PolyMth – Product Leadership

Laser beams to protect U.S. Navy from drones – CBS News.

Pretty crazy video/story.  The most interesting part about this was the claim the R&D only cost $40 million.  For something we have been researching since Reagon/’70s it doesn’t seem possible for it to have such a low price tag.

Here is some better information.  Engadget says the laser costs $32 million per unit.

I just finished the book Talent Is Overrated.  You can usually judge a book by the quality of the research that it references, lots of good follow up reading here.  I’m not going to go to deep.  Hard work is the only way to get ahead.  More like deliberate, targeted hard work is.

When I am traveling with my family, the most cost effective/convenient way to travel is by train.  I always enjoy the people I get to meet and watch.

I watched a fairly humorous exchange on the dining car, where three separate rough necker types heading to western North Dakota were being barraged by the more typical train folk about the environmental impact of fracking.  There was much confusion around the idea that nobody had actual seen any environmental damage.  My favorite quote was a rather exasperated “but there has to be damage somewhere”.

If you don’t know much about fracking, you should spend some time googling frac sand, very interesting stuff.

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2013/04/08/business/frac-sand-mining-minnesota-firms

I went on a Wikipedia ramble and read last night before bed.  A very enjoyable before bed activity on a weekend.

Started with a friend on Facebook talking about Duff’s Ditch as a solution to the flooding problems in Fargo, ND.  Duff’s Ditch is otherwise know as the Red River Floodway around Winnipeg, MN.  At the time (1968) the Red River Floodway was was the second largest earth movie project of all time.  In front of the Suez Canal and the behind the Panama Canal.

The Red River Floodway cost $360 million CAD to move 305 million cubic yards of earth.  CAD $1.18 per cubic yard.

When the US bought the Panama Canal from the French they paid $24.4 inflation adjusted USD per cubic yard.  To finish the canal the US paid $6.1-$12.2 per cubic yard for dredges and $12.2-$24.4 per cubic yard for steam shovels.

The Rothscilds and The Yellow Fleet both provided interesting segues.

Picture of the Yellow Fleet from here

I used this tool to calculate approximate inflation adjusted dollars.