Better Living Through Introspection

Daily Vespers is back (now featuring the color green and possibly a purpose), posing this question: Could Gordon Gecko (Michael Douglas’s role in the 80’s classic, Wall Street) exist in a green business world?

D.C. Wire updates us on the stadium prelim work:

About a month has passed since the city held a groundbreaking for the new stadium and already the site looks completely different…Construction crews have knocked down 23 buildings and driven 150 pilings (out of the 2,400 that will be needed to secure the structure). About 130 workers and 120 trucks per day are on the site, according to Ronnie Strumpf, the project manager for Clark Construction, which is teamming with Hunt and Smoot companies to build the $611 million stadium project….

…The idea is to make South Capitol Street a “Parisian boulevard,” according to city planners. But the work could take at least until 2015.

A Stadium Rises on DC Wire. Click through for some photos.

In What Netflix Could Teach Hollywood, David Leonhardt explains Netflix’s current position in the movie-rental industryand how it’s gearing up for the future. More importantly, he answers questions that have been burning a hole in my head for a while now. Such as, “Just how many movies does Netflix rent?” Answer: Of the 60,000 movies in Netflix’s inventory, 35-40,000 are rented per day!)

Today, Netflix sends and receives 700 million little packages a year, a logistical operation that has few peers outside of FedEx, U.P.S. or the post office itself. The company’s new head of operations, in fact, used to be the postmaster general.

Worth reading. Though I’m amazed that the whole “open red envelope, stuff new envelopes” part of the process isn’t automated. Turns out, Netflix uses immigrant workers for that.

(Tip o’ the hat to A Certain Someone.)

To try and understand nature we have to be like her. And if we wish to take her portrait, we need a camera that is also like her: big, very big and always moving.

But since a camera like this does not exist, we had to build it ourselves.

This is the cameratruck project.

via Jason Santa Maria

It’s getting so I can’t keep track of what Google is up to anymore. This just in: Google Spreadsheet (limited test):

Google Spreadsheet via Slashdot (and more on Washingtonpost.com)