Hugo Schotman

Pangea day: I'll be watching

If you're asking "what is important right now?"...

There is a good answer in this talk by Philippe Starck:

I hope I've given enough of a tease to make you watch.
Don't worry, as soon as you have seen 2 minutes you'll want to see it all.

Philippe's TEDTalk with transcript

TEDGlobal pictures: handing out Lapdesks

Before the kick-off of the TEDGlobal conference in Arusha, Tanzania I had the opportunity to participate in a tour with the Lapdesk company.
See the pictures here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hugo_schotman/tags/lapdesk/

Other pictures from TEDGlobal:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/tedglobal07/

Blink; you're in an avalanche!

Malcolm Gladwell was in Zürich last week, talking about his book Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking at a Swiss independent research institute (GDI).

With my mind wandering al over the place as usual, I drew a comparison between his examples of (often critical) decision making and the methods being used to asses the risk of avalanches. The goal there is to decide: do I go on this tour or not? If yes, which route should I ski/ Board to keep the residual risk to an acceptable level?

Very important is the balance between the scientific theory of determining the risk and the human factors influencing both the risk itself and the decision making process! This is where Malcolm's theory becomes relevant: to what extent does our subconscious interfere with the outcome of our theoretical analysis? Or, can it be the other way around? (You 'feel' it's not safe but the reduction method says the risk is acceptable.)

It seems that this is actually taken into account in the standard risk reduction method developed by Werner Munter in Europe. His work is the standard for determining avalanche risk and he has developed the '3x3 risk reduction method' that is being used all over the world.

Notes from a Backcountry Avalanche Workshop on clubthread.com:
"Munter's Reduction method is based on the idea that there are two modes of thinking: Scientific or "left" brained; rational, conscious thought, slow, differentiating, based on scientific details and Operational or "right brained"; Quick, responsive, intuitive, gut-feeling, based on past experiences and able to recognise patterns; and the acceptance that we will need to use both modalities in our decision making processes in order to make better decisions.

Studies have shown; in order to make better decisions, the maximum of variables we can deal with is only 3-5, these variables should have no more than 3-5 different values. More information than this quickly leads to overload and does not increase the quality of the decision. It is better to have one basic approach, less details are better."

Malcolm gave an example of situations where decisions based on a limited set of variables significantly increased the success rate: Doctors distinguishing patients who were having heart attacks from patients who weren't using only 4 indicators.

The standard reference book for Avalanche theory by Werner Munter (in German) is: Drei mal drei (3x3) Lawinen. Entscheiden in kritischen Situationen.
A partial English translation can be found in Powderguide by Tobias Kurzeder and others.
The research data that the book is based on is kept at the Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research Davos (SLF).

Some quick reference sheets from the SLF:
- Caution - Avalanches!
- Avalanches. Danger!

BBC TEDGlobal coverage

The BBC has a collection of articles covering last week's TEDGlobal 2005 conference. There is no specific starting page but this article about free media funding for example has a sidebar on the right with links to other TEDGlobal articles.

More PIX from TEDglobal 2005

Even more pictures from TEDGlobal 2005.
Docu-Blog/Steve's POV: PIX from TEDglobal 2005

It seems that there is more picture content than writing for TEDGlobal so far.
During the conference I think there was just too much to keep up with for someone who would want to blog it live.

Topics covered... well.. they ranged from multiple parallel universes to violence against women to bad car seats to achieving immortality to experimental art to solving poverty to global warming to open source everything. That would be about 1 % of it...

TEDGlobal - 7/7 Wikipedia illustration

At the TEDGlobal conference, Chris Anderson introduced Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales by editing Jimmy's Wikipedia entry live on stage. The entry was corrected within minutes by volunteer editors.

Here is a visual presentation of the Wikipedia editing process: Timelapse Animation of Wikipedia Entry for 7/7 London Bombings

TED Global 2005

TED Global 2005 was really great on many levels! A treat for the mind, meeting great people, interesting subjects, good laughs, a diet (Gala dinner) and much more.

The interesting discussions took place off stage. That is something I thought could have been started on stage with the speakers. The conference could still have been as on-schedule as it was if the host would have facilitated it properly.

Some people have blogged about the conference:
- Black Looks: TED Global
- The Post Money Value: TEDGLOBAL vs. well, everything else
- Seth's Blog: Stuck (with a bump on the head)
- "Hello_World": TED Global -180 seconds of fame
But some expect more:
Blackbeltjones/Work: Thread-bare TED

I hope more posts trickle in this week.

A lot of photo's are available from the Tedsters and on the official site.
My contribution? An explanation of a little yellow thingy.

More on the EU Constitution: "[Comment] Constitution fails fundamental tests"

[Comment] Constitution fails fundamental tests: "...First prize for complexity... ...The people are absent..."

(Via EUobserver.com - Headline News.)

RSS Feeds about European constitution

My Father is heavily opposed to the current version of the European constitution that Europeans are voting on.
I still have to make up my mind about it before the Dutch referendum on June 1st. I have the feeling that it is a monster that is being pushed through prematurely.

Some things to figure out:
- What are the real consequences when the constitution is not accepted at this time?
- Will it go back to the drawing board and when would we have a better version?
- What are the real consequences if it is accepted?
- Can it be changed after it has been accepted and how difficult would that be?
- Is it really that bad?

Some RSS feeds that I found in a quick search:
http://www.euobserver.com/?rss=1&sid=9
Dutch feed, but English text: http://www.grondweteuropa.nl/9326000/1/j9vvgjnazrhmix9/vgz7bm14utr8?nctx=vgjndazgatu4
Google news: http://news.google.com/news?ie=utf8&oe=utf8&q=european+constitution&hl=en

QOTD about prejudices of your social environment

Albert Einstein: "Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions."

(Via Quotes of the Day.)

I had to look up equanimity.

This helps you put into perspective and not take too seriously a lot of crap you read and hear.

The Nido car: smarter

Congratulations to some friends of mine. (No blog.)
They participated in the design of the safety concept of Pininfarina's Nido, a new small and safe car that was just presented at the 2004 Paris Motor Show.


(What's that on the seat?!)
Article in Car Design News.