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This is a fascinating insight into what our media call modern-day pirates in the Somalian seas.

Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the “golden age of piracy” – from 1650 to 1730 – the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage Bluebeard that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda heave.

And then

They mutinied – and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively, without torture. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls “one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century”.

It’s written by Johann Hari and was publish in the Independent on-line magazine. Read the full commentary here.

Detailed accounts of Corey Trager‘s interview at Google. He didn’t get the job but he describes the interview and all the psychology before/during and after the interview very well. Link

The guy sitting next to me on the flight back from LA (Tom) started talking to me once he (and I) had had a few drinks.

After the usual chitchat about work and LA, he explained the threat of fresh water shortage that threaten the world. He said that Australia is one of the first countries that has this problem at the moment but due to the spread of pollution into the fresh water supplies, we face a serious prospect of not having enough fresh water for our needs within 10-15 years from now!

He painted a grim picture but added that there’s a lot of research being carried out in Australia and elsewhere in finding ways of purifying polluted water into safe water.

Think a little bit of research into this is required. Maybe I can publish my research here later on.

Got back today having slept on the flight for 4+ hours. Now that’s a first for me, sleeping on the long-haul flight. Fatigue and alcohol (2 G&Ts + red wine) were the main causes. Although waking up with a hangover on a 11hr flight is probably not the best experience.

We flew with MaxJet – an airline that that specialises in Business class only so you have a 300+ seater plan that only has 110 passengers! The leg room is incredible! The service is good too and you get given your own little entertainment box which has around 20 movies plus lots of tv shows etc. – not as good as Virgin but good enough. To be honest I was so grateful I was flying business after the long hours of work at the Autoshow in LA Convention Center. Amen!

Got to LAX on Saturday night and got a cab to the hotel – the Standard Downtown. When I got out of the cab I thought the driver had got it wrong as there was a queue outside and music was pumping out of the building. I then realised that the hotel turns into a club on the weekend. I dropped my bags in my funky room and went straight to the roof bar which was amazing. The hotel is right between lots of high-rise buildings and the view is just ace.

As I was jetlagged so the alcohol went to my head pretty quickly and I along with a few others from the company carried on till the earlyhours of Sunday. Oh bless the Imagination crew.

It’s been a long day… Got to work early thinking I’m gonna get stuff done.

Turned out one of the clients used our latest version of an application which didn’t have the correct content and surprisingly couldn’t navigate her way through it – she had a bit of a go at my colleagues and they panicked accordingly!

I stayed late to fix the software – seems to me that we always need more people to stay late and fix stuff – well that’s just the way it is.

On another note, as if I didn’t know, I’m well into reading Lost Wisdom at the moment. There are plent of words per almost each paragraph that I don’t really understand but on the whole I think I’m getting it. The third chapter is about one the kings (Shahs) of Iran in the later part of the the nineteenth century who went traveling in Europe and wrote his memoirs to be published. It seems he did this to impress the European more than his own people.

The book is about modernity in Iran – this particular king thought he was being modern but he forgot about Iran and concentrated on his own success. What an ass!