via nytimes.com
Some great pictures from Vincent Laforet, all in the field of sports, and specially a great serie in Hawaii, Oahu for the Rip Curl Pro Pipeline Masters in 2006. Just impressive.
© Vincent Laforet
via vpod.tv
The real world and why it matters.
During the last leweb3 conference in Paris (December 2006, I know I am…late ;-), I had the chance to be “confronted” with the reality of Hans Rosling (his blog, wikipedia).
Confronted, because this very smart guy is definitely bringing a new and fresh view on a lot of stereotypes we have concerning the different countries in the world… Really.
Chance, because yes, it was a great chance to see Hans and to ask yourself if the way you are thinking is the right one or not.
Very very refreshing. Have a look, it is also very entertaining and funny. Great what Hans can do with statistics :-)
Some inputs I have noted down during the presentation:
- we meet wrong preconceived ideas concerning the situation in the world, our common taxonomy: western world – long life in small family vs. third world – short life in large family
- in 1962, 2/3 of the countries, representing 3 billion people, were in the situation of “short life in large family”
- in 2004, about all the countries have joined the “long life in small family”!
- about 2 children per woman all other the world
- 2050-2060: 9-10 billion people, stabilized
- the bedrooms of the world have not globalized, but modernized!
- we have to think in terms of modernization, and not globalization
- length of life is not medical doctors, it is the bathroom and the kitchen
- if you have food in the kitchen and soap in the bathroom, the life expectency is going from 40 to 60
- medicine will bring the years above 60
- basic life conditions have dramtically improved all over the world in the last 40 years
- poverty line is at 1$/day, that means when you have to invest 80% of your income to buy the food (we are talking about purchasing dollar, i.e. what you can locally buy with the dollars)
- the 20% richest take 74% of the money, the 20% poorest take 2% of the money, 60% of the current population take 24%. this money is investing in the kitchen and the bathroom
- success is when a population can reach the 3$/day level: there, families have secured school for the kids and medical services for four family
- we have to develop a fact-based world view fron now on
- the countries of the world are going through their own modernization projects, each at its own pace
- rural development has stopped now, there are about 3 billion people living in cities and 3 billion people living in rural areas, the 2 next generations will live in cities
- http://www.gapminder.org!!!
- there is not real factual link between democratization and modernization
- cheap electricity first in poor countries!
- we are loosing 10 million kids per year because we cannot deliver enough drugs to the countries, 10 million kids per year
- Sweden should be a good part of the world vs. Sweden should be part of a good world!
via Stephen Walli
Stephen has published some inputs concerning 3 possible benefits of open sourcing, and 3 things that you *cannot* expect from such kind of process.
via CICLOPS
Again, an absolutely fantastic view of the Saturn rings from the Cassini-Huygens mission, with great shadows and light effects.
The rings of Saturn glow softly as sunlight from below wends its way through. Some of the Sun’s light bounces off the rings’ opposite side and can be seen illuminating Saturn’s night side southern hemisphere.
Such a view is only possible from the Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft.
This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 33 degrees above the ringplane. Shadows of the innermost rings are cast upon the planet at upper left. The edge of Saturn’s shadow cuts a straight line across the rings near upper right.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on March 30, 2007 at a distance of approximately 1.9 million kilometers (1.2 million miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 117 kilometers (73 miles) per pixel.
So, it is done and signed :-) About 5 months for 11 pages and an appendix of 191 pages.
The new foundations are now in place.
It is just…crazy that we could manage that.
I will need some days now to recover.
Laurent said a *lot* more here ;-)
Laurent has sent me (for a while…) this interesting presentation concerning the eBay infrastructure (Nov 2006).