Davos Notes: This, That, and the Other Thing

A couple of quick hits from Davos Day Three:

Went to a luncheon discussion today entitled "Where is Ukraine Heading?" with the president of Latvia, the president of Poland, the Prime Minister of Ukraine, and George Soros. On my way to the lunch I ran into BuzzMachine's Jeff Jarvis. When I told him where we were headed, he said: "Don't drink anything... unless you want to suddenly have a complexion like Viktor Yushchenko."

Had a quick First World chat with Adam Pasick, who (along with his avatar Adam Reuters) is the Reuters bureau chief in Second Life. He had just finished a virtual chat with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom that included the mayor's thoughts on the 08 prospects of Hillary, Obama, and Gore (see the whole conversation here). The talk inevitably turned to gay marriage, whereupon Newsom said that one of those three presidential hopefuls refuses to have their picture taken with him because of the issue. "I tried to get him to eliminate one of the names so we could have a 50/50 chance of figuring it out," Adam told me. "But he wouldn't." Even with a one-in-three chance -- and even if Newsom hadn't slipped later in the conversation and used the pronoun "she" -- I like my odds of being able to figure that one out.

While having a meeting at my hotel this afternoon, I experienced a regularly occurring Davos phenomenon: you sense a sudden flurry of activity around you, then you look up and see a gaggle of security guys, advance men, and bodyguards moving someone through the crowd. This afternoon it turned out to be Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, coming in to meet with the president of Switzerland.

One of the more popular sessions at Davos 07 so far was a Thursday panel on sexuality and relationships called "Relationships and Self-Esteem." Barbara Hippeau, the wife of Softbank's Eric Hippeau, told me that the discussion had been so in demand the WEF had decided to have a repeat performance today. "They better allot some extra time," said our HuffPost editor, Roy Sekoff. "The second go 'round usually lasts a lot longer."