They are Israel’s largest defense company with brilliant defense, homeland security, and national security solutions.
Proven on the battlefield on land, sea, air, and space.
From the advanced F-35 Joint Strike Fighter helmet mounted display to the Iron Fist active protection system to drones, lasers, C4ISR, cyber, electronic warfare, electro-optics, countermeasures, combat vehicle systems, and artillery, mortar, munitions and more.
Elbit offer high-tech solutions that uniquely combine brain with brawn!
Defending the Holy Land and other countries around the globe.
In the fight of good over evil, I’m proud that Elbit is one of the good guys! 😉
Even though the Jewish people are a tiny minority in the world, through our faith, determination, and the help of G-d, we are able to survive against all odds, contribute to the world far beyond our mere numbers, and succeed in truly incredible ways. From Einstein, Freud, and Marx to Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Ellison, we are a people that punches way above our weight.
I believe the lessons of faith and determination is one that we can all take away from the tests of our forefathers in the Bible to the flourishing modern State of Israel and to how we live our own lives today. G-d tests all of us, and if we go forward and answer His calling with a full heart and perseverance, G-d will help us to succeed above our wildest of dreams and even beyond the very laws of nature.
– Russian spies stole U.S. nuclear secrets helping them to build their first atomic bomb.
We are the innovator for high-tech bar none, which is beautiful and a huge competitive advantage.
But what good is it when we can’t protect our intellectual property and national security secrets.
The U.S. feeds the world not only with our agricultural, but with our knowledge.
Knowledge Management should be a mindful exercise that rewards our allies and friends and protects us from our enemies–and not a free-for-all where we we can’t responsibly control our information. 😉
(Source Photo: here with attribution to James Emery)
Fremont Street has a cool free outdoor light show.
It is in the “downtown,” which is actually at the north end of the Strip (go figure).
The high-tech light show of 2.1 million bulbs is on a canopy covering 5 street blocks.
The show lasts about 5 minutes and is beautiful.
I tried to combine the overhead show with some of the faces of the people walking down the street.
Enjoyed the experience – like an IMAX and very creative.
Interesting…on the way over, took a cab and talking with the driver, he told me how one of his colleagues found a box of chocolates in his cab this week.
When he opened the box, there was $300,000 inside!
Like Forrest Gump’s mother told him, “Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you are going to get” – in Vegas and beyond. 😉
Wow, prosthetics have come a long way–these are tough!
This video from Biodapt shows their high-performance Moto Knee being used in a variety of action sports including snowmobiling, motor biking, mountain biking, horseback riding, water skiing, snow boarding, and jet skiing.
Bloomberg BusinessWeek (11 July 2013) explains how the Moto Knee has hydraulic components that provide “tension and range of motion for intense physical activity.”
They cost around $6,000 and don’t replace the regular walking version, but Mike Schultz, the developer understands the need for these advanced prosthetics having lost a leg himself in a 2008 competitive snowmobiling accident.
I think it’s wonderful that these high-tech devices are being made available for disabled people to be able to do a wide range of exciting activities.
My hope is that as the technology continues to advance that we can have–like a person’s legs–one prosthetic device that is adaptive for use in every day use as well as more intense activities and sports.
It is hard to imagine people voluntarily trading their body parts for mechanical implants–but one day, in the not too distant future, these mechanical limbs will not only be a substitute for repair of real body parts, but will actually provide some superior capabilities–they will be used for body augmentation–and thus even be desirable by those who haven’t lost limbs.
What gives a leg up to prosthetics, as Hugh Herr in the Wall Street Journal (12 July 2013) put it is “that the designed parts of the body can improve in time, whereas the normal body, the biological body, degrades in time.”
With regenerative medicine and replacement parts by design, more than ever our physical bodies will be just the transient vessel that houses our heart, mind and soul–that which really makes us, us. 😉
Some people think the new Apple HQs (or Apple Campus 2) looks like a flying saucer or spaceship–to me, it looks like a great big donut. 🙂
In all seriousness though, the planned Apple HQs is so cool–I love it!
Bloomberg BusinessWeek (4 April 2013) has a terrific article about this awesome design project.
Some of the facts about this planned facility:
– Houses 12,000 employees
– Has 4 concentric rings.
– 2.8 million square feet (2/3 the size of the Pentagon)
– 176 acres of trees, including the vast courtyard in the center which will have apricot, olive, and apple orchards.
– 40-foot high walls of concave glass
– 700,000 square feet of solar panels (enough to power 4,000 homes)
– Climate-responsive technology such as window treatments that automatically open and close
– Costs about $5 billion (1.1 billion more than the new World Trade Center)
– Move in expected 2016
– Just 2 entry roads
– 4-story underground garage
– 2 R&D labs
– Fitness center
While some think that this building is vanity, I think it is a work of art, and perfectly suits the innovativeness nature of the company.
Apple’s HQS is a reflection of itself, not just another building. The beautiful, sleek, and high-tech building melds with the company’s design philosophy and vision for great consumer products.
Just like Apple’s unique positioning in being able to integrate hardware and software solutions for their customers, their new HQS is a unification of their physical work environment with their internal vision for themselves as a company and the amazing products they put out.
Unlike some organizations which are foolishly tearing down all their walls and working as if they in sitting in Starbucks, Apple understands how to marry the need for a social and collaborative work environment with a proper and respectful functional space.
Apple’s building will be beautiful and functional just like their computing devices…and they remain true to themselves and us. 😉
(Source Photo: here with attribution to Cupertino Government)
I remember hearing that sometimes the best way to hide is in plain sight–just where no one would think to look.
Now there is a new clothing line being introduced by Adam Harvey for Stealth Wear that hides you using your own clothes.
According to Slate (11 January 2013), the clothing line is envisioned to have:
– Anti-drone hoodies and scarfs: These will be made with special metalized material that can shield you from things like drone thermal imaging technology, and I would imagine could also help against facial recognition along the lines of a prior project CVDazzle that uses face-painting and hair styling for concealment.
– XX-shirts: These cover your upper body and can shield you from x-rays. I wonder how this will impact TSA scanning at airports?
– Pocket-blocks: A cell phone pouch made from “signal attenuating material” to prevent tracking and interception.
Don’t confuse this stealth wear clothing line with a Canadian company called StealthWear that makes a different type of protective clothing–padding for jackets, forearms, shoulders, torso, and so on for those working in “aggressive educational environments.”
The new Stealth Wear, however, is a concept for a high-tech fashion line designed to provide counter surveillance and more personal privacy–in this sense, it’s really the anti Big Brother.
With more and more cameras, imaging machines, facial recognition, drones, and other surveillance tools out there–I suppose it is not surprising to see a cultural backlash in terms of everyday surveillance protection clothing coming to the fore. 😉
andyblumenthal