Jamie Oliver's TED Prize wish: Teach every child about food | Video on TED.com

Jamie Oliver's TED Prize wish: Teach every child about food | Video on TED.com

collective mourning for a lost colleague

It is now official. One of the18 who perished in the train crash is our colleague. Our thoughts are with his family, who had to endure more than 36 hours of incertitude while waiting for official news. Our workplace, unified in mourning, will never be the same again.

How a dramatic event can stop you literally in your tracks

Yesterday two passenger trains collided south of Brussels and during the day we found out that one colleague (who hadn't shown up for work and takes that specific train) had indeed been injured and was hospitalized.

This morning we found out that not only were there two people with the same name aboard that train, the one in hospital is not our colleague. Which means there is no news: he will be either very heavyly injured or will not have survived. Another colleague was on the train that derailed because of the debris on the rails, yet another one ... any accident on any of the important commuter lines to brussels at that specific hour would have involved people working here.

The really sad thing is that this missing colleague barely survived a near-deadly motoraccident a couple of years ago and has undergone multiple operations over the years to deal with backproblems and other stuff. It never ever diminished his joie-de-vivre, his charm and his sense of humour. He seemed indestructible. Today, it's all we can hope for.

Why does someone get involved in a serious accident twice in his life? How is that possible? What does it mean?

(picture courtesy AP on numerous websites)

No more excuses: buy art!

Admit that this picture breathes a very strange atmosphere and is very beautiful. I picked it up on a site called www.eyebuyart.com, offering a selection of artworks in different price categories. This one is by Marshall Byrd Sterling. I suppose most, if not all of these artists are young and unknown but their work certainly deserves attention.

Google going social?

Posted in the Wall Street Journal today: Google to announce some social feature linked to Gmail allowing users to share media and even update statuses? The least you can say they don't create this irritating hype announcing something ages beforehand.

On the other hand: I don't mind creating status updates for my Facebook account on a (nearly) daily basis but do I want to see status updates on everything I do? Absolutely not.

The reason FB has remained this much fun is because most of the status updates I see in my friends' circle are witty, funny, serious, provocative ... no day-to-day 'i'm having coffee now and after that I will start doing the dishes' kinda stuff. But on my Google mail? And what is Google going to do with that? Run text analysis, sentiment analysis, semantic analysis and get me analyzed to bits?

I don't think so.