Captain's Log

The tragedy of choice

2011-01-29T23:13:00.002+01:00

"To me, there is not only right or wrong, but many shades in between. The real tragedies in life are not in choices between right and wrong. Only the most callous of persons chose what they know to be wrong. Real tragedy comes in a dilemma of evaluating what is right. Real dilemmas are difficulties of the soul, provoking agonies, which you in your world of black and white can't even begin to comprehend."

Nial Ferguson has quoted Henry Kissinger from a 1948 letter to his parents during his magisterial LSE lecture The Grand Strategy of Detente. I've been a fan of Kissinger's analysis ever since reading A World Restored way back in university, and this as yet apparently unpublished quotation reflects his approach very well indeed. Ferguson's lecture is a must-watch video, as I am sure his book on Kissinger is going to be mandatory reading when it appears in a few years' time.

Simba, 1995-2010

2010-12-27T17:14:00.003+01:00

Thank you for choosing to stay with us.

You'll be missed.

What would you do?

2010-12-05T17:25:00.000+01:00

Here's your Sunday Philosophy Club ethical problem: The other day, I bought an iPad Case from an auction site. The seller (100% straight positive ratings) advertised it using Apple's original photos and description, the price was 29 instead of the original 49. Prior to the purchase, I asked whether it was the real thing - no reply.

The inevitable happened: The case arrived, but turned out to be an inferior imitation. I contacted the seller straight away, demanding a return. He agreed immediately, and the transaction was reversed at minimal cost to me.

Next stop was the seller rating: I opted for a Neutral (rather than negative) rating because the transaction was reversed without trouble. But the seller wouldn't have it as he preferred 100% happy customers, and my Neutral would be a spot on his clean bill. So he offered a tenner in exchange for my removal of the rating. I refused. And now, he's offering 50 or the original iPad case for free.

What would you do? I feel obliged to the user community of the auction site because I rely on user ratings myself to a substantial degree. Plus the seller did not respond to my pre-sale question. And he came up with some form of compensation only after his clean bill of health came under threat. So the transaction was objectively flawed.

On the other hand, he is now voluntarily prepared to pay up in order to maintain his reputation to the outside world, and presumably, every other buyer could do likewise in the similar situation (he has collected 4 Neutrals in the meantime, btw). Taking the point of view of my original intention of the transaction, I would get for free what I was prepared to pay for in the first place. So the both of us would be happy, and my Neutral rating wouldn't be justifiable anymore.

This is a trivial case, of course, but it's a nice illustration of an ethical dilemma. Just transpose the situation to the value of, say, a house ... so, what would you do?

Une soirée au salon bleu

2010-10-17T21:48:00.000+02:00

After far too long an absence, I was lucky to be invited to yesterday's Salon Bleu. This is a chamber art format curated by Claudia Sutter, aka Madame Bleu, who also plays the piano. Yesterday's instalment Es war einmal was war was all about the language of symbols, interwoven with piano and violin music by Brahms, Carlo Bonferroni, Kurtag and Kreisler. The violin was played by my friend and teacher Claudia Dora. The programme was an intense progression of lyric poetry and short texts by Claudia Sutter herself, Walter Muschg, Hauff, Zweig and others with the musical choreography tailored to Claudia Sutter's captivating recital.

The Salon is a unique experience because, much like its 19th century bourgeois predecessors, it takes place in Madame Bleu's very own living room with an audience of no more than 20. Due to that intimate setting, a close and personal engagement with the high art on offer is virtually inescapable. Don't miss it if you have the opportunity to go!

Another day, another iPhone

2010-09-12T22:09:00.000+02:00

You may be interested to hear that my trusty new iPhone 3GS is up for sale over on ricardo. It served me well, but now it's time to move on - iPhone 4, here I am. Btw Applecare is really worth while - I've just had my used phone swapped for a brand new one because of a tiny crack in its back. Good for the happy buyer!

Keyifli

2010-07-08T00:50:00.000+02:00

Keyifli is manifold - for some Istanbullus it is casting a line from a pontoon on one of the nearby Princes' Islands, to others it is crunching through the first green erik plum of the season or blowing on a glass of çay to cool it in the shade, and for many it is all of the above.

So much of life in Istanbul is given to the pursuit of keyifli. A life lived on the streets; from rooftop to rooftop; afloat or by boat; in taxis and in traffic jams; at prayer, in sin or somewhere in between; from Karaköy to Kadaköy; at 20 to a table; at two to a nargile; laying back at top speed; with bellies full and glasses empty; smoking, joking and forever in gesticulation.

From Saul Taylor's essay on Istanbul in issue 35 of Monocle.

Glister

2010-06-19T15:10:00.002+02:00

Yesterday night, I finished Glister, a novel that I started reading following a tantalising review of its German edition. It is an extraordinarily dark, gothic story involving a premature teenager by the name of Leonard who meets his tragic end in classic greek style . The atmosphere is dense and overpowering, but the characters somehow lack credibility. I understand their precocity as a dramatic device representing the Innertown's venomous environment, but still ... and yet, there are a few gems like this that make it worth your while, although they may not be to everybody's taste:

"the soul is wet and dark, a creature that takes up residence in the human body like a parasite and feeds on it, a creature hungry for experience and power and possessed of an inhuman joy that cares nothing for its host, but lives, as it must live, in perpetual, disfigured longing."

An incredible story

2010-06-12T15:45:00.000+02:00

The small, border village of Schönenbuch has suffered a high incidence of break-ins of late. Some say it coïncides with the abolition of border controls due to Schengen, but I'd say that's a post hoc, ergo propter hoc.

Anyway, here's the stupid story: There was an attempted break-in at my neighbours' house across the street yesterday night. Their house is secured by an alarm, which I heard going off, but didn't do anything about it because I thought it was a car alarm of one of the visitors they had earlier. I didn't realise that everybody had left, so I didn't care, and that was stupid of me because I could have and should have intervened.

But that's not the end of the story. Because of the aforementioned break-in activity, we often have a police patrol positioned behind the house to watch for suspect activity - so yesterday night. But they hadn't heard the alarm either! So there was in fact a police patrol less than 100 metres away from the attempted break-in, and the perpetrators are no worse for wear, except maybe for the thrill when the alarm went off! How embarrassing is that?! Touch wood, but I'm increasingly convinced that we would have had break-ins in my house a long time ago, were it not for the evil Laika!

Discovering Sir John

2010-06-10T23:38:00.001+02:00

During my last trip to London (which was a 13h stint on a splendid day), I discovered Sir John Soane's Museum. This is an absolutely marvellous little big place which bristles with classical erudition, wit and beauty. I shall definitely go back and try out the audio tour available on the Museum's website. You should do the same. In the meantime, have a gander via this virtual reality gadget. It cannot do the place justice, but you get an idea.

Closing that chapter

2010-06-06T14:14:00.000+02:00

As flagged to my facebook friends a few weeks ago, I've just deleted my account, removed the profile badge from this blog, deleted the fb app on iPhone as well as the bookmarks in the browser, so this is my good-bye from facebook.

The reason why I've decided to take that contrarian step is that I simply don't trust the firm, hence do not want to support them and add to their valuation by being a member. That lack of trust has been on the way up ever since I joined. The firm is apparently incompetent in security matters (serial incidents over the recent past) and always tries to push as far ahead as it can in terms of capitalising on their users' content and personal details, only to take a reluctant step back when they absolutely have to. What's more, their recently announced technology strategy give us a hint of how they want to position their firm as an even more important hub of the internets than it already is by putting in centralising features hosted on their own servers. Also, they seem to have started to act politically by compromising free speech in cooperation with governments. Et ceteris praeteritis propositis ...

So, that's me gone then. Will I come back? Probably not. I might reconsider if their privacy declaration shrunk from being bigger than the US Constitution to - say - five points, one of them saying that user data and content always belongs to users. Secondly, they have to commit to always having a complete & comprehensive export feature with which users can pull their info from the greedy clutches of the provider (Google does that, and it's a great exercise in self-discipline, I think). Meanwhile, you can always connect with me here or on Google Buzz or LinkedIn or elsewhere. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Something fresh!

2010-05-02T18:59:00.000+02:00

For my birthday last week, my brother gave me tickets to yesterday's Jazzfestival Concert, which I attended with C. It was an amazingly rich programme of contrasts with Rigmor Gustafsson and Roberta Gambarini. The latter was extremely smoothly executed, yet mostly conventional standards jazz, whereas Rigmor Gustafsson and the Radio String Quartet Vienna were the discovery of the evening for me. It started when the strings walked on stage and begun playing something that could have been from a contemporary nordic composer of classical music. Then Rigmor (the name has nothing to do with rigor mortis btw) came on stage and started to perform her magic.

The whole set lived and breathed a creative group of minds' fun approach to music. The strings were on an equal footing with the suave singer and were able to make their virtuosity shine. But despite the virtuosity and the intelligence, the emotive messages were clear and simple in their almost pop-music style delivery, and most enjoyable. Most of the songs are also available on their recently published album Calling You, which is spinning on repeat here ... highly recommended!

Sadly, I found out that I'll be on a plane back from Boston when another fabulous gig is scheduled in Basel: Joshua Redman & Brad Mehldau. I guess I'll just have to make do with Mehldau's Highway Rider on the plane, then ...

Bossing Monteverdi

2010-03-06T01:15:00.001+01:00

Just back from an experiment that failed in an interesting way. Nox illuminata had a concert programme at Sudhaus with pieces of Monteverdi's Orfeo and Bossa Nova, which they called Orfeu Negro after a famous movie by Vinicius de Moraes. Now the musical styles are obviously very different - 3 centuries a difference make. And yet, the themes are the same, so you would think that the music can be made to match. To make it short, it didn't work out, unfortunately.

I think it may have to do with the musicians being firmly (too firmly?) grounded in Bossa Nova, and trying to perform Monteverdi in the same way. This might really only work if you have musicians who are equally well versed in the free flowing, small form Bossa Nova as in Monteverdi's formal, complex court music of centuries past. The artistic director probably realised that herself, as the programme had a lot more Bossa Nova than Monteverdi. That way, I got a very fine Bossa Nova concert out of a musical experiment.

Also, J asked the other day what was happening to my blog, as there obviously wasn't really happening that much at all. I promise to work on getting my motivation back!

Beyond text

2010-01-19T00:08:00.001+01:00

Do you know Robin Sloan? Probably not. He's a Californian writer and media-inventor whose story Mr. Penumbra and the Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store I stumbled across a while ago, and I was hooked. His stories are smart, fast and full of surprises in a way that I've never seen before. The latest story (The Truth about the East Wind) is based on classical Greek mythology whereas the sci-fi crime novel Annabel Scheme is set in the future San Francisco dominated by quantum computers and Grail, the second best name for a search engine that I can think of. Very smart indeed, and just a little nerdy.

The creative way in which Sloan plays with formats gave me pause to think about how un-creatively today's media work with their formats on the web. For incumbent producers of print, the acme of production is text, while TV people produce video. To the man with the hammer, everything looks like a nail, I guess.

But in this day and age of cross-media, things have to change. Content needs to be optimised for effect and for convenience. Convenience means that content should always be available in all possible formats so that I can hear a text when I'm on the move, for instance. Effect is the best possible way in which content can be presented. A picture may say more than a thousand words, but often times, complexity is not open to imagery, but only to text. But - text is difficult to digest and demands a concentrated effort. So there's a number of dimensions across which to choose the most effective mode of communicating something.

The iPhone after next?

2009-12-02T19:53:00.000+01:00

I'm breaking my silence here for a technology forecast about the next generation in personal portable (wearable?) devices. I have a feeling that it might be a QD Laser projector enabled thing that enables a Sixth Sense User Interface, thus making screens, keyboards and other such gadgets redundant. I'm looking forward to it!

Witzig, witzig

2009-09-13T23:42:00.002+02:00

On rare occasions, there's a German post on this blog. This is one of those rare occasions, because the post's object is a German language talk that I attended. Sorry about that.

Vor ein paar Tagen habe ich im Rahmen einer Flying Science Reihe einen ausgezeichneten Vortrag von Jochen Hörisch mit dem Titel Witzig, witzig - was ist lustig? gehört. Meine Aufnahme des Vortrags ist - mit Placet des Referenten - hier verfügbar. Die Kernthese des Vortrags hat mich schockiert: Das einzige, worüber man heute nicht lachen dürfe, sei die Religion. Begründet wurde diese Feststellung mit den möglichen Folgen solcher Witze - dänische Karikaturen usw lassen grüssen.

Meiner Meinung nach ist diese These falsch auf so vielen Ebenen, dass ich ohne umfangreiche Abhandlung nicht darauf eingehen kann. Nur soviel: allein die Fixierung auf die Religion ist viel zu allgemein, da sich nur monotheistische Religionen so ernst nehmen, dass sie Humor nicht zulassen. Den Göttern sei Dank kann ich mir eine detaillierte Kritik aber ersparen, weil der Referent selbst seine These in derart vielfältiger Weise köstlich gebrochen hat, dass er sie offensichtlich selbst nicht Ernst nimmt. Ein wahres Lehrstück der Selbstironie und echtes Vergnügen also - nur schade, dass nach dem (kurzen) Referat keine Diskussion zugelassen worden ist.

Gone Navigon

2009-08-31T10:50:00.003+02:00

Well, I've taken the jump at last and bought Navigon from the App Store. My trusty old TomTom GO 700 will be gone by tomorrow, and so will the special price for Navigon (hurry if you're planning to do the same). But that's not the only reason: I've been waiting for the TomTom app to come out because it is the market leader, but reading comparative reviews, the two competitors seem to be running side by side, with a slight advantage for Navigon. For me, the main reason for choosing Navigon over TomTom is that their coverage is substantially better (more countries in Eastern Europe). The substantially better price (for now) is rather convincing, too.

I've already tested Navigon a little bit, and it works well. The only issue is its massive drain on the battery, especially when listening to music on the iPod while driving. But this will be addressed by a phone stand charger. I've seen two interesting models so far from Belkin and Griffin. So, even the announced, but as yet unavailable TomTom stand is no argument.

Mad hatters!

2009-08-27T23:27:00.003+02:00

Since I'm beginning to approach the advanced old age and degree of baldness where wearing a hat seems increasingly commendable, if not medicinally required in hot weather, I've been beginning to shop around. Obviously, the common cap hardly suits my sense of style, but conventional hattery somehow does not cut it either.

That's how I came across LeTom in a podcast programme. Have a look at their collection - it's about as smart and unconventional as their advertisement lets on. There's an interesting story behind that, too ... anyway, I'm looking forward to wearing my LeTom soon!

Digital persona

2009-08-20T23:33:00.002+02:00

This is my digital persona - nice, isn't it. It's particularly interesting to watch its creation, so go ahead and have your own!

A musical black swan

2009-07-14T16:36:00.003+02:00

Reading this fun conversation on literature ("I no longer understand what arrogant means") between Nassim Taleb and Rolf Dobelli gave rise to the discovery of a musical black swan when Taleb mentions that musicians don't do music about music. As you now know, Glenn Gould did, and he certainly was a musician, even though one of black swan quality.

A favourite of mine

2009-07-11T09:59:00.002+02:00

This is a piece I can never get enough of - clever, smart, complex ... you can just see the composer having fun in writing it! Glenn Gould rules.

Oratio brevissima

2009-06-07T13:04:00.001+02:00

P6059747
Originally uploaded by chdreyer

Salvete amicae, salvete amici,
sed primo ordine, Salve uxor nova, maritus novus!
Mea maxima delectatio et honor est orationem in honorem maritorum novorum facere!
Non timete - oratio mea simplex et parvula erit. Pariter parvula ac Romana nova vel Romanus novus in utero uxoris. Tandem hodie causa ceremoniae nostrae est, et non lucra tributorum, quod mariti dicunt aride et sine passione. Malum simulacrum et excusatio redunda est, quoniam excusatio opus non est pro festum celebrare.
Ita desidero ut mariti nostri habent maximum felicitatis et valetudinis, et multos liberos - non modo pro FCB futuro aut Oranjes futuros!
Sed quomodo dixit Asterix? Nunc est bibendum!
Itaque vitra surgite!
Thomas - vale! Wenda - vale! Coniuges - valete!

Romani ite domum!

2009-05-29T14:09:00.002+02:00

My nephew Tomi's other hobby horse on Swiss TV for your viewing pleasure ... enjoy!

Never eat alone

2009-05-07T01:10:00.003+02:00

Perhaps you've heard of the self-development book by the same title? I haven't read it, and I'm pretty sure that my dog hasn't, either. And yet, she seems to be much more business-minded than her master, because she actually refuses to eat without company, even though the food bowl is right next to her bed. Very odd.

Remote birthday

2009-04-22T23:52:00.002+02:00

I'm not trying to escape from a party - far from it - but I'll be spending my birthday this year in Florida at a CFA conference. Leaving tomorrow, back on 1 May. See you then ... and don't forget to drop all these presents!

Watch before breakfast

2009-04-21T13:32:00.001+02:00

... and your day starts in a good mood!