David & Goliath all over again

This is why I read the International herald Tribune: for the amazing stories you never read about in our quality papers or, when you do read about it, they have become 'after-the-facts' stories talking about far away places.

Check this out: there is this really tiny Eskimo village called Kivalina, perched on a barrier island even north of the Arctic circle, facing the Bering Strait.

They are suing some two dozen fuel and utility companies. Reason: these companies are responsable for the climate change which causes the Arctic ice, which protects the island, to melt, leaving Kivalina's fragile coast exposed to extreme weather conditions.

What makes this lawsuit especially bitter is that one of the companies accused is Exxon. Remember the Exxon Valdez? Some 21 years ago (March 89) Alaska suffered the gravest oil spill in history when the Exxon Valdez sank after hitting a reef. They were convicted to a 2,5 billion dollar penalty, later reversed to a shockingly mere half a million dollars by the Supreme Court.

Exxon makes 2,5 billion dollars in two days because of the astronomical enery prices ...

Specialists compare this case with cases against the tobacco industry: a lot of class action suits were lost but finally ... suers won big and the tobacco industry has had to pay and adapt itself.

I'd say: Go Kivalina!
And as the Kivalina picture is copyright protected: here is where I got it.

De Zandloper

It's 'national poetry-day' today in Flanders (which puts the word 'national' in a more humble context) and much to my surprise, an anouncer's voice on the train this morning started reciting a poem for the passengers. It was a very nice poem, with such a specific storyline I retrieved it from the Web in no time. I have no idea whether it was his own initiative or not but it certainly was a fine gift and one appreciated by at least some of the (otherwise very grumpy) passengers. Some of us shared smiles. That's something! And here is the poem, by Maarten Inghels, called 'De Zandloper'.

Dat haar besmeurde blauwe laarsjes het bed vol vuil
stampen, dat ze zich dan met een elegante boog
opdrukt in een handstand tegen de muur, deert mij
niet. Dat ze daarbij enigszins rood aanloopt, puft,
hijgt, maakt haar opwindender dan ooit tevoren.

Wennen is het wanneer ze ondertussen kreunend
uitroept, dat ze haar lenigheid, de kopstand, oefent
voor later, wanneer na haar dood de as in een houten
zandloper moet, testamentair vastgelegd. Zodat ze
dan eeuwig op mijn salontafel beweegt.

And finally some good news too

After the shockwave caused by the announced closure of the Opel plant in Antwerp, some good news at least: Saab has found a new and exciting home. Thanks to Spyker for tenaciously holding on to a deal declared dead in the press more than once. Saab is Safe!

Fair is fair: Lijit Wijit again

As I say: fair is fair. Who would 've expected to get an immediate and professional Lijit-response as a comment to my previous Lijit post? I certainly didn't. Well, there you go. Shows great committment and an almost creepy monitoring of the users (just joking!). Want to read the feedback, click the comment.

Lijit Wijit (bis)

Hmm. Searching on stuff I know is there (because I wrote it) gives no results.

I am NOT impressed. Or amused.

Let's give it some (crawling?) time ...

A Lijit Wijit.

Look to the left uppercorner of this blog. There is a search box. It's not just a search box, it's a lijit-searchbox. 'It does site search, but it does it better' or somesuch. The idea however is cool: Lijit gathers info from my site, my social content and content from my network. Someone searching for, let's say, the future of the web would not only find my stuff on this site but also my tweets and those of my Twitter friends and the tweets I follow.

The fact that I never heard of them doesn't exactly count in my favor .. apparantly they've been active quite some time already.... and burning some amazing amounts of money as well in the meantime.

I actually stumbled on it while reading an old Chris Anderson blogpost on Long Tails. And as we Dutch speaking cybernauts are very familiar with the 'wij' part of the word wijit my first reaction was to think I had found something weird & local. ('Wij' means 'us'). I apologize :-)

a-huffin'-and-a-puffin'

Meet NASA's personal flying suit' called Puffin, an intriguing mix between a one-man stealth plane and a futuristic jet suit. The whole thing is stil highly experimental and conceptual and, hey, what other use for it than military, right? Which makes me wonder why you'd want to put these highly conceptual things on Youtube in the first place?

Found on the homepage of The New York Times Global

Avatar

Yes, we went to see Avatar last week. Yes, it's a thin storyline but a breath-takingly beautiful movie.

Yes, it's a little bit Matrix, Star Wars, LOTR, Battlestart Galactica, ... its' good versus bad, machines versus nature, a tale about people living together, integration, etcetcetc.

I was a bit amazed to read this week that apparantly EVERYBODY finds something to bristle about: feminists who don't like these male Avatars being taller and stronger than the females, anti-smoking lobbies who protest against smoking in space stations, the Vatican protesting this nature worship and alien gods, ...

While we thought, when leaving the cinema, that it was already half a miracle that this tale so far hadn't (yet) inflamed the hearts and minds of people all over the world who have experience with this kind of American military (and other) arrogance ...

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 :-)