There’s a lovely site for generating your own “handwritten” Tory poster. Here’s mine.
The world is flat
If you read nothing else today, read the excerpt from Tom Friedman’s new book, The World is Flat: a brief history of the 21st century in the Guardian. Friedman had the brilliant idea of asking Dell to describe the process by which the laptop on which he wrote the book was made. It’s such a good idea that one hates him for having it. And it makes a very profound point in the simplest, most unobtrusive way.
Years ago, Friedman proposed “the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention”.
The Golden Arches Theory stipulated that when a country reached the level of economic development where it had a middle class big enough to support a network of McDonald’s, it became a McDonald’s country. And people in McDonald’s countries didn’t like to fight wars any more. They preferred to wait in line for burgers.
He’s now come out with a new, updated, theory: the Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention, the essence of which is that the advent and spread of just-in-time global supply chains in the flat world are an even greater restraint on geopolitical adventurism than the more general rising standard of living that McDonald’s symbolised.
The Dell Theory stipulates: no two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain, such as Dell’s, will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply chain, because people embedded in major global supply chains don’t want to fight old-time wars any more.
En passant: imagine the chaos there would be in the electronics and computer industries if China ever invaded Taiwan.
Later…Not everyone thinks of highly of Tom F, however. Here, for example, is a splendidly dyspeptic rant by Matt Taibbi which positively oozes bile from every participle. Sample:
On an ideological level, Friedman’s new book is the worst, most boring kind of middlebrow horseshit. If its literary peculiarities could somehow be removed from the equation, The World Is Flat would appear as no more than an unusually long pamphlet replete with the kind of plug-filled, free-trader leg-humping that passes for thought in this country. It is a tale of a man who walks 10 feet in front of his house armed with a late-model Blackberry and comes back home five minutes later to gush to his wife that hospitals now use the internet to outsource the reading of CAT scans. Man flies on planes, observes the wonders of capitalism, says we’re not in Kansas anymore. (He actually says we’re not in Kansas anymore.) That’s the whole plot right there. If the underlying message is all that interests you, read no further, because that’s all there is.
The Sun shines on the Vatican
Apropos Joe Ratzinger’s elevation, the Sun has the best headline of the day: “From Hitler Youth to… PAPA RATZI!”
Holy Smoke!
Cardinals elect elderly reactionary as Pope. Whatever next!
Flash deal
Adobe has paid $3.4 billion for Macromedia, purveyors of Flash animation to a grateful world.
Moore’s Law at 40
Forty years ago yesterday, Electronics magazine published Gordon Moore’s celebrated article predicting that the number of transistors that could be placed on a silicon chip would continue to double at regular intervals for the foreseeable future. Several years later, the physicist Carver Mead christened it “Moore’s Law”. I met Moore some years ago in Cambridge (where he has endowed a nice library for science and technology), and he was wearing the crappy digital watch which, he proudly declares, cost $15 million. (that’s what it cost Intel to get in and out of the digital watch business).
We met in the University Library and when we’d finished talking discovered that the limo the university had ordered to take him to his next appointment (lunch with the Duke of Edinburgh) had failed to arrive. So I offered him a lift in my chronically untidy car. He climbed in over the crisp packets and tennis rackets and all the other detritus deposited by the kids and nattered cheerfully all the way to Clarkson Road.
When I got home, I told Sue (who was temperamentally an extremely tidy and organised person, and regarded my car as an environmental hazard) about what had happened. She looked at me incredulously. “You did what? You took Gordon Moore in that vehicle!” “Yep”. She went off muttering in disapproval, looked up Moore’s Intel shareholding and calculated that, on that day, he was worth just over $7 billion!
Environmental Heresies
Stewart Brand has written an essay on what he calls “Environmental Heresies” which has ruffled a lot of feathers. Here’s the gist:
Over the next ten years, I predict, the mainstream of the environmental movement will reverse its opinion and activism in four major areas: population growth, urbanization, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power.
Evening in Cambridge
The Mill Pond and the Granta pub at dusk.
Running crazy
My friends Sean French and Nicci Gerrard are running in today’s London marathon. I get tired just thinking about it. Nicci is one of the wonders of the world. She manages to combine being a terrific mother, a generous host, a great journalist, a best-selling novelist (in collaboration with Sean) and an inspired cook. Two years ago, she broke her back in a riding accident. Now she’s racing round London. Ye Gods!
Update: They both finished in just under four hours (3:58:50)!
The Rover fiasco
From Frank Kane’s admirably robust commentary on the disaster.
The number of politicians hand-wringing their way through Longbridge on Friday – including the Prime Minister – almost made you think MG Rover’s collapse was some great natural disaster that had engulfed Birmingham.
But there is nothing ‘natural’ about the Longbridge scandal; it is no act of God. It is an entirely man-made catastrophe, which can be blamed on a relatively small number of individuals. They can and should be made to pay.
He also points out that Patricia Hewitt, the Cabinet Minister ultimately responsible, has to explain
why she wasted another £6.5m of taxpayers’ money last week – apparently acting on orders from the Prime Minister – when the Chinese had told her in writing more than two weeks ago they were not interested in Rover. As one adviser says, ‘Which part of “no” did she not understand?’