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Trailer for ‘Ovo’ at Cirque du Soleil
On Wednesday Alex and I celebrated our second anniversary by going to see “Ovo”, the insect-themed show which Cirque du Soleil are currently performing in their home town of Montréal. It was absolutely breathtaking.. Incredible feats of human skill, outlandish costumes and wonderful sets and lighting. The video barely does it justice – I recommend you see it if you can!
An example of how the Internet is shifting the balance of power in society
This video has just “gone viral” on Twitter and elsewhere. Everyone is forwarding the link around.
All you need to do these days in tell your story, and if it’s sticky enough, the world will spread it, far more effectively than any company’s PR department can.
As social networks online grow, consumer power grows. Companies that treat their customers badly need to wake up and listen, or this will happen to them too.
You can read the full story at Dave Carroll‘s site. Whatever he lost in the value of that guitar, he will soon gain back in getting his music to new audiences.
Oh, and the best bit? There’s another two songs still to come…!
An example of how society’s values are all screwed up
The doorbell rang, a delivery man was there. “Sign here”, he said, and handed me a cardboard box. “Thanks,” I said, noticing how light the box was. I knew I’d recently ordered two new hard drives and a SATA card (to connect them into our server). This was too light to be either.
You can see from the photos below what was inside – a box the size of two shoeboxes, stuffed with brown paper, containing 2 tiny red SATA cables (which could at a pinch fit in a normal paper envelope if you wanted to). I had ordered these from http://newegg.ca/ as part of the order for the SATA card. I was shocked that they would ship these individually and in such a wasteful way. A jiffy bag would have been more appropriate, and why on earth do the cables needed to be shipped separately.
This got me thinking, people talk about how we should have an economical model where we take into account the real environmental cost, not to mention the money cost. I can’t think of a better illustration than this.
Read More“Your Extraordinary Mind” by Mike Williams
Andrew Marr interviews John Major on the state of UK politics & UK debt
I caught this very interesting interview with former PM John Major talking about how the state of the UK public debt is so much worse than we realise, and about the problems that the next government – whichever party it might be – will face. Government will have to raise taxes or cut spending, he says. He even proposes that government itself should be downsized, and mentions a very interesting idea to ensure that politicians are more in touch with “real life”. They also discuss the problems of the loss of trust in Parliament as a whole following the expenses scandal.
I don’t support Labour or Conservative myself, but I can’t help but see parallels between the media criticism of John Major that led to his downfall and the similar media attacks on Gordon Brown of late. Gordon Brown strikes me as a shrewd economist who somewhat has his hands tied by public and media pressure. I hope he doesn’t suffer the same fate John Major did, and I would like to think the British public could let people like Major and Brown do their job on their own merits. Sadly, with the media being as anti-establishment and influential to public opinion as it is, I’m not sure that can happen.
This YouTube version is viewable anywhere but stops before the end. For UK viewers the full interview is on iPlayer [43:00 minutes in]