Andy (אברהם נפתלי) Blumenthal Leadership, Technology, Life, and Faith ✡

You may have seen this before--it is a great comic strip on how requirements can go awry.  When you look at how product or service requi...

The first few times when I started hiking, I had this paradigm that I had to walk between the rocks--sort of like hopscotch--then I realiz...

I am very excited about Bigelow Aerospace's BA-330 space inhabiting module. The BA-330 is an inflatable, expandable habitat that can...

It was shocking to read that suicide deaths in the U.S. have now surpassed deaths by motor vehicle accidents. In 2010, there were over 3...

When I was a youngster going to summer camp, a great guy, "The Chief" lifeguard, used to tempt the kids to behave by offering ...

This is a beautiful lithograph from Currier and Ives that I came across of Washington D.C. It is called Chesapeake Bay Area - The City...

I remember learning for my MBA about people's shopping addiction (aka compulsive shopping ) and how it consumes their time and money ...

Going to a restaurant the other night, I stepped into the men's room for a minute and noticed this sticker on the right of the mirror ...

This is great--finally soda vending machines that take credit cards.  No more looking for change or losing your cash in the machine.  ...

So we went to look at a new dorm-type apartment for my daughter.  She and her friends want to be near campus and where everyone hangs ou...

At the dedication of the new George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, the picture of the elder Bush in a wheelchair...

So I was teaching a course this week in enterprise architecture, and some of the students asked about EA having a bad rap and brand (i.e. ...

This picture from this week in D.C. needs no commentary... except maybe, that's no good!  "Over here, over here, I got it!...

Not to be mean or anything, but this was an eye-catching advertisement for this vendor's services.  But whether or not you can spell...

Wanted to share two unrelated, but noteworthy items from my week so far... First, this tree went down right in the middle of traffic in ...

This was a humorous engraved stone that I found in a gift shop today.  It is a Concord  "Words From The Wise," engraved pape...

I sit here this morning filled with indignation for the victims of a series of brutal monsters who have committed horrific acts against ch...

I took this picture of a cow stampede when hiking in the mountains.  The cows first came up to us all friendly and then after staying ...

When an earthquake strikes, it is not just the immediate loss of life that is a concern, but the longer-term damage to critical infrastruc...

Management agents are not just for Hollywood stars anymore... Bloomberg BusinessWeek (10 April 2013) says really good freelance applica...

As a follow up to my blog on Tuesday about the Anti-rape Bra, a colleague gave me the lead to another prototype device called Rape-aXe...

The world's most beautiful elevator has got to be the AquaDom in the Radisson Blu Hotel in Berlin. It contains a cylindrical elev...

In the medieval times, to help ensure fidelity of partners and protect against rape, they invented something called a chastity belt--I a...

My mom and dad are still in love after almost 58 years of marriage.  While I already knew how special they were to each other--through t...

This deer and I had a staring contest this morning, and I lost. The deer didn't let me get too close, before he ran off into the woo...

According to the New York Times (12 April 2013) a high school English teacher in Albany, New York on Monday asked students to write a per...

It was interesting to read in Popular Science (12 April 2013) that the famous physicist and futurist, Stephen Hawking, stated that huma...

Russia (and many others countries) develop some really kick-a*s weapons--especially, when they are so simple, yet so devastatingly effecti...

The Wall Street Journal had a good book review on "The End of Sex" by Donna Freitas.  The book is about the casual hook-up cu...

This is an awesome slow motion video from Gizmodo . It is taken with a Phantom Flex4k camera at 1000 frames per second and high resolut...

So we took my daughter, Rebecca, and a friend indoor rock climbing and it was awesome! Each of them climbed three walls of increasing di...

Some people think the new Apple HQs (or Apple Campus 2) looks like a flying saucer or spaceship--but to me, it looks like a great big donu...

Two interesting recent articles discuss the importance of building in simplicity to product design to make things more useful to people. ...