Daily Archives: February 14, 2009

Rats, often seen as a scourge on mankind, are being shown to be a benefit too. Besides being trained to find land mines, giant rats are being used to sniff out TB victims (Telegraph). It’s a brilliant idea. Actually, both of them are.

This reminds me of Joshua Klein’s talk at the TED conference about the amazing intelligence of crows. He brings up the idea that instead of trying to wipe out creatures that we consider parasites or vermin, we should be trying to learn more about them and work with them for our mutual benefit.

It looks like a number of smart people in Africa are already doing this. I think the rest of the world needs to look at our populations of rats, roaches, crows, squirrels, raccoons, pigeons….you name it…and get more creative on how we can live together.

Both the Telegraph article and the Klein talk are well worth while.

(This rat in a flickr photo from gilbrit’s photostream is smart enough to debug software. 🙂 Ok, maybe not. Good photo, though.)

With all the gloom and doom around publishing, it is easy to think that by sometime soon, there will be scarcely any magazines on the stands, never mind new ones. However, if anyone can figure out how to make a go of it in the new world of publishing, I would bet on Conde Nast. And they don’t seem to have given up, as this article in the Telegraph highlights, with their new magazine, Love.

The article has lots of detail behind the new publication. It could be a good one, and a good trend.

I quite like this song and this video. I think it is inventive, unusual, appealling pop music. If I found it on an indie site and it was attributed to an unknown artist, I would be quite taken by it. Perhaps you would too.

However, it is by anything but an unknown artist. It’s by Paul McCartney, one of the greatest names in pop music. And that affects the way I see the video and listen to the music. More than it should. The Beatles were right to sing “Boy you’re going to carry that weight along time”. In some ways the legacy of the Beatles is a huge weight, both for him and his listeners who loved the Beatles. From time to time we both deserve to put that weight aside and listen to the newer stuff. If you haven’t listened to him in awhile, try this.