June 2004 Archives

I cringe whenever I hear someone say that we live in an age with no heroes. Aside from being a cliche, it's also complete rubbish. I think there are probably more great people alive today than at any time in history, firstly because there are more people alive today, and secondly because our high-speed, interconnected society has made amazing acts of global significance more possible -- not to mention it's made it easier for these acts to be widely appreciated. But enough of the rambling, incoherent introduction.

Here are five of my personal heroes of the latter half of the 20th century. They are not in any order, and neither are they any kind of 'top five', they're just five people whose decisions I admire and whose qualities I aspire to. I post them here because everyone should have role models, and if you don't, here are some that I think are worthy candidates.

Dr. Carl Sagan
A world-famous astronomer and respected educator, Carl Sagan authored some 600-plus scientific papers and articles in his lifetime. He may best be known, however, for co-writing and presenting the landmark 1980 documentary television series Cosmos, which mixed equal measures of scientific theory and infectious enthusiasm to create a passionate and persuasive science documentary that still stands at the head of its field. By demonstrating how physical law is filled with elegance and beauty, Sagan inspired people around the world to adopt careers in the sciences.
Carl Sagan died in 1996 at the age of 62, after a long fight against myelodysplasia, a bone marrow disease.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes
The world's greatest living explorer. Discoverer of lost cities, the first man to reach both poles, and the man who crossed the Antarctic unassisted. He probably leaps mountains in a single bound, too. Fiennes, with a friend, completed an unprecedented achievement last year when he ran seven marathons on seven continents on seven successive days, something that nobody had previously been crazy enough to try. How can anybody not want to be like this guy, who does the impossible on a regular basis?
Fiennes is 60, and is still finding impossible tasks and then doing them for charity.

Douglas Adams
A highly intelligent individual with an intense curiosity who, had he not taken to writing, could have been a world class talent in any one of several sciences. Although best known for his works of fiction, including The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, it is his other legacies that I find most interesting. As a journalist he was insightful, self-deprecating, and funny, and his early musings on computer networks -- written before the Web was invented -- exhibit both practicality and prescience. In 1999, Douglas's company, The Digital Village, launched h2g2, a project open to all to collaboratively create a repository of useful information on all subjects. h2g2 survived the demise of its parent company and is continuing Douglas's vision at www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/.
Adams died from a sudden heart attack in 2001, at the age of 49, and many unvoiced ideas undoubtedly died with him. He viewed the Hitch-Hiker's Guide series as something of an albatross, so it is perhaps not as a mere writer of humour, but as a technological visionary, that we should remember him.

Dr. Norman Borlaug
Most people have never heard of Norman Borlaug, which is a shame, because he is almost certainly the greatest humanitarian in history. An agriculturalist, Borlaug engineered resilient, high yield strains of wheat which are credited with ending famine in India and Pakistan in the 1960s and 70s. His innovations in agriculture, and the efforts he made to distribute them to the world, are estimated to have saved a billion lives from starvation in the past 40 years. Yes, that's billion, with a B. Take that, Jesus.
Borlaug is now 90, and is still actively trying to solve the problem of world hunger.

Steve Wozniak
A bio of Steve Wozniak reads like a 'did you know?' list; his achievements are so diverse and interesting. An brilliant engineer, he created the machines that started the home computer revolution (notably the Apple II -- both hardware and software were Woz's work), designed the original Atari Breakout arcade game, and invented the modern floppy drive. He's a serial practical joker, a world-class Tetris player (he held the Gameboy world high score for many months), and a generous philanthropist. Oh, and he was born on August 11th, which is the only thing in this list that he and I have in common, sadly.
Wozniak left Apple in 1985 after becoming bored with the company's direction. Apple lost most of its liberated, independent spirit many years ago, but Woz is still thinking different. Now 53, he has never lost his good nature or sense of fun. As well as working on high-tech projects, he teaches kids and does tech support at schools in his local district, just because he enjoys it. Through email and his website, www.woz.org, he often corresponds personally with anybody who cares to contact him.

Do you have any modern day heroes or any comments on these ones? Please discuss away.

I think it's time I stated the reasoning for the hair, okay? This is the only time I'm going to explain it, so listen carefully.

I will get my hair cut when -- and only when -- I get invited to my first job interview. This started as an idle thought but has now escalated into bloody-minded defiance. While my job applications continue to be ignored or unsuccessful, my hair will grow. When I get invited to one interview, it will be cut, and I'll probably have a full shave too in order to try and look kind of presentable for the interview.

This means that my hair now also serves the useful second purpose of a meter for my success in seeking employment. With this knowledge, people who know me can see instantaneously just how desperately my job search is going, by noting how long and unkempt my hair is. This will shorten conversations about employment down to:

"Job search going badly then?"
"Yeah."

...freeing up vital conversational seconds for subjects like politics, religion, and the Firefly movie.

This is the point where I should really upload a photo of the hair, but since I have no wish to be haunted for life by such a misguided act, you'll just have to contrive a suitable mental image. Imagine bad hair, then triple it.

But it's not my fault, okay?

This is the new Batmobile, apparently. Is that it? It looks like a pile of leftover triangles. The Batmobile is iconic; they could at least have made an effort.

Seems I've had another foolish idea: entering this round of the IRTC. Never mind that there are less than 20 days left and I haven't seriously used POVRay for years. It's just one of those things that I've wanted to do for ages. I have an idea, I just need to turn the idea into pixels. So here we go.

It's weird to have 4 years of work in such a tangible form. For the first time, it feels real.