The increasing trend of parents choosing names for their children based on the availability of the .com domain name proves as a useful segue into several important topics: the validity of this practice given the increasing importance of search engines and folksonomy, the impact of technology on cultural development and the inverse relationship between fashion and abundance, to name a few.

Personally, I’m simply waiting to find the first example of a child named Christophr.

A television advertisement is currently running for an educational software package that closes with the phrase (and I may be paraphrasing): “The kids will be having so much fun they won’t even know they’re learning.”

When did we create a society where learning is scorned so effortlessly?

I have long held an affinity with the song Imagine, by John Lennon. As with many things however, it is easier to accept the song on face value yet increasingly difficult when you break it down. Lennon advocates a utopian society where all our differences are obliterated. What can be wrong with that, right?

Today was the first day in memory that I have come to the realisation that utopia does not, and cannot exist. It is naive to think it can, as no universal definition of utopia exists. This leads to exclusion. Exclusion leads to division which brings us right back to where we started. In this sense, I assert that it is possible to advocate that we currently live in a utopia. We respect each other’s differences, yet come together on common issues, right?

Unfortunately, this is also a naive conclusion. Having followed APEC closely, I have listened attentively to the politicians and leaders delivering prepared speeches far more eloquently than my own emphasising the importance of economic ties in maintaining a war-free society (a position I agree with). It is easy to forget however that not every country is part of this inner-loop. I love Star Trek. To me, the prospect of a society built on respect, science and equality (gender, race and species) is utopia. Yet, similar to the Lennon song, this is a naive view as it overlooks the easy criticism of the promotion of communist and fascist ideologies. I attack not individuals who hold these ideologies, but use them as a reminder that people who think differently than you or I exist.

Diversity appears to stand between us and the concept of utopia, and yet my definition of utopia cannot exist without diversity. It is with a heavy heart that I lay the fallacy of utopia to rest, we hardly knew ye.

Thanks Daryl.

I don’t know her motivations: making a public spectacle is a good way to further one’s career. Regardless, I respect the sentiment.

Side note: I won’t be mentioning names here as not to further inflate the search engine rankings for such trash. In the event of comments using names, they will be edited.

After reading only a brief amount of the article listed below, I knew I wanted to write a post to share it with those who otherwise might have walked past without noticing. Early on, I jotted down a few brief notes regarding my increased readership of The Washington Post due to their high quality and willingness to embrace web technology, I posed the question asking if I would have done anything differently, I noted my increased respect for Joshua Bell for participating in the exercise and I questioned the subjective nature of beauty itself. However on completing the reading, I am left slightly numb. Suddenly my linguistic ability to express the rush of thoughts and insights seems inadequate. I feel a certain affinity with those oblivious commuters, as I know I too move through life oblivious at times: an idea explored in a previous post.

On that Friday in January, those private questions would be answered in an unusually public way. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities — as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?

- Pearls Before Breakfast by Gene Weingarten for The Washington Post

I hope you can find time to read the article.

I have been asked a few times about the Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel quote that currently resides in the header of this site: “We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion.”

The full version of this comes from the 1837 work Lectures on the Philosophy of History, can can be seen below.

We assert then that nothing has been accomplished without interest on the part of the actors; and — if interest be called passion, inasmuch as the whole individuality, to the neglect of all other actual or possible interests and claims, is devoted to an object with every fibre of volition, concentrating all its desires and powers upon it — we may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion.

Despite being commonly bandied around, it isn’t easy to define exactly what passion is. Lets explore this shall we…

Read the rest of this entry »

Get Rich Slow by Tama McAleese opens with the following preface, attributed to an unknown author.

A man found an eagle’s egg and put it in the nest of a backyard hen. The eagle hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them. All his life the eagle did what the backyard chickens did, thinking he was a backyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air.
Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, gliding with scarcely a beat of its strong wings. The old eagle looked up in awe.
“Who’s that?” he asked.
“That’s the eagle, the king of the birds,” said his neighbor. “He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth. We’re chickens.”
So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that’s what he thought he was.

Such questions of human curiosity (and a muffled personal guffaw given the career choice of one of my close family members) are addressed in the book Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner.

Frankly, this is one book I wish everyone would read. In a quick and easy flowing way, Freakonomics pokes a sharp stick at everything from abortion and the Ku Klux Klan to chewing gum and Listerine. Although I had heard positive reports on the book previously, it was the personal recommendation of an old friend Dan on his blog that convinced me to pick it up. I believe that if everyone read this book there would be a sharp decline in rash, sheep-like assumptions you often see when looking at a large group. Then again, the authors would likely set me straight over this assertion stating that I was not able to show causality and the two were merely effects of another cause, such as greater access to education giving children a higher level of literacy skills, instilling curiosity and enough independent thought to ask the question “why?”

The depiction of ‘expert’ doctors up-selling their services to more costly, if ever slightly unnecessary ones reminded me of my Grandmother’s anecdotes of how doctors set out to make you sick with the intention of charging to make you better afterwards. Thank you Freakonomics, my Nan has now been vindicated.

I began reading Freakonomics early this morning and had completed the book by the late afternoon, while still finding time to complete both the day’s necessities and niceties (Boost’s new Two & Five juice is divine). It’s an enjoyable, easy read that strives to make you question conventional wisdom and I highly recommend it.