What, Why & How do we Know ?
Following Google and Microsoft eBay just had to have their own telephone and messaging service. This time Skype are mentioned – they are the acquisition – for a mind-boggling $2.6bn !!
You can see why Skype would sell-out, but why would eBay want to spend that money for that capability ? I’m going to have to get into eBay – I’ve only browsed a couple of times so far – never caught the over-40’s habit yet.
Vint Cerf joins Google.
Usual “today US scientists claimed ….” story, but an interesting connection none-the-less, whatever the facts.
Interesting in “The End of Life as We Know it” (the final “Life” column from the Grauniad) “Don’t Dumb Me Down” bemoans popular media’s obsession with reporting scientific claims filtered by unscientific editing. “The media create a parody of science.” says Ben Goldacre of Bad Science. [via Ray Girvan].
I’ve been using the “every cloud has a silver lining” aphorism as part of the debate about whether MoQish “Dynamic Quality” has any necessarily positive directed change effect, suggesting it’s really just a case of every change is an opportunity for some positive evolution. Same as the general management cliche that every problem is really an opportunity.
This NYT article uses the same metaphor,
“Katrina was a natural disaster that interrupted a social disaster …. It has created as close to a blank slate as we get in human affairs, and given us a chance to rebuild a city that wasn’t working. We need to be realistic about how much we can actually change human behavior, but it would be a double tragedy if we didn’t take advantage of these unique circumstances to do something that could serve as a spur to antipoverty programs nationwide.”
“Blank Slate” in there too. Metaphors R us. Interestingly it was the subject of Katrina that most recently provided the “silver lining” opportunity on MoQ-Discuss too.
Not read this yet. Thanks to Will Wilkinson for the link.
Worth reading, for Dennett’s writing style. Nice non-committal reference to the Cold Fusion case, as other scientists rushed to prove / disprove. He concludes with
“Since there is no content [in Intelligent Design Creationism], there is no “controversy” to teach about in biology class. But here is a good topic for a high school course on current events and politics: Is intelligent design a hoax? And if so, how was it perpetrated?”
I agree, what is much more interesting is how the acceptance of ideas like IDC spread through a culture.
Referenced this work several times previously, but picked-up this neat summary thanks to a search cross-hit.
Post from Jorn about disaster response planning (also referring to the HuffPo post), which includes an important point for me about hindsight, and reliable ways of spotting vulnerabilities that need to be addressed in advance.
He says “I suspect the skill that this sort of foresight requires is rare and unfamiliar to most people, and especially to bureaucrats. It seems to me much more like the novelist’s skill …”
Hear, hear. Archetypal “bureaucrats” deal in logic and facts, whereas the world really deals in quality.
On Jorn’s new blog, a typically thoughtful lefty Bush (NeoCon) bashing piece, which picks up on spin as meme-creation. Using Cheney’s post 9/11 “Liberals wanted to give al-Qaeda therapy” quote, he says it’s that perfect 1% true. Interestingly it is an admission that “we” have to play “their” game. Personally I’m not into us and them conspiracies, but it does show that we all actually must play or at least understand the meme game.