TED Talks: Al Gore on Climate & Democracy crisis

Notte sento (with English subtitles)

They’re so cute, aren’t they?

Another ecological manifesto

Logic Men vs Feelings Men: who’s needed more?

Short summary of “The MFA Is the New MBA” by Katherine Bell (HBR Senior Editor).

In the article she describes how useful right-brain-sided people are for companies and states 4 lessons a Logic Man (MBA) might learn from a Feelings Man (MFA):

1. Criticism acceptance (hear what people say).
2. Understanding motivation (remember about hidden desires and motives).
3. Engaging an audience (lead the story but ask customers for ideas).
4. Constant and critical review of your ideas (don’t let your imagination shelter your eyes).

Nice article, highly recommended for reading.

Explaning economics with… cows

In case your business partners need a lesson in economics… let them read the following economies classification.

SOCIALISM
You have 2 cows. The State takes both and gives you some milk.

FASCISM
You have 2 cows. The State takes both and shoots you.

COMMUNISM
You have 2 cows. The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then throws the milk away.

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM
You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.

WALL STREET CAPITALISM
You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. You sell one cow to buy a new President of the United States, leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the release. The public then buys your bull.

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows. You sell one and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. Later, you hire a consultant to analyze why the cow has dropped dead and ask the Treasury to buy you a new one.

A FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows. You go on strike, organize a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create a clever cow cartoon image called “Cowkimon” and market it worldwide.

A GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows. You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows, but you don’t know where they are. You decide to have lunch.

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 2 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

A SWISS CORPORATION
You have 5000 cows. None of them belong to you. You charge the owners for storing them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION
You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim that you have full employment and high bovine productivity. You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows. You worship them.

A BRITISH CORPORATION
You have two cows. Both are mad.

AN IRAQI CORPORATION
Everyone thinks you have lots of cows. You tell them that you have none. Nobody believes you, so they bomb the shit out of you and invade your country. You still have no cows, but at least now you are part of Democracy.

AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows. Business seems pretty good. You close the office and go for a few beers to celebrate.

A NEW ZEALAND CORPORATION
You have two cows. The one on the left looks very attractive.

SURREALISM
You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

Firefox: enlighting UI

Decided to state some ways to get lightweight (really-really lightweight) Firefox UI.

The point is to install the right add-ons:

• Chromin Frame
• Hide menubar
• Smart Stop/Reload: combines Reload and Stop buttons in Opera way

Also recommend the followings (at least, I use them):

• Theme:
  • Full Flat
• Add-ons:
  • FoxTab: change tabs in a wooooow-way
  • Google:
    • Gmail Notifier
    • Better Gmail 2: GMail tweaks
    • Google Notebook
  • Socials:
    • Meebo: web-client for most of IMs
    • TwitterFox: follow me@Twitter
  • Cooliris: browse multimedia on sites you visit in a funky way
  • Opera-style:
    • ImgLikeOpera: manage images loading
    • Speed Dial
  • Boss Key: minimize\hide FF
  • British English Dictionary

Twitter and Google as customer service tools

Twitter and Google as customer service tools – New Media & Search

Posted using ShareThis

Watch it, sm*ker!

Here (http://videosostav.ru/video/a243cc4966ff07c215b310d3ae4b5cc3/) is a video about “joy” of smoking. Really worth watching: everybody in our office said they won’t smoke at least today.

As for me, I don’t smoke. Never tried a cigarette; tried hookah but didn’t like it. I won’t ever smoke – life’s too short for spending it at such a kind of things.

What if the Matrix ran on Windows

Investigation about being vegan

Yesterday I’ve decided to investigate pros and contras of being vegan. I suppose getting in this if it won’t harm health.

The reasons are:

• I ate very little meat (just soup with chicken made by Mom or some raviolis for about 3 weeks in total) since I live in Moscow (Sept. 2006) and I haven’t felt bad;
• I support greens like WWF and Greenpeace.

So it looks like eating meat isn’t necessary for me (and maybe humankind in general).

Need some investigation. The reasons will be published here.