David Kreps Blog

Homophobic Christian Nutjob LOSES

Islington Council victory against bigotry
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-10005.html

20 12 08 - 19:20 - da5idk - default| No comments - § ¶

Hi-tech Venture Capital gets a cold and we all sneeze

I've read recently - (Will Hutton in fact) - that the great advantage of the West over the East is our aggressive entrepreneurial culture, and that because of this we will survive and thrive despite the greater numbers and economic power of China and India. Crucial to such activity, however, is a thriving Venture Capital sector, optimistically putting money into new ideas and new ventures that might just make it. In a leaked PowerPoint from one of the leading US VC companies - Sequoia Capital (funders of companies like Apple, Oracle and YouTube) - the true depth of the recession we are now in is laid out in dizzyingly scary figures. See The Daily Beast blog entry interpreting the slideshow, and the slideshow itself...

.. (more)

14 12 08 - 23:22 - da5idk - default| No comments - § ¶

Future Laptop - I wish? I predict?

I can envisage an ultra-thin laptop, similar to the MacAir, but somehow more in the style of the eePC, and which essentially has only one application on it - Firefox. Everything else that one could possible want is already available on the web. I look forward to it, and will buy one when it arrives.

30 11 08 - 13:08 - da5idk - default| two comments - § ¶

Is china taking over global economy?

Is it possible that it may be to a growing extent the Chinese who are the ones lending large amounts of money to help the Western Central banks prop up our failing banking system?

See the US Treasury website, for example - http://www.ustreas.gov/tic/mfh.txt, showing Japan as the biggest foreign owner of US treasury bonds, on a declining scale, and China as the second biggest, rapidly catching up and very soon to overtake Japan. (We in the UK are a distant - but rapidly and massively growing - 3rd after these two giants, with the rest of the world trailing behind.)

See recent analysis for China of the current crisis - "In the first half of 2008 China’s GDP continued to grow at a double-digit rate (10.4%), despite a few severe natural disasters that hit many parts of the country really hard, including the snow­storms in south China in January and the Sichuan earthquake in May. Therefore, irrespective of the economic slowdown in the rest of the world, China is still likely to propel its own economic growth and trade at a rather ambitious pace. Thanks to limited exposure to US sub­prime mortgages, most Chinese commercial banks will not be critically impaired by the current crisis. " [pdf]

See the journalistic reports that China is indeed so economically strong that its large investments in the West can nonetheless be comfortably written off...

Maybe they waited till after the Olympics before they really started to squeeze...?
STOP PRESS - Will Hutton's comments are revealing and longer term. A relief?

08 10 08 - 22:58 - da5idk - default| No comments - § ¶

Hope for the world....please!!!

Obama wants an 80% cut in US greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. He wants the US to lead the global effort to combat climate change. He says he would invest $150bn over 10 years in clean energy.

Let us pray he manages to persuade the American people to vote for him.

Whatever else may be unsavoury about him, about US politics, about liberal America in general, at least this man sounds like a decent step in the right direction! If the election goes in the other direction, the world will truly go to the dogs..... (more)

07 09 08 - 23:02 - da5idk - default| No comments - § ¶

15 minutes

Warhol coined the phrase "15 minutes of fame", which refers to the fleeting condition of celebrity that attaches to an object of media attention, then passes to some new object as soon as the public's attention span is exhausted. In this age of Web 2.0, in a networked society comprising constant internet exposure to one's net-friends on the various social networking sites and chat networks to which so many of us belong and upon which we spend our evenings (and increasingly our lunchtimes and afternoons... breakfast, elevenses, etc) one wonders if we are entering a time whereby we will look to the anonymity of the past, and even dream of a time, in the future, when everyone will be anonymous for 15 minutes...

05 09 08 - 20:20 - da5idk - default| No comments - § ¶

Boys

---------------- Boys------------------------
-----------are like apples------------------
-------on trees. The best ones-----------
-----are at the top of the tree-----------
-----Other boys dont want to reach----
----for the good ones because they----
-are afraid of falling & getting hurt-----
-Instead, they get the rotten apples---
-from the ground that arent as nice----
-but easy. So the apples up top think--
--there is something wrong with them--
---when in reality they're amazing------
---They just have to wait for the-------
-------right boy to come along-----------
--------the one who is brave-------------
----------enough to climb-----------------
----------------all the----------------------
---------------way to----------------------
---------------the top----------------------
-------------of the tree---------

05 09 08 - 11:50 - da5idk - default| one comment - § ¶