John Maeda has a great web site. There is much to discover here, including the Laws of Simplicity.

Here’s the first one:

“Law 1: Reduce. The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.”

To get the rest of the laws and other thoughts by him, it’s simple. Click here.

Note! If you want to read more about Haiti on this blog, click here.

For the latest on what is happening in Haiti, I recommend the NYTimes.com. They have a great section on Haiti here)

As I was going through the TIME archives, I noticed a quote from a Haitian government official on some matter of importance. It reminded me of something that struck me when I read “Paris, 1919”: the seeming importance of Haiti in world affairs. True, it was not as important as the Great Powers, but it was one of the countries at the table, both literally and figuratively.  It appears to be a middle player at the beginning of the 20th Century. And then it sadly declined.

One account of this is found here.

If you know people who like to worry, here’s a list of new things to worry about that they likely haven’t even considered!  See:

10 Disasters That Could End It All At Any Given Second

My favourite is rogue black holes. 🙂

(Thanks to transbuddha.com for the tip and Nasa for the image)

The globeandmail.com has a copy of the story from Reuters on how:

“A woman in Germany who became pregnant after an online sex auction has won a court battle to force the website that hosted the sale to reveal the names of the winners, so she can find out who’s the father. Six different men won Internet auctions to have sex with the woman in April and May last year. They were only known to her by their online names”

When I read this, my first thought was: I feel sorry for the child born from these parents. To call the father a “winner” is a stretch, to say the least.