Ideas: twin tower project, phone company switching…

Phone company switching: I just had to pay 175 USD to switch out of Verizon (bastards)… would it not be better to pay 100 to someone to take over my contract? And that could definitely be done if there was a marketplace set up. And so here is an idea: set up a site where people can offer each other an ability to take over their plans where the person taking over the contract actually gets paid for doing so. Say, if the fee is 175, if Joe wants a really cheap phone + service and I don’t want to pay the 175, I could pay him 87.5 to make the switch. We both win. Sadly, so does Verizon.

WTC: what if the new building encased the shape of the old twins? Especially if there was some way to make it semi-transparent so that looking from the outside one would see the shape of the old twins… that would at once be monumental, beautiful, sad, and serve as a reminder for the days to come. Something tells me that just having the prints does not give one an idea of what it was like… of the magnitude of the event… Probably was already suggested by someone – I am curious to see which stage this proposal reached.

Chee and I in London… I want to go back… sigh…

Biggest problem in discussions nowadays: keeping on track. It’s as hard for me to understand why others have such troule doing it as it is keep myself on point…

No time to write, but Vadim sent me this: http://www.artlebedev.com/portfolio/optimus

Ooooh… I want one…

This was taken in Hvar (if memory serves me rigth)… Hvar? HVar? H Var? H Variable? What the *%&# is the H Variable? Welcome to the peachy world of software associations. OK. Nerd humor over.

So I am hanging out with Catherine in Hvar and she says “Wow, that looks nice! Take a picture!” I had no idea what it was that looked nice, but took a picture anyway. And then, when I saw it, I was humbled. Catherine had me take a really cool (IMHO, of course) pic without even my being aware of it… except nominally of course, which, doesn’t count.

Speaking of H Variables and Does someone know of a good PDF to RTF converter? Would save me quite a bit of a hassle of writing out cross-tab reports when we already have generation thereof in PDF. Grr… So much to do, so many opportunities, and I feel like most are slipping through my fingers… [sigh] [some other completely unnecessary symbol that I use because I haven’t read in ages consequently having exponentially degenerating writing capabilities]
🙂

>:|
>:-(
|:-O
😮
:-* < — "And this… this is my happy face…"

(yeah… you know it's bad when Zoolander gets quoted)

Update: Braille

http://www.brl.org

Thanks Gigi.

Idea: extension to eVenue…

I just noticed that CraigsList has a lessons section. But, as usual, Craigslist is one big pile of everything dumped in there. I’ve wanted to add a lessons section for a long time to my eVenue site (not up yet… not really anyway), but this makes me think about the following additions:

– rating
– booking
– categorizaion

Anyone know of sites that put the teachers together with pupils out there?

Request: Braille???

Does ANYONE out there know of a good place to learn Braille in NYC? Why is this “only for the disabled”??? I spend hours in front of a monitor, my eyes are tired at the end of the day, I want to read something without using my eyes, is that so wrong?!?!?!?!? Yet at this point Braile seems to be unpopular among the sighted… lame…

Musings: A servant to two masters…

Saw an Italian play – happy endings are not unique to the states. Although with all the jolly humor, thoughts of more serious works and pain cross the mind, which leads to the thought of how much of a product we are of the ideas we brew in and would a society with nothing but, say, comedies be happier than that saturated with soul-searching drama?

Might this be quantifiable by observing existing cultures?

Diary: politics…

This picture, by Anselm Keifer, hangs in Tate Modern in London and, IMHO, is alone worth going to that museum. It hangs (from memory) a solid 5 meters wide by 3 meters high. When standing close to it, much like with impressionists, all you see is dabs of color and twisted wire coming directly out of the picture. Take 10 steps back and you see a breathtaking bird’s-eye-view of a city fading into grayness… There was something overwhelming about it…

Had an interesting talk with Z yesterday, which resulted in this question. Suppose you have a country A that is hungry and country B that has a terrible economy but furtile land. Now suppose that country A sets up a channel with country B (trade channel, free-trade agreement, etc.). Members of country B realize they can make money from exports to country A. They start growing crops, make money, and the economy adjusts towards capitalism. Now suppose that country A is capitalist in nature. Has it just expanded its influence onto B by virtue of creating a market? Now suppose that A is America and B is any country that can provide some goods to America. By creating a market for those goods has America expanded its imperialist influence?

My opinion? Capitalist imperialism doesn’t exist because capitalism is a cold drive for effeciency. Or rather capitalist imperialism exists as much as democratic imperialism which exists as ideological imperialism. If I show someone that 2 + 2 is 4 when they didn’t previously know, have I just colonized?

On the other hand, while imperialism to me is a silly notion, analysis of inlfuence is a valid and complex question that should be debated and that will always, IMHO, end up in a delicate balance between social and economic intertests.

Musings: post-Italy…

I wish I had the time to jot down all of my thoughts. To do as once did when doing a research paper or in a physics class when I take all of the havoc in my head and lay it a dusty layer atop whatever is in front of me so that I may be able to, afterwards, construct the thoughts out of ideas like a puzzle out of a 1000 piece set.

Recently came back from my trip to Britain, Italy, and Croatia. Something occured to me on this trip – there are two ways of thinking about life: static and dynamic. The static thought is that of a perfectionist… or an individual who wishes to be at some place at some time – when every action has a purpose to attain something. And then there is the dynamic percetion when one lives in the moment and gets pleasure from perpetual motion – when life is improvisation. Of course sometimes the two merge into bliss… when, for instance you are falling asleep in the arms of a beautiful woman and can just pass out there and then, when actions serve no purpose other than enjoyment of the moment… But other than that, it’s all improvisation and if it stops, if there is stagnation, people become miserable. I become miserable. Miserable, insecure, paranoid, etc. And when sitting down behind a piano, I find that I get immense pleasure from hearing a single note. And even though that the moment is arguably static, I take pleasure from the process…