Japanese squid-hunters catch legendary giant on film; return with one of its tentacles. My friend EC said of this story, appropriately, “I
heard this on the radio several days ago, but it was just when I woke
up and then I hit the snooze, and later I thought I had dreamed it.“
ø
Boston is putting out a bid
to host the second Wikimania congress this coming summer (soon we won’t
be able to help calling it an annual event). If you have
suggestions about what to do in or around Boston, or groups that you’d
like to see involved with such an event (particularly in-kind sponsors,
people who would like to organize wiki events before or during the week
of Wikimania, or artists/researchers who would like to present there),
let me know.
Other ways you can get involved : suggest people who would enjoy the Hacking Days session for current and would-be MediaWiki hackers; or help plan other parts of the conference
ø
Everyone seems to think that developing tools around people’s daily
lives, on cleverly-designed platforms, is the Answer to lots of things
– the next iPod/computer/phone, new PCs for people in China’s urban
households, etc.
It doesn’t sound terribly innovative to me; am I just a stick in the
mud? How can anyone get excited about a PC-like platform when
there’s some real innovation being done for $100 PCs that torally
rethinks many layers in the development and distribution of
computing? Not that I think the $100 PC is the be-all or end-all
of what target consumers really need… I’m foolish enough to
think that most things that end-users really need doesn’t get developed
at all. A completely silly suggestion, I know.
ø
Stewart Butterfield, asked about his role models, mentioned a few people who had inspired and guided him, including Wittgenstein, which philosophical bad boy was acrobatically allmost connected directly to Flickr.
And to all you playboys and social barnacles out there : throwing fancy
dinner parties and making political connections will be the end of your
creativity and great ideas. The audience was full of
Flickr’philes.
And Tracey Ho, as understated as she is hot, admits that despite believing she would spend her live in civil service
in Singapore, and doing just that after college, she came back around
to academia and was lured back to MIT and now Caltech. It was
good to see the civil service come up as an important life-choice
option among these young stars.
The ‘late show with our moderator’ format didn’t work perfectly, but it
brought out a lighter side of the TR35 members and helped make the
awards ceremony more than just a show.
This afternoon’s panel on the resurgence of interest in Nuclear Power
got off to a quiet enough start; but climaxed in a few emotional
exchanges among its five panelists shortly before the end.
An embarrassingly rough transcript (as usual, better
ones to come) is online. A quick summary
: big power gorups are conflicted; both trying to support their existing
power investments and trying to pursue nuclear and other options
without taking on more risk than necessary. Few energy activists
(or policy-makers in the right gov’t offices!) have the money or
authority to put their necks out, even when they feel they know the
right technical steps to make.
The big point that noone picked up was nuclear education :
how to educate the public about nuclear power; something which hasn’t
happened well. This is also one place where Wikipedia-style
projects could help immensely… There wasn’t enough interest in the
panelist fesponses to tell how much if any they would care for such a
development.
ø
Presroi has a new section for notes on lexicons around the world : Category-lexika
He also recently gave a well-received talk to a group of European KM mavens… let me see if I can post a link to the presentation.
ø
It’s better than talking down to people. Short uninformative
announcements that avoid the real issues may work as patches to
problems, but they avoid the heart of matters
Safest… hmmm. Everyone should go visit John Conwell on Valerie Street in Bellaire to see a little well-conceived safety. (via Dan Feldstein)
Schools to open again next Wednesday – what a long vacation! – and airports to start reopening by Sunday.
Startup school : Coming this October 15th to a Science Center near you. Sign up early if you want to come in person!
ø
Our persimmons in Houston
are heavy, and fall off in the slightest gust of wind. Any serious
storm is enough to ruin the year’s crop. None fell off this morning; it
was just like a strong thunderstorm.
Elsewhere : sporadic trees and branches were down elsewhere in the
city, with a localized gust of 70mph; one high-rise lost a few windows; 300,000
are without electricity.
Galveston,
too, was largely untouched. East Texas had it worst; but Beaumont
escaped destruction. No towns were flattened, or even mauled;
though some houses lost roofs and some buildings suffered heavy damage.
On the other hand, there was extensive highway gridlock,
with people on the roads for over 24 hours; some deaths from
heatstroke, many people running out of gas b/c of the stalled traffic
and leaving on their A/C in the 100-degree heat. I wonder if people used up the breakdown lanes… Yesterday at
6pm, there were still people stranded on the road w/o gas, despite many
locals (in addition to official FEMA efforts) making sorties to bring gas and food to those poor souls. Here is a typical evac experience from Dwight.
The
unofficial evacuation orders were too broad (‘everyone in the hundred
year flood plain!’), too thorough (‘everyone get out of the city’
rather than ‘everyone get to higher ground’), and too individualist
(‘everyone to his/her own car!’).
The standard evac orders were fine — here is the canonical Galveston/Houston evacuation map.
Note that even the “C” evacuation zones, for Category 4/5 hurricanes,
only come into Houston as far as the East 610 Loop (to which point the
ship channel extends). However,
When you tell people to stop trusting their own judgment and to
trust yours, you suddenly have an enormously greater responsibility to
care for them…