18 minutes with an agile mind: Clifford Stoll on TED

Clifford Stoll could talk about the atmosphere of Jupiter. Or hunting KGB hackers. Or Klein bottles, computers in classrooms, the future. But he's not going to. Which is fine, because it would be criminal to confine a man with interests as multifarious as Stoll's to give a talk on any one topic. Instead, he simply captivates his audience with a wildly energetic sprinkling of anecdotes, observations, asides -- and even a science experiment. After all, by his own definition, he's a scientist: "Once I do something, I want to do something else." (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, California. Duration: 17:50.)

This is a very insightful video. AND a great lesson on how to give a presentation.

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A clickable slideshare primer on the subprime

 

Michael in Los Angels, a finance expert who arranges structured finance transactions for real estate developers, sent me the link to this Slideshare below that was created seven months ago. "It's very simplistic but it does a good job of giving a pretty good flavor for what went down," wrote Michael in a recent email. "Everyone knew this was going to eventually fold, although I don’t believe anyone really knew that the credit markets would get to this point." Michael even used one of the slides in a recent presentation and he said the entire auditorium got it. "It was amazing how powerful just showing one slide was." A few finance professionals have sent me the Slideshare link this week; it's a good followup to the whiteboard presentation in the previous post. Visually this Slideshare is simplified to the point of being quite crude, and yet as a sort of tongue-in-cheek overview of at least part of the financial crisis this works. The downside of this Slideshare is that you'll have to view it at "Full Screen" to read the text. Warning: some of the language may be too crude for some (you've been warned), but given what took place in the market this week, I heard much worse in the Tokyo pubs.)

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: subprime mortgages)

This is syndicated from Presentation Zen, and written by Garr.

Know the answer before you ask the question

I received this in my joke folder today and though it probably has been circulated for years, I am never first to get these, I thought it have a valuable lesson. How many times have you heard that a lawyer should know the answer to the question before he asks? Well, we do try to our hand at discovery, a lawyer does it before the trial, and maybe research, a lawyer does it before and during a trial. Well should I go on! Think about if you don't do your homework, accept the answers you get.

Now for the Story: Lawyers should never ask a Mississippi grandma a question if they aren't prepared for the answer.

In a trial, a Southern small-town prosecuting attorney called his first witness, a grandmotherly, elderly woman to the stand. He approached her and asked, 'Mrs. Jones, do you know me?' She responded, 'Why, yes, I do know you, Mr. Williams. I've known you since you were a boy, and frankly, you've been a big disappointment to me. You lie, you cheat on your wife, and you manipulate people and talk about them behind their backs. You think you're a big shot when you haven't the brains to realize you'll never amount to anything more than a two-bit paper pusher. Yes, I know you.'

The lawyer was stunned. Not knowing what else to do, he pointed across the room and asked, 'Mrs. Jones, do you know the defense attorney?' She again replied, 'Why yes, I do I've known Mr. Bradley since he was a youngster, too. He's lazy, bigoted, and he has a drinking problem. He can't build a normal relationship with anyone, and his law practice is one of the worst in the entire state. Not to mention he cheated on his wife with three different women. One of them was your wife. Yes, I know him.' The defense attorney nearly died.

The judge asked both counselors to approach the bench and, in a very quiet voice, said, 'If either of you idiots asks her if she knows me, I'll send you both to the electric chair.'