Scoble on Jonathan, and laid-off bloggers

Legendary Microsoft blogger Scoble (soon to be ex-MS) recently visited Jonathan Schwartz at Sun. His account of their conversation is well worth reading. I found the following comment about the impending layoff particularly interesting:

For one, Sun is going to encourage all the laid off workers to continue to blog — on Sun’s dime. Now, I can imagine the kind of vitriol and crud that’ll get posted by workers who’ve just lost their jobs. That takes real corporate bravery and my hat is off to him. One good thing about this? It’ll make it possible for new employers to get in touch with laid off workers. There’s a lot of companies that are hungry for workers right now.

So does this apply to recently-laid-off Sun bloggers: will their blogs.sun.com accounts will be unfrozen? Can I get geoffarnold.com added back to b.s.c/planet.do? (At least until I land a new gig.)
And I guess they’ll have to change the b.s.c title, which currently reads:
This space is accessible to any Sun employee to write about anything.

Random 10

It’s Sunday morning, and the British Grand Prix finished a little while ago. However here in the USA it’s being televised tape-delayed on one of the major networks at 1pm EDT, so I’m trying to avoid all sources of news. Let’s see what iTunes has for us:

  • “Alone Again With The Dawn Coming Up” by the KLF (from Chill Out) personal favourite
  • “Astrid + Rope And Glory” by the Legendary Pink Dots (from The Tower)
  • “Back Side Of The Moon” by the Orb (from Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld) personal favourite
  • “Falling Farther In” by October Project (from Falling Farther In) personal favourite
  • “Five A.M. in the Pinewoods”, a poem by Mary Oliver (from At Blackwater Pond)
  • “Genie On A Table Top” by Al Stewart (from Famous Last Words)
  • “Good Times Bad Times” by Led Zeppelin (from Led Zeppelin Remasters)
  • “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” by Johnny Cash (from American IV: The Man Comes Around)
  • “In My Dreams” by Crosby, Stills & Nash (from The Greatest Hits)
  • “Overture” by The Who (from Live At Leeds – Deluxe Edition)

I just noticed that Susie’s sunday morning shuffle includes “When Fall Comes to New England” by Cheryl Wheeler. I haven’t got around to ripping any of our Cheryl Wheeler collection – what an omission!

The value of reading

There’s a mind-blowing piece over at present simple: the kind of thing that makes you wonder what planet you’re on. The author (a lecturer language instructor) was talking to a group of students about reading:

I asked the other three students (there were only four) how much reading they did. All three of them said that they didn’t read books at all. Ever. They didn’t seem ashamed to admit this, even though they are all university students in their third or fourth years. They don’t even read textbooks. I asked. They said they didn’t need to, to pass their courses, and since they found reading hard work and didn’t enjoy it, what was the point?
Then one of them looked thoughtful. “Do you think reading is good for anything?” he asked. “Do you think people should read?”
He really wanted to know.
How do you answer questions like that?

I don’t know. How do you? (My emphasis, in case it matters.)

Read PZ's talk at the KosFest

Money quote:

Imagine being an electrical engineer and hearing that a third of the country doesn’t believe all that stuff about electricity and radio waves, but thinks there actually are little people moving about inside their televisions. That’s how biologists feel about the state of knowledge about biology here; we’ve got a lot of people with medieval attitudes about the subject.

Back to the rain (with a bonus)

I’ve just arrived back in the (very wet) Boston area after a remarkably tedious trip from Seattle. The SEA-DEN flight was OK, but for some reason air traffic control imposed a draconian flow control policy into Boston, and the DEN-BOS flight was a couple of hours late. Boring.
The bonus was visual. After taking off from SEA, our 757 had to climb through a fairly thick layer of dense cloud. When we emerged, the top of Mount Ranier was right in front of me. Since I had my camera handy….
Mt.Ranier

Seattle views (with buses)

I’ve got an hour to kill at the Red Carpet Club at SeaTac airport before I fly back to Boston, so I decided to upload a few photos that I took yesterday. I was staying at the Hotel Max; as you can see, it’s very elegant (original art everywhere), but I’m not sure I’d recommend it. The bathrooms are tiny, my shower only had two water temperature settings (painfully hot, and scalding), and they charge extra for WiFi. (This is particularly galling in a city that has more free hotspots than you can count.)
max hotel
Despite the fact that I’ve visited Seattle many times before, I’d never been up the Space Needle. I decided to rectify this, and took the opportunity to visit Paul Allen’s SciFi Museum (tiny, but promising) and Experience Music Project. EMP was pretty good: lots of stuff about musicians from the Pacific Northwest, from Heart to Nirvana to Pearl Jam. And, of course, Jimi Hendrix. It’s a veritable shrine to the greatest guitarist of all time. (Yes, I’m a believer. I’m not sure why they downplayed his masterpiece “Electric Ladyland”, but never mind.)
The shots from the Space Needle are a bit subdued: while Tuesday and Wedenesday were sunny, Thursday was overcast and showery. I tried to get a good shot of St. Mark’s Cathedral for Chris, but at maximum zoom all my efforts look a bit hazy.
St.Mark's
And finally there are some shots of various Seattle buses for Paul.
hybrid articulated bus
In the evening, I took the ferry over to Bainbridge Island to have dinner with old friends. I’ll add those photos later. [Done]
Seattle ferry

Celebrating 30 years of "The Selfish Gene"

The NYT has just published a short review of Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think. I’ve just finished reading it myself, and was planning to blog an enthusiastic review of this collection of essays, edited by Alan Grafen and Matt Ridley. The NYT has now saved me the trouble. Highly recommended.

Beautiful weather

I’m blogging this from a Starbucks in Seattle (on Stewart between 6th and 7th). The weather is just about perfect. And every time I look up, there’s another bendi-bus going by….
bendi-bus