i grew up in europe....

funny quote of the day from Eddie Izzard

"I grew up in Europe, where the history comes from."
- Eddie Izzard

Hope in TIME

this article, from this week's TIME magazine is one of the most hopeful and inspring pieces I have read in a long time. In the spirit of what it is about , I hope they don't mind me pasting it in full here :

The Next Big Thing Is Us
Big, bold ideas used to come from small groups of experts. Now they come from you as well. Here's our annual look at what's new and innovative--from politics to movies, medicine to fashion, sports to tech
By LEV GROSSMAN

It goes against everybody's inner cynic to read (or for that matter to write) a sentence like the following: We are on the verge of the greatest age of creativity and innovation the world has ever known. It smacks of treacly dotcomism. It smacks of I Love the '90s. My inner cynic is a tiny bit queasy right now. But lately it's a conclusion I've had a hard time avoiding. Consider the following idea. Things, broadly speaking, used to be invented by a small, shadowy élite. This mysterious group might be called the People Who Happened to Be in the Room at the Time. These people might have been engineers, or sitcom writers, or chefs. They were probably very nice and might have even been very, very smart. But however smart they were, they're almost certainly no match for a less élite but much, much larger group: All the People Outside the Room.

Historically, that latter group hasn't had much to do with innovation. These people buy and consume whatever gets invented inside the room, but that's it. The arrow points just the one way. Until now it's been kind of awkward getting them involved in the innovation process at all, because they're not getting paid; plus it's a pain to set up the conference call.

But that's changing. The authorship of innovation is shifting from the Few to the Many. Take as an example something called the open-source movement. The basic idea is that while most software is produced by the aforementioned People in the Room, open-source software is offered to the entire world as a collaborative project. Somebody posts a piece of software on the Internet and then throws the joint wide open. It's like American Idol for software. In the open-source model, innovation comes from hundreds of thousands of people, not just a handful of engineers and a six-pack of Code Red. One open-source program, the truly excellent Web browser Firefox, has been downloaded 150 million times. SourceForge.net a website that coordinates open-source work, is currently host to almost 15,000 projects. Internet behemoth AOL, which shares a corporate parent with this magazine, open-sourced its instant-messaging service just last week.

The idea that lots of people, potentially everybody, can be involved in the process of innovation is both obvious and utterly transformative, and once you look for examples you start seeing them everywhere. When Apple launched iTunes and the iPod it had no idea that podcasting would be a big deal. It took the rest of us to tell Apple what its product was for. Companies as diverse as Lego, Ikea and BMW are getting in on this action. And it exists in the cultural realm too. Look at websites like YouTube, or Google Video. Anybody anywhere can upload his or her little three-minute movies, and the best ones bubble to the top. Who knows what unheralded, unagented Soderbergh will come crawling out of that primordial tide pool? Granted, some of the movies are of people falling off jungle gyms. But some of them are brilliant. Some of them are both.

Two things make this kind of innovation possible, one obvious and one not. The obvious one is--say it with me--the Internet. The other one, the surprising one, is a curious phenomenon you could call intellectual altruism. It turns out that given the opportunity, people will donate their time and brainpower to make the world better. There's an online encyclopedia called Wikipedia written entirely by anonymous experts donating their expertise. It has the unevenness you'd expect from anything that's user-created and user-edited, but it's still the most useful reference resource anywhere on- or off-line; earlier this month Wikipedia posted its 1 millionth article.

You would think corporations would be falling all over themselves to make money off this new resource: a cheap R&D lab the approximate size of the earth's online population. In fact, they have been slow to embrace it. Admittedly, it's counterintuitive: until now the value of a piece of intellectual property has been defined by how few people possess it. In the future the value will be defined by how many people possess it. You could even imagine a future in which companies scrapped their R&D departments entirely and simply proposed questions for the global collective intelligence to mull. All that creative types like myself would have to do is sit back and harvest free, brilliant ideas from the brains of billions. Now that's an idea my inner cynic can get behind.

Great Men

Nancy Banks-Smith reviewing the Kenneth Williams biopic which was on BBC 4 television last night says : “Fantabulosa! was a drama about his (Williams) undramatic private life. It was based on Williams' lacerating diaries. He is one of the great diarists. Great diarists are never great men.” Is this true? And does this make me a great man? (since my diary is fairly pedestrian) Very annoyed with myself that I forgot to watch “Fantabulosa”, but I’m sure it will be repeated as everything is on BBC 4

Oh to be in America tonight where the last season of "The Sopranos" starts on HBO!

Voltaire on Blogging?

quote of the day comes from Voltaire:

"The multitude of books is making us ignorant."
- Voltaire

wonder what he'd make of the fact that a new blog is created every second?

Future Me

I’ve always liked the idea of FUTURE ME. It’s one of those very simple ideas that goes deep. You write an e-mail to yourself to be delivered at some date in the future. This could delve as deep as Samuel Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape” or simple as a “to do” note yourself. It’s great fun to read the public entries. Here’s a random entry:

Dear FutureMe,
Are you out celebrating with your friends or are you stuck at home watching tv while sitting on the couch wishing you were out with your friends? So, it's 2009, the year you're going to graduate from high school and finally go to college! YAY! Well, I hope you are having a good New Years Day. You'll probably get this on the 1st, rather than the 31st because it doesn't set the particular time to send it. And plus, what the hell would I be doing at 12AM on the internet on New Year's Day. So, have you sent in your applications for colleges and scholarships? Are you on your way to being valedictorian? Are you still popular because I bet by now, people have seen your competitive side and knows you act like a bitch when you do stuff like that. Hopefully, not because I'm working on that attitude now. Are the parents still on your case and vice versa? Any boyfriends? Are you still friends with the Melissa, Kalyn, and Denise? If so, are ya'll crazy as ever since it's senior year? What about a job? Please tell me I got one and got some new clothes!!! God... how about the SAT and ACT? High scores or average? Did I find the college I wanted to go to. Well, anyways, I just wanted to say have a fun (not boring) New Year's Day!

(written Tue Dec 27, 2005, to be delivered Thu Jan 1, 2009)

secret of life

Good Quote of the day today:

"The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well."
- Horace Walpole

Good Night and Good Luck

So I finally got to see “Good Night and Good Luck” yesterday afternoon. While I enjoyed it I wasn’t as fond of it as I thought I would be. I agreed with its view point and purpose but I thought it lacked feeling somehow. It was made in black and white which looked great, I just wish the screenplay itself had a bit more colour in it. Like the Johnny Cash movie, I was fascinated once again by 1950s America. Add McCarthy to that weird soup. There was so much hysteria around, good and bad. The word Atomic kept coming into my mind. Everyone (apart from the George Clooney character?) smoked in the movie. There was a fog of it all around. Cigarettes definitely worked better in black and white. I loved the interview with Liberace. Saying he would “settle down” when the right woman came along! Yes, we do live in better times. And yet, there was definitely something happening way back then…..

Rebel Rebel.

Predictably, the social commentators have jumped aboard the Dublin riot bandwagon. I think its utterly disgusting how this shower of “analysers” are always waiting to pounce and pronounce any sign of unrest as proof that society isn’t working. It’s like they spent their lives praying for a revolution.

There is something adolescent about it all. And many of these guys (most of them are guys) are no adolescents. Many of them are probably deluded enough to believe what they preach. A fantasy where the mob tears down the rotten state and starts again. In this fantasy, the mob , having destroyed the status quo will suddenly be transformed into a peace loving group living in harmony and sharing in the just society they have helped to establish. Yeah, right.

Cabana

During yesterday's Apple launch of the new apple boom box, Steve Jobs talked about it as being portable enough to take .".. out the cabana or the pool..” Lovely word , Cabana. Very pleasant word associations. Definitely designed in California. The boom box itself is , unfortunately, no new Apple icon design wise. The bigger you stretch white plastic the cheaper it begins to look?

after the deluge

Interesting piece on “Aaron’s” blog (http://icedcoffeeandabagel.blogspot.com/2006/02/digital-grandma.html) claiming that New Orleans may be fast becoming “…one of the most technologically advanced cities in the U.S.” Because the infrastructure was banjaxed it seems that everyone his gone wireless. Every cloud?

yesterday's kerfuffle

in relation to yesterday's kerfuffle, I though this photo caught it well :
(photo by : http://www.flickr.com/photos/o6scura/)

Ads by Google

Ads by Google can get it so wrong! Yesterday I wrote a piece about the riots in Dublin city center , placing the blame at the door of republican followers. Today, my “ads by Google” include a number of links to this murky world which I have spent my whole life steering clear of! How wrong can you be, dear word analyzing computer. So I guess the thing to do is put in some words that might steer you in the right direction? Shopping, entertainment, beaches, sunny days, music, good books, computers, sexuality, philosophy, evolution, the future. These are a few of my favourite things.

A Riot

There was a riot in Dublin City Center today, where it not for the fact that I got a text from my sister I’d probably be in the middle of it as I was thinking of going in to see the movie “Good Night and Good Luck” The Unionists had come down to hold a protest march and republican supporters had organised a protest. It soon got out of control and the eager and angry young men who are always plentiful at such events started burning looting and robbing. Days like this, you’d just wish the whole lot of them would melt away back into the past, where they live in their heads anyway. It’s such a rotten cauldron, that Northern mix of fascist republicanism and Unionist bigots. And the Irish government is talking about holding an Easter rising military commemoration in April, God when will they get into their heads that this is the last thing we need? It’s no coincidence that our fortunes started to change for the better when the Irish soccer team (led by an Englishman) where paraded down O Connell Street in mid 1990s. There was something new and forward looking about that. Guns at Easter, even if they are state guns, should be kept far away from O Connell Street. Are you listening Bertie, get a grip will you and cancel this parade back into the damp and dismal days.

ONENOTE

There is a piece of software made by Microsoft called ONENOTE that I have been using for some years. Apart from Photoshop, I think its my favourite application. I think that it was originally invented for the Tablet PC and I imagine it works very well on that platform – in fact I often considered buying a tablet PC just to use ONENOTE. I use it on a desktop PC and also on a Sony Vaio laptop. Beautiful, intuitive and practical aren’t words usually associated with Microsoft but beautiful, intuitive and practical is what ONENOTE is. And no, I have no connections whatsoever with Microsoft. It just occurred to me, that once in a while, we should speak up in praise of our favourite tools!

Walk the Line

Went to see the Johnny Cash biopic “Walk the Line” this afternoon. I saw the movie described somewhere as “sweet” and this describes it well – “sweet” in the best sense of that word. Complexities are ironed out leaving a clear well constructed plot line that is very enjoyable to watch. It’s only on reflection that one misses the complexities and the jagged edges of a real life. Joaquin Phoenix gives a great performance as does Reese Witherspoon. One thing that struck me watching it was the vitality of mid 1950s America. There was definitely something in the water over there at that time! To think of Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and many more touring the country, playing blazing music in sleepy small towns – sounds that had not been heard in mainstreets or in mainstream before. And at the same time, Alan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac – the beat generation were all howling away in the big cities. No wonder the era is still a touchstone that can still be raw and dazzling.

Dubai

There’s an article in today’s Guardian about the city of Dubai. It’s really worth reading for a view of a possible and unforeseen future.
(http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1708395,00.html) The biggest city ever constructed is rising out the sands of the middle east. With a strange web of influences as its bone structure, its skin is pure Disneyland with Pharaoh and Aztec pigmentation . Something about the project also reminds me of the online world “Second Life” A world based on history and the human imagination, nothing startlingly new about it but using borrowed ideas and images to make a gigantic mirror of the way we were as a civilisation. But a mirror where hundreds of thousands of people can live. The muslim culture of the middle east is a strange anchor for such a venture, especially in the times we live in. With much of Islam obsessed with the medieval it’s a shock to see a part of that world engaged in this venture. The article made me want to visit Dubai. The article’s closing paragraph asks whether “…Dubai, (is) in fact, the fulcrum of the future global trading and financial system? Is it, in embryo, what London was to the 19th century and Manhattan to the 20th? Not the modern centre of the Arab world but, more than that, the Arab centre of the modern world.” The continuing story of the new world?

light evening

Every year around this time there comes an evening that startles you with its brightness and allows you to eat dinner in daylight again. That was today, my empty dinner plate on the table at 5.23pm, still daylight outside.

THE ABBASID CALIPHS

this was one of the best radio programmes I have listened to in a long while. Really worth the download! What tangled webs we weave to make sense of our place in the cosmos.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime.shtml

2001 comes around at last...

I just read this report in the Moscow Times :

A spacesuit tossed out of the international space station was supposed to float through space, talking to radio operators around the globe.

The suit, stuffed with old clothes and a radio transmitter, orbited Earth twice on Friday, giving off faint signals to Japan. But then the suit, called Ivan Ivanovich, apparently went silent.

"It may have ceased operating very shortly after its deployment," said NASA spokesman Rob Navias.

Navias speculated that the suit's batteries might have become too cold.

The Russian Orlan spacesuit, stuffed with rags and other trash, was released early Saturday Moscow time.

It looked like an astronaut tumbling helplessly 350 kilometers above the central Pacific Ocean, beginning a gentle downward spiral that will end in four to seven months when it incinerates in Earth's atmosphere.

Its transmitter was to broadcast a limited lineup: First an announcement via voice synthesizer that said, "This is SuitSat-1, RSORS," followed by greetings in English, French, Japanese, Russian, German and Spanish with "special words" for students to decode.

Then SuitSat was to relay its vital signs in English -- temperature, available battery power, the elapsed time of the mission.

The whole thing was to take 30 seconds, after which SuitSat was to rest 30 seconds and broadcast again.

SuitSat arose in late 2004 as the brainchild of the Russian space station team and the Space Radio Amateur Satellite Corp., a nonprofit that promotes education and amateur radio satellites.

Unlike the United States, which recycles its spacesuits, the Russians use Orlans for about two years and then discard them.

The Russians suggested a variation on this theme: Why not hook up radio gear to an old suit, toss it into space and make a satellite out of it?

International space station commander William McArthur and flight engineer Valery Tokarev began the second spacewalk of their six-month stay aboard the space station at 1:44 a.m. on Saturday.

Its primary purpose was to secure a cable cutter on the mobile transporter that moves the station's robot crane.

But first they had to get rid of SuitSat. The old spacesuit, weighing several hundred kilograms, had last been used by NASA astronaut Michael Foale during an August 2004 spacewalk.

On Friday, a radio antenna poked out the top of the backpack.

The idea of a quick departure was apparently a good one, for SuitSat first got in the way of closing the airlock door, then balked at being wrestled into position.

Finally, with video cameras recording the event, it was gone.

"Wonderful picture, Valery," mission control said. "Thank you very much."