Category: Social Commentary

I am reading two books at the moment: The Long Tail and 50 Great E-businesses and the minds behind them. The Long Tail is by Chris Anderson and was written in 2004. Call me a late adopter. I thought I understood the long tail, but reading the book introduces the idea of the democratization of… Continue reading Antipodean Summer Reading => Lulu.com

I am building a house in Northern New South Wales near the Queensland border in a mountainous area known as the Granite Belt. It is a wonderful area of Australia. As the local towns go it is in the middle of nowhere. I am building the house on the Maryland river adjacent to a gorge.… Continue reading I finally figured out what Next G was good for

Maybe this is one of the new Web 3.0 services. Twitter is about what you are doing. You voluntary allow yourself to be tracked. Here is my Twitter link: http://twitter.com/gregrluck. Or to keep things really simple, you can see my twitter “badge” which shows what I am doing is in the left sidebar on this… Continue reading Twitter

I have been in San Francico for a few days now. Coming to the US around once a year I always look for things that are new. As William Gibson said “The future is here now. It’s just not evenly distributed.” With that in mind, what is happening in California, and San Francisco in particularm,… Continue reading What’s new in America

I am in New Zealand for the Kiwi Foo Conference and to do the Tongerara track. The Flight Over As my Air New Zealand flight took off over the Pacific the stewardess announced that they would shortly be turning on the Entertainment System. She warned us not to press the buttons too fast or it… Continue reading Trip to New Zealand

Only about one in every six Americans who have ever been overweight or obese loses weight and maintains that loss, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers. While that number is larger than most weight-loss clinical trials report, the majority of Americans are still unable to lose weight and keep it off. Identifying those… Continue reading Back in the USA

Whenever a nasty IE bug comes out I always fantasize about putting that up on my blog. The problem with acting on that desire is that it is probably unlawful here in Australia and in many other jurisdictions. Plus you are potentially harming someone. So I don’t do it. Over the years I have gotten… Continue reading Explorer Destroyer

The last book I read on climate change was The Skeptical Environmentalist, by Bjorn Lomborg. He is a statistician and argued that the global warming we witnessed up to 2000 could have alternate explanations than greenhouse gases, such as increased sunspot activity. He was lambasted at the time and investigated by the Danish Committee on… Continue reading The Weather Makers

In 2005 I went to the US with my family on an exchange program. We lived in Chicago, San Jose, Salt Lake City, Provo and San Diego; and visited many more places. The experience was much different to what I expected, not withstanding some 6 previous short visits to the US. Most Australians think that… Continue reading Culture Shock: An Australian living in the US

Updated 14 October H5N1, also known as bird or avian flu, is a new influenza variant that first infected humans in HongKong in 1997 from chickens. Since then it has become endemic in wild birds in South East Asia. Based on everything we know about flu, H5N1 needs to make a few changes to spread… Continue reading Got Tamiflu? Probably not.