Conferences like TED or CGI address serious issues, frequently tragic issues. So the question is: is there a role for humor in these events?
At the Citizen’s Award Gala Dinner at CGI 2010 the organizers took a big risk. They added humor to tragedy. It was daring. Would hearing descriptions of the 30 seconds in which 250,000 people died in Haiti right after Ben Stiller and Kevin Spacey mock interview of Clinton work? Would giving a fake award in the mix of giving out some pretty serious awards to people who risk their life for whatever they believe in not seen as rude? Would not the mix be offensive as it was at the last TED I attended with Sarah Silverman picking on the retarded? (here is Sarah Silverman’s view of the event) Or how about adding humor to stories of dilapidated women in Afghanistan? Well as you will see in this video the humor worked. And the key to the success was to keep the humor away from the tragedy. To draw a dividing line between the two. The event was great at alternating, but not mixing humor and tragedy. The same woman you will see in the video at my table, the wife of the Primer Minister of Haiti, who was laughing and raising her hand in approval saying that Haitians are Africans was crying (I did not want to film her then) when the tragedy of the 250K haitians who died in 30 seconds was told. Nina my wife held her hand and it was a very, very sad moment in which I had to hold my own tears.
In the case of my video I chose to focus on the humor. The whole ceremony lasted 3 hours and I think 7 minutes is the most that the Youtube crowd will put up with. So here it goes.
2010 8
Media and the math of racism
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
In Spain 1 immigrant in 1000 is a convicted criminal. That means that for every 999 immigrants Spain gets one immigrant who ends up as a convicted criminal. That means that 99.9% of immigrants are not convicted criminals. And yet, because there are very few criminals in society overall, it happens that 60% of all the convicted criminals in Spain are foreigners. And Spanish media repeats that number to the point that it is beginning to feed racist sentiments. If you read it lightly it could be understand that 60% of immigrants are criminals, not 1 in 1000. That is the worrying math of racism. Should media say that 99.9% of immigrants are honest and sell few newspapers, or should it say that 60% of the criminals are foreigners and sell many? The math of racism feeds media the wrong way.
The BT FON WiFi network has grown to 1.6 million hotspots in the UK alone. That is a incredible amount of WiFi in one place compared to other networks, like T-Mobile’s WiFi network, that has only 10 thousand in the US. And now, there is another reason to make your friends in the States jealous, the BT FON autoconnection app for iPhone and Android.
The new BT FON app lets BT Total Broadband customers choose to be automatically logged in to WiFi whenever they are near a BT Fon or Openzone hotspot. Sure, there are a lot of third-party apps already available that detect WiFi. But, they often lead to locked or paid hotspots. This new app is much better. It avoids all that, autoconnects, and it’s free. For users who appreciate seamless connectivity, it’s as convenient as the innovations coming out of iphone app development melbourne.
Another great feature is the WiFi map that shows all the hotspots nearby, so you’ll always know where to find one. But of course the real advantage here is being able to connect to WiFi easily away from home, and this is why the BT FON partnership works so well. We all want the same thing. WiFi everywhere. The BT FON app brings us one step closer to that reality.
Download the free mobile app for iPhone. (Must be in the UK to download.)
Download the free mobile app for Android. (Must be in the UK to download.)
Your download of the BT FON mobile app also contributes to BBC Children in Need.
To learn more, please read the BT press release, or visit BT.com
I know. It’s shocking. Especially for me considering that I personally lost around $50 million saying “computers and Microsoft don’t matter anymore” 10 years ago (building Einsteinet a wonderful adventure but my only start up, out of 7, in which I lost all money invested for being way to early with cloud computing).
But finally, now, I can say it: computers and Microsoft really don’t matter anymore. At least they don’t at work and not for me. This is my experience. At Fon I use a second hand computer, an old Compaq nx6310 that they were going to throw away. It’s value now is probably around $100. I use it with Jolicloud because I like the social aspect of this distro, but I could be running Ubuntu, or Debian, or any Linux. Linux flavors also matter little because almost everything I do happens at Chromium, the open source version of Chrome which for all intents and purposes is like Chrome.
Right now in Chromium I have the following tabs opened: I listen to music in Grooveshark (yes I work with music right now Kevin Rudolf “Let it Rock”), I blog in Tumblr, I have Seesmic desktop to see what’s happening in Twitter and Facebook simultaneously, I use Postbox for my email (I love Postbox), Netvibes to find out what is happening in the world (outside of Twitter and Facebook), Gmail is open as well for Gmail back up, calendar. My searches don’t happen at Google.com anymore, they go straight from my browser bar to Google (Firefox must add this feature immediately!). Skype is also running. And of course my old Compaq is connected to a Fonera that gives me WiFi.
What’s important here is that nothing that happens in my computer at work stays at my computer at work. Should it fatally crash another computer would be up doing the same work in minutes. For file saving I use Dropbox. But frankly I almost have nothing on Dropbox since Gmail backs up all my mail and Gmail is my Dropbox. I pay for extra storage in Gmail.
Could I do the same at home? Not really. At home I have all my heavy duty photography in RAW files, the HD videos, games, tons of music, all my digital life which occupies around 1.5TB and no service yet stores it for anything that can compete with my two 2TB drives. So at home I am not ready to give up all to the cloud. I know that soon with services like Spotify and Netflix (when they get all the rights) I will stop downloading (downloading is legal in Spain) and storing movies and music and other than the content I produce, like photography and video, I will also be able to replace my Mac.
But at work, well I have all I need in this old Compaq running Linux and storing everything in the cloud.
2010 30
Thanks to Bloomberg NYC is becoming a great place for cyclists
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in USA with No Comments
I just wanted to thank Mayor Bloomberg who I had a chance to meet a few times and greatly admire for the new bike paths around the city. Here’s a ride I did today. It was phenomenal and mostly done on bike routes and bike paths, a lot of it in Harlem.
I take the opportunity to recommend Endomondo. What a great bike app!! I used it on an HTC Desire.
In 2007, Loic Le Meur and I came up with the concept of La Fatera. It is described here. The idea was a scale that would share your weight over the internet and help you lose weight socially. At that time the plan was that Fon makes the Fonera and the Fatera. But while at Fon we stuck with the Fonera, a successful strategy (this year alone we sold close to 2 million), others picked up on the concept of the Fatera. The most successful implementation is Withings the WiFi scale. And new social sites to lose weight keep appearing. Fatdrop is a good example.
The obvious reason for the success of the scale and the weight losing sites is the obesity epidemics. 20% to one third of the population of developed countries obese or overweight. Interestingly obesity is so global and popular that in the world now there are as many obese people as hungry people, an estimated billion of each. But other than obesity the psychology of overeating lends itself more to sharing the activity socially to stop it than other addictions. Drug addictions, alcoholism are generally treated in secret in places like AA because taking drugs alters your behavior and there is a shame factor associated with it. Few people tweet something like “I have gone 134 days without shooting heroin”. Yet many people are tweeting their weight with Bob Metcalfe the creator of ethernet is a good example. Over eating is an activity that can be done in public, without shame and that other than the occasional barfing it does not produce any obvious social problems (it’s legal to drive after you overeat for example). But in this case, the shamelessness nature of over eating is a big plus for society to get you to stop. And sharing your weight over the internet is the objective measure of your eating. I see tremendous potential in weight sharing as a way to socially lose weight.
2010 23
The Sicilian Islands: Aeolian, Aegadian and Pantelleria
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Trips with No Comments
I have had Aphrodite for 10 years now. During those years I have been able to combine my life as an entrepreneur and my life as a sailor getting around 20 to 40 days on board per year. Aphrodite spends summers in the Mediterranean and winters in the Caribbean, so she has many Atlantic crossings under her belly. She is a 92 feet Ketch built by Vitters in the Netherlands and designed by Andre Hoek with one purpose in mind, safe and fast cruising. With its flashed deck Aphrodite is the perfect explorer sailboat.
And this summer we once more put Aphrodite to the test together with Nina my wife and Isa, Tom and Leo. For close to two weeks we sailed the islands around Sicily and what follows is a review of them that can serve others as a guide of what to do and what to avoid in the Sicilian Islands.
Aeolian Islands
My short take on them is that you should only use Capo Milazzo as the port of embarcation for sailing the Aeolians but waste no time there. Avoid Lipari and Vulcano in August because they are the most popular of the Aeolian Islands and if you are on a sailboat you can do better than that, and focus on the rest which are absolutely phenomenal. Sail directly from Milazzo to Stromboli.
Stromboli
Stromboli is one of the jewels of the Med but there are caveats. The island has two towns, Stromboli itself and Ginastra. Stromboli is charming but quite touristy and just not as elegant as say Panarea or Ginastra itself in the same island. So while most people spend time in Stromboli, I recommend making Ginastra the center of your exploration. For example, while going up to the volcano is organized with guides and many tourists on the Stromboli side, if you are like me and prefer to open your own path and be alone, put on a pair of jeans (as the path that goes up from Ginastra to Stromboli is barely used and has many thorny plants) and go up on your own. In Stromboli we mostly ate on board so I have no restaurants to recommend. After seven the Guardia Costiera leaves the area where the volcano spits lava ever 15 minutes or so and you can get as close to the volcano as you want.
Panarea
When you sail from Stromboli to Panarea there are three tiny islands that are worth a stop. They are all beautiful and the middle island has a sulphur gas that comes up from the bottom of the sea around 10 meters deep and you can go snorkling around there surrounded by shiny bubbles. Warning: my wedding band, normally silver, turned brown as a result of that swim but metal cleaning products normally used on sailboats worked and fixed the problem. So after spending a day or so you can get to Panarea at night.
Panarea is the only Aeolian with true night life in the sense of large choice of elegant restaurants and a couple of chill out bars. We only ate in one, Quartara, and both the food and atmosphere were great. The town of Panarea deserves a 3 hour walk in both directions. I also recommend a hike to the heliport from where you have a great view of Stromboli. If you have 800€ to spare go for a helicopter ride of Stromboli with Air Panarea, the owner of that helicopter airline is a particularly nice guy and my 3 year old had a good time pretending to be a helicopter pilot together with his 4 year old.
Salinas
Salinas is the most complete of the Aeolians, by that I mean that if you have a weekend to spend in one Aeolian Island I would recommend Panarea, but for a whole week, it would be Salinas. Salinas has roads, cars, scooters, towns, and yet it is not as crowded as Lipari. Friends of ours spent their honeymoon there and I can understand why. The best town is Malfa, by far. The 4 other towns can’t compare. The place to eat is the Signum Hotel. Rent a scooter, go around, hike, go to la Caldera (sailing and over land different, complementary experiences). Salinas must have much more to explore than what we saw. I would go back there.
Filicudi
Filicudi and Alicudi are the lesser Aelioans. But lesser in the sense that they are smaller, yet in terms of beauty per square meter they hold their own. Filicudi is all focused on one side, the one protected from Mistrals. It is interesting how Mistrals the strong NW winds that go through the Western Med 2 or 3 times a month, have shaped development, both humans and naturals around the region.
In the Aeolians, Mistrals have created a situation in which lava flows face the Mistrals and nature and people avoid them. Stromboli, Alicudi volcanos flow towards the Mistrals. I don’t know why but I have a sense that erosion help decide the path of least resistance for lava flows. Filicudi has these amazing phallic rock formation sticking out 70m off the water that are worth sailing around, quite a few times.
Alicudi
Alicudi is the smallest of the Aeolian and yet incredibly steep. What is unique about it is that the 100 homes or so that have been built there can only be inhabited by athletes who, as Tom said, are willing to go up and down the equivalent of the Empire State by staircase, every time they need milk. And they are inhabited by athletes, I have never seen fitter people and animals as in those islands. The mules work non stop bringing such essentials as drinking water to the homes on the side of the extinguished volcano. We went up to the last home and it took us over an hour of the steepest hike of our lives to get to it, at 488m over sea level.
The Aegadian Islands
From the Aeolian Islands we sailed to the Aegadian and my general comment is that they are not worth your time for anything other than a passage stop from the Aeolians to Pantelleria. On that passage what you may want to do is to stop in San Vito lo Capo, a quiet nice town in the North West corner of Sicily and in Trapani. Trapani is kind of run down but it has a decadent beauty that I liked. It reminded me of Essaouira in Morocco. If you go to Trapani get a car or some means of transportation and go to Erice, a beautiful medieval town up the mountain.
Now back to the Aegadians, we were so poorly impressed by Trapani that we did not even try to go to Levanzo. But Favignana was slightly better. At this point let me grade the islands so you get an idea of what I mean about the Egadi. Vulcano B+, Lipari B+, Stromboli A+, Panarea A+, Salinas A+, Filcudi A-, Alicudi A- but Trapani C, Favignana B. You get my point. Favignana does have a town that has its moments, it is quite busy so if you miss seeing people out and about you may like Favignana more.
But in Favignana the markets are not local fruits and vegetables but Chinese goods sold by sad looking African emigrants desperate to make a living. Still we managed to find a charming restaurant in the Augusta hotel, a garden restaurant where we ate well. In general I would say that we still have to find one restaurant in which we ate poorly. All of them are great Southern Italian food for 20 to 40 euros a person. We only got ripped off once and that was at the restaurant Al Tramonto in Pantelleria where they charged us €96 euros for a mediocre fish or €50 euros per person for a meal that anywhere else would be half of that. Otherwise eating in the Sicilian Islands is generally a phenomenally predicable experience.
And in Favignana we did have a special moment and that was when we coincided with a local, religious celebration in which a Madonna was brought into the church by men in uniform. The light was perfect, the church attractively small and while religion is to blame for a lot of unnecessary killings among humans when properly practiced it can be especially picturesque.
Pantelleria
Is Pantelleria worth a day of sailing to get there and another one to get back? I am not 100% sure but we did enjoy it. Pantelleria, like the Aeolians, is a volcanic island. The volcano is not active but there’s “fresh” lava all over the place. As other volcanic Islands, Pantelleria is very steep, with poor anchorages as sandy bottoms are rare. We only found one in Scauri and that’s where we stayed. Avoid Pantelleria town, it is depressing and after a long sail to get to Pantelleria Island if that is the first thing you see, as it happens to us, you will question the whole trip, and if you haven’t slept well, your whole life after seeing that dump of a place. But Scauri for example is Aelian level material. So Pantelleria gets a B+ in my blog because of Scauri, because of the South, because of the hikes and local lava based architecture.
Conclusion
Unless you are one of those sailors, like me who likes to see everything and come to his/her own conclusions, just go to the Aeolian Islands. You can avoid the Egadi and regarding Pantelleria, if it was say 3 hours of sailing from Stromboli I would say go for it. But to sail 2 days from the Aeolians to go to Pantelleria is not worth it.
2010 23
Germany’s contradictions on matters of Privacy
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Micro with No Comments
How can a country obsessed with privacy as Germany come up with a national identity card system with RFIDs? One of the only ways to preserve privacy is anonymity but with a requirement to go anywhere with these new IDs it is very difficult to be anonymous. This is not just a German problem by the way. Same is the case in other European countries including Spain. An employee of mine spent 3 days in jail for not having her ID in Madrid. I interview her in this video. In any case, the same country that comes up with that national ID also has leading magazine, Stern, writing extremely negative articles about how Google invades privacy. I chose Stern as an example but when I ran companies in Germany for example we could not outsource our customer care because we were not allowed to pass customer information to the customer care centers if we did not own them. This added a lot of costs to our operations all for the sake of privacy. And this was not telemarketing, this was technical support. Privacy concerns in Europe many times clash with the normal functioning of the Internet and technology business. I guess the main difference between Continental Europe and USA in this matter is that Europeans have tremendous faith in government and do not consider their actions as invasive of privacy. For Americans government is one more potential invader privacy. Personally I think that there are more people now who prefer to share than to be private but if you do want privacy it is better not to be online and to be out and about in places where people do not know who you are. In my case I am just the opposite. From this blog on I sign everything I do online and in real life.
2010 22
The Messenger, a great movie
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Movies with No Comments
Tonight we saw The Messenger with @ninavarsavsky. We started watching it while sailing back to Sardinia after a failed attempt of crossing to Menorca. With over 20 kts straight against us we decided to fly back and have the crew choose a better day for the return. In the meantime, in rough seas, we turned the Mac on and started what we thought was a better choice to throwing up. And it was.
In spite of its meandering last third, The Messenger is a great movie. While war is at the center stage of this drama, it is not a war movie. The Messenger is a movie about how war impacts everyday life. The title refers to the job that the two main characters (played by Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson) are assigned to do. Their job is to communicate to the NOK (next of kin) that their loved one has died at war. The acting, directing, photography are superb. If there’s anything weak is the plot itself, but I watch films more for their special moments than their story as a whole and the dialogues are great.
2010 5
Do harder languages hinder social mobility?
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Micro with No Comments
I wonder if languages that are hard in certain ways, for example French for spelling, German in terms of grammar or Chinese in terms of writing, end up creating a special difficulty for social mobility. All languages have a class distinction in terms of the ability of different individuals to master them. But those that are especially hard, create an additional obstacle for class mobility. People who don’t master their own language in all cultures are poorly regarded by the elites, but if the language they speak are very hard to improve as an adult, then language can be an obstacle for social mobility. Individuals can suffer discrimination in jobs and their social standing can be diminished just because of not mastering the idiosincracies of their language. Is it a coincidence that English is associated with democracy and social mobility?