{ Walter Flaat }

An oldie but very cool. The gravity wells of the planets presented in 2d scaled to earth surface gravity.

Best music clip I've seen in ages! If you watch this at work it should be from a professional how-stuff-is-designed point of view only of course ;-)

During carnaval in the Netherlands a local "Prince Carnaval" was refused to do communion in church. In response, local gay rights movements attended mass this weekend to see if they were also refused. They were. This was cause for columnist Désanne van Brederode to make the following empassioned call which I (loosely) translated here in English:

The movie 'A single man', which is currently in cinemas, shows a professor in English, who mourns is lost beloved. His pain is pictured effectively by fashion designer and director Tom Ford - someone who has equal interests for both exterior and dressing, as the depths of the inner world. Seldom have I seen desire, loss and swallowed desperation depicted so subtly. A serene, venerable ode to love, and the perfect antidote to the egocentric, exhibitionist 'emotion-porn' that floods us daily. The lost love of the literature professor, is a man. It's halfway last century, Homosexuality is not accepted. To his students, the profession explains that there are minorities that instill fear in people. Shyfully he speaks of "we, the invisible", thats all. Moments, equally wry as those in which his beloved is missed. This morning dozens of gays went to the high mass in the Sint Janskathedraal in Den Bosch, to see if bishop Huurkmans would refuse them the communion. A fierce reaction to the priest from Reusel that recently refused the gay Prince Carnaval. A justified response. It is up to no one, including priests, to decide who sins and who does not - that's up for Jesus Crist to decide. A decent heterosexual marriage, a homely family, what does that says about someones inside? And yet: practicing gays slur the sacrament only bu looking at it! You only have to think about the Irish molestation scandals by priests, and you will know what Jesus meant by the speck of sawdust in the eye of the other and the plank in your own eye. Often, I hear people say: "Actually Islam needs a reformer like Martin Luther." I agree, but Christianity also still needs Martin Luthers. Give the right example! It would be nice if Christians would bring their devoted frontbearers and their judging fellow-believers to the movie A Single Man. Those who stay unaffected and cold by that movie, just because it deals with gay love, should consider if there is place in a petrified heart like that for communion or for God. And not the other way around.

If you're in project management, you probably have a good gut feeling that tells you whether to buy champaign or headache medicin whenever you get a new project. This is of course a combination of experience, social/political factors etcetera.

This makes me extremely skeptical of initiatives like the one below. Especially the assumption that project management and project risk management are based on metrics is flawed. It's all based on soft human factors. How is the political climate? Do the stakeholders know what they want? Are you going to be able to be in the drivers seat or do you have to be passive?

Non the less, all this experiental factors are not measurable, and thus you can't defend them based on evidence. That's why it's vital that we do try to get to reasonable metrics.

A great way, in my opinion, would be to get a huge set of possible metrics, and then apply them to historical projects. See how the metrics would have looked during those projects. Then map that against the project outcomes and find out which real key variables made the difference. I'm willing to bet that the results are not what we might expect, Freakonomics style.

This paper is an interesting thought experiment, but not very useful in reality.