Haunted by Blackberry Buzz

The incessant noise follows me everywhere--computer speakers, conference
room phones, even my car radio--like the constant whine of a
mosquito buzzing around my ears, except you can't swat
it. Turning down the speaker volume doesn't help. Moving the damned thing
several feet away is equally ineffective--you've got to actually hurl
it into another room.

RIM's only apparent fix for the problem has been to harden the case so
it doesn't break when I throw it (both a plus and a minus). Perhaps an exorcist would help.

The silver lining: in conference rooms with a speakerphone, the
horrible buzz forces blackberry users to turn off their devices and focus on the meeting.

A Sky Spectacle

I don't know precisely where I am, except that I'm roughly six miles from the Earth and heading west. Several miles to the north, and perhaps 2 miles beneath, a brilliant electrical storm illuminates a cloud formation. The sparks fly at the surprising rate of one or two every second, as the light strobes in fiery spectacle.

I had thought this morning that the day couldn't get any better, tickled as I was to be golfing the legendary Augusta National course. The Georgia air was a balmy 70, the fairways greener than Al Gore, and my new, used woods from eBay swinging smooth. (Still, Jim "800-Flowers" McCann bested me by a stroke.) The setting was pastoral and glorious, but Nature's outdoing herself tonight with a fireworks display that barely resembles my normally grounded view of lightning.

It's humbling that physicists today know little more than Ben Franklin did as to the root cause of this thunderous phenomenon. (According to my favorite prevailing theory, Earth-bound solar winds carry starry particles that ignite the atmospheric explosions.) I recall that Ben Franklin's son had assisted his father with his daredevil experiment (don't try this at home--stormy kite-flying is not a good family activity), which reminds me of a conversation I had with my own 7 year old several months back as we drifted off to sleep in his room.

I had just answered--to the best of my ability--his question about what options people have for fuel sources. I thought that my list had sedated him for the night, but after some silence he asked me whether lightning can be a fuel source. Good idea, I said, but you can't harvest the power in lightning because you don't know where it will strike. But aren't there places, he asked, where you're likely to get much more than average? I supposed that there are, but I also reasoned confidently that the power is too bursty for any equipment to safely capture in a sustainable way. Okay, he said, but couldn't you attach a lightning rod to a bunch of other rods that branch out further and further, until the current spreads out enough to safely collect?

Yikes, I had no clue. But his idea's intriguing--at least as feasible as some of the technologies I assess for investment. (Action item: I must introduce him to my Cleantech partner Justin, just as soon as the boy graduates from second grade.) In my final moments watching the sparks flash through the clouds, they suddenly resemble the charged, frenetic neurons of a 7 year old mind.

I still don't know precisely where I am, but I do know exactly where I want to be.

Goodbye Kurt. So it goes.

On Thursday, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., one of my favorite authors, died at the age of 84.

Vonnegut had succeeded Isaac Asimov (my other favorite) as Honorary President of the American Humanists Association. Like Asimov. Vonnegut mastered the communication of complex ideas through simple prose. When Vonnegut eulogized Asimov, he joked that Asimov is up in Heaven now.

If you haven't read Vonnegut's books, it's time to start! Sirens of Titan was a personal favorite, but Slaughterhouse Five is the book he's most famous for (and the literary reference behind "So it goes"); it's a fictional derivative of his experience as a World War II prisoner of war in the aftermath of the Dresden bombing. In his last book, Man Without a Country, Vonnegut laments the lack of direction and leadership in our nation, decrying our government's religious crusades and eco-terrorism with the grumpiness of an old man who just no longer gives a shit. But if you have an issue with commitment, start with the short stories in Welcome to the Monkeyhouse.

I think that looking back on his death, Vonnegut would be pleased that the cause of his expiration was a head injury from falling. Even thirty years before he published God Bless You Dr. Kevorkian, he had written that his sister's dying words, "No pain," was a recurring theme of his works.

Kurt is up in Heaven now.