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Just came across an apt quotation for our times by William Pitt (the younger) from a speech in the House of Commons (November 18, 1783): "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." Pitt
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Currently reading Dante's Inferno in the Everyman edition of the The Divine Comedy: Inferno; Purgatorio; Paradiso . It is one of those canonical classics that I've never bothered to read and is a fascinating journey through the circles of hell replete with rich language and classical allusions.
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Currently reading Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking . It is a bit scary to think that many of our decisions are made sub-rationally.
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Chris Brogan has been experimenting with a new social network called 'grasshoppers' - people helping people. He has created it in two places: Ning and Facebook (although it did seem to migrate through Google groups quite quickly on the way to Ning). It will be interesting to see
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the 5 top websites to avoid (according to Time) are: * eHarmony.com * eVite.com * Meez.com * MySpace.com * SecondLife.com Agree with them regarding Myspace & SecondLife, but eVite just looks like it needs a refresh! Meez is still kind of fun though.
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AIIA and ACS recently ran the SET Up for Success workshops in Australia. These are designed to help advance the careers of women in the ICT industry, with a one-day program covering topics such as the skills required to navigate a successful ICT career, succeed in a male-dominated working environment
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Sometimes I think that judges have not quite joined the 21st century! Suspect this one does not know what RAM actually is and how it is used? Talk about things that make you go hmmm ... here is an interesting ruling that was recently reported on ZDNET by Greg Sandoval, CNET
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The BBC documentary the Great Global Warming Swindle went to air on the ABC TV in Australia last week and it gave rise to some vigorous debates in our office. It led to an interesting discussion about relativism and scientificity. Some people argued that, since the majority of the scientists
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The World Society for the Protection of Animals is one of many animal care organisations that is campaigning for a universal declaration on animal welfare. Why is it important? Because recognized principles of animal welfare could help achieve: * Recognition of the importance of the welfare of sentient animals; * Improved practices
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The Wyld Report, is worth a read. It is published by the IBM Center for the Business of Government, discusses the implications of web 2.0 for government. It also provides a good history of blogging and gives some case studies about government application.
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itnews.com.au has an article discussing The good and bad Of Web 2.0 tools Worth noting that there is more buzz about Enterprise 2.0 now. All this leads to the need to think about how IT departments will deal with user communities (who often have better tools
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Interesting article at Entrpreneur.com about "What Your Sign-off is Really Saying - Find out what business etiquette experts have to say about the expressions we use to end work-related e-mails. It makes you think - 'cheers' is my favoured casual sign-off , but 'regards' seems