Nina and I spent a few days in Amsterdam. These are my thoughts…

*The city is young, in the city center, which is quite vast, youth is served throughout, and only occasional was the sighting of a person over 40 years old.

* The city was and still is rich. Much like London when touring Amsterdam it is easy to see both the stamp of new wealth, in gleaming buildings and fashionable cafes but also the epic scale of colonial power as evidenced by frequent statuary in strange places and colossal city squares bordered by monolithic buildings

* The Red Light District: I found it to be surprisingly clean and presentable considering it is awash in sex and “coffee (read hash) bars”. Transactions were conducted openly and with surprisingly little fanfare, a stark contrast to the consumption of drugs and commercial sex in North America.

Conclusions: I like Amsterdam, it is vibrant (a bit too vibrant around the train station, where crossing the street is a risk of life and limb), very photogenic and a spectacularly easy place to get around in if you know English.

For a visual essay of Amsterdam, click here: http://www.cobalisk.com/content/category/39/1/Amsterdam-2010/

When you move long distances you invariably pass through time zones. Now, time zones are artificial, but the reasons for them are real enough. For example New York is not really 4 hours ahead of San Francisco, but, since it is possible for it to be good and dark in New York and still light in Frisco they can’t both be at the same time. Railroads, both in England and America drove the point home that time needed to be standardized and then divided. In England, not an especially large country, the issue was getting everyone on the same clock so people did not leave Birmingham at noon and arrive in Leeds at 11:45am.
In the US, due to its vast size the need for large zones spanning multiple hours was made apparent by rail travel. The systems work hence the division of the globe into 24 rather oddly shaped zones. So now Muenster, Germany is 8 hours ahead of Phoenix, Arizona. Which of course makes sense, when it is 6pm and dark in Muenster, it is 10am and the day is beginning in Phoenix. Such a large gap makes contact between the two cities rather cumbersome as I am quickly discovering. Nevertheless, no point in blaming time zones, they are just the messengers.

Only those small islands in the Pacific clustered around the International Date Line really have a gripe about Time zones themselves. The distance between Samoa and Fiji is about 600 miles, a short flight but the time difference is 23 hours due to the stretch of ocean between them being cut in half by the date line. In this case it is of course absurd to insist that Fiji and Samoa are really that far apart in time. The phenomenon is little more than a seam on the baseball of the world.

For further reading on the history of Time zones, the Wiki is quite good. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_zone

For a map of world time zones, please click here: Map of time zones

Wishing you and yours the very best this Holiday Season!
This is an exciting time, we recently created a new Facebook page and will be executing a continental relocation in mere weeks.
Also, some new flash techniques are in the works and I hope to display them in the X-Mas photos to come.

Merry Christmas!

I must give George W. Bush some credit, his use of the phrase “Ownership Society” was as prescient as it was accurate. While he meant it in a different manner than it will mean in the future it’s a great description of America. America is the land where it can be owned; a house, a TV, a car, land, mineral rights, even problems and conditions, or responsibility. Athletes and coaches often speak of “owning it” parents and teachers use the phrase “owning up to it”. Yes, in America, almost anything can be owned, often to exclusion. When the Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi bought Rockefeller Center in New York (where they have the public ice skating and the giant x-mas tree every year) it was a huge swipe at the national pride because it was no longer American Owned. Mind you, it stayed in New York its not like the Japanese moved it to Sapporo.

Here lies the crux, the breakthrough, the germ of thought from where the new perspective is born. From the way things were seen before to how they are viewed now. Take a moment to think about Rockefeller Center, does it matter who owns it? The building is still there, you can still visit it, they still put up a giant Christmas Tree every Holiday Season, still have the giant skating pond… In other words, the building is still being used as it always has and the invisible transfers of ownership over the years have changed little.

However, it would be silly not to acknowledge that there is the potential that any new owner could radically alter how something is used or viewed. Again to use Rockefeller Center, the Japanese could have closed the building to the public and use it store Japanese kimonos or shredded junk bonds. Perhaps this fear or alternation was at the root of the uproar, because owners can change that which they own because ownership means power…Right?

It is disheartening, and frustrating to see that mere minutes after current US President Barack Obama is given the Nobel Peace Prize, he is torn apart by virtually half of the US media, most Republicans and many pundits all of whom are singing from the same song..loosely titled…”He does not deserve it”.
The tragedy is that there is a pervasive blindness about peace and how it is accomplished. Signing agreements do not make peace happen, bullying aggressors at Martha’ Vineyard or Camp David does not ensure peace, if it did, Isreal and Palestine would have settled differences long ago.
Peace is a slow process but one that has so far always begun by flexibility and open lines of communication. Peace is achieved by establishing dialogue, communicating positions and being flexible about solutions, showing a willingness to actually communicate, not just broadcast agression.
In selecting Obama the Nobel committee countermanded most perceptions of peace and how peace is achieved today, something they have done before.
Perhaps, they are seeing deeper than the naysayers, perhaps not, I am not them so I cannot say. However, if one looks at ‘tone’ in international dialogue, foreign newspapers and even U.S. magazines, war does in fact seem to have receded. By scrapping the proposed missile shield that so angered Russia and China, having direct talks with Iran, lobbying for total nuclear disarmament and allowing Brazil to diffuse the crises in Honduras without conflict, Obama actually has achieved some measurable accomplishments for peace. However a quick daily read of headlines is the best testament to now being a more peaceable time. Most nations are now focusing on financial restructuring, international summits like the G20, the impacts of the Treaty of Lisbon vote in Ireland, recent elections and congratulating Rio on the 2016 Olympics. What has almost completely disappeared is international saber rattling.
Sometimes the absence of a thing is hard to see but once you do see it, you can’t miss it. The bully pulpit so favored by others has been put away by Obama and consequently, international tensions have gradually ebbed now for the better part of a year. Previously unimportant international meetings now take center stage and the biggest public contest was for the Olympics, surely this is a good indicator that perhaps the Nobel Committee was looking with different eyes.

I will avoid the tortured metaphors of life being a highway or train tracks or whatever. Simply put, the great advantage and Achilles’ heel of being human is the ability to work on different things, leading in different directions simultaneously. It’s great for service or information companies, you can answer the phone and review a spreadsheet at the same time, very efficient.
Modern measurements of efficiency were simply not possible in the old manufacturing economy when, for safety’s sake, or for speed, a person was required to perform a specific task over as quickly as possible or perhaps a set of tasks in sequence, very rapidly. These things take concentration, because people can only move very fast if they are intentionally trying to do so.
In information dependent companies employees do many different things, often simultaneously. We usually call this multi-tasking and do it in our personal lives all the time.
Of course, it can get out of hand, applying for new jobs while holding down another one can get very sticky if you have inconveniently scheduled interviews, driving while talking on the phone is universally denounced, justifiably. In the end, perhaps work has finally merged with our own private lives, we live the way we work and often work the way we live. I suppose in a way, it resembles farming which was a lifestyle more than a job. Is that good?

As the new year dawns there seems to be a common thread in TV, print and blogger media; a rejection, or at least rapid dismissal, of the year 2008. Of course such a reaction is understandable, 2008 was a pretty lousy year overall, though certainly it had some spectacular bright spots. Nevertheless, as 2008 limped to a close with its global recession, massive bailouts, terrible sales figures and a new war in the Middle East erupting, it certainly makes sense to wish good bye to all of that.

Some even argue it should be forgotten, 2008 might be the year to forget. But nothing could be further from the truth. We should not forget 2008, in fact we should make it a point to remember this malignant year because, after all, forgetting is what got us here.

When the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas expired in late December, home-made rockets began plunking into Israel, provoking the large response escaltiing into open warfare that we witness today and is now being called “intifada 3″ by Hamas. Clearly Hamas forgot the results of the first 2 intifadas…

The global financial crises was born of the global credit crises which itself was born of the American housing crises and the wildly out of sync debt leveraging that was taking place because American politicians and business leaders forgot that financial regulations actually have value. Repealing effective market regulation leads to over-exuberant market speculation <–Remember that.

Icelandic banks, by far the hardest hit in the global meltdown apparently forgot that carrying debt several times greater than the GDP of the entire country would render them insolvent and so, insolvent they became. I’m not advocating pointing fingers, only advocating that we not be so quick to forget the lessons of the past.

Memory is a valuable tool, just like the ability to think on your feet is a valuable tool, it won’t solve everything but it certainly can ease the pain of repetition which so often comes from forgetting.

She walked away from the convulsing man, trying not to see. For sight often carries that corollary, action. By ‘unseeing’ or pretending not to see this woman could discard the obligation, leaving the man to die. I am made of some other more humane material, I LOOKED, I saw the man was severely underdressed, jeans and a thin sweater. It was minus 15 degrees out! He had no jacket, or gloves, his hands were white. He was convulsing, face down on the pavement, spasming, jerking around. It was disturbing, no doubt about it, you can see why the lady looked away. But of course she walked away. This man would die if left unattended, I was convinced of this.

I went into the store and approached a security guard, someone who I knew was being paid not to look away. I took her outside to see what I had seen and she sprang to action. An ambulance was called, medical attention was provided.

I curse that woman who was such a coward as to walk away from a dying man on a sidewalk. Who was too weak to carry the small burden of sight.

Yesterday I was on the phone with my good friend Carlos. Carlos and his wife were sitting at a restaurant preparing to order when a truck pulled up outside, a man jumped out and started firing a handgun into area and the restaurant. I heard the pandemonium over the phone, the windows being blown-out and people hitting the deck, screams, tables and chairs falling over it sounded like an earthquake. I could hear Carlos yelling at other people to “get down, get down!” I could not understand these sounds coming through my phone. My mind struggling to make sense of this was picturing a tree had falling into the roof or a freak tornado was ripping through. It was not until the gunman peeled away with the gunman in it that Carlos, in an agitated state was able to tell me what had happened.

This inexplicable assault on a restaurant would not have happened if handguns were not so easy to get in the US. This was not a mob hit or some criminal vengeance on a high profile diner. Most likely it was gang initiation, someone young man having to “make his bones” in the local street gang. Ready access to hand guns and assault weapons makes this kind of initiation possible.

Now, in fairness, countries which have restrictions on handguns and assault weapons such as England do still have gangs and initiations. Typically the weapon of choice is a knife and so higher rates of knife violence occur in these countries. However knives, while deadly, pale in comparison to handguns or assault weapons so the fatality rates from these assaults are way lower than the US fatalities from handguns and assault weapons, mere fractions really. Additionally, these countries do not experience the paroxysms of grief that accompany the awful trend in the US of shooting up a place whether it be a college campus, a post office or a restaurant. In societies where handgun and assault weapons are restricted, crime is more localized and violence is not a means of attracting attention because the lack of heavy weapons make such options mere fantasy. Outlandish acts such as firing blindly into a crowded restaurant can only happen if guns are readily available.

Some argue that if more people had guns this would not happen. This argument is dishonest, more guns would mean more incidents involving a gun, its simple statistics. To verify this one need only look at the number of gun related violence which mirrors the rise or fall in the number of weapons in the U.S.

From the above graphic it is obvious that a significant drop in criminal gun play began just before 1995. What caused this? The Brady Bill, which when passed in 1994 made it harder to acquire firearms across the board (background checks and waiting periods, etc). Now, each side of the gun-control debate has good points but clearly the statistics tell the story, less guns - less gun related incidents. The other argument against ‘guns for everyone’ is the understanding that an over-armed citizenry merely re-creates the wild west era. If my friend was armed he would then have the option of firing on the assailant, which while personally satisfying, would greatly increase the odds of a bloody body count as two men traded gunfire within the confines of a crowded restaurant.

This whole scenario, of a man firing into a crowded restaurant, which actually happened on June 28th, 2008 in Phoenix, Arizona is not possible without a well-armed citizenry. Perhaps the founding fathers did not have such horror in mind.

Carlos and his wife are well, and still damn fine human beings.