No Spec Work - Rewarding Creativity Properly

The smell of frying bacon was coming from the kitchen, but Sam stayed where he was. He glanced at his face in the mirror over the fireplace as if seeing it for the first time. Then he looked at the rest of the room, over his reflection’s shoulder; the two old armchairs, the long dining table and the sideboard, upon which rested the big mahogany wireless.

Sam liked everything about that wireless. He liked its solid chunkiness, the big wooden dials and the window with its red needle, which lit up when you turned the set on. He thought of the programmes he listened to in the evening, sometimes with Keith, sometimes with all the family.

There was ‘Dick Barton, Special Agent’; “Come on, Snowey, help me break down this door before the blighter gets away!” “Right you are, sir - here, better take my gun”; and there was ‘Journey into Space’, with Jet Morgan and Lemmie, which had them on the edge of their seats with its sounds of rocket engines roaring, hissing air escaping from something or other, and the eeriest music they had ever heard. He even listened to ‘Toytown’ with Larry the Lamb, although he was supposed to be too old for that; “Please Mr. Policeman, there’s a dra-a-a-gon in the woods”.

He wondered briefly why it was called a wireless, when anyone could see the thick wire coming out the back of it, but life was full of mysteries. For instance, why were all airplanes a mile long, why did you float to the ceiling if you swallowed an orange pip, why was there a flagpole without a flag in the garden, and what had happened to their pedal car. This wonderful vehicle had been made for Sam and Keith by Uncle Gill, and was the envy of all the kids in the street. One day it disappeared from their garden, and the grown-ups claimed they didn’t know what had happened to it. The boys suspected it had been broken up for firewood, but nothing was ever proved.

Sam sighed. Looking out through the French windows he could see the flagpole at the bottom of the garden. He remembered the ‘boxing match’ he’d had with Keith in the garden. Uncle Gill had bought them each a pair of boxing gloves, and they couldn’t wait to try them out. Off they trooped to the end of the garden. They both swung and landed a mighty punch at the same time. It was the only punch of the match. They burst into tears at the same moment, and the boxing gloves were taken away, never to be seen again.

When he had first come to stay with the Drayson family, they had called him Silent Sam, and even now, six years later, he wasn’t a great talker, but he was happy, and couldn’t remember having lived anywhere else. Keith was just four months older than Sam, Pam was a couple of years older and Tommy was nearly grown up. Tommy’s real name was Eva, but she had always been called Tommy. Sam was a little in love with Tommy, but then so was everybody else.

In summer they sometimes cycled the five miles to Hainault Forest to pick blackberries. At least, the two girls did the cycling and Sam and Keith perched on the handlebars. He remembered that the metal brake levers would pinch his thighs if he weren’t careful.

He returned to the present to hear Uncle Gill calling him from the kitchen. Sam scuffed his shoe against the fireplace. He did not want to go into the kitchen. He knew his life was about to change in ways he could only imagine. Uncle Gill called again, and this time Sam made his way to the kitchen. Uncle Gill did not look at him. “Your mother will be here soon, boy. I’ve made you a bacon sandwich for the journey”.

Auntie Eva had gone off to work this morning, Keith had gone to school, and Pam and Tommy had gone wherever they went during the day. Sam and Uncle Gill were the only ones left in the house. The boy watched as Uncle Gill cut the rind off the bacon. This was the first time Sam had ever seen him cook anything.

They heard a car scrunching to a stop in the road outside. Footsteps came up the path. Now the man looked at the boy and ruffled his hair. Another first. Sam found he could not speak. The doorbell rang.

James Donaldson Collins

James Collins is an artist and writer. He lives in the Scottish Highlands with his wife, daughter and three dogs. His interests are history, sci-fi, chess and snooker. He also claims to play guitar like a ringing a bell.

Bill Gates announced that he will transition out of his day-to-day role at Microsoft by July 2008 in order to spend more time working on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which focuses on global health and education.

His announcement reminded us of the plethora of graduation speeches that eager students imbibed across the land this spring. As we listened to the meritorious goals heaped on the recent graduates, so they might achieve goals the speaker’s generation has found impossible, we could not help but think, why doesn’t somebody come out and tell the youthful aspirants what the real challenge is?

Like it or not, today’s world, as well as many another age, is conducted by two primary forces: wealth and power, and, other than resort to firearms, power springs from wealth.

So if you want to influence the ways of this outrageously necessitous world, consider the stark truth that all power springs from the opening in a fat wallet. It’s called the economic basis of society but, in its current incarnation, in debilitating excess.

When we were recent graduates, we were not aware of such an uncompromising reality and passed up at least two opportunities to make megabucks because we wanted to preserve our mental energy to expend it toward the achievement of our ideals.

Had we been wiser, we would have set aside a few years to stuff our pockets with power and then, like Mr. Gates, have spent the rest of our days placidly pursuing those still-inspiriting ideals.

So we find ourselves, from our own experience, in the unlikely role of advising the most idealistic to enable their altruism by involving themselves, initially, in the activity they undoubtedly are convinced is not the most inviting.

Then, should you be fortunate enough to enable your financial independence, you may, like Mr. Gates, head off into full-time devotion to your undoubtedly meritorious idealisms.

Well, the speech probably would not have been one that would have inspired the administration to invite us back or that the students would have received with endorsement, but the sharp glass on the road through economic necessity is a fact not lightly to be dismissed. Ignore it and you may step on it with painful frequency.

Tom Attea, humorist and creator of NewsLaugh.com, has had six shows produced Off-Broadway and has written comedy for TV. Critics have called his writing “”delightfully funny” and “witty” with “good, genuine laughs.”

I can feel it. The googlebot is coming to get me. You might say I am insane, but I know for certain that Google is a strange company and that the founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, definitely have a master plan for the whole world.

Sure, you might say, “They are just a couple of innocuous geeks.” But you probably haven’t read as deeply into them or their company as much as I have. I can’t go into too many specific details here because Page & Brin’s googlebot records everything on the World Wide Web. All I can say for now is that there is more to that gaping white space on Page & Brin’s famous homepage, www.google.com, then almost anyone realizes.

Google prides itself on minimalism and speed. The perfect combination in an Information Age. That sparse page, www.google.com, has attracted over a billion people since its inception. That such a streamlined creation could change the world boggles the mind. All the big boys, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, desperately fill their portals with as much clutter as possible. Google stays primitive but holds fast to the most ass-kicking search algorithm(s) ever created.

Just think if one could steal Google’s search algorithm. The possibilities are intoxicating. A few pages of dense, arcane code might be worth over a billion dollars! Of course, I believe there already have been many attempts to steal their sacred algorithm, with a few half-successes. Yahoo, MSN and others probably have gleaned the minds of Google defectors for many years.

Yet Google, led by the mysterious geeks, Larry Page & Sergey Brin, always stays one-step ahead of the competition. They constantly tweak their algorithm to make it the purest, most fair, most thorough page-searching algorithm on the net. Google’s algorithm weeds out garbage more brilliantly then anyone else. It finds obscure sites quicker than anybody else. How do they do it? The only way to know for sure would be to steal their algorithm.

I am disturbed by Google’s all-encompassing influence, but I could never even consider the possibility of attempting to steal their sacred algorithm. It would probably be a sin to even recommend such an action. However, many others have penetrated Google’s recesses and a few have succeeded in doing diabolical tricks. What I am talking about here are individuals who secretly work for other internet portal companies and get hired at Google, posing as run-of-the-mill computer scientists. Google has an incredible vetting process, but a few bad apples get in.

These individuals, bad apples so to speak, lust for Google’s algorithm. According to strict protocol, only Page & Brin can see the entire algorithm at one time. However, bits & pieces of this crucial code are scattered about at Google headquarters, and the enterprising computer scientist, with enough cloak-and-dagger ingenuity, can sometimes steal a few code nuggets and take them home and then sell them to the competition. That’s how the world has partially caught-up to Google in page search speed.

Sacred Words by Geek Rulers
Christopher K Haan is a free-radical blogger and e-ranter who dreams of one day saving the world. He is not ashamed of such a wild dream because he knows that personal delusions sometimes actually affect outside reality. E-rants

Feed Your Blog Over the Web