Scott Kirsner is blogging the Boston Ideas conference. (I blogged it yesterday, at the same url.) Music, stem cells, the brain, biological computers…

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Stonyfield Farms, the yogurt company, has launched 5 company blogs. (I haven’t had a chance to look at them yet.)

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When were org charts first used to depict a business’ management structure? Anyone have any leads? All I could find on the Net was a link to a book by Stafford Beers that costs $115. While I wait for my local library to locate it, does anyone have any other sources/links?

Thank you.

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I’m in Somewhere Pretty, MD, doing a keynote for the I-Media conference, getting to yell at them about why marketing alienates customers. I’ll be on the road most of the day and probably won’t be able to blog anything except, well, this…

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BuzzMachine has a list of bloggers blogging the conference. Also try Bloglines.

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               in just

     in Just-
spring      when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame baloonman

whistles       far       and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it’s
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old baloonman whistles

far       and       wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it’s
spring
and

        the

                goat-footed

baloonMan     whistles
far
and
wee

— ee cummings

[Thanks to Zephyr Teachout for pointing out how apropos this poem is.]

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A flautist and violinist played Baroque duets (“Music courtesy of the Brookline Music School”) in the front corner of the lobby of the Brookline Town Hall. “Let me get rid of that for you,” said a woman wearing an orange GLAD t-shirt, taking an orange rind from the tiny hand of a four year old on the shoulder of one of his fathers. GLAD was there to hand out roses, serve pastries, and applaud. There were no crowds of anonymous well-wishers, unlike last night’s festival in Cambridge, just clusters of couples with their family and best friends.

Terry, the mother of one of my son’s best friends, was there with a corsage pinned to her. She was invited by the parents of a boy a year ahead of ours in our local school. They were chatting with a small group of friends and relatives, waiting for the clerk to call their number. The clerk, a man in his 70s, stood outside the inner office, called out the couples’ numbers, and warmly congratulated each couple on the way out. By 9:30 this morning, fifty couples in this town of 50,000 had been granted marriage licenses.

When I left, I saw a media person videotaping a meter maid ticketing a motorcycle with a sidecar — B-roll for the “life goes on” message the news will use to frame today’s events. Yes, of course life goes on. But so far in Brookline, a hundred neighbors have had their love a acknowledged in a way that they probably thought would never happen in their lifetimes. So, life goes on, but as of May 17, 2004 in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, life is better for all of us.

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Hoder on the BloggerCon IRC points to a blog by the VP of Iran. Quick look: Wow!

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Yesterday I was at an all-day meeting of group looking into privacy issues around medical records. The number of people in a typical database of medical records who have the same social security number is astoundingly high. And, apparently there are 12 William Smiths born every day in the US.

So, it’s occurred to me that we could solve lots of our problems if we required people to give unique names to their children. For example, “William Smith1087b” or perhaps “Jeff ButterBurp12 Michaels” and “Rashid SneekerBang Jones.”

ICANN could set up name servers and authorize … Oh, to hell with it.

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My host’s server died yesterday and didn’t come back until this morning. Sorry for the interruption.

I don’t know yet what will happen to email you sent me yesterday. Apparently it’s all going to arrive soon. Sorry for the inconvenience.

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