BaldwinP

72 posts
In a world full of people, only some want to fly. Isn't that crazy? Baldwin Periphetes wants to fly, and also to juggle, tell jokes, and rule the world. He is at least halfway to his goal.

19 August, Day of Coups

With thousands of years of recorded human history, invariably there are going to be coincidences. Yesterday, August 18, and tomorrow, August 20, are each anniversaries of the deaths of 3 Catholic Popes (none today, though). 19 August holds a rather interesting status, though. It has more than its fair share of coups. And not just coups on little islands. Big, history-changing coups. Perhaps because it comes at the end of the northern summer it is a likely end for military campaigns? Perhaps the months of summer heat or drought finally drive people to the point of trying to kill their king, prime minister or generalissimo? Or maybe it is just a coincidence. We report. You decide.

Here’s just some of the list. Continue reading →

Hewlett Packard Abandons WebOS Only Thirteen Months After Buying Palm for $1.2b

Products and strategies fail sometimes, but rarely so quickly.  Tech giant Hewlett Packard has, withing 6 weeks of launching the TouchPad tablet, not only ceased sale of the tablet but announced it is withdrawing from the tablet game completely and that it is ceasing to develop webOS tablets and phones – the very things which were meant to have been the reason it acquired Palm Inc for $1.2b just over a year ago.  That’s a very expensive mistake. Continue reading →

QOTD: Who is Your Celebrity Soundalike?

One of the weird things about the Internet is that we talk so much but hear so little.  The Internet has adopted text, photos, video, but never really audio.  And audio matters.  Without it, we miss the accent, emphasis and intonation through which so much information is passed when talking. There’s no missing sarcasm in person, but often there’s no spotting sarcasm on the Internet.

In the interests of enhancing communication among Crasstalkers, especially for the estimated 20% of the population said to be auditory learners, the question of the day is this:  What celebrity do you most sound like? Continue reading →

What Can We Learn From Twitter’s 2011 Trending Topics?

 A little while ago, Twitter published their top trending topics for the first half of 2011. For all that has been said about Twitter promoting triviality, thoughtlessness, Biebermania and every other sign of the apocalypse, the trending topics reveal a bit of hope for the Twitter generation after all – and also emphasise Twitter’s international spread.

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The 10 Best (or Worst?) Manic Pixie Dream Girls of All Time

For those not familiar with the term, “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” is a term coined by film reviewer Nathan Rabin in 2007 for a type of character we all know well.

She is generally petite, attractive, high on life, playful, prone to quirky antics and shenanigans, maybe minor crime that doesn’t hurt no-one, and will inevitably be obsessed with teaching a more straight-laced, brooding male character to “loosen up a little”, “be free”, “be happy” or similar.  They probably “meet cute” early in the work, too.
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A Visit to Kanazawa, Japan

Speak of a tourist visit to Japan, and inevitably people will ask about places like Tokyo (for mine, the most amazing city in the world), Kyoto (gorgeous, worth as much time as you can afford to spend there) or Hiroshima (haven’t been, but there’s definitely more to it than its nuclear scars).  Perhaps Kobe (great beef, and the earthquake museum is a must-see), Osaka (boringly industrial), Sapporo (cold) or Nara (doe, a deer, LOTS of deer).  But some of the best places to visit in Japan are a little away from the usual sights.  One such is Kanazawa, the highlight of my own time in Japan.

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