Useful Thoughts and Actions Taken

Very interesting film about the history of venture capital.  It all started with some guys working issues on the side.  An amazing history of interest to anyone who wants to start their own company.

From the webpage summary

Official selection of the 2011 San Francisco International Film Festival.

Conceived by co-executive producer Paul Holland and directed by Emmy Award winning filmmakers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine, SOMETHING VENTURED tells the story of the creation of an industry that went on to become the single greatest engine of innovation and economic growth in the twentieth century. It is told by the visionary risk-takers who dared to make it happen: Tom Perkins, Don Valentine, Arthur Rock, Dick Kramlich and others. The film also includes some of our finest entrepreneurs sharing how they worked with these venture capitalists to grow world-class companies like Intel, Apple, Cisco, Atari, Genentech, Tandem and others. Beginning in the late 1950s, this small group of high rollers fostered a one-of-a-kind business culture that encouraged extraordinary risk and made possible unprecedented rewards. They laid the groundwork for America's start-up economy, providing not just the capital but the guidance to allow seedling companies to reach their full potential. Our lives would be dramatically different without the contributions that these venture capitalists made to the creation of PCs, the Internet and life-saving drugs.

Watch here

Video Notes

In a guest lecture at the University of Waterloo's Institute for Quantum Computing, Dr. Peter Milonni of the Los Alamos National Laboratory explains Casimir effects.

Casimir effects are generally regarded as manifestations of zero-point energies of quantum fields. The best-known Casimir effects are those associated with the electromagnetic vacuum field; these are of great current interest not only for basic physics but also for their implications for nanotechnology. Following a brief review of the concept of zero-point energy, and experimental evidence for it, attention is be focused on the most famous Casimir effect—the force between two perfectly conducting plates—and the extension of the theory to dielectric materials.

For more information:

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—Video went AWOL —

A very good video because it brings zero point energy into the explanation of the Casimir effect.  

Notes

• Shows the invariant term for spectra which is the sum of the  Wave Term + Particle term