Thought Nuggets from Twitter – Part 1

I don’t twit in the traditional sense of the term (internet tradition is measured in months not years). I don’t generally tell people what I am doing. Instead I twit what I am thinking about. For year end I will post what Evan Williams, founder of Twitter, appropriately called thought nuggets.

• laptops still need to be lighter, faster, less hot and with daylong batteries
• the problem with psychology is one of marketing, nobody likes to be called a mental patient, how about changing titles to “life trainers”
• Immigrants make 8% of the population of USA but the companies they built account for 25% of US mkt cap
• The Spaniards disagree on staying Spanish. The French want to be French, but they disagree on the regime they want.
• How can the French have both, the largest supermarket chains in the world and the petit marche au coin?
• Most countries have cultural centers in Paris. USA does not need one. Its culture rules is pulled, not pushed.
• Height is one of the most overrated virtues
• using windows is like smoking, people know its bad for them, but they still do it cause they are addicted
• digesting the time warner news, tremendous coverage in the States
• Waking up to the cries of my baby son I enjoy the congratulatory messages
• Truth is a moving target
• Google rank should be language based
• sugar and milk, if u stir well you end up with dulce de leche, if you don’t with curd milk
• I don’t care about what most people do. I do care about what a few people think.
• As u roam the world: what does your footprint look like?
• Does the instinct to kill have anything to do with eliminating competitors?
• My iPod is designed by Americans, buit by Asians and populated by Africans
• In Hollywood movies bad guys were first German, then Russians, then Arabs, lately….Americans
• Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. But people with guns kill more people.
• If u make Ducatis, should u feel remorse for all the people who die riding them?
• If speeding is dealt with fines so should illegal downloads.
• Is evolution about species or about DNA itself building a diversified survival portfolio?
• Can u be both very smart and very poor in America?
• Are keyboards so bad to give us a chance to think about what we write?
• Sorry twitter but I am still not telling u what I am doing right now.
• Can u do a newspaper for the chinese that is in english?
• considering how islamic Saudi Arabia already is it is remarkable that the people who fight that regime are those who want it more so
• Its unfortunate Koreans, Chinese and Japanese dislike each other when there’s so much they can do jointly.
• I am a green, but i am in favor of prudent use of Nuclear Energy and GM food
• While the world changes aircraft dont
• School is a poor model for real life
• If u think of air as a fluid flying becomes sailing
• is the richest country the one with the richest people or the one with the richest poor people?
• politics is a winner takes all game, that’s why politicians trash each other even more than competing businesses
• I allow my kids to bring their boyfriends/girlfriends to sleepover at home after a one year relationship, in USA I could be sued I was told
• In Spain the law works so slowly that people are forced to get along
• in the 70s maoist terrorists killed in Europe, now they are simply outdated, hope the same happens to islamic terrorists in a decade
• music is a collection of sounds that somehow make sense
• Israelis are realizing that the Lebanon invasion made Hezbollah more powerful
• babies show that falling asleep must be a very scary experience for the uninitiated
• Is having children a humanitarian act?
• I have loved hip hop since RunDMC in the 80s. Almost nobody else I know does.
• sarko and sego’s debate looks like a matrimonial dispute
• a single engine turboprop that i used to own fell in the Mediterranean yesterday
• craig’s list is like the bad looking guy who gets all the cute girls
• Nazis killed 3 times as many Russians as they killed Jews. Why are there so many Russian Neonazis?
• The toughest job that immigrants are doing in Europe is having and raising children.
• gtalk is not a download anymore, that makes it so much easier to use!
• we hear about gold diggers, we hear less about beauty diggers
• Why are women more religious than men?
• Men make most rules but women tend to follow them better
• www.fotolog.com one pix per day diet leads to more page views than flickr all u can eat
• why can’t France get the heart of sego with the brains of sarko?
• everyone in Europe likes the welfare state, but the French are addicted to it
• the 35 hour French assumes that work is punishment, i favor freedom for all, workaholics and workphobics to work as they negotiate
• European garage designers are in cohoots with body shop owners
• my father used to argue that the 7 day week in which we all work 5 days and rest 2 does not make sense, he proposed shifts and a 6 day week
• at least on twitter I am a follower of Barack Obama
• beaurocrats exist thanks to unnecesary laws and regulations
• on the earth we move until we run out of energy, in space we move until we encounter energy
• Wish Turkey was the role model in the Muslim World as far as separation of mosque and state
• Curse: to only be happy til u find someone else who is happier
• In Europe people rarely talk to strangers and ask them where they r from.
• In the last decades capitalism clearly won. But democracy?
• we have the social router, the fonera, should we launch the fatera a social scale for collaborative weight loss?
• the Chinese r only one political party away from American style democracy
• God’s probably an Atheist cause he does not believe in a superior being who created him
• Good funk doesn’t die, it’s remixed.
• the American election will be a gender, race and generational contest
• Blair and Bush made the same mistake in Iraq, but for different reasons.
• Best measure of national food success is that which foreigners like the most.
• In Spain it’s blind people who sell lottery tickets. A lesson on trust.
• Many people I know are migrating to Mac or Ubuntu. I have yet to find one person who loves Vista.
• USA alternates left and right in decades, Reagan, Clinton, Bush and now?
• Are Netlog and Meetic the two largest communities in Europe?
• sms is the technology that has been pronounced dead most often, and Americans are just discovering it…
• In Spain birth rates collapsed in the 90s, the country had to import 8% of it population in the last 7 years
• Spain has the most proislamic press that I have seen in Europe.
• The best diet is to eat whatever u normally eat, but less. I don’t believe in eating weird stuff.
• In England high school ends at 16, college goes from 16 to 18 and university starts at 18.
• USA’s fights illegal immigration at the border, Europe in the streets.
• It would be arrogant of us to believe that only on earth there’s life
• sometimes my body seems to have a mind of its own
• Europe is 46% of Google’s profits. Where is Europe’s Google?
• Eric Schmidt says Google has the LAX theory of corporate culture…if u r stuck at LAX for 6hrs with the candidate…
• Why is it that most oil in the world is own by non democrats? Coincidence or does oil allow rulers disregard the views of others?
• the second tear most successful web communities like bebo, netlog, fotolog or twitter have a real hard time making more than $500K per month
• www.jamba.de spends 70 million euros in TV advertising, and it’s profitable
• ad based companies reach a ceiling that is only pierced when they get into the virtual property business a la facebook gifts
• the bubble test: when only vcs and not crowds fall in love with your idea
• Countries don’t attack countries in which they have invested a lot of money, unless they are about to lose it….
• twitter without IM is not fun as I twit from my blackberry using jabber, fix this please!!
• Most of the people who speak Spanish are poor.
• Best cities to visit: NYC, Tokyo, Berlin, BA, Barcelona, Rome, Paris, San Fran.
• the different between a first wife and a second wife is that with the first u lost all arguments, with the second…most
• Berlin is by far the most interesting city in Germany
• Israel was built on the premise that Jews needed a safe home. Now the least safe place for Jews is Israel.
• The best incentive that we could offer Russia to reform is membership in the EU
• Why do ethnic groups who frequently murder each other stop doing so the moment they immigrate to USA?
• Yasmina Khadra says that the 2 choices of islamic youth r to emigrate or become terrorist.
• Paradox: The place in which Palestinian’s live best is Israel. The place in which they are worse off is Lebanon.
• skype is better than google talk but google talk keeps showing up everywhere, on twitter, blackberry, gmail…
• The most educated countries are those with the lowest police to crime ratios.
• The richest countries are those with the richest poor people.
• To what extent are new generations taller because of widespread availability of C Sections?
• genetics is getting to the point in which while we cannot know our genetic future knowing our genome we can now do a genetic “horoscope”
• Argentina has a huge trade surplus with China because China is the first industrialized country that does not subsidize its own food
• Is China the rising tide that lifts all boats?
• Only robots and communities yield extraordinary profits.