October 19, 2004
Somaliland blog
Here’s a part of the world — Somaliland — I knew nothing about, but, now, thanks to this blog, I know at least a little. Ah, the power of a single voice.
October 19, 2004
Here’s a part of the world — Somaliland — I knew nothing about, but, now, thanks to this blog, I know at least a little. Ah, the power of a single voice.
US citizen Ilya Mafter has been detained by the Belarusians for committing the crime of Voice over IP. The government says that he caused about US$100,000 in damage to the country’s telephony providers ” as a result of illegal communications services using IP telephony that were organized by Mafter.”
Roxanne Roberts, Style columnist for the Washington Post, writes about the art of making small talk, and, oddly, cites me. Her three rules:
1. Shut up and listen.
2. When in doubt, repeat Rule 1.
3. People, even the really shy ones, like to talk about themselves and will do so if you know how to draw them out. You have to be genuinely interested. You have to check your ego. If this is done right, they walk away thinking you’re great.
Sounds right, unless, of course, the person has also internalized Roxanne’s first two rules.
Roxanne interviewed me because in a previous issue of my newsletter, I defended small talk. I appreciate the mention. But I have one small correction that matters to nothing but my vanity. Roxanne writes: “Weinberger says he didn’t become skilled at making small talk until he was 40…” Not quite. I am still bad at small talk. Those who have met me will attest to the awkward silences and the extended bouts of conversational twitching. What I actually told Roxanne is that until I was in my 40s — embarrassingly late — I had totally the wrong idea about how to talk with people I don’t know. I would talk about something interesting to me instead of trying to find what was interesting to the other person. D’oh. But “skilled at small talk”? Just ask the person whose shoes I’ve been inspecting.
October 17, 2004
Liz has a helpful post about what actually goes on at an Al-Anon meeting: “I wonder sometimes if more people might be willing to go if they had a better sense of what it would be like.” She gives a straightforward description that is likely to help some people who, like Liz, have an alcoholic in their lives.
This afternoon, my wife and I went on the annual house walking tour sponsored by the Brookline Chorus. For $25 each we got to inspect the insides of six old homes in a beautiful part of Brookline. Gorgeous.
So, here’s my question: Why are they rich and I’m not?
I’ve published a new issue of my newsletter. (You can subscribe for free, you know.)
The future of facts (and the rise of fact servers): Are facts going to become as cheap and uninteresting as styrofoam peanuts?
The end of data: In the new world of classification and categorization, data and metadata are indistinguishable.
Walking the walk: O’Reilly’s foo camp is brilliant marketing in which the product is never mentioned |
October 14, 2004
Wendy the Redhead and Joey the Accordian Guy are getting hitched. And they have already produced a bouncing baby blog. (Dowbrigade has a charming post about this happy event.)
Worthwhile magazine, about what makes working life worthwhile, is shipping its first issue. (Yes, it’s on paper. Its blog is pretty lively, though.) You can view pdf’s of its table of contents and a handful of articles here.
Halley, who had a lot to do with getting the blog going, is a senior editor, as am I.
An odd email arrived today. It begins:
We would like to introduce our new-born site, where you can shop around most wanted and needed items in your life. Our weapon section has wide range of hard-to-find machine guns, silencers, armour-piercing ammos and others.
First of all, let\’s check our 3 top-selling items:
1. Russian surface-to-air missle SA-14 \”Gremlin\” (upgraded analog of SS-16 \”Strela\”) from our supplies in Kazakhstan.
Due to high demand, it takes about 4 weeks to backorder that item.
Weight is 10,2 kg., lenght – 1427 mm. You can make a huge party and you can have tons of fun launching your \”Gremlin\”
with your buddies.
2. Israeli bestselling submashine-gun…
It’s just about 100% certainly a phony: There is no url given and the 800 number and fax numbers are both Verisign’s. The msg came through APNIC, an Asian ISP. If you think there’s anything more to this than a joke or a lame attempt to spur some bewildering calls to Verisign, let me know.
October 11, 2004
I feel cheesy being moved by the death of Christopher Reeve. With all the suffering in the world, my values must be pretty screwed up to be saddened by the loss of one pretty-good actor who, crippled in a rich guy’s hobby, got medical care reserved for the earth’s elite. Yet his public optimism was a welcome rebuke to our normal values. And, because of his accidental identification with Superman and his determination to walk again, he was in a story arc that was supposed to have ended better.
So, what the hell, I’m going with it: I admire the courage of his values and am sad about his death.