Blog L

Do you use your computer much? Do you leave it running all the time, just in case there's an email to read? Do you Skype? The world's computing devices use 125 terrawatt hours of electricity annually, and that's about the same as burning 350 million tons of coal. And while there are a lot of people developing energy saving software and techniques for computing, there is a bigger group of people developing power hungry applications to give us all a bigger experience. Which do you need? Can we circumvent the compound fracturing of our future world by lightening up a little? My partner earns her living on a computer; and I can go a whole day without being able to access an interesting looking email, but I can get this blog away while she showers. I have minimal use, in fact, for this machine, and she searches the net better than I, and saves a multitude of energy wasting by being a good online researcher. But I sense in everyone who has access to the current computing world, an abnormal need for detail and unnecessary facts/tidbits/gossip, let alone the burgeoning need to share with everyone that set of crazy photos someone sent you. This is trivial use of a vast resource; I don't have the facts about the post offices of the world; we certainly aren't economising on paper, a claim I've heard since I started using IBMs in the 60s.... but we are getting obsessive, and I would like everyone to think about that each day as they make their decisions what to do at each computing moment. Of course you may be the type who just has to have everything at your fingertips... well, you too, lighten up. All the achievers I've ever hung out with have NOT used computers in any major way. (John Britten, the motorcycle designer, was one of the few I've seen embrace the computer as a great tool, and pay no mind to its smallminded capabilities.) Michael Jackson probably never had a computer, or the time to use one, but he did teach us all how to dance; now there are more websites devoted to pulling him down, turning him over, spitting him out, and, yes, they could lighten up too; stop wasting precious time please. If you think I'm too busy knocking people, I'd like you to know I have literally hundreds of good ideas every day; I find a paucity of people to share them with; John Britten was the last guy I really brainstormed with; now with internet I have to subscribe-to-contribute, and I much prefer 'zero-knowledge-proofs' to get connected with people; regrettably people want more than my input; they want my demographics, and I don't have any demographics I need to share with anyone. Now there are plans to make the cellphone a social networking tool; which will come first; the misuse of the system to commit a physical offence with a participant, or an actual theft of an identity to achieve god-knows-what? And do we need Netvibes and other egocentric media that badly? If we all put limits on our acceptance of enormous files, the egos might be forced to lighten up too? Nuff said.

Blog K

Yup, this one is for knuckleheads; you know who you are; humiliated in class, streamed into the 'trades' and third grade skill set, you found your stodgy niche and stayed there. Some of you may have been stuck with a rich and ambitious father, and your foot up the ladder was easy. Others of you will have developed that cunning that allowed you to progress well into local government, and some of the really ambitious and useless amongst you got to be big time politicians. I've been on this planet long enough to have lost the surprise I originally expressed at the progress of you turkeys. I recall once being in charge of a school group at a ski lodge, where one particularly hopeless case was a boy totally unable to keep out of trouble, who'd fuck with the generators so we had no electricity, and break up and annoy every happy group, and years later, languishing in hospital with a smashed shoulder from a motorcycle accident, I discovered this 'brilliant surgeon' of the same name; the ambitious and wealthy father had made sure his son had gotten well up the ladder, but upon hearing his name I promptly discharged myself from that institution and sought surgery elsewhere. Whew! Have you had a negative experience from an issue of major importance to you? Did someone mess with your justifiable complaint and get you left out in the cold? There are specialist of this ilk in every walk of life; some have the universal password to suitdom; the MBA; the qualification for this is; no track record; time spent in the fringes of business; a pocketful of money gleaned however you like; 20-30 hrs a week spare to attend lectures and study. I know some really good people from all walks of life who've found the break they needed to higher executive roles, but there is a majority of the graduates who have gained solely a license to practice their connerie at a totally different level. I once challenged, informally, a professor of law I happened to be rubbing shoulders with, and he wryly admitted that 95% of his graduates weren't up to scratch. I also knew a lawyer who'd, for a bet, graduated in six years instead of five, WITHOUT READING A SINGLE BOOK. I passed my first management exams without attending a single lecture, principally because the basics are common sense, and amongst the others from my company scored, to their chagrin, the highest mark. Common sense is a natural process. Regrettably the higher etchelons of the law and science and medicine are getting away from that, and the knucklehead factor starts to skew the results, and we have immense wastage of our precious resources in the research and quests for the mindless and banal. Hey, turn on TV; these people are a population segment with an immense power to control or influence or entertain or inform, and what do they give you? You do the math; 400 channels and maybe, just maybe, one will be a reasonable supplier of factual, realistic, educational material; the rest are serving you a vast heap of rubbish; for better or worse; and hopefully a sports channel you can relate to is in there too... but I digress; this factor of life that is the bane of the human race, and will keep us from every sane move for the good, is present right up to the head of the United States; he's in the pocket of every sleazy business shark who ever made a trillion; there are a few of them, and to have him back senseless technologies, and blind alley paths of problem resolution, IS OUR FUCKING DESTINY, unless you can see a way to wake up the USA..... I know there is a huge show of Al Goreism in the world, but whose interest is he pushing really? And the good news this week is that the polar ice melt will open up the North West Passage for the first time in centuries, allowing greater frequency of larger ships with boatloads of PRC shite to get to the EU/East Coast USA market quicker! Are you in, for more shite, quicker?We'll be amazed in five years to look back and see the continued stupidity that curses our corridors of power; the way is possible only to klutzes; why? Intelligence, and the ability to think outside the square is frowned upon; I know; my two brothers were top of every class, top of their schools, between them they achieved amazing academic performances, scholarships awarded only on evidence of true brilliance.... Today, they are both nowhere; in limbo; discarded, ignored, rebuffed and anonymous, this resource of really great brainpower has contributed zero to the progress of the world. I on the other hand, chose not to cast my pearls before the swine of this world, and indulged my every whim in employment and research for the interesting and amazing, and have done a great deal of what I ever fancied to do. That's it; Fancy; and let me tell you, when this world falls into the polluted swirl of sludge that is its destiny, I will be there too, but I will have this rich resource of memories of the awesome, the wonderful, the soul-satisfying glories one can seek alone or with a special one, while you have stuck to your fucking mind numbing inside line to the predictable future you all justifiably deserve... or am I wrong? Will you actually become one of the possible billion voices saying 'enough'? Does your intelligence quotient actually allow you to put your hand up and speak out? Or did you push it down in anticipation of someone else speaking up? No more mate; Nuff said.