I knew May was going to be a whirlwind between work trips and my Mom coming to visit London & Paris. Now that it's June, things have settled down a little bit.
The quick highlights, which include a lot of near disasters involving missing or late tickets for events:
1) I dropped my Mom and step-Dad at the Chelsea Flower Show on Saturday and its been a blur of sightseeing since. All of the events I bought tickets for, these were the earliest.
More coming soon, gotta run.
Although I remember the entire night, this photo sums up the span from
12:30 to 4:30am, and of course my then sleep-drenched Saturday
afternoon. Focused yet bright blurry flashes of brillance- the music,
not my dancing.
I wrote the following response to my brother who, as a 2nd year law
student, emailed me to gloat slightly about the Pirate Bay ruling.
I haven't blogged in awhile, Twitter has taken over my creative output
over last three months or so but this topic, copyright in the digital
age, got me fired up enough to write a meaningful response.
And it also got me thinking that I need to spend more time working of
things that fire me up. ------ Begin forwarded message: >
> Thanks for the link, been following this case, especially since
> having been to Sweden now. Read the Economist article, I think it's
> a little more even-handed than the NYT. >
> I was actually at the site last night, which underscores exactly why
> this a hollow victory. I agree that alwas penalities to breaking
> laws, they wouldn't be laws unless there were consequences. >
> But as we all know, the genie is out of the bottle and this is like
> a game of whack-a-mole, as soon as you knock one down another one
> pops up. So PB my have lost this battle (notice how NYT doesn't
> mention that this isn't the end if the case, the Economist points
> out how they're going to appeal), but the war is already over--
> technology won. >
> I'm not advocating the abolition of copyright, quite the contrary, I
> believe there is an important, critical role for copyright but when
> over 50 acclaimed economists (including Nobel lauretes) sign a
> petition againist the most recent U.S. Copyright extension because
> it flouts the Constitution and actually causes economic
> disincentives and astifles innovation (which flies in the face of
> the purpose of copyright), there is something wrong. >
> As the NYT article cited, copyright holders only real, long-term
> viable solution is to combat free with free and develop new business
> models. It happened with the telegraph, the phone, the TV, the VCR,
> and other major disruptive technology in our history. >
> Like the war on drugs or on alcohol, which have both gone rather
> poorly, when a society's mores dictate that a behaivor is reasonable
> they will continue doing so despite the law. And what makes this
> question all the more daunting than these examples is that it's
> technology-enabled and digital, you can't fight 1s and 0s with laws
> and courts. The economics of content in the digital age have changed
> because marginal costs are approaching zero on the production side,
> and this is turning all kinds of industries upside down (see Chris
> Anderson's WIRED article or upcoming book on free). That means that
> at the end of the day, the law of economics and technology will win. >
> Thanks for inspiring me to write, I haven't spent time on a serious
> topic in a couple of months. Let's keep this going. >
> Sent from my iPhone
Snowboarding sticker from the mid- late-90s, either from a fine
snowboard shop in western NY or Big Sky, MT, can't remember which.
London snow photos from last couple of days, including some of me trying to snowboard (jibbing a pole) by Kensington Gardens in Hyde Park.
And a few more photos via the Official Inauguration website:
Relaxing Saturday afternoon in Epping Forest, after a walk and lunch &
pint at the pub. How nice to be out of the city and in the countey for
a short timw. The sun was out for a brief time and then became the
grey, dreary day you see below.
One of my best college buddies is in Iraq now and I’m happy to know that he (or his wife) hasn’t lost his sense of humor.
Patrick and Emily arrived in London this afternoon, spent some time at
The British Museum, and then went to the Princess Louise pub for some
pints.
I left the office to meet them at the pub ( first time but very cool,
old Victoria pub feel known for it's architecture, and heal too) and
we started any London visit on the right foot: dinner at Abeno
Okonomiyaki.
I went all out like last time with Matt and Haniel and ordered the
Abeno Special, the one on the left in the photo.
Photos of local graffiti and streetart near my flat in Shoreditch. Thanks to Sandrine and Robin at WeAreSocial for setting up the day, it was a lot of fun, stimulating web2.0 and new media conversations, and cool people.
Rest of the photos are on my Flickr page.
I went to a liberal arts college and despite Garrison Keillor's chiding about that, or maybe more specifically, English majors (that wasn't mine luckily, I was International Political Economy), I have no regrets about the choice or about the education I received. The world is increasingly interconnected and interdisciplinary so it only makes sense to understand the world from different perspectives and be able to analyze issues through the different lenses that one develops with a liberal arts background.
There's no need to defend a liberal arts education because it speaks for itself...and because there are many far, far smarter people than myself who've tackled this question already. My alma matter's current president, Richard Celeste, is a great spokesperson and leader of the liberal arts college education. He's done phenominal work promoting Colorado College and the liberal arts so this post is for him and for all of the great professors who put up with me during college, especially when I wasn't prepared or hadn't studied enough (finishing my Senior thesis almost killed me but it made me realize how far I could push myself before breaking-- my only fear now is have I reached that same extreme in pushing myself in my career...).
From Nov. 30th's episode of Meet the Press, here's Ted Turner, quickly mentioning how valuable his liberal arts education was to his success (I'm no huge fan or opponent but the guy has been extremely successful, no matter how you measure it): emphasis added
MR. TURNER: Well, he, he, he really wanted me to go to business school. He was very practical. And--but Brown was a liberal arts college, and he knew that when I went there. Even the economics courses I took were economic theory. They weren't how to balance, balance books and the sort of thing I would have gotten if I'd have gone to, say, Wharton or, or to a business school. That--but that's where he decided later on, where, where I ought to be. But I was already at Brown. It was really an attack on a liberal, liberal arts education. And there are reasons why, there are reasons why I, I had a liberal arts education, and I was extremely successful in business. And I think I would have not been as successful if it had not been for my classical background, because I learned about Alexander the Great and Pericles and Aristotle, and I think it made me a better businessman.
Posts to here to Dimen Designs have been sparse lately, partly from work and a re-evaluation of my blogging habits. Dimen Designs isn't dying but microblogging via Twitter and my An Expat in Lonon blog via Tumblr have taken over (http://anExpatInLondon.tumblr.com).
Regardless a few thoughts with sharing as I've been sick, uninspired, and diverting my energies to reading, which is a close substitute to not creating something yourself. Finished reading Neil Stephenson's 'Anathem' today and started Edward Tufte's seminal work, 'The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.' Tufte is a Yale professor who is famous for, among other things, being one of the earliest to decry that PowerPoint makes us stupid.
Here are his important takeaways, by chapter, as I'm 2/3 of the way through so far:
Graphical Excellence
Ask yourself, how often does information or data get communicated, whether in PowerPoint, Keynote or in regular presentations, that meets the standards above for Graphical Excellence?
From personal experience, maybe 10-15% of the time. Data and information presented clearly and powerfully is how knowledge and insight is generated and remembered. More Tufte conclusions coming this week.
The fireworks were nice but way too short-- nothing like the 4th of
July.
Microblogging from the plane via newspaper reading (Oct. 30- Nov 2)
Financial Times (Thu.) She has, after all been a Democrat all her life. not this time.
'Forget it. I'm not voting for no black guy,' she said. Why not? 'It's
just the way I was raised.'
Article on the Obama camapigns degrees of preparedness for the
transition, in great contrast to Clinton who didn't do very well and
this suffered the 1994 Republican mid-term elections. And article
notes that Bush White House has been forthcoming and noble in helping
both sides with the relevant issues required for whomever the new
president is. Four big issues or challenges for Obama: A) when to push congress to enact a 2nd stimulus package B) how to withrawl trips quickly from Iraq as promises C) how to handle the financial meltdown D) how to prepare the first budget to be launched in Feb.
WSJ-- The hard work of getting ahead Talent is valid but disciplined practice and relentless improvmentof
your weaknesses is the stronger path to success. The 10 year rule, by
which it takes 10 of hard work to achieve excellence in almost any
important field.
And when we hire people, we focus too much on gut instinct and
corporate fit. As one CEO said when firing someone, I hired your
resume bit unfortunately I got you. Their research (over 4,000 hiring hstudies) showed that interviewing
is not predictive of job performance.
Obama massive on the ground organizing and leveraging Internet to
unite previously disparate groups of geographically or socially
diverse yet Democratic voters.
Economist: On cloud computing-- for computing to reach a higher level its cells
he to be commoditized. The three main parts of cloud computing: 1) the infrastructure layer 2) software layer 3) periphery or device layer
Big challenge of cloud computing is (since it can gather intelligence
about how the individual uses the service and adjust accordingly) how
to connect the myriad data and make them profitable.
--- on way back and the Detroit to Heatheow flight is playing Thievery
Corporation, very cool.---
And beause my seat's VOD was rebooted for not working I saw for a
split second the Linux penguin before the progress bar screen took
over. It's called Frozen River and I'd never heard of it before
turning on the VOD during dinner but I'm glad I did-- I really was
transformed by the story and felt for these characters. One of the
most depressing films that I've seen in awhile. And it took place in
the woods of upstate NY. Filmed entirley in NY state.
Background music in the film by: 'The State of The Union' by Pompous Plate Or by Rachel Diablo and The Calm
Sent from my iPhone
Just spotted the Google Street View car driving through central London on Southampton Row near Holborn tube http://twitpic.com/f9hi
First time ever riding at an indoor snow hill, more a slope than
anything, but ir was quite fun. Reminded me a lot of backyard
shredding with a little snow, a rail or small jump, and taking lap
after lap while the hours slide away. Hopefully you're with good
friends and then after the snow has melted or been displaced and
you're sore drom a few good falls, you all celebrate with a few beers.
