GDay World 361 – Livewire Launch
Posted on 19. Feb, 2009 by Cameron in Podcast
Today my guests are Omar Kalifa, Managing Director, and Cinnamon Pollard, Partnership and Marketing Manager, of a new social networking site that is bring officially launched today called LIVEWIRE. According to their site:
Livewire is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Starlight Children’s Foundation and is supported by funding from the Australian Government under the Clever Networks Program and in-kind contributions from Starlight and Livewire partners.
Together we are working towards keeping children & young people living with illness or disability connected
It’s estimated there are over 400,000 children and young people aged 10-21 years old coping with the impact of living with a serious illness, a chronic condition or a disability in Australia.
While I think a social networking community for young people with serious illnesses is a good thing, I am concerned that this site has cost $14.7 million to set up, with half of that money coming from the Federal Government. I asked Omar and Cinnamon where the money went.
PLEASE SUPPORT THE TPN PLEDGE!
Anaxagoras Day
Posted on 18. Feb, 2009 by Cameron in anaxagoras day, Atheism, philosophy
I hereby declare December 25th to henceforth be celebrated as “Anaxagoras Day”.
Anaxagoras is the first recorded atheist; has been described as the first scientist; and was the first philosopher to take up at his abode at Athens. He was the father of the idea of atoms and the teacher of Pericles. Around 450BCE he wrote his treatise “On Nature” which declared (among other things but we don’t know much of it, as it’s been lost to history) that the sun was a red-hot stone (an idea borrowed from the ideas of Anaximenes) and that the moon was made of earth and derives it’s light from the sun. He was accused of being an atheist, sentenced to death, but seems to have escaped (probably with the help of Pericles) and been exiled from Athens.
As we atheists need something to celebrate on December 25th, I’m proposing that we remember the bravery, insight and diligence of the first recorded atheist in history by celebrating ANAXAGORAS DAY.
This year on December 25th I will be sending out Anaxagoras cards to friends and family, decorating my home with pictures remembering the story of Anaxagoras and composing hymns to the life of Anaxagoras. I hope you will join me.
If you want to join us in celebrating the life of Anaxagoras, just join the Facebook group. I just see it as a day to celebrate the fact that we CAN be atheists without fear of persecution. It’s a great day to think up a way to spread a little bit of rational thinking.
Perfect Timing and Inches
Posted on 06. Feb, 2009 by Cameron in philosophy
I’ve been thinking tonight…. that it’s all about INCHES.
Okay… so I stole that line off of Al Pacino and Oliver Stone, but it’s been in my head tonight, so I’m claiming it.
Life is a lot about timing.
When you meet someone special, if it’s a month too soon, or a month too late, it doesn’t work out.
If you start a business, and you’re a year too soon or a year too late, it can make all the difference.
I don’t know how you know when the timing is right. Maybe people smarter than me know. Or maybe we don’t ever know. Maybe it’s just chance, or the holographic universe frakking with us. Maybe things are either meant to be or not. Maybe it’s all a cosmic joke.
All I know is that timing is a magic ingredient that either makes it work… or not.
I’ve been very lucky in my life. I’ve had good and bad timing with a few things. I started working at an ISP in 1996. That was good timing. I started working at Microsoft in 1998. That was bad timing – the share price that had climbed for 12 years climbed for another two years – then plummeted. I started podcasting in Nov 2004 – that was good timing, too. Maybe sooner than the market was ready for it, but early enough to get an opportunity to study the market from the outset and build a bit of a brand in an industry from the ground floor.
“In any fight, it’s the guy who’s willing to die who’s going to win that inch.”
In my personal life, too, I’ve had good and bad timing. I’ve met people exactly when I needed to and I’ve met people when it was too soon or too late, either in my life or theirs. You can’t predict that. And you can’t do much about it when it happens. It’s just timing.
In retrospect though, perhaps when I thought the timing was bad, it was actually right. The person/business/job that I thought would have been perfect for me, actually wouldn’t have been.
I know people will say “you make your own luck” but that’s VERY unscientific. It might sell self-help seminars, but it doesn’t stand up to examination. There is no free will. There is only physics. Or the hologram making it LOOK like there is physics. Either way, we ain’t in control.
Perhaps it’s like poker. Sometimes you get the right cards in the right hand and if you know what to do with them, it works out profitably. But if you get the right cards in the wrong hand… well, you can lose your wallet.
I don’t know. Too deep for this time of night. I just thought I had to get it out there. Timing. Inches.
The Universe is a Giant Hologram?
Posted on 05. Feb, 2009 by Cameron in General
Read this article from New Scientist (quickly, before they hide it behind their firewall) and it will blow your frakking minds.
Craig Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab’s Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: “If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram.”