Archive: November 13, 2008

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from Salvador

Thursday,  11/13/08  05:18 PM

This is coming to you from Salvador, and I must tell you I finally got a good night's sleep!  Yay.  Today began in Rio, and I had half a day to be a tourist before flying on to Salvador and took full advantage; I visited the famous Jesus the Redeemer statue which overlooks the city.


Jesus the Redeemer; sandstone 120ft tall, 635 tons, erected in 1931.  Wow.

The statue itself is amazing, but even cooler is the view of the city you get standing up on Mount Corcovado, where the statue is located.


Panorama of Rio from Mount Corcovado; click for larger version
(my hotel was just about the fingertip :)

Off I went to Salvador, a city of 3.5M people (larger than Chicago!) located almost due North of Rio on a peninsula that encloses the Bahia de Todos Santos.  Here's a map; small children are born knowing all this, but then, those are Brazilian children; you and I need Google.


Brazil - map showing São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador

Once in Salvador we checked into our hotel and explored the seafront a bit; we walked to the Forte de Santo Antonio da Barra, which encloses a lighthouse at the Southern-most tip of the city.


the Forte de Santo Antonio da Barra silhouettes the sun

Then it was back to the hotel for a beautiful Brazilian sunset - enjoyed from the pool deck, of course, and finally on to an excellent African-inspired seafood dinner.


Salvadorian sunset, as seen from the pool deck

I can recommend the shrimp with the pepper sauce, although you’ll need to have a fire extinguisher handy, or at least a Caipirinha.  Yes, more cycling to do…


Elise Aparecido, Leila Vecchio, James Wells, Sandra Martins-Boyte, Ole Eichhorn, Flavio Santos

And so ends day four!  Tomorrow, another presentation / demo, and then tomorrow night I fly home!

 

 

Thursday,  11/13/08  05:48 PM

And so the Ole filter makes its daily pass, from Salvador, and this time well rested...

Brad Feld has a few requests for President-elect Obama

  1. Appoint Some High Profile Republicans to Your Cabinet.
  2. Veto The First Pork Laden Bill.
  3. Continue Being Confident But Not Certain.

It's a good list, I agree with all of them.  It will be interesting to see who he does appoint to his cabinet, that will determine much else that happens...

John McWhorter: What Obama means for black America.  "The issue is not only the emergence of the new but the eclipse of the old."  This is all good, really good. 

  • "The studious black teen will no longer be tarred as 'thinking he's white.'"  Yeah, who's cooler, Barack Obama or Fifty Cent?
  • "The illusion that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are black America's leaders is now officially dispelled."  I never thought they were, now they don't, either.
  • "The idea that for black people, underdoggism is higher awareness is obsolete."  Excellent, the culture of victimology totally bothered me.

Maybe I'm going to end up glad Obama won, even though I was afraid he would.  (In the end I suspect his effect on the economy will determine how I feel, not his effect on "black America".  Still.)

Powerline on the bailout situation: More to come.  "Given the latest announcement by Secretary Paulson that none of the $700 billion appropriated by Congress will be used for the originally-stated purpose of purchasing distressed financial assets, it seems clear that neither the administration nor those in Congress who voted for the bailout had any idea what they were about."  Ugh. 

TechCrunch notes a scary line has been crossed for VCs...  "money going into VC funds is now more than the money coming out of VC funds. That line was crossed last June and there is no going back anytime soon.  The big institutional investors who tend to put the most money into venture funds as limited partners are hurting right now.  They’re other investments have gone south, they are over-leveraged, and there is buzz that some are pulling back from their commitments to venture funds."  And that is why there's a credit crunch for funding startups. 

A cool new Dutch coinReally cool. 

Ted Dziuba reports Valleywag dies, takes Internet celebrity with it.  "Now, Valleywag is going to be relegated to a column on Gawker.com, where it's going to be abundantly obvious that nobody cares about a group of well-to-do twenty-somethings going on vacation to Cyprus.  This is actually Web 2.0 coming full circle.  In the beginning, nobody cared who you were, and in the end, nobody cares who you are."  The crocodile tears are flowing :) 

The Sea Orchestra, an animated United Airlines commercial.  Beautiful!  I watched it several times running, to take it all in... 

Tim Bray on discipline and his 2 1/2 year old daughter.  I love it. 

 

 

 

 
 

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