Archive for May, 2010
Disaster? What Disaster?
Friday, May 28th, 2010I’m afraid that Data Disasters don’t exist, because we don’t want to believe they exist. It seems that in the esoteric world of noughts and ones, belief matters far more than empirical truth, making a true Data Disaster literally inconceivable.
Plus ca change…
Wednesday, May 26th, 2010There are people in Seoul – and countless other places in the world – who have more bandwidth at their personal disposal than a quarter of a million people here in the Pacific.
Invention
Tuesday, May 18th, 2010People invent because it’s an innate part of human nature. So is jealousy, of course, so it’s more natural for us to talk about ‘my’ idea than it is to talk about ‘an’ idea. Like three-year-olds, we exchange ideas, insights and other intellectual tidbits in exchange for social advancement. But when that advancement is not forthcoming, we try harder, not less. We change our conception of reward. We change our audience.
We do everything except stop inventing.
No Silver Bullet
Monday, May 17th, 2010The recent prisoner escape has –quite understandably– raised emotions among Port Vila residents. Our collective inability to end this chronic threat has led many to call for drastic action in order to resolve the problem once and for all.
If only it were that easy.
Snippet
Sunday, May 2nd, 2010I came across something all too rare these days – a viewpoint well expressed, cogent and thought-provoking: “We are turning into the society Burke feared. One dominated by emotive, shallow views which applies naive levelling reason to all problems it encounters. This is why our prisons are filling up as crime goes down; why our [...]