I’ve known that if you get wealthy enough you can always buy a jet fighter (Larry Ellison and his son have mock dogfights over the Pacific), but how about that interface?

Today I found out that it might be coming a little sooner than the jet, thanks to Oblong Industries.  Check out this video of their G-Speak “spatial operating environment”.  Then you can compare it with the original Minority Report user interface.

Wendy and I got up this morning and went to our local cafe, Le Bergamote, for the best ham & cheese croissants in town.  The place was packed and the weather outside was furious - the wind was literally whipping the leaves off the trees:

We decided to hit up some galleries, starting with Pace Wildenstein to see the Richard Avedon exhibit.  The exhibit was almost exhausting in its scope: it contained photos of a shocking number of influential people from the 20th century.  From Bob Dylan to Marilyn Monroe to Dwight Eisenhower.

Literally, across the street the Matthew Marks gallery was exhibiting the latest work from Andreas Gursky.

Two blocks away, on 24th, Fredericks & Freiser had a show by Zak Smith.  If you’ve never heard of Zak Smith, I suggest you take a look at his portfolio.  It bursts with colour, detail and creativity; one wall of the gallery was covered with dozens of minute detailed drawings characterizing his history (which, by the way, is as colourful as his art).

A second room in the gallery contained all the drawings from On The Road of Knives - a project between Smith and two other artists whereby they mail drawings to one another in an ongoing story (check out the link for the chronology).

A block further, on 25th, the Yossi Milo Gallery was showing Lise Safarti’s retrospective of photos she took in Russia while living there from 1991 to 2000.  It’s a complicated mixture of decaying factories, traditional wooden architecture and homosexual boys.  These may sound like three things that should never be juxtaposed, but Safarti creates a touching portrait of a nation going through profound changes post the collapse of communism.

As if this all the art wasn’t enough to overwhelm, there was more going on outside.

Underneath the High Line, a 3 ton steel sculpture you could walk through had just been installed.

The sky was clearing, meaning that fog could be seen tearing across the rooftops of building.

And on the corner of 24th and 10th, the largest crane I’ve ever seen was being used to take down a the crane and it looked as if the construction workers were literally walking in the sky:

Like I said, sometimes this city just crackles with energy.

ABC is raising a glass to the US voters with relief and a heartfelt thank-you

DEF can’t wait to see the White House occupied by an African-American family, as it should have been since 143 years ago

GHI (American) has renewed optimism with our new charismatic, unifying leader…

JKL (American) is glad he won’t have to listen to people in the middle east complain to him about US polotics [sic] for the next 4 years! 

MNO is impressed by America today.

PQR (American) is alternating between pinching herself and drinking champagne, pinching herself and drinking champagne….

STU (American) YES WE DID!

VWX is is [sic] hopeful that today is the dawn of a new era for the US and the world.

YZA thinks she picked a good year to establish permanent residency in the US! (and is happy 123 went blue).

BCD is OBAMA-licious.

EFG (American) is inspired to use her status line to congratulate Ohio (and the rest of you) on an election well done. Cleveland Baracks!

Here’s to the next four years:

And I apologize for the weak Star Wars pun in the title of this post.

Technology Review has an article in this month’s issue - Upwardly Mobile - describing how banking is being brought to rural India.  A lot of it was stuff I’d heard before; basically payments via cellphones (it’s been done in the Phillipines for a while).  What was fascinating was this:

These women live in a village that is seven kilometers from the nearest bank.  However, there’s a bank in that town that trusts a local woman (she’s the government’s representative for aid work) and has given her a special machine to extend banking to the village.  The way it works is like this:

• She has a strong box where she stores money from people in the village
• When people want to deposit or withdraw money they sign into a special machine via their fingerprint
• The machine uses the cellphone network to send a message to the bank’s central computer
• The cash is issued from the strongbox and the user gets a receipt

The system isn’t perfect (what happens if everyone wants to withdraw at once?), but it solves the greatest need of the villagers: the ability to store sums of money for short periods of time.  I thought it a very elegant solution; read the article to get an understanding of the impact this could have if it is scaled up across the entire country.

I thought I new just about every interesting fruit out there, but this one was a pleasant suprise - until we tried eating it.  The darn thing tasted like a pithy lemon with little flavour.  I’m going to put it in the same category as Dragon Fruit: stunning until bitten into.

The opera was great, although I must admit I was exhausted at the end.  I think it may have had something to do with the fact that Wendy had dragged me to The Duchess the night before.  Two period pieces in a row is quite exhausting.  Next time I’ll go for Wagner.

Fortunately, it as the Knicks home opener against Miami on Wednesday night.  Scott and I went; here’s the opening tip-off:

Remarkably good game; New York was up by over 15 but Miami closed it and almost took the game in the final minute.  Of note: this is the only town that boos its own players.  Both Eddie Curry and Stephon Marbury were booed during introductions.  Ironically, later on the crowd was cheering “We want Steph” (neither Curry or Marbury played; the coach has benched them both).

At first it doesn’t look like much.  I mean after all, it’s just a train set, right?  Actually, it’s a little more subtle than that.  It’s called the “Stop-den-castor-start-set” which would translate as “Stop the nuclear train beginner’s set”.  The ‘castor’ refers to a canister holding nuclear waste that was sent to Germany for reprocessing.  Every couple of years these are sent from France and there are inevitable riots and then more riots.  Here’s a photo from the 2006 installment:

If you look closely at the ad, you can see the following:

• A protester has tied himself to the tracks (top)
• In the middle are farm equipment (used to block the tracks) and protesters (carrying placards saying “We’re against this”)
• In the bottom is a sample of what the actual ‘castor’ looks like: a massive container mounted on a flatbed

I thought it a great ad and worth sharing.  The paper also gets a bonus for their slogan: “The traditional paper for the new philistines.”

These are three stickers that I’m supposed to put on my calendar to remind myself to pay my credit card bill.  Am I the only one who finds this a little weird?

Think about it.  You’re a credit card company.  You are basically lending people money with the trust that they will pay it back.  If you want to avoid losing money you try and find the one’s most likely to pay their bills.  Those folks don’t need stickers for their calendars.

But then you get greedy.  You decide that you can make a lot more money if you can find people who will actually pay their bills, but do so late-because then you make money on interests charges and late fees.  These people are a lot riskier-how can you accurately model who is going to pay their bill late versus never pay at all?  In order to appear as a good corporate citizen who helps people become financially responsible, you give them stickers.  And if it all blows up, at least this way you can tell shareholders and Congress that you were trying to help people become financially responsible, right?

So here’s my suggestion.  The next time you sign up for anything that has a monthly payment plan and you receive sticker, short that company’s stock.  And get your money out of the stock market.  For evidence with a sample size of one, here’s Capital One’s ticker; down 60% from it’s peak and has gone nowhere for five years:

If you live in NYC, chances are that you’re voting for Obama (as a non-American I’m one of the lucky few who don’t have to choose sides).  Yahoo’s Political Dashboard has him leading here 60 to 35.  What’s amazing me is how he’s become a cult of personality.

You may have seen the Shepard Fairey Obama paintings, but what really struck me was the window display the other day when I walked past Brooklyn Industries on 8th.  They make inexpensive, trendy clothes sold overwhelmingly to young, white New Yorkers.  And they’ve placed a Barack Obama mask over each of their mannequins (even the female ones).

Obama is really resonating with a block of Americans in ways I’ve never seen before.  As a corollary, I can’t imagine Brooks Brothers doing this for John McCain.

A few years ago this was hammered home to me on a trip to the Yukon.  Here’s an old mine near Whitehorse:

Later we were hiking the Chilkoot Trail and when we hit Canyon City we found the detritus of a civilization that lasted at most two years:

As we continued on to Dawson, we came across a set of dredges that are now landlocked.  They were built on-site in a pond and literally moved a creek with them as they crunched through the mud looking for gold.  The creek is long gone and the dredges (there are two) sit as a testament to, amongst other things, what humans will do for a dollar:

To me, the Yukon was the most personal and poignant example of both how relentless and feckless humans can be.  

That is until tonight, when I heard of Hashima Island, off the coast of Japan.

This place almost defies description.  Starting in 1890, a small island was built up to contain exactly two things: a coal mine and a city that existed solely to serve it.  By the 1950’s, it was the most densely populated place on earth (over 10x as dense as Tokyo).  And then in 1973, the coal ran out and it was abandoned in weeks.  It’s still there, rusting away and waiting to fall into the sea:

It sounds-and looks-unbelievable but it really exists.  For more, check out this and this.  Also, watch this video: