Are you coachable? What kind of 'coachable' people are there? Why is it important to be coachable?

"If we are not coming together, we're coming apart."

You are more than just one label, and so am I. This article explores the subtle exclusionary prejudices that divide us, needlessly.

In this time of the Covid19 pandemic, "data-driven decision-making" has been spouted as some kind of magic elixir that should make the general public have confidence in the decisions our leaders are making.
This article distinguishes data from information and insight, as well as illuminating how the very thought processes people have result in different conclusions - based on the same data.

What if you followed a link to read an article on a news website and just by going there, intimate data about you (and more) went to nearly 500 companies? And what if the news website you are visiting also received data that those other 500 companies knew about you? Meet the "behavioral economy" and the "digital commercial surveillance state." What do those terms mean in day-to-day layman's language?

When you see/hear "We Value Your Privacy," it means the person saying it respects your privacy, and they want to treat it with care. But you might also read it to mean that they place a value on (using / trading in) your private data. Indeed, they buy and sell that private data.

(Originally published on Linkedin)
There is no question that STEM professions are disproportionately underrepresented by women and minorities. However, not every STEM field/industry is vocal or "activist" about it, while others are persistently so. This article looks at some actual data about parity in various STEM fields and asks the hard question: is "activism" helping?

An open letter to all my fellow citizens of the United States of America:
On July 3, 2018, the literal eve of our great country's Independence Day, I had an interesting conversation with a friend who is an immigrant from South America. She was reflecting on how our two nations were formed; things like what was the same and what was different about the process of forming a nation. This got me thinking about differences, and commonalities...

(Originally published on Linkedin)
FBI Director Chris Wray spoke at the Aspen Security Forum and addressed the topic of law enforcement having access to encrypted data.

(Originally published on Linkedin)
In the March 27th issue of Wired Magazine, Blanca Myers offers us an article that enumerates the results of some recent research into college Computer Science degrees over time - awarded to the sexes and the races. There were some curious results.

CRISPR/Cas9 is to DNA what photolithography was to Silicon. It is the accelerant in the new era of programmable biology, instead of silicon. It offers humanity the power to experiment with evolution itself. Are we ready?

What percentage would you guess that females represent among all US-based inventors? Or of patents? How many patents have females as the "first-named" or Primary Inventor? Do these percentages vary from metro to metro or state to state? Are there particular patent classes where females do better than males? Are there companies that are more "female inventor friendly" than others? How does the US compare to other nations?

Examining over 3 million US Patents issued between 2005 and 2017 to about 1.5 million domestic inventors, this analysis showed that the proportion of female inventors is indeed improving. However... the average annual growth rate is about 0.25%.

(Originally published on Linkedin)
Uber (now former) CEO, Kalanick, resigned from President Trump's so-called 'CEO Kitchen Cabinet' in response to a campaign by Uber customers. Was it constructive?

(Originally published in Ethics & Medics)
When our son was a little over a year old, he began dropping things and he still couldn't talk. At first, doctors thought...

During the ten years from 2005 to 2014, the US Patent Office issued some 1.5 million patents. In the first-of-its-kind study, the Inventiveness Index looked at the interesection of geography, companies, inventors and patents to identify and rank the top 250 metro areas in the country. This ranking used datas from the USPTO, US Census, IRS and more to create nine key sub-indexes, then rolled them up into an overall ranking score.

But there is much, much more to this report than a simple ranking. By examining other factors such as population, revenues, patent classes and more, it was possible to identify concentrations of talent, emerging markets for innovation and more.