Wednesday, April 24, 2002

There is an enormous "supercolony" of Argentine ants that extends across 6,000 kilometers of Southern Europe. This amazing structure involves hundreds of billions of individual ants. All the ants within this supercolony, even those from different nests, seem to behave amicably toward each other. This is the largest cooperative biological unit ever discovered. So, large numbers of living things can get along after all. 11:03:48 PM     Mike Daisey, who just moved his one-man show (21 Dog Years; Doing Time at Amazon.com), has a blog. I haven't seen the show, but based on his blog writing and the reviews, I'd plunk down the money if I were in New York.   Speaking of being in New York, we were there a couple of weeks ago. And -- I can't believe I did this -- I forgot about The Producers. I loved the movie. I think Mel Brooks is a spectacular talent. I saw a documentary on making the Broadway play. And I forgot to even try to get tickets. I gotta go get a good breakfast somewhere; maybe I'll feel better. ... There, that's better. 12:35:29 PM     Tom Friedman makes a telling point. He notes that the best-selling book in China over the past 16 months has been one that demonstrates how to get one's child into Harvard. Meanwhile, the Saudi amabassador to London recently penned a poem praising the 18-year-old girl who blew herself up in an Israeli supermarket.   A society that makes a best seller about how to get its teenagers into Harvard will eventually build Harvards of its own. But leaders who glorify a teenager who committed suicide in a supermarket full of civilians will never build a country that can live on anything other than oil; their priorities will be too messed up. Israel did not "honor" God in Jenin, and neither do suicide bombers. That's the problem with hate: it doesn't leave a whole lot of energy for creating things.   I realize that as a white, middle-class resident of Silicon Valley, I don't have a lot to say to people who are living through this kind of hell on earth, but still, it seems so obvious that both sides are losing their souls.   History (see the Balkans) seems to show that once the situation drops through a certain threshold, the participants are doomed to generations of mutual hatred that may never disappear.   Maybe at this point the only course is for things to get so bad that the moderates on both sides finally throw aside their leaders and reach for a pragmatic solution. Has this ever happened? Can moderate ideas survive this much hate? I don't know. 12:32:12 PM     The Atlanta police are trying out the Segway for a couple of months. Any bets on how long it takes for a Segway to throw a cop as it crashes through a pothole? Or be stolen when the officer leaves it to collar a crook on foot? I suspect that the new machine's use by the Postal Service is more likely to be successful.   The Atlanta police story has some potential for humor (imagine a segway with a light bar and siren), but people used to laugh at the thought of cops riding bicycles, too, and that seems to work out pretty well.   Besides, the more of these things they sell to the big organizations, the lower the price. Let's see... a new digital camera, or a Segway... 12:31:36 PM

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