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Friday, April 09, 2004 |
I'm currently reading Morgan's recent short bio of Benjamin Franklin. About half-way through, I am struck by the parallels to the subject of the last biography I read: Henry Kissinger.
- Starting with the obvious point, both were skilled practictioners of diplomacy for their country.
- In doing so, both traveled overseas very extensively.
- Neither one was born an American (Franklin was born in Boston, but until 1775, considered himself an Englishman).
- Both enjoyed a rock-star status unlike any predecessor or successor.
- Both were known to exhibit great personal charm and wit.
- At times, each used deception or secrecy to achieve their ends (Franklin much more innocently; I am thinking of his letters to the editor, penned by him, but published in his newspaper under fictitious names).
- Both enjoyed a reputation as womanizers, but in fact were (probably) only flirts. Morgan says of Kissinger: "The dirty little secret about Kissinger's associations with pretty young women is that there was no dirty secret". The same is probably true for Franklin, especially when we remember that, at the time he was "baching it" in London, he was well into his fifties.
- Both were far-seeing (visionary). However, both valued stability and emphasized realpolitik over revolution. Thus, in formulating foreign policy, they were pragmatists, not idealists.
9:35:41 PM 
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This article says the theory behind month of Ramadan is that, by practicing a daily fast from food and sex, Muslims "believe it will hot-wire their ability to resist temptation the rest of the year." I had thought that the average Muslim household actually spent more on food during the month of Ramadan, they just had to consume it all in binges at night. But maybe that is an urban legend.
3:41:16 PM
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Seth Godin article claiming that "you are your references", and those references are all over the web for anybody to find. I'm sympathetic to this idea, but I think he overstates the case. I have Googled many people I work with or am scheduled to interview, and I typically don't come up with much or any information. Plus there is the issue of name uniquness; "Seth Godin" or "Erik Neu" are easier to zero in on than many names.
1:42:27 PM
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I am one for having LOTS of browser instances open at once. I might be in the midst of some kind of research that I have to set aside while moving to some other task, but that I want to come back to later in the day. I would like to be able to mark a browser session as protected, which would prevent the browser screen from being closed or re-used (yes, I already have the "re-use browser sessions for shortcuts" advanced option turned off).
My analogy is like protecting selected pictures on a digital camera (any protected images can not be deleted until protection is turned off). I haven't thought deeply about some of the details...besides preventing re-use by shortcuts (for those who have that feature enabled), and preventing "x-ing out", would protection do more? Would it prevent script elements on the page from changing the screen (i.e., what happens if I click a link?)? Maybe it could cause those to spawn a new browser session.
A really nice refinement of this feature would be to remember the URL even upon a re-boot, and resume the browser session (where possible, it will obviously fail when the session is stateful).
11:13:04 AM
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As mentioned recently, I have been delving into Photoshop, as time permits. Besides the cool stuff that is its core value proposition--color correction, contrast adjustment, lighting changes, filters--it has also finally gotten me to take time to do the more mundane task of cropping. I have to say, I have a new appreciation for how much cropping improves an image. Previously, I had sort of thought "you just mentally ignore the part of the image that is un-interesting" (sort of like banner ads). Easier said than done its seems; I find with cropping that less really is more.
11:11:07 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Erik Neu.
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