From Harpers weekly digest:

Radek Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, denied saying that Barack Obama’s relatives were
cannibals who ate Polish missionaries. “Mr. Sikorski did not tell a racist joke,” said a spokesman. “He was only giving an example of unpalatable and racist jokes.”

What seems like years but in fact was only 7 weeks or so, Icesave went bankrupt and a pile of money I had in there seemed to vanish. As of this morning I have every pence back – the FSCS did a really excellent job of getting this sorted in short order and kept me really well informed. English institutions really do work well sometimes.

Ever since I heard about the tactile feedback on the storm keyboard I’ve been intrigued. While I love my iPhone, my old blackberry was still the best email device I ever used. The storm looks lovely and I had this vague feeling that I might be tempted to shift over.
Of course once I got my hands on one all illusions were shattered in seconds.
The screen does have tactile, clickly feedback – but it’s horrible. The entire screen is a button in effect – the touch sensors figure out where you’re touching and the click is the activation. But you need significant effort to actually click the thing and there’s no button like feeling – you feel like you’re pushing on the whole screen.
Also it’s slow – not dog horrible slow – but slow compared to the iPhone swooshy graphics that appear the instant you touch something. I know the iPhone isn’t that fast actually, but they fool you well enough that you think it’s quick.

Fred Wilson, my current favourite VC chats about how he’d like to see the auto companies broken up. I have some sympathy for this view but I take issue with his, and many other people’s statement that ‘We can’t afford to let the entire auto industry supply chain go bankrupt”.
The US 3 (no longer the Big 3 since GM is no worth less than Apple turns over in iPods) employ some 150-200k people directly. Their supply chain partners employ another 100-150K people and then there are the dealers. Auto is the largest retail employer in the country. Sounds like a disaster if this 1m+ collection of people went bankrupt right?
Well no – first off, does anyone really think this would be a vanishing act? When a bank goes, it’s fundamental structure does not exist any more – GM, Ford and Chrysler would still own plants, plans, facilities, land – they’ll re-appear in some guise, just smaller. Yes we’ll see 100k+ job losses but in reality these guys are making stuff no-one wants and there’s no indication that this will change.
We saved the banks because they really are all tied in to each other and if they vanish, society as we know it is screwed. It’s also possible the rest of the world would have gone down in flames with the USA. If the auto makers vanished, there would be an unemployment issue, sure – but Toyota and Nissan and a whole set of actual well run car companies would take over those dealers, buy the plants and in 2 years all the cars would be just fine – expect that they’d be cheap, good and actually sell.
The auto industry is saying “Hey, we’re really important” though they’re not. They also saying “We screwed up every single decision possible even while publicly stating we knew the right way to go, but this time it will be different” – I find this difficult to believe.

Michael Critchton Died of cancer at 66.

Just the latest example of awful customer service. T-Moblie in the USA allows you to choose to page mobile users instead of leaving a voicemail. Problem is that if the person you’re trying to reach has turned off paging, they just throw away the message – and they always offer to let you page people.
Any sensible person would know that the right thing to do is to turn off the option to page people who’ve turned off paging right.
T-Mobile’s response is a rather opaque and crazy justification which makes absolutely no sense. Evil bastards right?
Well, I don’t think so – even though companies like T-Mobile may very well do nasty things in the pursuit of money but this doesn’t make them money and annoys their users – there’s no sense here at all.
I suspect that this was thought through by someone who got it wrong – not an uncommon outcome. But they justified it, and everyone agree it and internally they’re lined up behind it.
And now people are complaining and T-Mobile are trying to explain what they were thinking instead of re-thinking why they’re doing this. They’re frantically asking internally “Why don’t people understand this?” not “Oh God – they’re right”.
I can think of maybe 20 examples off the top of my head where I’ve been in a small or large company doing exactly this. Somehow clients become the enemy when they depart from our perfect logic – people we’d happily buy a beer any other time become suspect when they ask for a refund. Even when they’re obviously not operating by our rules, they’re often doing the obvious thing and are baffled by why we don’t see how dumb we are being.

Dinner last night with a set of people from work, most of whom I don’t know very well, was surprisingly fun. A few deep conversations developed (it was that kind of a day – I suspect everyone was in a somewhat pensive and reflective mood) and I was once again surprised by how transparent I can be while imagining that I’m a complete mystery to people.
Someone said to me I should work in local government and then listed about 4 things I am all of which were pretty spot on. Now I’m not sure that I want to work for the council, but it gave me pause to think. I’m that easy to understand?
It’s these moment when we realise that so many assumptions about who we are and what we look like are wrong that really help you along in life. I suspect I’m in for a few days at least of heavy musing.

There’s very little to say. We got what we wanted. Even after the event, the speech is gorgeous and connects on so many levels. I disagree with much of what Obama thinks economically, but I feel he’s shown an ability to think things through, listen to his advisors and do something sensible. His economic guys are first class. I expect that he’ll do some things I disagree with, some that I do agree with, and many that I disagree with but understand. Most importantly, we’ve drawn a line under this past world – a new economy, a new president, a new world – it’s really at least that important.

His Acceptance speech is, as always, pure genius.