Weekend Digest: The Back To The Future Edition

TV PREVIEW: DISMANG, GILLAM & BRUMMETT
On this week’s TV edition of Talk Business & Politics with Roby Brock, which now airs at our new time – Sunday at 9:30 a.m. on KATV Ch. 7:

A broadband initiative, highway funding and health care reform – the state legislature has plenty on its plate although we’re months away from the fiscal session. Senate President Jonathan Dismang and Speaker of the House Jeremy Gillam are our guests for a conversation.

A new U.S. Speaker of the House, a Presidential debate, and questions involving legislative and lobbying ethics. Columnist and contributor John Brummett joins the set to talk politics.

And KATV’s Janelle Lilley previews next week’s filing period in addition to bringing viewers a roundup of the latest business and political headlines.

Tune in to Talk Business & Politics with Roby Brock on KATV Ch. 7 Sunday at 9:30 a.m.

CAN GM GET TO THE FUTURE ON TIME
It’s a race between General Motors and Google. And Bloomberg Business says, “It will also, if all goes according to plan, propel GM into a multibillion-dollar race for the future of human mobility.”

You see this race is indeed about cars, but not the ones you drive, rather the ones that drive themselves.

The question is whether GM can get to the future on time. Super Cruise won’t hit the market until 2017. Elon Musk has just begun offering autopilot on his Tesla Model S.

Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, and Volvo have similar hands-free driving systems in the works. Then there’s Google, which wants to skip the half-measures and do a full-on moonshot: totally autonomous cars that, regulators willing, won’t even come with a steering wheel or gas pedal.

Google’s latest prototypes are already driving themselves around Silicon Valley, where they’re known as Koala cars because of their bulbous shape, and they may be available for purchase right around the time GM’s hands-free Caddy hits showrooms.

Who’s going to win? Full story at this link.

A $197 MILLION GIFT TO EMPLOYEES
That’s what Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey gave to his employees in the form of an astounding third of his stock options.

While he still holds an additional two percent of company shares, this unprecedented act of generosity holds some valuable lessons for leaders.

What are they? Find out here from Entrepreneur.

HOW TO REALLY LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
Harvard Business Review posts, “Everyone says they listen to their customers,” but do you really?

Almost everyone in the luxury service industry talks about “listening to the voice of the customer.” But listening is not the same as understanding. How you listen, and to whom you listen, is critical. Even a smart, high-end business can be led astray by misunderstanding the strengths and weaknesses of different customer feedback channels.

“In this piece, I’ll lay out a few of the strengths and shortcomings of a few of the more common channels, based on my experience as global director of guest experience and innovation at the Dorchester Collection of luxury hotels.”

Follow this link to learn more.

SILICON VALLEY STARTUPS CREATED THROUGH HELP BY IRAN’S MIT
Sounds like a strange connection but it’s not.

“If, as expected, the Iranian startup scene explodes, there is a ready conduit for funding and talent to pass to and from the United States.”

As in many immigrant communities in the United States, connections between universities in Iran and the United States have enabled an informal and fluid relationship to continue between countries even while formal ties have been frozen.

There are two universities that I’ve heard spoken of in Tehran that have been feeding students (and future entrepreneurs) to the United States: Sharif University, which people sometimes call the MIT of Iran, and the University of Tehran, where Tahmaseb went. SUT has a total of 300 full-time faculty members, approximately 430 part-time faculty members and a student body of about 12,000, according to its web site.

Schools like Sharif and and the University of Tehran are key players in an internal tech ecosystem.

“Emerging economies that don’t have those centers of research and education face the challenge of building them; Iran already has them.”

For the complete story, connect to this link.

PAUL RYAN MAY HAVE TO SET MORE MODEST GOALS AS SPEAKER
The New York Times reports, “Paul Davis Ryan, a son and grandson of Midwestern lawyers, ascended rapidly in American politics as a man with big plans: overhauling the tax code, slashing federal spending and rewriting the social contracts for Medicare and Social Security.”

Now, as he grips the gavel as the youngest speaker of the House since the late 1860s — a time when his ancestors were already settled in Wisconsin — Mr. Ryan, 45, confronts a fundamental question: Will his new post provide a platform to pursue his bold visions for a renewed America, or will those big ideas ultimately weigh him down in an era defined by confrontation and small-bore compromise?

Recent experience, including the success of President Obama and congressional Democrats in blocking all of Mr. Ryan’s big budget proposals, suggests that he will continue to harbor expansive aspirations, but will set more modest goals.

Read the full story at this link.

FIVE TAKEAWAYS FROM THE THIRD GOP DEBATE
This past week the leading and not-so-leading contenders in the GOP presidential debate hammered away at each other on CNBC.

POLITICO has taken a keen look at what happened and calls the third Republican debate, “the sloppiest.”

…it offered the greatest clarity to date about the direction of the race — marking the emergence of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz as upper-tier candidates along with Donald Trump and Ben Carson.

It will also likely be remembered as the night the Jeb Bush 2016 deathwatch began.

Here are POLITICO’s “5 takeaways” from the debate.

BUSH vs. RUBIO: A SHOWDOWN
The New York Times says, “Measured but optimistic, Senator Marco Rubio on Thursday stepped into the national spotlight he always feared would come too early and prepared for a bruising collision with Jeb Bush, his friend, neighbor and onetime political partner in Florida.”

But as Mr. Rubio and his supporters tried not to be swept up in their own euphoria over his debate performance Wednesday night, the mood among Mr. Bush’s supporters was despondent, with some questioning in private conversations whether the accumulation of three unsteady appearances on the same stage had finally blocked his path to the nomination.

Even as top Rubio advisers expressed confidence, they delivered a plea to their top donors and supporters to redouble efforts in fund-raising, which remains the campaign’s most serious obstacle to beating Mr. Bush.

Will the “collision” of the Florida GOP combatants mark the end for Bush? For complete details and analysis, follow this link.

DOES COLLEGE FOOTBALL AFFECT PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS?
A Washington Post editorial writer says, “A few years ago I wrote about a paper by Andrew Healy, Neil Malhotra and Cecilia Mo that claimed that having the local team win a college football game could improve incumbent vote share in the presidential election by up to two percentage points.”

At the time, I wrote:

I took a look at the study (I felt obliged to, as it combined two of my interests) and it seemed reasonable to me. There certainly could be some big selection bias going on that the authors (and I) didn’t think of, but I saw no obvious problems. So for now I’ll take their result at face value and will assume a 2 percentage-point effect.

“Now we have an update, a paper by Anthony Fowler and B. Pablo Montagnes provocatively titled College football, elections, and false-positive results in observational research, and with this summary:”

What does it say? Go to this link for the latest research into a very interesting hypothesis.

30 HALLOWEEN COSTUME IDEAS INSPIRED BY VINTAGE CELEBRITIES
This year’s Halloween parties are likely to see a plethora of Trump wigs, Swift squads and Pizza rats. But if 2015’s memes are less to your liking than vintage flair is, the LIFE magazine archives offer a treasure trove of classic inspiration.

From Elvis to Marilyn, the Addams Family to the Jackson 5, check out the best Halloween costume inspiration from the LIFE archives.

Go for it here.

HOW ‘BACK TO THE FUTURE’S’ CLOCK TOWER SCENE WAS MADE
Slate reports, “Back to the Future has become one of film’s most beloved franchises, but getting it made was no easy feat. A new Art of the Scene video from Cinefix points out that major studios all initially turned it down because it wasn’t a sexy enough romp. Disney didn’t like the part where McFly’s mom develops a crush on him.”

But the finished product is clearly a classic, and one with a remarkable climax, as Marty McFly and Dr. Emmett Brown race against the clock — literally — to harness 1.21 gigawatts of power from lightning to jumpstart Brown’s DeLorean and get McFly out of the 1950s and back … well, you know. The climactic scene, like the rest of the movie, barely uses any visual effects.

So how was it done? “Warp” to this link to find out.

THE TECH OF MODERN GHOST HUNTING
Fast Company posts, “Paranormal investigators, or ‘ghost hunters’ as most of us refer to them, are private investigators who visit homes and businesses subject to perceived hauntings. And, like most other industries these days, they rely on specialized technology to do their jobs.”

Brian Patrick of the Los Angeles Paranormal Association, a group of paranormal enthusiasts that investigate what he calls “perceived paranormal phenomena,” tells Fast Company that he typically brings a specific “toolkit” with him on investigations. According to Patrick, a typical kit includes temperature gauge meters, electromagnetic field meters, a variety of recording devices, infrared or night vision cameras, flashlights, and thermal energy detectors.

So what’s in those toolkits that paranormal investigators use “to hunt for evidence of life after death?”

The “reveal” at this link.