Wednesday, September 29, 2004

Bubble Bubble, Don't Give Me No Trouble If You Lived Through the Last Bubble..... Read Paul Graham on What the Bubble Got Right. The fact is, despite all the nonsense we heard during the Bubble about the "new economy," there was a core of truth. You need that to get a really big bubble: you need to have something solid at the center, so that even smart people are sucked in. (Isaac Newton and Jonathan Swift both lost money in the South Sea Bubble of 1720.) Now the pendulum has swung the other way. Now anything that became fashionable during the Bubble is ipso facto unfashionable. But that's a mistake-- an even bigger mistake than believing what everyone was saying in 1999. Over the long term, what the Bubble got right will be more important than what it got... [John Battelle's Searchblog] 9:12:44 PM

Changes Change One Thing, Change Everything. I watched the Butterfly Effect the other nite. Really fascinating movie. I can't get it out of my head. The tag line to the movie is, "Change One Thing, Change Everything." And that's no overstatement, either. I can't help but think of all the bad things I've done in my life and how I have so wanted to go back and change them. If I could only change this or that, everything would have worked out, and it would be great. But what happens if you could go back ... what happens if you could, indeed, change that one little bad thing you did, yet your good intention simply leads to, well, plenty of other bad things that you hadn't thought of and have no control over? What then? Do the math. It never ends. It even gets deeper when you realize that actions are only the gross manifestations of conscious thoughts. What if you went back and changed your thoughts? How would that more subtle change affect your outward actions? Still deeper ... what about your unconscious thoughts? That's what really guides most of us, now isn't it? Just how do you change that, anyway? I figure the only way around this paradox (aside from not thinking about it) is to look back to learn from the obviously bad things, change your thoughts and behavior in the present so you don't repeat the really stupid mistakes, and that will increase the chances of a pretty nice future with more good things. Simply. Yet profoundly complex for some reason. I guess it's the butterfly effect ... I'm looking for a really good book on this. Any suggestions? [Jim Grisanzio] 7:21:50 AM

Robyn Hitchcock Robyn Hitchcock: Spooked. Robyn Hitchcock has always been one of my favorite singer-songwriters. As Dean Ericksen explained it to me once, "He is just organically weird." Just got his new record Spooked, on which his backup band is Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. (Talk about a match made in heaven!) My ... [Jon Stahl's Journal] 7:17:55 AM

Desert Research ASU water research will tap into Phoenix. Arizona State University will use Phoenix as a living laboratory for a new $6.9 million research center that will help desert cities look for ways to balance growth with limited water resources. [azcentral.com | republicfront] 7:13:27 AM

Into the Forest Into the Forest. Here's a quotation I found online, from DH Lawrence: When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego and when we escape like squirrels turning in the cages of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright but things will happen to us so that we don't know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in, and passion will make our bodies taut with power, we shall stamp our feet with new power and old things will fall down we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like burnt paper DH Lawrence This was at the end of an article online by John Seed. [Hand Forged Vessels] 7:06:04 AM

Antigone Present-day 'Antigone' proves timeless. Few plays are forever relevant, and attempts to make them so can amount to untold dramatic indignities. Fortunately, Richard McElvain chose a sturdy play to adapt and made bold writing choices in his re-imagining of Sophocles's Antigone at Boston Playwrights' Theatre. [Boston Globe -- Living / Arts News] 7:03:48 AM

Broadband Dreams and Multicast 'Beams' Broadband dreams and multicast 'beams'. Internet pioneer Vint Cerf says the Internet will only make good on its true broadband promise when ISPs finally adopt multicast technology. [CNET News.com] 7:00:56 AM

'All Across the AlieNation' Green Day looks smart with 'Idiot'. When word began to leak out that Green Day was planning a politically charged rock opera for its latest album, "American Idiot," reactions ranged from sarcastic guffaws to abject horror. This, after all, was the same band of punk brats who, a decade ago, cranked out mosh-pit ditties about soul-numbing laziness and dismissive hookers and whose crowning close-up moment was ... [Boston Globe -- Living / Arts News] Mediaburn Special: View the video for American Idiot. 6:55:56 AM