Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Toast to Ando and Beck

2008 was the year Lonely Planet got back into the online game with the launch of a new website after struggling to do that for too long. With new shareholders BBCW on board, we met some wonderful people who gave up life in London to put their weight behind the project - which in the end won both the Australian iAward for the simultaneous transformation of organisational capability with delivery of the world's largest travel site; and the People's Choice Webby for Best Travel Site.

Here's our toast (from my colleague Chris Boden and I) to two of them, Andy and Rebecca Conroy. Apologies to Afferbeck Lauder and his brilliant book Let's Talk Strine - you cannot imagine how funny a South African and a Kiwi delivering this could be.

We're hair terday in this Gloria Soame
Ter sendoff Ando and Beck
We'll do it in proper strine style
Gettin' blotto on the deck.

In pommie-land 18 months ago
Old Smithy had a spout
Wheelaffta send a cuppla guns
To sort the mippies out.

Sex of content!
That's what she needs
Ta make a website bitter
Aorta jam the books online
And get it out the shitter.

The problem is I gunga din
To all the different bits
I need a single sign-on
It's just getting' on me tits.

Hare we gunna build all this?
Some bits moron once!
We'll get stark ender everything
In just a garbler munce.

"She'll be done by Cupdee" Ando says
But come spring in Melbin tairn,
There's no race-day for half the team
Beck just chucks her hembairg dairn.

The points are crook, she's up the spout
Said Beck "it's like a bloody maze"
But nothing we can't bodgy up
Inner narkup laddaze.

And launch we did, Navimber last
With not much egg jelly rooted
Scona beer bonza site
Zactly like we mooted.

We're gunna miss them bee in rand
As LP as Jimmy's 'roo
It's like a furry tile ya know
Zarf trawl that we've been through.

So laze and gem I ask you now
To rayzup all yer glasses
To Ando and Beck, who we've come to think
Aren't bad for pommie bastards.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Working in America - reflection on safety


Working in the USA was a crazy thing. There was a nasty overlap between an employee's freedom to carry a gun, and the jitters that gave me when I monitored the speed with which pain-killers were consumed from the lunch-room in the Costco industrial packs of Panadol - let alone the valium, Ritalin and a million other pharmaceuticals that got the team through the day.

While in Minneapolis, the gun law was changed in some electoral skullduggery to allow concealed handguns to be carried. We foreigners never felt safe again.

As always - crappygraph.com comes to the rescue with a simple illustration of the problem!

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Genetics for Dummies

More old Palm pilot gems. I copied this from somewhere erudite - wish I'd been more diligent in keeping the source reference.

A Cell has a helix shaped string of DNA - think of a set of encylopedias containing complete blueprint for life.

DNA is a set of 23 pairs of 'books' (chromosomes) in the set.

Each word in the books is a Gene (100, 000 of them).

The words are made up of 4 main letters - G (guanine), A (adenine). T (thymine), C (cytosine).

These letters are nucleotides. There are 3b of them in total in a DNA string, 90% of which do nothing.

The genome project is mapping the 100,000 genes and their role.

Single Genes may cause disease such as cystic fibrosis. Combinations of genes may cause more complex conditions (obesity for example).

Once a growing cell splits from 8 to 16 the cell begins to specialise and only reads a part of the book.

Clones are easily created at the cellular level as in identical twins.

Dolly the sheep proved that an old DNA strand can be tricked from its specific role back in time to accessing the full encyclopedia.

Thus it is a new form of cloning, more akin to genetic-level engineering than twinning.

World's Greatest Inventions (ever)

Another gem from my old Palm Pilots - a list that generated a lot of debate (and ridicule) at the time I recall! I'll try to put it in order sometime soon, and perhaps try to justify these wild claims.

  • Fire
  • Wheel
  • Weaving
  • Metalwork
  • Plough
  • Writing (Sumeria, 3000BC)
  • Printing press (Gutenburg 1458) - note: da Vinci refused to have his manuscripts typeset as he thought printing was a fad.
  • Water frame (Arkwright) 1770 vs Spinning Jenny (Hargreaves) 1767
  • Pulp paper (1798)
  • Gatling Gun (1860s)
  • Telecommunications (AG Bell, 1876)
  • Engine (Niklaus Otto, 1877)
  • Refrigeration (?)
  • Plane (Wrights, 1903)
  • Thermal Oil refining (W. Burton, 1913)
  • Liquid fuel rocket (Goddard, 1923)
  • Atomic bomb (1945)
  • Computer (1946)
  • Satellite (Clarke 1948, launched '58)
  • The Pill (1961)
  • The internet
  • Theory of 4 forces - weak nuclear, strong nuclear, gravity, electromagnetic.

Quotes from my Palm Pilot

I worked out how to crack my ancient Palm Pilot (pre 3COM!) data files. Found some great old quotes, in no particular order:

Travelers, there is no path. Paths are made by walking. (Antonio Machado, 1875-1939)

Relying on quantitative analysis is akin to thinking the buying & mailing of Christmas cards causes Christmas.

Organisations should change their habits - not their culture (Drucker)

Don't write off Disney as a global financial services player in the 21st century. No one has a bad day at Disneyland. No one's called Mickey Mouse a bastard (Linda Nicholls. Wallis Enquiry)

Rivers knew only too well how often the early stages of change or cure may mimic deterioration. Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly, a fit emblem for the human soul, for those whose cast of mind leads them to seek such emblems. No, the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay (Pat Barker, The Regeneration Trilogy, page 184).

The best way to predict the future is to invent it (The X-files)

Beneath all this horse-shit there just has to be a pony.

The fuckup fairy has visited again...

If you have the opportunity to seize power, sell your mother to do so - you can always buy her back afterwards. (Arab proverb)

False face must hide what the false heart doth know (Macbeth Act 1)

The better a hammer has served in the past, the more all new problems look like nails (Kotter)

There's a big difference between hope & expectation (Fox Mulder)

As cunning as a fox who has just been made Professor of cunning at Oxford University (Blackadder Goes Forth)

Whenever there's any doubt, there is no doubt (Ronin, 1999)

Mankind hopes vaguely, but dreads precisely.

You can tell a lot about a company by the person they keep. (Microsoft)

I do not know with what weapons WW3 will be fought with, but WW4 will be fought with sticks & stones (Einstein)

Insanity is doing the same thing again & again, but expecting a different result (Rita Mae Brown)

Change is inevitable, progress is not (John Callum).

You can't talk your way out of what you have behaved your way into (Covey)

More NZers believe Elvis is alive than support compulsory retirement savings (Michael Cullen)

Dealing with DSS is working for the dole (graffiti Melbourne)

The world breaks everyone, but afterwards some are strong at the broken places (Hemingway)

This project is so important, we can't let more important things interfere with it (UPS)

Work is a thing you do, not a place you go.

An error does not become a mistake until you refuse to correct it (Orlando Battista)

My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income (Errol Flynn)

Cafe society or Nescafe society?

It girl or twit girl?

We don't like their sound - groups of guitars are on their way out... (Decca Records rejecting the Beatles, 1962)

Radio has no future (Lord Kelvin, 1897)

TV won't be able to hold onto any market it captures after the first 6 months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night (Darryl Zanuck, 20th CF, 1946)

Airplanes are interesting toys, but of 0 military value (Marshall Ferdinand Foch, French military strategist 1911)

There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home (Ken Olsen, founder DIGITAL, 1977)

Radio makes surprise impossible (Joseph Daniels, US Secretary of Navy, October 16 1942)

What use could this company make of an electrical toy? (Western Union turning down AG Bell's $100k offer to sell his struggling company)

Who the hell wants to hear actors talk? (Harry Warner 1927)

Stocks have reached a permanently hiqh plateau (Irving Fisher, Yale Prof of economics, Oct 17, 1929)

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

The Bull With the Bowler Hat by Clive Dalton and Don Clegg

An extract from the book Daft Laddies, Farming Tales of North Tyne and Rede 50 years on (2003) by Clive Dalton and Don Clegg, shared by permission. If you'd like a copy of the book, drop me a line or google the title.

In these days of genome mapping, DNA analysis, multiple ovulation and embryo transfer (MOET), cloning, and genetically modified (GM) organisms – you have to smile at the consternation caused by the simple process of Artificial Insemination (AI) on North Tyne and Rede farms in the 1950s.

As in all farming circles there are leaders who try new things, and countless sceptics who knaa nowt about it, but nivortheless have strang opinions forecasting doom and disaster for aall involved. There was a lot of it aboot in the 1950s when AI became available on local farms.

AI solved the need to keep a bull, freeing up feed for an extra cow and calf. It was also a lot safer as housed bulls regularly caused injuries to farm folk. But the big selling point was that through AI you could get the services of a much better bull and at reasonable cost. And you’ll remember the boss was nivor maede o’ muney!

Aall a lot of blow’d rrubeesh, said the sceptics! So what were their concerns - real and imagined? The first was how to taalk aboot it – even to say the name. The word “artificial” usually referred to manure from a bag. That was bad enough but the word “insemination” was just gannin’ ower far.

Trouble started with the inevitable questions of “huw de they git the juice oot o’ the bull”? Nobody had been to the AI centre at Shinfield in faraway Coonty Durham to see the process, so there was only conjecture of mind-boggling proportions.

So when we farmin’ college students with wor fancy beuk larnin’ explained how the bull served into a warmed rubber tube and the semen was collected in a small glass test tube – well that was ower daft for woords. “Nee bull worth his keep wad dee owt as daft as that, man!” was the comment.

Then there was the question aboot huw the cuw gat bulled if there wasn’t a bull? Well, we explained, it was done by the “AI man” – in the North Tyne that was a Mr Jamieson from Hexham. Now you were clearly away wi the fairies, bonny lad.

Suddenly, we students were a font of knowledge of such things – but you had to watch what company you were in afore borstin’ forth with yor newfangled knowledge. It was aall right at the Saturday night dances to explain such things to the village lassees, but not to chorch folk ov a Sunday.

The dangerous bit was when you explained where Mr Jamieson put his hand and aboot the glass tube containing the semen (no plastics then) which could very easily break inside the cuw. This was seen as undiluted filth comin’ from the gob of somebody like mesel (CD) who blew the organ, tolled the bell and took the collection at St Cuthbert’s chorch!

There were many folk in those days who genuinely believed that the whole process of not letting nature take its course, by letting bulls do bull’s work, would do some irreparable genetic and psychological harm to cattle as a species. And then to explain that semen could be frozen and be kept for EVER was totally ower the top and would be the end of farmin’.

But probably the biggest embarassment for the daft laddie was phoning from a very public phone box to order the bull. Few farms had phones in those days so you had to go to the nearest public phone box with all the trauma of having the right money, pressin’ button A and not B at the right time, and then deliverin’ your message.

Then the biggest shock came when you got through to the Milk Marketing Board in Hexham, and a WOMAN answered! That was bad enough but then she started askin’ you questions:

MMB: “Good morning Sir, Milk Marketing Board Insemination Service”
Laddie: “Helloa, Aye – am caalin’ aboot a cuw from Nettle Hill.”
MMB: “Yes, I have the farm details, sir”. Is the cow standing, sir?”
Laddie : “Wey no, she was lyin’ doon in the byor when Aa left.”
MMB: “No sir, is she in standing heat or is she just coming on?”
Laddie: “Oh Aa see. By heck no, she’s stannin’ allright. The boss was just sayin’ she’s stannin’ like a dyke. She’s fair mad a bullin’.”
MMB: “What breed of bull do you want, sir?”
Laddie: “Oh, the boss wants Shorthorn but the missus likes them new Friesians they hev doon at Acomb.”
MMB: “So what’s the decision, sir?”
Laddie: “Well, the row was still ganin’ on when Aa left on me bike to phone up. Mebbe wise to bring baeth bulls’ juice, eh?”
MMB: “Has the cow been inseminated before sir?”
Laddie: “Oh aye – this will be the fowerth time. The boss was just sayin’ that if she doesn’t haad this time, she’ll gan te Archie’s Galloway. He’ll stop owt, Aa tell ye.
MMB: “Thank you for calling sir, Mr Jamieson will be there this afternoon.

It was all ower much for some folk and after escaping from the phone box on a hot summer morning after a grilling like that, and gollarin’ doon the phone so the lass cud heor - as Hexham, remember, was 12 miles away or more, the sweat was just dripping off you. It was a relief to get back on the hard iron seat of the hay turner.

Then followed the air of expectancy, waiting for Jamieson’s arrival. The poor cuw tied up in the byre was equally excited and to show this she bellowed all day, decorating the newly whitewashed walls in half circles of liquid green.

Sure enough, late in the day a little white Ford van came chugging into the yard and out popped Mr Jamieson in spotless Wellingtons and riding britches carrying a white box and a waterproof coat. Here indeed was “the bull with the bowler hat” as many farmers dubbed him. It was unbelievable for some – whaat in the wide woorld was he ganin’ dee?

The mystery deepened and was made no less enlightening when he asked for a bucket of warm water, a towel and bit of soap, and somebody to hold the cow’s tail oot of the way. Then he put his coat on back to front! Ye beggor o’ Hexham – what next?

Can you imagine how these details were received by good folk with puritanical views and sceptical about so-called scientific progress? Explaining that the cow’s cervix was palpated through the rectum wall and the semen deposited just through the cervix by the glass pipette, were details they begged to be spared from. That was just ower much filth for decent lugs, and was typical of the “modreen rubbeesh young folk larned at them farmin’ colleeges”.

The ultimate argument against AI was that a cow mated by AI wad nivor haad again tiv a bull. And the sceptics always had examples of folk they kenned from Deadwater down to Acomb with this awful experience. “The cuws wor rruined man, an waadn’t even haad te the Galloway bull efterwards”, they declared. The Galloway bull was seen as the ultimate in bovine impregnation – “if he cudn’t stop a cuw, nowt wad”.

Other doubting Thomases had seen these AI-bred calves and they were “nivor ony geud, man, and just blow’d rrubeesh”. I remember once viewing one of the early AI-bred calves in the presence of some sceptics, and, in an atmosphere of near wonderment, the comment was made – “Eeeh man! leuk heor, leuk whaat the bull wi’ the bowler hat’s gitten. Aye man, an’ it kindo leuks like Jamieson an’ aall.”

Imagine if they’d known about the recently discovered evidence that we humans share about 90% of our DNA with cattle. Aa knaa whee’d git the blame for this shock horror – owld Jamieson from Hexham!