Odds & Ends

The Next Great Distraction: We seem to be lurching from one short-term crisis (most of them manufactured, like the US social security ‘crisis’), and blithely ignoring the longer-term threats that continually sit just outside the edge of our attention. While Bush is likely to keep his countrymen distracted for at least four years by stealing their social security and planning his next imperial adventure in Iran, the rest of the world is likely to be distracted by another crisis that is just waiting to happen — a global pandemic caused by new strains of influenza jumping the species barrier. We’ve brought all these crises on ourselves — overpopulation, overcrowding, and reducing the diversity of life on Earth to the point all the nodes of the ecosystem are rendered horrifically fragile. But the greatest danger us that these short-term crises are tangible and demanding of immediate attention, distracting us from making even an iota of progress on the critical but not yet urgent issues like global warming.

Voyeur’s Delight: Opentopia is an open source directory of some weird and wonderful online stuff. Its newest feature is online webcams where you can see what’s happening in various public places all over the world. First one to spot a terrorist wins a prize. Thanks to The Pre-Surfer for the link.

How to Be a Consultant: Also courtesy of Presurfer, this site humourously and candidly tells you what you should do, and not do, to succeed in the wacky world of consulting. Hilarious and very true advice.

What First Amendment?: A recent exhaustive survey suggests most American schools don’t teach students what the First Amendment is, or why it’s important. Not surprisingly, therefore, it also finds most students don’t know, or care.

Dave Gets Another Blog Award Nomination: How to Save the World has received a lot of award nominations, but its lack of focus generally means that it just doesn’t ‘fit’ in any of the categories well enough to compete with single-subject blogs. For example, recently I was nominated as ‘Best Single-Subject Blog’, prompting one voter to ask me “which of the 40 subjects you write about is this referring to?” I’ve also been nominated recently as Best Canadian Blog, which is remarkable since I almost never write about Canada. Needless to say, I’m still award-less. Now I’ve been nominated for Best Business Blog, and while that’s not all I write about, at least I have a whole category on the subject. Since some of the other nominees are promoting their nomination to stir up votes, I thought I’d at least make an attempt to try to win one award. If you think my blog warrants consideration as Best Business Blog, please take a look at the nominees and consider voting for me here.