Posts

I’m not a gadget person. I’m generally 2-4 years behind the technology curve when it comes to hardware of any sort. I love to have the latest and greatest OS and applications on my computer at all times, but when it comes to shelling out the bucks for that new gizmo that everyone is raving about, I’m always reluctant. Maybe I’m cheap. Anyway, I finally ordered a TiVo this week. I’ve been wanting one since they were originally introduced, but only now have I actually decided to shell out the $400 for one. I’m very much looking forward to have my TV watching revolutionized. (Mostly, I’m eager to never have to remember to watch Austin City Limits at the time it comes on.) ...

The New York Times has a more detailed story on the mine rescue today. I’m still utterly amazed at the overall health of the miners when they were found. There’s a ton more coverage at Yahoo News as well.

Lance Armstrong won his fourth straight Tour de France today. I think he is, by a head and shoulders, the most impressive athlete of his generation. Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan, step aside. Armstrong’s achievements in cycling would stand alone even aside from the fact that he made one of the most amazing recoveries from cancer I’ve ever heard of.

Amazing news tonight – all 9 of the trapped miners in the Pennsylvania coal mine are alive. All that’s left is to get them out.

I’ve been corrected by Medley: BBN Technologies is still around, and is a subsidiary of Verizon. Judging from this timeline, it looks like when Genuity was spun out as part of GTE’s merger with Verizon, BBN Technologies stuck around as part of Verizon itself. Don’t you love the world of business?

The current issue of the NYRB has a review of Globalization and Its Discontents by former World Bank economist and member of Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors Joseph Stiglitz. The review raises more questions than it answers, mainly illuminating the complexities of the debate over globalization. I’d love to be able to dismiss the IMF as being evil or make other black and white judgements about globalization, but it’s just not that easy. The only thing I am sure of is that the world’s rich countries aren’t doing enough for the world’s poor countries. ...

I’ve been completely captivated by the horrific story of the 9 miners who are trapped at the bottom of a flooded coal mine in Pennsylvania. There’s no way of knowing whether the miners are alive or dead, and attempts to drill a new shaft down to the chamber where they’re trapped have been frustrated by various delays. This awful event is yet another reason why we ought to really think about ways to ease our dependency on coal as a power source. Coal mining is incredibly dangerous, awful for the long term health of the miners, and is an environmental disaster. Once it’s extracted from the ground, burning the coal creates amazing amounts of air pollution. Every time I think of coal mining, I think oof the movie Brassed Off, which is the story of a coal mining town in England and the miners who face the prospect of the mine closing down, viewed through the lens of a brass band associated with the colliery. The movie perfectly captures the problems faced by coal miners and people in other such industries – on one hand, they face the prospect of financial ruin if the coal mine closes down and they lose their jobs, on the other hand they face dying young due to black lung and other health problems brought on by their jobs. Not a pretty picture. ...

There’s a huge controversy surrounding the proposed Homeland Security department. Does it revolve around debating whether or not bundling up 170,000 federal employees with widely varying roles and many different kinds of responsibilities will actually make the country more safe? No, of course not. Instead it revolves around how much flexibility managers in the department will have with regard to being able to fire employees. The structure of the massive new department seems to be signed, sealed, and delivered whether it makes sense or not. ...

It looks like Genuity Inc is going down the tubes after they posted massive losses and Verizon declined an option to reabsorb the company, which it was required to spin off when it acquired GTE. I find this interesting only because of the heritage of the company. Genuity Inc used to be BBN Planet which started out as Bolt Beranek and Newman, or BB & N. Bob Kahn was an employee of BB & N back in 1969 when he participated in the initial experiments that led to the creation of what is now the Internet, and was on the distribution list for RFC 3, which was written by Steve Crocker. It’s kind of amazing to think that BBN went from a high tech consulting firm that was asked to design a packet switched network for the defense department to a major bandwith provider to yet another bit of telecom industry road kill. ...

I saw a link somewhere to the Doonesbury strip last Sunday, in which the gag involves freeloading on somebody’s 802.11b hub. The strip is funny, but what surprised me is that something so geeky is now mainstream. Is Doonesbury a more geeky strip than I had thought, or is this wireless stuff now firmly entrenched in popular culture?