Thought Nuggets from Twitter – Part 2

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.

• Ireland shows that to thrive you don’t need to have leading global companies. U just need for them to like u.
• having children is the only miracle we can experience in real life
• will the next web finally be the one in which the interface is human meaning speech, video, sound, and not keyboards and text?
• i am now trilingual, mac, ubuntu, windows, but I rarely use windows anymore
• Why is top blogging equal or better than top print and top video blogging a la youtube so much worse than cable TV?
• the best internet conferences in Europe are DLD, Google Zeitgeist, Le Web 3 and SIME
• facebook: your social CV
• my favorite Nokia apps are shozu. fring and pocketcaster
• Are Putin and Hu Jintao dictators or are they necessary intermediary steps between Stalin, Mao….and democracy?
• There are 3 approaches to immigration: no immigrants like Japan, low skilled immigrants like Spain, most qualified immigrants around the wo …
• FedEx proves that moving things is much more profitable than moving people.
• virtual philanthropy, second life or stardoll can give virtual property away for free to people in poor countries
• Airlines are masters at affinity programs yet they don’t seat people on planes according to affinities.
• There r 3 Arab civil wars going on now in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq.
• With global warming the amount of cells in the planet will increase.
• Would Sarkozy love an Obama led America as much?
• I was against Sarkozy but I sincerely hopes he brings a sense of urgency to complacent France
• A few months ago the future was in Second Life, now the future is in Facebook, where is the future going to be tomorrow?
• USA tries to stop illegals at the border. Europe on the streets.
• I work better since I abandoned Microsoft for Ubuntu and Mac. But I can’t wait for browser based computing to be ready.
• Coming from Europe, Canada seems like a kinder, more caring, USA.
• in USA “undivided attention” is a thing of the past
• Are social networks about being social or about self promotion.
• Facebooks success is like America’s: immigration.
• San Fran. One of the most beatiful cities in the world. Even the homeless seem to agree.
• Why is it that in Europe most parking is underground and in America is not?
• I am in the wine country. Didn’t know they had such a country. Its just beautiful!
• Calistoga, Healdsburg, areas, add them to the list of places to see…
• When u fly in America, u realize that terrorism won.
• Why if women do not compete with men in sports do they fight agaimst them in war?
• there are over 700 people worth over $5 million thanks to the rise in Google share price
• Skype should offer an open API for chat even if it does not for voice. If not Google Talk will eventually catch up.
• forget about the war on drugs, i want to start the war…on war
• One measure of civilization: lowest police per capita.
• as population grows, there are more people who believe in past lives that there are past lives available for them
• Israel is the home of over one million Palestinian. None of them become terrorists.
• Is it possible to be a very well educated person and not speak English?
• Since Facebook opened apps all the other communities I belong to are going silent.
• It is easier for me to understand why humans die than to understand why they sleep.
• Chile has the best government in Latin America, but the worst music. In Cuba the opposite is true.
• The Bible by proclaiming virginity leaves out the only miracle we do experience in real life: conception.
• Nintendo fanboys are sheep, Sony fanboys are crabs, PC gamers r hermits
• The best two service economies are USA and Japan. One is based on tipping. The other one on duty.
• the iPhone is web 1.0, it s a great spectator phone, but you can’t film, the camera is very poor, it’s amazing to read but poor to write on …
• Pakistan’s ruler likes the West but his people hate it. Iran has a ruler who hates the West, but his people like us. Pakistan has the bomb. …
• Enhanced TV is the TV industry answer to time shifting
• 2006 was the year with most TV sold in USA, most TVs sold over 50 inches
• HBO is the only big TV network without ads, can that last?
• US regulators believe that anyone in finance who is consistently generating alpha is cheating
• Londons recent lead gain over NYC is mostly due to poor US reg moves
• U cannot chat, film, gps on an iPhone.
• Companies r taken private when investors think they will be misunderstood
• The net neutrality fight, to US consumers, is like hearing divorced parents argue, consumers need both, papa and mama
• The fastest growing population segment in OECD countries is those over 65
• A smoker has on the average 3400 dollars of extra medical costs per year in USA
• Health Care systems should be rated along 3 axis: quality, access and cost.
• The secret to how grandparents get along so well with grandchildren is their common enemy
• The members of the Forbes 400 pay less taxes in percentage terms than their receptionists
• USA has a 250bn deficit with China. USA gets goods. China gets paper.
• U want to buy a biz that an idiot can run cause sooner or later one will, pete lynch
• As I listen to Bill Gates present I realize that he is falling out of touch with the times.
• Microsoft Surface, computer on your desk gets in your desk, looked cool
• George Burns got 4 amazing girls for his 95th bday. He saw them and said: sorry babes, I am 95, one of u has to go.
• Warren Buffett’s political views would make him very well liked in Europe. In USA he gets away with them.
• USA and Europe lose a lot by training foreign students and then refusing them work visas.
• The NYC public school system has to deal with students whose parents speak 170 different languages
• In the States education is managed by mayors, not presidents
• Biz is on on dog eat dog world, politics is just the reverse
• Problem: politics has gone global but policies remain local
• Many local problems only have global solutions
• Tony Blair a hero of mine in spite of Iraq. I wish he ran the UN
• Bush argues that if USA leaves Iraq the country will fall into chaos. At this point it is more likely that the opposite is true.
• Americans defeat the weather. In the winter…it’s too hot, in the summer it’s too cold.
• Carlos Slim is the wealthiest man on earth. Mexico’s GDP is 1/17th of that of USA.Slim’s wealth says a lot about poor income distribution! …
• in madrid people are nasty in the upper class suburbs and nice downtown, in NYC the opposite is true
• in America the rich are mostly visible, in Spain they are mostly invisible
• in America many people take their babies out of their homes and drive them around to put them to sleep…
• NY Times says USA has become one of the countries with the most road fatalities rates, it ranks bet Poland and Greece.
• in New Hampshire its legal to drive without your seat belt: live free or die?
• the Youtube/CNN debate made the Time cover true, the clipmakers were the protagonists
• the Americans invent, the Europeans design, the Chinese manufacture
• China is replacing USA as the growth engine of the world. USA is slowed down by military spending and legal waste.
• USA’s real estate market moves in two different waves, one for 99% of the population and the other for 1% of the population
• Many conspiracy theories come out of poor policy choices. People can’t believe that their gov is so incompetent and attribute higher motives …
• I prefer to know what people are thinking than what they r doing
• do first born children have more sleeping problems? if they do it must due to the inexperience of the parents
• women are overcoming 10K years of oppression in 50, not bad
• Americans let teens drive at 16 but get to drink at 21. I think it would be best if teens could learn to drink in moderation and then drive
• When it gets to sex and alcohol the US gov makes teens feel and act like criminals.
• Endowments many times survive their reason to exist
• Freedom is the ability to lead a life without fear
• in Argentina where I grew up being very thin was associated with being poor, in the Hamptons where I am now the opposite is true
• USA should lower the drinking age and raise the driving age
• 40% of bottled water in the States is tap water
• Back in Spain, make a GSM call, quality far superior to US, why r US cell nets so bad?
• Since 1980 the number of imprisoned Americans grew 450%
• How can the Spaniards work so little compared to the Koreans and have the same GDP per person?
• Is Google atmospheric P/E a blessing or a curse for googlers?
• People get much more energy per kg of food than engines running biofuels.
• flying and sailing have much more in common than people think, people who are afraid of flying but not sailing should learn about this
• Laws should follow the principles of inactive email accounts, after certain years of not being used they should be deleted
• Paradox: in Europe the highest holocaust survival rates were among German Jews.
• Can fully veiled women be candidate in an election?
• The next big thing in tattoing is to tattoo objects
• Books are tools for communication and as such they are becoming outdated
• Why do so many people believe supermarket food poisons them?
• Ten percent of Protestants, 21 percent of Roman Catholics, and 52 percent of Jews do NOT believe in God.
• there are 1,4 billion Mulsims and 14 million Jews in the world
• there are over 6bn people on the planet, around 1 bn consider themselves non religious
• Religious theories are shortcuts towards explanations
• Europe and USA diverge on death penalty, guns, religion in politics, environment, military spending, egalitarianism, beaurocracy, transport
• When credit markets get shaky LDCs credit tanks first even when they run surpluses. Hard for them to believe in markets.
• When people tell me that we all had previous lives somehow I can’t work out the demographics
• Virginity: the rare occasion in which beginners are praised.
• People who are afraid of chemicals don’t seem to realize that all that we see and eat are chemicals.
• Americans can’t remember, Europeans can’t forget, Asians can’t forgive
• Digital photography. You can always do prints…you never do.
• I have a hard time with the notion that our TV signals will be around the universe once our planet is gone.
• The Southern hemisphere is mostly water, less able to eliminate carbon emitted in the North.
• There are more bacteria in your body than years in the universe.
• Antartica is technically a desert
• Learning requires focus, focus requires that we ignore most else, so learning requires ignorance?
• Judged by numbers, the animals who we hate, rats, have been doing better than the ones we like,cats.
• I spent hours thinking about a plausible theory of why humans like music and dance so much, could not come up with anything reasonable…
• When non US people buy dollars US citizens get richer. If those buyers shift to euros….
• Birth rates collapse when people children as a financial burden rather than life insurance. Is that why they were having them?
• weeks are an irrational division of time
• University is the place where professors teach u what they were never able to do
• Species need lucky mutants to evolve, does human knowledge need thinking mutants to expand?
• Anyone who is anybody spends time on the internet. If I was looking for Osama Bin Laden I would look for him online.
• USA is the only country able to export famous people, why?
• Growing old in America: Dawson’s Creek, Friends, Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives and Weeds.
• humans process food much more efficiently than cars, another reason to oppose biofuels
• global warming is bad except in the fact that it increases the amount of living cells in the planet
• Addiction treatments like AA rely on 0 tolerance for addictive substance. This is not possible with addiction to food.
• Does children happiness correlate better with parents being together or with time spent with parents?