How to Castrate a Bull: Unexpected Lessons on Risk, Growth, and Success in Business

INTERLUDE: Redundant Array of Pyramid Hieroglyphics (RAPH)

How do you store data so that it can be accessed a long, long time in the future? Like hundreds or thousands of years from now? On a trip to Egypt I learned how the ancient Egyptians accomplished this.

Some temples in ancient Egypt were for the dead, but others focused on the living. Those temples were partly religious, but they also functioned as centers of learning and healing, a sort of combination church, university, and hospital. The temple of Kom Ombo was for the living, and it used an interesting data protection technique. When running a temple, priests must perform different procedures every day of the year—different prayers, different offerings, different sacrifices. To ensure ...