Sometimes, the most important thing is to keep going. To get through the dip, as Seth Godin would say. I’ve recently struggled writing speeches for my Toastmasters Club. But what the heck, I thought at one point: The most important thing is to keep going. Accepting the dip was the first step to what in… Continue Reading
What do you do when the democratic decision making process in your country is broken? You can move to a different country – or you can try to fix it. If you choose the latter, states might use their means to protect the status quo and criminalize you. But every state – however despotic –… Continue Reading
Everybody is talking about climate change, and still I’m always deeply moved when I’m reading the actual figures of how serious climate change really is. This speech – given at the Brussels based Black Forest Toastmasters Club – builds on figures from the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It’s very… Continue Reading
Can you remember where you were when the World Trade Center fell in 2001? What did the event change for you? Ani DiFranco expressed her consternation, her fear and her anger in the poem ‘Self Evident’, one of the most powerful descriptions of the event I know. and the shock was subsonicand the smoke was… Continue Reading
As someone who’s major was Artificial Intelligence, I have great admiration for Turings seminal essay “Computing machinery and intelligence”. More than fifty years after its publication, it remains surprisingly relevant for such a fast-changing field as computer science. Here’s how I tried to explain this fascination of mine to my Toastmasters club: Können Maschinen denken?… Continue Reading