Kind of funny.

Occasionally Philip Greenspun's acerbic comments still hit the mark.

What do you call a country with a thriving financial services sector and everything else rusting and obsolete?

England

No-one's going to be surprised by my answer here.

Wardley is rolling today.

Facebook experiment (I mean it must be useful for something, right?). Recession Ready : A group for discussing recession-related issues (mainly effects and coping strategies).

Gravity Planes

Wow! Hat-tip Manuel Simoni, video of Tenori-On.

Hadn't seen this before. Very sweet.

Greed Eats Brains

How screwed up does a culture have to get before this starts to look like a reasonable way for parents to interact with their teenage kids?

Dave Winer and Rolling Stone on Vote Blocking in the US elections.

Something I've been thinking about for a while, as a way to sell the Unfinished : an Unfinished Market

Maybe this is an example.

It's a tuneful BeatBlog today. Beat 2-29

Interestingly, this, turns out to have been my most popular post evah (I think) ... 276 hits within the last few days.

Is it all those Haskell programmers?

Update : seems to be due to Reddit.

Let them sing it for you!

Update : even cooler of course would be some automatic mixing and morphing between the atoms.

Great skype comment in a conversation with my friend Tonho :

I am crazy for science ... I think it is the only exit for be a more happy person (talking about you advice " make sure you cultivate the CHILDLIKE SENSE OF CURIOSITY AND WONDER ABOUT NATURE. Children have an isatiable curiosity about everything around them. Sights, sounds, and smell are a constant source of wonder and amazement...the are eager to learn about plants, birds and insects and are always trying all sorts of experiments with straws, bottles, mud, and love take apart a watch or mecancal toy to see what is inside and how it works. A scientist, Phil is a person who retains some of this childlike sense of curiosity and wonder about nature...and neurons.

hmmm ... going back to the UK means back to one of the most surveilled (if that's a real world) countries in the world.

Update : Get's worse.

Talented Friend Watch #13 : Hilan launches his book.

Portuguese-speaking philosophers can follow the blog of the book : Hybris Solta.

Someone in Superstruct just linked this video of Mastar in Abu Dhabai.

Frankly, I can no longer tell what's Superstruct, and what's real life.

Irony of ironies.

Oct. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said political leaders are discussing the idea of closing the world's financial markets while they ``rewrite the rules of international finance.''

``The idea of suspending the markets for the time it takes to rewrite the rules is being discussed,'' Berlusconi said today after a Cabinet meeting in Naples, Italy. A solution to the financial crisis ``can't just be for one country, or even just for Europe, but global.''

The cry goes up in the markets : "Help! Mr. Government! Save us from ourselves"

Remember, the reality is that markets have never been anything but the junior partners to political power. People who tell you otherwise are trying to fool you into not exercising that power.

You know what I'd like to see?

A mashup collaboration between Jackson Fish Market and The Blank Workshop.

Readers are left to imagine what form, media, or even multiverse, such a coupling would produce.