RonMertens.com

One of the good things about being sick (yeah, I’m not feeling too good, fever and stuff) is that you get to read a lot. So I just finished an interesting book: 1421, the year China discovered the world. It’s a theory that China (in 1421) sent hundreds of large ships all over the world - to do some astronomical measurements and also to trade and settle. The author claims that the Chinese reached North and South America, Polynesia (inc. Australia and NZ), All of Africa, Greenland and Antarctica - all of the world really. It’s a fascinating book. It’s a controversial one though - a lot of people say it’s bogus.

Anyway it was a good read, even though I can’t really check the evidence and decide for myself

So at first there was nothing, and then someone created Facebook. I really liked it at first - I found lot’s of friends (and non-friends) in there, and we are all happily connected. But now after a few weeks, it’s time to think what’s it all about. So the execution is great (I love how they built that site, and the user interface is a charm), and *everyone* is on facebook which is cool. But what’s the point of logging in there? To show-off to my friends the latest pictures from my latest trip? to write a witty quote or say that I love some sophisticated artist? That’s basically it - you can use it to impress some semi-friends who you wouldn’t have talked to in real life… kinda sad (mostly because I tend to do it still).

The thing about facebook is that you get addicted - I want to login! maybe Ahuva updated her Status! maybe Jeff asked another question! Maybe Michal is now a parsley!

The one thing I *do* like about facebook’s network is that it allows you to get to know people who were not your friends at all. For example many of my Metalgrass clients, or people who we work with in TripTouch are on facebook, and are now my ‘friends’. So it’s nice to see the people behind the e-mails. Maybe that’s what it all about, and it’s good to have facebook for that.

And on better books than face’s one - I just finished ‘The left hand of darkness’, by Ursula Le Guin. A great book by an amazing author. It’s so cool that she can create a world and a culture and history, it’s just so real. Recommended! Maybe I’ll go and update my book list in Facebook…

Yesterday we saw the fifth Harry Potter movie. I rather enjoyed it. It’s very ‘dark’ compared to the other movies, but when I think about it, the whole series is getting darker. The problem is that the books are getting larger, and they have to leave out more and more sub plots and interesting things in order to make the movie short. That’s a shame, but I guess they had no choice.

Hopefully I’ll get the seventh book soon - it’s gonna be interesting to see how it all ends.

I just finished a really good book - ‘A tale of love and darkness’ by Amos Oz. It’s an autobiography, beautifully written, and very touching. I really enjoyed it, and it’s recommended.

On another note, a couple of days ago we saw The pirates of the Caribbean : At World’s end. Everybody said how awful this movie was, but we wanted to see something fun. I guess with such low expectations, it was bound to be good - and so it was. I love these movies. Silly and without any coherent story, they are still fun. I love the music, and it also reminds me of the old ‘Monkey Island’ games I used to play when I was younger. Arrgh! Talk to me like a pirate.

I just finished an interesting book - Linked. It’s all about the science of networks. It begins nice. This guy argues again Reductionism. He says that western science had this notion that the best way to study something is to take it apart, study the bits, and then understand how everything is built. It might work on a radio or a telephone. But it doesn’t work on the human body or other complex things. Yeah - we know about atoms and molecules - but it doesn’t help us understand how our bodies function. I like this kind of thinking - that’s part of what’s wrong with modern western medicine as compared to more ‘holistic’ methods.

Anyway, so he says we need to study networks. The book deals with several models for networks, going through several interesting examples - the internet routing network, the WWW, living cells, terrorist networks, movie-actors network, and more.

But overall it was rather disappointing - because I’m not sure if I really did learn anything ‘useful’. It feels like this ’science’ is in rather early stages so they don’t have anything exciting to say. Yet.

I just finished reading Dracula. It’s one of those books that were on my waiting-list for years, and I finally found the time to read it. It was surprisingly good - I really enjoyed it. It was quite modern (it was written in 1897) - written as written journals and newspaper clips. Recommended to all the fans lovers out there