Sax on the Road: November 2006

The Apocalypse Game Show

I'm involved in putting together a new 'game show' designed to be put on in theatres and at festivals next year. We're doing a final preview, in a secret location in London this friday evening. Get in touch (or leave a comment) if you'd like to be put on the guest list.

Websites I have owned

A couple days ago I noticed that the second domain which I used to own, but let lapse, has been picked up and used by someone else. In the midst of dotcom venture capital frenzy I registered reddit.com with the idea of turning it into "textbooks online" where university lecturers could publish reading lists for their students, publishers would make the relevant texts available electronically, and the days of the university library shelf being bare would be over (and someone would pay handsomely for all this to happen). I even went as far as writing it all up and presenting it to my new 'New Media' employers as very definitely my own idea, and not a piece of IP created on their shilling.

I also recently let lapse saxonthebeach.net - seems it's been taken over by a bunch of hairy fellow Californians.

Mayan Calendar predicted dollar "crash"...

On 11 May this year, I was in an audience of 50-60 people listening to Carl Johan Calleman speak at the Be The Change event about the Mayan calendar. At one point, almost as an aside (iirc), he mentioned that on 24 November 2006, the Mayan calendar predicts that the dollar will collapse (I think those were pretty much his words). Well, according to The Guardian on Saturday 25th, Friday saw "Frantic day's trading sends dollar into freefall"

I can't say I'm an avid reader of the financial pages, so I don't know whether there's an even chance that on any Friday, I might have found a similar story. Or perhaps there are enough devotees of the Mayan calendar around the world with control of sufficent funds for this to become a self-fulfiling prophesy. I don't think it needs a modern day Nostradamus to predict that the dollar's days are numbered as the world's favourite hard currency. Seems like an interesting cooincidence for Mr Calleman to pick this date six months ago.