'The Kids Are Alright,' Don Tapscott style

Don Tapscott is is one of our most brilliant thinkers, particularly when it comes to reforming education. 

I question a few of his points in this two-minute blast but appreciate his passion in defending the youth of today -- the ones us Boomers are leaving with one big, heaping pile of stink to clean up. 

Dirt track racing in San Luis, circa 1924

Check out this amazing video showing auto racing at nearby San Luis Obispo in 1924. I had never heard of Exposition Park Raceway, but it looked to be quite sizable for what must have been a relatively small farming town at that time. 

The Exposition dirt track was bumpy and dustyand drew a large crowd. According to the YouTube detail page, the track "was located along South Street between Higuera and Broad Street."

Couple fun things to look out for:

• The close promixity of speeding cars and crew members casually walking alonside the track (the pits were not segregated by a wall as is common in modern tracks).
• The dust plumes that follow the cars along the backstretch. They reminded me of the dust left by the Roadrunner. 
• A nice pass on the backstretch that begins halfway out of Turn 2. 
• A very quick pitstop in which a crew member deftly removes the damaged undertray of a car. Not sure they could make the repair any faster these days.

I'm regularly amazed with the scope of racetracks back in the day. I mean, how many tracks have you been to that have overhangs over the stands? 

'When Larry Met Sergey'

OnlinePHD.org has published a fun interactive history of Google titled "When Larry Met Sergey" that tracks the company's year-by-year progress compared with the rest of the web. 

Each year gives you a peek at the company's key metrics but more fun are the yearly lists of common search terms, big site launches, top memes, browser market share and the ever-beefy hardware Google uses to power itself. 

Geeky but fun.