A Different Drummer

Conversation between a First World War veteran and James Joyce, where the veteran is trying to suggest that Joyce is a bit of a pansy for not joining the Great Battle....

Veteran - "So, Joyce, what did you do during the Great War?"

Joyce - "I wrote Ulysses. What did you do?"

And a fair old achievement that is - Ulysses is a monster of a book:

"Ulysses is a massive novel: 267,000 words in total from a vocabulary of 30,000 words, with most editions weighing in at between 800 to 1000 pages, and divided into 18 chapters.....

In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Ulysses first on a list the 100 best novels in English of the 20th Century"

An ongoing fascination of mine on this and previous blogs has been the phenomenal growth and general awesomeness of google. They seem to have everything right - incredibly wonderful core product (what is more dominantly superior in its industry, google search or the Gilette Mach 3 razor?), brilliant organisational culture that seems to innovate at the speed of sound, and a huge metric shit-ton of cash to spend on growing.

However, all those previous "wow" posts may have been superficial hand clapping over minor details compared to what might be coming:

"Google is working on a project to create its own global internet protocol (IP) network, a private alternative to the internet controlled by the search giant, according to sources who are in commercial negotiation with the company.

Last month, Google placed job advertisements in America and the British national press for "Strategic Negotiator candidates with experience in...identification, selection, and negotiation of dark fibre contracts both in metropolitan areas and over long distances as part of development of a global backbone network".....

Read the whole thing, it just gets way too James Bond - including 40 foot shipping containers crammed with processing power, ready to be played anywhere on earth to work as mobile data centres. It must be wonderful to be sitting in on some strategy meetings at Mountain View these days.....

An ongoing fascination of mine on this and previous blogs has been the phenomenal growth and general awesomeness of google. They seem to have everything right - incredibly wonderful core product (what is more dominantly superior in its industry, google search or the Gilette Mach 3 razor?), brilliant organisational culture that seems to innovate at the speed of sound, and a huge metric shit-ton of cash to spend on growing.

However, all those previous "wow" posts may have been superficial hand clapping over minor details compared to what might be coming:

"Google is working on a project to create its own global internet protocol (IP) network, a private alternative to the internet controlled by the search giant, according to sources who are in commercial negotiation with the company.

Last month, Google placed job advertisements in America and the British national press for "Strategic Negotiator candidates with experience in...identification, selection, and negotiation of dark fibre contracts both in metropolitan areas and over long distances as part of development of a global backbone network".....

Read the whole thing, it just gets way too James Bond - including 40 foot shipping containers crammed with processing power, ready to be played anywhere on earth to work as mobile data centres. It must be wonderful to be sitting in on some strategy meetings at Mountain View these days.....

Egypt have won the African cup of nations. Cairo would be the place to be right now, if massive street celebrations of long suffering football fans is your thing. Looking forward to hearing some first hand reports of the celebrations from the many many nomadlifers in Cairo....

Huge street celebration minus alcohol and drunkenness....sounds pretty good to me...

When I first saw the score, 4-2, I thought to myself "wow, high scoring game". My big problem with football is that it is too hard to score, too easy to be defensive, and too often ends up 0-0 after 2 hours play. 6 goals in a match seemed pretty cool to me.....Then I read that it was a penalty shootout that ended up being 4-2 to Egypt - the actual game ended 0-0.

My second big problem with football is penalty shootouts. You might as well toss coins, or have the captains challenge each other at Fifa 2004 on Sony Playstation consoles or something. Pretty random way to end a game....

It still rocks massively that Egypt won. Party hard, everyone there....

I don't know exactly where this info can be found (comments?) but right now on BBC2, a late night talk show is discussing a recent survey of British Muslims. 12% of the respondants believed that suicide bombings in the UK are justified, and 36% believe that Jews in the UK should be targeted.

As mentioned on the show, obviously it is easy to say extreme things like this when responding to a survey. But even if the real figures are one tenth of what is being quoted, this is some scary shit...

UPDATE - Ahhh shit. Has anyone else seen footage of the protests outside the Danish embassy in London? Over 1000 Muslims chanting "Freedom, go to hell" and "UK, you must pay". A guy front and centre is holding a big sign that reads "Behead those who disrespect Islam". That shit is expected in shitholes like Syria and Saudi Arabia, but Londoners are not going to put up with that for a moment.....

You can almost literaly feel the tide turning here in Britain. Crazy old hook hand, Abu Hamza, just went down for 7 years for inciting murder, and it has been revealed that at least 3 of the London Bombers were going to his sermons. The endgame is near......

1) Nothing, in the entire world, is as complicated as the Lebanese civil war. I think I will fully comprehend String Theory before I understand exactly what the hell went on there...

2) Druze are my new favourite hard-ass dont-mess-with-us-we're-mountain-people religion

3) The movie 2Fast 2Furious should never have been made.

Anatole Koletsky gets it so, so right, in The Times. For me, this is the real lesson that the rest of the world needs to learn from the Bush years......

"For the past five years, America has been led by a president who is clearly not up to the job — a man who is not just inarticulate, but lacking in judgment, intelligence, integrity, charisma or staying power. Yet America as a nation seems to be stronger, more prosperous and self-confident than ever.....

Why does America’s prosperity and self-confidence seem to bear so little relationship to the competence of its government? "

The whole article is just spot on.