How do you think they arrived at the size of the fuels tanks of the sides of the NASA spaceship?

It kind of went like this. The size of the fuel tanks was limited by the railway that brought the fuel tanks to NASA. The most limiting factor, on this track, was a tunnel, the width of a train (and a bit).

The width of the train was really dictated by the gauge on which it rode. Apparently the gauge of that particular rail track was determined by the guys that originally supplied the trains.

These guys before they got into trains used to do horse carriages, so for the wheel gauge and undercarriages they adapted the same kind of tooling that they used for horse draw carriages and consequently ended up the same gauge for trains.

Heard something amazing at a talk on leadership today. How do you think they arrived at the size of the fuels tanks of the sides of the NASA spaceship?

It kind of went like this. The size of the fuel tanks was limited by the railway that brought the fuel tanks to NASA. The most limiting factor, on this track, was a tunnel, the width of a train (and a bit).

The width of the train was really dictated by the gauge on which it rode. Apparently the gauge of that particular rail track was determined by the guys that originally supplied the trains.

These guys before they got into trains used to do horse carriages, so for the wheel gauge and undercarriages they adapted the same kind of tooling that they used for horse draw carriages and consequently ended up the same gauge for trains.

Now the wheels of a horse drawn carriage were set to ride in the ruts in the road. There was an accepted guage or width that most of the carriage makers used...as these ruts had built up over hundreds of years.

Ten guesses who started with the ruts... the Romans, who based their chariot wheel widths on the width of two horses backsides.

And here we have the most sophisticated mode of transport today being influenced by the width of two horse backsides.

What a legacy that original chariot maker had on the space shuttle.

Legacy...you never know how much influence you really have.

One of my business buddies reported at a breakfast that he found a stapler in the rubbish bin at his office a couple of days ago.(We didn’t even want to go why he was rifling through the bins at his office.)

He then asked his staff why it was in there...a perfectly normal working stapler.....

You won’t believe the answer he was given...

"It ran out of staples!"

When 60% of GDP comes from production of goods where the IP has been stolen…you can understand the EEU saying to China that the figure needs to be halved before they could possibly get accepted as a trading partner.

When 60% of GDP comes from production of goods where the IP has been stolen…you can understand the EEU saying to China that the figure needs to be halved before they could possibly get accepted as a trading partner.

Even dealing with China….the lure of cheaply made goods goes hand in hand with the possibility of your designs even your actual branded products being sold to another country in a heartbeat. And I never understood why.

The fact is, that China has only had property ownership for the past 10 or so years.

If owning land is such new concept, imagine the leap in understanding that a company or a person is also able to own the Intellectual Property for something.

(Remember that China was a massive state collective of farms, factories, everything…The government is now having to find 25 million new jobs each year as these collectives are disbanded.)

If owning the land is such new concept, then the idea of a company and person owning “intellectual property:” is going to take some real getting used to.

Ownership after all is a philosophy…………..of separateness.

Coles-Myer hadn't registered www.colesmyer.com as part of their brand protection strategy. So some enterprising person decided to register the .com and proceeded to redirect all the web traffic to www.woolworths.com.au for fun.

Priceless...

Driving up Punt Road I came up to what is becoming known as the “windscreen washers” corner.

I couldn’t help but notice how the whole operation of kerb-side windscreen washing was becoming more sophisticated.

Driving up Punt Road I came up to what is becoming known as the “windscreen washers” corner.

I couldn’t help but notice how the whole operation of kerb-side windscreen washing was becoming more sophisticated.

Gone was the dirty bucket of water by the tram stop. Instead today’s window washer had invested in a spray bottle of light blue window washing liquid. This obviously was the next step along the road of innovation for our kerb-side washers.

Still, even with the dog tied up and mobile phone in the pocket, there wasn’t a lot of takers.

While I was watching I began wondering what it would take to make this a real business.

Even though I calculated that paying the one dollar was roughly on par, per metre, with my down-town hand carwash. Just doing the windscreen, isn’t enough value for the disturbance of having to find the money, winding down the window etc for me.

However, if they could band together and offer a one-stop total outside car body clean…I would be more than interested. After all, in the Grand Prix, they can fill up a car, change the tyres, AND do the windscreen in under 14 seconds. You can be stuck at these lights for at least a couple of minutes.

If they really got their act together they could even offer a service that might have a station at multiple lights so what wasn’t completed at one stop could be finished at the next.

All they would need is some good cleaning products and the same colour shirts for credibility...and then the council permits, workers comp, insurance, union fees, GST reporting facilities, payroll…

Hmmm, there sure are a lot of hangers-on, to placate to see if a good idea can work.