Excellent and fun example of product design iterations meeting new product requirements.
What it takes to be James Bond 007
James Bond is an MI6 British secret agent codenamed 007 portrayed in books and film. There wasn’t a reasonable skillset list for him online. So I assembled a list of James Bond skills. Turns out, 007 has many skills.
A list of skills and abilities held by James Bond 007:
- Body language, facial and emotional recognition abilities
- Bomb detonation and defusing (Goldfinger)
- Bungee Jumping (Goldeneye)
- Charmer (Casino Royale)
- Confidence, Swagger (Die Another Day)
- Counterfeiting (Skyfall)
- Detective
- Disguises (list of James Bond disguises)
- Driver (list of James Bond vehicles)
- Evasion (No Time To Die)
- Fast learner
- First-aid
- Free-running, parkour, acrobat (Casino Royale)
- Gadgets (list of James Bond gadgets)
- Gambler (Dr. No, list of James Bond gambling scenes)
- Golf (Goldfinger)
- Kitesurfing (Die Another Day)
- Lover and art of seduction (list of James Bond girls)
- Manipulator
- Marksmen and sniper (The Living Daylights, From Russia With Love)
- Martial arts and knife fighting (Quantum of Solace)
- Motorcycle driving and jumping (Tomorrow Never Dies)
- Multilingualism fluency
- Patriotism
- Peak human condition and endurance
- Pilot airplane, helicopter and hang glider (You Only Live Twice)
- Rappelling (Goldeneye)
- Rock climbing (For Your Eyes Only)
- Safe-cracking (Dr. No)
- Sailor and mariner (Casino Royale, list of James Bond boats)
- Scuba and underwater fighting with speargun (Thunderball)
- Skiing (The Spy Who Loved Me, list of James Bond ski scenes)
- Skiing to sky diving transition (The Spy Who Loved Me)
- Skydiving (License To Kill)
- Snowmobiling (A View To A Kill)
- Space combat
- Spy-craft
- Stealth
- Strategist
- Surfing (Die Another Day)
- Survival of explosion (Spectre)
Did I miss one? Please write me and I’ll add it.
Dropping a falcon feather and hammer on the moon
On the moon in 1971, Commander David Scott dropped a hammer and a falcon feather to validate Galileo’s theory that without air resistance, objects fall at the same rate due to gravity regardless of mass. Given the negligible lunar atmosphere, there was no drag on the feather, both experienced the same acceleration, and both hit the ground at the same time. NASA did this because they wanted a memorable popular science experiment to do on the Moon, for kids. Very cool to watch.
The Feynman Technique
The Feynman Technique is the best way to learn anything quickly. Devised by a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, it uses the power of teaching for better learning.
There are four steps to the Feynman Learning Technique:
- Pretend to teach a concept you want to learn about to a student in the sixth grade.
- Identify gaps in your explanation. Go back to the source material to better understand it.
- Organize and simplify.
- Transmit (optional).
Days on earth vs. other planets
How tides work
Our experience on earth makes us think that the tides are causing by water following the moon and sun. It turns out the water isn’t chasing the moon and sun. The water stays in the same place as the earth rotates inside the two bulges of water. More on this in the video and on wiki.
Song written by GPT-3 deep learning model
This country song was written by GPT-3. The AI was only fed the title of the song, River of Love. The song was performed by singer Anna Vaus. It’s a bit catchy.
How we’ll get to Mars
We’re fortunate to live in a time when we have two new launch rockets intended to enable crewed launches to Mars.
The two rockets on the left have flown already. The Falcon Heavy flew in 2018 and is currently 32M miles from home traveling at 58K mph. The Saturn V launched the Apollo Missions between 1967-1973.
The two rockets on the right haven’t flown yet. Boeing’s Space Launch System is more expensive and also is not reusable, so it has larger expected price (green bar graph) and $ per kilogram (blue bar graph) characteristics.
Sage from creator Casey Neistat
Casey Neistat is an observer of the modern world (e.g. NYC bike lane obstructions), and he has sage advice about avoiding basic embellishments.
68 bits of unsolicited advice from a 68 year old co-founder of Wired
My favorite part is that Kevin teaches most readers a new word, with the last word on his list –– “Pronoia” is a neologism coined to describe a state of mind that is the opposite of paranoia..
Here are 3 of of my favs from his list:
1- Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points.
2- Don’t be the best. Be the only.
3- Promptness is a sign of respect.
This list reminded me of the sunscreen song, which is also good.