Nothing quite like a spot of Wimbledon

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I'm watching a particularly exciting match between Britain's "hope" Andy Murray and Stanilas Wawrinka on the newly-roofed and newly-lit centre court. It reminded me of last year's final between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. This event I regard to be the single best sporting event that I have ever seen. Federer was on course to beat Pete Sampras' record, was he to win, but on the day faced some incredibly good quality opposition in the form of Nadal.

There was hardly an unforced error in the match - on any given point one player was simply and solidly outplayed by the other. Over a course of almost 7 hours, including rain delays, the match resulted in the some of the most incredible rallies ever seen in tennis. I believe even John McEnroe said it was the greatest match he'd ever seen.

Being lucky enough to see such a high level of anything happen for such an unusually long time is a something I won't easily forget.

Being prolific

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The Michael Jackson thing didn't really hit home with me until last night. A radio station was playing non stop hits of his the whole night and every track struck me as more classic and influential than the last. I suddenly realised how intense it must be to have left a trail like that behind you in the world. He's chilling there, buried, and all over the world people are listening to similar Michael Jackson tribute days and suddenly getting their groove on.

He was, as they say, prolific. Sure he had help at various times along the way, but it was his own emotional energy that was behind every last ounce of his supernova-like legacy. A generosity of spirit that was offered to the world for most of the late 20th century.

Don't "give it 100%", try to be prolific.
It's different.

New vibe: hollow ice

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The weather outside is 32 degrees and at 100% humidity. Which means it's the same inside, I guess.

As I sit in my bedroom in Brooklyn, fan blowing loudly, ass stuck to the chair, I finally made it to the kitchen to get some water. Of course the ice in the freezer had not frozen through yet, but I did notice how it was in fact exactly half-frozen.

Which is actually pretty awesome. You get to have not just a top layer frozen, mind, but a complete hard shell of ice. While the almost frozen water from the center you can pour into your glass, making the overall temperature lower than if you had used just regular tap water. Do you know how much better hollow ice sounds in the glass?

Those perfect little shards stay so beautifully frozen for the entire duration of my beverage sipping, and make me feel like a James Bond villain in a Lanvin suit, uh... whose ass is not stuck to a chair.

The Second Enlightenment

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Finally, my decision in my last year of high school to drop from higher grade to standard grade mathematics seems vindicated. I didn't enjoy it and any talent I may have had for it was spoiled by a certain teacher fairly early on. It soon became clear to me that my talents lay elsewhere.

Only very recently it seems, though, that people are beginning to be able to gain any kind of real recognition or status for being talented in any other areas, like the arts or subjects like marketing or understanding of human behaviour. I think the reasons for this are numerous and come from very different angles. The world's centuries-long obsession with science and progress, or rather, progress through science only, seems to be reaching it's end. Sir Ken Robinson made some very good points at last year's TED. Well worth it.

Linear programming to save the earth

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As Stephen Hawking says, we are in fact going to have to leave the planet in order to stay alive. Assuming that this is the case – we definitely need to prepare to leave at a certain rate if we are to leave in time and stand any chance.

The time we have left will also be determined by the extra time we give ourselves by doing what we can, now, to save the environment. Of course we want to save the environment for its own sake anyway, but now we have a second reason - to win us time for the preparation to leave. The preparation itself will be determined, largely, by the amount of resources that can be allocated towards it, i.e. not toward saving the environment.

In other words, we need to put the greatest amount of effort into the environment and insodoing acquire the most time we can get, with the least expense to the preparation itself (in case we don’t make it).

If my memory serves me correctly (which it probably doesn’t), the mathematical tool needed to optimise two such grand plans is something called linear programming. But we will need an enormously complicated version of it, similar to the calculations used to determine our personal or corporate environmental footprint. Plenty of people are good at these calculations and it strikes me as something that needs to be calculated too if we are to really not waste any time and allow for the most pleasant time we have left here.