The 7 vices of highly creative people
Gambling is at the heart of every worthwhile accomplishment in life. Consequently, vice three is essential for the success of your creativity. Instinctively, the highly creative person knows that nothing matters except the throw of the dice.
Wise words, but this vice can be the downfall of many a good person. Life isn’t worth living without a little risk and little truly worthwhile can be accomplished without putting something on the line.
Altered Carbon is to be adapted as a movie by V for Vendetta director James McTeigue.
Children Full of Life (viewable in its entirety here) is a very moving documentary about a teacher Mr. Kanamori and his 4th grade class in Kanazawa, Japan.
Mr. Kanamori, tells the children that their primary goal is to be happy, and that sharing feelings is part of the path to happiness. He encourages the children to keep a journal of their lives and feelings and to share them with one another in class.
I think Mr. Kanamori is a fantastic teacher and I can only hope that my own children will be lucky enough to have somebody this wonderful during their schoolyears.
Via TokyoMango and Metafilter
Wired: 100 Essential Skills for Geeks
I possess many of these skills but I’m not sure all 100 are really ‘essential’.
The ecological disaster that is dolphin safe tuna is a shocking piece of science journalism that took second place in The 3 Quarks Daily 2009 Prize in Science. [via]
However as shocking as the facts about the dolphin friendly method of purse seine fishing is it isn’t as shocking as the conclusion drawn by whysharksmatter, the author of the article.
He quotes the following bycatch rates from here (a broken link to what looks like a Powerpoint presentation).
Ten thousand sets of purse seine nets around immature tuna swimming under logs and other debris will cause the deaths of 25 dolphins; 130 million small tunas; 513,870 mahi mahi; 139,580 sharks; 118,660 wahoo; 30,050 rainbow runners; 12,680 other small fish; 6540 billfish; 2980 yellowtail; 200 other large fish; 1020 sea turtles; and 50 triggerfish.
Ten thousand sets of purse seine nets around mature yellowfin swimming in association with dolphins, will cause the deaths of 4000 dolphins (0.04 percent of a population that replenishes itself at the rate of two to six percent per year); 70,000 small tunas; 100 mahi mahi; 3 other small fish; 520 billfish; 30 other large fish; and 100 sea turtles. No sharks, no wahoo, no rainbow runners, no yellowtail, and no triggerfish and dramatic reductions in all other species but dolphins.
Then whysharksmatter writes this
If you work out the math on this, you find that 1 dolphin saved costs 382 mahi-mahi, 188 wahoo, 82 yellowtail and other large fish, 27 sharks, and almost 1,200 small fish.
By trying to help dolphins, groups like Greenpeace caused one of the worst marine ecological disasters of all time. Few other fisheries are as bad for groups like sharks and sea turtles as the purse seine fishery, and none are as large in scale.
This is entirely disingenuous because it suggests that there are only two methods of catching tuna both of which use purse seine nets and that the dolphin friendly usage of purse seine nets is the ecologically worse of the two.
Greenpeace in fact advocate ditching the use of purse seine nets entirely and catching tuna (plus other commercial species of fish) with pole and line methods and many major British retailers are in line with this thinking.
There is a brilliant new documentary called The End of the Line that is currently on limited release in the UK that explains these issues in far greater detail than I can here or pick up the book by Charles Clover that the film was based on (available at Amazon US or UK).
This is Glastonbury Festival weekend and for the first time in years I would dearly like to be going. I’d been thinking that I was getting too old to be camping in a rain-soaked tent in a field but then decided that with legendary headliners like Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen and Blur that it would have been worth it.
I shall have to keep track on Twitter and will be watching and listening to the ever excellent coverage of the festival by the BBC.
The weather is not entirely favourable looking according to the Met Office.
Good luck staying dry and have an awesome time at the festival to Jess, Maria, Ruaidhri, Becky and Matt and every one of the 180 000 other people expected to attend this year.
I’m am so looking forward to the release of Shutter Island, it’s based on a great book, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio. The trailer looks like it will live up to my expectations.
Funny and insightful post on Tomato Nation about the etiquette of being a grown-up.
A certain grace period for the development of basic consideration and self-sufficiency is assumed, but once you have turned 25, the grace period is over, and starring in a film in your head in which you walk the earth alone is no longer considered a valid lifestyle choice, but rather grounds for exclusion from social occasions.
I think I’m mostly fine on these things.
