Hasta La Gadget!

As August rolls around, students around the country are gearing up to return to college campuses. Whether it’s your senior year ( ) or your freshman year, the exciting idea of decorating your dorm room will soon ensue.

But designing a room that is très chic in such a small space can be hard. And doing it on a budget is even harder. No matter where you go to school or what type of layout your room has, it’s important that your dorm provides an escape for you amidst the chaos of navigating college life.

After three years of decorating my own dorm room, I know how to make my space feel cozy and aesthetically pleasing. During my freshman year, it was all about fun pops of colors and lots of wall decoration. Now that I am a senior, I want to focus on neutral and white colors, and use different materials (like fur and metal) to add texture to a monochromatic room. 

To get you started on your own dorm decoration, check out some of my favorite must-have pieces that will instantly change any dismal space into a bright, organized and stylish haven. The best part? The below items work for decorating on a budget.

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Whenever the ravages of time take its toll on our bodies, then you can be sure that there will be discomfort at best, or pain in the more extreme cases. Pain management is an area in which many of us would have to cope with, and for those who have arthritis in their hands, the Cordless Arthritis Pain Relieving Glove would provide some soothing respite. However, what if you have searing pain due to plantar fasciitis? The $99.95 Cordless Plantar Fasciitis Pain Relieving Sock will be able to get the job done, no problem at all.

Touted to be the only cordless neuromuscular stimulator sock which is able to provide relief from plantar fasciitis, it has been specially developed to be worn on either foot. This particular sock will employ Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS) therapy, which is a method of pain relief therapy that has been widely adopted by medical professionals. It will feature battery-powered electrode pads which will connect to the sock via snap-on fasteners, sending out harmless low-frequency electrical pulses into the tissue in order to block pain signals from passing through nerves to the brain. The remote control allows one to select from six different treatment modes and ten intensity levels, and a CR2032 battery will keep the remote going. If you have a pacemaker, then do give this a miss!
[ Cordless Plantar Fasciitis Pain Relieving Sock provides relief without being tethered copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Mistakes can be gifts. As George Bernard Shaw said, “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.” In live theater where anything can go wrong on stage, mistakes happen all the time. “Mistakes are human. Theater is a human thing because it’s happening live,” says Ivo van Hove who won a Tony for directing A View From the Bridge. “And in rehearsal, a mistake can bring a new energy and new ideas.”

NewYork.com asked Broadway stars to share memorable mistakes that they have experienced onstage.

Danny Burstein, Fiddler on the Roof
“When they happen, you try to turn mistakes into a positive. At the very end of the show when Chava leaves, I run center stage after her, but it’s too late to call her back. One night, I threw my hands up crying. It’s such a hard show, and you cry every single time. A metal button fell off my jacket. It rung so loud throughout the theater — ding, ding, ding, ding. It was a magical moment. I reached down and picked up the button and kissed it.

And it was like God giving me a gift telling me that everything was going to be okay. Everybody in the company mentioned it afterwards. They were all crying. Even people who came back afterwards mentioned it. Bryan Cranston was there and talked about that moment to me that night. It was a beautiful thing. Sometimes that happens. And sometimes a fly is open, and there is nothing you can do.”

Discover more mistakes from Daveed Diggs, Andrea Martin, Krysta Rodriguez, Jennifer Simard, Bill Camp, Ali Stroker, Alex Sharp and more at this new NewYork.com story.

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By Nigel Crowther, University of Western Ontario
A bronze statue, ‘The Boxer of Quirinal.’ Sometimes ancient Greek boxers would bribe their opponents. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

As a professor of classical studies, I’ve noticed some remarkable differences and similarities between the modern and ancient Olympic Games.

The medals, the torch relay and events for females didn’t exist in the ancient games, but the four-year cycle and the concept of a major sports spectacle still continue.

Yet while both versions have purported to observe fair play, there’s one “tradition” that’s a strong holdover from ancient Greece: allegations of bribery, some of which were documented more than 2,000 years ago.

Paid to lose or switch sides

Even in a founding myth of the ancient Olympics, bribery played a central role. According to the poet Pindar, the king of Pisa bribed Hermes’ son Myrtilus to tamper with his opponent’s chariot wheels.

During the ancient Olympics, athletes, their fathers and trainers made oaths not to “sin against the games.” But some didn’t take this oath as seriously as others. For example, the travel writer Pausanias wrote about how, in 388 B.C., the boxer Eupolus bribed his three opponents at Olympia. The officials punished all four contestants. Sixty-six years later, a pentathlete named Callippus offered his competitors money to throw the contest in his favor. And, according to the philosopher Philostratus, trainers often lent money to athletes at high rates of interest for the sole purpose of bribery.

Meanwhile, some Olympic contestants competed for city-states other than their own as a result of bribery, or assumed bribery. After his Olympic victory, the runner Sotades of Crete was bribed to compete for the rival city of Ephesus. In response, his home city expelled him.

In the fifth century B.C., wealthy residents of Syracuse enticed Astylus of Croton to compete for their city and, a century later, the runner Dicon of Caulonia. In the former case, the citizens of Croton turned Astylus’ house into a prison and destroyed his statue.

Today, some athletes will actually try to gain residency in different countries, often to improve their chances of participating or winning. According to the Daily Telegraph,
11 percent of the athletes who represented Great Britain at the 2012 Olympics were born abroad and were dubbed “plastic Brits.” At Sochi 2014, a Singaporean competed for Thailand, an American-Italian couple for Dominica, and a German for Mexico.

Laying down the law

Modern officials can disqualify cheating athletes and bar them from competition. In ancient times, there was also a disciplinary system in place, but in some ways, it wasn’t very robust. In 12 B.C., the father of the Olympic wrestler Polyktor attempted to bribe the father of a rival. Pausanias wrote about how the judges fined the fathers but not the sons. And athletes could still retain their victory even if they’d been caught breaking the rules – not exactly the best disincentive to cheating.

On the other hand, ancient officials could flog and fine wrongdoers, using the money to shame them publicly by commissioning statues of Zeus called Zanes. As Pausanias explained, these bronze figures were then displayed outside the Olympic stadium, with the names of the miscreants inscribed on their bases. The purpose of these elegiac verses was to ensure that people would “remember their shame for all time,” and other competitors “would be discouraged from cheating.” All who entered the stadium had to pass by what we might best describe as a “Hall of Shame” – at least 16 sculptures with inscriptions that warned fans and competitors not to give money for the purpose of gaining an Olympic victory, but to win by “speed of foot and strength of body.”

The statues lasted for more than 500 years (at least until the second century A.D., when Pausanias described them), while the bases of the Zanes can still be seen today.

Buying the judges

Yet public shaming, oaths, bans, floggings and fines couldn’t prevent bribery at Olympia. Even the judges weren’t beyond reproach.

The Olympic judges (Hellanodikai) had the reputation of acting fairly, even in the face of verbal harassment by athletes and spectators. Like competitors, they, too, swore to abstain from bribery.

Nonetheless, there are examples of judges expressing conflicts of interest and making decisions where kickbacks may have been involved. Take the controversial judgment about the runner Leon of Ambracia in 396 B.C.

According to the Greek historian Cassius Dio, the judges accepted a bribe of one million sesterces (about US$5 million today) from the Emperor Nero to allow the ruler himself to win in numerous events at the Olympics. Of course, the judges were probably put in a bind: If they rejected the bribe, they may have risked losing their lives.

The more things change…

Fast-forward 2,000 years, and little has changed.

Even the International Olympic Committee (IOC), in a 1999 confidential report, admitted that “bribery within the Olympic movement goes back decades.”

Just this past year, a Russian track and field athlete who had been caught trying to tamper with a urine sample allegedly attempted to then bribe the doping control officer. In February, two Kenyan athletes claimed that the chief executive of Athletics Kenya asked them each for a $24,000 bribe to reduce their suspensions.

At the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, a French judge admitted being pressured to vote for the Russian skaters in order to secure an advantage for France in the pairs ice dancing competition.

In 2004, IOC Vice President Kim Un-Yong, who was involved in both the Seoul Olympics and the Salt Lake City scandal, was found guilty of receiving $700,000 in gifts and bribes.

Every two years, IOC members will vote on which city will host the Olympic Games. As cities present their case, a modern problem has been “vote buying.” (The ancient Greeks never faced this problem as the Olympics always stayed in one venue – Olympia.)

A leading member of the IOC claimed that “bribes of up to a million dollars have been demanded from cities bidding for the games.” Without reference to any specific Olympics, unofficial agents offered to deliver 25 IOC votes to competing cities (out of a total of 105) for $1.8 million.

The most egregious example of bribery is the Salt Lake City scandal, in which leaders of the bidding committee were accused of offering monetary and other incentives to IOC officials. Several IOC members were expelled, but the two alleged bribers were acquitted of criminal charges. Olympic historian Bill Mallon remarks that things were proceeding smoothly for the IOC until that fateful day of November 24, 1998, when news of the scandal first broke. IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch was quick to acknowledge the gravity of the situation, calling the crisis “as serious as the political boycotts of the 1980s and Ben Johnson’s drug scandal at the 1988 Seoul Games.”

During Rio – and beyond – it’s unlikely that scandals and bribery will disappear.

As British cyclist David Millar aptly put it, “…human nature dictates that there will always be cheaters. That’s inevitable. Where there’s money involved and glory, there are going to be people that cheat, and there will always be ways to cheat.”

Nigel Crowther, Emeritus Professor of Classical Studies, University of Western Ontario

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come
Victor Hugo

On September 7th – 9th we are holding our first Hacking for Defense & Diplomacy – class for Educators and Sponsors, training educators how to teach these classes in their universities and sponsors how to select problem sets and manage their teams.

Sign up here.

An Idea Whose Time Has Come
Our first Hacking for Defense class was a series of experiments. And like all good experiments we tested a set of hypotheses. Surprisingly the results blew past our expectations – and we had set a pretty high bar. (see the final Hacking for Defense class presentations here). Based on those results we believe that we can do the same with Diplomacy so working with the State Department’s innovation cell in Silicon Valley we will prototype the Hacking for Diplomacy course at Stanford this fall.

A few of the student and sponsor comments about the class:

“Absolutely amazing class. Experiential learning is very effective to really grasp what we claim to know intellectually.” – computer science grad student

“One of the best classes I’ve ever taken, and it turned me onto a whole new career path.” – MBA student

“We’re still blown away what students who knew nothing about our agency could learn and deliver in such a short period of time.” – sponsor

First, would students to sign up for a class that engaged them in national service with the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community?

Result: I’ll admit my hesitancy was because I brought my memories of U.S. college campuses circa the Vietnam War (and the riots and student protests at Stanford). So I was astonished how ready and eager students were for a class that combines the toughest problems in national security, with learning Lean Innovation methods. We had more applicants (70+) for the 32 seats in this class than we usually get in our Lean LaunchPad entrepreneurship class. And early indications are that Hacking for Diplomacy will be at least as popular.

Second, could we find islands of innovation inside the DOD, the Intelligence Community and State Department willing to engage students to work on real problems? And could those sponsors work with us to scrub those problems so they were unclassified but valuable to the sponsors and the students?

Result: We solicited 8 problems for the students to work on and had to shut down the submission process after we reached 24 from the DOD. We’ve now built a national clearing house for DOD/Intel problems that other schools can use. The Department of State has already given us 15 problems for our upcoming Diplomacy class.

Third, would students be turned off by working problems that weren’t theirs, in particular from the DOD and Intel community?

Result: We surveyed student motivations before and after the class and were surprised to find that a large percentage became more interested and engaged in national service. Over half the student teams have decided to continue working on national security projects. At the end of class two teams were funded by SOCOM (U.S. Special Operations Command) to continue prototyping over the summer. One team closed a $200K seed round in the middle of the class. Multiple teams have been engaged by government, prime contractor and VC firms for follow-on discussions/engagements.

Fourth, would the same Lean Startup methodology (business model design, customer development and agile engineering) used in the Lean LaunchPad and NSF I-Corps class work here?

Result: Hell yes.

Fifth, would other schools be interested in offering this class?

Result: Seven schools have already added Hacking for Defense classes: UC San Diego, University of Pittsburgh, University of Southern California, Stanford, University of Rochester, Georgia Tech and Georgetown University. 15 more schools are in the pipeline. NDU (the National Defense University) – National Security Accelerator (NSTA), the Stanford University Hacking 4 Defense Project and JIDA (the Joint Improvised-threat Defeat Agency) have all teamed up to fund the expansion of the Hacking for Defense class to other universities. The Department of Energy Advanced Manufacturing Office has also lent its support to the expansion. If our Hacking for Diplomacy goes well this fall, we intend to scale it as well.

The Educator/Sponsor Class
We learned a lot developing the Hacking for Defense class, and even more as we taught it and worked with the problem sponsors in the DOD/Intel community. Now we’ve created a ton of course materials for educators (syllabus, slides, videos) and have written a detailed educator’s guide with suggestions on how to set up and run a class along with best practices and detailed sample lessons plans for each class session. And for sponsors we have an equally robust set of tools on how to get the most out of the student teams and the university. And we’re excited it to share it all with other educators and sponsors in the DOD/Intel community.

So on September 7 through 9th at Stanford we will hold our first 2.5-day Hacking for Defense & Diplomacy Educator and Sponsor Class.

We’ll provide you all the course materials (syllabus, slides, videos) along with an educator’s guide with suggestions on how to set up and run a class along with detailed sample lessons plans for each class session. You’ll also

• Meet with other instructors and problem sponsors and experience the Hacking for Defense/Diplomacy methodology first hand
• Learn how to build H4D teaching teams and recruit student teams to participate
• Learn what makes a good student problem and how problem sponsors can increase their Return On Investment for supporting the course
• Engage with the original Stanford Hacking For Defense course authors (Pete Newell, Joe Felter and I) and students from the original H4D cohort
• Engage directly with potential government problem sponsors

Life is series of unplanned paths and unintended consequences – Hacking For Defense
A year ago as I started helping government agencies put innovation programs in place, a student in my Stanford class who had served in the special forces pointed out that the Lean methodologies I was teaching sounded identical to what the U.S. Army had done with the Rapid Equipping Force (REF) commanded by then Colonel Pete Newell.

The REFs goal was to get out of the building and into the field to get a deep understanding of soldiers’ problems, then get technology solutions to these problems into the hands of front-line soldiers in days and weeks, instead of the military’s traditional months and years. The REF had permission to shortcut the detailed 100+ page requirements documents used by the defense acquisition process and could use existing government equipment or buy or commercial-off-the-shelf technologies purchased with a government credit card or its own budget.

When Pete Newell retired to Silicon Valley he teamed up with Joe Felter, another retired colonel, who had a career as a Special Forces and foreign area officer (among other things, Joe led the Counterinsurgency Advisory and Assistance Team (CAAT) in Afghanistan) and was now teaching at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). Together Pete and Joe had formed BMNT to create an “insurgency” in Silicon Valley to help accelerate the way the Department of Defense acquires new technology and ideas and integrates cutting-edge innovation into the organizations defending our country.

The Hacking for Defense & Diplomacy classes were born from the intersection of BMNTs work with the Department of Defense in Silicon Valley and my work in Lean Innovation.

We had five goals for the class:

1. Teach students Lean Innovation – the mindset, reflexes, agility and resilience an entrepreneur needs to make decisions at speed and with urgency in a chaotic and uncertain world.
2. Offer students an opportunity to engage in a national public service. Today if college students want to give back to their country they think of Teach for America, the Peace Corps, or Americorps or perhaps the US Digital Service or the GSA’s 18F. Few consider opportunities to make the world safer with the Department of Defense, Intelligence Community, State Department or other government agencies.
3. Teach our sponsors (the innovators inside the Department of Defense (DOD), Intelligence Community (IC) and State Department) there was a methodology that could help them understand and better respond to rapidly evolving asymmetric threats. (By rapidly discovering the real problems in the field using Lean methods, and then articulating the requirements to solve them, defense acquisition programs operate at speed and urgency to deliver timely and needed solutions.)
4. Show our DOD/IC/State sponsors that civilian students can make a meaningful contribution to problem understanding and rapid prototyping of solutions.
5. Create the 21st Century version of Tech ROTC by having Hacking for Defense and Hacking for Diplomacy taught by a national network of 50 colleges and universities. This would give the Department of Defense (DOD), Intelligence Community (IC) and State Department access to a pool of previously untapped technically sophisticated talent, trained in Lean and Agile methodologies, and unencumbered by dogma and doctrine.

It looks like we’re on our way to achieving all of these goals. Join us.

Lessons Learned

— Hacking for Defense and Hacking for Diplomacy are classes students want

• 7 universities have signed up to teach it

— Hacking for Diplomacy is being piloted this fall

— We’re offering a 2½ day seminar for educators who want to offer either class

Steve Blank’s blog: www.steveblank.com

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