding budget is the wedge for some naval plans both very ambitious – and expensively self-serving. The Chairman of the Seapower Subcommittee, who steered this spending through is Randy Forbes (R-Va.). He represents the suburbs of Hampton Roads, in the Navy’s most highly funded area in the country. Forbes commented that this bill “increases shipbuilding to $20.6 billion, $2.3 billion more than the President’s budget, and the highest level of shipbuilding since the Reagan-Lehman era, adjusting for inflation.” (Of course, that was at the peak of the naval rivalry with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, when the U.S. Navy faced global confrontation with the Soviet Navy.) Forbes continues, “With this legislation, we are . . . making a down payment on the 350-ship Navy we need for national defense.” 350 ships is a staggeringly high number to contemplate funding – budget busting as far as the eye can see. While we have not heard the candidates for President give detailed specifics about how they would spend more on defense, clearly, Chairman Randy Forbes has the vision and perspective to show them the way.
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eee9cd13e353a2b604ce6d5f53bb2874 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlestiefer/2016/11/25/new-trump-white-house-counsel-donald-mcgahn-is-a-partisan-politico-consiglieri/ | McGahn Is Troubling Pick For White House Counsel Given Trump's Conflict-Of-Interest Issues | McGahn Is Troubling Pick For White House Counsel Given Trump's Conflict-Of-Interest Issues
Federal Election Commission (FEC) Commissioner Donald McGahn II testifies during a hearing November... [+] 3, 2011. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Let’s hope the newly named White House Counsel, Donald McGahn, is not Trump’s whole answer to concerns of conflict-of-interest as his business interests overlap with his governance. Because McGahn is a totally partisan politico, more like a consiglieri to the Godfather than a source of sound ethical counsel.
Trump’s White House Counsel has many responsibilities, but none higher than giving salutary in-house ethics advice. Perhaps the most famous one in history was President Nixon’s White House Counsel, John W. Dean. Initially, Dean helped with the Watergate cover-up.
But there came a time when he warned Nixon that Watergate was a cancer on the Presidency. He came clean with Congress and the prosecutors. Since then he has become a widely respected author and commentator. One can be Dean’s type and at some point go straight and tell the President what he should do to be honest. Or, one can be McGahn’s type.
McGahn started out in Patton Boggs, largely considered a political lobby shop (albeit a capable one). There was an early tie to Trump: McGahn’s uncle worked for Trump for many years. Patrick “Paddy” McGahn was a local power broker and lawyer, who helped Trump cut deals that paved the way for him to open his Atlantic City casinos.
In 1999-2008, Donald McGahn served as in-house counsel for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House Republican campaign arm. This was at the time that the notorious Tom DeLay ramrodded the partisan House Republican conference.
President George W. Bush named him as chair of the Federal Election Commission in 2008. To the Republicans controlling election policy at that time, the goal of their commissioners in the FEC was to render reform as close to nil as possible. (It should be remembered that this was before the Supreme Court decisions hobbled campaign finance law.)
At the FEC, public interest groups and Democrats accused McGahn of steering the agency into an era of gridlock. McGahn led three Republicans, half the Commission, to block efforts by advocacy groups aiming to reduce the influence of money in politics. In fact, McGahn himself is credited as having played a crucial role in loosening regulation on campaign spending.
McGahn worked with the Koch Brothers’ network – namely, “Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce.” In 2012, the organization raised $256 million. It has given grants worth a total of $236 million to right-wing political groups like the Tea Party.
“Freedom Partners” made a grant of $115 million to another Koch organ, the “Center to Protect Patient Rights.” This called itself a “social welfare” organization (which gets favorable legal treatment) although it allegedly ran massive political attack ads in midterm elections -- perhaps done as "issue ads" to evade the law.
Oh, and then he joined the Trump campaign. The Wall Street Journal comments, “He’s one of a growing number of people with ties to the Kochs to join Trump’s administration.”
Trump seemed at one point to say he was going to change Washington. Trump says in a release that “Don [McGahn] has a brilliant legal mind, excellent character and a deep understanding of constitutional law.”
The press has been laying out Trump’s extensive and massive conflicts of interest and the inadequacy of the supposed in-family “blind trust” in which Trump turns the daily management of his business empire to his children. In theory, the White House Counsel would nail down the ethics issues and tighten up the protections. McGahn, in theory, would do that.
That’s the theory.
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163816015686799851a6c2ff31321c1e | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlestiefer/2017/01/02/on-january-3d-the-republican-congress-readies-its-assault-on-medicare-and-medicaid/ | On Jan. 3, The Republican Congress Readies Its Assault On Medicare And Medicaid | On Jan. 3, The Republican Congress Readies Its Assault On Medicare And Medicaid
ARLINGTON, VA - MARCH 20: U.S. Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) tears a page from the national health care bill... [+] during a press conference at the U.S. Capitol. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
With Donald Trump’s election, it was a given that the Republican Congress will repeal some or all of the Affordable Care Act. What is only now has become clear, with the House Republicans convening January 3, is that Congress is readying a path to its assault on Medicare and Medicaid, too.
The weakened and shrunken forms each of these will take differ between Medicare and Medicaid. But, the way for the Republican Congress to prepare for that assault, is by the same changes in House floor procedure for both Medicare and Medicaid.
The House of Representatives votes its rules, for the procedures of bills on the House floor, the first day it convenes. What the House Republicans do on the first day, is not like a mere campaign speech or platform. It is the actual set of procedural rules that govern what the House will do for the next two years.
In the past, Congress had procedurally shielded Medicare and Medicaid from the most alarming kinds of meddling and slashing. Other kinds of spending, like defense and farm subsidies, occur only by annual appropriations. They compete afresh, each and every year, with the rest of the appropriated spending, known as “discretionary spending.”
Changes in appropriations level have an enormous push behind them. Namely, the annual expiration of the previous year’s appropriations leaves a spending vacuum. Congress has no choice but to enact fresh new appropriation bills to fill the vacuum. These “must pass” bills may include changes in funding levels, such as increases or decreases in particular funds for homeland security. So, procedurally, cuts in such discretionary spending have a smooth procedural path.
In contrast, Medicare and Medicaid are “mandatory spending.” They did not compete with the general pool of discretionary spending, like defense. They continue without annual appropriations or anything annual at all. Congress does not have to, and usually does not, make changes in them, which are only made by some affirmative new legislation that faces procedural hurdles. Because Medicare and Medicaid do not compete with appropriations, Congress does not choose each year between defense and homeland security, on the one hand, and Medicare and Medicaid.
But now, House Republicans are changing the rules. The House rules will require House committee chairs to propose ways of imposing more fiscal discipline on programs like Medicare and Medicaid. The goal is to switch such programs from “mandatory funding” to “discretionary appropriations.”
This rule tracks the ideology of the new Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Price, who has been chair of the House Budget Committee. As Secretary of Health and Human Services, Price will testify before Congress on the Administration’s policy about Medicare and Medicaid. So, he will shepherd along the policy of this new House rule.
Secretary (to-be) Price said in a recent speech, “Two-thirds of current expenditures are dedicated to . . . automatic spending programs like Medicare and Social Security, which are not subject to annual appropriations and therefore operate largely outside the control of Congress.”
By bringing Medicare and Medicaid into annual competition for funds with defense, these health programs can be reshaped into weakened and shrunken forms. For Medicaid, the first step will be to end the expansion made by the Affordable Care Act. Some Republican-controlled states have never even opted into it.
But, the really big step will be to “block grant” and reduce its funding. This way, states would get less annual federal aid but would have few or no federal rules about the minimum of coverage. Generally speaking, Republican-controlled states would embrace their new power to slash Medicaid. Democratic-controlled states might avoid slashing Medicaid coverage, but only by providing more state funding. In other words, they would have to tax their citizens more heavily, a difficult and unpopular step, merely to keep Medicaid at its current level.
For Medicare, the Republicans would now have a procedural path to oblige the program to compete for long-term funding with defense and homeland security. As implemented, the Republican plan will be to “voucherize” the program. Instead of receiving full fee-for-care Medicare, Medicare beneficiaries would receive a fixed and limited amount with which to buy insurance policies.
The change would particularly disfavor “older, sicker and poorer” Medicare beneficiaries. They would now find that decent-quality insurance policies would charge much more than they could afford. They would have to buy inferior insurance policies with which they will be lucky to buy health care of even the lowest quality. Unqualified providers who spend minimal time currently on each Medicaid patient, known as “Medicaid mills,” would now be “Medicare mills,” too.
This dreadful push begins with the new House rules.
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144785034e65fe4c5f648e319e8ab3c1 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlestiefer/2020/11/10/the-gsa-head-who-blocks-transition-to-biden-presidency-is-partisan-and-not-independent/?sh=1cfdfe1f5e52 | The GSA Head Who Blocks Transition To Biden Presidency Is Partisan And Not Independent | The GSA Head Who Blocks Transition To Biden Presidency Is Partisan And Not Independent
The head of the General Services Administration (GSA), Emily W. Murphy, has a key role now. GSA’s normal role is as the leading civilian procurement agency. Currently, she triggers the machinery of the Presidential Transition Act facilitating the transition from outgoing President Trump to incoming President Biden that must occur in a short time. By law, she makes an “ascertainment” of the winner of the election. It is being asked just who she is. Is she on her own, or is she Trump’s puppet?
First, it may be asked whether her GSA performance has demonstrated any independence from President Trump. No, she is not independent. Early in the Trump Administration, GSA proceeded with the lease to the Trump Administration of the Old Post Office Building in D.C. This was quickly denounced by observers as illegal. In May 2017, I posted “GSA Approval of Trump Old Post Office Lease Whitewashes an Illegal Arrangement.”
The lease contained the standard clause, “No . . . elected official of the Government of the United States . . . shall be admitted to any share or part of this Lease.” Trump turned management of the hotel, nominally, to his family and retainers. He stopped “distributions” to him. However, his proceeds were simply accumulated in an account for after his term. And, his continued role in management of his hotels, in terms of using his Presidency to drum up business, has been only too well known.
In the other prominent GSA scandal, an FBI long-scheduled move out of its D.C. headquarters was blocked to keep the current site from redevelopment into a hotel to compete with Trump’s hotel. At first, Murphy testified to Congress that the decision was made without Trump.
However, in July 2018, the GSA inspector general released a report that Murphy’s statement to Congress was “incomplete and may have left the misleading impression that she had no discussions with White House officials in the decision-making.” In fact, Murphy had multiple meetings with Trump on this, notably a two-day meeting in January 2018 between Murphy, Trump, White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, and budget director Mick Mulvaney. She was a lawyer giving bogus testimony to a Congressional committee, caught by an Inspector General. That adds up to a lot of loyalty to, and no independence from, Trump.
Second, it may be asked whether her background is partisan. After college graduation, she worked in 1995-1997 for the Republican National Committee. That is a partisan way to start a career.
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She then went to work for 1997-1998 for the Republican Chair of the House Committee on Small Business. Afterward, she went to law school. She worked for the George W. Bush administration, first at the Small Business Administration in 2004-2005, then at GSA (for the first time) in 2005-2007. At GSA she was involved in GSA’s response to procurement audits that threatened to close a third of GSA’s operations and lost $8 billion a year. Although her roles involved some party loyalty, those who know her say that she was less rock-hard partisan then than later in the 2010s. She returned to the House Small Business Committee as senior counsel in 2011-2016, then worked (on procurement) in the House Committee on Armed Services in 2016-2017.
Look at posts from both a Congressional and a procurement perspective. Her many years in the House were for the Republican chairs. Her key experiences are as a House Republican counsel, in a partisan House. And, of course, Republican committee counsels do not have independence from their elected boss. To picture House Republicans serving Trump, think of Mike Pompeo and Mark Meadows – hard partisans wanting no independence.
If you will excuse some procurement policy discussion, her bias in procurement policymaking has consistently favored big contractors at the expense of vital competition. She was the Congressional staff offeror of provisions along this line. And at GSA, she has presided over taking the important Federal Supply Schedules (FSS) and having them be without prices. The FSS are a way to spend billions of dollars on procurement without meaningful competition, so not even to have prices milks the taxpayer to pay off big suppliers.
She is Trump’s puppet.
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8799782090d8dd4678536de9cb6fe0a8 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlestowersclark/2019/12/11/the-future-of-work-in-2020-and-beyond/ | The Future Of Work In 2020 And Beyond | The Future Of Work In 2020 And Beyond
The future of work is already here, and the way we work and interact with companies is changing ever ... [+] faster as we move into 2020. Freepik
The future of work is a somewhat misleading phrase. Referring to a way of working that is fundamentally different from traditional paradigms (clock in at 9, out at five, sick days negotiable), the ‘future’ of work is already here and significantly changing how people think about jobs and about how their time is valued.
It is useful, however, to look at how far we’ve come in terms of employment and workers’ rights, and how far we still need to go to create the ‘future of work’ that many envisage. As we move into 2020, here are a few predictions on the next developments in employment and work, and why ‘the future of work’ might not be quite as Utopian as some think (at least not yet).
Transparency
Over this past year, more and more companies have been becoming far more transparent, including the transparency of salaries. Especially popular in creative industries, salary transparency is gaining traction amongst an increasingly empowered and informed workforce, so much so that LinkedIn named pay transparency one of its top four trends in the Global Talent Trends 2019. It might seem like a stretch to go from pay secrecy to completely public and open salaries for each employee, but this is part of a much wider trend towards transparency that is based on instilling mutual trust between employer and employee. This trend will continue throughout 2020 and beyond, as employees look for a more flexible, accountable, and trustworthy relationship with employers. Under the omnipresent gaze of social media, the most transparent companies will continue to attract the best talent (and the least trustworthy will lose the best talent), and we will also see a small number of companies allowing employees to choose their own salaries—primarily as a means of giving more responsibility to employees.
Anti-hierarchy
Another trend, perhaps less radical than pay transparency, is that of companies forgoing traditional roles and departments—and all the territorialism that goes with them—to focus on purpose-built projects that thrive without the need for departments. Focusing on specific projects encourages a more concentrated effort from project members to complete a distinct goal, and have a greater effort/reward ratio than the status of a role and department ever could. While this trend is harder to measure, I expect a slow and steady shift towards project-based organizational structures. This is because the same workforce that rightly expects equality, honesty, and respect from their employers, also has no patience with the ‘because I said so’ rhetoric that comes with fixed departments and arbitrary role definitions.
Disparity
Unfortunately, whilst the most attractive professions will offer a level of transparency and trust to their employees in exchange for critical skills and high levels of emotional intelligence, the gap between high value ‘thought-based’ professions and those that do not require specific skills will increase. Those that work to survive, and may not have any option other than to continue working under an oppressive working structure, will likely not benefit from a trend towards trust and transparency. This disparity will be most starkly felt in areas that have a huge amount of process-driven jobs that can be easily automated, such as factory work and clothes production, and we will begin to see the adverse effects of AI and automation as more jobs are taken up by robots in these areas. More prosperous regions don’t have such a high proportion of workers in these kinds of roles, and so this could well lead to more of a ‘them and us’ mindset if not properly addressed.
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Time to pay taxes
Treating workers fairly at every level of employment has been an incredibly hot topic this year, and the largest, seemingly untouchable enterprises have begun to show cracks in their slick, shiny armor. Numerous disturbing reports have surfaced of Amazon’s horrific working conditions that endanger the safety of its employees, and the company has been slated by various political figures for not paying their taxes. Google too has been under fire for not paying their fair share of taxes and has seen an employee revolt over working conditions that is only intensifying. The level of public outrage around this issue is not going to decrease over the next year. In fact, large enterprises will most likely face more backlash for not solving these troubling issues. As a result, non-profit objectives will be a major focus for companies moving forward, to somewhat offset bad press and indeed to improve their impact on society.
The future is... mixed
As we move into 2020, the way we work is changing dramatically. On one hand, we will start to see the adverse effects of AI and automation in areas that have a large amount of process-driven jobs, and a larger separation between those working to survive and those in thought-based roles. On the other hand, we are seeing a greater focus on equal rights for all employees, flexible and considerate schedules and company structures, and a far greater emphasis on accountability around poor working conditions.
Cut-throat business practices are becoming less and less acceptable under the vigilant eye of social media, and this can only be a good thing for workers of all descriptions. In 2020 and beyond, the intense scrutiny that businesses are facing will certainly lead us to a more positive and productive future of work.
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0b3ae39a27a60ad60c295e5ae508401c | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlestowersclark/2020/01/10/construction-co-bots-need-to-be-smarter-more-adaptive-part-two/ | Construction Co-bots Need To Be Smarter, More Adaptive (Part Two) | Construction Co-bots Need To Be Smarter, More Adaptive (Part Two)
Construction co-bots need some more development before they can become smart, adaptive, and ... [+] responsive enough for a complicated construction environment. Autodesk
For robots to really change the construction industry, they need to become more than just ‘tools’ in the eyes of the people using them. Previously I wrote about two construction robotics companies that are augmenting construction workers to alleviate a serious skills shortage, but these solutions focus on providing more powerful tools on-site, rather than looking further afield at the construction industry's potential for automation.
In this article, I will delve deeper into robotics and automation in construction to look at how true autonomy might be achieved in a complex and high-risk environment, and what impact robotics might have on workers and the industry as a whole.
Adaptability is king
As AI becomes far more capable of dealing with nuanced and high-pressure situations without human intervention, more traditional pre-programmed industrial robots are becoming less useful in comparison. “Six-axis industrial robots are largely 'mute',” says Erin Bradner, Director of Robotics at the Autodesk Robotics Lab, “they are blind, they have no sense of touch, and [can’t really] respond to their environment.” As sensors are embedded into robotic arms and mobile robots as well, there is an increased emphasis on “introducing adaptivity into robots, to move beyond the paradigm of pre-programmed motion,” says Bradner. The utility of traditional industrial robots or robotic arms has been proven over the years, but with an increasingly digitized working environment and severe skills shortages—particularly in manual industries such as construction—more competent and independent automation is needed to keep up with the pace of innovation.
The limited ability of stationary robots to respond to their environment could be a huge hindrance in a scenario such as a busy construction site, leading to more work for those using the robot to allow it to operate effectively. Mobile co-bots that roam around the job site are far more responsive to their environments, but this can also be a hindrance if they aren’t smart, as Bradner explains: “Co-bots are designed to be human-safe, they'll stop when they encounter an obstacle, but you don't want your project stopping every time a person sneezes.” To get past this deterministic hyper-vigilance, some co-bots like those of Scaled Robotics and Dusty Robotics are introducing adaptivity and more nuanced intelligence so that, as Bradner puts it, “the co-bot will be more flexible and responsive to its environment so that humans don't have to adapt to the co-bot.”
Finding new paths
There are a few possible ways for a co-bot to respond to its environment, either “stop whenever there is a force exceeding a certain threshold,” “teach a robot to understand what a dynamic environment feels like,” in the cloud and maintain communication in real-time, or what Bradner calls the brute force approach, “burning into chips the ability to follow every single path and allowing it to choose the right one.” Each of these approaches has its merits and drawbacks—the first is simple but can’t judge outside of the “force” parameter, the second is more nuanced but needs to communicate with the cloud, and the third takes a huge amount of processing power to give the most possible autonomy—but the question remains which method is best or which combination will suit different applications. Ultimately, Bradner states, “for a robot to adapt to more dynamic environments, we need to train it to be able to infer what happens if something crosses its path, how to respond to that, sense it, plan and act in that context.” Given the complexity and intensity of a live construction site, it is likely that a combination of these approaches will be needed to reach a workable solution for jobs where robots are manipulating building materials on-site.
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There are many applications for robotics away from the construction site itself that might provide a quicker win for automation, stemming from the wave of digitization that has swept the industry over the last few years. Bradner points to the prevalence of incredibly granular CAD models that are used ubiquitously throughout the industry, and the possibilities that such a level of digital insight off-site could open up for robotics. “When a CAD model is handed over to a contractor or a manufacturer, typically the geometries and tolerances in the 3D model are just used as a guideline. What if we could leverage the inherent logic and accuracy of a 3D CAD model, explode the model, and then simply train a robot to reverse that explosion. You’ve just created a set of perfectly accurate assembly instructions that a robot can follow to the letter.”
Assembling the future
Developing robotics construction in this way, using automation, digital software, and bypassing manual processes and errors, sets an interesting foundation for the future of robotics in construction. Not one where robots wearing hard-hats replace workers, but one where the entire construction site itself changes to more of a process of assembly, rather than construction as we think of it today.
As automation and robotics reach deeper into an increasing number of industries, the question is whether a particular industry adopts robotics into its processes, or changes itself completely around a new way of working with robots. Facing a lack of skilled labor and a shortage of resources, automation might help the construction industry to rebuild itself from the ground up.
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5a3d96fd0bac1bdc8d8aa02af520a336 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlestowersclark/2021/03/30/relayr-what-if-an-agile-mindset-doesnt-scale/?sh=452953723f25 | Relayr: What If An ‘Agile’ Mindset Doesn’t Scale? | Relayr: What If An ‘Agile’ Mindset Doesn’t Scale?
Scaling a business does not always gel with an agile mindset, and letting each employee carry their ... [+] own load does not always lead to growth. I spoke with Guneet Bedi, SVP of relayr, about why scaling up can sometimes mean going back to a top-down methodology. getty
Digital startups are very often built around an ‘agile’ and flexible mindset, with a strong focus on ideas and little regard for traditional ‘top-down’ management. Scaling into a successful and stable enterprise, however, often requires a different approach – one that balances nimbleness with structure.
I spoke with Guneet Bedi, Senior Vice President (SVP) and General Manager at relayr, about transitioning from a small, bustling company into a business that can reliably scale, and why company culture has to change along the way.
Three stages of growth
For Bedi, any digital transformation strategy has to go hand in hand with cultural change, and that doesn’t always mean sticking to an agile, start-up mentality. Relayr provides digital transformation services in the industrial IoT space, and has undergone a change process that followed a distinct path from a venture-backed start-up in 2015 through to being acquired by a traditional insurance company in October 2018. As such Bedi and the relayr Executive Leadership team have thought a lot about how digital transformation manifests in a company’s culture, concluding that “digital maturity really dictates where change is needed - a lot of companies are just dabbling with technology, others are starting to implement, and fewer still have figured out the tech piece and are starting to scale.”
Central to Bedi’s evaluation of digital transformation programs are the cultural changes embodied at each distinct level of digital maturity - ideation, implementation, and scaling up. “In the first stage when you’re first starting to do market creation and value capture, the goals are very customer-driven. Building confidence is key because market perception is so important,” says Bedi. At this “very early” stage, top-down decision making with a broad/experimental approach was necessary for relayr, but Bedi feels that a company should also remain very open to new ideas and celebrate every ‘micro-goal’ milestone: “To start with, trust in people, not process. It’s okay to fail, it’s okay to not have all the information, it’s okay to be more nimble - all of that is very important to start with,” says Bedi.
Balancing act
Relayr is now “right in the middle” of the second ‘implementation’ stage “where you need to balance that nimbleness with structure,” says Bedi, “this is where the cultural shift really starts to happen - it’s not enough to be top-down and customer-facing, every department has to be part of that change process.” Looking at their ‘stage one’ attitude, to “throw people at the problem, to get customer success whatever the cost,” Bedi and the relayr team realized that their agile mindset had “led to different strategies in different teams” and that they were at risk of having “too many cooks in the kitchen,” which led to some unforeseen challenges. “In some cases we had too many layers of people between a customer request and the engineering department,” says Bedi, “why couldn’t that be flattened to 1-2 layers?”
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One example in this stage of relayr’s digital transformation, Bedi and his team launched a “value-creation advisory team” to balance out nimbleness with structure, and to “drive that mindset of ‘which business do we want to pursue, where is the most value,’” says Bedi. The creation of this team started relayr’s sales team thinking about not just any business to grow but more sustainable growth. The company hired an SVP People and rather than hiring more highly-skilled people and falling into the same trap of siloed, semi-independent teams, relayr looked to competency-based hiring for those “organizational skills,” says Bedi. This approach relies on the principle that, aside from basic functional capabilities, “it doesn’t matter what function you have, if you have the competencies and cultural skills you can do whatever,” explains Bedi.
“In the first phase functional mastery was so important - you need to be really good at artificial intelligence, project management, or sales to succeed. But when we wanted to drive success in a more structured way, we realized that every business we closed had some personal relationship involved, or it was down to one or two high-performing individuals. That is not sustainable when you have multiple products and projects, so we had to reassess what actually makes a good employee.”
This competency-based hiring framework consists of an initial test of “functional mastery” (the fundamental requirements to fulfill the role), then an interview panel with “each interviewer focusing on one or two core competencies,” to ensure a focus on people skills rather than just ability to achieve a functional task. Competencies are then linked to different levels of the company structure - “the CEO would be level seven and an intern might be level one” - to parse out different competency requirements for different roles. Bedi states that this “made us think very differently about talent, now in the interview process we focus so much on working with others and prioritization, rather than more specific job skills.”
From agile to old-school
Finally, when companies like relayr get to the scaling stage, says Bedi, from his past experience he feels that the company culture and strategy really have to dramatically change. “The problem is that you have trained your organization to be nimble and think differently, you have a little bit of structure with new roles, and suddenly you need the old-school, growth leadership mentality back,” says Bedi.
Counter to the prevailing narrative of many silicon-valley companies, Bedi argues that in order to scale effectively, companies need to sacrifice that flexible attitude and go back to a traditional process-driven leadership to really commit to scaling up. “It’s a bold statement, but you cannot keep the agile, entrepreneurial mindset when you go to scale,” he continues, “I think a lot of people are going to struggle with that stage of the process.” Particularly for digital companies, however, being agile in the market still has a huge advantage, even if back-end processes are far more traditionally-minded. “In some areas of the business we are already trying to change to a traditional organization from a scaling perspective without losing the market edge of being agile,” says Bedi.
Keeping this semblance of an agile mindset alongside structured, scalable business processes is no easy feat, but Bedi explains that “the customer-facing roles are of an agile, customer-focused mindset, and teams like the value-creation team are there to kind of decide when it’s okay to be more traditional and when we should be more agile.” This is balanced out by far more structured operational processes, and a process-driven back-end. “Trust in the process will be needed for us to scale operationally and not have every function/team do their own thing,” says Bedi.
Top-down or across?
Whilst Bedi and relayr have adopted a traditional stance, not everything is as it was in the good old days of top-down, growth-focused leadership. “We think of ourselves not as hierarchical but as flat and wide... there should not be more than six layers from the CEO to the lowest level,” says Bedi. The stages of digital transformation that relayr has been through before settling into a traditional mindset is refreshingly balanced by Bedi’s view that companies should keep evolving. “We’ve kept it very flat now, but we remain flexible and will adapt to the changing needs of the market and our customers,” said Bedi. “But we might determine a need to adjust roles or responsibilities within certain areas of our business in the future, for instance, necessitating another evolution of our team structure.”
If there is but one key takeaway from my discussion with Bedi, it is this: whether agile or traditional, starting up or scaling, companies must fundamentally change to remain relevant and resilient.
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743b931a5ca39efa9d28a3b22bb55c31 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charleswallace1/2018/08/14/are-russia-and-china-trying-to-kill-king-dollar/ | Are Russia And China Trying To Kill The Dollar? | Are Russia And China Trying To Kill The Dollar?
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov suggested Tuesday that countries facing sanctions like Iran, Turkey and Russia may start doing business in their national currencies, suggesting that the days of the U.S. dollar as the international reserve currency may be numbered.
Perhaps no one would be happier about that than President Donald Trump. Here’s why:
As Yale economist Robert Tiffin explained in the 1950s, if a country’s currency is the international reserve currency, then it has no choice but to run a current account deficit. If a replacement is found, as the dollar replaced the British pound in the 1920s, it may be more likely to have trade surpluses – which is what Trump has said he wants.
The reason is simple: trading nations all over the world have to accumulate dollars to use in trading with each other. When China buys oil from Iran, for example, it pays in U.S. dollars. So, more U.S. dollars flow out of the US than flow in, and bingo, you have a big current account deficit.
On the other hand, having the dollar as the international reserve currency creates what’s called “monetary seignorage,” which is what the U.S. government earns by having all those dollars floating around overseas. It costs almost nothing to print money, but China, Russia and everyone else pay a full dollar in goods and services for that greenback.
There have been efforts to replace the dollar as the reserve currency for some time – China even blamed the dollar’s international role as one of the causes of the financial crisis in 2008. The problem is that no other currency has stepped forward as a good replacement.
What’s changed? The weaponization of the dollar by Washington. When Trump re-imposed sanctions on Iran last week, he warned that any company doing deals with the Iranians in dollars would also be subject to sanctions. Several Russian companies are also under U.S. sanctions.
While it is a somewhat different issue, Turkey is also angry that a tweet by Trump last week doubling tariffs on imports of Turkish steel has caused Turkey’s currency, the lira, to crash more than 20 percent against the US dollar. That has caused a stampede by investors out of emerging market currencies everywhere.
Lavrov is visiting Turkey and told a press conference that “unilateral enforcement measures are illegitimate in international affairs,” a reference to the American sanctions. “One way to counter these illegitimate barriers and restrictions is we can use national currencies on our bilateral trade,” he added.
Lavrov said Russia already uses local currencies in trade with China and Iran and that a number of other countries are also thinking about doing the same. China has been active in setting up trade deals in its own currency, the renminbi.
“I strongly believe that abuse of the role the U.S. dollar plays as an international currency will eventually result in its role being undermined,” Lavrov said
A teller holds Turkish lira banknotes at a currency exchange office in Istanbul on August 13, 2018.... [+] - Turkey's troubled lira tumbled on August 13 to fresh record lows against the euro and dollar, piling pressure on stock markets on fears the country's crisis could spill over into the world economy. (Photo by Yasin AKGUL / AFP) (Photo credit should read YASIN AKGUL/AFP/Getty Images)
. “A growing number of countries — even those not affected by US sanctions — will more and more stay away from the dollar and will rely on more reliable partners using their (own) currency.”
While Lavrov may be right, the use of national currencies goes only so far. Will traders in China, for example, be content taking Turkish lira in payment for goods shipped when they know that the currency will be worth much less by the time the ship reaches its destination?
It’s a little bit like the way the English language has become the lingua franca of international business. Although they may not like it, you often hear Chinese businessmen speaking with their German and French counterparts in English. It’s the same for the dollar: it’s safe, dependable and easy to exchange.
So, while President Trump might be happier with lower trade deficits because the dollar is no longer the international reserve currency, it’s probably not going to happen soon.
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9e3517f5561ab6789592146202848557 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charleswarner/2016/11/27/fake-news-facebook-is-a-technology-company/ | Fake News: Facebook Is A Technology Company | Fake News: Facebook Is A Technology Company
(KAY NIETFELD/AFP/Getty Images)
Facebook's co-founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has come under intense scrutiny and criticism since the election, largely because of the prevalence of fake news on his social platform that some critics are claiming helped Donald Trump get elected.
Zuckerberg's initial response to concerns about fake news was in a Nov. 12 post on Facebook in which he wrote that Facebook is a technology company, not a media company. He also wrote that it was up to users to decide what news to follow and that it is a “crazy idea” that Facebook influenced the election.
The notion that Facebook is a technology company, not a media company, is nonsense. It's fake news.
Zuckerberg is no dummy. He took the idea of a digitized facebook from some Harvard classmates and was good enough at coding to put one up on Harvard's servers. As Picasso said, "bad artists copy; good artists steal." Zuckerberg was smart enough to get into Harvard, smart enough to take a good idea and smart enough to continue innovating at his new company to leave Friendster and MySpace in the dust.
But when the company became successful Zuckerberg didn't want to admit that Facebook was a media company, even though he eventually managed it like other media companies are managed, i.e. to maximize advertising revenue. At the beginning of Facebook, Zuckerberg didn't like advertising because he thought it hurt the product. However, he soon learned, like Larry Page and Sergey Brin learned at Google, that users weren't going to pay for the service, so in order to grow he had to accept advertising.
Advertising revenue is like heroin. Once you try it for a while, the highs become addictive.
Zuckerberg became addicted to advertising revenue, but because he was a new player in the game, he thought he could deny being in the media business and being addicted to ad revenue. He talked a good game, a game that would inspire the troops at Facebook, appease its users and distract investors. He said Facebook's mission was “to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected,” which is a lot more noble than admitting its mission is to maximize advertising revenue and profit. Wealth is even more addictive than heroin.
William S. Paley didn't start CBS to serve the public with a truthful news source and create a community-focused discourse on important issues. Paley, like president-elect Trump, went to the undergraduate Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and, also like Trump, founded his company with the goal of getting rich. Why else would you go to business school? But Paley realized that the biggest profits were not in owning a network that packaged programs and shared advertising revenue with affiliates, but in owning radio and then TV stations.
The problem with owning radio and TV stations is that you have to get a license from the federal government (from the FCC) to use public airwaves; and to get those licenses, you have to agree to serve the "public good convenience and necessity." Therefore, Paley realized that the No. 1 priority of radio and TV station managers was to keep their licenses, so it was in his economic interests to serve the public interest by providing news, public affairs programming, editorial writers and community affairs directors at the CBS-owned radio and TV stations.
But Paley and other broadcasters, through the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), lobbied hard (and expensively) to get the FCC rules changed so that being fair (the Fairness Doctrine abolished in 1986) or providing meaningful public service was thrown in the trash heap of good intentions. Bring on Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and now fake news.
These changes in regulation brought about a revolution in the media. Neither cable television nor the internet require a government license, so the concept of public service didn't apply. Cable TV became the uncensored, unregulated home of indecency, advocacy news and pornography, all driven by an addiction to advertising revenue. The internet was driven by the same uncensored, unregulated content and addiction.
But there is some hope, some ethical light at the end of the tunnel. In 1974 eroticist Al Goldstein put his Screw Magazine on cable TV, and it soon became Midnight Blue. Eventually, the repulsiveness of Midnight Blue, Screw Magazine and other porn became obvious to viewers. The novelty wore off and they died without advertisers or viewers. This election that spotlighted the obscenity of fake news might just be enough to kill it too.
Mark Zuckerberg has now announced that Facebook will try to do something to censor fake news by cutting off the reason for its existence -- advertising revenue. The teenage Macedonians and Filipinos who created the fake news didn't care who was elected in the U.S.; they cared about the advertising revenue. By admitting that Facebook would cut off the ad revenue to fake news sites, Zuckerberg was admitting that Facebook is a media company, that it isn't amoral and that serving the public interest matters.
Welcome to the traditional media world, Mark.
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df642b3b4211b684f133f4443aa9bd98 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charleyblaine/2016/02/11/why-amazon-com-boosted-its-stock-buyback-program/ | Why Amazon.com Boosted Its Stock Buyback Program | Why Amazon.com Boosted Its Stock Buyback Program
What do you do if your financial results disappoint, the stock market tanks and your shares fall as much as 32% in a matter of weeks? Buy back shares to show your stockholders you care.
That's what Amazon.com announced after Wednesday's close: a $5 billion stock-buyback program. It replaces a $2 billion buyback plan that hadn't yet been completed.
Amazon shares have been hammered since peaking at $696.44 intraday on Dec. 29. The most recent low was $474 midday on Tuesday.
Wednesday's news gave the stock a little pop, which is what buyback announcements are supposed to do. Amazon stock was trading at $494.95 after hours, up 0.9% from the regular close of $490.48.
Based on the Wednesday close, however, AMZN shares are down 27.4% for the year. That's nasty, especially compared with the Standard & Poor's 500 Index, down 9.4% this year or the Nasdaq Composite Index, down 9.6%. The slump also comes after Amazon stock jumped nearly 118% in 2015.
Amazon.com's fulfillment center in DuPont, Wash. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
Amazon is vulnerable to sell-offs after big runups. It fell 65% in the 2008 market crash and dropped 29% between early 2014 and early 2015 after rising nearly 63% in 2013.
Financing this buyback shouldn't be a problem. Amazon.com had $15.9 billion in cash on its balance sheet as of Dec. 31, and the company generated $7.3 billion in free cash flow during the year.
The buyback is open-ended. Purchases would be made when the company believes buying "would enhance long-term shareholder value," a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission said.
Amazon was up 1.7% in regular trading before the buyback announcement. The stock's gain may give a little relief to CEO Jeff Bezos, who saw the value of his stake in Amazon.com fall to as little $39.8 billion from a December peak of $56.8 billion. Bezos' 83.9-million shares were worth about $41.2 billion at Wednesday's close.
The pressure on the stock this year has not been just a reaction to the market turmoil of recent months. Amazon shares tumbled as much as 10% on Jan. 29 before ending at $587 after its fourth-quarter earnings of $1 a share (on an adjusted basis) missed the Street estimate of $1.56.
Then, the shares fell an additional 19% as the global market slump worsened -- and tech stocks in particular took a special beating.
In addition to the near-constant argument that Amazon stock is overpriced, there have been multiple issues bothering investors about Amazon.com:
Amazon is still investing heavily in original content in addition to continued investments in its core retail businesses to make same-day deliveries the rule and not the exception. Amazon opened a retail store in Seattle last fall, and there was amazement last week when General Growth Properties CEO Sandeep Mathrani told a conference call that he understood Amazon wanted to add perhaps as many as 400 retail stores. (Amazon officials declined comment, and Mathrani said the next day he had no direct knowledge of the plans.) There are strong signals the company wants to start shipping products itself.
The last point is worth exploring for a moment. Amazon.com is buying up the portion of French parcel delivery company Colis Privé it doesn't already own.
More importantly, Bloomberg News reported that the company has been studying setting up a large logistics business that looks like it will concentrate on moving freight from China to designated hubs around the world, most likely New York, Atlanta and London.
Recent news reports have said the company in in talks to buy or lease 20 Boeing 767 jet freighters. That may sound like a lot planes, but the fact is that FedEx operated 656 planes in its fleet as of Nov. 30, 2015. UPS had an active fleet of around 240 planes as of last fall.
But the real target of the effort isn't FedEx or UPS, Bloomberg said. It's Alibaba, the Chinese Internet giant.
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a90b3337862aa53e42f5f514a48a4f8a | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2017/07/19/disney-joins-ar-fray-with-200-star-wars-ar-headset/ | Disney Joins AR Fray With $200 Star Wars AR Headset | Disney Joins AR Fray With $200 Star Wars AR Headset
At its D23 fan event in Anaheim, CA on Sunday, July 16, Disney announced that its LucasFilm subsidiary and Lenovo are developing a smartphone based augmented reality headset which will feature Star Wars games like Holo Chess, along with a peripheral Bluetooth Light Saber. The headset is essentially a light weight iPhone holder attached to a clear plastic visor. The cell phone's images are reflected onto the visor, allowing digital images to mingle with the physical reality in often startlingly realistic ways.
Disney/Lenovo headset with Bluetooth peripheral Light Saber. Disney
Disney’s VP of Advanced Development Mike Goslin revealed the project on stage and showed videos of several games-in-progress. The breathless crowd saw miniature rebels, Strom Troopers and Walkers battling on the rug, as well as a life-sized Storm Trooper (presumably the opponent in a duel), and the famous circular Holo Chess board from the classic Star Wars movie, replete with animated pieces. The app will presumably support other AR as well, which would make the Disney/Lenovo Star Wars headset a much much bigger play.
The most dramatic change AR enables is making the camera the primary interface. Instead of looking down at your handset, as we do now, you will be looking up and out your camera, which will combine physical reality with digital images. Your arm will get tired from holding your phone up like that. Really tired. Some people won’t do it, but the benefits are going to be so great that many will. So what’s the solution? A wearable smart phone. ODG is going to market in China this fall with a wearable Android computer, the unsexily named R8. Google, Apple, Facebook and Snapchat all have AR headsets in the works. Google's standalone Daydream VR headsets from Lenovo and HTC are in the $500 price range and are expected in time for the Holiday season. Disney isn't revealing a release date, or the final price (or the price of the peripheral Light Saber) but the teaser video strongly suggests Christmas, with Best Buy as the featured retail partner. Analysts suggest it will be in the $200 range.
In game shot of Star Wars Holo Chess, one of the premier experiences being developed for their new... [+] Lenovo AR headset. Disney
The demo shown by Goslin at D23 suggests the images seen through the Disney/Lenovo AR headset are compelling, but perhaps not yet up to Star Wars' standards.
Screen capture of prototype Star Wars AR game for Disney's Lucasfilm/Lenovo AR headset. Twitch
"If any IP can sell high-tech experiences at a premium price, Star Wars would be the one to do it," says Stephanie Llamas, VR of AR and VR Research at Superdata.
Dual use standalone VR/AR headsets like the ones being made Daydream by Lenovo and HTC use an untethered (not attached to a computer or smartphone) occluded headset that uses a powerful chip that supports built in tracking and localization and has multiple inside out and depth sensing cameras. The Star Wars AR headset is decidedly simpler.
Magic Leap, the secretive billion dollar start up led by entrepreneur and scientist Rony Abovitz, recently announced a breakthrough that will bring its stand alone smart glasses to consumers in 2018. Magic Leap is backed by Google, Disney, Warner, China's Alibaba.
The newly announced Mira Prism can now be preordered. It is remarkably similar to the headset Lenovo... [+] is making for Disney, and suggests where Facebook and Snapchat may be going with their own designs. Mira
Excitement about an ultra cheap Facebook AR headset was stoked last week when Bloomberg revealed the project code name, "Pacific". Facebook's last public statement about an AR headset was in late 2016, when the company said an announcement was not imminent. Facebook admits they are developing an AR headset, possibly for 2018, but otherwise nothing is known publicly. Oculus Content VP Jason Rubin suggested in an interview on July 7th that VR is ready for prime time, while AR is "starting from scratch five years behind VR, where now the now is great." He says Oculus is focused solely on the Rift, and said the Rift's recent price cut was about gaining market share, and nothing else. "Oculus is unaware and unconcerned about competition from AR inside or outside the company. It's not going to happen anytime soon - if it happens at all," Rubin told me. Snapchat is also working on AR glasses, probably an expansion of its successful Specs, which are currently only capable of shooting short video clips.
Life could be greatly augmented by the Mira Prism. They could also be a footnote in the most epic... [+] business story of the decade. Here's the thing: no one knows how this story is going to end. Mira
"Facebook is not a company for the niche consumer — their selling point is how accessible their services are to anyone, anywhere. So finding something with the potential for mass penetration is a priority, especially with Rift’s bumpy past. However, an untethered, self-contained device for $200 seems like either a loss-leader or a highly simplified VR experience." Llamas told me in an email Monday.
The Prism demo was impressive considering its unfinished state. The company just started taking... [+] pre-orders online. Charlie Fink
By the end of Q4 2017, it will be raining AR headsets. More are joining the fray. Yesterday, a new startup, Mira, introduced its Prism headset, which is remarkably similar to the Lenovo/Disney headset. Slide your smartphone into the slot on the head mounted display, fire up the Prism app, and play 3D chess and other games. The headset is light, and its visor is removable, attached by a magnet, making the Prism quite portable, which any mobile peripheral needs to be. Some of the demo games feature a multiplayer mode. The $99 Prism also includes a hand controller similar to Google Daydream's. It feels like a simple version of the Hololens, but with a wider field of view. Mira was founded by Ben Taft, Matt Stern, and Montana Reed who met in the inaugural class of the University of Southern California’s Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology, and the Business of Innovation. The three have taken leave while building the company with 1.5 M of seed funding from influential players that include Sequoia Capital, Troy Capital Partners, S-Cubed Capital, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, will.i.am, and Jaunt VR founder Jens Christensen. Mira will need these powerful friends to help arrange the kind of partnerships that will enable it to go head to head with the biggest tech companies in the world. The Mira Prism can be pre-ordered here.
Similar to Mira is Zapbox, which wants to be the Google cardboard of AR, and is now shipping its much-anticipated cardboard AR headset, which is only $50. Zapbox told me at AWE that they see their AR product as a platform, and developers are working on compatible apps. The company says it offers "Magic Leap for super cheap".
At $50, Zappar makes "Magic Leap magic cheap". Zapbox
These are the kinds of developments that make disruptive VR and AR technology one of the great business stories of this century. The stakes are hundreds of billions of dollars over the next ten years. The players are the biggest tech companies in the world: Apple (the world's most valuable company), Microsoft, Google, and Facebook. The characters are larger than life. Not just Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, and other industry leaders, but venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, producers, students, opportunists, and hustlers of every kind. There are shifting alliances, known unknowns, like Magic Leap, and unknown unknowns yet to be revealed.
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9bc59f2965a9fa78808f0686dd17bc47 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2017/08/24/meet-the-d-w-griffith-of-virtual-reality/ | Meet The D.W. Griffith Of Virtual Reality | Meet The D.W. Griffith Of Virtual Reality
"Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see." - Arthur Schopenhauer
Like all geniuses, the CEO & founder of Penrose VR animation studio, Producer and Director Eugene Chung, says he stands on the shoulders of giants like legendary filmmakers Irving Thalberg, Walt Disney, Alfred Hitchcock, and Hayao Miyazaki. I was blown away by his sixteen-minute narrative VR masterpiece Arden's Wake at the Tribeca Film Festival's Immersive Arcade in April so I jumped at the chance to meet Chung at Penrose's San Francisco office, and to experience Arden's Wake and its critically acclaimed predecessor, Allumette, again.
Arden's Wake was even better the second time I saw it. It's a completely new, original approach to immersive storytelling that makes us think differently about how third person narratives will work in this new medium. I saw something revolutionary like this once before, in this very same city, in 1986, when Pixar's "Luxo, Jr." was first screened. It re-defined animation. We had never before seen anyting like it. Twenty years later Disney acquired Pixar for 7.4 Billion dollars.
Eugene Chung, Founder & CEO of Penrose Studios, and Producer & Director of its "Allumette" and... [+] "Arden's Wake" narrative VR experiences. Penrose Studios
If you're making VR experiences, or are a theater director, film maker or interactive media producer interested in immersive storytelling, you MUST experience Allumette and the upcoming Arden's Wake for yourself to see just how Penrose is innovating in this new medium and finding solutions that have eluded others who are pandering to a family audience with the techniques of 360 videos.
It feels like you are peering into a dollhouse. Penrose Studios
Arden's Wake takes us inside a Waterworld-like post apocalyptic world, where a teenage girl lives in a Nemo-like lighthouse built atop a decaying underwater skyscraper. When her inventor father is lost while diving, she takes his underwater vehicle into the ruins to find him. The 3D animation is simply amazing. We follow the tiny characters and their narrative as if we are giants looking into a dollhouse.
Penrose Studios posters try to convey the epic scale of their VR experiences. Penrose Studios
Allumette was the talk of the Tribeca Film Festival in 2016. Wired Magazine declared "The stunning Allumette is the first VR Film masterpiece!" This fifteen minute narrative VR experience is loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, "The Little Match Girl", but set in a a Venitian floating world. Overall it has the feel of a popup children's book, which makes it all the more shocking when Chung soulfully and unflinchingly executes Andresen's tragic ending. In Allumette we first see the VR storytelling techniques Chung and his team poineered to give the viewer control over scale, perspective and presence, replacing the traditional cinematic language of intercutting and parallel action invented by D.W. Griffith in 1908.
Critics raved about Penrose Studio's VR featurette "Allumette". Penrose Studios
As in the early days of film, or motion pictures, or movies, we are so early in the development of this medium we don't have words to describe it, even to other people inside the industry. Arden's Wake is not a film. It's cinematic, but not live action. It's a story. A narrative. It has main characters, though they are stylized like the stop motion maquettes featured in the movies Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach. Certainly, like all VR, we experience it, though experience doesn't quite capture it, either. Escape Rooms are experiences, too. "Sleep No More", the smash hit New York show now entering its sixth blockbuster year, is called immersive theater, which Chung says strongly influenced him, along with the operas in which his father performed. He says he is also inspired by video and strategy games, whose miniature style suggested the god-like perspective of his narrative VR experiences.
The epic success of "Sleep No More" in New York represents a tipping point for Immersive... [+] Entertainment. Courtesy of The McKittrick Hotel
Chung's eclectic background uniquely suits him to this moment in time. He grew up in suburban Washington, DC. His mother was a CPA and his father a professional opera singer. Chung told me "the duality of art and commerce is in my DNA". One thing was always clear: he liked to make things on computers, and with video. Chung wanted to tell stories. He was valedictorian of his class and went to Cal Berkeley, a tech hot bed, all the while nursing film projects on the side. After a four year stint it in investment banking, Chung attended Harvard Business School, where he took advantage of Harvard's media center across the river. Chung was angling for a career in movies, not finance. He moved back to California to work at Pixar. Later he landed a gig as head of Oculus' early, pre-Facebook acquisition, content efforts, which is where he acquired his passion for VR. "The definition of entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School is the pursuit of opportunity beyond resources controlled. And in regard to this, I think that creating an independent film is almost like creating a startup - you have to find resources, recruit a team and motivate people with a vision," Chung said.
An encounter in the deep while searching for father in "Arden's Wake" by Penrose Studios. Penrose Studios
The idea for Arden's Wake started with Chung's original idea: "a boy in a fishing village builds a submarine to look for his lost parents. He shows dedication in the face of ridicule". The team refined the story, changing the protagonists and setting. "We want to convey the real human experience," he said. "We want to tell stories in the most honest way we can. The audience can smell inauthenticity." Before the Penrose team could tell the story in VR, the characters, model sheets, storyboards and settings were painstakingly designed, just as they would be in traditional animation. "It turns out story boards are a bad way to illustrate a story in VR. They lead artists in the wrong direction," Chung told me.
Penrose created a tool artists can use to collaborate inside VR called Maestro. Penrose Studios
"For designers and animators to collaborate to build a 3D VR world and tell a story within it, they need to be inside it, not looking at a 2D storyboard sketch", said Chung. To solve this thorny problem, Penrose built a collaborative, social space in VR (accessible anywhere in the world) called "Maestro". "This allows us to collaborate inside a fully virtual space. With our Maestro platform, we dive into VR every day where we can have direct social interactions to create and review our work with unprecedented perspective."
Chung and his team also had to solve what he calls "the identity issue". Inside a VR experience, the audience has to know who they are in the VR world, what to do there and how to relate to the characters. "Scale is the solution. It makes tech more intimate and allows you to build a relationship with the characters, which are designed to be very fragile looking while at the same time being capable of conveying their humanity," Chung explained.
"Allumette" (2016) directed by Eugene Chung for his Penrose Studios, presages the style and themes... [+] of loss and humanity of his next VR narrative experience, "Arden's Wake" (2017). Penrose Studios
Chung says his team is excited by the opportunities presented by Augmented Reality (AR). "While things from VR don't translate directly to AR, there is a lot that we can learn from one medium that guides us on what we do in the other. VR has been a great learning ground for AR." AR is slowly coming to new Android phones, and is a highly anticipated new feature of the iPhone 8, which will be introduced later in the fall. Chung says it's possible, even probable, that Penrose will produce content for AR in the future as it grows and improves. "It's easy to come back to the worlds we create and reuse them for other stories." The settings and characters Penrose creates are now assets that can be redeployed as needed.
For Chung and Penrose, 2018 will bring the next installment of Arden's Wake, which ends with a cliff hanger as our heroine is swallowed by a sea monster the size of a skyscraper. "No one knows the ideal length of the VR experiences of the future," the director said. "What we're doing is not glamorous. It's just the hard work needed to move the medium forward."
Allumette is available on Playstation VR, Oculus Rift, Steam VR, and Viveport. A release date and platforms for Arden's Wake have not yet been announced.
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ba0e01719ac81aefa73925171d711fea | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2017/11/08/is-it-possible-to-benefit-society-with-virtual-reality/ | Is It Possible To Benefit Society With Virtual Reality? | Is It Possible To Benefit Society With Virtual Reality?
Beyond gaming, beyond manufacturing, beyond the obvious commercial aspects that virtual and augmented reality will bring to our economy, will there be any positive benefits to individuals and disparate groups as we embrace this new generation of technology?
A day long summit on November 17th at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health in Washington, DC will explore this question in further detail. Slated as the first conference dedicated to the positive social impacts of VR/AR, the VR for Good Summit is bringing together developers and practitioners in healthcare, education, accessibility and other social causes that are using VR/AR in meaningful ways.
“When the folks who understand the problems engage with the folks who understand what leading technology can do, innovation happens. That's what VR for Good is all about.” Said Lex McCusker, Director of Student Entrepreneurship Programs at George Washington University. Speakers from the largest VR headset manufacturers, Oculus and HTC, will provide their views and share how their companies are supporting the "VR for Good" movement, known in other circles as "VR for Impact."
Lex McCusker Bob Fine
“The potential for VR to help us understand and transform ourselves and the world around us is limitless. It is crucial that the VR industry comes together in these formative years to fully leverage this potential for social good,” said Ylva Hansdotter, Head of VR for Impact, HTC Vive. Her peer at Oculus, Paula Cueno, who leads Oculus’s efforts in VR for Good further added, “I have personally been called to community and to philanthropy through my experiences in VR. If we move one person at a time to action, gratitude and inspiration, we are moving in the right direction.”
With the millennial generation (and younger) turning to digital media for creating social change, getting them interested in the potential of VR is an important step. "Virtual and augmented reality are playing a crucial role in this evolution by inspiring young people to use and experiment with innovative technology, which can prompt them to consider careers in IT," said Eric Larson, Senior Director of IT Futures Labs.
But it’s not only younger people in our society being affected through the use of VR in positive ways. Amanda Cavaleri, Founder of Connect The Ages, received a fellowship funded by AARP to explore VR and AR’s positive impact on the aging. She will present her work and findings to date at the summit.
Amanda Cavaleri Bob Fine
Piotr Łój, Founder of the Virtual Dream Project, is traveling from Poland to share how he’s using virtual reality to aid the relief of young oncology patients. “VR is one of the most crucial issues of social development in our time as it touches every crisis of the modern world. Escapism, alter-ego, depression, anti-social behavior, porn addiction, gaming addiction, suicide and suicide prevention, a lack of empathy for others and the dehumanization of society. In all of these cases VR has great impact potential.”
Piotr Łój Bob Fine
Cathe Neukem, Executive Director of the International Rescue Committee will present a case study with their collaborate partner Gordon Meyer, Head of Marketing at YouVisit titled: “Four Walls: Using Virtual Reality to Drive Social Action”. Other companies and organizations presenting include: Lucasfilm, Paracosma, SunnysideVR, Digital History Studios, Harvard University, Baltu Studios, Phoenix VR for Good, Things Entertainment, Navteca, StoryUp, Ohio University and the University of Maryland.
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8ef33b8d906a674fb944e5bf27360343 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2018/01/15/the-ces-decompress/ | The CES Decompress | The CES Decompress
Come home. Sleep. Sort through 100 business cards. Try to recall what just happened.
Even NASA was there. Charlie Fink
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) the largest trade show in the world, closed the books on 2018 on Friday, January 12th. 170,000 attendees swarmed Vegas for four days of floor showcases, panels, parties, and traffic gridlock. CES is spread all over the city. Each venue is a mile or two from the main show floors, which during CES means a forty minute cab ride. Even when you get to the hotel or the convention center, you can still walk another twenty or thirty minutes to reach your destination. Usually, the madness of the crowds reaches its peak on the third day. This year it seemed like the crush started when the doors opened on Tuesday, January 9th.
This was the crush on day one, hour one of CES. Charlie Fink
I was instantly reminded of my CES peeves: people who stop in pedestrian traffic lanes to check their cell phone; booth attendants with bad breath (they have to get close because of the relentless din); people with black or glossy cards you can't write on; and, finally, at the risk of sounding like a deservedly unpopular American politician, booth attendants who don't speak English, including those in the booth of a large Chinese company with an impressive AI driven handheld translator.
It would be impossible to cover 2.75 million net square feet of exhibit space spread across Las Vegas – the largest show floor in CES’ 51-year history. The show's official venues spread from Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) to the Westgate next door, the Renaissance across the street, the Sands Expo Center, The Venetian, The Palazzo, Wynn, Encore, ARIA, Cosmopolitan, and Vdara. "Large and small companies from around the globe came to Las Vegas this week to use CES 2018 to launch technologies that will change our world,” said Gary Shapiro, president and CEO, Consumer Technology Association (CTA).
Your erstwhile reporter on the last day in the world's sweetest massage chair. They finally chased... [+] me out by trying to sell it to me for $4,999. Show special. Charlie Fink
I couldn't come close to spending time with all the VR and AR products, ideas and people that were at CES, let alone the vast array of objects, machines and devices which are now legitimate Consumer Electronics. One thing I'm not going to talk about: the things my 7,000 (not a typo) colleagues in the media have already written about such as the Intel keynote, the 100 drones light show, a brief power outage in the central hall, drift racing BMWs, or the Samsung VR auditoriums.
I'll get my AR/VR highlights, but first I want to talk about the general vibe of the show. For me, 2018 will be remembered as the Google year. They were everywhere. And everyone in every hall was talking about digital assistants, AI, Computer Vision, Machine Learning and how everyone's everything integrates with Home or Alexa.
LAS VEGAS, NV - JANUARY 07: A Las Vegas Monorail car with a Google ad is seen running prior to the... [+] CES 2018 on January 7, 2018 in Las Vegas, Nevada. CES, the world's largest annual consumer technology trade show, runs from January 9-12 and features about 3,900 exhibitors showing off their latest products and services to more than 170,000 attendees. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Google in lights at CES. Charlie Fink
Next to LVCC. At CES 2018, Google was omnipresent. Charlie Fink
Google was everywhere at CES2018. Hey Google. Stop. Charlie Fink
Google thinks people want to do this. Charlie FInk
Other big themes:
Cars are consumer electronics, too, and consumer electronics for cars are using the most advanced AR available right now. No headset required.
IoT, Wearables & Neurables. Something is happening with performance sports monitoring, wearables and brainwave sensors. I made up the word Nuerable. It's a wearable for your brain.
LAS VEGAS, NV - JANUARY 11: The Yamaha Fazer R combustible engine, industrial-use unmanned... [+] helicopter is displayed at the Yamaha booth during CES 2018 at the Las Vegas Convention Center on January 11, 2018 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The USD 100,000 autonomous drone is primarily used for high-end agricultural purposes. It features a 32-liter capacity tank that allows it to spray about four hectares without reloading chemicals or refueling. CES, the world's largest annual consumer technology trade show, runs through January 12 and features about 3,900 exhibitors showing off their latest products and services to more than 170,000 attendees. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
Drones, not AR and VR, dominated the vast South Halls 1 & 2 of the LVCC. I looked it up and found out why: 2.4 M personal drones were sold in 2016, generating $4.5 billion, according to research firm Gartner. Industrial and Military sales account for another $4 B.
What's the deal with products to help you sleep? There must be a lot of people who need help with this, because there are a lot of companies, like Phillips, making things to help us sleep.
Everywhere you go at CES, someone going to make you sleep better. This solution, which I was told... [+] was "relaxing" actually plays a spa-like audio sales pitch. Charlie Fink
A lot of the action was actually not as CES but in hotel suites and private conference rooms at both the show and other hotels around town, like Ceasar's and The Hard Rock. The epic difficulty getting around the city during the show made it hard to see everyone and everything I wanted. However, I was fortunate that VR Voice asked me to lead their broadcast from the floor of the show for four hours a day from the Vuze Camera booth in the VR/AR area of the South Hall. The world came to us. Vuze makes an $800 3D 360 4K (ultra high definition) camera which is necessary to create 3D environments for VR. We hosted twenty-seven leaders in the category, including Viveport President Rikard Steiber, Tony Parisi, Global Head of VR/AR for Unity, and Ted Schilowitz, Futurist, Paramount Pictures. All the interviews are archived on Crowdcast.io.
Tony Parisi, Global Head of VR/AR for Unity, being interviewed by author Charlie Fink in the VR... [+] Voice/Vuze Camera broadcast booth on the CES Las Vegas show floor. Michael Eichenseer
CES 2018 Women of VR panel, VR Voice Broadcast from the Vuze Camera Booth on the floor of LVCC.... [+] Pictured from left, Sarah Hill, CEO Chief Storyteller at Story-up, Suzanne Lagerweij, CEO of Field of Views, Joanna Popper, EVP of Media and Marketing at Singularity University, Alina Mikhaleva, Co-founder at SPHERICA VR studio, Laura Mingail, Director, Marketing & Business Development at Entertainment One, and Rutha Aronson, VP Product and Marketing at Humaneyes Technologies Bob Fine
"There was a significant lack of women speakers at CES, even when top female leaders in VR and technology, in general, were in attendance at the event", said Laura Mingail, from Entertainment One in Toronto. "Suzanne Lagerweij (of Vuze Camera) thought we should be heard, so we quickly gathered colleagues considered the leading women in VR to share insights on the VR Voice Crowdcast." Panelists shared insights into topics ranging from content, storytelling and monetization.
Interviewing Justin Barad of Osso VR, which creates realistic simulations for orthopaedists. Michael Eichenseer
With Jeremy Kenisky of Merge VR and their new "Blaster". Michael Eichenseer
Interviewing Vuze Camera CEO Shahar Bin-Nun Michael Eichenseer
HTC Vive made the most noise in VR by introducing the Vive Pro, which addresses the most asked for improvements in high-end home VR: better optics (no screen door!), and wireless. The upgraded headset also features dual noise-canceling mics, better 3D audio. The 2880 x 1660 resolution optical view is 78% better than today's Vive. While the new Vive Pro is backward compatible with their lighthouses and controllers, it also supports 10 x 10 room tracking (presently users are limited to 6 x 6 feet of free roam. The Pro will be released this summer, but as yet no price has been announced. It won't be cheap. A company executive told me the prosumers and enterprise users this product targets aren't price sensitive. I would not be surprised if it was as much as than $1,500.
With Viveport President Rickard Steiber, VR Voice in the Vuze Camera Booth at CES. Michael Eichenseer
I was fortunate enough to snag an interview with Viveport President Rikard Steiber. Viveport has recently redesigned to create what Steiber describes as "a VR-first experience that allows users to experience 3D content themselves while browsing, rather than watching a 2D video of someone else's experience." Subscriptions continue to exceed expectations, and the number of titles available to subscribers now exceeds 200.
Someone at Vive was giving select press and VIPs a demo of the ultralight $500 wireless standalone VR device, the Vive Focus, which is being introduced in China next month. I found the quality remarkably good and being untethered intoxicating. No U.S. date has been set, nor do we know if it will use Viveport, Daydream or Steam for its content. Here in the US, deep-pocketed Oculus is set to offer its untethered standalone, the Go. The Go is similar to the Gear VR but no smartphone is required. The Vive Focus, which is more than twice as expensive, felt much more like high-end VR we're used to seeing on gaming PCs with new graphics cards.
The Vuzix Blade is a consumer version of its current industrial smart glasses. These extremely lightweight (3 oz) glasses from Vuzix are operated by a combination of wing swipes, gestures and voice commands (integrates Alexa). A very tiny 8MB high-resolution display is projected on a small portion of one of your lenses. Because of the short focal distance, users can choose to focus on the tiny screen, making it seem much bigger, or continue to focus on the physical world beyond the lenses. There are terrific business and consumer applications for the blade. Vuzix is taking deposits for developer kits on its website and hopes to ship a consumer version by the end of the year. The Vuzix Blade was awarded four CES Innovation awards in the areas of Fitness, Sports, and Biotech; Wireless Handset Accessories; Portable Media Players and Accessories as well as Computer Accessories.
With Paul Travers, CEO of Vuzix, wearing their upcoming "Blades". Charlie Fink
Kopin Solos. Kopin, until recently, was a little-known provider of HUD and other AR optics and components for military devices. The company is now moving into the consumer market with an AR device of its own, Solos, a smart cycling heads-up display which works a lot like the Vuzix Blade, but is half the price. Solos feature voice control enhanced audio and also throws a high definition window into the corner of the glasses' lenses.
Kopin Solos Bike Riding Glasses will retail for $499. Charlie Fink
Lenovo's AR & VR offerings show how serious the company is about being a player in this category. They are are targeting three very specific and distinct markets with their Star Wars AR game headset, the Mirage Solo for Daydream (coming this summer) and their fully occluded Windows MR headset.
Lenovo's three plays in AR & VR. From left, Disney Last Jedi Star Wars HMD and lightsaber, Lenovo... [+] Explorer for Windows MR, and their soon to be released Mirage Solo for Google Daydream. Charlie Fink
The $99 Mira Prism continues to intrigue as it tantalizes us with a simple solution to throwing data into our field of view: Pepper's Ghost. Simply, your phone mounts on the top of the Prism. Its stereoscopic images are projected onto the lenses. Boom. Welcome to AR. We're told the Prism will be available later this year.
The fiendishly simple and effective Mira Prism always puts a smile on my face. Charlie Fink
Holobeam Me Up, Scotty! Microsoft gave me a private demonstration of volumetric telepresence with HoloLens from a German company, Valorem, which I wrote about in Forbes just eight weeks ago, as part of a story about the coming disruption of telecommunications. The technology makes science fiction science fact, but it is far from worked out. As you can see from the shot through the lens of the HoloLens, the participants in the conference look like victims of a Star Trek transporter accident.
Holoportation, in which real space is occupied by remote participants, may transform communications... [+] are we know it. Charlie Fink
Last, but hardly least, was Kino-mo, shows off its amazing Hypervsn retail promotion product, which uses spinning LEDs to project animated, floating, holographic 3D images into space.
Someday soon we really could be living in a Blade Runner world where commercial strips will be filled with floating Holographic billboards. 2D video can't do it justice. You have to see it in person. With your naked eyes. That's the thing about CES. As much as you hate it, you have to see for yourself.
Oh! And to celebrate the release of my new book, Charlie Fink's Metaverse, An AR Enabled Guide to VR & AR, I signed and gave away over 100 copies, courtesy of Vuze Camera.
Gratitude to my colleague, editor and publisher, Bob Fine of VR Voice, our contributors, and our... [+] incredible host, Vuze 3-D HD Camera, Gregory Panos
You don't need to buy the book to get a taste of the AR inside: (1) download & open the app (2) Go to Finkmetaverse.com and point your camera at the book cover art (3) be amazed by AR art that literally pops up out of the page.
Point your camera at the cover logo and see the book come to life. Charlie Fink
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809fb9e82d68d170354dc59e2a7ab00b | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2018/02/15/five-rules-for-doing-ar-right/ | Five Rules For Doing AR Right | Five Rules For Doing AR Right
Kopin Corporation (NASDAQ:KOPN), launched as a spinoff of MIT in 1985, kicked off its efforts to deliver wearable technologies due to a special request from the military to improve situational awareness for soldiers. Since then, Kopin has become the leading supplier for AR HMDs for military applications, including those used in the F35 Joint Strike Fighter, for which Kopin provides microdisplays. Their clients include not only defense contractors (Rockwell Collins, Elbit, Thales and DRS), enterprise (Vuzix, Google, Fujitsu, Lenovo New Vision, and RealWear) and consumer (Intel/Recon, Garmin, and more). This spring, Kopin will release its first consumer product, SOLOS, stylish sports glasses that will Bluetooth anything on your phone to a light, inexpensive, high-resolution microdisplay. While Snap Spec did not catch on, they only took short videos for use on Snapchat.
One of Kopin's CEO John Fan's "Five Rules for Doing AR right" is to present the consumer with a... [+] light, fashionable product that enhances an activity they are already doing. Kopin
SOLOS are something else altogether. And they're $499. And here's why: they may make what we're already doing much better. While bikers and runners can now access performance data hands-free, it can also make other activities like consuming video on the go much better. It could be video consumption will be more popular than sports performance
Dr. John C.C. Fan, founder and CEO of Kopin, shared his views on making great AR products with the audience at AR in Action (ARiA) at MIT on January 16th. To see a video of his insightful and inspiring fifteen-minute talk, "Five Rules For Making AR Great," click here.
Kopin Founder and CEO John Fan has focused the company on wearable computing. Dave Rezendes
Fan's Rules are designed to help innovators in the AR industry overcome challenges to achieve mainstream adoption of AR. These challenges include user resistance to wearables, overly complex learning curve and lack of clearly defined benefits. "Kopin has been creating augmented reality technology since long before the term even existed, and providing that technology to military, enterprise, and consumer markets. We've learned many lessons over the past few decades," explained Fan.
"In the beginning, millions of years ago, man stood upright, on two feet," Fan begins. "This created the modern man. Modern man can see, hear, communicate, and use his hands. We can manipulate our physical world. Our head is up, and we can see the horizon. And what has that led to? The smartphone man. He no longer understands the physical world. We have earbuds, but we cannot hear the voice outside. We look down on the screen, so all of a sudden we’re immersed in this digital world, or the virtual world, but we've lost the physical world." Augmented reality gives man the world back by combining the physical with the digital.
John Fan's Rule 1, from his Slides at AR in Action (ARiA) at MIT. Kopin
1) HUMANS FIRST. Humans do not generally want to wear devices on their heads. If users are uncomfortable, they will reject innovation. Prioritize human ergonomics first, technology second.
"I wear glasses. Why?" Fan asked rhetorically. "To correct my vision. I wear it them all the time, so they have to be good-looking, comfortable, and aesthetically good. Correcting my vision is not enough. The military wears helmets to save lives. Or their own life. They don’t wear them because they want to, they wear them for a mission."
"The first rule for a technologist is the human comes first," Fan repeats for emphasis. "Humans by nature do not want to wear things on their head. So, therefore, the benefits have to be real, and substantial to encourage them to keep it on."
2) PHYSICAL WORLD FIRST. Too much virtual content can easily overwhelm the brain. Deliver AR overlays in small, controlled bursts.
"You cannot provide too much data to them," Fan says. "The brain cannot absorb it, and it will be confused. Many technologies can deliver graphics. So we’ll put it up, because we can do it. No, no, you’re talking about humans. Don’t confuse them. Don’t don't jam everything in there." Only what they need for that particular mission.
3) MAINTAIN SITUATIONAL AWARENESS. When people become claustrophobic they react predictably. The AR experience must preserve contact to the real world by not obstructing five senses.
Put another way, reality, physical reality, is the defining condition of augmented reality.
4) VOICE IS THE NEW TOUCH. Keyboards and touch screens require compromise. In AR, as in the real world, audio is the most effective and proven channel for command/control as well as transmitting and receiving information.
"The fourth rule is that we have to be able to interact with the virtual world the same way as we do with the physical world. Remember, AR glass really combines the two worlds together. In the two worlds together, in the physical world, the views, vision, and sound are the most important. There are three other senses, but mostly vision and sound. So what happens in the virtual world, we want to do the same thing. The display screen, and the sound," said Fan.
5) BALANCE DESIGN WITH BENEFITS. Do not overdesign by adding unnecessary features but design for clear, specific benefits to motivate adoption of AR.
"The Final Rule," concludes Dr. Fan, "is that we must balance the design, make it work, and give it flair. People have to accept that. People willing to put it on, people have to put it on for a long time, for the benefits. If they’re not doing that, the design will be a failure. And if you don’t have benefits, the system will be a failure. The benefit has to overwhelm the idea that people don’t want to wear anything on top."
If Fan's five rules hold true, we might see SOLOS on the un-sporty. And, if we do, it will confirm Fan's thesis that man's rise back to his original upright position is inevitable.
To read more about John Fan and Kopin see yesterday's column, Kopin Is First To Market Stylish AR Glasses.
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94ac1ab627e61a6424c634877236bcf8 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2018/04/20/vr-at-tribeca-18-the-awesome-list/ | VR At Tribeca 18: The Awesome List | VR At Tribeca 18: The Awesome List
Tribeca Immersive Programmer Loren Hammonds scours the globe for a year to bring his festival the best VR experiences the medium has to offer. It’s a feast too rich and enormous for one sitting, or even two. It’s a privilege and pleasure to give yourself over to it. They’ve done all the work. It’s as close to plug-and-play as VR could possibly be. No setting up your VR rig. No firmware updates. No expired certificates to service. No downloading enormous files for hours. Visitors just drop into the most compelling VR experiences on the planet. The Tribeca Immersive Arcade is open daily through April 28.
NEW YORK, NY - APRIL 19: Actor Maria Mc Clurg and director Mathias Chelebourg onset during the... [+] Immersive VR Experience of 'Jack Part One' At The TriBeCa Film Festival at Spring Studios on April 19, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Santiago Felipe/WireImage)
It is impossible to experience everything Tribeca Immersive has to offer in one visit. And it’s popular. And most experiences can only accommodate one person at a time. If you’re not attending the press event (and actually even if you are) bring your patience, expect to wait and accept that to see all 35 experiences you’ll have to make several trips to the 5th Floor of the Festival Hub at 50 Varick Street. It took me over 5 hours to see half of the Festival’s selections. That means it would take a normal attendee at least 10. To see half.
"Tide's Fall" is Part Two of Penrose Studio's extraordinary "Arden's Wake". Director Eugene TK... [+] Chung, Technical Director Jimmy Malvrikes. Penrose Studios
There were five experiences I’m going to give my “most awesome” accolade to. Three of them, “Hero”, “Jack, Part One” and “My Africa” use “free roam” VR, in which a user dons a headset and an HP backpack PC and is literally able to walk around inside the movie, with full freedom and agency. My only complaint with these is that they are over way too quickly. The other two winners are from established studios, Penrose and Atlas V, who both presented compelling, cinematic VR masterpieces, “Arden’s Wake, Tides Fall” and “Battlescar”. These are not to be missed. Get there early and rush to get your name on the list. Only eight people per hour can experience "My Africa". In the case of the 30 minute “Arden’s Wake, Tide’s Fall” only two people per hour can experience it.
What's it like to live in Northern Kenya, among wild animals and deadly predators, like poachers. Conservation International
Also on my list, in a category I’m going to call “Also Awesome”, are Eliza McNitt’s companion to “Spheres”, “Pale Blue Dot”, “Objects in Mirror AR Closer Than They Appear”, “Lambchild Superstar”, “The Dinner Party”, “Campfire Creepers: Midnight March”, and Owlchemy’s ridiculously enjoyable “Vacation Simulator”, a follow up to their smash hit, “Job Simulator”, one of VR’s best selling titles.
Graham Sack, co-creator of "Objects In Mirror AR Closer Than They Appear" with Creative Director... [+] Ricardo Laganzaro. Charlie Fink
I was sorry to miss Laurie Anderson’s “Chalkroom”. Many were talking about it. “Where Thoughts Go”, by Lucas Rizzotto, is set in a world where all human thoughts exist as sleeping creatures. I was bumped from “Queerkins” by a film crew (choosing TV over Forbes, imagine that!). I did a number of other experiences I don’t have space or time to write up. Some weren’t my thing, some kind of failed artistically, but at Tribeca even the misses are hits. You really can’t go wrong. Taken as a whole, it’s just that damn good. For this reason, I’m going to give the Festival itself the “Ultimate Awesome”, because VR doesn't get any better than this.
“Jack, Part One” begins with a conversation with mom, a delightfully cartoony anthropomorphic frog, nagging you about daydreaming. You're Jack. From the fairy tale. You live in a treehouse, in a ramshackle forest community. And you're poor. Dirt poor. Using a technique called texture mapping, mom is played by an actress wearing a full body motion capture suit. You and mom are tracked in real time by 41 external cameras. Real objects like brooms, teakettles, railings and, ultimately, a giant bean, are brought into the drama, texture mapped to match the cartoon world you inhabit. Mom immediately shoves a broom in your hands puts you to work. Be careful you don’t bump into the lone light bulb hanging from the ceiling. It’s real. Soon enough, mom has to go out, but she leaves you with one simple job: sell a decrepit radio/cassette player from the 80s (remember those?) to a trader, a kookie bird played by the same actress, who soon arrives in a flying contraption. The trader asks to look at the radio and before you can say anything she casts off and tosses a giant bean to you in exchange. Mom is as pissed as you thought she'd be and tosses the bean out the window. Soon the floor begins to vibrate as the room is entwined by giant green vines and thrust into the air. As the roof is torn away you feel the wind and see the sky. When the shaking finally stops, you see an opening that leads to the cloud kingdom. When you walk through it, the experience is over. To be continued. I can’t wait to see the rest.
The project is a collaboration between Paris based Mathias Chelebourg and VR animation studio Baobab, who met at the Venice Film Festival last year, where Chelebourg presented a magical VR version of “Alice in Wonderland”, “Alice: The Virtual Reality Play”, which also combined live actors with free roam VR. With Baobab Studios, creators of the early VR hits “Invasion!” and “Asteroids!” behind him, Chelebourg cooked up “Jack”, which was rushed into production just three months ago.
The closest you will ever come to a barrel bomb without risking your life. Hero
“Hero”, the only free roam experience at Tribeca in competition, puts us in the center of a Syrian city to see what it feels like to be a victim of a barrel bomb. It’s a harrowing experience of unspeakable violence and suffering. Why would human beings do this to one another? What does the Syrian government possibly have to gain by slaughtering its people? When the bomb goes off you are covered with debris. You go to help a trapped girl, and feel the heat of a fire and the urgency of the father. Co-creator Navid Khonsari told me he thinks “we’ve become numb, desensitized. Through this experience, we are able to make the distant personal.” This is one of five experiences in juried competition for the Storyscapes prize. I saw three of the five in competition. With incomplete knowledge, I’m going to call this the winner.
“My Africa”, presented by Conservation International, is narrated by Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o, who takes us inside a Kenyan wildlife sanctuary where inhabitants live in harmony with nature while fending off lions, leopards, hyenas and the most deadly predator, poachers. The stereoscopic 360 cinematography, striking in its dimensionality, was captured on a relatively low priced Insta 360 pro, which the makers said was the only camera that could withstand the brutal heat and dust. One of the themes of this year’s festival is how good high resolution 360 cinematography has become, and how dimensional its subjects feel. You feel like you can reach out and touch the animals and in the companion free roam VR experience, you can. In it you help to treat the orphan baby elephant featured in the first part, during which you are a passive observer. The two pieces taken together present a world so complete in its presence you feel a deep, moving empathy for the people and their struggle to live in harmony with nature.
An image from Ardenís Wake: Tides Fall. Courtesy of Penrose Studios. Penrose Studios
Last year after viewing Penrose Studios’ “Arden’s Wake”, I called writer/director Eugene Chung “the D.W. Griffith of virtual reality” for his masterful use of scale and perspective, which are two of the tools a VR director has to replace the tradition (or slavery, as Alfonso Inarritu says) of the shot. Chung's follow up to “Arden’s Wake”, “Tides Fall”, takes us back to the “Waterworld” of the story, where humans cling to islands made of scrap atop flooded, decaying skyscrapers. Meena, beautifully voiced by Oscar-winning actress Alicia Vikander, searches in vain for her father, a drunk who’s gone missing during a scrap dive. As “Arden’s Wake” ended, Meena is swallowed by a sea monster. In the sequel, “Tides Fall”, we learn the sea monster, which Chung named “Derie”, is actually saving Meena, not eating her. Meena awakens inside the magical beast, which seems to be telepathically emitting an Emily Bronte poem while Meena relives and comes to terms with her tragic life and troubled father. I had a wide-ranging conversation with Chung and two of his key collaborators, technical director Jimmy Maidens and animation director Bruna Berford, after experiencing the thirty minute VR adventure-cum-melodrama. Never before and perhaps never again will I find myself talking about the 50s melodramas of Douglas Sirk, the endless tracking shots of Jean-Luc Goddard, and the stop-motion animation of Rankin-Bass in the context of a VR experience. Chung’s inspirations are as wildly diverse and unexpected as “Arden’s Wake: Tides Fall”.
The final VR experience atop my personal leaderboard is “Battlescar”, by French collaborators Nico Casavecchia and Martin Allais. Lupe, voiced by Rosario Dawson, is a runaway who gets swept into New York’s 70s punk scene by a wild girl she meets in juvenile detention. The graphics and animation, the presentation of the drama as a dimensional dollhouse, full of cutouts and poetry, is entirely original and could only be done in VR. The ten-minute experience ends when it’s really getting interesting. There was a lot of premature endings at this year’s Festival and frankly, I’m a little miffed by it. Not to pick on “Battlescar. Everyone is doing it. Until VR really hits an inflection point, and there’s a market for these incredible experiences, so no one can really afford to go all the way. Not even well-funded companies like Baobab and Penrose.
Eliza McNitt, director of "Spheres" and "Pale Blue Dot", a VR experience featured at the 2018... [+] Tribeca Film Festival. Charlie Fink
I was excited to see the follow up to Eliza McNitt’s critically acclaimed “Spheres”, which was picked up for distribution in a first of its kind seven-figure deal at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. “Pale Blue Dot” takes us through the solar system, past Saturn and Mars, volatile dead planets, to our vulnerable, verdant earth which we newcomers to the cosmos take for granted. McNitt's two VR experiences are destined to become a staple in education, ultimately replacing the planetarium.
“The Dinner Party”, by Angel Soto, also from RYOT, tells the story of Betty and Barney Hill, an interracial couple who were reportedly abducted by aliens. After they relive their experience which we view sitting at real dinner table set, the guests don’t stay for dinner. Soto’s masterful use of 360 video and continuous tracking shots make the story go down a lot easier than the Hills’.
Betty and Barney Hill, abducted by aliens. Tribeca Film Festival
“Campfire Creepers: Midnight March”, created by horror film director Alexandre Aja, takes us to Camp Coyote, where sadistic counselors take their charges on a midnight march that ends in the fangs of a werewolf. Aja brings Hollywood panache and exceptional production values to a classic campfire story so evocative you can smell the marshmallows. Aja described the technique to me as “real but not real”. The surroundings, the set, the forest, are all rendered with a game engine, which makes them seem dimensional, while the actors are captured volumetrically. The experience is free in the Oculus store starting tomorrow, Saturday, April 21st.
On the lighter side were three experiences I could have spent a lot more time with. “Lambchild Superstar: Making Music in the Menagerie of the Holy Cow” was created by Chris Milk and Damian Kulash, the front man for the music group OK, Go, which is famous for its wildly inventive music videos. In this wacky experience, the user is encouraged to manipulate anthropomorphic animals to create their own song. “Objects in Mirror AR Closer Than They Appear”, is a unique multimedia installation in which users wander among the kind of detritus one might find a hoarder’s basement. By pointing a mobile phone built into an antique stereoscope many of the objects come to life. This is because they are augmented reality triggers that activate other media. In this way, an old Jello ad in a magazine triggers an old tv ad for Jello. Every object tells a story. Finally, Owlchemey’s “Vacation Simulator” is just plain fun. Beach vacation with idiot robots? Count me in! It was the first thing I did. I wish it was the last because then I would have left with a goofy grin, instead of the feeling that someone was trying to kill me.
Yelena Ratchinsky, who runs the experiences group for Oculus Story Studios, put it another way: "Makers finally have the tools and the experience to make the tech a little bit invisible."
Reason #37 "Why I Love My Job". With Tribeca co-founders Jane Rosenthal (with whom I worked at... [+] Disney in the 80s) and living legend Robert DeNiro. Charlie Fink
A full list of Tribeca Immersive's offerings can be found here.
Tribeca Immersive takes place in the Tribeca Festival Hub located at Spring Studios – 50 Varick Street. Admission to presentations of the Virtual Arcade featuring Storyscapes is $40.00. Screening tickets for Cinema360 screenings are $15. Tickets can be purchased online at tribecafilm.com/immersive beginning March 27 or by telephone at (646) 502-5296 or toll-free at (866) 941-FEST (3378).
Packages and passes are now available for purchase on the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival App on iTunes and Google Play.
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6fdc486ba01483f0388610f04a33b6e1 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2018/05/16/why-augmented-world-expo-is-xrs-most-essential-conference/ | Why Augmented World Expo Is XR's Most Essential Conference | Why Augmented World Expo Is XR's Most Essential Conference
Augmented World Expo, better known as its acronym AWE, has grown to become one of the AR and VR world’s most important gatherings, with over 6,000 attendees expected. The conference, May 30 - June 1, 2018, takes place in the Santa Clara Convention Center in Silicon Valley. This year AWE is preparing 100,000 square feet of exhibition space for 250+ exhibiting companies and featuring 350+ speakers. Attendees will engage in hundreds of tech demos, art installations, educational sessions and product launches. Bridging the gap between technology and the human experience, AWE 2018 will feature around 1000 demos of headsets, software, and tools - plus more meetings than you can possibly tuck into a manic schedule. If you’ve got FOMO, there’s still time to buy tickets at a discount.
Trying out ODG Smartglasses at AWE 2017. Popular with enterprise users, the company has designs on... [+] the consumer. AWE
This year’s conference, the 9th annual, comes at a moment when AR is particularly hot. There’s been rapid innovation in mobile AR since ARKit was released in September. At its annual developers conference, Google I/O, the company announced Google Lens (computer vision) integration into the camera on dozens of Android phones, including Pixel phones. Google is integrating AR into maps to improve walking directions - a much-needed upgrade.
Improving the apps we use every day is how AR is going to insinuate itself into mobile computing to the point of invisibility. These advances make the conference especially relevant, and explains AWE’s growing popularity. Virtually everyone in the industry is converging on the Santa Clara Convention Center including executives from secretive startup Magic Leap, which was assiduously courting investors at last month’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, to companies from every corner of the world.
Conference organizer Tom Emrich of Super Ventures. AWE is run as a notprofit. AWE
Conference co-producer, Tom Emrich told me in an interview yesterday he sees six main trends emerging at AWE. “The AR Cloud, Location Based VR, Enterprise uses of AR and VR, Blockchain & XR (OTOY is working on a disruptive approach to rendering), and mobile AR with a focus on creator and developer tools.
Nathan Martz of Google will deliver a keynote about AR with Google, and Google is participating in several other sessions, “Intro to Web AR” and “Designing AR Experiences”. Kyle Roche, GM of Amazon Sumerian, an in-browser toolkit that helps developers create and run virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and 3D applications quickly and easily without requiring any specialized programming or 3D graphics expertise, plans to demonstrate the Sumerian IDE (no license fees) and demonstrate a connected AR experience with the entire audience. We’ll also be hearing from Facebook, and Snapchat. Phil Keslin, CTO of Pokemon Go Creator Niantic is doing a keynote. Hopefully, we’ll be hearing about Niantic's upcoming blockbuster follow up to “Pokemon Go”, based on “Harry Potter”, due to be released with the next movie in November.
“2018 is a special year for XR because the big guys are now all in. It signals the transition from the web era to the spatial computing era. We’ll hear from the world’s top tech companies about how they enable XR and from fortune 1000 companies about their adoption of the tech to improve their businesses. But I expect the most interesting surprises to come from the crazy audacious upstarts” AWE Executive Producer and Co-Founder Ori Inbar said in an email.
Meta 2 on the Main Stage at AWE 2017. AWE
Several interactive demos will be featured on the main stage. Marco Tempest of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will combine mixed reality, storytelling, gestural sensing and swarm robotics to deliver a glimpse into the future of AR. Emrich’s keynote will feature a special face mapping presentation created by University of Tokyo researcher Yoshihiro Watanabe and one of the founding fathers of live face mapping, Nobumichi Asai, who is most known for using projection mapping to morph Lady Gaga into David Bowie at the 2016 Grammys.
While the consumer mobile market heats up, Enterprise is still where the big money is and it has a huge presence at the show. While it will be some time before people casually wear head-mounted displays around the house, businesses around the world are rushing to get the substantial financial benefits from the decidedly unsexy monocular microdisplay made by companies like Realwear, Kopin, and Toshiba. These devices have set the worker’s hands free while eliminating time shifting between PCs and hand work.
Kopin Founder and CEO John Fan has focused the company on wearable computing. Dave Rezendes
“Kopin participates in many conferences. But AWE is where we know that we’ll be in front of the most influential and most visionary AR, VR and wearable leaders,” said Dr. John C.C. Fan, CEO of Kopin Corporation, one of AWE’s Sponsors, in an email exchange. “We make sure to bring our most disruptive and game-changing demos to AWE - whether it’s our Solos smart glasses for cyclists and runners, our latest high-performance micro-displays and headset reference designs, or this year’s big unveil, which I’m keeping to myself for now!”
Other heavy hitters on the show floor will include PTC, Vuforia, Bosch, Daqri, Microsoft, Osterhout Design Group and Qualcomm.
Organizers estimate there will be around 1,000 demos at AWE. AWE
Plenty of startups will be unveiling game-changing new demos this year as well. Kaaya Tech will be showing its HoloSuit for the first time. Holosuit is a full body motion capture suit that uses haptic feedback to let people truly enter the VR world for gaming and sports while allowing training for situations like medical and military. 8th Wall will showcase its AR development platform for use with both iOS and Android devices.
Emrich said the conference is working especially hard this year to be as inclusive and diverse as possible. In partnership with the Virtual World Society, AWE is hosting two unique tracks, “XR for Good”, “The Cultural, Social and Ethical implications of XR”, and with the WXR Fund “XR for Inclusion”. "As we are teaching our computers how to be human, such as giving them sight, it is important that we make sure that we do not build bias into the technology and that it recognizes and considers all people which is why its important to have all voices at the table at AWE,” Emrich said.
Fun from the 2017 show. 20,000 square feet has been dedicated to the Playground at AWE. AWE
“AWE’s Playground pushes the envelope of augmented and virtual reality and features experiences you don’t see everyday—even if you work in XR,” said Inbar. “It gives every attendee a chance to do more than merely ‘watch’ a technology demo by taking a break from the hustle and bustle of the expo floor, and dive into mind-blowing adventures in AR and VR that will inspire any professional.”
AWE expects over 6,000 attendees in 2018. AWE
The Playground, adjacent to the trade show, features demos and implementations that showcase a diverse number of art and entertainment applications of new technologies. Illustrated and animated by Australian artist Sutu is presenting large AR enabled illustrations; there’s a free roam VR installation; Nuheara is demoing technology that helps users hear in crowded environments; “Tribe VR DJ School by Tribe XR”, is a DJ lesson in VR; straight from the Tribeca Immersive Arcade, critically acclaimed VR experience “Where Thoughts Go: Prologue” by Lucas Rizzotto reveals the thoughts of others; Two Bit Circus, a large scale multimedia entertainment destination slated to open in downtown LA later this year is showcasing some of their techy new diversions.
Matt Miesnieks of 6D.ai told me he is expecting to publicly demo a working version of their new world mesh AR Cloud application, a crowdsourced 3D map of the world that all AR apps can share. Given the number of partnerships, 6D.ai has under discussion the company could immediately become one of the most important pieces of the AR Cloud. “We’re constrained by how fast we can build, not market demand,” Miesnieks confided. “We’re pleased that the timing of AWE lined up with the readiness of the technology.” Miesnieks will be giving a keynote and speaking on two panels, one of which is a roundtable discussion about the important topic of an open AR cloud. In order for there to be a visual Google, and persistent location of data from different apps, there needs to be a common platform. Without HTML websites that anyone can make, Google would not be able to catalog the web. The roundtable will be chaired by Ori Inbar of Super Ventures, and will also feature Dave Lorenzini (YouAR.io), Yohan Balliot (ARCortex), Anton Yabubenko (GeoCV), Christine Perry (PEREY Research), Nabil Hajj Chehade (Apprentice.io).
On the lighter side, Living Popups will enliven the AWE badge, as they did at VRLA, with the continuing AR series “The Aug-Mentors”. The VRLA AR cartoons are a knowing lampoon in the spirit of HBO’s “Silicon Valley.” Simply point the AWE app at your badge, and see the Aug-Mentors pop up, literally, out of the badge. In front of you. Living Popups CEO Cheryl Bayer will be speaking about the future of AR and Entertainment on Friday, June 1st.
AWE is produced by AugmentedReality.org, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to advance AR to advance humanity by connecting, educating, and accelerating the industry. All profits are reinvested back in the community.
The Aug-Mentors, from Living Popups. AR on your badge. Yes, please! Living Popups
[Disclaimers: (1) Ori Inbar, executive producer and co-founder of AWE, is one of the contributors to my book, Charlie Fink’s Metaverse, An AR Enabled Guide to VR & AR, (2) I am giving a mainstage presentations on the first day of the conference, “What I Learned From Making An AR Book”, and participating in a writer's panel (3) My book also includes AR animation from Living Popups (4) My AR-Enabled book has been nominated for an Auggie Award and (5) I am doing several book signings, including one sponsored by Kopin.]
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80b79a16a2d70aaa5fc74a436d4615ab | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2018/06/15/my-beef-with-xr/ | My Beef With XR | My Beef With XR
When Venture Capitalist, AR thought leader, and Executive Producer of Augmented World Expo (AWE) Ori Inbar kicked off the event on May 29th with the phrase: “Go XR or go extinct!” I knew it was over. I had officially lost the war of words. As my old boss Ted Leonsis used to say, “it is better to win than to be right.” So, to the winners, I say I am dropping my objection to the use of “XR”, or “X-Reality”. I was even wearing my XR t-shirt the last day of the AWE Conference. But I still think XR is an annoying made up word that conveys only the agony of our confusion.
Ori Inbar's opening of AWE 18, the 9th annual conference, at the Santa Clara Convention Center of... [+] May 29th. "Go XR or Go Extinct!" Michael O'Donnell
Making a counterpoint to Stephanie Llamas, VP of XR for Superdata Research, who wrote the first chapter of my book, Charlie Fink's Metaverse, An AR Enabled Guide to VR & AR, I objected to the new acronym "XR" then, which has replaced "MR" as the umbrella term for immersive computing, including mobile AR, MR, and VR. I’m not exactly sure who is to blame for all this confusion but my top suspects are Microsoft and Qualcomm, which actually sought to trademark XR last fall. Microsoft is guilty of an earlier sin, torturing the word hologram, which by definition must be seen with the naked eye (look it up). It is quite a stretch to call The HoloLens a Holographic Computer. My friends at Microsoft are slightly embarrassed when I explain this because the people I interact with are basically nice, guileless people. Still. Who owns the unintended consequences of decisions made by the marketing department?
In my "I [heart] XR" T-shirt on June 1st, the last day of AWE. Richard Cray
Llamas correctly pointed out that consistency of language is critical in the developing consumer market. We have to agree on what to call things. Microsoft put MR out there as the name for the concept in 2016, appropriating the Milgram scale, created in 1994 by two academics, Paul Milgram and Fumio Kishino. Conveniently, on either side of the new “Microsoft Mixed Reality Spectrum”, where the company’s HoloLens and fully occluded Windows MR VR device. Microsoft was immediately accused of seeking to brand the VR world with WindowsMR. Since WindowsMR headsets are not exactly flying off the shelves, despite attractive pricing, it doesn’t really matter anymore. That was almost ten months ago, for god’s sake.
Created in 1994 by two academics, the Milgram Mixed Reality Spectrum sought to explain the... [+] relationship of Virtual and Augmented Reality. By conflating VR and AR, they failed. Miserably. Charlie Fink
My objections to the appropriation and misuse of the of the words MR and XR are well known. Until my formal surrender today, I insisted on using the more cumbersome AR and VR, keeping them separate. One of the key points of my book is that AR and VR do not belong on a spectrum of immersion. While VR is for immersion, AR is a tool, like the club and the wheel and the steam engine, that makes humankind better, faster and stronger. Both the quest for immersion and the need for augmentation are deeply rooted in humans. VR is spiritual and experiential. It demands a willing suspension of disbelief, while AR needs the real world to exist, otherwise, there would be nothing to augment. It is true both run on computers and require optics, bandwidth, and storage, but so what? Computers do a lot of things. Also, this doesn't account for the vast majority of AR today, which is Heads Up Displays, mobile phones, and monocular microdisplays. My biggest complaint at about XR is that it conflates AR and VR.
“It's just too nuanced not to combine VR and AR into one term. Consumers just will not understand those differences,” Llamas says. “We need to have a unifying terminology that makes it easy for consumers to understand. Until the separations are clearer, X (standing in for an unknown, or variety of variables) Reality serves as a simple way to encompass everything that digitally alters reality.”
Thanks to Manomotion and others, we can interact with AR objects inside the camera in real time for... [+] a true MR experience in AR Manomotion
Second, both MR and XR redefine important terms. MR previously referred to mixing reality, so when your hand hits a virtual ball, it has real physics and bounces, or when, in VR, smell, heat, smoke or other elements are added, mixing reality. XR has long referred to bio-augmentation, which is the sort of thing Patti Maes does at the MIT Media Lab. What are we to call these now? So. Objection #2: Redefinition and Appropriation.
Objection #3, Dishonesty. In January 2017, the companies discussed in this story approved a press release from the technology committee of the Consumer Technology Association, which provided definitions of AR, VR, and MR, and accounted for their distinctions. These definitions have been ignored since the day they were was released, with Microsoft almost immediately following with an announcement that appropriated Windows MR. Which is a fully occluded VR headset. Raise your hand if you are not confused.
Consumers are going to be talking about iGlass, not XR or AR, says Writer & Producer Michael... [+] Eichenseer. Taeyeon Kim/Behance
Finally, Objection #4: Market confusion. Since there's no real consumer market here to confuse, we're mainly still talking to ourselves. “While there are benefits to unifying definitions, I'm not convinced the benefits would be noticed as the market develops. It'll be brands that mold the minds of consumers,” said writer and producer Michael Eichenseer. “It won't be Apple's AR/MR/XR Glasses, it'll be iGlass. Users won't refer to iGlass's AR/MR/XR display, it'll be iGlassOS.” Eichenseer is right, of course, but what about the hundreds, maybe millions of people who are studying what we do. This is the Internet in 1993. What we call things is going to matter, and soon. Maybe they are the most important audience now.
“What I have noticed is that those of us in the industry are using XR, but I see very few people outside of our industry using XR. Whenever I bring up the term XR at a marketing conference (most often than not), I would say 90% of folks have never heard the term,” Says Cathy Hackl, Futurist at You Are Here Labs and co-author of Marketing New Realities. “I'm all for using XR within our industry, but I'm not sure the mass market is ready for XR as a term. While it provides clarity for our industry, I worry it might make it harder to comprehend for the mass market.”
Bring on the XR!
You see my point? XR is the devil. It should never have been invented. Long live XR.
Therefore, this is the June 2018 Fink “official” definitions of XR, AR, MR, VR, and bioaugmentation. I reserve the right to be defeated again in the future.
Virtual Reality - A fully occluded world in which the digital completely replaces the physical world.
Augmented Reality - Any technology that adds digital content to the physical world. There are many modes of AR. Some of them are Heads Up Displays (HUDs), Reflective AR (Lenovo/Disney Jedi Challenge, Mira Prism), Mobile (ARKit and AR Core), Monocular Microdisplays (Glass, Kopin, RealWear, Toshiba), Waveguide (HoloLens, ODG, Vuzix)) and Lightfield (Magic Leap) devices. Sound plays a role as well. Vuzix and ODG incorporate Alexa.
Mixed Reality - Any virtual or augmented reality where the real and digital worlds interact. Example 1: through the camera, on your cell phone you see a ball. You hit it with your free hand, and it appears to bounce off the real wall. Example 2: when temperature changes, wind, smell, touch and/or physical props are incorporated into full occluded VR experience, usually in a public installation like The Void, Zero Latency, and Dreamscape.
XR or X-Reality - The VR and AR industry, taken as a whole, including research into wearables, bioaugmentation, and invisible computing.
Bio and Experimental Augmentation (BA and EA) are not yet widely known outside academia but will probably replace the previous uses of XR.
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7e7766f122e37f2321e02560a3e4dc71 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2018/10/22/this-week-in-xr-awe-eu-wrap-up-a-china-scale-vr-conference-augmented-tv-vr-bowling-and-more/ | This Week in XR: AWE EU Wrap Up, A China Scale VR Conference, Augmented TV, VR Bowling And More | This Week in XR: AWE EU Wrap Up, A China Scale VR Conference, Augmented TV, VR Bowling And More
My new weekly column, “This Week In XR,” is a few days late, making the title more appropriately “Last Week in XR.” I’m at AWE EU where I gave a keynote and signed over 300 books. Here’s my wrap up of AWE EU, Munich...
Ori Inbar kicked off the Munich conference with his trademark rallying cry: "Go XR or go home!" AWE
AWE kicked off its third annual European conference highlighting continued XR industry growth. Ori Inbar, Founder and Executive Producer AWE, and Partner in the AR focused VC Super Ventures, started off the conference with his evangelist rallying cry: “Go XR or Go Home!” Of course, since most of the audience is from elsewhere (I’m told they represented over 50 countries), Ori should have said “Go XR and go home.” Inbar says the ultimate goal of AWE is to inspire one billion active XR users by the year 2020. “All signs point to rapid XR adoption by the Fortune 1000, big bets by tech, manufacturing and consumer giants, and record investment in the billions.” Inbar also announced the expansion of the AWE Nite Meetup series to ten more chapter cities worldwide, and launched the Open AR Cloud (OARC) initiative, an idea first introduced at AWE USA 2018. The inaugural Open AR Cloud working session focused on two core topics: the introduction of its "Privacy Manifesto for AR Cloud Solutions," and an open discussion about the development of a shared searchable language for a single, unified AR Cloud.
There was also a flurry of company announcements:
PTC announced new industry research with detailed findings of how augmented reality drives best-in-class performance in factory operations, service, and training. The report, compiled in conjunction with Aberdeen Group, identifies significant financial improvements realized by companies embracing augmented reality and provides best practices for unlocking the potential of AR across a variety of environments.
By replacing paper manuals with AR-enabled digital ones, detailed drawings, diagnostics and remote... [+] experts are always at hand. Re'flekt
RE'FLEKT unveiled a new standard enterprise operating system, built on its REFLEKT ONE Enterprise Augmented Reality ecosystem for the industrial maintenance aftermarket. I wrote about BASF’s recent investment in RE’FLEKT here. Bosch is also an investor. Speaking of Bosch... they introduced a new AR solution for the automotive industry: an app that generates VIN specific wiring diagrams to help mechanics (they’re called technicians in the EU) diagnose and repair vehicles. Bosch’s proprietary CAP (Common Augmented Reality Platform) thus significantly reduces repair time.
The Vuzix Blade can do anything your smartphone does for $999.99. Vuzix
The Vuzix Blade is here. Vuzix announced that it is ready to launch the Blade Edge, the commercial edition release of the Vuzix Blade Smart Glasses and expects shipments the first week of November 2018. The first commercial release of Vuzix Blade includes the Blade Edge SDK version 5 commercial edition, which allows customers to take advantage of communication links between iOS and Android devices. The release also includes the Vuzix Blade companion app, featuring email, messages, media player support, and user-specific application notifications. The Vuzix Blade monocular display dev kit goes for $999.99.
Ubimax offers a wide array of industrial applications which keep the worker's hands free while... [+] providing detailed instructions and a visual link to experts. Ubimax
Entire Ubimax Frontline AR platform now works on the Vuzix Blade. The Vuzix Blade’s commercial launch is accompanied by Ubimax Frontline AR software for enterprises. Existing Ubimax customers can upgrade to the Vuzix Blade Smart Glasses with a simple server update. The Vuzix Blade Smart Glasses have won multiple awards for their sunglasses style design and Ubimax Frontline solutions recently won the Auggie Award for “Best Enterprise Solution”.
RealWear deploys HMT-1 hands-free wearable computers to 20 Colgate-Palmolive manufacturing sites. Employees of Colgate-Palmolive in 11 countries are now using RealWear HMT-1 wearables to enhance daily operations. The technology allows employees to engage with subject matter experts while keeping their hands free. The devices can also be used to capture and retrieve documents and videos. RealWear CEO Andy Lowery sees the deployment as a sign: “Industrial wearable computing has crossed the chasm into mainstream manufacturing companies”.
Eyecandylabs enables augmented TV. Point your device’s camera at the TV and watch the whole room come to life. They announced the release of its augmen.tv SDK that allows advertisers, networks, and producers to incorporate the solution into their own apps.
Visualix debuts new AR cloud localization system for factories and warehouses. German startup Visualix helps companies scan their own warehouses, factories, and stores to create maps for augmented reality navigation. The company introduced the Visualix Mapping and Positioning System, which includes a content management system along with the company's Localization SDK, APIs, and AR cloud service. Companies can track individual SKUs, as well as anchor AR content in specific locations. The seed-stage company, newly out of stealth, told me at the end of the show they had scored a major deal.
Winners of the enhanced Auggie Awards in Munich on Friday. AWE
AWE EU Auggie Awards 2018. This year AWE partnered with VR First and IEEE to debut three new Auggie Awards at AWE EU 2018 called the Breakthrough Awards. The Breakthrough Awards honored excellence in collaborative projects between industry and academia celebrating Most Innovative Breakthrough, Most Impactful Breakthrough and honoring a Women XR Laureate. These three awards joined AWE’s annual Best in Show Awards for AR, VR, and Overall. The winners of this year’s AWE EU Auggie Awards are:
Most Innovative Breakthrough: Virtual Reality Vision Therapy VERVE (Virtual Eye Rotation Vision Exercises) by OculoMotor Technologies, others.
Most Impactful Breakthrough: Virtual Reality Flight Simulator for Surgery by FundamentalVR, others.
Women XR Laureate: Dr. Tara Alvarez, head of VERVE project
Best in Show - AR: XMReality
Best in Show - VR: Koliseum Soccer VR
Best in Show - Overall: Vuzix
At every large conference, I am completely floored by a random hallway demo. This year's winner is Devar, which makes AR-enabled kids' books for clients like Hasbro. Thanks to Devar's CEO Anna Belova you for tracking me down to tell the story of this large 100+ NY based company I've never heard of.
Devar also makes kick-ass AR filters which rival anything I've seen on Snap or FB. Anna Belova
A China Scale VR Conference. At The WCVRI Nanching (Oct. 18th - 22nd), HTC announced new 6 DOF Controllers and showcased hand tracking for the coming Vive Focus. 4,000 delegates took part in the conference and over 250,000 ( don’t know how this number is possible) people saw the exhibition. The Chinese Premier spoke about the transformative power of VR. How this was not covered by the mainstream media eludes me. That’s a lot larger than the 182,000 visitors CES Las Vegas hosted in January 2018. I guess what happens in China stays in China. Why do I think that’s not a good thing?
Oculus Quest sales projected to surpass 1 million units next year according to SuperData market analysis. "SuperData's latest research and analysis points to the fact that 2019 will be the year of VR,” explained Stephanie Llamas, Head of XR at Neilsen’s newly acquired SuperData. Data points to the rapid growth of both location-based VR entertainment, and mobile AR applications. The momentum of VR is increasing and with the Oculus Quest projected to outsell the Rift in its launch year by more than 3 to 1. According to Superdata the Quest has the potential to push VR into the mainstream. I wouldn’t declare victory just yet. The Nintendo Switch sold twelve million units in the US last Christmas, that’s what VR needs to do. A couple of million units isn’t going to change anything in my opinion. Hope I’m wrong.
Oculus Thinking About LBVR. Tech Radar shared some hiring news that indicates Oculus is finally making a move into location-based VR (LBVR). While the Rift has many fans, and many new free roam VR locations are using its headset with backpack PCs, it’s hard for me to see them unseating incumbent Vive systems in LBVR, especially the new wireless Vive Pro with enhanced room scale tracking. Also, Microsoft held an invitation-only mini-conference in San Francisco on this very topic last August, to help it evaluate its opportunities in VRcades and other public venues. Oculus is late to the party.
NextVR announces 2018-2019 NBA viewing schedule. VR users on every major platform can now watch NBA games in VR. Viewers can watch their favorite NBA teams play from courtside seats, and now with Oculus Venues fans can sit virtually next to family and friends while watching the game. Need to see multiple games at once? NextVR’s Screening Room is a VR environment that showcases up to 13 live NBA games on a theater-sized screen. 26 of the games are scheduled for an immersive 3D VR broadcast experience. The first game of the season between Golden State and Denver is free on October 21. The company’s been at this for over three years, and they’re getting really good at it. But, like anything worth having, it’s not free. Subscriptions start at $6.99/game, but a season pass will run you $249. Users of Oculus Venues get the whole shebang for free.
Go bowling with friends in VR free with new RecRoom update. Against Gravity, developer of free social VR game RecRoom, released another update this week adding bowling to their growing list of activities players can do together. Bowling in VR seems to be the logical next step after the success of Wii Sports bowling years back. Couple that with the fact that players on PSVR, Vive, Oculus, and WindowsMR can all group up and bowl together and the new Lone Shoe Lanes will be a busy place in VR. You have to have something to do in VR, otherwise, it’s simply a 3D chat room. Hopefully, that thing is something you’re already doing, so there’s minimal explaining necessary. Rec Room’s other offerings include Paintball, Ping Pong, Shuffleboard, Pool and more. Offered at the Internet's favorite price: free.
I had the time of my life signing 300 books at the Re'flekt's AWE EU booth. Wolfgang Stetzle
This story was produced with the editorial assistance of Michael Eichenseer.
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6ff6a3ef0d8396e214589d4e1d5c3f60 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2018/11/01/no-headset-required-lightform-is-ar-in-the-real-world/ | No Headset Required: Lightform Is AR In The Real World | No Headset Required: Lightform Is AR In The Real World
Brett Jones, co-founder and CEO of Lightform, has created a simple, inexpensive hardware and software projection mapping solution for creators, artists, brands, promoters, and anyone who want to decorate or paint the world with data, art, words, ads, anything. “We’re finally free from the rectangle,” Jones told me in an interview. “The whole world is now a canvas.”
Artist Gabriel Schama's piece Pachamama made its way to the top of Reddit. The laser-cut wooden... [+] panels are intricate and come alive with Lightform's projection mapping. Gabriel Schama
Jones first saw projection mapping ten years ago, while an intern at Disney Imagineering. There were eight projectors and a 3D set. It stuck with the young computer scientist, then working toward his Ph.D. on computer vision and design. “Those projectors were heavy and expensive and the sets finely tuned to their needs. Today, a high definition projector is less than $600.”
The Lightform design tool makes it easy for anyone to create visuals for projected AR using content creation software powered by computer vision hardware. For years projection mapping has been used to fantastic effect turning even the most mundane concrete walls into wonderful displays of light. Performance artists have used projection mapping to enhance their exhibitions alongside lasers and traditional light displays. “What happens when every object is a display?” mused Jones as we spoke.
The Lightform LF1 can pair with most any projector. Here it's paired with an Epson PowerLite PRO... [+] G7905u. Lightform
The introduction of Lightform’s Projection AR has democratized what used to be a highly specialized and expensive process. Here’s how it works: the LF1 device scans the scene for details like depth. With this information added to Lightform Creator, users can create projected AR experiences by selecting objects, applying instant effects and text, or importing their own images or videos.
Jones and his partner Raj Sodhi have 10 years of experience in inventing, designing and implementing new technologies to create magical experiences. Like Jones, Sodhi worked for Walt Disney Imagineering and Microsoft Research, and in the past the co-founders collaborated on VR/AR projects like IllumiRoom and RoomAlive, two Microsoft Research projects that broke videos games out of TVs and turned entire living rooms into immersive, projected AR experiences.
L to R: Lightform co-founders, Brett Jones, CEO Kevin Karsch, CTO, and Raj Sodhi, CSO. Lighform
The company has raised $7.8 million in funding from investors including Lux Capital, 7 Seas, Dolby Family Ventures, Crunchfund, the National Science Foundation, Presence Capital, Anorak Ventures, and others. They are based in San Francisco, CA.
Projected AR Mural
Lightform's HQ now has their own AR mural painted by Gemma O'Brien and augmented by Craig Winslow.
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517e658f1f7569e4252b5ce164097714 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2019/01/14/why-2019-was-the-best-year-for-ar-vr-at-ces/?ss=consumertech | Why 2019 Was The Best Year For AR And VR At CES | Why 2019 Was The Best Year For AR And VR At CES
If there is strength in numbers, AR continues to climb to prominence at CES. The buzz around audio assistants (Alexa, Google, Samsung's Bixby) continued. Google was predictably everywhere you looked on the Strip. I heard a lot about connected home and IoT. 5G and AI came up a lot in keynotes. Something big is going on, but it's not manifested in products yet. There were only a couple supposedly 5G compatible handsets, and they looked like regular smartphones. The handset that really caught my attention was the foldable screen from Royole (a US-based Chinese company).
Hey Google, dominate the Las Vegas strip for me. Charlie Fink
CES is too huge. I tried to do all things AR and VR at the show, but it just was not possible. Here's my CES, mostly in pictures, and mostly focused on XR.
With North co-founder Arron Grant. We're both wearing Focals by North. Charlie Fink
Focals by North was much talked about and their booth was mobbed. I had a chance to sit down with co-founder Aaron Grant, and give Focals a try. The system projects simple things like text messages and directions. It's fashionable, light, and can be fitted with prescription lenses in one of their two stores in Brooklyn and Toronto.
The Vuzix booth was mobbed all week. Charlie Fink
The Vuzix Blade can do anything your smartphone does for $999.99. Vuzix
As I wrote in my CES preview, I've been living with the Vuzix Blade, a monocular display which look like regular sunglasses until you get up close. Vuzix CEO Paul Travers showed me a prototype for version two which really does look a sunglasses. Vuzix is known for its popular enterprise monocular microdisplay, the M-300. It fits on anything including hard hats. It's ideal for what developers call "assisted reality," meaning instructions and remote experts. The Blade is available for pre-order on the Vuzix web site now. It's to be released at the end of the month, just a few weeks from now. While enterprise remains their main market, Vuzix believes the low price point and growing app ecosystem will attract consumers as well.
nReal of Bejing introduced fashionable AR Glasses with powerful features like hand tracking. Charlie Fink
Another Chinese company, Realmax, introduced a slightly less sexy but still comfortably wearable AR HMD. It's prescription-compatible, self-contained (it's running Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835), and uses an Android-based open architecture, to make app development more seamless. Company literature says you can switch between VR and AR, but I did not try this feature.
Checking out Realmax. Charlie Fink
The Realmax has an astonishing 100.8 degree Field of View (FOV) and is multi-player. This is a $2,900 Developer Version. The company plans to release a $1,500 model later this year.
With Dreamglass founder Kevin Zhong. Charlie Fink
Dreamglass was founded by Kevin Zhong, a former GE engineer whose last gig was head of optics at Meta. His $619 HMD has an impressive 90-degree FOV and 6 degrees of freedom. It's light and comfy, runs on Android, and is packed with features like hand tracking and gesture control. The version I saw was tethered, but Zhong says it will be Bluetooth capable in the next few months.
Aurora AR Glasses from Rokid. Charlie Fink
One of the pleasant surprises was a suite demo of Rokid's new Aurora enterprise AR glasses. The company is using this new model to move toward the consumer. Aurora uses USB-C to connect to both Android and iPhone, but it also has computing onboard. Rokid makes its own chipset for voice recognition. The Aurora is also capable of calculating depth and distance. Reynold Wu, Rokid's Director of Product and Business Operations told me "we are running a pilot program with several Chinese partners right now, and will officially ship it in spring 2019. There are some big preorders." Apps do not need a unique SDK to run on Rokid's glasses. They just do.
Third Eye enterprise AR glasses. Charlie Fink
Third Eye claims to be the world's smallest mixed reality glasses. They sport a 45-degree FOV, and binocular 1080p HD resolution. Their Android-based system integrates software for remote help, and other custom features. The company boasts its app store has over 100 apps.
Digilens, backed by Niantic, is ideal for both consumer and enterprise applications. Digilens
DigiLens, backed by Sony, Mitsubishi, and Niantic, unveiled its ArHUD, a 30-degree FOV with clear (not sunglasses) display. The company says it is capable of both AR and VR applications. Priced at $499, these are among the least expensive AR headsets. They say it can be used for activities as diverse as architectural visualization, consumer gaming, telepresence and night vision. The ArHUD is already being field trialed, but no release date yet.
Lumus want to be the "Intel Inside" for AR. They're selling tech to OEMs. Charlie Fink
I sat down with Lumus CEO Ari Grobman and Marketing VP David Goldman. The Isreal based company, backed by eCommerce giant Ali-Baba, Quanta Computer, and others, was previously a developer of military grade optics for the US Air Force among others. They say their 40-degree FOV stereoscopic waveguide is the brightest and most power efficient display on the market.
This amazing PC and Laptop from Dimenco SR allows users to do interactive 3D without glasses. Dimenco
Dimenco Simulated Reality (Dimenco SR) displays combine eye tracking, hand tracking (they use Leap Motion sensors), gesture recognition, behind a super crisp 32" 8K display to allow you to reach out and touch objects that seem to float out of the screen without glasses. Dimenco does this with a lenticular lens which sits atop the PC screen. The dev kit is $5,000, but the company hopes to have a model that is priced only $200 more than a regular PC laptop out in the market by 2020. The demo I did allowed me to shoot targets with a virtual slingshot I controlled with my hands. Dimenco's SR devkit can use up to 12 cameras and 12 beamforming audio speakers to complete the illusion with mid-air hand gesture. 3D without glasses. This is a very big deal.
A photo from Dimenco that tries to depict 3D without glasses. Dimenco
It's worth mentioning here that using Leap Motion technology, one can do similar things with the Looking Glass. I didn't see them at the show but wrote about them last summer. If you're not familiar with their 3D monitors they're worth a look.
zSpace is the leading company in educational XR. zSpace
zSpace was showing off its amazing 3D laptop. As opposed to Dimenco, users need to wear polarizing lenses (a little like the 3D movie glasses) and a 6 DOF mouse which looks like a pen. It's popular in education partly because multiple users can share the 3D illusion. zSpace has been nurturing a development community for their desktop AR system for years. Schools pay a monthly licensing fee, which the company shares with its developers.
Golden-i from Kopin clips onto your glasses or hat. Charlie Fink
Designed to serve the needs of field workers in a variety of different industries, Kopin's Golden-i Infinity is a voice and gesture controlled wearable monocular microdisplay that supports Android and Windows 10-based computing solutions. Golden-i Infinity adds a smart head-worn display and hands-free voice control to smartphones and mobile PCs for improved productivity. The Infinity was designed to be future-proof. When an organization invests in new smartphones and PCs with greater capabilities, Golden-i Infinity by design automatically benefits from those upgrades.
HYPERVSN's spinning 3D displays project holograms into midair. They continue to draw big crowds at CES. The company, founded in 2012 and initially backed by Sir Richard Branson, has recently attracted additional investment from Mark Cuban, among others. The proprietary HYPERVSN hardware works in conjunction with a platform of unique and robust software/content to provide customers with an integrated 360, high-quality business solution. Targeted business verticals include Digital Signage, Retail, Events, Education, Public Safety and many other use cases.
HYPERVSN never fails to draw a big crowd at CES. I'm seeing them in malls now. HYPERVSN
Vive was in the Alsace Ballroom at the Wynn doing its annual invitation-only CES pressers and demos. The Vive Cosmos was introduced. We were allowed to look and not touch, and no specs were released, but it looks like it has inside out tracking so the annoying Vive light towers will finally be a thing of the past. We were told the Vive Focus is not going to be released to consumers, but instead, Vive is pushing it for enterprise and education, clearing the field for the Oculus Quest. Vive also announced an expansion of its wildly successful cross-platform Viveport subscription, Infinity, which allows users unlimited monthly use of the entire Viveport catalog. Vive pro wasn't left out; it added eye tracking.
The new Vive Cosmos is a non-working prototype. They wouldn't let anyone touch it, nor were spec... [+] provided. Charlie Fink
I had a memorable demo of the soon-to-be-released multiplayer VR game, Population One from Big Box VR. It's a battle royale similar to Fortnight and Rec Room's Battle Royale, but with much better graphics and game mechanics. You can sign up for the private beta at http://populationonevr.com.
Maybe I liked it so much because I won. Charlie Fink
Oh, and I absolutely destroyed a tracking puck and left a dent in the wall playing MLB Home Run Derby. Fortunately, the fine people at Vive have a sense of humor, but it was my most embarrassing CES moment, and it was captured on video.
Elsewhere on the VR side, VRgineers showed off their high-resolution VR HMDs targing primarily industrial design and price accordingly. These are truly incredible. Pimax has a 4K/eye 200" diagonal field of view. They will soon have two steam-compatible HMDs on the market, a 5K for $699, and an 8K for $899.
The VOID, ensconced in the Venetian Shoppes, has two stages. Charlie Fink
I had the opportunity to experience "Ralph Breaks VR" at the VOID with their Chief Creative Officer Curtis Hickman. They use a lot of original animation for the film, and of course, Ralph and his sidekick Vanellope von Schweetz are animated with charm and humor. As always, free roam VR is nothing less than amazing. We also had a chance to visit the installation of PlatformaVR downstairs at Bally's.
Platforma has many locations in Russia and is now bringing its exciting multiplayer experiences to the US.
With Dean Takahashi of Venture Beat. Charlie Fink
Running into friends like Dean Takahasi, a tech writer for Venture Beat, whom I admire greatly and whose work I follow closely, is one of the reasons I force myself to go to CES every year. Twenty three down. Someday don't you just say, I'm too old for this s***
With Gary Shapiro, CEO of CES. We were both in CES' prestigious "Gary's Book Club." How cool is... [+] that? Charlie Fink
My last night I got off the Strip with a group of friends and enjoyed a fantastic Indian feast at a wonderful and inexpensive restaurant, Gandhi. Four stars.
From Left to Right: Dave Lorenzini, Jacob Lowenstein, Samantha Wolfe, Ryan Fink, Jeremy Keninsky.... [+] Tipatat Cheravasian, Will Gee, and Ted Schilowitz, Leanne Frisbie, Felice Liang,Fleur Saville. Not pictured, Alan Smithson, Chandra Devam and Scott Edgar. Alan Smithson
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e23b3cd35f6dbab502a451cb9881892e | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2019/05/09/coming-to-a-theater-near-you-the-greatest-startup-you-never-heard-of/ | Coming To A Theater Near You: The Greatest Startup You Never Heard Of | Coming To A Theater Near You: The Greatest Startup You Never Heard Of
The documentary feature General Magic, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2018, will be released to theaters on Friday, May 10. The film, directed by Matthew Maude and Sarah Kerruish, tells the story of the eponymous company from its spin off from Apple to public offering (it was the first concept IPO) and abrupt decline. The film is poignant, honest, entertaining and full of life lessons from the small and personal to the universal. Lessons that should be appreciated by everyone, especially those on the cutting edge of technology today.
"The idea of a computer in your pocket is a really big idea," says pioneering tech journalist and New York Times Columnist Kara Swisher. "The idea of a mobile computer was started at General Magic." Their problem was timing. People weren't yet doing the things General Magic made better. Few had cell phones. Few had email. The consumer had not yet reached the point of needing always-on computing. The film that was commissioned to chronicle General Magic’s rocket ride to the future instead became a requiem to its past.
Years ahead of its time, in 1995 General Magic's Communicator didn't catch on. General Magic
The co-founder and visionary CEO of General Magic, Marc Porat, a soft spoken Stanford Ph.D., told me this about the film last year: "One of my proudest, greatest reflections is that two young software engineers, Tony Fadell and Andy Rubin, who went on to create the iPhone and Android, now 97% of the three billion smart phones on the planet, sat next to each other at General Magic.” Earlier this week we had another opportunity to interview Porat about the film, leadership and today’s tech world.
Charlie Fink: So what's it been like to be the star of the movie?
Marc Porat: I definitely do not consider myself the star of the movie. It's not false modesty. General Magic, the people of General Magic, are the stars. The people in the movie, and people not in the movie, all say that working at General Magic are was one of their formative experiences.
Scenes from the new documentary feature "General Magic" General Magic
Charlie: The movie makes it seem like you were all living together to meet the deadline.
Marc: We were living together. The Magicians captured the spirit and the vision in a way that became intensely personal. I think the vision, the evolution into what we now know as mobile computing, was so intuitively correct, we all knew it was obvious and inevitable. We knew without a doubt that we were working on something that would fundamentally change everything. And that's why it became so intensely personal to us. And that's why it became a peak experience, everyone was pursuing it together. I think that the star of the movie is that collective spirit and drive.
Charlie: What was it like to show the movie to all the company alumni in Silicon Valley?
Marc: It was an incredible reunion. People flew in from all over the world. I heard from so many of them that their years at General Magic changed their lives as dramatically as it changed mine. We had no idea that 25 years later, there’d be a movie about the story.
Charlie: It seems like it spoke to everybody's need to be part of something bigger than themselves.
Marc: Exactly. I think that spark, that intense spark, has to light a fire that burns so hot, that the embers don't go out when reality keep throwing water on it, or when a company gets into trouble. The spirit, that fire, that initial fire keeps you going. It kind of reminds me when you fall in love. It’s rare. To keep going a lifetime, it has to start out hot.
Apple computer designers Bill Atkinson (R) & Andy Hertzfeld (L), w. communications technology... [+] specialist Marc Porat (C) spun off from Apple to start General Magic. (Photo by John Harding/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images) Getty Images
Charlie: People spend more time at work than they do with their families.
Marc: And in the film it’s pretty explicit: therein lies the risk and the downside. When we were spinning out of Apple, Bill Campbell told me to remember the occupational hazard of being a CEO, especially of a visionary company, is that it takes over your life to the exclusion of everything. It’s not a good thing. You marginalize yourself in the family inadvertently because the next challenge seems huge, an existential threat. I had a lot of those, oh-so-important moments, which in retrospect, weren't that important. But one has to create the illusion that you're always living on the brink of survival, in a war, or something dramatic, self-induced state. And then when you rise to the occasion, and you fight the battles, and you fight hard, and you fight to win -- it drains you. One of the things that can get marginalized is the relationship with the family. So to budding entrepreneurs: be careful, save a piece of yourself. You’ll need it.
Charlie: When you took General Magic public, the market cap was like 800 million dollars and people thought it was madness. This can't go on. This makes no sense.
Marc: I think it went from $14 to 26 a share the first day. There was frenzy around it. Investors were able to invest their imagination into the company also. Because it was so clear that the idea was correct and the future we're describing was correct, just no one knew when it would happen. Today, smart phones is a $500 billion a year industry. So yes, investors got excited. Big tech companies like Amazon were able to survive negative earnings. The market was willing to feed those them until they crossed the chasm. We could have, maybe should have, but we were exhausted.
Charlie: You have to get the timing perfect. You had to wait until people had the problem for your solution to be understood.
Marc: We definitely did not. Kara Swisher said, “there was no digital cellular, no web, everything that wasn’t, wasn’t.” By the time we shipped in 1995, the web went from tiny to inevitable - we couldn’t pivot fast enough.
Charlie: Why not?
Marc: We ran out of time and money. We didn't have the stamina. We would have ended up waiting 12 years [when iPhone 1 shipped]. It would have destroyed so many lives, it would have been crazy hard to do.
Charlie: My beat is focused on augmented and virtual reality and artificial intelligence. Timing is a critical issue here, too.
Marc: General Magic embodied the innovator’s dilemma. The innovator gets to be an innovator because other people haven’t noticed, or have left a vacuum. There's a reason why innovators are able to jump in and get going, leapfrogging the big entrenched companies. The dilemma, of course, is that the infrastructure of the industry that it relies on, and user demand, they aren't there, because if they were, then the startup would not be an innovator. It’d be sort of a follower. In our case, even being very, very good didn’t help because without nearly perfect timing, the innovator will get crushed. Light a path for others - but not get it over the line.
Charlie: Are you seeing companies that remind you of General Magic?
Marc: Our vision was so big. We saw the world horizontally not vertically. We saw people’s lives, their lifestyle, their psychology, how they communicated, got information, bought things. We saw it in a very humanistic way. The FAANG [Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google] companies changed the world (although now we’re seeing some of the social and political downside). I've actually not encountered a start-up recently that has that kind of coherent, revolutionary vision. I’m sure they’re out there.
Charlie: So, General Magic the Netflix series, who plays Marc Porat?
Marc: Hmm. Matt Damon, minus the ripped muscles and the Glock with silencer.
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c4647a236536f44a343b97d34e6b32f8 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2019/10/21/mediview-xr-out-of-stealth-with-x-ray-vision-and-45-million-in-funding/ | MediView XR Out Of Stealth With X-Ray Vision And $4.5 Million In Funding | MediView XR Out Of Stealth With X-Ray Vision And $4.5 Million In Funding
A Cleveland Clinic-backed XR medical visualization startup, MediView XR, Inc., has launched with $4.5 million in funding. The company uses the HoloLens and their custom software to help doctors visualize patient anatomy, and anchor it precisely on their body, giving the doctor, in essence, x-ray specs. The fundamental holographic visualization technology was initially developed at the Lerner Research Institute at the Cleveland Clinic to help surgeons better visualize and plan for the face transplant. Karl West led the team, using a HoloLens to create 3D holographic representations of the donor’s skull and other anatomy to assess and refine their surgical plans. Jeffrey Yanof, PhD, created the software.
Dr Martin prepares trajectory to avoid hitting rib during cancerous liver tumor ablation. The Cleveland Clinic Center for Medical Art & Photography © 2018 All Rights Reserved
Drs. West and Yanof, integrated four overlapping technologies to create a comprehensive AR Surgical Navigation Platform. (1) An anatomic CR/MRI registration, which anchors a patient’s own CT or MRI, so the surgeon can see beneath the skin and identify critical anatomy and risk structures around a cancerous lesion; (2) Preoperative Plan with Inter operative Display lets the physician actually plan their trajectory with the light ray tool targeting the tumor during the procedure; (3) Intraoperative Tool Tracking tracks the surgeon’s tools throughout the procedure, turning them into holographic images; and (4) A Real-Time Holographic Ultrasound Overlay to provide comprehensive and accurate guidance the surgeon is able to see all of the MediView system capabilities synchronized together in real-time 3D as they move around the patient in the surgical suite.
The company’s initial application is transforming percutaneous procedures by harnessing the power of Mixed Reality and Artificial Intelligence to improve acute and chronic patient outcomes. While there are other companies taking different approaches to using AR for real time, anchored, “X-ray vision,” the approach of MediView is unique, because it uses CT scans to register to a patient, but then uses ultrasound to locate and build 3D images of tumors and the organs around them using the spatial computing capabilities of the HoloLens. This has important advantages over the old system, which presented deadly threats to clinicians. The risk of extended radiation exposure can be measured and is well known. One or the events that spurred Dr. West to create MediView was the death of his friend Dr. Roy Greenberg, who succumbed to cancer very possibly as a direct result of his work as a surgeon.
MediView XR helps reduce risk to surgeons’ own lives by reducing the need for high doses of radiation from CT scanners and other X-ray imaging equipment typically used to “see” tumors. “If you stand in the X-ray beam long enough you are going to get irradiated,” said Dr. West. “There are surgeons going blind and others have developed cancers due to their continued exposure to X-Rays.”
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CEO John Black says MediView is like a “missile guidance system” for surgeons, helping surgeons to plan for, locate and navigate to cancerous tumors. Black told me that by trade he is a physiologist who has worked in the medical device industry most of his career. “I was working as the regional vice president of clinical sales at Orthofix when I first saw the technology and instantly saw the future transformation of surgical procedures. From that point I applied for grants and used personal earnings to bootstrap the company. We all feel this is a project that truly has dignity.”
One of the groups that financed the company, Inside View Investments, LLC, was formed over a dinner that was to be a friends and family round presentation. “At the time, our group was attempting to raise $1 million in convertible debt,” said Black. “We met at Logan’s Irish pub and within twenty minutes nearly every person in the Irish Pub was having their first experience with Augmented Reality. Scott Malaney, CEO of Blanchard Valley Health system in Findlay, OH, pulled me to the side and asked, ‘How much do you need to get a clear runway for meaningful development in the surgical setting?’ In one hour, the team had raised $4 million. Plug and Play Ventures also joined the round. Last week, the Northwest Ohio Tech fund, which is comprised of Promedica Health System, Mercy Health System, Bowling Green State University and the University of Toledo, invested an additional $500,000.”
Surgeon View of Liver Tumor and critical anatomy to avoid hitting during needle insertion for ... [+] ablation of a cancerous tumor in the liver. The Cleveland Clinic Center for Medical Art & Photography © 2018 All Rights Reserved
“Our current use of funds is to first focus on voice of customer, the surgeon,” says Black. “The end product has to have the full scope of ease of use and clinical utility from only the surgeon point of view. These funds allow us to scale to 12 full-time staff members at MediView and outsource all regulatory activities to Jalex Medical. We believe that with these funds we can reach FDA approval. Our first goal is soft tissue ablation and biopsy, and bone tumor ablation and biopsy. Next, our platform will expand into pediatric deformity correction, orthopedics and neurosurgery.”
A Cleveland Clinic Internal Review Board approved nine-patient human evaluation this month that expands application into Kidney, Bone, Lung and other soft tissue applications.
Surgeon view from AR headset during microwave ablation of cancerous tumor in liver performed at ... [+] Cleveland Clinic The Cleveland Clinic Center for Medical Art & Photography © 2018 All Rights Reserved
Mina Fahim, a research development engineer for Medtronic and St. Jude Medical, and Greg Miller, former CIO/COO of CentraComm, will be joining MediView as CTO and CIO, respectively, in October.
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74043563d2a4615ca5ca97aec39a294b | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2019/10/22/justin-timberlake-katy-perry-other-celebs-invest-11-million-more-in-lbvr-start-up-sandbox/ | Justin Timberlake, Katy Perry, Other Celebs Invest $11 Million In LBVR Start Up Sandbox | Justin Timberlake, Katy Perry, Other Celebs Invest $11 Million In LBVR Start Up Sandbox
Led by a16z and Craft Ventures, Sandbox VR has closed a new, $11 million dollar round of financing that includes notable actors, sports icons, and musicians. Sandbox VR, founded by game developer Steve Zhao, is a free roam location based entertainment venue that puts up to eight players wearing backpack PCs and VR headsets literally inside the game together.
HONG KONG , Hong Kong - 9 July 2019; Steve Zhao, Founder, Sandbox VR, on PandaConf + creatiff ... [+] Stage during day one of RISE 2019 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Hong Kong. (Photo By Seb Daly/Sportsfile via Getty Images) Sportsfile via Getty Images
Earlier this year Sandbox VR raised an eye-popping $68 million dollars from Andressen Horowitz, the venture fund behind Oculus, AirBnb, Lyft, Pintrest and Slack. This new round adds Craft Ventures, founded in 2017 by David O. Sacks and Bill Lee, which has invested in startups such as Bird, Reddit, and SpaceX. The celebrity presence was rounded out by actors Will Smith, Orlando Bloom, athletes Kevin Durant, and Honda Keisuke, and former superagent, and CAA co-founder, Michel Ovitz. This brings the total raised by the Location Based VR start up to $79 million.
“We're incredibly honored to be able to work with some of the most talented and influential artists, athletes, and actors in the world,” said Steve Zhao, Founder and CEO of Sandbox VR. “Their support is a vote of confidence that our platform will one day become the new medium for the future of sports, music, and storytelling.” Zhao explained when we spoke that he expected great things to come out of what he characterized as a “strategic round,” meaning it was as much about who invested as how much.
“Sandbox VR is the future of virtual reality. What excites us the most about this investment is that the team at Sandbox is setting out to remaking the entertainment industry,” said David Sacks, Partner at Craft Ventures. “It is not really comparable to anything else we have played.” If you haven't experienced free roam from The VOID, Dreamscape, Zero Latency, or VR Studios, Sandbox VR is mighty impressive. Free roam is the only true, natural locomotion VR system. We asked Zhao, a veteran of the PC and mobile game industry, why investors who had tried all these fantastic systems chose his particular approach. “Our philosophy is that VR is a social experience, and a physical experience. For example, we make you brush stuff off your body and off your friends’ bodies. You’re using touch, and all your senses.”
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The company is in the process of an expansive rollout across the U.S. with a location recently opened in Los Angeles, and is coming soon to New York, Austin, San Diego, and Chicago with a total of 16 total locations planned by the end of 2019, and fifty by the end of 2020. According to Zhao, business is booming and they have been able to raise their prices due to excess demand. “People aren’t just repeat players, they’re coming back with their friends.” When asked about VR’s deadly utilization issues (too few seats Saturday night, too many seats the rest of the time), Zhao says it doesn’t exist. “People book online. We’re busy 90% of the time.”
Sandbox VR's San Mateo location is in one of the country's most affluent suburbs. Charlie Fink
The company recently announced a mulitplayer Star Trek experience will be released to its simulation centers the end of this month. Zhao told me last year that he was going build the Star Trek HoloDeck with a mixture of hardware and Hollywood level content. “You are never going to have the HoloDeck in your living room,” he said when I asked about the future of LBVR against progress of in-home VR devices. The lead investor on the Andressen side of the deal, Andrew Chen, has stated last year that they liked the "flexibility" and "small footprint" of the Sandbox VR system. Zhao says Sandbox has an SDK (Software Developers Kit) they are quietly sharing with select partners who someday may be able to deliver content to Sandbox VR locations.
There is quite a cage fight developing in LBVR between Sandbox, The Void, Dreamscape, VR Studios and Zero Latency, with a whole lot of other competitors nipping at their heels, like Hologate, which has over 300 installations of its small footprint four player system. There are lots of other players like Nomadic, ExitVR, Omni Arena, fighting for a piece of the burgeoning industry. The movie exhibition business is in decline. What comes next? Perhaps being in the movie. Big bets are being made on the future of entertainment.
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17775bfe7770a10fe88803589b017abf | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2019/11/25/red-6-brings-ar-to-usaf-combat-training/?sh=6c50049964f6 | Red 6 Brings AR To USAF Combat Training | Red 6 Brings AR To USAF Combat Training
A Santa Monica, CA based start- up, Red 6, has announced a $1.5M development grant from AFWERX (the US Air Force tech incubator) to use augmented reality to solve what co-founder and CEO Dan Robinson calls “the military’s multi-billion dollar pain point.” The USAF alone is over 2,000 pilots short and is spending billions of dollars per year to providing adversary air-to-air training through the same expensive, dangerous and costly mock dogfights used for training in WWI.
Red 6 custom high FOV daylight capable Augmented Reality visor system Red 6
The training of combat pilots for close range air-to-air combat, ground attack, and refueling is complex, expensive, and dangerous. Large and expensive simulators were previously the best way to put a pilot in a “cockpit” for near peer air adversary training, but even the most advanced military simulators have limited effectiveness. Crucially, simulators leave out the most important feature of air combat: cognitive load. The speed, G-forces, and telemetry of real fighter aircraft induce significant cognitive stress on modern day fighter pilots.
Robinson says, “simulators play an important role in the training cycle of a fighter pilot. However, they cannot accurately represent the real world stresses that fighter pilots experience when they fly.” The solution, he concluded, was to put Augmented Reality (AR) in the aircraft, the most advanced of which, were filled with rudimentary AR solutions for targeting, but without any ability to present artificial targets to aviators.
Virtual friendlies and adversaries appear as if real during training flights using Red 6's AR ... [+] technology. . Red 6
Tracking a pilot’s head, gaze direction, the positional dynamics of a real aircraft, and matching the AR entities presented to the pilot in real time requires near zero visual latency, and unheard of processing speeds and transmission rates. In order for the system to be an effective training tool, it must mimic the operational environment and not leave the user feeling like they are looking through a soda straw, requiring the system to present a much wider field of view than AR systems currently on the market.
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Robinson, a former Royal Air Force Tornado pilot who graduated from the UK’s version of Top Gun and was the first non-American designated as an instructor pilot in the world’s most advanced fighter, the F-22, proposed a two-part, eighteen month sprint to the US Air Force’s AFWERX accelerator. This consisted of hitting two milestones: One, demonstrating their technology would work on the ground, and effectively simulate air-to-air combat and in-flight refueling, and two, prove it could present a fixed-in-space AR entity that is visible from a real world moving airplane in daylight. The ground demonstration piece was met in February 2019, and following initial airborne demonstrations for the USAF in early November, that included not only fixed objects, but multiple moving AR aircraft, the second milestone was exceeded. Robinson believes the USAF will be using this system with all pilots within the next five to seven years, as the USAF needs to increase the number of training sorties by more than 100% by 2030.
The engineering sprint was funded by a small initial USAF AFWERX grant and a $2.5M seed round of venture capital led by Moonshots Capital, a venture capital firm with military veteran leadership that recognizes the broader commercial applications that this technological breakthrough represents.
Colonel Randall “Laz” Gordon of AFWERX, the USAF’s rapid technology development organization, stated, “It’s exciting that Red 6 has created such a cutting-edge solution aimed at maintaining our competitive advantage. Their approach marks the genesis of a new paradigm in training and offers enormous potential for the future. There has never been an outdoor Augmented Reality solution like this before." Red 6 has received both Small Business Innovative Research Phase I and a $1.5M Phase II award from AFWERX based-on the soundness, technical merit, and innovation of Red 6’s approach to solving a compelling USAF need. Red 6 is the longest running program within AFWERX.
“Spatial computing is going to play a much bigger role for consumers,” predicted Robinson. “Currently we are operating with a daylight capable, 105 degree field of view system, but the display technology we are developing over the next 18-24 months is even more compelling, and can be applied to all use cases for the general consumer.”
Robinson first met his co-founders, Nick Bicanic, Red 6’s Chief Technology Officer and Glenn Snyder, Chief Product Officer, in 2017. “I was frustrated with the status quo that existed within the AR industry as a whole,” said Bicanic. “The technology always fascinated me but my frustration was that in its current state, it is a solution in search of a problem, searching for a home.”
Snyder, who is also co-creator of the now legendary VR demonstration Virtual Drift, said “What Dan presented to us when we met with him, was the exact opposite of a solution searching for a problem. Critically, he identified an extremely compelling and extremely challenging use case for augmented reality software and hardware.”
“Ultimately, this is about delivering critical capabilities to our war fighters. This is what I’m most passionate about,” said Robinson. “However, our technology road map is carefully aligned to the broader consumer market. When that inflexion point arrives, we’ll be ready, but right now, I think we’ve got the most compelling story in AR.”
Founder/CEO Dan Robinson, CTO Nick Bicanic, and Glenn Snyder, Chief Product Officer, created Red 6 ... [+] to change the way fighter pilots train using AR. Red 6
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ae5de33339c07a5e794d6f8e0195fb07 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2019/12/14/this-week-in-xr-table-setting-the-new-xr--decade-as-magic-leap-gets-down-to-business/?sh=66b6b3e70294 | This Week In XR: Table Setting The New XR Decade As Magic Leap Gets Down To Business | This Week In XR: Table Setting The New XR Decade As Magic Leap Gets Down To Business
Between the recent leak about Apple’s AR plans to debut its highly anticipated AR glasses in 2022, and Magic Leap’s non-announcement of its 2021 launch of the Magic Leap 2, lots of table setting is getting done this last month of the year. The shape of the next decade in XR is coming into focus.
Say goodbye to the Magic Leap One Creators Edition for developers. Say hello to The Magic Leap 1 for ... [+] enterprise. Magic Leap
Magic Leap Reveals Enterprise Strategy And The Magic Leap 2. Brushing off nabobs of negativity, Rony Abovitz got down to business last week, sharing the company’s plans for enterprise, and revealing the highly anticipated Magic Leap 2 AR headset will be available sometime in 2021, following trials with enterprise customers. The company has beefed up its enterprise offerings and support, but it’s not calling this a pivot. Although everyone else is. The Magic Leap website has been revamped to emphasize its business to business offerings. Magic Leap needs to find a Microsoft Azure, a monthly source of recurring revenue. Not that they seem overly concerned about revenue right now.
Streem enables home repair pros to communicate with customers and remote experts using ... [+] see-what-I-see technology with smartphones. Streem
Frontdoor acquires XR start up Streem. Frontdoor is one of the largest companies in the home services industry, and recently became publicly traded. Streem is a Portland based startup that has developed a see-what-I-see technology using smartphone AR. The acquisition will put Streem’s technology in the hands of the large Frontdoor marketplace of home contractors and technicians. The Streem team will continue working from their current offices while integrating into Frontdoor.
Scope AR adds to its SaaS platform with the acquisition of Tel Aviv-based WakingApp. WakingApp AR Studios has been building an app creation tool that allows developers and designers to rapidly produce AR experiences as stand-alone apps or integrate mobile AR experiences into existing mobile apps. Scope AR plans to add this to its WorkLink platform.
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Oculus Quest adds hand tracking support to latest Quest software update. The standalone VR headset becomes the first major consumer headset to receive hand tracking as a built-in feature. Quest owners can experience the hand tracking by turning on the hand tracking option in the Experimental Features menu. Developers will gain access to the SDK next week.
The virtual cockpit will allow live instructors to sit beside pilots in training in full featured ... [+] virtual Airbus planes. Airbus
Airbus announces new VR flight trainer. The pace of enterprise training applications continues to accelerate with the virtual cockpit from Airbus. It will allow live instructors to sit beside pilots in training in full featured virtual Airbus planes. Built to run on commercially available VR headsets and hand controllers, the Airbus VR Flight Trainer intends to make pilot training more accessible for digital natives who will become the next generation of pilots. Airbus sees this move as helping to fill the need for 550,000 pilots of the next 20 years.
Neilson's Super Data adds XR tracking to its official offerings. Neilsen
Neilsen’s SuperData releases new XR Market Intelligence Platform. SuperData XR Dimensions business intelligence platform covers all of XR for developers, hardware manufacturers, investors and more. Subscribers have access to hardware sales numbers, consumer spending habits, venture capital investments in XR, and more XR industry insights. Some recent insights include 2019 VR hardware revenues approaching $2.1 billion, up 31% from 2018 driven largely by Oculus Quest sales, over 2 billion users have experienced AR thanks to mobile apps in Q3 2019 alone, and North America is the top region for XR technologies having over a third of the total market.
ARCore getting new update from Google with impressive new capabilities. The update includes a new Depth API which powers the AR feature we’ve all been waiting for: occlusion. Occlusion is the ability for objects in 3D space to block the view of other objects behind them. Whether its a Pikachu running behind a tree, or a new coffee table you want to see in the living room, ARCore’s new occlusion capabilities just made AR content a whole lot more convincing. Developers will be the first to get ahold of the Depth API, but we can expect to start seeing apps utilizing the new capabilities sometime next year.
The next generation of North's relatively normal-looking AR smartglasses will be available in 2020. ... [+] The company will no longer be selling its first generation Focals. North
Focals 2.0 by North will start shipping in 2020. North announced they have ended production of their first generation Focals smart glasses to focus on production of the next generation of smart stylish eyewear arriving sometime in 2020.
Taqtile raises $3 million to bolster development of AR for industrial applications. Along with the $3 million investment round led by Broadmark Capital, Taqtile has joined Magic Leap’s enterprise partner program. Taqtile’s applications are geared towards training and other on-the-job purposes.
Firefox Reality receives new update for syncing webpages between desktop, mobile, and now VR. The new update allows VR users of the Firefox web browser to log in to their account and sync tabs, bookmarks, and more from flat screen devices to their VR headset. Next time you stumble upon a new 360 video or WebXR experience while browsing in 2D, it’ll be a whole lot easier to hop into VR and load up your experience.
Coca-Cola’s holiday AR activations are powered by Unity and built by Tactic. This holiday season, Coke fans can point their smartphone cameras at Coca-Cola branded packaging to experience holiday themed AR artwork and games featuring their favorite polar bears, each AR experience built using Unity’s AR technology.
The small-footprint free roam enclosure from VR Studios has added dozens of titles through its new ... [+] deal with VRcade software distributor Springboard. VR Studios
SpringboardVR VR arcade content platform partners with VRstudios. VRstudios provides turn-key wireless multiplayer VR systems for location based entertainment venues, while SpringboardVR is a content marketplace built for VR arcades. The partnership will allow VRstudios to provide not only a hardware solution, but a library of experiences available on SpringboardVR’s platform.
Sansar launches a live music venue based on real life music venue Bootshaus, from which it will ... [+] broadcast live in VR. Sansar
Sansar’s partnership with live music venue Bootshaus kicks off with world-famous DJ’s Don Diablo: The Virtual Show. Don’s real-life performance at Bootshaus will be captured live and transmitted to a global audience in Boosthaus VR in Sansar.
The Advanced Imaging Society, a non-profit supported by the big tech companies and movie studios, holds its annual On the Lot conference in Los Angeles Tuesday and Wednesday, December 17th and 18th. To learn more, and buy tickets, click.
“This Week in XR” is written and edited with Michael Eichenseer.
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ec2a7efffad50c6ea0cfc392cf3fe0ee | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2020/01/10/this-week-in-xr-the-best-xr-at-ces/ | This Week In XR: The Best At CES | This Week In XR: The Best At CES
The first thing attendees ask one another at CES is “have you seen anything special?” The name on everyone in XR’s lips is Nreal, the spatial AR glasses launching next fall. Based on the interest at this show and elsewhere, it’s clear they’re going to sell hundreds of thousands of devices the day they are made available. Microsoft and Magic Leap have ceded the consumer to them, at least for now. Of course, Apple and Facebook have designs on the market, and plan to introduce their own XR glasses in two or three years. In the meantime, Nreal has the field to themselves. Except for one thing. There’s very little spatial content. More on Nreal’s plans below.
Attendees try NReal augmented reality (AR) glasses, on the last day of CES 2019, on January 11, 2019 ... [+] at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. - The user can see their environment while wearing Augmented reality (AR) glasses, which blend virtual images with real-world objects. The enormous international gadget and consumer electronics show returns to Las Vegas on January 7, 2020. (Photo by Robyn Beck / AFP) (Photo credit should read ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images) AFP via Getty Images
We did our best to take a comprehensive look at the world’s largest trade show, but CES (formerly the Consumer Electronics Show) is too, big (180,000 attendees, according to the CTA, which put on this massive show every January in Las Vegas) to adequately summarize in one news story, or even ten. The CTA should change the name to the Consumer Everything Show because there isn’t a single business which is not a technology business today. Automotive and transportation exhibits get more elaborate and numerous every year. Even International Harvester had one of their mega reapers in the middle of the show floor. Charmin toilet paper offered a satiric look at potty tech with a smartphone controlled “roll bot,” for those uncomfortable moments when you’re out of toilet paper. Nearly every car company used VR to demonstrate its future as an immersive, connected device.
Many of the leading XR companies, such as Apple, Microsoft, Oculus/Facebook, and Magic Leap, don’t exhibit because they have their own developer conferences. Sony promotes playstation VR at E3, the huge games show in the Spring. So as comprehensive as CES is for so many consumer verticals, this is not the case for XR.
With Nreal founder and CEO Chi Xu at CES, Wednesday, January 9th. Charlie Fink
Nreal steals the show. The sleek, smartphone-based spatial XR headset attracted big crowds on the show floor. We had to fight our way into their booth. CEO Chi Xu acknowledged that there isn’t much spatial content yet, but showed us their approach to bringing the 2D content on a smartphone into a spatial context. Users can place multiple screens around them, so you could type, consume media, and monitor social media feeds at the same time. Which could be useful to a writer. Or anyone. The $499 glasses are prescription compatible. Nreal is launching in Korea this spring, followed by Japan. Nreal will be available in the US in the latter half of the year. It’s Android only for now, unless Apple agrees to cooperate with the fledgling company.
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Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg believes in the wearable future. In his annual blog post about the company’s goals, the founder and CEO said “While I expect phones to still be our primary devices through most of this decade, at some point in the 2020s, we will get breakthrough augmented reality glasses that will redefine our relationship with technology.”
The other company XR people were talking about was Spatial. The cross platform XR telepresence company burst onto the scene at last year’s Mobile World Congress when Microsoft Hololens inventor Alex Kipman invited the company to the stage to demo their application on the new HoloLens 2. Co-present Spatial users can cover walls with images, videos, and slide presentations, review, annotate, and modify 3D models, and even join through Mobile/PC. In addition the HoloLens, Spatial is on the Magic Leap and works on VR and mobile devices.
AARP Innovation Labs launched Alcove, a social space for shared experiences. The Association for Retired People, a not-for-profit foundation based in Washington, DC, thinks VR can reduce loneliness and isolation of the elderly by providing a virtual place for families to share activities and experiences. They have been thinking a lot about “the longevity economy,” which, along with healthtech in general, was a big thing at the show.
Pico Neo 2 standalone headset may be the Oculus Quest for businesses. As far as standalone VR HMDs are concerned, the only real players so far have been Oculus Quest and the HTC Vive Focus. At CES this week Pico shared their take on a standalone HMD. The all in one VR headset is aimed at business users, has 6DoF tracking, has two wireless controllers, and comes with optional eye tracking. If you are a business, you can inquire about pre-ordering the Neo 2 and Neo 2 eye from Pico’s website.
Firefox Reality coming to Pico devices. The web browser, tailored for virtual reality, works on the major consumer VR headsets and will soon work on Pico’s new Neo 2. Firefox is also bringing their Hubs virtual spaces to the Pico devices. Firefox Reality will land on Pico devices in late Q1 2020.
PSVR unit sales. Sony
PlayStation VR reaches 5 Million units sold. Sony announced this week that the device has sold over 5 million units to date since its launch in 2016. While an impressive number, Sony also shared it has sold 106 million PS4 and PS4 Pro consoles. 4.5% penetration isn’t exactly proof XR is reaching the crook in the mythical hockey stick. But it’s growth. Much better than the fate of Gear VR.
Panasonic showed this prototype of a VR HMD at CES 2020. Panasonic
Panasonic reveals compact VR HMD design at CES. The sleek form factor and reportedly high quality display make this concept HMD impressive. Unfortunately little has been revealed as to what these would look like with proper tracking hardware. Panasonic says they are continuing work on VR hardware so maybe we will see.
Samsung teases AR glasses at CES presser. Samsung’s “Age of Experience” product strategy includes its own dedicated AR headset.
VRgineers reveal newest XTAL VR HMD specs. The newest iteration of their enterprise level VR HMD touts 8k resolution, or 4k per eye, as well as a 180 degree field of view, and hand and eye tracking. It is so realistic it’s literally dizzying at first.
Pimax announces new high end HMDs priced for prosumers. The Pimax 5K SUPER retails for a $1,300, features a 180Hz refresh rate, 2560 x 1440 resolution and a ridiculously large 170 degree field of view. It’s compatible with SteamVR 2.0 base stations and Valve Index controllers.
Neon introduced its new virtual humans at CES. Charlie Fink
Neon AI launched at CES. This spin off from Samsung Labs makes virtual humans so nuanced and lifelike they seem to be volumetric captures of actors. They are not. And they drew a crowd. The company hopes these intelligent agents will create more empathy between man and machine. It’s also possible that we’ll treat them like the non-player characters in Grand Theft Auto or the hosts in Westworld. The company is just four months old and undertook an enormous sprint to prepare for CES. They are looking for partners to help develop the new technology.
These robot arms - and fingers - are controlled with HaptX gloves. HaptX
HaptX is joining forces with Shadow Robot Company, and Tangible Research to form a new consortium: Converge Robotics Group. Their mission is “to extend the reach of human cognition, sensation, and manipulation through the integration of advanced technologies.” More on the group’s new website.
Serendipity is a big part of CES. This year we were blown away by the free roaming game on the Oculus Quest, Arenaverse from Escape VR Games, at DreamlandXR, a CES side event at the Alexis Park Hotel. This could be big. We saw Brent Bushnell there. Maybe he’ll add it to Two Bit Circus.
Serendipity happened outside the show, too. On Freemont Street, downtown Las Vegas, we saw this amazing video canopy. It is hard to see in the video just how big it is.
For more on CES:
Dean Takahasi’s Best of CES. The Dean of XR writers saw a lot more than XR at the show.
Why Jeremy Horwitz says CES proved XR is thriving.
A Roundup of Immersive Announcements at CES by our Forbes Tech colleague Sol Rogers.
Christopher Grayson Digs Into AR Glasses in a this pre-CES deep dive.
“This Week in XR” is written and edited with Michael Eichenseer.
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dc413a09bfa43c20fd28b24303af8756 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2020/01/16/mojo-vision-reveals-xr-contact-lens/ | Mojo Vision Reveals XR Contact Lens | Mojo Vision Reveals XR Contact Lens
Science fiction has again become science fact as Mojo Vision, a stealthy Silicon Valley startup that’s raised over $100 million dollars, revealed this morning that it is making an XR contact lens, The Mojo Lens. The company hopes that its wearable XR contact lens will become an all-day-every-day method of doing ubiquitous, invisible, visual computing. Today the company also announced it is doing a pilot with Vista Vision Center of Palo Alto which will be the first to use its technology. The first application will be helping sight impaired people navigate low light situations.
Meet the new platform. Your eyes. Mojo
Mojo Vision was founded in 2015 by serial entrepreneur CEO Drew Perkins, CTO Mike Wiemer, Chief Science Officer Michael Deering, and a team of Silicon Valley veterans from companies including Apple, Google, and Microsoft. “Mojo Vision is the Invisible Computing company, dedicated to developing products and platforms that re-imagine the intersection of ideas, information, and people. Instead of being tethered to devices that are increasingly a distraction in many aspects of our lives,” said Perkins in a statement.
Drew Perkins, cofounder and CEO of Mojo Vision. Mojo Vision
In the two demos we did in a private suite at CES, we saw how Mojo Lens could detect walls, edges and furniture to help the vision impaired navigate safely in darkness. We also saw how normal users could use gaze detection as an interface for the XR lenses.
MojoLens Assembly. Mojo Vision
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Were it not for the bronze filament running from edge to center of the tiny contact lens, it appears to be completely normal otherwise, though it is the window through which mankind will augment its surroundings. At least until there are implants.
Also worth noting is that the Mojo Lens works even with eyes closed, thus turning from a see-through display to a fully occluded VR display. Interestingly, the science-fiction Netflix series Altered Carbon envisioned XR as everyday contact lenses. It’s set more than four hundred years in the future.
Mike Wiemer, co founder and CTO/ Mojo Vision
“I found a great problem to solve that would really matter,” said co-founder and CTO Mike Wiemer when we asked what drove him to tackle a miniaturization problem of this complexity. The company plans to develop its technology while working on practical applications with health care, defense and other verticals. While it may take a decade or more before you’re wearing a Mojo Lens casually, the company has illustrated it is possible, which is a major breakthrough and an entirely new approach to XR.
“Mojo Vision is taking on a big challenge,” Perkins told Venturebeat last year. “To rethink how people receive and share information in a way that is immediate and relevant, without diverting their attention,”
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8ff8268bb9ed749d28af54f932691713 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2020/04/29/this-is-future-of-showbiz-is-no-game/ | The Future Of Showbiz Is No Game | The Future Of Showbiz Is No Game
Last Thursday, April 23rd, I had an epiphany while watching Travis Scott’s “Astronomical” in the video game world Fortnite. In this event is the future of entertainment. Inside a video game. But it’s not a game, or a movie, or a music video. It’s a new experience. The first Travis Scott show was attended by over 12 million unique users (as avatars) from around the world. 27.7 million unique players in-game attended live 45.8 million times.
Astronomical Fortnite
Epic Games was founded in 1991 by Mark Rein and Tim Sweeney. The company licenses its Unreal Engine game development platform and continues to make its own games, including mega-hit Fortnite, which has generated more than $4 Billion in sales. Tencent, China's largest video game publisher, invested $330 million to acquire a 40 percent stake in Epic Games in 2012. In October 2018, Epic raised an additional $1.25 billion from seven VCs, including Kleiner Perkins, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. It’s reported they are now looking for additional financing at a 16 billion dollar valuation. CEO Tim Sweeney says Fortnite is “evolving beyond being a game.”
“Astronomical” played with scale which created a larger than life experience with a giant globe and a humongous Travis Scott avatar. The immersive nature of the environments, weightlessness, and swimming underwater, provided agency in the virtual space. The audience was brought into the unreal world imagined by the artist’s music, like an MTV music video, and you just go with it. We may well look back on this as a watershed event.
"Astronomical." Larger than life, literally. Fortnite
The event created inside of Fortnite is native for its key interactive platforms: consoles, PCs, and smartphones. You click. You go. You know where you are, and what you are able to do there. Even in the limited confines of an old fashioned hallway shooter, you are part of the show. The director of these kinds of new entertainment generated by a game engine is more of a world designer and event designer than storyteller. Everyone has their own story.
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You don't need to download the game. There are videos all over. Here's the whole ten-minute event.
"Astronomical." Fortnite
Marshmello, an American EDM (Electronic Dance Music) DJ headlined a February 2019 concert in Fortnite which attracted 10.7 million concurrent avatars. It took place on a traditional stage that felt more immersive than the old-fashion analog rock show, which involved hundreds of dollars and parking. The Marshmello show featured gigantic background dancers, strobe light effects, flying avatars, all synchronized like a firework show.
I asked screenwriter and producer Bruce Feirstein if he thought this kind of massive multiplayer experience might replace live concerts in the next few years. “After the pandemic is over, money is going to be tight and until there’s a vaccine people are going to stay away from crowds. It's going to be a long time before anyone starts paying $250 for tickets to Taylor Swift at Staples again. I can easily make the jump here about how you could pull this off in a AR/VR setting, and not just satisfy your fans, but make a fortune.”
Star Wars In Fortnite. Fortnite
Fortnite has been the venue of many other brand marketing events such as Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker teaser trailer party, in which players could fight with a lightsaber—-every Star Wars fans dream. In addition, it also hosted an Avengers event in which players could play as Thanos or use Avenger’s weapons. The immersion makes you the star of the movie. You control the entertainment. The device to do it? It’s in front of you. It’s everywhere when you know about it. And now you do.
This story was written with Brandon Cloobeck.
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e92f1954405fb38fe650ace220545e96 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2020/07/17/this-week-in-xr-oculus-and-sony-vr-ramp-up-production-of-vr-devices-jios-ar-glasses/ | This Week In XR: Oculus And Sony Ramp Up VR Headset Production, Meet JioGlass | This Week In XR: Oculus And Sony Ramp Up VR Headset Production, Meet JioGlass
The $399 Oculus Quest is finally back in stock on Amazon as Facebook and Sony are increasing game hardware production. Facebook is pushing for a 50% increase from a year ago for its VR devices, pushing production to 2 million units. Sony is increasing production plans for the PlayStation 5 to around 9 million units, from the roughly 6 million units it had planned in spring.
Last week Linden Lab was acquired by an investment group led by Randy Waterfield and Brad Oberwager. There are still some regulatory hurdles remaining as Second Life has a bank, so transactions are subject to review. It seems like CEO Ebbie Alterberg still has a job. So maybe it’s simply a matter of swapping VC for Equity Investors, and nothing else changes. I guess founder Philip Rosedale gets a few more motorcycles.
Ubimax X-suite is designed to allow industrial workers to keep their hands free. Ubimax
TeamViewer purchasing Ubimax for 136.5 million euros. They X-Picked themselves a winner (X Pick being one of Ubimax’s key products ;)
Zoom expands into hardware. Zoom will soon be shipping a new Zoom For Home device, a 27-inch touchscreen display with three wide-angle cameras that comes with Zoom pre-installed. The device was conceived in partnership with DTEN and is available for pre-order for $599 with the first units shipping in August.
Meet JioGlass. Jio
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Jio Tesseract announces JioGlass mixed reality glasses. The MR glasses connect to a smartphone via USB-C and look similar to Nreal’s attempt at stylish frames. The Jio group is India’s largest player in the mixed reality space. Google recently announced a $4.5 billion dollar investment in the company, as well as an investment from Facebook. More from Shodu.
Voodle launches tiktok style app for the workplace. The Voodle app allows co-workers to send short videos to each other similar to social platforms like Snapchat or TikTok.Video(Vimeo):
DreamWorld AR has crowdfunded nearly $200k so far for plug and play 4K AR glasses. Earlier this week, DreamWorld AR launched an Indiegogo campaign for its DreamGlass 4K AR glasses that act as a large portable 4K TV that can connect to most any living room device, game console, or PC. Their previous product, DreamGlass Air, was successfully funded to the tune of $1 million in crowdfunding last year. You can pre-order the new 4K version on the Indiegogo page starting at $379.
ENGAGE VR education and corporate training platform is now available on mobile devices. Attendees can now join virtual events hosted on the platform via VR and mobile devices. More from CEO David Whelan.
Virtual beings zoom screen shot Fable Studios
The Virtual Beings Summit took place this week. Organized by Fable Studios and Ed Saachi, in an effort to “walk the walk,” the talks took place in unlikely places like “Animal Crossing,” a social avatar game for the Nintendo Switch.
Pico G2 “4K S” and G2 “4K” Enterprise Pico
Pico announced two new 3DoF VR headsets. The two new headsets, the G2 “4K S” and G2 “4K” Enterprise, include a larger battery, more internal storage, and a PU material meant for easier sanitation. The “4K S” model is available now for $375, while the Enterprise model will be available in Q3 for $450.
Snap announces new Yellow Collabs program for companies aiming to integrate with the Snap platform. The program is focused around many of the new features announced at the recent Snap Partner Summit and lasts 13 weeks. From September 21 - December 18 2020 participating companies will work closely with Snap to create new integrations using the platform. Applications for Yellow Collabs open Monday morning at 6am PST via this link.
Snoop Dogg gets the AR treatment on the 19 Crimes Cali Red wine bottle. The AR activation was created by Tactic on the Living Wine Labels app.
Mojo Vision shared a report on the spike in consumer technology adoption during COVID. Some highlights include 53% of correspondents said they started using virtual communications tools and services during the pandemic, and 76% of First Adopters and 41% of Later Adopters said they are likely to continue buying and trying new devices, apps or technology- driven services once the COVID-19 crisis subsides.
Fun Spot amusement park builders partner with VRStudios. The partnership includes a new 2-8 player VR experience Fun Spot intends to integrate into their amusement park repertoire.
Cleanbox has collaborated with VRstudios to provide best practice guidelines for hygiene and decontamination procedures during COVID. The aim is to help location-based entertainment companies with VR attractions understand ways to reopen safely, and give their customers confidence through a vetted sanitization process. This guide is based on data and science from independent lab testing, CDC and EPA guidelines and manufacturer recommendations for the safe use of XR in attractions operations.
In case you missed it, we dropped two awesome stories this week. The first is about how not even airline executives want to risk travel today. KLM uses Glue's VR collaboration system to save time and money. The second story is about Ostendo’s astonishing 150 degree field of view see-through AR optics which may accelerate the development of the industry.
What We’re Reading:
Why Virtual Conferences Are Here To Stay (Entrepreneur Magazine)
“This Week in XR” is written and edited with Michael Eichenseer.
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181d28bd70c6470a85b13eaa916c9a49 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2020/08/07/this-week-in-xr-tik-tok-makes-music-as-instagram-reels-more-on-epics-epic-raise/ | This Week In XR: Tencent Banished, Instagram Unspools Reels, Tik Tok Stars The Weekend | This Week In XR: Tencent Banished, Instagram Unspools Reels, Tik Tok Stars The Weekend
NEW YORK, NY - SEPTEMBER 29: The Weeknd performs onstage during the 2018 Global Citizen Festival: ... [+] Be The Generation in Central Park on September 29, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Global Citizen) Getty Images for Global Citizen
President Donald Trump signed an executive order to prohibit US companies from doing business with Tencent, which owns WeChat and nearly 50% of Epic Games, which makes Fortnite and Unreal Engine. Tik Tok has until September 20th to sell to Microsoft or another American company or it, too, will be banned. Is this because some Kpop fans on Tik Tok spoofed a Trump rally in Tulsa?
The Weekend will perform in a virtual TikTok concert on August 7th. The Weekend will be represented by a digital avatar in what TikTok is calling its “first-ever in-app cross reality experience.” Viewers will able to interact with the singer as he performs. WaveXR is involved so it’s sure to be full of amazing art, and exude their cool vibe (they just raised a bunch of dough for their eponymous VR music venue). It’s hard not to feel they are supplanting what used to be the exclusive provenance of television shows like The Tonight Shows, or Saturday Night Live.
Introducing Reels from Instagram. Instagram
Facebook's Instagram is not tied to the railroad tracks waiting for a Tik Tok to run over them. They've launched Reels this week, and early reviews are good. BUT it must hurt to have your launch of bedroom dancing, talking animals, and backyard stunts pushed out of the headlines by Tik Tok’s The Weekend concert announcement. If Tik Tok planned that, it was very well played.
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Epic Games announces $1.78 Billion funding round. The funding round puts the Fortnite maker’s valuation at $17.3 billion. The round includes a previously announced $250 million investment from Sony. Control of the company remains in the hands of its founder and CEO Tim Sweeney.
Zoom stickers. My favorites is "The Brady Bunch" with... YOU! in the middle. Sure to be popular. And ... [+] fun. Zoom
Zoom is launching an expanded version of it’s virtual backgrounds, using its image recognition software to add Snap-like face filters. Although they announced this yesterday, there’s no word on when it will show up on my Zoom app.
HTC cofounder Peter Chou announced he is building XRspace Manova - a VR hardware and virtual world based on 5G. Only Venture Beat seems to have picked up this up the announcement of a new HMD integrated into a fully embodied virtual world, where you can buy real estate and live in a semi-realistic graphic novel, which appears to be very much like our world without any details like bathrooms.
Building a headset, even one based on an existing Qualcomm reference design, requires a boat load of cash. It takes years to build a software ecosystem. Longer if you do it yourself. No word on how much money Chou has raised for the venture. I feel like I've seen this movie before. But maybe this remake will have a better ending.
Speaking of VR worlds... where is Facebook's Horizon? They were vague on the launch date. If it's not late, they announced too soon.
ScopeAR partners with ServiceMax for improved real-time augmented reality work instructions. ScopeAR will integrate ServiceMax’s Field Service Management platform into their WorkLink platform. The integration aims to improve insights gained from servicing equipment out in the field by expanding the data gathered as technicians go about their daily tasks.
Rock Paper Reality partners with Siduri and Microsoft Mixed Reality Capture Studio to bring wine bottles to life. In the volumetrically captured experience, the Sonoma County winery’s founder steps out of a wine bottle and shares his passion for pinot noir. Thanks to 8th Wall the experience can be seen by simply scanning a QR code with your smartphone.
Pistol Whip, created by Cloudhead Games just released on PSVR and makes for an action packed bullet fueled workout. The game is a unique blend of an on-rails shooter, coupled with a synthwave aesthetic, music, and great gun feel, says Superjump reviewer Josh Bgad. Shoot and punch your way through an onslaught of bad guys while racking up points to the electronic sound track.
What We’re Reading
The Economy of the Metaverse | Interview with Epic CEO Tim Sweeney
US Businesses are slow to adopt AI.
Study says people work longer and send more emails while working from home during the pandemic.
Mojo Vision’s AR contact lenses are coming sooner than you think.
“This Week in XR” is written and edited with Michael Eichenseer.
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c6b8fd60c67218110b4580d724fb5cbb | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2021/02/01/how-computer-vision-and-ai-make-new-revenue-from-old-media/ | How Computer Vision And AI Make New Revenue From Old Media | How Computer Vision And AI Make New Revenue From Old Media
Ryff is an LA startup that has developed a system that uses computer vision, artificial intelligence and machine learning to gain a semantic understanding of film, TV, sports and user generated content like YouTube. Ryff’s new Placer platform is able to ingest large volumes of finished content to create a brand new kind of advertising inventory. As the value of interruptive commercials declines, integrated marketing, better known as product placement, has increased in value. However, it is expensive, and its implementation disruptive. The upcoming Bond movie, delayed by the pandemic, had to do expensive re-shoots to keep the products placed up-to-date.
Using “sympathetic integration” Ryff is able to analyze hundreds of thousands of hours of content. Placer is able to transcribe dialog , create scene metadata, detect what is being said and by who, and how the scene is shot. Virtual Placement Opportunities (VPO’s) are produced automatically and delivered to content owners and brands. They can then approve scenes that are best suited to the needs of their brand. Ryff is then able to digitally insert any brand or product into any ingested content, at scale. Through Ryff’s technology, promotions are always current, culturally and contextually relevant.
Roy Taylor, founder and CEO of Ryff Spencer Stephens
Roy Taylor, founder and CEO of Ryff, opened NVIDIA in Europe in 1998 and went on to form AMD Studios in Hollywood in 2016. Using his insights into visual computing and entertainment he started Ryff in 2018. Ryff has since raised $8.4M in funding and is supported by Chicago-based Valor VC, the late Paul Allen’s Vulcan Ventures, MaC [sic] Ventures, and Moneta, a Sacramento-based VC.
Same scene, same driver, different cars. Ryff
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CTO Susan Hewitt, who is based in Cambridge UK, joined the company in Aug 2018, a few months after Ryff was formed. A semiconductor engineer by trade, she has worked at Texas Instruments, ATI, ARM and AMD , which is where she met Taylor. After years of working in big organizations, Hewitt told us, startup life is a big change of pace. “The exciting thing about a startup is that you have a blank slate, you’re not building on top of choices other people made years ago. We’re going a mile a minute, and that’s exciting. .” Cambridge is ground zero for AI and computer vision technology, attracting FAANG companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon, whose offices are down the street. The University, and the town, create this unique incubator for new technology. “It’s a small intimate location,” Hewitt explained. “And that provides an advantage over some of larger cities where all the companies are spread out over a wider area. There are just so many opportunities to learn and grow.”
Anshel Sag, Sr. Analyst for Moor Insights and Strategy, thinks Ryff has “an enormous potential opportunity that slides between existing markets. It’s most useful in a streaming world. Content owners can seamlessly, and temporarily or not, add to library content. This opens a new, significant revenue opportunity where there was none. There are so many players in the media space that can take advantage of this technology.”
The new James Bond film, “No Time to Die,” was scheduled to be released in 2020 but was delayed due to the pandemic. Tech Radar just reported the producers are re-shooting key scenes “in a desperate attempt to save time-sensitive product placement deals.” Sponsors, which include Nokia, Omega watches, Adidas footwear and Bollinger champagne, didn’t want one-year-old products in the film, according to the widely circulated story. The producers could potentially have saved millions of dollars using Ryff’s technology. In fact, Ryff can ensure every gadget from every Bond film ever made is replaced with newer models. Maybe Nokia, Omega, Adidas and Bollinger would like to be in “Dr. No,” too.
“Traditional methods of product placement - pay now, see placement after the content is distributed which can mean months or even years, is both cumbersome and inefficient,'' said Taylor. “This promises no less a revolution to advertising than happened to books with Amazon and Music with iTunes.”
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c55b41af3d89b4fa0bd9316aace859e4 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2021/04/09/this-week-in-xr-apple-and-epic-sharpen-their-knives/ | This Week In XR: Apple And Epic Sharpen Their Knives | This Week In XR: Apple And Epic Sharpen Their Knives
This illustration picture shows Epic Games' Fortnite loading on a smartphone in Los Angeles on ... [+] August 14, 2020. - Apple and Google on August 13, 2020 pulled video game sensation Fortnite from their mobile app shops after its maker Epic Games released an update that dodges revenue sharing with the tech giants. (Photo by Chris DELMAS / AFP) (Photo by CHRIS DELMAS/AFP via Getty Images) AFP via Getty Images
Apple says Epic's Fortnite lawsuit is a marketing stunt to revive 'flagging interest' in the game. Apple believes this lawsuit is Epic’s “project liberty” media strategy, despite Epic’s claim regarding the App Store raising prices due to Apple’s share of profit. The trial begins next month in California.
TAMPA, FL - FEBRUARY 07: Super Bowl MVP Tom Brady (12) of the Buccaneers accepts the Lombardi Trophy ... [+] from General Manager Jason Licht after the Super Bowl LV game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on February 7, 2021 at Raymond James Stadium, in Tampa, FL. (Photo by Cliff Welch/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images) Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Football legend Tom Brady launching an NFT company for autographs. It makes perfect sense, finally. What possession made of atoms needs an infallible chain of ownership - a blockchain - or NFT - more than an autograph? Perhaps the Mona Lisa? Or, as Philip Rosedale posited in this 2017 Forbes interview, a Ferrari. How would there otherwise be scarcity?
Vuzix Partners with TechSee to bring AI-powered visual assistance to the enterprise market over Vuzix' Smart Glasses. The combined solution will support multiple industries such as manufacturing, insurance, and consumer electronics. The integration allows TechSee’s computer vision AI to be integrated into Vuzix’s hardware and will eventually be available in the App Store.
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HP Reverb G2 Omnicept Launches in May for $1249. The new headset is a professional version of the recently released Reverb G2 last year. Some new additions to the headset are features such as pupil and eye tracking, heart rate, and facial tracking with an extra mounted unit.
The Unity Cube was created to make a point. Tony Vitillo
The Unity Cube is an experiment from developer Tony “SkarredGhost” Vitillo to test the limits of what Oculus will allow into the App Lab program. Vitillo submitted a fully functional application which simply presents the user with a cube in a blank environment—and Oculus accepted it.
Introducing the eGlass: a hybrid classroom solution. The product is a new form of classroom delivery in which a teacher can draw on a transparent piece of glass for students in the classroom. Then, the image on the glass can be flipped in the conference call for students learning remotely. The goal of the product is to make learning more effective and engaging while we are all still remote.
Apple patents suggest AR Smartglasses will use head-worn haptics to guide user attention. The “micro-gestures” will use AR input to create controllers out of the user's fingers if positioned a certain way. The haptics and micro-gestures hope to guide and control user attention to objects outside of their field of view.
VR pioneer names most influential in VR 2021. HTC Vive
Guess who’s number #19 on HTC Vive’s list of its Top 100 VR Influencers? That’s right, baby. Thank you.
This Week in XR is now a podcast hosted by Paramount’s Futurist Ted Schilowitz and Charlie Fink, the author of this weekly column. You can find it on podcasting platforms Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube. We got a nice new logo, too.
What We’re Reading
March AR Roundup Most comprehensive in the business by Tom Emrich of 8th Wall.
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5353292ef3db9bc638d4efafc67629f8 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2021/04/16/this-week-in-xr-fortnites-billion-dollar-metaverse-surgical-robots-xr-art-and-immersive-concerts/?sh=750af936240d | This Week In XR: Fortnite’s Billion Dollar Metaverse, Surgical Robots, XR Art, Immersive Concerts, Nvidia Too | This Week In XR: Fortnite’s Billion Dollar Metaverse, Surgical Robots, XR Art, Immersive Concerts, Nvidia Too
Travis Scott in Astronomical from Epic Games/Fortnite. Epic Games
Epic Games Plants Metaverse Flag On Fortnite Island. The maker of the mega-hit game and Unreal Engine game development platform has landed another cool billion in a new round of funding. The company says they’re building of the metaverse, an interconnected platform for games, e commerce, social media and entertainment. It values Epic at $28.7 billion, but a public offering might bring 5x that number. This kind of late stage, more mature money from Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC, GIC, T. Rowe Price Associates, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, BlackRock, Park West, KKR, AllianceBernstein, Altimeter, Franklin Templeton, and Luxor Capital, suggests a public offering of an epic (not a pun) nature may be immanent.
Nvidia introduces the Omniverse. This almost got past us as it was introduced at at Nvidia’s GTC Conference earlier this week and it seemed a bit too “inside baseball,” but this story shows how it’s not. This metaverse for engineers, based on open source platform from Pixar, is enabling BMW to test a real factory as a digital twin before building its twin IRL.
Vicarious Surgical hopes to raise $460M for their VR surgery platform. The company plans on going public on the NYSE with a $1.1B evaluation. If this happens, they will be the second VR unicorn company. Their surgical robots use VR to bring surgeons inside a patient to do minimally invasive surgery.
The world in one screen. Virtualitics
Virtualitics secured $18 Million to support the defense industry expand AI-driven analytics and 3D visualization technology. Virtualitics is letting people transport into VR to view data with other users. The Air Force is using Virtualitics for predictive maintenance of aircraft, ensuring military readiness and lower cost.
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AmazeVR raises $9.5M to Bring Immersive Concerts to VR. The goal of the company, similar to WaveXR’s now defunct VR unit, hopes to provide fans close-up personal views of pre-recorded concert content with CGI effects included. The concerts will be coming to VR headsets, pop-up events, and movie theaters later in 2021.
Art anywhere you want it. Snapchat
Snapchat brings AR monuments across Los Angeles. The monuments are a partnership between Snap and LACMA to showcase artists and lens creators, celebrating diverse histories across Los Angeles from a variety of different cultures. Those in LA can see the landmarks on their Snap map within the platform, though anyone can experience the AR landmarks from around the world.
Quest 2 is getting a huge update. The update introduces wireless PC VR, 120Hz Refresh, and keyboard and desk tracking. Keyboard and desk tracking allows users to type and mark their desk in their guardian while in VR, bringing to life their virtual office concept from last year. The wireless PC VR, named Air Link, streams VR to your computer, albeit you have an extremely stable Wi-Fi connection.
The Pico NEO 3 Specs were revealed last week. The headset, which will be releasing May 10th, 2021, will have a Snapdragon XR2 chipset (the same chip Oculus 2 has), three IPD adjustments, four wide-angle cameras for positioning and capturing, a curved 90Hz screen, and a WiFi 6 antenna. The headset will be released outside of Asia sometime during the summer.
The promise of VR is everywhere. VZFit
VZfit launches on the Oculus app store. VirZOOM, the company behind the app, is dedicating to transforming the exercise VR space. The app allows users to workout and experience the world on Oculus Quest 1 and 2. Users can connect their headset to most smart bikes or workout through a full-body exercise.
This Week in XR is now a podcast hosted by Paramount’s Futurist Ted Schilowitz and Charlie Fink, the author of this weekly column. You can find it on podcasting platforms Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube. We got a nice new logo, too.
What We’re Reading
A Big Bang Week for the Metaverse from Dean Takahasi’s Deanbeat (Venturebeat)
What is Epic Games' Metaverse, and Is It Worth Billions? Rebekah Valentine (IGN)
The Best Thing To Do In VR Is Work Out (The Verge)
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ce150f8c283eb1e203fef8fa5550bdf4 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2021/04/27/campfire-hi-res-xr-design-system-emerges-from-stealth/?sh=32a125d85ff3 | Campfire Hi Res XR Design System Emerges From Stealth | Campfire Hi Res XR Design System Emerges From Stealth
The hardware components of the Campfire 3D design system are the HMD, the tabletop cons and the ... [+] pack, which clips onto a smartphone. Campfire
Campfire emerged from Stealth today to introduce its new eponymous AR and VR headset, which features a 92 degree field of view. They are targeting 3D design and engineering professionals. The PC-tethered headset is around 500 grams, pleasingly distributed with a nylon body and head strap. A tabletop accessory called a “console” acts like a holographic projector that can be shared by any number of simultaneous users in remote locations. The clarity is equal to that of expensive, high-end industrial HMDS from Varjo and Xtal. You can lean into a car model and see the writing on the tiny dials.
Jay Wright, co-founder and CEO of Campfire. Campfire
San Mateo-based Campfire quietly developed their system in stealth over the past two years with a team of fifteen engineers led by a familiar face, co-founder and CEO Jay Wright. He famously created Vuforia at Qualcomm. Vuforia enabled mobile AR with computer vision years before Apple and Google introduced ARkit and ARcore. When PTC bought Vuforia from Qualcomm, Wright went with it. Today, millions of AR apps have been developed with Vuforia, including both of my AR enabled books. Wright introduced Vuforia Chalk, a solution for remote assistance, right around the time the company was sold to PTC, which was the last time we spoke, at AWE 2017. Since then, Wright has been quietly working to create an entirely new approach to the 3D design use case for enterprises, creating new devices and applications.
Campfire can accommodate a limitless number of simultaneous users on any device. Campfire
“Campfire was designed from the ground up for 3D design and engineering workflows,” Wright told us during the demo last week. “The addition of our system to the design process results in massive productivity gains in developing everything from consumer goods to industrial products.” Wright worked with Frog Design, the company which famously designed early Apple products, to create the Campfire hardware. In fact, Frog is using Campfire today to develop products for other clients. “Campfire is like powerpoint or Google docs for 3D,” Wright said.
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Campfire provides a whole system, hardware and software, to clients who pay a monthly subscription fee. The component parts are (1) the super hi res 92 FOV Campfire headset. The see through display becomes a VR display by clipping on a cover. (2) The Campfire Console is the new tabletop review device that acts like a holographic projector and joins together globally-distributed users. (3) The Campfire Pack clips onto a smartphone and turns it into a controller. (4) Campfire Scenes, which enable users to load and manipulate 3D models (they’re compatible with forty formats) for quick reviews or elaborate presentations. Finally, (5) the Campfire Viewer enables users to work alone or together during video calls, using a Campfire Headset, tablet, or phone. It’s also compatible with Teams and Zoom.
Campfire raised more than $8M in seed funding from OTV, Kli Capital, Tuesday Capital, and others and expects to ship in the fall. The Campfire system, made entirely in the US, is available for preview through Campfire’s website, where those interested can sign up.
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d73b76f66ed64cec2aadd32a7ce2df5c | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2021/05/04/lightform-turning-surfaces-into-screens/ | Lightform Turning Surfaces Into Screens | Lightform Turning Surfaces Into Screens
Lightform, the San-Francisco projection mapping company, today introduced Project LFX, a platform for steerable projected interfaces for the home. LFX has three different devices, each capable of turning any surface into a screen. The company demonstrated three different designs: a ceiling-mounted light fixture and two table-top lamps. Each device contains a projector for display, cameras for 3D scanning and people tracking, and a combination of mirrors and motors to steer around the space. Users interact with the projections using voice or with small hand held controller they call a wand.
LFX Ceiling 3D printed prototype. Lightform
“With steerable projection, we can summon a computer onto any surface,” the company said in a statement. “This steerable interface can follow us through the room, popping up on the closest surface. We can turn our art into a sound-reactive dance club. We can give every smart home device a large display. Project LFX is the magic of an AR headset, without a pound of magic on your face.”
L to R: Lightform co-founders, Brett Jones, CEO Kevin Karsch, CTO, and Raj Sodhi, CSO. Lightform
“Project LFX shows a future where digital experiences are shared, seamless, and a little more magical.” Said co-founder and CEO Brett Jones. Jones founded the company with CSO Raj Sodhi and CTO Kevin Karsch in 2014. The three co-founders of Lightform have PhDs in computer vision from UIUC. They previously worked on projection mapping at Walt Disney Imagineering and invented IllumiRoom and RoomAlive, two Microsoft Research projects that broke video games out of TVs and turned entire living rooms into immersive, projected AR experiences.
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The company hopes that by sharing LFX re-imagines the future of the smart home with steerable, projected interfaces following you around the home, controlled by voice, utilizing computer vision to understand where you are, and locating the most convenient surface nearby turning empty surfaces into large displays.
Lightform has raised $18M from Baidu Ventures, Amazon Alexa Fund, Lux Capital, Dolby Family Ventures, and other investors. The company has sold over 11,000 units to designers creating bespoke projected augmented reality experiences for events, hospitality, retail, and use at home. Along with other location-based XR entertainment providers, Lightform has accelerated the development of a home line business while waiting for the live events business to recover from COVID.
Jones told us it was too early to say when the LFX device will be commercially available, and what the price point would be. The company hopes to create an entry level device that can retail for $1,000 or less.
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a9cb8539fdadb7bec4788c74e680e9f1 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlottekiang/2020/01/16/a-freshly-cooked-meal-in-space-it-could-happen-sooner-than-you-think/ | A Freshly Cooked Meal In Space? It Could Happen Sooner Than You Think. | A Freshly Cooked Meal In Space? It Could Happen Sooner Than You Think.
NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren corrals the supply of fresh fruit that arrived on the Kounotori 5 H-II ... [+] Transfer Vehicle (HTV-5.) NASA
With both NASA’s Commercial Crew Program and Virgin Galactic on track to launch crew into space this year, the 2020s are on track to become the decade of space tourism. In anticipation of the industry’s expansion, companies such as Bigelow Aerospace have gone as far as to design hotels that will house private space travelers during their stays on orbit. Virgin Galactic, in turn, has a waiting list more than 600 people long for its first suborbital tourist flights.
As a 2010 study by The Tauri Group found, the main customer base for private spaceflight is high net-worth individuals, many of whom are seeking a new luxury travel experience after patronizing the world’s finest hotels and resorts. These individuals, who are willing to pay between $250,000 and $25M USD for a private spaceflight experience, are accustomed to white glove treatment: Not only are they visiting a destination when they travel, but they expect the cream of the crop in accommodation, amenities, and dining during their stay.
Various examples of encapsulated space food including a space shuttle food tray. NASA Johnson Space Center
Given that the majority of astronaut food is currently freeze-dried and consumed in packages similar to military meal ready-to-eat packets (MREs), private spaceflight providers will need to consider what they can do to help the dining experience meet the rest of the trip’s luxury standards. Food, as it turns out, is one of the most multidimensional and fundamentally human experiences on Earth, and the psychological benefits of sitting down for a meal or drink should not be underestimated. To date, the design of space food has rightfully focused on nutrition and convenience, as the majority of spacefarers have been government astronauts with scientific mission objectives. However, for space tourism to gain traction among the ultra wealthy, space vehicle operators must begin thinking of their flights as a premium passenger experience rather than a set of minimum requirements.
How, exactly, can the industry make the leap from bagged fruit to fine dining? Certainly, some technological advances will be necessary, some of which are already in work by the scientific research community. It may still be too early to envision a five star meal service in space, but a look at some of the major space food experiments conducted over the past few years can give us a sneak peek at what lies ahead.
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1. Cookies In Space
A chocolate chip cookie was baked aboard the International Space Station in December 2019 using Zero ... [+] G Kitchen's microgravity oven. Zero G Kitchen
DoubleTree by Hilton has long touted freshly baked cookies as its signature welcome amenity. Now, the company has teamed up with Zero G Kitchen to create Cookies In Space, a joint venture in which the DoubleTree’s famous chocolate chip cookies recently became the first food to be baked in space.
Although baking cookies may hardly seem like advanced science, baking food in space is no trivial feat. Traditional ovens rely on convection - the natural process where hot air rises and cool air falls - which does not occur in the absence of gravity. Additionally, being in microgravity presents the extra challenge of keeping food stationary while it cooks. All of this must be accomplished on a limited power supply so as not to blow a fuse on the ISS. To do so, Zero G’s oven uses a silicone frame to hold objects in place during baking. The oven’s cylindrical heating coils surround the food at the center of the oven’s chamber and rise to temperature more slowly than a normal oven to accommodate ISS power constraints.
Five chunks of dough in silicone pouches were sent to the space station, awaiting baking in Zero G ... [+] Kitchen's oven. DoubleTree by Hilton
Zero G’s oven was built in partnership with Nanoracks, the company responsible for commercial plug-and-play payload interfaces aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The oven is the first of a series of appliances that Zero G intends to develop as part of its space kitchen, which the company states will eventually include “a refrigerator, blender, slow cooker, and more.”
The oven and supplies were launched to the ISS aboard a Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft in November, where they were received by the ISS crew and used to bake cookies in late December. The finished cookies were returned to Earth with SpaceX’s CRS-18 mission earlier this month, where they were be analyzed to inform future attempts at baking in space.
2. ISSPresso and Space-Certified Coffee Cups
ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti takes a sip of espresso from the zero-gravity cup. NASA
For many adults, there’s nothing quite like starting out the day with a fresh cup of Joe. However, being in space can get in the way of this morning ritual, since until recently astronauts were forced to consume all liquids from plastic bladders to prevent them from floating away in the microgravity environment.
Specially-designed 3D-printed Space Cups are being used on the International Space Station. collectSPACE
In 2008, Oregon-based company IRPI teamed up with NASA astronaut Don Pettit in search of a better solution. The team came up with a coffee cup design that exploited the effects of surface tension and wetting angles to recreate the experience of drinking from a mug on Earth. When Italian company Lavazza launched a modified version of its expresso machine (dubbed “ISSPresso”) to the Station in 2015, IRPI saw a perfect opportunity to test out its design. The company flew 6 of its cups as part of NASA’s 2015 Capillary Beverage Experiment, and upon successful checkout by the ISS crew, the cups officially became space-qualified hardware.
3. Vostok Space Beer
Unlike Ninkasi Beer (made with yeast that traveled to space back in 2015) or Bridgeport Brewing’s ... [+] The First IPA (craft beer that was launched into space in early 2018), Vostok is the first beer designed for consumption in space. VOSTOK SPACE BEER
Like having a morning coffee, sitting down for a cold beer is one of the most universal experiences known to humanity. However, beer bottles suffer from the same problems as coffee cups in microgravity: The open top bottles cannot prevent beer from floating away haphazardly. Additionally, gases and liquids do not separate in microgravity, the bubbles in beer tend to stick together and form one huge ball of gas surrounded by a shell of beer, leading to an uncomfortable (albeit harmless) condition called “wet burp” among many who ingest it.
In 2010, the founders of Australian companies 4 Pines Brewing Company and Saber Astronautics began collaborating on a beer that could surmount these problems. To reduce the product’s potential to cause wet burp, carbonation was reduced while other flavors were strengthened to complement the drink’s smaller bubbles. The bottle was then fitted with an insert similar to a rocket fuel tank, utilizing a shaped insert to wick fuel in the direction of the outlet “valve.”
Inside the space beer bottle Vostok Space Beer
In 2018, the team launched an Indiegogo campaign to fund testing and flight certification for their product. The campaign was unfortunately unsuccessful, raising only 3% of its $1M USD goal. Nonetheless, the team has pressed forward with its efforts, which have included 2 crewed parabolic flights to validate the bottle’s usability.
4. NASA’s VEGGIE Experiment
A picture of Tokyo Bekana Chinese cabbage growing in a NASA Veggie unit. NASA
As depicted in The Martian, one of the greatest challenges associated with long-duration space missions is the difficulty of obtaining food in space. For most of the space program’s history, all food consumed by astronauts has been packaged and shipped in from Earth. The lack of direct sunlight in most space habitats and the scarcity of water away from Earth present significant challenges in implementing a space-based crop-growing infrastructure.
Although growing crops on Earth allows humans to continue following processes that are well understood, the price-per-pound of launching cargo (currently just under $30,000 USD per pound using a SpaceX Dragon capsule) into orbit prevents humans from expanding its long-term presence in space using these methods. The ISS program currently costs NASA between $3 and $4 billion USD per year to sustain a maximum of 6 people on orbit, and a large portion of these costs is attributable to the cargo missions used to resupply the Space Station with food and other astronaut provisions. For the industry to reduce costs enough to make space tourism profitable, a more sustainable method of food production is needed on orbit.
In the early 2000s, NASA began testing out potential solutions using its Vegetable Production System (VEGGIE). The deployable aquaponic plant growth unit is capable of producing salad-type crops using its integrated lighting and nutrient delivery system, and relies on the ISS cabin environment for temperature control and carbon dioxide supply. In addition to supplementing the Station’s food supply with fresh vegetables, the VEGGIE unit has the potential to produce mental health benefits associated with recreational gardening.
As of January 2020, 4 VEGGIE experiments have been launched to the ISS. Though no results have been released to the public regarding the psychological benefits of the unit, experiments continue to measure the effect of lighting, fertilizer, and environmental conditions on the quality of crops produced.
As these experiments continue in orbit, researchers continue to examine the effect of food on both individual happiness and group dynamics. While the psychological effects of eating in space have yet to be quantified, facilities such as the NASA-funded Hawai’i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) have conducted initial ground-based observations on the benefits of freshly prepared group meals during long-term confinement. Some preliminary research has shown that individuals who consumed food they liked experienced improved morale and productivity, and that groups who prepared meals together experienced improved team cohesion.
The participants of 2015's 8 month HI-SEAS mission. NASA
Although not all of the findings of space analog research are directly applicable to space tourists, it is clear that the quality of one’s meals has a direct effect on satisfaction with one’s living conditions. As humanity expands its presence beyond Earth, care must be taken to ensure that human factors are not ignored in the design of everyday experiences. If new technologies must be developed to accommodate human preferences, investments should be made accordingly years ahead of the technology’s planned use.
The next decade will undoubtedly be a defining moment for space tourism, and commercial spaceflight companies will be forced to make an important decision: Will space tourism be a luxury only in price, or also in quality of passenger experience?
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7de370c5d40a7908f80dfb3c8c9469ac | https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlottekiang/2020/01/23/how-under-30-honoree-jenny-xu-found-her-niche-in-video-games/?sh=37afb5932b06 | How Under 30 Honoree Jenny Xu Found Her Niche In Video Games | How Under 30 Honoree Jenny Xu Found Her Niche In Video Games
Jenny Xu Jenny Xu
Jenny Xu has never been one to toot her own horn. During her childhood in Northern California, she recalls being a “shy kid who loved drawing and wanted to be an artist.” Her fascination with games such as Pokemon and Neopets inspired her to create her own digital art, which she began posting anonymously to DeviantArt in middle school. When she was 12, her dad gifted her a copy of Adobe Flash, and upon using it to combine her art with a few lines of copy and pasted code, she unknowingly created her first video game. This game became the first of many, and Jenny soon earned herself a sizeable following within the online gaming community under the alias of “Chibixi.”
As Jenny immersed herself in game development, she began to attend trade shows and STEM pitch competitions during her free time to learn more about the industry. Feeling embarrassed by what she thought was a “nerdy” hobby, she never discussed her game development ambitions with her friends during high school. Looking back now, she realizes she was lucky to get into the field early in life, long before she knew how skewed the gender ratio was among developers. Jenny, now 22, has developed a total of 127 original video games and 10 mobile games over the past 10 years.
“When I first started creating games, I hid behind my internet alias and would rarely talk about my games offline. As I got more involved with the online gaming community, I realized that everyone thought I was a guy, and I never really corrected them. To this day, many people I interact with online assume I am a man or only an artist, even though I always write that I am a woman and a developer in my profile.”
As a junior in high school, Jenny founded JCSoft, Inc. to release and distribute her games. To date, her mobile games have received more than 9.1 million downloads in the Google Play and iPhone App stores. Among her favorites is Seven Photos, a murder mystery game in which the player’s character wakes up with no memory and no possessions except a camera with seven photos in its reel. These photos must be used to extract clues in order to determine how the murder happened.
“A girl who had played [Seven Photos] once emailed me an essay about how she was so inspired by it that she decided to go into the gaming industry. Seeing that impact is really valuable to me and really drives me to keep going.”
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Wanting to learn more about the science behind game design, Jenny enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after high school. Though she kept an open mind with regards to her future career, she knew early on that her dream was to launch her own game studio. Even then, she was unsure whether her games were worth discussing with her college friends, so she continued to compartmentalize her personal life and her gaming pursuits until she was selected as one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in Games during her junior year.
“After I was recognized in Forbes, I was kind of forced to talk about it. People started asking me more about my games, and I finally realized that people liked what I made and thought it was cool.”
With this newfound confidence, Jenny became more vocal about her work in games during her senior year at MIT. She gave talked at the annual Game Developers Conference, volunteered at various gaming summits, and founded Game On Girls, a student organization that connected local Boston game developers with female MIT students. The club hosted dinners and “speed mentoring” events where students were matched with industry mentors based on their interests. Though other gaming affinity clubs already existed at MIT, Jenny hoped to increase discourse with the industry and to foster mentor/mentee relationships like the ones that helped her early in her own career.
“When I first started pursuing game development, I was lucky to meet a few other women at industry events who ended up serving as mentors for years afterwards. They gave me confidence that I was making a difference, and that I wasn’t just an amateur. I stayed in contact with some of them throughout high school and MIT, and I’m very grateful to all of them for their help.”
In December 2018, Jenny completed her bachelor’s degree one semester early with a major in Computer Science and a minor in Comparative Media Studies. Since then, she has continued her work as Founder and Lead Game Developer at JCSoft and has also started up a new gaming studio, Talofa Games, where she collaborates with her family on new game releases and hopes to hire her first employees in the near future. In November 2019, JCSoft won Niantic’s Beyond Reality Developer Contest with Run To My Heart, a new augmented reality (AR) fitness game developed using Niantic’s Real World Platform technology.
JCSoft accepts the grand prize at Niantic's Beyond Reality Developer Contest Jenny Xu
As one of the gaming industry’s youngest trailblazers, Jenny encourages others to pursue their dreams, even if they don’t yet feel they are ready.
“If you want to do something, just start doing it. There’s a lot of initial activation energy needed to start a project, but sometimes if you just start it, that’s all you need to get rolling. Only after creating little things along the way and putting yourself out there are you going to get better. Remember: You don’t have to be perfect.”
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d2f65049f15773dc831b4b00b12cef71 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2015/07/29/recycling-riches-how-australian-billionaire-anthony-pratt-is-getting-wealthier-off-americans-trash/ | Recycling Riches: How Australian Billionaire Anthony Pratt Is Getting Wealthier Off Americans' Trash | Recycling Riches: How Australian Billionaire Anthony Pratt Is Getting Wealthier Off Americans' Trash
When Anthony Pratt, the affable, orange-haired Australian billionaire behind America's biggest maker of fully recycled cardboard boxes, takes you on a tour of his factory in Valparaiso, Ind., you're bound to stop for the bronze plaque outside: "Dedicated by Muhammad Ali on July 15, 2000." "I like to say we're the second-greatest boxer of all time," Pratt chuckles.
Well-worn jokes and a friendship with Ali aren't the only things he has to be happy about. His privately held Pratt Industries is one of the fastest-growing players in America's $35 billion corrugated packaging industry and the only big boxmaker using 100%-recycled paper. By taking the nation's paper trash--yellowed newspapers and greasy pizza boxes--and turning it into new packaging, Pratt has helped bolster a personal fortune FORBES estimates at $3.4 billion, while saving some 50,000 trees a day. That's especially significant in today's world of online shopping, where everything comes in a box. "We were in recycling before recycling was cool," says Pratt, 55.
Anthony Pratt stands among 30-foot rolls of paper -- all made entirely from recycled paper. (Photo:... [+] Jamel Toppin for Forbes.)
In the past 15 months alone the company, based in Conyers,Ga., has invested nearly $450 million in America, most notably constructing a $260 million paper mill (the company's fourth) next to the Ali-autographed box factory in Valparaiso. The firm does $260 million in Ebitda (on $2 billion in sales), and Pratt thinks it will surpass $300 million once the new mill--driving his first big push into nearby Chicago, one of the largest box markets in the U.S.--comes online in September. In total the company operates more than 130 sites, including paper mills, box factories and distribution centers, across 26 states and Mexico, churning out more than 3,000 tons of paper every day. That's enough to create 12 million boxes, all without cutting down a single tree. "They're the upstart player in the industry," says Mark Wilde, managing director at BMO Capital Markets. "It's a remarkable story."
Pratt's journey began at a single wasteful paper mill in Macon, Ga. in 1991. That's when he was dispatched to the U.S. from Australia, where his family operated Visy, a recycled-packaging juggernaut founded by his grandfather in 1948. (Today Pratt Industries and Visy operate as sister companies, both run by Pratt.) Arriving in the country he quickly saw a gap in the market. Everyone was making paper from trees. Why wasn't anyone just recycling the stuff heading for the landfills, as Visy did in Australia? He soon shuttered the Macon mill and focused on recycling the waste produced by competitors.
That decision--made more than a decade ahead of the recent consumer-driven outcry for greener products--unleashed a domino effect of efficiency. Unlike his rivals, who must operate mills close to timber sources and then send the paper to factories near cities, where it's turned into boxes, Pratt situates operations where they make the most logistical sense: near cities, which are full of waste--and customers--thereby cutting transportation costs.
And because he's relatively new to the U.S. market and builds his own factories--rather than acquiring existing plants, like most of his competitors--Pratt's facilities are some of the most advanced and efficient in the industry. He builds cheap by owning his own construction company, one that specializes in making mills on budget. Newer technology and the relative simplicity of the recycling process allow his mills to employ just a quarter of the staff his competitors do. "We're building the space shuttle competing against other people who are still flying Spitfires," he says.
A Pratt Industries employee walks through a maze of refuse that will soon be turned into some of the... [+] 12,000 boxes Pratt produces every day. (Photo: Jamel Toppin for Forbes.)
Still, he's dependent on his competitors to keep pumping out more paper to be thrown away, collected and sent to his mills. After all, paper fiber can be recycled only so many times before it starts to disintegrate. But given the size of America's paper market and how entrenched his competitors are in the standard (and profitable) method, he's bullish about the future.
He sees Pratt Industries, which controls less than 5% of the U.S. market, doubling in size to more than $4 billion in sales in the next seven years while global sales grow to $10 billion. That includes $1 billion from his newly launched California operation, a play into the state's massive fruit and vegetable market. Pratt is also cozying up to big shippers like Amazon and the U.S. Postal Service, betting that the rise of online retailing will translate to more boxes being sent directly to consumers who want to see sustainable products. And Pratt continues to expand one of his most successful product lines: lightweight packaging.
He's also dependent on U.S. companies to keep pumping out products to be boxed, tethering him to American manufacturing. That puts him in a position many might find uncomfortable, yet Pratt is happy to rely on a sector many once counted out. Industry is booming, according to Pratt, and the country's regenerative nature is more than enough to carry a young boxer a few more rounds. "My policy in America is 'steady growth is forever,' " says Pratt. "We think sustainability is a wave that's not going away anytime soon."
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3a99745ca1381a707e292a92234d4921 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2015/11/24/subprime-supremo-don-hankey-made-a-fortune-on-high-interest-car-loans-now-hes-ubers-partner/ | Subprime Supremo: Don Hankey Made A Fortune On High-Interest Car Loans -- Now He's Uber's Partner | Subprime Supremo: Don Hankey Made A Fortune On High-Interest Car Loans -- Now He's Uber's Partner
(Ethan Pines for Forbes)
Thirty seconds into meeting Don Hankey, he's already crunching numbers. We're hunched over the computer in his corner office in a quiet part of Los Angeles inspecting a massive spreadsheet.
"Let's say this guy's putting $3,000 down on a $15,000 loan and his FICO score is 610," says Hankey, who arrived at the office at 5:45 a.m., the norm for decades. "We'd approve him at 19.09%."
He rejiggers the formula, adding and subtracting past financial sins and hypothetical repossessions on the fictional person's credit report like a mad scientist mixing beakers. "If we change it to a $2,000 down payment, it's 23.99%."
Hankey, immaculate in a starched white shirt and blue tie, then heads into the lobby and pauses in front of a 60-inch flat screen displaying a live feed of the e-mails that are sent whenever his Westlake Financial Services approves a new loan. The inbox is overflowing. On a typical day Westlake finances 750 cars. It currently has 336,000 outstanding loans, each originating from one of the 23,000 dealerships it works with (everyone from CarMax to small mom-and-pop used car lots).
The average American has a FICO score of 695. But most of Hankey's borrowers aren't average--they are financial underachievers with credit scores below 600. Many have bankruptcies, past repossessions or limited credit histories--things that make them unattractive to traditional lenders. That's where Hankey steps in. While Westlake offers loans as low as 1.65%, it specializes in financing credit-challenged car buyers--at an eye-popping rate of 19%, more than double the average for used car loans.
It's a risky and controversial business, but bankrolling these borrowers pays well: They typically shell out $344 per month over 49 months, or $16,860 on a $12,000 loan. That translates to an extra $3,920 in interest over the life of the loan when compared to the 3.67% rate a borrower with good credit gets when buying a new car, according to Experian. Sure, each month the company has to write off about $17 million in unpaid loans, but it still banks a profit of around $20 million. In 2014 Westlake netted $230 million on $600 million in revenues.
This kind of lending has a reputation for sharp elbows. Hankey repossesses around 250 cars every day, and his debt collectors have been known to spoof their caller ID so it appears that they are calling from the local pizzeria. But in many ways he is providing a critical service for this country's poor. Outside of a few coastal cities like New York and San Francisco that have widespread public transport, owning a car in America is not a luxury--it's a necessity. Try commuting to a job in Texas or buying groceries in Minneapolis without one. And, assuming you make the monthly payments, financing a used car is one of the quickest ways to improve your credit score.
Westlake Financial is by far the largest part of the seven-company, $1.3 billion (revenues) Hankey Group, which runs mostly auto-related businesses. Hankey, who owns 57.5% of Westlake (he brought in outside investors in 2011), is also in car insurance, rental cars and real estate, and has a tech firm. But subprime auto financing has been the main driver of growth--and it's also the major reason the 72-year-old Hankey, who himself is chauffeured around in a brand-new black Maybach, is richer than ever, with a $2.7 billion fortune.
One of Hankey's latest bets is on Uber. He joined forces with the ride-share leviathan in September 2014 as its only outside financing partner. Spanish bank Santander had been working with Uber, offering a lease-to-own program, but that relationship ended earlier this year. Would-be Uber drivers who are looking to purchase a car can get pre-qualified online in a matter of minutes. Westlake's software determines an interest rate, sales price and down payment, and then the driver inks the deal at a local, Uber-approved dealership in one of 18 states, including California, Florida and Texas. The Uber app automatically deducts the car payment from the driver's weekly earnings.
It's a clever way to get around two of the lender's biggest headaches: determining ability to pay and collecting payments. Westlake knows Uber drivers have a source of income and that the payment will always be routed to its coffers, reducing risk and uncertainty. But so far a greater portion of its Uber drivers are behind on their payments compared to its typical subprime borrowers, apparently not earning enough to cover the costs. Uber, flush with cash after raising more than $8 billion on the private market, is getting in on the game itself, launching a program in July to lease--rather than sell--cars to its drivers for three years. Drivers also have the option to pay $250 to escape the lease scot-free, as long as they give two weeks' notice. Westlake, which has lent to 1,000 Uber drivers, says it is still signing up more of them and is not too concerned, either about delinquencies or Uber muscling in on the business. Makes sense given that Uber-related loans represent just 0.3% of Westlake's loan portfolio.
But why would drivers agree to Westlake's often onerous terms? Because they have little choice: Darrell Lofton, one of the Uber drivers who has purchased a car using Westlake, says that no one else was willing to finance him, but Hankey's firm let him trade in a 1996 Nissan Quest on which he owed $1,400 for a brand-new 2015 Toyota Corolla. "My credit was in the worst condition," he says. "Westlake Financial saw everything, and they still gave me a chance."
Hankey got his first chance from his dad, who ran a dealership in Los Angeles called Midway Ford and a National Rental Car franchise. As a teen he worked at Midway as a lot boy, washing and polishing cars. The next summer Hankey started selling cars and became the dealership's top seller by August. But he was always more into numbers than wheels. When he was 16, his father sat him down to explain that his weekly poker game with friends was a waste of time and money. The young entrepreneur responded by furnishing a carefully recorded ledger showing his winnings exceeded his losses over the previous year.
His father died of cancer after his first semester of college. He stayed the course, graduating with a degree in finance from USC in 1965. He then enrolled in the school's M.B.A. program but quit halfway through, heading up to Vancouver to check out a logging outfit that his mom wanted to invest in. After a few months he came back to Los Angeles and got a job as a clerk at investment bank Jefferies before becoming a trader at brokerage firm Mitchum, Jones & Templeton.
In 1972 he and his family borrowed $250,000 from Ford Motor Credit, the automaker's financial services arm, to buy out the partners in Midway Ford. The dealership had once been very profitable but had been floundering since Hankey's father died 11 years earlier. Hankey took a leave of absence from Mitchum with plans of righting the ship, hiring a good general manager and returning to his trading job.
"I came in at the finance end, and I didn't know how to run the store," says Hankey. "It was more than I bargained for." He never went back to his old job and instead spent years fighting to turn a profit. He eventually stumbled into subprime lending. Tired of turning away credit-challenged customers, he began extending credit to help finance deals. Other dealers couldn't believe he was willing to risk his own money on loans to sketchy borrowers. "I was ridiculed for a few years, but, lo and behold, it turned into a pretty good business plan."
Almost too good: His showroom became cluttered with people arguing with his finance department over what they owed. Worried that it might start to hurt sales, Hankey moved the lending business to its own location up the road, and it eventually became a separate company. He soon expanded his subprime financing program to other dealers, using profits to move into new states.
By 1990 he had about 1,200 borrowers in California. He realized that to continue growing at a steady pace without taking on partners, he would need to shoot for 30% returns. It's been the rule ever since. As chairman Hankey insists on a 30% pretax return on equity and 20% revenue growth.
The numbers fanatic has used that 30% mantra to guide him in and out of businesses. Today Hankey, who claims he's averaged a 34% annual return on equity since 1980, owns a Toyota dealership, rental car businesses and a million square feet of southern California retail and office space. His Knight Insurance Group sells policies to dealerships and rental car companies. His Hankey Investment Co. offers bridge and construction loans to commercial developers and has recently begun developing its own properties, including two towers across the street from the Staples Center.
"Don's key job is capital allocator," says W. Scott Dobbins, head of Hankey's real estate company. "He sees where risk return is best amongst the companies and tries to balance that. And obviously he's been very successful."
Within ten years Westlake hopes to apply its subprime prowess to everything from RVs and boats to furniture lending. "Guys that need a lawn mower that have 580 FICOs where no one else will finance--why couldn't we do that?" asks Ian Anderson, Westlake's president.
Hankey has even found a way to make a return on his beach house in Malibu, 3 miles from his main residence, a 12,500-square-foot complex called Xanadu with five terraces, a theater, a gym, two separate guest quarters and 165 feet of beach access. It's regularly rented out at $12,500 a day for filming commercials, TV shows and movies, including Entourage , CSI: Miami and Charlie's Angels .
Then there is Nowcom, which not only handles Hankey Group's IT services but also created a successful software suite for car dealerships called Dealer Center. Hankey leases the software for up to $65 a month to 13,000 dealers, who use it to manage inventory, run credit reports and send loan applications to Westlake and 1,500 other lenders. Crucially in the subprime market, Dealer Center looks beyond the obvious factors like an applicant's income and FICO score to analyze more complex indicators of someone's ability to repay a loan. It considers everything from the length of time an applicant has lived at his or her current residence to more intricate information about their place of employment. For example, Westlake's algorithms factor in which Las Vegas casinos' dealers tend to earn more. They know that, everything else being equal, a dealer at the Wynn will earn more in tips than a dealer at, say, Excalibur--and be a stronger applicant.
It's a great time to be in the auto financing business. The number of new loans being pumped out each year is up roughly 80% since 2009, pushing outstanding car debt over the $1 trillion mark for the first time in U.S. history. Subprime lending has been one of the biggest drivers, with loans to borrowers with below-prime credit totaling $356 billion--up some 35% from 2009.
Despite the obvious similarities to the housing industry before its collapse, few experts think it's a bubble, yet. "We have unleashed a lot of the pent-up demand we accrued during the recession," says Cristian deRitis, a senior director with Moody's Analytics. "If we continue to loosen underwriting standards, there will be greater cause for concern and potential for a bubble, but right now it seems to be more of a return to equilibrium than overexpansion."
Still, the industry, including Westlake, gets a pretty bad rap--and for good reason. Westlake's 400 debt collectors, operating next door to Hankey's main offices, may start making calls as soon as someone is just one day late on their payment. Westlake will often initiate repossession proceedings after a customer is delinquent for just 45 days.
Lines are occasionally crossed. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau--a federal watchdog tasked with overseeing the financial sector--ordered Westlake in October to pay $48 million in fines, balance reductions and cash restitution for deceptive collection tactics and other violations over a four-year period. Among its misdeeds: Employees falsified their caller IDs so it looked like the calls were coming from local pizzerias, flower shops or even a member of the borrower's family.
Westlake insists that the most egregious examples were rare occurrences that largely happened years ago--and that those employees were terminated immediately. Other actions, like using the phrases Westlake Repossession (which the CFPB says made it seem like repo was imminent, even when it wasn't), were in fact approved by the company's compliance department at the time. "[The Bureau is] looking at a standard almost retroactively, saying, 'Well, in 2010 you should have been doing this.' When in fact nobody knew that the auto industry was going to be subject to that standard in 2010," says Westlake's chief compliance officer, Robert Engilman.
Hankey has implemented stronger punishments, including docking bonus pay, for mistakes debt collectors make--such as forgetting to identify themselves as Westlake employees. It has devised a remediation plan, approved by the bureau, that includes recording 100% of their calls to monitor for regulatory compliance.
Despite the fine and the rock-bottom ratings on review sites like Yelp and Consumer Affairs, Hankey is convinced he is providing a good service. Without subprime lenders like Westlake willing to take on the risk of offering loans at rates high enough to make a profit, it's unlikely that the poorest credit-challenged customers would be able to buy cars at all. "I think we help a large number of people get financing for the car that they need to make it to work," says Hankey. "The alternative is to wait several years and pay cash for the car, or take the bus."
According to Westlake, a high-interest car loan actually helps people rebuild credit. "If you make all your payments on time, your credit score will improve dramatically," says Westlake President Anderson. "In the future if you need another car loan, your rate can be much lower, and we give you $300 toward the down payment."
A recent Equifax study found that people with credit scores below 550 who took on subprime auto loans were four times more likely to see their scores jump to 640 within three years. Not that Westlake always benefits: Perhaps bruised by rough treatment and the high interest rates, not many of Hankey's customers seem eager to do business with him again. Of its 336,000 borrowers, only 7% are return customers, but that's more than triple the number who came back two years ago. Convincing customers or the public that Hankey's formula--charging high rates to hit ambitious profit goals--actually makes people better off is a tough sell. "My grandma says, 'Oh God, Ian, that's horrendous. You're a loan shark!,' " recalls Anderson. "I say 'Grandma, really, we're just trying to make a return.' "
And that is what matters to Hankey and his lieutenants. Says he: "What I take pride in is having profitable companies."
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db5bb040583d7e5869403f802212b6af | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2016/05/17/trump-files-new-financial-disclosure-still-touting-questionable-10-billion-fortune/ | Trump Says He's Filed New Financial Disclosure, Still Touting Questionable $10 Billion Fortune | Trump Says He's Filed New Financial Disclosure, Still Touting Questionable $10 Billion Fortune
Donald Trump has announced that he filed a new personal financial disclosure with the Federal Election Commission, according a press release issued Thursday that says the form shows a “tremendous cash flow” and a net worth “in excess of $10 billion.”
“I filed my PFD, which I am proud to say is the largest in the history of the FEC,” Trump stated in the release. “Despite the fact that I am allowed extensions, I have again filed my report, which is 104 pages, on time.” Trump's new financial disclosure is not yet available on the FEC website.
The presumptive GOP nominee used the opportunity to take a swipe at, of all people, Bernie Sanders, saying the longshot Democratic candidate “has requested, on the other hand, an extension for his small report. This is the difference between a businessman and the all talk, no action politicians that have failed the American people for far too long.”
Donald Trump speaks during a rally in Spokane, Wash. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)
The new disclosure form will show “a revenue increase of approximately $190 million dollars” for Trump’s companies and personal income “in excess of $557 million” (neither of which include dividends, interest, capital gains, rents and royalties), according to the press release.
A recent analysis by The Wall Street Journal projected Trump's annual income to be around $160 million this year, casting doubt on his income figure.
The billionaire has been criticized lately for reluctance to release his tax returns, a longstanding practice among presidential candidates. The returns could provide details about possible conflicts of interest, his income and personal tax rate and charitable giving. It’s still not clear when, or if, Trump will release any returns, which he says are being audited.
Trump’s latest filing is similar to a 92-page disclosure submitted last June that lists Trump as being associated with 515 different organizations, including LLCs, foreign entities and trusts. The form also provides limited information about his assets and income. For some of his most valuable assets, like Trump Tower and 40 Wall Street, values are listed as being simply “over $50 million.” The mortgages on those properties are recorded similarly, shining little light on how Trump actually values them.
Forbes has been estimating The Donald’s fortune for 33 years. In September we spoke to more than 80 sources to arrive at a $4.5 billion net worth estimate for Trump. He claimed he was worth more than double that. Forbes found that Trump consistently exaggerates the value of his properties, but he also gets a much higher number because of the amorphous multi-billion-dollar value he likes to assign to the "Trump brand." Rather than include a theoretical value of personal goodwill, Forbes captures Trump's brand through the deals he's able to make using his personal cachet and the estimated market value of the company he uses to license the Trump name to the world.
Still, he told Forbes magazine editor Randall Lane, “You’re gonna look bad" while offering little proof of the $10 billion-plus he fancied besides a few clarifications on debt loads and building square footage. The amount of cash he claimed to have -- which was more than double what he had proven to us the year before -- was substantiated only by a piece of paper with the “new” number scribbled on it by hand. And admitting that he lied to Forbes when the overleveraged businessman dropped from The Forbes 400 in the early 1990s, despite his protests at the time, hardly breeds trust.
When the full disclosure is made publicly available, Forbes will take a look.
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b8b12b3f4c87d7c002388b5c5c75eeda | https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2016/06/29/fortune-of-family-behind-oxycontin-drops-amid-declining-prescriptions/ | Fortune Of Family Behind OxyContin Drops Amid Declining Prescriptions | Fortune Of Family Behind OxyContin Drops Amid Declining Prescriptions
(AP Photo/Toby Talbot, File)
Despite mounting external challenges to their core product, the family behind popular and controversial opioid painkiller OxyContin remains one of the wealthiest in the America. The Sacklers, who own Purdue Pharma and a number of foreign companies that sell OxyContin and other drugs to the rest of the world, come in at #19 on Forbes’ annual list of America’s richest families. Forbes estimates their net worth to be $13 billion, down from $14 billion last year.
The family fortune began in 1952 when three doctors -- Arthur (d. 1987), Mortimer (d. 2010) and Raymond Sackler -- purchased Purdue, then a small and struggling New York drug manufacturer. The company spent decades selling products like earwax remover and laxatives before moving into pain medications by the late 1980s. To create OxyContin, Purdue married oxycodone, a generic painkiller, with a time-release mechanism to combat abuse by spreading the drug’s effects over a half-day.
Gallery: America's Richest Families 2016 11 images View gallery
The FDA approved the medication in 1995 and it soon took off. By 2003 OxyContin sales hit $1.6 billion as the drug helped drive a huge nationwide spike in opioid prescribing. At its peak in 2012, doctors wrote more than 282 million prescriptions for opioid painkillers, including OxyContin, Vicodin and Percocet -- nearly enough for every American to have a bottle.
Now opioid prescriptions are declining amid increased scrutiny over drug addiction, down 12% since 2012 according to data from healthcare information firm IMS Health. OxyContin (which is also beginning to face competition from authorized generics while fighting to protect its patents over tamper-proof, extended-release oxycodone) saw prescriptions fall 17%.
“We’ve seen recognition among policy makers, the media and the public that our opioid crisis has been fueled by overprescribing,” says Andrew Kolodny, who is the executive director of the nonprofit Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing. “We’re sort of waking up to the fact that we have this epidemic of addiction.”
In March the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ratcheted up the pressure when it released new opioid prescription guidelines which could result in fewer OxyContin customers. Aimed at addressing deaths and overdoses from prescription painkillers, the voluntary recommendations encourage physicians to seek nonopioid treatments for chronic pain before turning to highly-addictive pills, to prescribe the lowest-possible dose and to monitor patients closely. The CDC also cautions against long-term opioid treatments, saying “Three days or less will often be sufficient; more than 7 days will rarely be needed.”
Because of widespread OxyContin abuse during the first decade and a half of the drug’s popularity, Purdue reformulated OxyContin in 2010, making it far more difficult to abuse by crushing and snorting the pills.
The company has faced numerous lawsuits over the original version of OxyContin, however, many of which claiming the company misbranded the drug as far less risky than it was. In 2007 Purdue paid $635 million in fines after pleading guilty to false marketing charges brought by the Department of Justice. (Sackler family members, who are largely uninvolved in the day-to-day management of Purdue, have never been charged.)
In December 2015 the company settled a long-running legal battle with the state of Kentucky, which had alleged that Purdue “illegally misrepresented and/or concealed the highly addictive nature of OxyContin and encouraged doctors who weren’t trained in pain management to overprescribe the opioid pain reliever to Kentucky patients.” Some thought damages could be billions of dollars. Purdue agreed to pay $24 million but admitted no wrongdoing.
Last year a Purdue spokesperson noted that courts in Kentucky and across the U.S. have dismissed similar cases against the company because the evidence did not establish that its marketing caused the harm alleged.
Raymond and Beverly Sackler. (Taco van der Eb/Hollandse Hoogte/Redux)
Forbes estimates the family’s fortune has declined slightly as its drug making companies are not quite as valuable given the added pressure on the industry. Valuation multiples for opioid manufacturers similar to Purdue are down, according to analysts. Forbes also adjusted its revenue estimates for the family’s little-known foreign companies, which include U.K.-based Napp Pharmaceuticals and a network of independent entities in Europe, South America, Asia, Africa and Australia that operate under the name Mundipharma.
Still the Sacklers continue to reap hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from the businesses -- some $700 million last year, by Forbes’ calculations -- from an estimated $3 billion in Purdue Pharma revenues plus at least $1.5 billion in sales from their foreign companies.
Fighting For A Fix: An eBook From Forbes Death by opioid overdose is on the rise in the U.S. Read the stories of grieving mothers crying out for reform.
The clan’s fortune, shared by about 20 family members, ranks among the top 20 in the U.S., between two alcohol dynasties -- the beermaking Busch family and the Brown family, which owns a majority stake in Brown-Forman , the producer of Jack Daniel’s and Finlandia vodka. Representatives for the Sacklers declined to comment for this story.
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