Just back from walking to dog and listening to Planet Money's latest podcast A Bet On The Future Of Humanity. In 1980 economist Julian Simon bet biologist Paul Ehrlich that the price of a basket of metals would go down over the next decade. Ehrlich lost, with repercussions still being felt in today's highly polarised discussions about what, if anything, we need to do to ensure a decent future. As it happens, I remember the bet clearly.
Of course one creates just for the pleasure of it, with no audience other than oneself in mind.1 And yet, having an actual audience of living, breathing people interested enough in what one has created to give it some of their precious currency is a wonderful reward and a spur to action. When the...
Feeding Our Reading Habits, a long and fascinating article by Alex Kessinger, whom I know as @voidfiles on app.net, set me thinking, as it was surely intended to do. Ostensibly about RSS readers, one of the least understood and most useful tools of the internet, the article is also about how and why an RSS reader can be a good thing, and in the course of settting out a draft manifesto for a new kind of RSS reader, Alex discusses some of the things readers ought to be able to do, and some of the things you ought to be able to do with them.
I'm not going to attempt to summarise those points; if you've come this far, you owe it to yourself to go and read the article in full. Instead, here are the thoughts it provoked in me.
Last night, we came home to a burst water main and the street awash. This morning, the street below was dry and so were the taps in the house. Luckily, there was enough old water in the kettle for a cup of tea each (though not the customary two) or else we'd probably be lying there still, parched. Taking the dog out, therefore, I loaded my backpack with an empty 5-litre demijohn and set off.
We spent a wonderful weekend at Ravello, on the Amalfi coast, gorgeous despite rain on and off all day Saturday. Among the delights, one of the best menu manglings ever.
