And one where I don’t know whether to laugh at, or cry for, the people involved. On reflection, I find it ineffably sad. Thanks to Jill for the link, I think.
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The World’s Greatest Bureaucracy
Based on personal experience, I often think that The Netherlands must rank high as a leading contender to be the world’s greatest bureaucracy (we’re guaranteed to grind you down…). However, on reflection I think that the honour should probably be passed to India. After all, they’ve been taught by a master in the form of the British Raj. The evidence is here.Leave a comment
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Quote of the Day
President Bush at a press conference yesterday: "In my first act of bipartisan outreach since the election, I shared with her [Pelosi] the names of some Republican interior decorators who can help her pick out the the new drapes for her new offices."Er, hello? I think the President’s brain has gone AWOL again… Perhaps he’ll offer her an unwanted neck massage next, à la Angela Merkel.(hat tip to Bitch PhD.)Leave a comment
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Emotional Islands
Teju Cole has another wonderful piece of writing up on his blog. The man’s a marvel.Leave a comment
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Global Warning
Peter Tatchell has an article in the Guardian‘s Comment is Free section on people’s apathy towards the threat of Global Warming. Judging by the tone of most of the comments on his article, it would appear that there are many people in denial as well. I think Norm puts his finger on the probable cause of the apathy – people just can’t get worked up about something that will happen years in the future. As he says, "compassion doesn’t work terribly well over great distances". And those distances can be measured in either space or time – the observation will still hold true.It seems to me that the only thing that might avert the disaster is to have another one – an outbreak of a human form of avian flu that decimates the world population. That might throw a sufficiently big spanner into the works and stop our spiralling contributions to global warming in its tracks…Leave a comment
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Cross-Fertilisation – Take Two
PZ Myers riffs on possible developments in techniques for stem-cell research. Mind-boggling stuff!Leave a comment
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Stuffed Sparrows
The Natural History Museum of Rotterdam opens a major exhibition next week: The Grand House Sparrow Exhibition. It’s your chance to see serried ranks of stuffed sparrows, including some celebrity birds. Improbable Research has more information.Leave a comment
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Cross-Fertilisation
Two of my favourite Blogs cross-fertilise each other today. Ballardian has a long, and interesting, interview with Geoff Manaugh, the man behind BLDBLOG. Worth reading.Leave a comment
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The Typewriter Revisited
Via idiolect.org.uk, I came across this Guardian article by Khoi Vinh, who argues that a way of overcoming writer’s block is to use a manual typewriter instead of a word processor. There may be something in the idea. And if you haven’t got that manual typewriter any more, then you could try the software equivalent: Writeroom for the Mac, or Darkroom for Windows.Leave a comment
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Green Fashion
Over at Worldchanging, Nicole Anne-Boyer has a post on how environmental concerns are becoming fashionable and being packaged to be sold to rich consumers. The post itself is interesting, but she also mentions the FT’s glossy lifestyle magazine How to Spend it – "devoted to the whims of elite consumption and concerns — everything from Prada to philanthropy. I’m charmed and appalled; their ideal reader". Well, I took a look at the magazine – I’m just appalled. Greed masquerading as taste and beauty. I must confess though that I was quite taken with the web application that the publishers are using to display the printed copy of the magazine as a digital version in the web browser. That’s quite good. Pity the content makes me want to vomit.Leave a comment
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Open Standards in China
Stephen Walli has an interesting post up on his blog (Once More unto the Breach) about his experiences on a recent trip to Beijing to attend a conference on Open Standards. I’ve known Stephe for years – we used to meet up at standards conferences in the last century. Stephe, have you got rid of your ponytail? Good decision – I never really cared for it. Oh, and look, there’s Carl Cargill too! Heavens, another face from the past. Glad to see that you are both clearly enjoying life.2 responses to “Open Standards in China”
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The ponytail went to "Locks of Love". Seemed a fitting end to it. s.
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Stephe – much, much better! Glad that you enjoyed the trip to China as well. Cheers.
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The History of Oil
The history of oil – as told by Robert Newman. A blackly humorous polemic.(hat tip to Improbable Research)Leave a comment
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The Moral Mind
Marc D. Hauser, a biologist working at Harvard, is proposing people are born with a "moral grammar" hardwired into their brains by evolution. He has written a book on the hypothesis – The Moral Mind – and it’s reviewed here in the New York Times.The trouble is, it seems to rather beg the question. The "moral grammar" could well be simply an emergent by-product of the brain’s decision-making mechanisms themselves. Jonah Lehrer, over at The Frontal Cortex, explores this nagging doubt very well.Leave a comment
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Tag Clouds
Tags are metadata keywords that are applied to things. And a Tag Cloud is a collection of tags, often with the most frequenty-used tags being highlighted in some fashion. For example, here’s the tag cloud for my library, and the tag cloud for my photographs.Tag clouds can be used to show aspects about the things being tagged that might not at first be apparent. For example, here’s a particularly interesting use of a tag cloud that varies over time. The collection that has been tagged is a collection of speeches made by US Presidents, dating from 1776 to the present day. By moving the slider to alter the date, you can see which are the key words (the Tags) used in a speech made at the time.Leave a comment
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Don’t Panic
The Guardian today carries a nice selection of extracts from emails sent by students on their gap year to their doting parents. The extracts, far from having the intended effect of calming their parents’ worries, probably had precisely the opposite effect. Sample:Dear Mummy and Daddy, how are you? This may come as a shock but I am thinking of eloping with one of my students to Assam coz he is from the Naga tribe, and I want to be a Naga girl and go hunting monkeys with bows and arrows and fishing with spears like they do, and then come back and do tribal dancing all night, coz it’s so much fun, and all the tribal people here are so great and brave and strong. Obviously the political situation in Assam isn’t ideal, but I’ll be OK. Love you lots. Only an idea at the moment. X, MeI have obviously led a sheltered life, since I don’t recall being in any situation remotely like some of the ones described here. And not having children ourselves means that we have missed out on the opportunity to experience parental panic. However, my brother, who is in his seventies, is currently travelling through South America, and sends me cheerful emails with news such as "survived an active volcano and a strikers’ blockade, burning tyres and all!", so I think I’m beginning to get the hang of how it must feel.Leave a comment
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Fungi Serendipity
Now that we live in the countryside; this year, for the first time, I’ve had the opportunity to observe the life of fungi. During the past couple of months, my daily walk in the woods with the dog usually reveals a few new specimens each time.
So when I saw this article by Carl Zimmer on Stinkhorns, I stopped and read it. And a link in the comments on the article led me to the Cornell Mushroom Blog.3 responses to “Fungi Serendipity”
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I’ve always been a fungi fan myself, but that article on the stinkhorns was amazing. These fungi types are like some weird lifeforms from a science fiction film – forcing insects to climb to the top of stalks and so on. Fascinating.
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oh, and, if these are your own photographs Geoff, they are really excellent. Have yu ever thought of sending them anywhere?
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Gelert, yep, they’re my photographs. It’s just a hobby of mine. All my photos are under a Creative Commons license that makes them available to others to use for non-commercial purposes. They’re all up on Flickr here.
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Office Roundtable
Last month, I mentioned new telepresence products from Cisco and Microsoft. Here’s some more information on the Microsoft product, Office Roundtable.First up is an interview with Ross Cutler of Microsoft Research talking about some of the innovations that have been done with the video camera device. Via that link, you can also download the 360 degree panoramic video of the interview, and see it as an Office Roundtable device would present it. Interesting stuff.And by way of light relief, here’s a take on how the product might be used.Leave a comment
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Berners-Lee and Sturgeon’s Revelation
Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World-Wide Web, is worried about the fact that the web will become a place where "untruths start to spread more than truths".Hello? This is human nature that we are talking about. Sturgeon’s Revelation is equally valid for the Web as for any other area of human endeavour. And for blogging, even more so…Update: Tim Berners-Lee reminds us all that journalists who quote out of context are not exactly rare either…Leave a comment
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