Intellectual Happy Hour

Again, I've found myself slacking on writing up enticing posts, so I'll suggest a couple of great reads I recently found:

Rich Karlgaard at Forbes puts forth his thoughts on the top ten laws of our digital society. They're all great, however I particularly like Ogilvy's Law: "If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants."

After 11 years of development and $13 billion in spending, Airbus finally tested its new huge A380 for the first time. This plane is spectacular, and a marvel of engineering. It's scheduled for first consumer application on Singapore Airlines in mid-2006.

Tom Evslin refers to an article in Wired Magazine on the impact of China's population and growth on the development & deployment of alternative fuels. It's a great commentary, but I don't necessarily agree with Tom on his views of globalisation and democracy.

An article in the WashingtonPost on the excessive amount of private capital available in the DC Metro Area and how deals are getting larger & larger. It's a great market for non-locals to play in as there isn't a large enough local pool of investment capital.

Andy Abramson points to a news article announcing the Cisco Linksys acquisition of Sipura Technology, the terminal adapter company for VoIP. Sipura is a truly great story and this is just another indication that VoIP is in the big leagues now.