The Weekend Edition

Moustafa wonders: Why do New Zealand currently have the most dominant rugby team ever? The Economist breaks down what makes the current All Blacks side (as the New Zealand national rugby side is known) the most dominant ever and summarises it, simply, in them being able to “run incisively. And they excel at the dirty work.” Up until Ireland beat them in Chicago on 5 November, the current New Zealand side were on an 18-match winning streak on the back of winning the 2015 World Cup. Niven Winchester, an MIT economist who developed a predictive model, says the side is the most dominant ever. His model shows that the current cohort can lay claim to being statistically dominant in most aspects of the game, and “great” by having managed to win the World Cup twice in a row. So what makes them win? New Zealand have the highest percentage of clean breaks (the number of times an attacker bursts through the defensive line) and the most meters run with the ball. They also managed to win more turnovers than any other team. Here are the highlights from when Ireland snapped New Zealand’s winning streak (runtime 06:27) and then when New Zealand got their revenge in Dublin two weeks later (runtime 03:50).

Hana is too young to worry about the fleeting nature of time, but still finds it cool that scientists have measured the zeptosecond for the first time. That’s a trillionth of a billionth of a second, the Huffington Post’s Ed Mazza tells us. Until the discovery, the shortest units of time humanity could measure were the nanosecond (a billionth of a second) or the millisecond (easy: a thousandth of a second). “Laser physicists in Munich have measured a photoionization — in which an electron exits a helium atom after excitation by light—- for the first time with zeptosecond precision,” read a press release by the Technical University of Munich. “This is the greatest accuracy of time determination ever achieved, as well as the first absolute determination of the timescale of photoionization.” The Smithsonian magazine has more.

Ingy would like to let slip the bonds of earth: A mini-documentary (runtime 8:23) and short piece from The New Yorker (catch them both here) tell the story of an amateur rocketeer’s dream to become “the first civilian to launch a rocket into space.” Ky Michaelson, a.k.a Rocketman, had always had a thing for rockets. “He has put rockets on everything from rollerblades to wheelchairs,” the magazine writes. Shooting one out into the atmosphere proved slightly more challenging though. Michaelson’s first tries in the ‘90s were unsuccessful, and when he finally made a breakthrough in 2004, he “ran up against a force even more challenging than scarce funds or unorthodox materials: the federal bureaucracy.” There was no legal framework to process the Rocketman’s request for a civilian license to launch a rocket out of Black Rock Desert in Nevada. Michaelson spent months wading through the red tape, but on the day of the launch, with no official authorization to fly, a chance encounter in the middle of the desert changed his fate. (Check out Michaelson’s official website about his Civilian Space Exploration Team for more footage of the launch)

Patrick is marveling that Microsoft’s Solitaire is now available for iOS and Android. He thinks there’s a weekend hour to be spent in this throwback of a game before the resident nine-year-old awakes. But mostly, he’s looking forward this weekend to being a husband and dad — and catching up on some reading. On the list: A fourth time through Doug Tatum’s No Man’s Land: Where Growing Companies Fail. And a first read for All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis (by the wonderful due of Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera) and the latest from Michael Connelly, the former journalist turned creator of the Harry Bosch series. Oh, and maybe an episode of The Americans. Set just after Ronald Reagan was elected, it’s a show about marriage and kids and family — when the parents just happen to be Soviet KGB illegals living deep undercover in the suburbs of Washington, DC. The New Yorker quite rightly called it “the whiskey sour of television shows.” Whether you’re someone’s spouse or parent — or simply suffering a massive case of 1980s nostalgia — this is the show for you. There are four seasons for you to enjoy right now, with two more to follow (in 2017 and 2018) before the series draws to a close. (We’re watching via iTunes; it hasn’t yet come to Egyptian Netflix.)

The most-clicked stories in Enterprise in the past week were:

• First Lady Intissar Amer El Sisi makes a rare public appearance to help lead a donation drive for the Tayha Misr Fund, accompanied by ministers Sahar Nasr and Ghada Waly. (Al Hayah, via Youtube)
• Finance Minister Amr El Garhy’s Bloomberg interview (Bloomberg TV)
• Video from US president-elect Donald Trump on his priorities for his first days in office (Youtube)
• Egypt Is Charting a New Economic Course, op-ed by International Cooperation Minister Sahar Nasr (Wall Street Journal, paywall) (tie)
• New York City’s graveyard shift: The men and women who work while the rest of the city sleeps. (New Yorker, photo essay) (tie)
• CIB’s updated credit card limits (CIB, pdf)