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Raw Thought (from Aaron Swartz)
"capture what you experience and sort it out; only in this way can you hope to use it to guide and test your reflection, and in the process shape yourself as an intellectual craftsman" -- C. Wright Mills
Election Slate: February 2008
A Very Speculative Theory of Free Will
How Dumb is Daniel Dennett?
Introducing theinfo.org
2007 Review of Books
2007 Review of Projects
Starting Out in the Morning
The Theory of The Game
No Superpowers
Bubble City: Chapter 11
Judgment Day
The Handwriting on the Wall
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Welcome
Amanda_chan's Xanga Blog
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i am Anthony dot com
bananasavant's Xanga Blog
FireBoxPhotography.com Version 2.0 is Live! (Saturday, October 13, 2007 )
bananasavant's entry on Saturday, October 13, 2007 at (1 comment)
Nippon (Tuesday, April 24, 2007 )
bananasavant's entry on Tuesday, April 24, 2007 at
Food for Thought (Friday, February 02, 2007 )
bananasavant's entry on Friday, February 02, 2007 at
Gonads... (Monday, January 22, 2007 )
bananasavant's entry on Monday, January 22, 2007 at (2 comments)
Oh Mama, Bin Spotted! (Monday, January 22, 2007 )
bananasavant's entry on Monday, January 22, 2007 at (1 comment)
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Blogos
God's Word | our words | meaning, communication, & technology | following Jesus, the Word made flesh
Blogos RSS Feed has Moved: Please Update Your Reader URL
I've moved to a new blogging platform (goodbye Radio Userland, hello WordPress). But if you read through an RSS aggregator (this is really important, so pay attention): This is the last post to the current RSS feed (http://www.semanticbible.com/blogos/rss.xml) You must change your feed URL to keep reading Blogos: the new feed is http://semanticbible.com/blogos/feed/. If you've only been subscribed to a specific channel (e.g. http://www.semanticbible.com/blogos/categories/semanticbible/rss.xml), those have moved as well: the new one for SemanticBible-only posts is http://semanticbible.com/blogos/category/semanticbible/feed/ (note 'categories' -> 'category'), and others are constructed in similar fashion If you read directly from the website, everything will work as before at my preferred URL, http://www.semanticbible.com/blogos/. The new site includes several syndication buttons that make it easy to add Blogos to your Bloglines, MyYahoo!, or other readers. If you have any problems with this, please send me (sean) an email at semanticbible daht com. I don't want to lose any readers in the transition (there aren't that many to start with!).
Lexical vs. Conceptual Semantics for Humility
In a comment on my recent thoughts on semantic search, Matt asks a reasonable question: "Wouldn't Louw-Nida help?" Since i've recently gotten a copy of Logos 3 Scholar's Library: Silver (i'll have a lot more to say about that later, but here's the preview: it's a fantastic resource), i tried it out. For this particular question, the answer appears to be no. Humility is under 88/G, Moral and Ethical Qualities and Related Behavior/Humility (note this is a conceptual label for the passage: the word humility doesn't actually occur). Related words here would include: lord (as in "lord it over"): 37/D, Control, Rule/Rule, Govern. exercise authority: same domain and subdomain servant/serve: 35/B, Help, Care For/Serve slave: either the same subdomain as "lord [it over]", the more figurative sense, or more literally as 87/E, Status/Slave, Free This isn't too surprising: Louw-Nida is a lexical resource, but the fundamental issue here (and the point of my post) is that there are lots of significant semantic concepts above the level of words. That's exactly what makes notions like "topic" slippery in practice.
xpound.org and Web 2.0 Bible tagging
xpound.org is a new Web 2.0 site that provides passage search, blogging, and social connections, but with an interesting new twist of Bible tagging, along the lines of del.icio.us. (I'm not sure if it's pronounced with equal stress like "slashdot", or "ex-POUND", like the verb) The basic idea of tagging is that, rather than a top-down, authoritative organization and labeling of knowledge, people can simply attach whatever labels make sense to them, in a bottom-up, unstructured (and, some would say, chaotic) fashion. The natural advantage of this kind of folksonomic tagging is that, at internet scale, it can overcome a lot of the messiness, while highly structured knowledge management approaches don't always scale. As with other tagging sites, there's no guarantee that what somebody tags as, say, africa, will have meaning to anybody else. But it means something to the person who tagged it, and thus becomes a highly personalized way to organize information. I think using this approach for Scripture makes some sense, and i've blogged about it previously. But i also have some questions. With del.icio.us, the item being tagged is clearly defined: it's a URL. But what's the natural unit for tagging Scripture? Verses are one answer, but they often don't have enough context. Books are generally too large, and chapter divisions don't necessarily line up with the content you'd want to tag. Of course, you can tag arbitrary passages: but here's where the comparison to del.icio.us breaks down. With del.icio.us, others who use the same tags as me can point me to sites i didn't know about. But where the passages aren't necessarily bounded the same, aggregation doesn't work quite the same way. Here's an example: a few days ago Josh tagged Ephesians 5:3-4 with five tags: gratitude, greed, immorality, impurity, and saint. 3 But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. 4 Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. (Eph.5.3-4) If you search on these tags (like gratitude), you'll find this unit. If instead you search by verse for Eph5.3, you still see the tag for gratitude, presumably inherited from the larger unit that was tagged (though you could argue that gratitude really only applied to verse 4). And of course, the following verses also talk about immorality and impurity, though (since they weren't included in these tags) they're not retrieved. One of the most interesting new capabilities that del.icio.us creates is knowledge discovery: if i find someone who has bookmarked several of the same sites as i have, i can go look at their other bookmarks, and often find new sites i was unaware of. This provides a kind of search by likeminded community intelligence, a really interesting counterpart to typical web search engines. I haven't found this capability in xpound, but it would be a great addition. (Hat tip to the ESV Blog for pointing me to xpound.org)
Search Interfaces for the Composite Gospel
I'm preparing a new version of the Composite Gospel Index pages, to standardize around the ESV text, and hopefully provide both more usability and more visual appeal. Designing an interface for this data poses some interesting challenges. There's a wealth of different attributes available, and while some (like traditional verse references) are familiar to most Bible students, i'm hoping to get outside the box a bit and do some novel things. The whole point of the Composite Gospel is to provide a different way to look at the story of Jesus' life, in particular one that is more oriented around stories, many of which are common to multiple Gospels, and to show how they fit into the whole. So i'm hoping to reinforce this in the new interface. Right now there are two ways to access the Composite Gospel, the typical entry point being the Pericope Index, a traditional single static page listing the pericope ID, title, and references, with hyperlinks to the content pages. It's got a number of faults: as soon as you click through to an individual pericope (here's Pericope 118, Jesus sends out the twelve disciples), you're back to looking through a keyhole, without the view of the whole sequence. It would be better to have a view of the whole index alongside the content for a selected pericope. there's no help for finding pericopes with specific titles or Scriptural references (other than browser search) while you can easily see how many sources are behind a given pericope (it's just a matter of how many columns are filled in its row in the table), the significance (as evidenced by size) is buried. Pericope 153: Jesus teaches about forgiving othersis only two verses: the next one, Pericope 154: Jesus tells the parable of the unforgiving debtor, has 13 verses. But there's no visual clues to this in the index. let's face it, it's just ugly :-/ The individual pages themselves have different navigational elements: next/previous pericope, and also next/previous for a given Gospel author. These are okay as far as they go: my major complaint is they don't go far enough. I'm also hoping to add more supplemental information: other pericopes with similar topics or content. For example, though i consider the cleansing of temple early in John (Pericope 031: Jesus clears the template) to be different from the one during the Passion Week (Pericope 249: Jesus clears the template again), clearly one ought to have a "see also" link to the other. a list of names in the pericope in view, with navigation to other pericopes which mention the same name It will be a while before i can do all this, though! I've been searching for some time for the right visual metaphor (and corresponding interface code) to provide a much more visual index to replace the current text-heavy index. It would be great if you could scan a clear visualization of which authors covered a particular story, and how much content there is for it (number of tokens). Likewise, when you've selected an individual pericope, you should have a clear view of where it fits into the entire sequence. In preparing for this, i got interested in the distribution of sources (an individual author's version) by their size. This graph shows that, binned in groups of 10: the black trend line smooths this a little further with a moving average (window of 3). There's quite a bit of variety (no surprise), ranging from a single source with just 9 tokens (Luke's description of the beginning of Jesus' Galilean preaching ministry, " And he was preaching in the synagogues of Judea.", Pericope 048: Jesus preaches throughout Galilee), to a single source with 566 tokens (Pericope 119: Jesus prepares the disciples for persecution, found in Matthew). But there's some approximation of a normal distribution (with an elongated tail on the high side), and clearly the bulk have from 30 to perhaps 270 tokens, with values near the median of around 30-40 instances (since i'm binning, this number itself isn't very meaningful). This suggests the cases i need to optimize for: i should be able to fit up to about 270 token displays on something close to a single page view (these days that really means 1024 x 768 pixels, though surprisingly i still get 15-20% of my visits from people with 800x600 displays). Ultimately, i'd love to have a rich treemap interface to support exploring the data in a variety of different ways (this was the substance of my presentation at the Society for Biblical Literature last year). As publisher Tim O'Reilly notes in a recent post, treemaps are really made to be interfaces, not graphs: their power lies in your ability to interact with them to explore the data. Unfortunately, i don't know how to do this live on my website: i don't have permission to host the Treemap software i use myself from the University of Maryland, and i don't know of a good substitute (O'Reilly's post is about a Rails implentation, but that's outside my current scope).
Topic Labels and Semantic Bible Search
But Jesus called them to him and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Matt.20.25-28) I've been thinking about topic labels for Scripture passages lately: a deceptively simple idea that's quite hard to nail down. The notion of topic includes many different things: a person might be a topic (Jesus talks about John the Baptist in Luke.7.24-30), but every mention of a person probably isn't a topic in quite the same sense (the same passage mentions the Pharisees, but the passage isn't really about them, it simply mentions them). Sometimes key words and phrases are topics ("luxury" is a word in the same passage, and a relatively distinct one at that: it only occurs 4 times in the New Testament). But if that's what you mean by a topic, then word searches will usually find what you want. The toughest cases (and therefore the most interesting ones) are when you don't have a distinctive lexical item for a topic decision. The classic Librarian Problem is that whatever i call a topic may have different meaning to someone else, or fall outside the conceptual schema they're using for searching (Shirky has a nice overview of this). The kind of folksonomic tagging popularized by del.icio.us works well at a personal level (i know what my "facets" tag means to me, even though you may not), and it works well at the larger level because enough others might happen to use the same tags that aggregation adds value. I expect this kind of tagging for Scripture will start to show up in some interesting ways in the next year under the Web2.0 rubric. Here's what got me thinking about this: i was reading Humility by Andrew Murraythis morning (highly recommended, by the way), and he discusses the passage above as an example of Jesus' teaching about humility. I'd agree (as would Naves, and most other topic-oriented indexes): but if you wanted to label such passages in some automated fashion, what evidence would you use? The words "humble" and "humility" are nowhere to be found, and neither are their direct antonyms like "proud". Jesus mentions the contrasting examples of Gentiles who "lord it over them" and others who "exercise authority over them": but these complex semantic constructs aren't easy to take apart (and the first one isn't very typical English: the Contemporary English Version's translation of "order their people around" is arguably more natural). Certainly being the servant of others implies the personal trait of humility, but the relationship is quite abstract. Just another argument for why this kind of annotation of Scripture will probably be done the old-fashioned way (by hand) for the foreseeable future ...
Lexical Statistics in the New Testament
I've been putting some of the data behind the Hyper-concordance into MySQL, in preparation for computing some statistics on lexical co-occurrence. Along the way, i've been collecting some numbers that i thought others might find interesting. There are a number of other sources for NT statistics: for example, this page from Prof. Felix Just shows words per verse per chapter per book (in the Greek NT). What's different about the numbers below is that they're based on Hyper-concordance's approach, which groups various inflected forms under their base form (what linguists call a lemma). For example, 'saying', 'says', and 'said' are all pooled under 'say' (as it turns out, the most common lemma in the New Testament, with 1946 occurrences). In the example from the Hyper-concordance home page (Mark.4.24), there are 10 content lemmas (9 of them unique) in this verse of 30 words: "say", "pay", "attention", "hear", "measure" (twice), "use", "still", "more", "add". Count Unique terms 73872 6333 base terms 73872 4526 name words 6638 593 non-name words 67234 3933 singletons 1444 1444 name words 281 281 "Count" is the actual instances, as opposed to the unique values (which we could call the content vocabulary of the New Testament). Some comments: As a textual corpus, the New Testament is relatively small by modern lexico-statistical standards: only about 8000 verses, with a vocabulary of only a few thousand words. I take some consolation from the modest vocabulary size: i'm interested in creating lexical semantics for these terms, and while ~4500 terms is far from trivial, it's not so large as to be completely impossible to consider. "name words" here means nothing more than a word written with a capital letter, about 1 in 10 words, which is actually rather large. I've only found three words that occur both capitalized and uncapitalized. The two obvious ones are God/god and Lord/lord: can you guess the other? (answer at the bottom) the ratio of terms to base terms is really a measurement of the compression induced by the lemmatization approach of the Hyper-concordance. I'd expect this difference to be much larger for a larger corpus. "singletons" here means words which occur exactly once (sometimes called hapax legomena). Clearly there can't be any variation in form here, so the instance and unique counts are the same. This is actually rather small, probably another consequence of the small corpus size: as a rule of thumb, for many large and general corpora, roughly half the words occur only once (though that's words, not lemmas), a consequence of Zipf's Law. the 11 most common words: say (1946 instances) God (1343) come (1120) all (1006) Jesus (964) go (749) man (745) Lord (657) see (622) no (569) know (543) Caveats: this is all based on the ESV text, your mileage will certainly vary for other translations. You could argue (with some merit) that all such counts should be performed on the Greek text, rather than an English one. However, since the ESV takes an 'essentially literal' approach, i'd argue that the magnitude will generally be roughly correct, though of course the exact numbers will be slightly different. Of course, these numbers for base forms depend on how you map forms back to their bases: i think my approach is credible, but certainly not perfect (i doubt 'perfect' here could even be well-defined). the Hyper-concordance omits 44 function words that are very common and not very contentful (in information retrieval terms, stop words). I'd argue this is a good thing, but you might think otherwise. (The second word that occurs in both capitalized and uncapitalized forms is much less obvious, though you'll figure it out if you think a lot about it ...)
NY Times Article on Parts of Speech
There's an interesting piece in the NY Times about linguistic parts of speech. It taught me the word Anthimeria (Greek: "one part for another"): from Wikipedia, "the use of a word of one class as if it were a member of another, typically the use of a noun as a verb." 'chill', meaning to relax (and thereby be culturally, rather than thermally, cool) would be an example.
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bwangiaLog
bwangiaLog - LiveJournal.com
How did the miraculous happen?
I just finished reading today's odb devotional. Its about the temptation of Jesus in the desert. Its a very interesting story . Jesus fast 40 days and 40 nights after being lead by the spirit of God into the desert. [ This would not be a significant verse if Jesus were not subject to the same hunger pains a regular man would have (i.e. if he used his God powers to reduce his hunger pains)] So Jesus is ridiculously hungry. I know how crazy i become after not having lunch .. Actually I once tried going a week without food ... it gets better after I miss both lunch and dinner then I started getting week on day 2 and on day three I got both soo weak and started feeling cold, at end of day 3 I was cold and could barely make it up the steps of my apartment and I decided to eat ... my little tale might not mean to much to some but I think Day 40 would be something doable for some but still quite ridiculous. Ok so Jesus is a man who is ridiculously hungry and the devil shows up to tempt him. In the Jesus movies the devil shows up as a hissing serpent but I know that no hissing serpent shows up when I get my temptations. So its more of an internal thing, I'll assume that its not just cerebral its also spiritual. Since Jesus was in tune with his spirit and his spirit is in fellowship with God, the reality of the devil tempting him in the spiritual realm would be very real. So the devil say turn stone to bread and given the spiritual power Jesus he can do this! I know its kind of mysterious for some how Jesus could do miracles but I think that its pretty simple. Jesus was a human just like me and you. He had a spirit just like you and I. He connected with God's spirit in intense ways and God granted him the communion and power to work miracles, access wisdom (aka the mind of God) and teaching (I think this is the reason he says, "38I am telling you what I have seen in the Father's presence") and all sorts of other heavenly goodies.We'll I think that every human being since Jesus has this power available! Why? Because we have a spirit just like Jesus' and because of Jesus death we have spiritual access granted by God. So why no such power is demonstrated in life today. One reason may be that we dont access because of our insistence on guiding our own spiritual path, what we will accept and what we wont, another could be because of lack of desire to access/have communion with the spirit of God, or lack of awareness of our spiritual selves and resources, other reasons may be our hearts have stored up in them desires or ideas from spirits other than the spirit of God. These are things we can work on to give God's spirit room.Well someone else may have honestly submitted to repentance, and God's leadership ... Well I think after that its up to God's desire to do stuff. But from Jesus' words that we will do more things than he did. I seriously doubt that God chooses not to use the willing and submissive. Its very exciting to me the amount of power to transcend the natural world that we live in that is available. We should do our part to access this power to deal with our temptations and other misnomers that we see everyday.God help us to be excited about what is available to us through our spirits connecting with yours and then help us to be committed to doing what we ought!Dont forget to check out my site http://www.cs.tufts.edu/~bwangia/ . The photo's page has some links to photo's from my wedding on April 23, 2005 in Santa Cruz, CA
Back from the honeymoon
Just a short note ...The wedding was fantastic ... yeah it was unbelievable. Later I'll get to talking about what it felt down inside to see K come down that aisle on Peter's arm ... the vows .. the communion .. the congregation ... kissing K for the first time ever!And boy ask anyone who was there about the reception! I danced and was sweating as if Id gone clubbing. Just to give an idea of how much fun happened ... picture a girl doing a flip ... my bride with one hand on one foot, the other behind her head and subsequent movement ... My sister Arlene and I doing the 'cooking spoon' dance in the middle of the circle ... picture three tall african men (my cousins) in black suits strolling through the circle floor waving little paper plates coz it was so hot! ... Picture guys chanting "Go Bradley! Go Bradley! Go Bradley! ... Go! Go! Go!"Dad danced, Mom Danced, Katee's parents, Chris, Shanee, Shanee's Mom Nancy, Charis, Evan, Neal Richarde freaking out in the middle of the circle (ps I think he is over 50 yrs old) ... I mean everyone you can think of was in the middle of that circle. You get the picture! All this happened at the churches hall, and who said church folk cant have fun.Then Katee and I drove down to Carmel and had the honeymoon of our life!We are just back to Santa Cruz from the honeymoon.I come back to Boston on Saturday morning and will probably update the journal after them. I'll probably put up wedding pictures right after then.K and I are doing great. Its never felt more natural to be married! I love it. Thanks to everyone for making our wedding just so great!
3 Days to go!
Wow! I leave for California today. 3 days to my wedding and the start of my life with K! I love her soo much (baby if you are reading this, I want the whole world to know).Its been a great ride. Lots of hope, lots of purpose, lots of patience, and most of all lots of love. Friday we have the rehearsal dinner. It will be awesome to be out in the hills in Santa Cruz with my Dad and Mom, Chris, Shanee, Little Nia-Lael, Arlene and the rest of my family and bring them to meet K's family and friends. Some of the boston crowd will make it to the dinner. Some of my Lincoln buddies are coming for the wedding Saturday.Saturday, we do it all. Its going to be a fun event! The mixture of everything. I heard the vows on saturday that Pastor R has prepared and my heart just started to lift as I felt the awe of covenant. In the day when all people want is 'self serving freedom' it has never felt better to place my intent, my will, my emotions, my love in the a vow that establishes covenant with K and with God. On saturday it felt like I was made to say those words; I mean I've never felt stronger about saying them.After Saturday, we'll be off to Carmel, CA start the married life!We'll be back in Boston on the 30th.Thank you Almighty God, My Creator for giving me K and this life I live. Glory to You.Todays ODB talked about God's unchanging nature. He does not destroy us even when we turn away from his way. Otherwise, the world would be gone by now. The circumstances of life dont change Him either. Its awesome to have this picture of God. To me its a picture of a God who sees it all and withholds his hand from punishment, and more often than not he stretches out and blesses even when we are on our own path.Mighty God, Mighty God .... Yes, you are a mighty God.
15 days to the big day!
Its 15 days till I get married and I’m feeling good. I got up today and was getting ready to go pick up K; when I realized that soon, I'll get to have her with me 24/7. We'll be together and won't have to go anywhere to see each other. It’s really a marvel the mystery that marriage is.We finished our marriage counseling yesterday and what an eye opener that was. As a single person, without realizing it you build up all these unhealthy hopes/expectations for your partner to fill that are all in your head. They are very burdensome to try and bring into a real living relationship. If you think about it would be really burdensome to live out someone else's expectations of you. It’s so much more refreshing to be yourself and have someone else discover the beauty of discovering your personality and also your quirks. Thanks God we got lots of warning on that.In general, I’m really pumped to be K's husband and later our kids’ father. I can't believe I get to set up a new family entity. Affecting my family with my actions and choices. It’s weird that by making great choices, I get to set up a home that is healthy and vibrant and I'll get to positively influence K, our relatives and friends, other visitors, and later our Kids.It’s funny that some of the guys tell me the count down with a tinge of "here it comes buddy; your in". But I just feel like I finally get to the finish line/or rewards line. Maybe for them, they got to do whatever when they were single/dating/engaged and so they had to come from that to full responsibility. But for the last few years I've been at full responsibility. So now I continue at full responsibility but I get to enjoy having someone to appreciate it, and someone to enjoy it with, have a strong reason for continuing this full responsibility. You don’t know how hard it is to do something hard when you’re constantly asking yourself, "Why am I putting myself through this? What is the big purpose in this?" But with marriage there is a big purpose to every little change that’s asked of you and making it yields some serious rewards. I’m looking forward to being married big time!Sure there are lots of other responsibilities coming up that I did not have to think about. But what’s new about that, when I had to leave my plush DuPont job for hard grad school that was new responsibility. When I had to make the adjustment to teaching tufts Kids in labs when I'd not done that before that was more responsibility, when I had to chart a new social life in a different kind of crowd at PT and grace street that was a challenge, when I had to leave PT and be at grace street full time that was a challenge. And as far as I can see on the horizon, challenges are lined up for me. But with marriage I get to enjoy big time; I get to be with someone else. It’s a challenge that has instant reward; life with K! I’m way stocked!And the wild card in all of this is its K! My baby's a lot of fun to be with. Everyone can tell by just how much fun people have interacting with her in public. But I come home to her everyday! Anyway, I’m writing too much ... I need to get to gradingToday’s ODB talks about a group that wanted to impose their religious practice on new converts just so that they could brag about this outward show. But also so that they would not face difficulty for going against the grain. Instead Paul says that their directives should be shunned and his boasts as a leader for the new converts are in the cross of Jesus Christ. The only change he's looking for is a change that gives a great reflection on what the death of Jesus has done for the new converts. Its quite awesome coz there's lots that people want to see in us that would make them feel better but is not in what Christ would like to see in us. I go with what Christ wants to see in me over what all the 'influentials' in my life want to see in me.
Sunday at Church
Yesterday a YWAM arts team out of tyler, TX came to gracestreet and did a dramatic performance that included lots of stats on abortion and the modern day problems that youth and family face. They went on to state that there was a bigger picture that framed everything. God created me he wants me to be fully alive. The enemy/satan is strongly opposed to me being fully alive. Because he hates people (me included) and he hates God. He will tempt, trick, confuse, and rid me of such things as faith, belief, compassion, trust, truth, hard work, love, hope, courage, service to others, in daily life and work hard to make sure that God's way of making these things happen for me, namely, faith that Jesus was God's son, that he was born, he died and he resurrected for me. For the saving of my spirit & soul (when I think of the spiritual), conscience and body (when I think of daily life on earth). The enemy will do everything to make me disbelieve this and also disbelieve that the teachings and practices that Jesus and his disciples taught will bring me and others full life on earth and after death.It was very clear to me that I had the choice of being fully alive! I could choose to be partially alive (believe in Jesus but not do his teaching or refuse to let him into my career plans) or I can choose to co-operate with God as he changed my thinking and practice so that I became FULLY ALIVE. Reached my full potential.I committed yesterday to choosing to be fully alive. For me that seems to mean a commitment to (Spiritual and possibly day to day) Priesthood (Ministry Work), Spiritual Knighthood (Prayer and daily living), and obedient to God living (day to day living). I feel very empowered by this choice. Today I came in to the computer science department and I power graded through 5 theory questions for my theory of computation class! I feel changes in my thoughts about my relationships. And I feel really encouraged about being able (with God's help) to live a life that obeys Jesus' teachings.Today's devotional talked about how people view Jesus and challenged me that if I viewed him as stated in the bible, I should respond to this picture with loyalty and love for him.
Long Time Coming
Hey,Ive been away form the journal for quite a while. School and other stuff got me seriously busy. Actually last week after studying about finite automata for the theory of computation class, I decided that the pressure of my current existance must have reduced me to a machine that could only address a finite number of input symbols. I remember going to class and not really comprehending/relating to what people were saying to me especially if that input was emotional; smiles, frowns ... You get the picture.However, stuff is really picking up. I ran the class this week and Ive been getting in a little bit after nine and leaving a little bit before nine. Im afraid I may not have been eating and relaxing well coz I started to fall sick yesterday. So its precaution time, the theraflu's, cough drops, lots of rest and relaxation and I will try and work some exercise into the schedule.Wedding planning is going well. I have one more guy to ask from my party and then Ill have to co-ordinate them. All in all I think my faith is the key in keeping sane in times like this. I read a passage today in the ODB devotional that showed a picture of the heaven's. I think picturing the heavens and hoping for that also makes sense to a lot of the struggle here. I dont know how Id take on this amount of change and responsibility without the knowledge that there was some purpose to it all. I know a lot of people are motivated by the money reward or happiness reward but a lot of those ring a little bit shallow for me. I want the big kahuna as motivation for daily life. Give me some heaven!
Turned 25 Yesterday
So I turned 25 yesterday.Birthdays are low key affairs for me (I even forgot) once growing up. But it was cool that people wanted to do something. The guys bought me dinner at picantes and K baked a cake and brought it in. D played a spanish birthday song on the accordion.Had a good time. Ive had so much happen in the last year. Since my last birthday and begun dating and got engaged to K. I got a masters degree, went home, begun research work, got my first niece, met in-laws- to be, have been to East Africa, California and Northern VT. Yay! Have had some wild times of personal and intellectual growth ...Someone said to me its just downhill from here ... meaning It should be easier going forward. Which is kind of true but I also think have serious challenges for my life.Yesterday I prayed that this marks not less than a quarter of my time on earth. Which made neurotic me think about taking better care of my bod if I wanted to be around for all that time and have fun being around!Its nice to be 25. Soon car companies wont discriminate against me for no reason. On a separate note, over the weekend I became quite resolute about my work as an academic. I was talking to a friend about how their corporate programming job was coming and I did not envy him one bit. I know I want to be excellent in academia and I know I have what it takes. So here comes nothing. As if to confirm this, I was asked to TA the Theory of Compuation class this semester and I will.Good to be 25!
Devotional: Life's Purpose
I competed for the Episcopalian scholarship that asked us to memorize some form of their creed and I remember that the first thing on the list was that Man's (and woman's of-course) chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Couple that with Jesus' "Love the lord your God with all your heart soul and strength and love your neighbor as you love yourself" and you the message of todays ODB.I tend to think about stuff so much and sometimes it gets me in a neurotic funk. At those times I question what life is for. Just to live doing what life demands and then die for heaven. Well thats as dry a thought as I can imagine. Its in stark contrast to obeying God and enjoying safe pasture in the land. Its in start contrast to Enjoying God forever. Its in stark contrast to love. To enjoying life and its challenges. Id rather think that Obeying God brings great pleasure and loving the people around me maximizes my sense of happiness, joy, and enjoyment of life. And it make perfect sense. If I disobey God and what is right and true and good. I feel apart from that good and true life, I feel the guilt of a violated conscience. Luckily God is so forgiving. All I have to do is come and say, Im sorry and I have a new lease on life. It turns out that enjoying God is more fun than resisting and disobeying him. It leads to better relationships with the people around. It leads me to enjoy my job and my existence and at the end of life, I have an even greater prize waiting for me!Someone may object that I am painting a rosy picture and that life has lot of sorrows and trials. I completely agree that life has sorrows and griefs and tragedies; but I would rather face those with the knowledge of God, his wisdom on dealing with them, and his comfort than without Him.It feels great to be a child of God today!
Devotional: Surrender and patience
Todays ODB can be best summed up by its last sentence, "Instead of trying to quell your fears with panic prayers, surrender yourself to God through a prayer of relinquishment, and see what He will do".I took comfort in the passage (Psalm 37:1-8)though.It talks about not worrying about people who do wrong and succeed because they will soon wither away. Instead we are to trust in God and do good; live and enjoy safe life.Vs. 5 strikes a chord in me because I feel like that is what Im currently doing with life.Vs. 6 is almost an untouchable because you are not supposed to dwell on self promotion. The speaker at church talked about this yesterday.The last line of the passage is a shocker, "Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret-it leads only to evil". I sometimes think that its my choice on whether I will worry or not but here it clearly states that fretting only leads to evil!
Devotional: Momentary vs future purpose
I guess I never understood todays passage from ODB. Esau, coming home from the outdoors swears an oath to sell his birthright to Jacob. I don't really think I understood this idea of birthright. It seems like a promised destiny not just for the individual but for his/her posterity.I feel like I have an inheritance/birthright in God and if I listen to him, I will come into it. Its almost already evident in some of the things that have happened to me. Winning a scholarship to come to the states, getting through lincoln, getting that Killer paying job at DuPont, getting into Tufts and getting my masters project done, going to Kenya in Nov needing both a passport and a visa to come back and I get it with no problem (student on legit trips have had months to get their visa's back), meeting and loving K, even my impending UCSC application. But it seems like the message here is that I can sacrifice all of that continued destiny if I give in to the pressures of the immediate. The pressure to have money to help with stuff, to drive a better car, live in a place I own, eat better ... just a better life! I could be unimpressed and step of the path of destiny! Disrupting all the blessing that was to come into being through me. I could opt for the ordinary in order to escape current pressures but I won't I will stick it out and change so that I can take on all my challenges. Then I will see all of God's blessing and will bring into this life everything God would use me to bring in plus some more! Yay!
Devotional: Gratitude
Todays devotional touched on something that has been on the fringes for me. Honest gratitude and thanksgiving to God for the things he does for me.This sentence from todays ODB is key, "Let's not think that because we can't repay God for saving us, we owe Him nothing.".Paul knew he could not pay God for the salvation that He gave him but he was so filled with gratitude that he gladly preached the gospel.What is it that prevents me from feeling the deepest sense of gratitude. Is it the little hardships that I suffer along the way that make me feel like I deserve the good I get. This sounds so ridiculous when written down but its actually what probably happens.I don't want to be a person who God has to take things away from so that he realizes that "its all God".What I can do to have more gratitude. Count my blessings and name them one by one Recognize my challenges as an opportunity to learn from God and the rules of life Appreciate the people around me Talk to God about his blessings...Hey google spider! Bradley WangiaI want to have more gratitude.
ODB Devotional: Count your blessings
Todays ODB was right on the money again.It encouraged me not to grumble about the tough things in my life because there are lots of blessings that I receive undeservedly. It tells the story of Arthur Ashe who contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion that he received when he had heart surgery. Rather than grumble and ask why me? about his blessing, he was maintained a grateful attitude because he said he could also have asked why me? why did he win wimbledon, marry a beautiful woman and have a wonderful child ...This really mirrors my life. When I met some of my friends back at home, I asked why me. Why do I get to leave Kenya and have the great life that I am having in the US? Why am I about to marry this extraordinary woman (she's more than I could ever have dreamed off on my own). Why do I have all the favor that seems to be on my life while millions are deprived the same. Its really awesome the level of blessing I have.The devotional ended with the following phrase "With unwanted burdens come undeserved blessings." Awesome!In an effort to make the google spidey find me I paste this link Bradley A. Wangia
Devtional: Quest for Riches
Todays ODB came from James 1:9-11; James 5:1-6 and it contained warnings on riches for both poor and rich.It comes at a really time time for me as I move into my new place and I start to think about how everything is not perfect! I dont have the furniture I want in there, my car is not fixed, little house things and all of a sudden Im off to the races looking for stuff. Prior to getting the place in Waltham, i lived in a basement had no furniture, for a while used the bus to get to school and had almost nothing. For a while I was really bummed about that and I sought God harder. I had all the challenges I have today and I did fine ; actually I think I was quite concerned with purpose and mission and praying and all that. Now I head off to waltham and materialism and self comfort/indulgence is creeping on me. It seems to justify itself with you've had it tough so its time to start getting the necessities of life! But this stands in stark contrast to what Jesus said to his followers Matthew 6:24-34 About not worryng and trusting in God. Well, I need to do the same!In an effort to make spidey find me I paste this link Bradley A. Wangia
Devotional: Help! God!
Todays ODB came from Psalm 69:13-18 and its a cry to God for help in the times of trouble.I just liked that we have a source of refuge for the tough times. We often may feel like when really sad or hurtful things happen that we have been abandoned by God or that "he let this happen". Well I can't answer the later but I've known in the last few weeks that God is not my opponent in these time. So its good to know that he is not an innocent bystander either, he is THE source of help for the tough times.
Devotional: Testify
Todays devotional message (Proverbs 24:10-12 )spoke of seeing people's spiritual reality and the Christian's responsibility to help if that reality is not good.We can not feign ignorance once we know what should be done. However, witnessing, as it is called in different circles calls for wisdom. We cant force people to see things the way we do. We have to be respectful and humble as we explain what we think we should say and most importantly, we have to realize that God is involved in their well being more than we ever could.Thats why he provides for each of us, gives us life's goods, sent his son to die for us ... and he is the only one who can bring real change into peoples lives.I'll look out for opportunities to tell people about God and the eternal realities of our relationship to Jesus.
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Byscuits & Davy
The personal weblog, photo albums, and writings of Dave Gandy.
Stephen King on my commute
I now have two and a half hours in a car every business day, and I've been looking for something to fill that time. I've thought of two good options so far, but last month's $100 bill has caused me...
Urgent and Important
I was talking to my mom at some point last week on my way home from work, and she mentioned something about the difference between something being urgent and something being important, and how that's something that young people need...
Funny timing
I got an email at work this morning (the account was just set up yesterday) letting me know that they'll be using my 'South Station' shot in a Fidelity Calendar. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you...
New job, new car, new photos
Hey folks. I know it's been a long time since my last update, but I've been busy. I mean mad busy. Here are my most recently added photo albums: Cedarwell at Harpers Ferry Cedarwell photo shoot Cruftlabs E&M Party Alton...
Photos and Pain
Hey everyone. This is just a quick entry to let yall know of some new photos I shot a week or so ago. During the Labor Day weekend, I went with some folks from Grace Street over to the Boston...
Love and Community
9The commandments, "Do not commit adultery," "Do not murder," "Do not steal," "Do not covet," and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: "Love your neighbor as yourself." 10Love does no harm to...
Exactly
I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. Haven't felt this in a while....
15 Rounds
I just wanna prove somethin' -- I ain't no bum... It don't matter if I lose... Don't matter if he opens my head... The only thing I wanna do is go the distance -- That's all. Nobody's ever gone fifteen...
Busy, busy, busy
Things have been a bit hectic lately. I started a new internship, moved out of the Wilson House, moved in to Fort Awesome, dated someone for a bit, did my first pro photography assisting job for Volkswagen, and had my...
Cinderella
After church at Grace Street on Sunday night, I watched the end of Cinderella with some of the younger kids. It was great to see the story again, to a degree, through their eyes. That night the story of Cinderella...
Tim Gilman
I'm skipping work three days next week. That's right. Next Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I have no plans whatsoever to go into work. But it's not for a vacation. Some part of me wishes it were, but not the part...
Fort Awesome
Jimmy James: I wanted a house just like "Xanadu," but without a dorky name. Lisa: So what did you call it? Jimmy James: "Fort Awesome." Tonight I'm starting to move in to our new place in Somerville, Fort Awesome. I'm...
Gonzalo Silva, Again
The wait for the subway was a bit painful this morning. Usually during rush hour, a train comes every 5 minutes or less. But this morning, I must have waited 25 minutes. For the first 15 minutes, it was tremendously...
First Week of Work
I interviewed someone for the first time today. She was interested in volunteering for the summer at DtM, so we wanted to see if she'd be able to help out with any of my projects. It was kind of weird....
flickr
I'm getting the word out about this place: flickr.com. It's a place where you can upload photos for free, which is nothing new. But they also have this great setup linking people together and creating small communities. You can also...
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- updated: Feb 13 12:47AM
Photos from Chosetec
army guy
Chosetec posted a photo:
lumberjack!
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Nelson Style
Chosetec posted a photo:
Nelson Style
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Simmons
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Cast iron
Chosetec posted a photo: Old rusty radiators, pipe fittings, all to be melted down and recast into sculptures
cool down
Chosetec posted a photo: the iron slowly cools down in the mold
filling a large mold
Chosetec posted a photo:
Molten iron flows into the ladle.
Chosetec posted a photo: the sparkles are burning droplets. Eye protection is recommended.
Liquid Hot Magma
Chosetec posted a photo: After cooking a while, the iron has completely melted. The plug is broken and it flows out with great speed.
Heat it
Chosetec posted a photo: The pre-heated furnace is stocked with iron and set to cook for 15 minutes or so.
Molds
Chosetec posted a photo: Molds with the wax burnt out.
Open top
Chosetec posted a photo: The furnace is regularly restocked with coal, iron, and flux.
Iron Casting, Mass Art
Chosetec posted a photo: John and his homemade iron smelter. Powered by a fan and burning coal, the furnace is able to reach the ~1200C required to melt iron. With the help of other Mass Art students, he runs an Iron Pour about once a month.
wear protection.
Chosetec posted a photo:
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- updated: Feb 07 02:16AM
Christianity Today Magazine
News and analysis from the world's leading Christian magazine.
Missions Boot Camp for Teens
As these teens prepare for short-term trips, they learn more about how to talk about Jesus.
Hindu Extremists Attack Christians
Hindu extremists exploit economic fears to launch attacks on Christians.
Pakistan after Bhutto
Post-assassination political fight puts the church at greater risk.
Disenfranchised in Pakistan
A guide to Christians' concerns about the February 18 parliamentary elections.
Stafford: This Samaritan Life
How to live in a culture that is vaguely suspicious of the church.
The Transgender Moment
Evangelicals hope to respond with both moral authority and biblical compassion to gender identity disorder.
Poll: Are most short-term youth missions groups well prepared?
Poll: Are most short-term youth missions groups well prepared?
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- updated: Feb 18 01:14AM
400 Bad Request
[untitled]
Blog entry on at
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Cooking For Engineers
Have an analytical mind? Like to cook? This is the site to read!
Recipe File: Creamy Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Off Topic: Comments and Forums Back Online
I've put the Community Forums back online. I'll also be slowly reactivating the forum-based comments. Let's hope everyone plays nice this time around.
Cooking Tests: Bacon (Part II)
When I posted the first Bacon Cooking Test (October 2004), I knew that I would have to continue to test different ways to cook bacon. I was so sure that a second article would follow that I named labeled that first article as "Part I". Over half a year later, I've finally gotten around to writing up my latest experiments with cooking bacon.I look at three more techniques in this article (using a fourth cooking method, low heat pan frying, as a control): Microwaving with a Makin' Bacon dish, grilling, and slow baking.Method 1: Microwaving with a Makin' Bacon dishThere are many specialty dishes designed for microwaving bacon. Some are simply plastic plates with grooves cut in them to catch grease. This one, the Makin' Bacon dish (about $10), elevates the bacon on poles. As many as a eighteen strips of bacon (according to the manufacturer), can be cooked at a time on this apparatus (although I think my bacon must be wider than their bacon because only a dozen of my strips would fit).Since I was only going to be cooking a couple strips, I used only the center pole.Following the instructions on the Makin' Bacon box, I covered the bacon with a paper towel to reduce potential splatter.I then microwaved it on high for 90 seconds. The bacon at the top (where it bends over the beam, was thoroughly cooked (almost overcooked). However, some of the fatty parts were still soft and partially unrendered. The texture of the bacon was thick and crunchy (similar to the microwaved bacon from the first test). There was also a slight off flavor to the bacon indicative of heating the bacon to too high of a temperature. It is definitely a very fast way to cook and with the Makin Bacon dish, a reasonable number of pieces can be cooked at the same time.As advertised, the bacon grease dripped down into the plastic container. The instructions recommend pouring out the bacon grease but why waste a good thing? After the grease cools, simply spoon it out into a storage container and store in the refrigerator. The grease collected was fairly clean with some small pieces of bacon in it.Method 2: GrillingI prepared a grill with low heat (about 300-350 degrees) and laid out the bacon onto the cooking surface.Flipping the bacon every five minutes, they reached doneness in twenty minutes time.With this method, the meaty portions were chewy (but not overly so) while the fat was light and crisp. There were also no off flavors to the bacon. Because of the texture and flavor, this was Tina's favorite cooking method.Because the bacon grease dripped down into the grill, there was no grease to collect and save afterward; there was also no clean up required. Depending on the size of your grill, you can cook a great deal of bacon at once.Method 3: Baking at low temperaturesI seemed to have lost the pictures that accompanied this baking technique - but their not much to look at anyway, it's just an oven.I laid out strips of bacon onto a wire rack and positioned a wire rack on a foil lined half sheet pan. I placed the pan in an oven preheated to 200°F (93°C) and waited. The theory was that the low heat would penetrate the bacon slowly and as the bacon cooked the fat would render, but without increasing the bacon temperature to a level where the preserving agents of cured meat begin to react and form new compounds producing an off taste (and potentially carcinogenic substances - but more chemicals such as ascorbic acid or erythorbic acid are added these days to help mitigate these effects).Unfortunately, I do not know how long the bacon was in the oven because I forgot to look at the time and fell asleep. My best estimate is that the bacon baked for about 3 hours.The baking resulted in extremely straight pieces of bacon that I found to have exceptional taste and flavor as compared to the pan frying and grilling (the microwaved bacon's off taste was really apparent next to the baked bacon). The texture was crispy throughout. Since flavor and texture were great, this is my favorite cooking method. (Tina prefers a little chewier meat and still likes the grilled method the best.)The long cooking time means this method is best for cooking bacon in large quantities (multiple pans) and then bagging and refrigerating them for future use. The bacon grease collected from the half sheet pan was pure white and completely devoid of charred bits.Method 4: Pan fryingAs a control, I cooked the bacon in the same way as the "winning" method from the first bacon test - pan frying. I placed three strips of bacon in a cold pan and placed it over low heat.After fifteen minutes of cooking while turning the bacon occasionally, the bacon was done. The bacon was light and crispy with a little chewiness to the meat. The grilled method's results came closest to this bacon. The bacon grease remaining in the pan had a pale gray-brown color and was spotted with charred bits and pieces of bacon.ConclusionsIf you're in a rush, microwaving works - but for the best flavor and texture either grill or bake (in advance). If you own a propane grill, cooking bacon over the grill is easier and more convenient than doing it on a stove top. However, if you don't mind spending the time, baking produces the best results with pure bacon grease for use later (may I suggest clam chowder?).
Equipment & Gear: Hefty Serve 'n Store
A few months ago, Hefty released a new line of products called the Hefty Serve 'n Store tableware. There's nothing revolutionary about a set of plastic plates or microwavable storage containers - but the Hefty Serve 'n Store is definitely a clever improvement over its parents: the plastic disposable plates and the low-cost multi-use disposable plastic container. Each plate interlocks with another plate of the same design to form a resealable container. We tried them in our daily lives (and under some contrived tests) and they performed admirably.Pactiv Corporation manufactures the Hefty Serve 'n Store tableware in two varieties: Everyday Tableware and Party Tableware. The Everyday variant is white plastic with a matte finish that is supposed to be sturdy, easy to grip, and microwavable. The Party variant, as far as I can tell, is just a brightly colored version of the Everyday tableware. I tested the Everyday variant.TestingThe plates worked as advertised. The rims are ridged in such a way as to allow two plates of the same size to interlock together to form a storage container. The idea is to use the same plates you would use to serve food (or eat off of) to double as storage containers. Tina and I are big fans (or at least we use them a lot) of Ziploc brand food storage containers. They are low cost, convenient, and work great as lunch containers to take to work. But, a lot of the time, stuff doesn't fit conveniently in them, pizza slices, sausages, chicken marsala, etc. Plate-sized storage containers make storage of most meals fast and easy.Microwaving food in the plates was also convenient. I simply popped the top plate off and repositioned it so the interlocking tabs sat on top of each other, opening up a bunch of vents to allow steam to escape. Reheating occurred quickly and evenly since the contents of the plate were spread out without having too much content stacked on top of each other (a common problem I have when reheating lunches that I pack for work).The general feel of the plate reminded me of thick, heavy duty paper plates. The plastic has a matte finish that feels like you're holding paper, not plastic. It's also stiff and doesn't flex easily. Several other testers commented on how much the Hefty Serve 'n Store plates felt like a paper plate. One tester was so convinced the plates contained some paper that he didn't want "to take a chance with soaking the plate" for fear that it would rip or tear.As expected, the plates hold liquid without any sign of soaking (they are plastic after all). We also hand washed the plates which cleaned up easily and nicely. I received some information from Pactiv when I called to ask about washing the plates. Since the plates are designed to be disposable, there will most likely be some reduced performance in the interlock mechanism of the plates (i.e. they won't fit together as well) with repeated washing. Washing in a dishwashing machine is not recommended due to the high temperatures that a dishwasher reaches.I should also mention that the seal made by the interlocking plates is not water tight, but works pretty well to prevent liquid from escaping if it sloshes around a bit. Just don't fill it with soup and then tilt it.DinnerI brought over a stack of plates to a friend's place, and we grilled up a couple dozen burgers and sausages. Service was handled by the plates and they worked flawlessly. Most of the testers ate standing up holding their plate with one hand and accessing their food with the other. None of the plates bent or flexed under weight and the plates were deep enough to hold corn on the cob without the eater worrying about the corn rolling off the plate. The rims of the plates were both stiff and comfortable making the plates easy to hold.We then served up Korean BBQ short ribs and some of the testers used a metal knife to cut the short ribs. The plate held up to the cutting just fine. It seemed that the plates worked at least as well as other heavy duty plates from such companies as Chinet or Dixie.At this point, we tested the crux of the Hefty Serve 'n Store usage model: storage of leftovers. We took combined the leftovers from the plates we used for serving onto a couple plates and used the newly emptied plates to cover. At first we tried to shove too much food onto one plate, but the lid wouldn't close. After distributing a reasonable quantity of food onto the plate, the other lid snapped into place without a problem. After enclosing all the leftovers in the interlocking plates, they stacked on top of each other and went into a bag for easy transport back home to my refrigerator.We only had two "issues" with the interlocking plates. First, since the plates are opaque, we can't see what's stored in each container. Second, there is no physical mechanism that helps each pair of plates from slipping off each other when stacked (although the plates have a bumpy matte finish that increases friction).When we first heard about the plates, we thought, "Why can't we just use plastic wrap to seal the plates? Is it really necessary to use another plate to cover your leftovers?" Well, usually plastic wrap doesn't stick or seal well when used on paper or plastic disposable plates, so you have to wrap all the way around so the plastic will stick to itself. Also, once the plate has been wrapped, stacking plates doesn't work too well when the only thing separating the bottom of your top plate from the bottom plate's content is a thin sheet of plastic. The interlocking plates solved the problem for us and we efficiently stacked the leftovers without worrying about tilting plates or ill-fitting plastic wrap.ConclusionsAfter using the Hefty Serve 'n Store tableware for a couple weeks, we are convinced that the product lives up to its advertised promises - plus they're quite convenient and the plates are high quality for the price ($2 for a 24 pack of 9-in. plates). Also, the bowls interlock with the 9-in. plates to form deep dish storage containers. The plastic is solid and has a nice textured feel (as opposed to other brands with thin flimsy plastic that might not hold up to a hearty plate of food). These plates are an obvious choice to serve food from when you've got an informal party.The only downside to these plates are that some people may consider them plain (even the festively colored Party plates) and not as pretty as other disposable plates. Also, they aren't the cheapest disposable plates either (but not even close to the most expensive). For the quality of the plate, it's a good bargain since comparable plates cost the same but do not interlock to form storage containers.
Off Topic: Comments and Forums
So, I just got back from my honeymoon and discovered that not only did we have one of our cars towed, but someone decided to "hack" my forums. I'm in the process of trying to catch up on work, so this forums problem isn't going to be fixed for a little while. Since both the comment engine and the forums are based on phpbb, and someone exploited a hole in phpbb, I've been forced to shut down both for the time being in order to preserve the rest of the website. I do have the info backed up, but there's no point bringing them back online until I get a chance to update the forums with the appropriate patches. If anyone would like to point me in the right direction, feel free to e-mail me at cooking@cookingforengineers.com but I may not be able to respond immediately due to my work situation and general lack of free time.
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Creative Commons » CC News
Share, reuse, and remix — legally.
CC0 beta/discussion draft feedback and next step
On January 15 we launched discussion of two new tools in a beta US version, both branded “CC0″ — a Waiver of all copyrights in a work, and an Assertion that there are no copyrights in a work. After taking account of your feedback (thank you!), a lot of internal discussion has led us to [...]
Songza
Songza, a beautifully designed music search engine and jukebox, recentlly launched with a chorus of praise concerning its design, implementation, and simplicity (read about the project here). Of particularly interest to the CC community is Songza’s commitment to CC-licensed music and artists, with Songza actively looking to promote and feature CC-licensed music through their Self-Promotion [...]
8bitpeoples
Today seems to be the day that unique, experimental, CC-licensed record labels show up on our radar. 8bitpeoples, “a collective of artists sharing a common love for classic videogames”, specializes in retro video game goodness, creating music that reflects a clear obsession with old NES soundtracks and the wonderfully brittle noises of the Commodore 64. Less [...]
Jahtari
Jahtari is a German dub/reggae web label that releases the majority of their music under a CC BY-NC-ND license. Specializing in what they call Digital Laptop Reggae, Jahtari focus on the collision between the free form aesthetics and rhythm of dub/reggae music and the inelastic nature of computer based electronica. Both stylistic movements focus heavily [...]
Lessig Library
Exact Editions, a company that “makes magazines, books and other printed documents accessible, searchable and usable on the web”, recentlly added CC CEO and founder Lawrence Lessig’s Future of Ideas, Code 2.0, and Free Culture to their database. This means you can now power-peruse Lessig-ology to your heart’s content. From Exact Editions: The books carry the [...]
OLPC + CC Hackathon
Check out the OLPC book & music drive and XO hackathon going on this weekend. From SJ: Share the love with One Laptop per Child, the Creative Commons, Textbook Revolution, and the entire world! We are collecting all the free books, movies, music, and other content that we can in the next five days! Then, on Tuesday [...]
Community Testing for LiveContent 2.0 beta LiveDVD
A beta of LiveContent 2.0 is available for testing! We’ve got it up at the CC labs site (direct download) and the Fedora Spins site (torrent). Burn the DVD image to a disc and boot it up. The Creative Commons tech team has been working on an interesting content “autocuration” process for LiveContent 2.0, [...]
Freeing America’s Operating System
Last November Carl Malamud’s Public.Resource.Org announced an initiative to free 1.8 million pages of U.S. case law, publishing them online with no restrictions on reuse. Today the results of this initiative are available at http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/. From the press release (pdf): Today’s release covers all U.S. Supreme Court decisions and all Courts of Appeals decisions from 1950 on. The [...]
commons-research list
There’s a new mailing list spearheaded by Giorgos Cheliotis (see past posts concerning his research) has been set up for researchers critiquing, investigating, quantifying, or otherwise researching Creative Commons and the commons more broadly. Researchers from all fields are welcome. Visit commons-research to join (thanks again to ibiblio for hosting this and many other CC-related resources [...]
2008 Summer Internships
For all the students who have been patiently waiting, Creative Commons has posted summer internship positions. Please spread the word to interested college or graduate students. We are currently looking for a Community Development, a Business Development, a Technology, and a Development intern. Three full-time and one part-time (Development) positions are available in total. Applicants [...]
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css Zen Garden
A demonstration of what can be accomplished visually through CSS-based design. This feed announces the past 8 new entries.
#209 - 21 Nov 2007
'CSS Co., Ltd.' by Benjamin Klemm
#208 - 21 Nov 2007
'Sakura' by Tatsuya Uchida
#207 - 15 Nov 2007
'Kyoto Forest' by John Politowski
#206 - 27 Oct 2007
'A Walk in the Garden' by Simon Van Hauwermeiren
#205 - 27 Oct 2007
'spring360' by Rene Hornig
#204 - 24 Oct 2007
'Withering Beauty' by William Duffy
#203 - 24 Oct 2007
'Tiny Blue' by Timo Virtanen
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public-rdf-dawg@w3.org Mail Archives
This is the RDF Data Access Working Group mailing list. Please keep traffic relevent to working group business
"DAWG minutes - 4 Sep 2007" ( message in thread)
Message posted by Lee Feigenbaum
"Timezones and xsd:dateTime/xsd:date" (1 message in thread)
Message posted by Seaborne, Andy
"all facets covered, list of tests to approve:" (1 message in thread)
Message posted by Lee Feigenbaum
"Minutes - 28 Aug 2007" ( message in thread)
Message posted by Lee Feigenbaum
"DAWG Agenda (short) - 4 Sept 2007 @ 14:30 UTC" (2 messages in thread)
Last message posted by Seaborne, Andy
"all facets covered, list of tests to approve:" (1 message in thread)
Message posted by Seaborne, Andy
"Re: DAWG Agenda - 28 Aug 2007 @ 14:30 UTC" (1 message in thread)
Message posted by Eric Prud'hommeaux
"Re: all facets covered, list of tests to approve:" (1 message in thread)
Message posted by Eric Prud'hommeaux
"Timezones and xsd:dateTime/xsd:date" (1 message in thread)
Message posted by Lee Feigenbaum
"Comparing with <=" (1 message in thread)
Message posted by Seaborne, Andy
"Timezones and xsd:dateTime/xsd:date" (1 message in thread)
Message posted by Seaborne, Andy
"all facets covered, list of tests to approve:" ( message in thread)
Message posted by Lee Feigenbaum
"all facets covered, list of tests to approve:" (1 message in thread)
Message posted by Eric Prud'hommeaux
"[Fwd: Re: followup: SPARQL test suite and implementation report]" (1 message in thread)
Message posted by Lee Feigenbaum
"SPARQL testing: status" ( message in thread)
Message posted by Ivan Mikhailov
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Digital Web: What's New
http://www.digital-web.com/
the web comes to the iPod
Apple today announced the soon to be available iPod touch - effectively a phoneless iPhone. The new iPod enables wifi based web browsing, featuring a variation of Safari as its browser. How do your page designs fair when the browser window is 320px wide? Is this the end of the fixed width page design?
Smashing Magazine Celebrates
Smashing Magazine is celebrating its first anniversary with a big design/development book giveaway, some useful questions answered by 50 designers and other web professionals, and other events. They promise a lot will be happening this week, so stop by to visit—and maybe even win a prize.
Magento Preview released - open-source e-commerce
They promised an August release, and in the dying seconds of the month Varien's eagerly awaited open-source e-commerce platform, Magento, is finally available to download. Version 0.6 is an early beta release and not recommended for use in production environments, but I'm sure there will be hordes of developers eager to see if this is finally the customizable, standards-compliant, e-commerce platform we've been desperate for for years.
PHP support arrives in Aptana
With their latest release, the JavaScript IDE Aptana now offers some great new features for PHP developers. Code Assist and an Outline view are now available to ease your backend development, and you can also preview PHP pages through a server instead of on your local hard drive, making managing PHP projects inside Aptana a lot easier.
Deadlines for Web Directions South and the McFarlane Prize
For our Australian readers, here's a reminder about the deadlines for Web Directions South and the McFarlane Prize honoring “excellence in Australian Web Design”. Both deadlines are this coming Friday, August 31 2007, at midnight. Get your discount Web Directions South tickets for $895, or at least reserve a spot at that price!
Labor Day holiday
The Digital Web magazine staff will be taking a well-earned break for the next couple of weeks, while we wind down after the summer break and Labor Day. Our next issue will hit your virtual newsstands on September 11th.
Cameron Moll's New Mobile Design Book: Win an iPhone?
Interested in knowing respected web designer Cameron Moll's take on designing for mobile, and maybe even winning an iPhone if you buy his new book on its first day on sale? Then be sure to go to the book's spiffy new website today-his book, Mobile Web Design, is available there now.
Job: Web Developer (WA)
My colleague, Jon Pederson at PWG Design, tells me that they are looking for a skilled backend web developer who is interested in working on a variety of projects with a small team of really great people. For those who don't know, PWG Design is a Web design company based in Mount Vernon, Washington that does some pretty cool work. Requirements for the job include: PHP, Ruby on Rails, MySQL, Javascript Understanding of Web Standards Used to Mac OS X & Linux Clear communications skills Good work ethic and honest As far as location goes, Jon tells me that they would love to find someone local in the Seattle area, but they would be open to anyone in Washington state provided they are available via email, phone and IM. If you are interested and fit these criteria contact Jon directly via pwgdesign.com.
New Issue: Reviews of 'Beginning Rails' and Easy-Install Forums
Digital Web's own staff have two contributions to the magazine this week. Managing Editor Matthew Pennell digs into Ruby on Rails and reviews “Beginning Rails”, a great primer for those getting started with application frameworks. Editorial Assistant Jessica Neuman Beck reconsiders the formerly daunting task of setting up online forums in Forum Setup for Designers: Putting Vanilla to the Test.
Refresh Seattle: Web Accessibility in Three Acts
The next Refresh Seattle talk sneaked up on us. Tomorrow fellow colleague Matt May is going to be talking about Web Accessibility in Three Acts. For those who don't know, Matt May was one of the four original founders of Blue Flavor, he also did a lot of work for the W3C WAI group, lead WaSP's Accessibility Task Force, he is a contributor at Digital Web Magazine (be sure to check out Matt's article on Accessibility From The Ground Up), and these days you will find him at Adobe addressing accessibility within their array of products. His talk will be one not to miss. Space is limited for this talk so please RSVP ahead of time.
Webmaster Jam Session Early Bird Registration Ends Soon!
For those of you who are slack'n, the Early Bird discount for the Webmaster Jam Session is about to end. Given the number of great speakers (ahem! myself, Jeff Croft, Keith Robinson and more!) and topics on the schedule the pricing is well worth it. To get the Early Bird discount of $50, go to the registration page and enter "CLICKHAPPY" in the Discount Code field. Hope to see you there in Dallas!
Social Bookmarking
I am about a week late with this news, but in case you missed it... Lee, Sachi and Amos LeFever have another great video up for The CommonCraft Show. This time around he is explaining Social Bookmarking in Plain English. Be sure to catch the full series of videos on his site, they make it really easy to explain things like RSS, Social Networking, and even Wikis to those who even are novice computer users. Also, if you get a chance, be sure to catch Lee's presentation on how your website is like a party (slides).
New Issue: Ryan Nichols and the "Future Of" Designs
Digital Web is proud to offer a third installment in our popular series The Working Designer. This week's working designer is Ryan Nichols, who joins us to dissect his branding and website design for the “Future Of” series of conferences, like the well-attended Future of Web Apps and Future of Web Design. Join Ryan in Designing the “Future Of” Sites for a tour of the decision-making process and branding thought behind the FOWD/FOWA/FOOA aesthetic.
New Issue: Hacking APIs
This week in Digital Web, Gareth Rushgrove returns to offer up a follow-up to his first article, APIs and Mashups For The Rest Of Us. His new article goes a step further in addressing hacking, APIs and building some smart stuff—with Twitter, too! Add some API hacking skills to your bag of tricks with Hacking on Open APIs.
New Tools! XRAY from WestCiv
Web-standards geeks have been passing around a cool new tool lately—XRAY, from WestCiv. XRAY is a bookmarklet/favlet that opens a floating element inspector, exposing CSS, markup, dimensions and a more handy information for markup experts. Utilizing some magic around the "canvas" element, XRAY works for Mozilla- and Webkit-based browsers like Firefox and Safari. Support for IE and Opera to come! XRAY works inside most contemporary browsers is designed to help developers get beneath the skin of a site, and see what's really going on. westciv.com/xray/
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Stopdesign
A collection of creative work and thinking capturing my view as a designer and world problem solver.
At the SXSW Google booth
There are so many people in Austin for SXSW Interactive. I haven't even seen some good friends who I know are here this year. Among 8-9 different tracks running at the same time during the day, and multiple parties happening every night, it's difficult to catch everyone I'd like to see. On that note... If you've ever wondered what it's like to work for and at Google, or are interested in Google products... Or if we know each other but haven't had a chance to catch up yet here in Austin--or even if you and I don't know each other--and you'd like to chat for a bit, just a quick note here to encourage you to come by the Google booth here at SXSW (on the trade show floor, toward the far-right side as you enter). I'm scheduled to be in the booth area from noon until about 2pm both today (Monday) and tomorrow (Tuesday). If you're at the top of your game, and might be interested in working for Google, coming by the booth is a good opportunity to speak with one of us casually about working in the User Experience (UX) group. We have multiple positions open in design. Specifically, I'm trying to build out the Visual Design team with talented folks who have a passion for Google products and a clean, intuitive design sensibility. Even if you see me outside the booth hours, feel free to stop me anytime and say hi.
SXSWi Calendar for all
So a few of my fellow Google UXers and I will be at SXSW this year. We thought it odd that we couldn't find a calendar that aggregated all the sessions, panels, and parties of SXSW in one place, in a traditional calendar-like view. There are lists of daytime panels and evening parties, and you can add events one at a time to a personalized calendar on sxsw.com. But there was nothing that aggregated it all in one easy-to-view, all-at-once calendar (at least nothing that we knew of). (Scene Left: Tantek walks in and begins expounding on the merits of microformats, informing everyone that the entire SXSWi panel page is marked up with hCalendar, and that we can all use Tails or Operator, or some other Firefox extension that could magically whisk all the event data out of that page, somehow allowing us to import the data into iCal or Sunbird or Outlook or whatever floats our fancy. Narrator responds: But what about evening events? And why should everyone need to go through that trouble to see everything at once?) And that's where I started thinking. Let's suck all that SXSW Interactive event data into Google Calendar, get all the relevant details entered for as many events as we can and in the right fields, then share the calendar with each other. Or better yet, let's just make the whole calendar publicly available to anyone who wants it. So a few of us got together and did just that. And now you can add SXSWi 07 as another calendar in Google Calendar, or subscribe to the ICAL feed or XML feed in any calendar app of your choice. Event names, times, locations, and as many details as we had are all in one place. I know SXSW tends to be a little spontaneous as far as what I (and others) choose to attend. But there's so much going on over the next few days. I know there are a few panels and parties many people don't want to miss. I don't expect anyone to keep the whole SXSWi calendar visible all the time--there's way too many events on it for that. Rather, you could use it like I'm going to: grab a few of the panels and parties I don't want to miss, copy them over to my personal calendar, then hide the SXSWi calendar until I need it again. Sync my personal calendar with my Treo via GooSync. Delete it at the end of SXSW. Note: This is not in any way an official calendar provided by Google. It was just cobbled together by a few of us who happen to work here, then shared publicly in hopes it might be useful to a few SXSW attendees other than ourselves. As always, all events and details are subject to change at the whim of the organizer without notice. Also worthy to note, the events are all (obviously) happening in Austin, TX. So they're tied to Central Time (GMT-06:00). If you're coming from far away, you'll probably want to adjust your calendar's time zone setting once you arrive, so times will all appear correctly while you're in Austin. Just remember to switch it back to normal once you return home! If you'll be in Austin, see you there.
Inside view
A little over a month ago, just before Web Directions North, John Allsopp asked me a few questions over email about what I've been thinking and doing lately. Digital Web Magazine was kind enough to publish the exchange between us. A few friends have emailed me, having discovered the interview by other means, asking why they never saw mention of it here. Somehow, amid preperations for the conference, then ultimately, my back injury and cancelled appearance, I never got around to mentioning the interview. If I were to write an extended update here that covers my recent life, technology that interests me, and the issues I've been mulling over, it would consist of the same answers I provided to John. Thanks, John, for taking the time and interest to ask the questions. And thanks, DWM, for publishing my responses.
Insult to injury
Last week was supposed to be a big week for me. As John Allsopp put it, I had been lured out of a self-imposed retirement from speaking, and was scheduled to appear at Web Directions North in Vancouver. I was really looking forward to speaking again, along with seeing old friends, making new ones, and the general camaraderie experienced at events like that. Alas, for some reason, that wasn't to be. On a fine Sunday morning before the conference, I bent over the sink to spit out some toothpaste, and felt a shock of pain go through my lower back. I instantly told myself, "oh, it's nothing. just a twinge of pain. it will go away in a minute." But it didn't. Cam and I waited out the injury, hoping the pain would subside and magically heal itself, and I would be able to medicate enough to fly to Vancouver on Tuesday morning, and attend the conference as planned. Over the next two days, my back got progressively worse, until I could barely move or sit up in bed without excruciating pain. Long story, short, the pain continued all last week. And I had to cancel my trip to Vancouver and plans to speak at and attend Web Directions. I tried to fight off the depression and the negative thoughts. But the disappointment I felt was huge (and still is). I was forced to miss out on the opportunity not just to speak again, but to hear so many great speakers at once, and to reconnect with friends I hadn't seen in over a year. Not to mention the snowboarding in Whistler after the conference. This is the fourth time in the last two and a half years that I injured my back to the point of debilitation and forced rest. I have a bad disc in my lumbar region. Doctors told me after first injury that I might be forced to deal with it the rest of my life. Physical therapy helps immediately after the injury. But after the pain subsides, I tend to forget about the exercises and the stretching and the fact that my body is not perfect. If I am to make a difference in the future health of my back and my body, I must make changes to my daily routine. The treatment I learn after each episode must be folded into the strands of my life. I really don't want an injured back to prevent me from doing anything or going anywhere else.
Not so Heavenly
Last weekend, Cam and I drove up to South Lake Tahoe for a couple days of snowboarding and escape. Tahoe is too far from us for a one-day there-and-back trip. But it's close enough (~4 hour drive, sans traffic) for a weekend getaway. It was Cam's first attempt at boarding. I say, she did remarkably well given her lack of any prior experience skateboarding or surfing. She even skated off the lift a few times without falling (no small feat, for those who haven't tried snowboarding yet.) She came home quite sore and bruised in a few places. But I think enough of the bug was caught that she'll be willing to try it again soon. I'd just like to leave one note for anyone else planning to board or ski at Heavenly in South Lake. Do not rent your equipment from Heavenly Sports on the mountain. I repeat, do NOT do this. That is, unless you like waiting in line for up to two hours, only to get inside and deal with the chaotic process of renting from the most unorganized team of rude, clueless "equipment specialists". We made this mistake once, but we won't make it again. The equipment is old; the specialists lack any knowledge in proper adjustment of basic bindings. It's pretty bad when the instructors employed by the same resort advise all of their students to avoid the mountain rental shop at all costs. Instead, either rent locally and drive up with your gear. Or rent at any one of the small shops closer to the lake. Or get your gear from the Burton demo shop in front of the California lodge. Just don't plan on renting anything from Heavenly.
Swing low
Getting back into the swing of writing regularly here never really happened in 2006. When I look back at my archives, I see I only posted 11 times the entire year. And that includes three posts (1, 2, 3) that weren't really writing-based, as much as they were simple design and code experiments. Busyness accounts for a lot of it. 2006 brought a lot of changes for me, personally and professionally. Planning my wedding, putting Stopdesign as a business on hold to go work for Google full-time, getting married and honeymooning afterward, moving to a new place, getting a dog, and the life and responsibility that comes with all of the above. 2006 treated me very well -- I'm certainly not complaining. Another major reason for the lull in writing was general blog burnout. I was tired of writing on my own site. With greater numbers of readers building through 2004 and 2005, I felt greater pressure to write longer article-like posts with take-away content in every entry. More nutrition in every bite. And I was tired of other blogs. Tired of keeping up with hundreds of feeds. Tired of posts that pandered for comments or held contests to gain traffic, or those that recycled another me-too meme or blabbed about the wonders of Web-2-point-whatever. So I stopped using my feed reader completely. I let go of the pressure to keep up. I let go and just lived my life. If I wasn't working, I wasn't really on the Web. I only visited sites I liked and sites of my friends occasionally, just to keep loosely updated on their work, thinking, and lives. Lately, my interest is piqued again. Not so much by a fear of not keeping up with the world of blogs and news and events. But by a general desire to write for the sake of writing. In my daily life, I'm exposed to design in entirely new ways that I've never experienced before. I face new challenges. I encounter new ideas, situations, and interactions. In many ways, it feels like I'm just starting out in the world. So I look back to my first post of this blog, and think of returning to my roots. Write for my own record, not what I think others want to read. To lay out my thoughts, responses, and reactions to my industry and the events that surround my career and interests. To chronicle the bits and information around me. Short posts or long ones; on-topic or not; doesn't matter. Just write.
Design
Design Inspiration Motivation Process Talent Luck Permanent link to the working version of this design.
Roulette
0-f Permanent link to the working version of this design.
Change
Remain The more you see, the less you know The less you find out as you go I knew much more then, than I do now —Bono, City of Blinding Lights Permanent link to the working version of this design.
Going to Google
The cat's out of the bag. I made the announcement here in New Zealand at Webstock, so I'll confirm that, yes, the rumors are not just rumors. After a bit of negotiation and a lot of internal debate, I recently accepted an offer to join Google as Visual Design Lead, a position that did not previously exist there. I'm charged with helping the company establish a common visual language across all their collaborative and communication products. This includes products I've already had some hand in like Blogger and Calendar. But it will also include other highly used products like Gmail, Writely, Page Creator, and other projects in the pipeline. So whether obvious or not, I'll be adding a statement to this site that the words, views, and opinions expressed here are solely my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my new employer, Google. I've been assured that my voice will not and should not be silenced by joining Google. So you should start to see and hear even more from me now that I don't need to worry about losing a Stopdesign contract just for blogging about working on something post-launch. It was a tough decision to put the contract work I do under Stopdesign on hold for now. But as many people already know, I've been working with Google for the past six months as a contractor, and the relationship has gone quite well so far. I'm actually quite excited about the opportunities and the major challenges that lie ahead for me, the teams I'll be working with, and the company at large. Here's to hoping and wishing for a successful adventure and many great things to come.
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Emily Yan's Corner
I know maybe my life isn't the most interesting, but just pity me, neh? ;)
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ejlim's Xanga
Latest Xanga weblog from ejlim
Rethinking the GIRs at MIT
At most colleges and universities in America, students are required to complete a prescribed set of courses which are expected to provide a solid foundation for specialized study and training within a particular field of interest. This core curriculum is officially known as the General Institute Requirements - or GIRs, for short - at MIT. The GIRs are divided into two major categories. The first is the Science, Mathematics, and Engineering (SME) requirement, in which introductory subjects in calculus, physics, chemistry, and biology are required, while additional subjects given from a range of electives in science and technology are also mandatory. The second is the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS) requirement, in which a minimum number of introductory and advanced subjects must be completed from a collection of classes ranging from visual and performing arts to literary, historical, and social studies.In the 8+ years since I first arrived on the scene as a clueless freshman, some changes (such as the addition of communication-intensive courses within the humanities and one's specific major) have been made to the GIRs, but for the most part, MIT's core curriculum has maintained a near decade-long status quo. However, it appears that a more substantial facelift could be given to the GIRs, based on the recommendations of the MIT Task Force on the Undergraduate Educational Commons. In their 158-page report released last month, the committee proposed to strictly uphold the completion of some core courses within the SME and HASS requirement. However, the remaining previously required courses are either being eliminated or re-introduced within a broader, yet still somewhat specialized field of study, such as physical sciences, life sciences, humanities, and the arts. An additional component being proposed is the inclusion of "project-based first-year experiences," which consist of subjects in engineering and science that involve design or creation. While much of the committee's recommendations are both reasonable and necessary, I believe that further changes to the GIRs need to be made so that students can receive an undergraduate education that is more creative, yet still fundamentally sound. Two central ideas come to mind: 1) replacing the GIRs as a separate and comprehensive entity in favor of integrating essential GIR courses within the framework of a specific major, and 2) providing GIR "electives" that promote exposure to non-traditional career paths.A primary concern with MIT's undergraduate curriculum is that it's overall rigid framework limits the mobility of students to pursue multiple academic interests. This mobility is both beneficial and important in situations where students are: 1) undecided on a major and would need to take an introductory course in different fields in order to narrow down one's particular interest, 2) pursuing a dual degree, 3) studying abroad or doing a Co-Op, or 4) committed a specific major only to realize later on that a different path is desired. It would seem worthwhile to eliminate the SME and HASS requirements as stand-alone GIR components and instead include the essential SME and HASS courses within the overall curriculum of a particular major. For example, if one freshman was interested in pursuing an electrical engineering degree (Course 6-1), the core first-year courses might include 8.01 (Physics I), 8.02 (Physics II), 18.01 (Single-Variable Calculus), 18.02 (Multi-Variable Calculus), and 18.03 (Differential Equations). However, if another freshman was interested in pursuing a biology degree (Course 7), the core first-year classes might include 7.012 (Introductory Biology), 5.111 (Principles of Chemical Science), and 8.01. This integrated-GIR approach is attractive for several reasons. Rather than being forced to take irrelevant and unnecessary courses, students would take the introductory courses needed to continue on towards a specific degree path. One could thus expect that the quality of work from students would be at somewhat higher level due to an educational appreciation that is beyond a mere "get it over with" perspective. In addition, having integrated GIRs would streamline the first-year coursework, which would provide freshmen with the flexibility to either take the necessary prerequisite courses for multiple major paths or to get ahead in a specific major path. This means that freshmen who are undecided would not be penalized for exploring different degree options, while freshmen committed to a particular degree path would be able to take upper-level elective courses to gain additional breadth and depth in that path in preparation for the next phase of their educational experience, whether it be in industry, academia, or elsewhere. Another concern with MIT's undergraduate curriculum is that the often-intense workload discourages students from exploring and pursuing educational options that deviate far from a traditional post-graduate career path. One of the many hallmarks of an MIT education is that, in addition to possessing an impressive skill set, students learn how to think under pressure, both independently and collaboratively. While this may seem utterly trivial - and I mean no disrespect to other colleges and universities - I can't help but wonder how the global landscape might change if a significant percentage of every MIT graduating class was devoted to developing a new product, service, or program in the form of a start-up company, a non-profit organization, or perhaps even a think-tank. An initial attempt can be made to address this issue by incorporating an out-of-class GIR requirement that can be satisfied by the following options: 1) competing in a MIT-based start-up competition (i.e. 50K, Soldier Design, or Ideas), 2) developing an individual or group service project through the Public Service Center, 3) doing undergraduate lab research through the UROP program, or 4) studying abroad (i.e. Oxford or Cambridge). This requirement would be in lieu of previous GIR requirements, such as the Institute Lab or the HASS Concentration. The out-of-class GIR requirement would expose students to educational opportunities that transcend the usual regimen of problem sets and exams, and it would be especially useful to students interested in developing an idea but unable to invest time and resources into a project that might not necessarily be in line with their major degree requirements.The MIT Corporation, along with its faculty and staff, have worked admirably to ensure that an education of the highest quality is made available to each incoming class of students. While much of the undergraduate curriculum is fundamentally sound, certain changes need to be made, most notably in regards to the GIRs. The two ideas - integrated GIRs and out-of-class GIRs - presented here are not meant to serve as comprehensive solutions, nor is the implemention of these ideas trivial, by any means. However, a concerted effort in this direction can one day provide MIT students with the flexibility to pursue different career options, the means to delve deeper within a specific degree path, and an awareness of their ability - and with that, perhaps a selfless resolve - to change more than just the world around them.
A Redemptive Roar in Motown
With the clock approaching 7:30pm EDT, a collective roar could be heard in Detroit as Comerica Park and a nationally televised audience witnessed something that hadn't happened since I was in diapers - now that's when you know it's been a long time awaiting - the Detroit Tigers winning a playoff series, let alone making it to the post-season. They took yet another step in their march towards an improbable World Series championship by pillaging the Evil Empire (i.e. the New York Yankees) 8-3 as they won their divisional series, 3 games to 1. As a long-suffering Tigers fan - I live in Toledo, which has the AAA minor-league team for Detroit - it was immensely gratifying to watch mass pandemonium in Detroit that, for once, didn't involve overturned cars or riots in the streets. Now granted, the city still might go down in flames at some point during the postseason - win or lose - but at least for one day, Detroit can revel harmlessly in the fact that their Tigers are still on the prowl, while Georgie and his $200 million dollar band of overpaid henchmen are headed back to Gotham without a championship for a 6th consecutive season.That the Tigers won this game was significant for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it represented a near-revolutionary paradigm shift in regards to the level of play and the attitude of this team. Perhaps it was manager Jim Leyland and his staff, but starting from Day 1, this team took that approach that it was not going to accept losing, and that they would do whatever was necessary to become a competitive team. However, Leyland himself was to quick to admit that this team exceeded his expectations. Remember, this was a team that had lost an American League-record 119 games in 2003, a short 3 seasons ago. I certainly remember those horrid times, as I had the privilege (or misfortune, depending on how you want to look at it) of watching them in person at Fenway Park when the Tigers came into town to face the Red Sox. Even with my Master's Degree thesis due in 3 days, I made the trek over to Fenway Park the night before the first game of the series and slept on concrete sidewalk in hopes of snagging a pair of Green Monster seats the next morning. I was rewarded for my due diligence with a pair of seats in the 2nd row of the Green Monster that evening. Though I was ready to vocalize my support for my team on any good plays made at the plate or in the field, those moments were few and far between as the Red Sox pounded them 15-2. To add insult to injury, I most likely made it on the 11pm edition of Sportscenter that night for failing to catch a Manny Ramirez homer that came straight at me. The losing pitcher in that game was a rookie pitcher whom I had never heard of. But that changed quickly as the losses piled on, and by season's end, he had accumulated 19 losses (compared to a mere 6 wins). And the name of the pitcher? It was none other than Jeremy Bonderman. In that game, he was all over the place with his location, and because he was repeatedly behind in the count, Red Sox batters could let loose and tee off on his then-predictable pitches, as evidenced by the score. In the game against the Yankees, the Tigers sent one "Jeremy Bonderman" to the mound, but he wasn't the same pitcher that I saw at Fenway. This pitcher was focused, poised, and had good command of his pitches (he was perfect through 5 innings), and as he mowed down batter after batter in New York's vaunted lineup, you could sense his confidence rising to unseen heights. When Leyland pulled him with one out in the 9th, he walked towards the dugout to a spirited standing ovation from the 44,000+ appreciative fans in Comerica. This was the most important game of his life, a clutch post-season performance that could transform Bonderman into an established All-Star in the years to come. Keep in mind, he's only 23 years old and well over a year away from getting a Hertz rental car by himself.But today's game was meaningful for this most important reason - it was now fun again to be playing (and watching) baseball in the Motor City. You could see it in the players' faces all season long, and the stands had a spine-tingling buzz in October that was normally reserved for the late spring when the Pistons or Red Wings would make their traditional playoff push. While I certainly hope and pray that the Tigers pull off the near-unthinkable and celebrate a World Series title in Detroit this fall, regardless of where they end up, I'll be proud of how they carried themselves, both on and off the field. And speaking of celebrations, you know your team must be doing well when one of the players is wearing this: It's highly doubtful that Oakley will design a new product line of sunglasses based on Jason Grilli's post-game eyewear, but honestly, I could care less. I'll take substance over style any day.
Marathon Monday
It's almost a given that everyone likes holidays. The kids get a day off from school, while adults get to be away from the office and attend to other matters. While there are certain holidays that will always be of utmost meaning to me, such as Christmas and Easter, one of my personal favorites is Patriot's Day, also known as Marathon Monday. I think I enjoy this holiday even more than my birthday, and that becomes evident once you get to be my age. For the past three years, I've had the good fortune of qualifying for the Boston Marathon, but this year, it just wasn't meant to be. Injuries and other commitments kept me from putting in the training needed to re-qualify. So I had to settle for running a 5-mile race in the morning, after which I made my way to Kenmore Square to secure a good viewing location for cheering on my BAA teammates. I even put my appalling art skills on display by making a pseudo-motivational poster for the guys. As I waited for the first runners to come by, it dawned on me that today was the first time that I had ever been to a marathon as a spectator. I had been to 8 previous marathons, each time as a runner, so it felt a bit awkward being on the other side of the barricades. The weather was a bit chilly early on, with overcast skies, light winds, and temperatures in the mid-50's. Perfect weather for marathoners (for once), but not-so-hot weather for beer drinkers and BBQ grillers, no pun intended. As usual, the Kenyans took top honors in the overall men's and women's races, but it was a pleasant surprise to see Americans take 3rd, 4th, a