Year: 2006

The apprentice

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The new series has just started on the beeb. And it seems like its continuing in the same fashion as the first series, good telly, annoying pricks.
Why oh why do these people irritate me that much. It maybe due to statements such as

“£100,000 salary is not enough but it’s a good place to start.”

“Everything I have ever done in life I have succeeded at. That’s why, if I make it through to the final round, I will win. I know I’m going to be the best.”

“I want to be The Apprentice because I think it’s the ultimate business opportunity. Working with Sir Alan and seeing how he operates would be great. I think I could learn an awful lot from him.”

Sorry, but sycophantic, self-obsessed bullshit.

I hate everything about that entire biz-talk thang that goes on, I had enough of all that crap when studying for an Art degree before I even started in the world of business. It’s just the complete lack of actual content and focus that I despise, a sort of crap, half-baked postmodernist process where references to the system of business/art is all that is necessary, where actual focus of the references is besides the point as long as everyone plays the same game.

Good quote from Presentation Zen

I don’t hate politicians and I don’t hate marketers…but I hate the way they talk. “Mission-critical, forward-looking value propositions….” People do not talk that way! Many corporate speakers have a special gift for the “blah-blah-blah.” Is anyone listening? Speeches and presentation do not have to be be stuffy and dull, but neither do they need to be hyped-up and shallow — your audience is praying you’ll be different.

Maybe I am just a stupid idealist, maybe I am naive, doesn’t mean they speak any less crap though.
I believe in this post so much that I have donated my fee to Great Ormond Street.

At last

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Ah those canny investigators at the Health and Safety Executive and the Environment Agency have finally put all of our collective minds at rest with a statement about what happened at Buncefield (the fuel depot that created the cloud of death over most of the south-east).

Evidence points to a mixture of petrol and air which ignited being the cause of the Buncefield oil depot explosions, the lead investigator has said.

Ah of course, there was me thinking is was caused by cheese.

….And not to be trumped

There appear to have been several explosions but the exact sequence of events has not yet been established.

Damn, these guys are good, so that’s what caused the huge flames and large quantities of smoke, an exp…los..ion, I see,

When are we to see Health and Safety Executive and the Environment Agency Investigates (HSEEA Investigates) on our screens?

Although to be fair, it does go on to say that its early days and they need to find out more. Still kind of funny though.

Barbelith

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Barbelith is the red light seen by Black Tom O’Bedlam and Jack Frost as they smoke mold in the Grant Morrison comic book series “The Invisibles“. It recurs throughout the story as a supernatural moon seeming both intelligent and benign. It plays the deity to Jack Frost’s messiah (whom it forces to feel the pain of all humanity until he agrees to help make a better world and fulfill his destiny) and takes on the mission of sustaining humanity (much like a placenta does for an infant) until the time for them evolve past 3-D space arrives.

Cartoons

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You know what really bugs me about all this cartoon row, its the fact that many people have been saying that the Danish paper in question should be able to publish whatever they want and everyone else should simply accept it as free speech and be happy we live in such an open and democratic world.

I agree with the first portion, one can say and do whatever one wants. Yet its the second part I don’t agree with. I remember that my ol R.E. teacher once said to the class:

You can do whatever you want in this world…..but you must be aware there may be consequences to those actions

I agree completely with that statement. Yes the Danish newspaper has the right to say and do what they want. But they should have realised that there would likely be consequences and opposition to those actions. You can’t have free speech without a reaction because then you would be denying any affected peoples free speech. Again I don’t agree with some of the reactions of certain individuals, but then that’s my right to comment on them.

Its a similar situation that I used to see when I was studying for a Fine Art degree. Endless discussions about what is art and what is not art. Our answer to those sort of ponderences was often, everything that is called art is art, the only way of judging it is by saying if you like it or not. Which of course then differs from the next person, so you are in another argument.

He (Kant) denied that we can reach a valid universal aesthetic judgment of the form “All objects possessing such and such qualities are beautiful.”

Kind of lost my thread now, but I really just want to make the point that all of these reactions aren’t really that surprising, people are aways going to disagree with a point of view and its important to challenge various points of view, but don’t be surprised if people take angrily to someone telling them they are wrong. The Danish newspaper was either being naive about what would happen, wanted it to happen or just blind.

JB

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Jean Baudrillard

Jean Baudrillard

Wisdom of Crowds

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Just finished reading the Wisdom of Crowds

In order for a crowd to be smart, [Surowiecki] says it needs to satisfy four conditions: 1. Diversity, 2. Independence, 3. Decentralization, and 4. Aggregation.

Excellent.

del.icio.us/dogwonder/

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del.icio.us/dogwonder/

Seems as though I have been using del.icio.us for one year now – there are 358 items – oooh so close to one a day…..

Great resource. Didn’t know what to do when it went down for a day.

Only one issue with it, and not so much a fault of the site, more an issue with managing a large stock of resources. I have the same problem with gmail, desktop search, even my own blog. Namely, where do you start when you need something, sure searching or browsing by tag is great but you need to know what your searching for in the first place. In a similar way to looking for the spelling of a word and the paradox of where to start if you don’t know how to spell it.

I remember a concept I read about in the Peter F. Hamilton novels Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained where characters had brain inserts that allowed them to interface to the future internet (called the datasphere). They also had what was referred to as an e-Butler what essentially was a semi AI piece of software that would serve, filter, search and generally organise information. It would be tailored to your own preferences and would generally learn about your needs and would run sub-routines on large sets of data, only returning what was generally necessary. Web 2.0 (for want of a better term) is definitely better at allowing data to be organised in multiple ways.

Maybe I just want the moon on a stick, but I kinda like the idea of an e-Butler. Although mine would probably be lazy, like Homer’s monkey, and I’d be in a even worse state than I am now.

Mojo - worker monkey

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