This is a down and dirty first attempt at what an interactive map of the EU organization might look like. The idea is the result of a short discussion with Migeru.

Debrett's guide to online etiquette

It's a dilemma faced by millions of users of social networking sites: how do you fend off unwanted attention from a former lover?
Other devotees of sites such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace are just as confused about how to decline an online invitation to a party without causing offence.
Now Debrett's, the arbiter of all things good and proper, has come to the rescue with a guide on how to behave in these confusing, and sometimes awkward, new social situations.

Not that this would pertain to any ETers, naturally...

This is a subjective precis of an article in .net magazine issue 176. The article talked to a lot of top web copywriters to distill their wisdom. The online version requires a subscription to read back issues.

Helsingin Sanomat: Finland's election financiers

Further to my two diaries on the campaign donation scandal (the scandal mainly being that the recipients denied or obscured the origin of donations) here and here, Hesari lays out a lot of interesting background on 3 'colourful' businessmen that have so far not been connected to the scandal publicly.

In Finland there is an honorary non-hereditary title of `Vuorineuvos', bestowed by the President, that is recommended by a special committee, and is awarded to senior respected industrialists. The origins of the title are in mining (vuori can be hill or mine), but it is almost impossible to translate into English except by the name of the person, followed by `senior industrialist'. The Swedish term bergsråd or the German Bergrat are equivalent.

Malls are big business in Finland, as elsewhere. Most have been developed by Finnish construction companies and then sold to real estate investors or operators. The profits are now seeping into Finnish politics.

An entertaining scandal awaits below the fold. At the end of the diary, there is more business information and less comedy, for those who want to mall over more serious matters.

diary requested by DoDo...

Ecolean represents an evolutionary step in food and drink packaging. It has excellent relative environmental properties. It uses 40% chalk (a virtually unlimited resource) and beats competitor packaging in very low footprint manufacture (energy, waste, water, greenhouse gas). It comes from the people that gave you the Tetrapak gabletop carton (and therein lies a caveat - to be revealed below)

 

The Finnish foreign minister Ilkka `Ike' Kanerva (National Coalition party) is in deep excrement. He is but one of a large number of examples of politicians and leaders both historical and current who believe that their private behaviour is of no concern to those whom they claim to represent - i.e. us.

I'll get into the gory details down the page, but in brief our foreign minister appears to be obsessed by female on-the-make `models' with large bosoms and trash-glam make-up, who inhabit the wannabe celebrity F-list. The obsession appears to be limited to reciprocated bombardment by SMS. However this bombardment appears to take place on government mobile phones during government time. One can only hope that the government mobile service package is one of those `1000 text messages a month for free' deals. And since the target of Ike's obsession has a declared annual income over several years of only a few hundred euros, one hopes she has a cheap mobile deal also. It would help her to keep on buying the expensive shoes and clothes  and holidays abroad that she admits are the mainstay of her life in abject poverty.

I spent yesterday with an IT visionary pal who was requested by a major European government to find a way to make state budgeting more transparent. The government regularly publishes hundreds of pdfs from the Excel originals. As anyone knows who has transferred spreadsheets to Word or pdf, they just sit there. There's not much you can do to them except read them. What the government wanted was a) a state budget that could be easily translated into various worldwide accounting systems. B) a set of state budget modules and summaries that could easily be tested by other interested parties. c) an Open Source system. D) Automated processing of financial information to cut the laborious and costly processes of manual re-entry and comparison.

 

The mark of the modern world is the imagination of its profiteers and the counter-assertiveness of the oppressed. Exploitation and the refusal to accept exploitation as either inevitable or just constitute the continuing antinomy of the modern era, joined together in a dialectic, which has far from reached its climax in the twentieth century.

Diary rescue by Migeru

Seven Samurai v The Magnificent Seven

Seven Samurai

Seven Samurai (Shichinin no samurai) is a 1954 Japanese film co-written, edited and directed by Akira Kurosawa. The film takes place in Warring States Period Japan (around 1587/1588). It follows the story of a village of farmers that hire seven masterless samurai (ronin) to combat bandits who will return after the harvest to steal their crops.

Seven Samurai is frequently described as one of the greatest and most influential films ever made, and is one of a select few Japanese films to become widely known in the West for an extended period of time. It is the subject of both popular and critical acclaim; it was voted onto Sight & Sound's list of the ten greatest films of all time in 1982 and 1992, and remains on the director's top ten films in the 2002 poll.

Jérôme asks us where all the diaries and comments are lately...

Try this for inspiration.

I was reading about the the crash of the 27 billion dollar fund Carlyle Capital. I couldn't remember who was involved with the infamous Carlyle Group - but did remember Bushes snr and jnr, Frank Carlucci and John Major. But looking through the list below, a name jumped out of some interest to ET: Oliver Sarkozy, half-brother of the French Prezzie.

ET is a fairly broad church, representing many different progressive interests. Economy, energy, arts, photography, bridges etc - they are not discrete subjects. They are all connected together because they all involve human endeavours, and, ultimately, the drivers for those endeavours. The main driver, beyond simple survival, is Quality of Life.

This question came up in another diary and Migu asked me to post it as a new diary - below the fold....

As you all know, I don't make a great distinction between biochemical metaprogramming of brain functions from either outside or inside the body. Puberty is the biggest personality-changing trip that many people ever experience. And it is genetically programmed. It's an inside job.

I hope to have a bit more time during the Spring to tackle some of the possibilities that ET has for development. So this is the first of a series of diaries, in which my amateur qualifications will be quickly revealed. But I wish to get you all thinking about organizations of the future.

Future diaries will include Self-Organizing Systems, P2P networks, Developments in Collaborative Software (or Groupware) and Open Source. I'll add more when I see how the debate evolves. Maybe this will get TBG to post his Copyright diary <hint hint>

I start off with problem solving.

In Greek mythology, Mentor was the son of Alcumus and, in his old age, a friend of Odysseus. When Odysseus left for the Trojan War he placed Mentor in charge of his son, Telemachus, and of his palace. When Athena visited Telemachus she took the disguise of Mentor to hide herself from the suitors of Telemachus' mother Penelope.

<..>

This is the source of the modern use of the word mentor: a trusted friend, counselor or teacher, usually a more experienced person. Some professions have "mentoring programs" in which newcomers are paired with more experienced people in order to obtain good examples and advice as they advance, and schools sometimes have mentoring programs for new students or students who are having difficulties.

I just heard the sad news this morning of the death of my friend and colleague from documentary days. I first heard that Paul was seriously ill on January 6th. This was 4 days after I posted here the picture above, taken at the most northerly café in the world at Point Barrow, Alaska. Paul is on the left, I'm on the right. My then camera assistant Chris took the picture, and all others in this diary.

This will be a meander through the oxbows of that lazy river, reality. It is not an argument, but a series of possible connections.

It began as I was in the process of formulating a reply to DoDo a few days ago:

For each sensate being, their perception of 'reality' (both external and internal) is an evolving complexity of patterns that begins from pure noise with increased signal coming from each accumulated experience of stimulii. Thus everything is a synesthetic 'picture' whether from smell, taste touch, sight, hearing, EM detection and possibly a few more of which we are not yet aware. And in any combination.

But the constructed reality will depend on two things: the complexity and 'tools'. Complexity is a tricky question. Does the sea anenome with only 8 neurons and no nodes have a reality? At what level of complexity can signal emerge from noise?

The 'tools' of sensateness come in many different types: the acuity of eagle vision, the echo location-finding of bats, the amazing pheromone detection of some moths in an almost homeopathic dilution in air, and so on. These 'reality' constructs are as real as any other - to sensateness.

And so too are those realities constructed from incomplete information due to physiological anamolies of individuals within a species. Thus colour-blind people are unable to detect a full frequency spectrum of photons, but still construct a workable reality.

Thanks to everyone for brightening my days, even if I do not always agree with you. I wish you all, friend and foe alike, a wonderful holiday, thank for you being you not me, thanks for all your advice and sharing, and I look forward to even more vigorous discussions in the future.

Please feel free to use this thread to send any greetings!