On Friday, I visited Labs2 and I « test-surfed » the internet at 1 Gig. Labs2 of Sweden offer internet connections of 1 Gig (uplink/downlink) for 89 EUR which is absolutely incredible. Surfing at those speeds is like landing a jet plane. Extasis. To have an idea of what it’s like to have a 1 Gig connection, here’s how long it took to perform the following downloads:

-new skype software: < 1 second
-high-resolution movie trailer by Apple (200 Mb): < 3 seconds.
-song on Napster < 1 second

I simply didn’t want to disconnect. In my house in Madrid, I have a 1 Mb connection (uplink) and much less on downlink. I asked for much faster connection and I was told to wait 5 weeks…

The system that combines fiber-optic category 6 cables for a distance of up to 100 meters is the best I have every seen.

Ok. I tried to live without Microsoft for two weeks now and I confess…I’ve failed miserably. Like everything in life, there was some good and some bad in not using Microsoft anymore. But personally, as much as Firefox worked really well and is much better than Internet Explorer, Thunderbird is no match for Outlook. The rest of Microsoft Office is marginally superior to Openoffice, with the not-so-negligible fact that Openoffice is free and Microsoft Office is really expensive. For one person, the hefty price of a licence is tolerable, but buying licences for a whole company or NGO? No thanks.

Bottom line: You definitely gain some things living without Microsoft, but you certainly lose out on other things.

Avian Flu is proving that blogs may provide adequate balance to global media coverage of important issues such as the Avian Flu. Initially when global media was not covering the Avian Flu, news were appearing in many blogs as to the dangers that the disease posed to humans. Now that the national media and Bush himself has gone overboard with the dangers of the Avian Flu blogs are toning the whole issue down and putting it into the right perspective.

The Avian flu is so far not that dangerous cause birds give it to birds, rarely to humans and when humans get it so far they don´t spread it to other humans. Now if they did the first and most important preventive measure will be isolation. If we all retreat to the privacy of our homes there will be a much lesser chance for the virus to spread. For those of us who without the Avian flu already spend a significant part of the day online, retreating to our homes won´t be hard. We will chat with our friends, use web cams, listen to music, watch movies, blog, so long as we have the internet seclusion won´t be too harsh. Now for those who are not active on the internet isolation will be harder to put up with. I read somewhere that AIDS does not reach North African cause Muslims as opposed to Sub Saharans practice circumcision. Maybe the same will be true for net surfers. We on the net will be fine in isolation, we will be the North Africans, those off the net the Sub Saharans have a much greater probability of getting infected.

I live in Spain. United States spends more money in its armed forces per year than the GDP of Spain, a prosperous European country of 44 million people. When I look at how much the United States devotes to “defend” itself and I read an article in today´s New York Times that says that the United States ” is woefully unprepared for what could become the worst disaster in the nation’s history” meaning FLU I wonder what´s happening to US spending priorities. Does it make sense to spend a trillion dollars in armaments and not spend enough in flu vaccines? The 381 report that the New York Times writes about predicts widespread violence at vaccination clinics resulting from a vaccine shortage. How can Bill Gates personally be paying for vaccinating millions of Africans while the US Government is not paying for flu vaccines for its own citizens? When is the United States going to realize that the biggest danger to its nation is not Islamic terrorism but hurricanes, epidemics, earthquakes, and other natural disasters? I think it´s time that United States realizes that its most dangerous enemies are PEOPLE but NATURE. More precisely nature attacked by humanity with its main aggressor in terms of carbon emissions and global warming being the United States itself. As I write this I know that many people in the United States realize this. Unfortunately they only made 47% of the electorate last time around. Hopefully damage will be contained and a new president with the environment in mind will be elected in 2008. I frequently wonder what would have happened to the world if Al Gore had been given his true mandate in 2000. I have no doubt that the United States and the world would be a different, better, safer place.

Nuclear weapons make me nervous. Ideally I would like to see all the megatons in the world converted to megawatts peacefully generating electricity for all of us for years to come. Yes I am in favor of nuclear energy and I prefer a world of cheap megawatts than of dangerous megatons. Now on to Iran.

In a neighborhood in which Israel, Pakistan, India, Russia and many others have nuclear weapons I tend to understand that the Iranians want to have them as well. Still it does make me especially nervous to see nuclear weapons in the hands of fundamentalists. To me there are mainly two kinds of religious people, those who are simply religious and believe in a perfect God followed by imperfect human beings and those who are fundamentalists and believe in a perfect God followed by perfect human beings who got it right (while everyone else got it wrong). The Iranians make part of the latter group. So does Al Qaida.
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I am a progressive. In the US I identify with the democrats. Over the last two US elections I have watched in pain as Bush defeated Gore and Kerry. How could America elect such a conservative leader? I wondered. But after attending the Clinton Global Initiative two weeks ago in New York City and listening to some token right wingers who were invited to attend I realized that things have changed. Nowadays it is the Democrats who are conservatives in the sense that it is them who want things to stay the same, and paradoxically it is the republicans, traditionally seen as conservatives, who want things to change, sometimes radically. Abortion is legal, they want to change that. Prayer is not allowed at schools, they want that changed as well. Evolution is seen as the only accepted science, they don´t buy that. There´s one rule in politics, people who want things to change organize themselves better than people who want things to stay the same. For example, creationists are well organized, evolutionists who probably make 100% of the biology teachers in the world, are not. Why are you going to organize to fight for what you have? I think that people of a democratic spirit in America will begin to wake up only when they realize that their status quo…is no longer.

Both in Europe and America the press tends to be more progressive, or leftist than the rest of the population. In America conservatives have been very good at mounting a counterattack on the liberal media but the liberal media still has the upper hand. The country votes republican, the media overall is democratic. Why is this the case? To me this is simply a function of income. Start giving journalists investment banking salaries and they would certainly write more conservative articles! As it is they make very little money, and empathize with other people who do as well.

Here is my first contribution to Freakonomics. It relates to gasoline prices. I was recently in the States and read articles, one that emphasized that while in America consumers were very concerned about the rise in the price of gasoline, in Europe people were less worried. In the article there were many unusual theories as to why this may be the case.
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The Clinton Global Initiative is a medium size conference with around 800 people. Davos for example has around 3000 people. The Aspen Brainstorm, still the best conference I ever attended, 300 people. I would venture to say the CGI has managed to attain the perfect conference size. Still, they are not managing people well. At this conference there´s a remarkable gathering of people, many of whom have something to say but are not getting the chance. In this, Davos is more efficient. In my view it is better to have more sessions, more choices. Here there are around 10 sessions per day for 800 people. At Davos there are 60 sessions a day for 3000 people. So at Davos they have 4 times the number of people but 6 times the number of sessions. Sessions here are too large and don´t give an opportunity to the very smart people who attend to contribute and interact as much. Also having more sessions is an opportunity for people who attend the conference over the internet, through bloggers or through the press, to go directly to the topics of interest to them. These places are like Congress - many times speeches are made for the whole country and not necessarily for other members of Congress. Ideally though, you don´t want long and uninterrupted speeches, you want instead small sessions where speakers to shift from propaganda mode to a more honest Q&A session.

There´s another problem in the CGI format and that is that people are supposed to stay on the same tables throughout the day. I didn´t. I changed. You come to conferences like this to interact briefly with people who seem interesting to you so you can deepen the relationship outside of the conference. CGI´s system connects you too much with people at your table and little with anyone else. So, I switched tables so I could go to three tables in one day and cover a bit more ground