Archive for August, 2004
Wired wrote this great article on the MoveOnPAC, which was started by two founders, Joan Blades and Wes Boyd, only six years ago and which has become “one of the most revered activist groups in America, supporting Democratic political candidates with tens of millions of dollars in advertising, as well as countless hours of telephone [...]
Life imitates art. Art imitates life. “Godsend“, a movie opening August 17th, starring Robert de Niro as a doctor who clones children for parents who have lost a child due to early accidents or other loss, has a real-life equivalent. Or so says the man in question – Doctor Panos Zavos. Quoting from a news.scotsman.com [...]
This graphic clearly illustrates what was up until now a difficult to understand terror alert system. Thanks to bettybowers.com.
This article at Newsday.com talks about the release of the findings of a major study being presented at the Annual Meeting of the European Society of Cardiology. The research [...] followed 29,000 people in 52 countries. It took a decade and 262 scientists to complete the work, which, according to the editor of The Lancet [...]
John Paczkowski over at Good Morning Silicon Valley linked to this brilliantly funny one pager on the world’s 9 worst convenience foods. I’m not sure which is more appalling, the clam jerky or the armour pork brains in milk gravy.
Gizmodo has some information on the Treo 650 update. So does Engadget. Pretty much sounds like the rumoured additions will come to be: dedicated answer/disconnect buttons, voice recording, bluetooth, higher res screen (320×320), higher res camera (1.3MP), backlit keyboard, removeable battery, and video-mode on the camera. Here is a photo with the screen turned on [...]
Quoting from Mark Morford’s new rant on SF Gate: QUOTE So, let’s see: Bona-fide war hero turned incredibly articulate, educated, gifted Vietnam War protester and respected senator on one side, alcoholic AWOL failed-businessman born-again pampered daddy’s boy evangelical Christian on the other. Is this really the contest? Bush slugs gin and tonics like Evian while [...]
I don’t even have the energy to write much about this much-maligned system that was CAPPS and then CAPPS 2 and now SecureFlight. It is essentially a passenger screening system (like the flawed one I wrote about here and here) that has cost $100M to date and that is being relaunched with a new, friendly [...]
Martin Tobias over at Deep Green Crystals mentions this morning his geek fetish for a new device called the Firepod. He then goes on to say that this is cool because it is a cigarette plug in that breaks off to a USB and a Firewire cable, each of which can be used to charge [...]
I have been reading about online communities since the days of the WELL (one of the first electronic communities to ever exist.) Of course, humans have always formed communities as part of their biological imperative – communities for living, for art, for trades, for commerce, for sex, for war, and for peace. And the internet [...]
Similar to my post yesterday on swarming algorithms, Steve Jurvetson, head of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, also believes in the wealth of knowledge that we have yet to tap simply by exploring nature’s many inventions. Nice to see he agrees with me!! I’m kidding of course. The area of bio-mimetics has been discussed for quite some [...]
I am always fascinated by the cross-over from biology into electronics, hardware, software, and architecture. Nature has given us a nearly unlimited set of patterns and structures that are resilient, clever, fast, light, and adaptable. It is up to us to find them and learn from them. For example, Australian Defence scientists are studying the [...]
This short blurb appeared over at Good Morning Silicon Valley and was written by John Paczkowski. It is short and refers to a Wall Street Journal article (that requires a subscription) so I have quoted it here in full. This person HAS to be hating the fact that her colleague chose Option B. But how [...]
I have gone back and looked at the data available from the Canadian Venture Capital Association and Macdonald & Associates to get a sense of the big picture for VC financings here in Canada. (Any errors are mine and not the fault of CVCA or M&A.) Here is the big picture from 1995-2003: It looks [...]
Bruce is one of my favourite security authors. He has a very macro view of the world and his reasoning on security issues is always well-thought out and pragmatic. He has written an article on CNET about how he sees the ongoing American dissolution into a police state that is happening right now. QUOTE We [...]
Fast Company linked over to this Tufts University transcript of Pierre and Pam Omidyar’s commencement speeches to the Class of 2002. Some key lessons from Pierre and Pam’s speeches: • Prepare for the unexpected – prepare lots and learn lots but don’t feel that you have to connect all the dots at the same time; [...]
I am absolutely stunned by the simplicity and brilliance of this composite graph on Fred Wilson’s site that shows the last four years of opinion polls on George W. Bush. The most informative thing is the amount of trust and faith that has been repeatedly handed to him on 9/11 and then Iraq and then [...]
Dear American Friend: We’re sorry you’re down there. Feel free to come up and marry a Canadian anytime, we’d love to have you. You can no longer travel without papers in your own country (as designated by the secret laws that you are not allowed to read about.) The FBI are showing up on your [...]
Erroll Morris, the brains behind the much parodied, often copied “Switch” ads for Apple’s Macintosh computers, has found a new way to use his powerful interviewing technique. He contacted and interviewed 500 Republicans who have decided to vote for Kerry and had them tell why they were switching. Many of them are still Republican but [...]
If this is true, it’s hilarious and definitely a sign of the times. From the Times of India article: QUOTE Says a programmer on Slashdot.org who outsourced his job: “About a year ago I hired a developer in India to do my job. I pay him $12,000 out of the $67,000 I get. He’s happy [...]
Here are a couple of articles on the new report from the Inspector General of the EPA where he states that the White House directly changed the language in the press releases before they were releaased to the public around the time of 9/11. Now there is still a huge amount of pollution, possibly including [...]
There is a great article here in Wired about a clubhouse in Amsterdam called Baby. It contains a massive open-plan room, meeting rooms, and a nightclub/dance floor. It is home to 5,500 free agents of all descriptions who come here to work, think, plan, write, shmooze, collaborate, and yes, go to the lounge for a [...]
I made up the term for myself because I like adventures, following angel and venture finance trends, building businesses, social entrepreneurship, and environmentally sustainable capitalism. But currently there is no word for capitalists who are socially and environmentally aware and who want to use capitalism as a force for good in the world. Pan-capitalism? Omni-capitalism? [...]
I am a socially and environmentally business builder, advisor, athlete, and adventurer. My purpose in life is to use the power of business and technology to create new ventures that contribute to the development of a more sustainable, more open, and healthier life, community, society, and world. I’m currently President and VP Sales and Marketing [...]
There are a couple of angel forums in Vancouver, places where entrepreneurs can go to pitch their business idea directly to angels (high-net-worth individuals who invest their own money in startups). One of them is the Angel Forum run by Bob Chaworth-Musters, the other is VanTec, the VEF Angel Technology Network, which is coordinated by [...]
Universities (in the U.S.) are now going to be offering courses in such exciting Homeland Security topics as: how to hunt witches, how to protect against witch spells, and ….oops, that was in the McCarthy era. The new courses include Homeland (In)Security and the State, Jihad and the End of the World, and Urban Security [...]
This looks like an interesting energy project being opened in Toronto. Enwave Systems has built a three pipe system that pulls low-temperature water from the bottom of the lake Ontario, extracts the coldness from the water (the process is not mentioned), and then puts the water into the drinking supply. I would be interested to [...]
It’s Deja vu all over again. Renewable energy seems to be the topic of the day. Some odd combination of forces are driving interest in renewable energies (many of the things that I discussed in my previous posting on bioproducts). The web is cluttered with noise about bioproducts, solar energy, and other non-petroleum based energy [...]
The 2004 Q2 Price Waterhouse Coopers / Venture Economics / Venture Capital Association Moneytree Survey numbers are out. I posted on this in July but hadn’t put in the graphs and haven’t had time until now. I always find quarter-to-quarter comparisons too granular and lacking in context so I have taken the liberty of extracting [...]
Everything old is new again. It’s all about timing. These are only two of a few choice phrases that may describe something that is afoot here in British Columbia. Some major global, national, and provincial forces are in play that are driving the development of a new (to us) association that may be created in [...]
