Daylight saving day apparently occurred about two weeks ago. For the first time in my life, I didn’t notice.

The reason? All of my clocks are now smart; they know their timezone and the date, so they know when to display daylight saving-shifted times. (This in addition to keeping themselves synced to atomic clocks via the internet and NTP.) I have two smart clocks: one on my computer, and one on my phone. I’m very rarely more than 5 feet away from at least one of these.

I’ve removed all dumb clocks from my life. First, I don’t have any standalone clocks. Next, I don’t set the time on my microwave clock, leaving it showing “0″ when not cooking. And finally, I put a piece of electrical tape over the digital clock in my car’s stereo, so that its time display is not visible.

For the record: daylight saving time is stupid, and should be abolished. It already has been in some places. But until it is gone worldwide, smart clocks are a good workaround.

“People who possess loads of information in a particular field have historically been in hot demand and able the charge high fees for access to their stuffed, fact-filled brains. This was because the facts used to be difficult to access. Not any more. In an era where information about seemingly anything is only a mouse click away, just possessing information alone is hardly the differentiator it used to be. What is more important today than ever before is the ability to synthesize the facts and give them context and perspective.”

From Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds

“Q. Have your billions made you happy?

A. I’m reasonably happy, but the money’s not the point. It’s an indication that I’ve succeeded in the grand adventure of understanding reality.”

- George Soros (via Derek Sivers)

Today I opened a new book (Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody) and was shocked when the fifth physical page (not by page numbers, but by actual pages I had to turn after opening the cover) proclaimed: Chapter 1.

What, no preface? No introduction? No acknowledgements? (Without the acknowledgements, I’ll have no way of knowing that this book wouldn’t have been possible without the efforts of many great people!) No preface to the second edition, or notes from the author, or a table of contents that spans a thumb’s-thickness worth of pages?

Yes, amazingly: this book Got Right To It. I wish we’d skip all the build-up rigmarole, and get right to it, a bit more often. Not only books, but everything. Like DVDs with their FBI warning, Interpol warning, intro to the menu, menu transitions, and questions about whether I want to play with commentary on or off. Or software and websites with splash screens. Or video games with long intros. (Special props to Braid for dropping you into the gameplay approximately 100ms after launching the game.)

Let’s get right to it, shall we?

Having traveled to five different cities in three countries this summer, the one that stands out is Bordeaux, France. This city is beautiful, even moreso than Paris. Every building seems to be of 15th century construction, with detailed stone facades, wrought-iron scrollwork on the balconies, and huge banded wooden doors worthy of a Lord of the Rings movie. The narrow streets somehow feel intimate instead of claustrophobic; perhaps this is because most of the traffic is pedestrians. And the city’s relatively small size (same population as San Francisco, but spread out over more space) makes it feel a bit more relaxed than the usual pressure-cooker of dense urban streets.

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“Permeable membranes, that’s the key: a constant exchange between outside and in. You’ve got to let the world leak in, and let yourself flow out into the nutrient bath around you. [..] Life is all about having a permeable self - not so you’re unclear who you are, but so you overlap a little with the others on the edges.”

From Arkfall by Carolyn Ives Gilman

The Destruction of Sennacherib is a short story on the Variant Frequencies podcast. I found its overall production striking: use of sounds, music (some of which I recognized as Abney Park), and multiple voices combine to produce a fiction podcast episode not quite like anything I’ve heard before. Good stuff.

Sidebar: this story is steampunk to the gills. A year ago I called steampunk “a rising genre.” Aparently I underestimated that by quite a bit, since the New York Times is writing about it now.

Eric Raymond goes no-holds-barred on what he calls identity politics:

“My identity is not the accidents that have happened to me. It is what I choose. What I make of myself. It is irrelevant that I have palsy; it would be equally irrelevant if I were gay.

Identity politics, whether it’s about the “identity” of being palsied, or gay, or white, or black, or anything else, is a symptom of deep failure at choosing for yourself, at becoming a fully individuated and fully functioning human being.”

My latest method for goofing off on the internet: Zero Punctation. All the epsiodes are good, but the review of Assassin’s Creed is a good place to start.

The recently posted review of Braid captures what’s wrong with the game industry (high development costs stifling the innovation and creativity that typically comes from small dev teams), and how Braid is part of the new wave of indie games which is changing that.

For reference, past goof-off methods include: the Onion (oh so long ago), Homestar Runner, Ask a Ninja, Penny Arcade, and XKCD.

What will life be like in 2008? An article from 1968 makes a slew of predictions. I’m impressed:

“The single most important item in 2008 households is the computer. These electronic brains govern everything from meal preparation and waking up the household to assembling shopping lists and keeping track of the bank balance. […]

Computers also handle travel reservations, relay telephone messages, keep track of birthdays and anniversaries, compute taxes and even figure the monthly bills for electricity, water, telephone and other utilities. Not every family has its private computer. Many families reserve time on a city or regional computer to serve their needs.”

Damn, it was doing so well right up until the last two sentences.