‘Spontaneous compassion’ and how 4th-graders are solving world problems

Favorite quote from this TED Talk with teacher John Hunter:

“Spontaneous compassion.”

From TED:

John Hunter puts all the problems of the world on a 4′x5′ plywood board — and lets his 4th-graders solve them. At TED2011, he explains how his World Peace Game engages schoolkids, and why the complex lessons it teaches — spontaneous, and always surprising — go further than classroom lectures can.

9/11, healing and the power of forgiving

If they can, so can we.

From TED:

Phyllis Rodriguez and Aicha el-Wafi have a powerful friendship born of unthinkable loss. Rodriguez’ son was killed in the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001; el-Wafi’s son Zacarias Moussaoui was convicted of a role in those attacks and is serving a life sentence. In hoping to find peace, these two moms have come to understand and respect one another.

Cracking Stuxnet

Ralph Langner helped discover the intended target of Stuxnet, a computer virus directed specifically at shutting down Iran’s nuclear program. Because of its sophistication, he speculates Israel and the United States collaborated on the attack.

Read Vanity Fair’s A Declaration of Cyber-War if you’re not familiar with Stuxnet and want to learn more without getting a computer science degree. It’s a fascinating story.

Langner’s TED Talk shares how they cracked the code:

‘The Big Short’ end of the stick

The Big ShortI don’t know much about the intricacies of Wall Street and the world of subprime mortgage bonds, collateralize debt obligations (CDOs) and credit default swaps, but Michael Lewis’ The Big Short does a excellent job of highlighting what went wrong in the last decade that led to our economic crisis.

Many people lost homes they shouldn’t have held mortgages on in the first place, and the banking and finance industry was rewarded for its carelessness with a whimsical, multi-billion dollar government bailout. You finish The Big Short realizing the financial industry is one big sausage factory whose end product is something you’re not really sure what’s inside, but tastes great until you discover it might actually be bad for you.

In many ways Wall Street is a lot like legislation in Washington, DC, where no one completely understands what’s happening, but somehow everyone makes money off the deal.

Two excerpts best summarize the book’s gist:

The line between gambling and investing is artificial and thin. The soundest investment has the defining trait of a bet (you losing all of your money in hopes of making a bit more), and the wildest speculation has the salient characteristic of an investment (you might get your money back with interest). Maybe the best definition of “investing” is “gambling with the odds in your favor.” The people on the other side – the entire financial system, essentially – had gambled with the odds against them. Up to this point, the story of the big short could not be simpler. What’s strange and complicated about it, however, is that pretty much all the important people on both sides of the gamble left the table rich.

More to the point, from former Salomon Brothers CEO John Gutfreund, featured prominently in Lewis’ first book Liar’s Poker:

It’s laissez-faire until you get into deep shit.

There’s a great 60 Minutes interview with Lewis and others featured in the book:

Part 1

Part 2

Anonymous Extraordinaries

“Anonymous Extraordinaries are people who work selflessly and vigorously for what they believe in. People who are motivated by conviction and not recognition.”

‘Leaders can let you fail and yet not let you be a failure’

Retired Army four-star general Stanley McChrystal gives an excellent TED Talk on leadership, especially as it relates to leading in the military in the age of new media.

Restrepo

Just finished watching Restrepo, a National Geographic documentary that chronicles the experience and camaraderie of soldiers stationed in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, “one of the most dangerous postings in the U.S. military.” Restrepo was a 15-man outpost named for Juan Sebastián Restrepo who was killed early in the deployment. There’s a gut-wrenching scene when one of the men is killed during Operation Rock Avalanche and the immediate outpouring of grief from his fellow soldiers. America withdrew forces from the area in April 2010.

Trailer:

The Internet in Society: Empowering or Censoring Citizens?

The latest animation from RSA Animate features Evgeny Morozov, blogger and author of the recently-published The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, and his talk The Internet in Society: Empowering or Censoring Citizens?

One interesting anecdote is where he notes China’s acceptance of online criticism towards local government, which helps the national leaders better monitor the party activities from afar.

(HT: Nancy Scola)

DOJ CIO Vance Hitch on cybersecurity, cloud computing

I interviewed U.S. Department of Justice Chief Information Officer Vance Hitch during FedScoop’s Cybersecurity Summit, where he discussed cybersecurity priorities and cloud computing security.

Full playlist:

NIST Deputy Cyber Security Advisor Donna Dodson shares public service career advice

This week at FedScoop we’re featuring Donna Dodson, Division Chief of the Computer Security Division and the Deputy Cyber Security Advisor at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), as FedMentor of the Week. I interviewed Dodson during FedScoop’s Cybersecurity Summit in February.

Full playlist:

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