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Ultimate life hacks: flow and making tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge

I had an interview with 3M last year — if you’re not familiar, they invented the Post-It Note — and the interviewer says to me right off the bat, “Well, why do you want to work at 3M?” I wasn’t… Continue Reading

Fun with labor, maps, and statistics: if you want to find a job, move to North Dakota, Nebraska, or Dallas

I love data on jobs and job searching, probably because my own life is a wreck with that stuff right now. I started out looking at unemployment rate by state — to a coastal-bias person, it would seem crazy that the… Continue Reading

If you interview inmates about their decision-making when they were younger, what can you learn?

That’s the idea behind a photo exhibit from Trent Bell (there’s an accompanying video embedded above). Only 12 men volunteered for Bell’s project, which came about when one of his good friends was sentenced to 36 years in jail — and… Continue Reading

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IBM has a food truck debuting March 7 that’s going to reinvent your favorite foods (like burritos) off of cognitive computing

Came across the IBM Tumblr the other day and it’s fairly cool; one thing they’re focusing on now is called “cognitive cooking,” and it’s described in the video above — and also in this video. Essentially, the idea is this:… Continue Reading

72 percent of the Earth is covered by ocean. So desalination seems like a logical answer to drought, right? Not so fast.

California droughts right now might be the worst in 100 years, and Lake Mead’s at a fairly dangerous level (which threatens tourism mecca Las Vegas), so clearly we’re moving to the “answers” stage of our water problem. It would seem… Continue Reading

I-81 runs 855 miles from Knoxville to Canada. But one 1.4-mile stretch in Syracuse, NY could be a window to the future.

Fun fact: Dwight Eisenhower’s vision for the interstate system actually came from some roads he saw in Germany while a general. Communication lines got a bit crossed, though, and he didn’t actually realize interstates would run through cities until a few years… Continue Reading

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Lao Tzu, the quest for organic communication at work, and FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, please stop proposing newsletters

Some backstory: I’m in this class right now about employee engagement. It’s a pretty interesting class for the most part, although it can get sidetracked with a lot of millennial vs. Boomer and OMG what does it all mean discussions, but I… Continue Reading

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Does Cory Gardner running for Senate in Colorado mean the Tea Party is fading and the GOP is poised for a renaissance?

Cory Gardner is considered a rising star in the GOP, and a few days ago, he announced his candidacy for U.S. Senate at a lumber yard. He’ll challenge Mark Udall, who has been a Senator since 2009 (but is the son… Continue Reading