Been there too

Fascinating read, this "Richer women, poorer men"-article in yesterday's International Herald Tribune. On the problem women have when they advance themselves in terms of education and pay: it get's more and more difficult to find a partner for life. Men from any ethnic group get intimidated when women are smart. Money is a tricky subject (and I know, I have lived through a similar experience whan I was much younger). With the result that more and more perfectly elligible women cannot find a partner to spend (the rest of) their life with. A Big change in gender relations.

Some cute quotes though:
- on women wanting their potential partners to 'grow' with them instead of worrying about education and salary:"do you have a passport and a library card" is the first question to ask when you meet a new date.
- or this one, told by a male friend to a succesful designer: "you are confident, you have good credit, own your own business, travel around the world and are self-sufficient. What man is going to want you?"

But as men need marriage more than women do, from the standpoint of physical and mental well-being, it seems to me we are not the ones who have to take a step back. C'mon guys, take a step forward!

(copyright Sam Roberts - IHT - Jan 20th 2010)

Heartwarming Relief initiatives

Tech and Internet Giants Step Up to Help Haiti

Posted using ShareThis

All you Farmville adepts out there: buy Haitian stuff!

Google Earth provides Haiti layer

THe layer allows to look at Haiti pictures and really see the unbelievable damage and destruction that has hit this island and it's people. It makes your blood run cold.

In from Japan

Finally! in a big carton cilinder and without having to pay any additional customs or other costs: my geeky web trend map.
It's actually much bigger than I expected, so I'm having trouble putting it on the wall in my office. Call that a luxury problem.
For those of you who click on the link: zoom in-zoom out-enjoy!

heard in the elevator

One of the perks of working in a high-level IT organisation is you hear interesting stuff all the time. Well. Most of the time. Or sometimes. Whatever. Coming back to the office from a meeting, one of my tech colleagues was impressing another one with the following quip: 'one of the lesser known applications of a Playstation is the ability to act as a supercomputer when you link for example 9 of them together and use their combined power'.

And when you would spend a fair amount of money on, let's say a Cray, buying 9 PS3's would definitely be a lot cheaper.

That got me thinking. Should be easy to Google stuff like this, no? Turned out much harder than I imagined but hey, I learned soemething new today. FLOPS.

Floating Point Operations per Second.

My brain started floating when I tried to read about it but the point is: yes, the Cray-supercomputer versus PS3 equation exists. Amazing stuff, if you can actually understand what it means.

I humbly withdraw :-)