Bodanis on Passionate Minds

My British pal David Bodanis has a new book out: Passionate Minds. Why do I feel as if I've been going to weekly book launch parties lately.....whatever he is doing in London is too far to jump on a plane for, as much as I miss my old haunt.

Passionate Minds gives a feel for the extraordinary life of Emilie du Châtelet, 18th century fencer and gambler; partner with Voltaire; brilliant scientist.... David recently sent me a snippet from the book worth sharing. It reminded me of why and how he could write a book like this one. The only thing missing is hearing him read a poem or two. For another time.....

... They rode to an inn outside the city walls, they had chicken cooked in wine, there were candles everywhere, and Emilie raced in conversation, faster than anyone Voltaire had ever met, eyes sparkling as she teased and leapt against his words. This was special. He’d never even had a male friend like this, so what kind God had created this delightful woman, still just 27?

Voltaire kept it a secret at first. To the mutual friend who’d brought Emilie, he merely wrote a polite thank you for the evening. But he and Emilie had become lovers almost immediately, and just a few weeks later he wrote a poem for Emilie, telling what he now felt:

…Why did you only reach me so late?
What happened to my life before?
I hunted for love, but found only mirages
I found only the shadow of our pleasure.
You are a delight
You are tender
What pleasure I find in your arms

Castro's Halloween

Is this for real? I haven't been in the Bay Area for long but was living in the city a year ago, so how did I miss this? Clearly a popular tradition in San Francisco. I almost feel as if I should pop in for an hour to see how this City thinks and how they like to celebrate. My former Anthropologic past drives me to do things like this from time-to-time... :-)

JotSpot Gobbled Up

Big news today on Google's acquisition of JotSpot. Nearly every blog remotely connected to the Web 2.0 space has been talking about it all day. On Scoble's site - see a demo of what was sold.

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween. Sense of humor anyone?

eSnips Nails $2M in Funding

Announced this morning, client eSnips closes $2M in Series A Funding with Greylock Partners and Gemini Israel Funds. The company further announced the election of Erez Ofer, a partner at Greylock Partners, to its board of directors.

You've heard me talk about eSnips here before - their service essentially drives people to share, socialize, sell and promote their tastes, hobbies, interests, creative work and other aspects of their professional and personal live online. The service has been gaining more recognition as a key player in the social sharing space, particularly for allowing users to share every file type, not just photos, videos, audio, PDFs, or links. Users can create their own web space with personalized content that they can either share or keep private.

They already have nearly one million registered users worldwide. CEO Yael Elish comments, "people have lots of stuff to share and today they’re expected to use five to 10 different services to do it. With eSnips, people only need to go to one place for all their sharing needs."

Funding will be used to further support product development, market expansion and to expand its stronghold with mainstream, interest-centric users. CEO Yael's blog post on it today as well as Marshall Kirkpatrick of TechCrunch wrote a blurb about it this morning.

Addendum to Orphans

I had not quite finished "When We Were Orphans," when I wrote about it recently, and while I still agree that he does not consistently take you away to another dimension from start to finish, he makes up for it in the last chapter or so.....not only does he finally make the otherwise superficial main character human, but we gain the most important insight into his thinking behind being orphaned. The rawness and transparency of it all.

More than abandonment and orphan thinking, the clutter from those living unauthentic lives are revealed honestly and openly. He closes with an understanding, appreciation and acceptance of contentment, which we often only gain later in our lives, after too many promises wear out or fade out, or perhaps grow gray over time like the melancholy stormy skies in Spring.

In the end, he does not spend his life with the woman he never seemed to truly connect with, yet gravitated to and probably loved. He reflects on her own orphaned state and aloneness, as he starts to truly understand his own and that of his adopted niece, who has no parents to turn to throughout her adolescent life and beyond.

He writes, "My feeling is that she is thinking of herself as much as of me when she talks of a sense of a mission, and the futility of attempting to evade it. Perhaps there are those who are able to go about their lives unfettered by such concerns. But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm."

Permitted no calm!! Spot on Kishiguro. Bravo bravo. Yes yes yes, you get it all don't you?

2007 TED Prizes

I attended a TED salon tonight, where they announced the 2007 prize winners, among a group of old TEDsters, some newbies and friends of......Cameron Sinclair's mother-in-law and wife was there (nine months pregnant), neither of whom I have met. Both of them spoke prior to the unveiling (via video) of the 2007 award winners.

The three chosen for the 2007 TED prize, included war photographer, James Nachtwey, E.O. Wilson, one of the world's most prominent scientists, and Bill Clinton. Each recipient is granted one world-changing wish, which will be revealed at the 2007 TED conference in early March 2007.

James Nachtwey is one of the best-known and most highly regarded current photojournalists. He is known for documenting wars, conflicts and critical social issues. One of the world's most distinguished scientists, E.O. Wilson is a university research professor and honorary curator in entomology at Harvard University, where his most recent work focused on drawing public attention to the impact human activity has had on life on the planet.

Lastly, Clinton's Global Initiative, wins for its dedication to four critical areas: health security, with an emphasis on HIV/AIDS; economic empowerment; leadership development and citizen service; and racial, ethnic and religious reconciliation. The Initiative's long-term goal is to develop replicable models for the scale-up of integrated programs in resource-poor settings. The Clinton Global Initaitive has generated over $10 billion in commitments to improve the lives of people living on 6 continents.

Photos compliments of TED. Dr. E.O. Wilson, photo courtesy Jim Harrison, Harvard

LeWeb 3 in Paris

LeWeb 3 is around the corner, December 11-12 in Paris, this year co-hosted by TechCrunch. In an informal setting, they'll cover the next generation web and mobile services, virtual games/communties, old and new media and other topics. Last year, they apparently had 450 web entrepreneurs from 25 countries.

On Being Orphans

The New York Times says of Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans, "his fullest achievement yet," and I'm not quite there. While I typically agree with their assessment and I like his storytelling ability, he doesn't 'take me,' in the way that a 'fullest achievement' should.

I realized half way through (kind of like the last two novels I read), that 'ah yes, I've read this before, but many years ago.' Ishiguro won the Booker Prize for "Remains of the Day," so it is not surprising that I had read a second-tier classic again and yet.......

I recall aspects of the story, stage by stage, and yet I'm not grabbed, captivated, dazed, taken away for days upon end. The greatest of artists have the ability to take you away for days upon end, you don't need a reason why, how they got you there and best of all, you make up your own excuses for anything in the 'real world' you may have missed as a result of your temporary escape. Alas.

An orphan myself, there were aspects of his early (not so trivial) memories of the stages he goes through after losing his parents (denial, understanding and accepting what alone means), and responding to the rest of the world sans a traditional family, not just as a post adolescent, but for the rest of his life.

The main character, Christopher, is later a celebrated and legendary detective in London, who inevitably must return to Shanghai, where he last saw his parents (kidnapped, killed, other??) to discover whatever truth remains. Ah, the truth we keep from our children in times of turmoil, disgrace or when we feel we somehow can't unveil the news at the time....

It seems to me that the story changes slightly but the circumstances of which things are abstained rarely do. The face people hide behind is often the same face, regardless of culture, demographic or age.

As an adult, Christopher takes on a niece, who was orphaned herself at a young age, until a 'better arrangement could be made.' I've been there....by the time a better arrangement can be made, you've (like any child would) already established some attachment to that temporary arrangement until.......at some point, you realize and begin to understand that everything is temporary and start to plan accordingly.

There were times throughout when I felt he didn't understand the nature of an orphan, regardless of how they got there, and it was merely inserted to add depth to a multi-cultural complicated political plot. There were other times however when he runs (quietly) because there is no other thing to do when presented with a otherwise normal situation for most, yet a painful undealt with scene for the 'orphaned.'

Such a British moment where he approaches his orphaned niece about her 'belongings' which are likely lost -- for good. She wears a brave face when she responds about 'her belongings,' - "It's all right. I'm not upset. After all, they were just things. When you've lost your mother and father, you can't care so much about things, can you?" With that, she gave her little laugh.

In fact, she means the exact opposite and we all hear it in the tone, the subsequent laugh and mourn for her. He shares with her the meaning he placed on his own things, only a handful of which were saved and sent to him months later after being sent back to England.

I get that.......all of it. Those orphaned later in life tend to place less and less importance on things, but in the interim, they may be the only things you can safely clutch onto, the only things that remind you of a love that once was present.

She shrugged in response and put her horse up to her cheek, "you have to look forward in life." She means this but looks back for a period of daunting hours, days, weeks, months, years, that feel like a lifetime.

As Christopher stepped up to the house, he glanced behind him and aw that she was roaming about the garden once more, moving her horse in dreamy arcs through the air. (exactly where I expected her to be....then, and quietly for years to come).

I resonated here with Christopher and his niece because of my own background, but not because it was tantilizing, engaging writing. Clearly, he's a great storyteller and this is evident, but he doesn't 'take me away.'

He is however a man of words -- British articulation, "Ladies and Gentlemen. I can well see the situation here has grown rather trying. And I have no wish to raise false expectations at such a time."

Yet while meticulous and descriptive to a point of boring me at times (I remember feeling rather pleased with the way my voice came out, urbane an jocular, as I said.... I managed to pronounce my name with a flourish). Oh Christopher, get on with it. I love explicit supportive language to accentuate and flatter even the smallest exchange and yet, there were times I felt he could have said a lot more with a lot less.

Sometimes this serves him and the reader, when he chooses the raw and the truth, "the three weeks I have been in Shanghai, has become a perennial source of irritation; namely the way people here seem determined at every opportunity to block one's view."

Then later, "the British consulate, put his broad frame before me....as we strode on towards the doorway, I noticed the rather charming way each doorman would bow and bring his white-gloved hands up together. But we were hardly past the third man when even this view was obstructed by my other host........."

Oh yes England, I remember you well and experience upon experience there. Obstructed views were the norm and so much more than the limited view of a doorman or anyone else deemed important at the time."

The third part of the book starts to grab you, but it takes awhile to get there. It is worth reading because of his storytelling ability alone, but don't expect to be taken away into another passage of time for days on end.

Cross-Ownership & State of Newspapers

COOL image attached to today's New York Times article on the state of newspapers, cross-ownership, how that has changed, will need to change. Illustration by Christophe Vorlet - such a vibrant and eye catching visual.

On today's reality, they say "even if media companies could own more TV stations and newspapers in the same city, they might not think that it’s such a brilliant idea any more. As the F.C.C.’s chairman, Kevin J. Martin, said recently: “We need to develop a rule for cross-ownership that reflects current market characteristics, including the struggling nature of today’s newspaper industry.” Agreed....I actually don't want newspapers to go away altogether despite my numerous new reading sources.