Category Archives: Poetry

Poetry, Security

Poetry speaks to CEOs

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The NYT reveals that many successful business leaders are avid readers, and writers, of poetry. No surprise there.

However, they correlate this love to the want of books, and then to the need for libraries. One could almost use this tortured logic to say the people who house the largest collection of books are likely to be the most successful. I think they are missing the forest for the trees (pun not intended), but nevertheless a more significant message is not lost in the article:

Poetry speaks to many C.E.O.’s. “I used to tell my senior staff to get me poets as managers,” says Sidney Harman, founder of Harman Industries, a $3 billion producer of sound systems for luxury cars, theaters and airports. Mr. Harman maintains a library in each of his three homes, in Washington, Los Angeles and Aspen, Colo. “Poets are our original systems thinkers,” he said. “They look at our most complex environments and they reduce the complexity to something they begin to understand.”

Exactamundo!

The poetry of information security is the act of looking at environments and reducing the complexity to something that can be understood and therefore secured.

History, Poetry, Security

Viking Treasure: Big Load of Beer

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I just read a Viking galdralag poem called Havamal:

Byr’i betri
berrat ma’r brautu at
en s’ mannvit mikit;
vegnest verra
vegra hann velli at
en s’ ofdrykkja ols.

Interesting how the meter works. The ThinkQuest site provides the above text, and then this version in English:

Burden better
bears none abroad with him
than a cool discretion;
with worser food
will fare you never
than a big load of beer.

Something seems lost in translation.

Speaking of lost, have you heard about the treasure chest discovered in Old York? A father and son with metal detection equipment unearthed a well-preserved cache of silver and such.

The ancient objects come from as far afield as Afghanistan in the East and Ireland in the West, as well as Russia, Scandinavia and continental Europe.

The hoard contains 617 silver coins and 65 other objects, including a gold arm-ring and a gilt silver vessel.

[…]

It was probably buried for safety by a wealthy Viking leader during the unrest following the conquest of the Viking kingdom of Northumbria in AD927.

I wonder about the “leader” concept suggested in the article. Not a King? Regia Anglorum gives some stirring details of the conflict in the area:

England was being ruled at that time by King Athelstan, grandson of Alfred the Great, who took the throne in 925 at the age of thirty. Athelstan was not a soft king: he was a warrior in the tradition of his grandfather, father and aunt, and was determined to have an English kingdom that reached to the borders of Strathclyde. His ambitions worried the northern kings, but, when he met Sihtric at York, Athelstan gave away his sister in marriage to the king of York, in return for the Scandinavian becoming Christian. It seemed as though the Clan Ivarr was secure in its throne.

That security lasted until 927, when Sihtric died and Guthfrith took over. Athelstan invaded Northumbria and expelled Guthfrith and Olaf, Sihtric’s son. He entered York, demolished the Scandinavian fortifications, and distributed the loot he found there to his army.

Impressive how long the leader’s lead container was able to preserve the goods. Good thing Athelstan’s men did not find all the loot in their day.

While we may want to celebrate the discovery of precious metallic goods from ancient times, beer recipes or even ingredient farming methods may be the real treasure still waiting to be recovered.

Poetry, Security

The Talk

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by Erlend Øye

And so I’m back and I am stuck here in the same room.
A thorough shuffle to the mail my first excuse
not to immediately face the day’s agenda.
Some very awkward words I need be telling you
of a feeling that in motion through I’ve carried
for it to be worn off upon return
that grew inside me like a credit taken
in a currency I could no longer earn.
No better way,
no other time,
no other call,
no better line,
as soon as now, within your room
it can’t go on,
I’m not in love with you.
My mouth has got a funny taste of metal,
a pencil line’s been drawn upon my face.
Weight has come to hang around my shoulders
for the knowledge of a doubt I can’t erase.
Hey boy you never finish what you’ve started
says the man I wanna be who I am not
who will sacrifice his part as easy lover
to never be the one who holds and drops

Poetry, Sailing, Security

Crossover Dreams and Rescue

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Rubén Blades in a NYT interview suggested it is best to self-motivate to survive:

That’s what I think the whole trick of saving oneself comes down to. If you’re going to swim, you don’t expect to be picked out of the water by a boat that may never come.

At this point I feel like I should translate the lyrics to Pedro Navaja.

It’s the story of a small gangster, of whom the song makes us a very successful portrait, who attacks a prostitute. In the aggression, the girl defends herself by shooting Pedro Navaja. They both die, while a drunk finds the bodies, searches them, and sets out again while singing out of tune what immediately becomes the chorus of the following ‘montuno’.

Instead, I think I will just say that swimming is not something that gets easier through collaboration. The more people in the water, the more they ultimately still have to save themselves or perhaps just one other — may the strongest swimmer survive. They may even interfere. A boat (e.g. technology-enhanced processes that can be leveraged by people trying to save themselves or others) is an entirely different story — may the strongest sailors provide value unto others and be justly rewarded for his/her collaborative efforts.