Listening to: Can I Have It Like That - Pharrell Williams

Doogie Howser forwarded this Newsweek
article to me. It discusses the impact of globalization on the US and particularly
the effect of a huge trade deficit and low savings:

For most of the last 50 years, globalization has been a win-win proposition, making
America richer while lifting hundreds of millions in the developing world out of poverty
and despair. Recently, however, it has begun to operate differently, undermining U.S.
welfare while creating imbalances likely to end in a global economic crisis.

The parallels with NZ are disturbing. While the exogenous factors for the NZ are different
the behaviours (eg. Air NZ out sourcing high skill jobs to China) and the risks (economic
recession bought on by the effects of high trade deficit and low savings) are the
same.

Listening to: BBC Radio 1

As I have mentioned before, I’m a bit of a fan of the Segway Centaur. For me it has that great combination of character and great technology. I am quite excited to see that it might actually be released as a real product.

Listening to: not too sure… this was computer generated.

Image(723).jpg

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Originally uploaded by flash5.>

Listening to: not too sure… this was computer generated.

PaperPrototyping

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Originally uploaded by flash5.>

I thought I would give paper prototyping a crack… a neat little trick I learnt off Zef.

Listening to: not too sure… this was computer generated.

Open
Source graffiti???

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Originally uploaded by taniwha.>

A mural painted on a wall here in Welly.

Listening to: BBC Radio 1

Seymour Hersh has a wide ranging article in
the New Yorker about where the Iraq War is headed:

A key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the President’s
public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American
airpower. Quick, deadly strikes by U.S. warplanes are seen as a way to improve dramatically
the combat capability of even the weakest Iraqi combat units. The danger, military
experts have told me, is that, while the number of American casualties would decrease
as ground troops are withdrawn, the over-all level of violence and the number of Iraqi
fatalities would increase unless there are stringent controls over who bombs what.

Chillingly:

“The President is more determined than ever to stay the course,”
the former defense official said. “He doesn’t feel any pain. Bush is a
believer in the adage ‘People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.’
” He said that the President had become more detached, leaving more issues to
Karl Rove and Vice-President Cheney. “They keep him in the gray world of religious
idealism, where he wants to be anyway,” the former defense official said. Bush’s
public appearances, for example, are generally scheduled in front of friendly audiences,
most often at military bases. Four decades ago, President Lyndon Johnson, who was
also confronted with an increasingly unpopular war, was limited to similar public
forums. “Johnson knew he was a prisoner in the White House,” the former
official said, “but Bush has no idea.”

For a couple of interviews about the article and the topics it discusses:

• Sy Hersh on Today Show
• Seymour Hersh with Blitzer

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Listening to: BBC Radio 1

Think Secret has set
my OPML file alight this morning…

Apple’s Mac mini will be reborn as the digital hub centerpiece it was
originally conceived to be, Think Secret sources have disclosed. The new Mac mini
project, code-named Kaleidoscope, will feature an Intel processor and include both
Front Row 2.0 and TiVo-like DVR functionality.

While
the specific model and speed of the Intel processor in the new Mac mini is unknown,
sources are confident the system will be ready for roll-out at Macworld Expo San Francisco,
in line with other reports Think Secret has received that Intel-based Macs will be
ready some six months sooner than originally expected.

The
new Mac mini is also said to sport a built-in iPod dock, a feature that was scrapped
from the Mac mini Apple first introduced one year ago.

Listening to: Fasten Your Seatbelts - Pendulum

From The Washington
Note on the White House thinking it can dismiss the Geneva Conventions as Irrelevant:

In an Associated Press interview, former Powell chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson
also said President Bush was “too aloof, too distant from the details” of postwar
planning. Underlings exploited Bush’s detachment and made poor decisions, Wilkerson
said.

Wilkerson blamed Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
and likeminded aides. He said Cheney must have sincerely believed that Iraq could
be a spawning ground for new terror assaults, because “otherwise I have to declare
him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard.”

…

Powell raised frequent and loud objections, his former aide said, once yelling
into a telephone at Rumsfeld: “Donald, don’t you understand what you are doing to
our image?”

Listening to: King of You All - Fly My Pretties

Now this is a cool
idea… there have been a good number of occasions when I have tried to track
down a particular ad:

The same device that helps TV viewers skip commercials will now be prodding them
to search for ads.

TiVo Inc.
is partnering with several big ad firms to offer its users a system that lets them
search for commercials centered around a specific topic. Expected to launch next spring,
the feature comes as Madison Avenue is contemplating a number of ways to reach consumers
who use technology to avoid traditional advertising.

Listening to: Miracles - Fly My Pretties

The latest frog Design Mind article is about phatic
technologies:

Phatic communication, a term first coined by anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski,
is the international linguistic phenomenon of “small talk;” that is, exchanges meant
to provide a social connection rather than transmit information. Think about your
last ride in an elevator: did everyone suffer silently, or did someone attempt a connection
by offering some idle chatter about the weather? That man was engaging in a bit of
phatic communication.