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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, and 5th in the men's race. US distance running has improved significantly over the past couple of years, and it'll only be a matter of time before an American wins Boston, Chicago, or one of the other major marathons and hopefully usher in a new era of American dominance not seen since the days of Bill Rodgers and Alberto Salazar in the late 70's and early 80's. The performance of the elites was just one of many storylines headlining this year's Boston. For myself personally, I mostly cared about my teammates having a strong showing. While the weather seemed ideal for good race times, most of my teammates unfortunately had sub-par finishing times. Even as I tried to rally my teammates in spirited fashion, my heart ached a bit, because I knew that they were disappointed and in a whole lot of pain as they struggled to the finish. I had been in that lonely position before, so to some extent, I could feel their frustration. But even though I mainly went to Kenmore Square to watch my teammates run, my attention quickly shifted to the other runners, those whose names I didn't know and whose faces I most likely would never see ever again. While these runners would not win any trophies or prize money on this day, it was perfectly okay, because for many, they weren't running for personal glory or accolades. Rather, they were running in honor of or in memory of someone else. They were running for loved ones who were battling or had succumbed to cancer or other life-threatening diseases. They were running to raise awareness and funds for worthy causes and initiatives. They were running to instill hope in others that things previously thought to be impossible were in fact going to be accomplished 26.2 miles later on this glorious day. As I saw these runners courageously battle through the final mile of this race, I couldn't help but cheer and encourage these runners with reckless abandon. I gave high-fives to those running along the barricades. I called out runners who were walking and challenged them to finish strong on this last mile. I lost my voice yelling out whatever snippets of wit, humor, and motivational gimmicks that I could muster off the top of my head. Some laughed, while others gave me a thumbs-up. Still others ignored me and ran or walked straight ahead. But there were some who had previously walked who then gathered the strength and determination to start running again. And they were rewarded with a hearty roar of approval from the masses on Commonwealth Avenue. Patriot's Day is a special day, first and foremost because we celebrate and remember those who laid down their lives for our country's independence. But we also celebrate the Boston Marathon and the opportunities that it provides for those to put their passion and commitment to the ultimate test, be it to win the whole damn thing, to set a personal best, to raise money for charity, or to just do it for fun. Somebody once told me that the marathon is probably the only event where anyone can be a champion by race's end. That's the beauty of the marathon. That's the beauty of Boston.
A Photomosaic Hero
By now, I'm sure most of you have watched or heard of the show 'ER'. While I rarely watch the show much anymore, I used to watch it faithfully back in the day when George Clooney, Noah Wyle, and Anthony Edwards were playing leading roles. In all my years of watching the show, there was one episode that stood out amongst the others - the episode where Edwards' character, Dr. Greene, spends his last few days with his family before passing away. As the episode approached its final minutes on the air, it flashed back to highlights of Dr. Greene's life, with a guitar and Israel Kamakawiwo'ole singing a grainy yet soothing arrangement combining elements of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" with a touch of "It's a Wonderful World." I'll admit that I was a sap and shed a tear or two during the episode. Simply put, it was just too painful for me to see him suffer as he fought to stay alive during those last few days. When it's a struggle just to breathe and walk about, it certainly puts all of our other problems into perspective, doesn't it? This past weekend has been a humbling reminder of how, even when the crap hits the proverbial fan, you keep on doing what you love without complaints or discouragement, because your best, even if it's not perfect, can be good enough to make a meaningful contribution in more ways than you might ever know, and there's no guarantee that you'll wake to face another day. This past weekend presented a series of opportunities to improve my academics, my community service involvement, and my marathon training. On Saturday, I had a 5-mile road race and a final round interview for an international development scholarship, which would give me $5,000 to do medical field work in Rwanda for six weeks this summer. On Sunday was Stu's 30K race, an important tune-up for Boston, and today was my biochem exam. To make a long story short, I tweaked my hamstring during warmups for the 5M, which was enough to make me sit out both the 5M and the 30K race. I had a good interview only to find out from an apologetic committee member that I had just missed the cut for the award, and of course, the 12 hours of research and preparation for that interview could have gone to studying for the exam, which wasn't quite to my liking as well. I'll be honest that I was mildly upset and distraught all weekend, though I've tried my best not to show it around out in public. With all of this going on, plus the fact that my PhD advisor might leave in September for another job, my life has been somewhat in disarray. To not meet expectations and to live with much uncertainty is hardly a pleasant feeling. However, all of these "critical" problems and hardships quickly paled in comparison upon hearing that one of my BAA teammates had just passed away after a long battle with cancer. Dan Peterson, a 55-year old man from Beverly, had stage IV melanoma which resulted in his right arm being amputated, yet he still ran the Boston Marathon for the 24th consecutive time last year while enduring the effects of experimental treatment. I had the privilege of sitting next to him on the bus ride to Hopkinton for the 2004 race. I remember being immensely nervous before that race, because I was sponsored that year by Saucony (along with Dan) for personal contributions to the Boston running community and to society, I was raising funds for Children's Hospital, and I was running in Anderson's memory that year. Combined with 85+ degree temperatures and a slew of friends waiting for me in Kenmore Square, I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I remember telling Dan about my overwhelming burden to succeed and to not disappoint all those who would be there to support me. With a big grin on his face, he told me to simply do my best, because the effort and the way in which you carry yourself would be more meaningful than a result taken out of context. He also said to take in the full experience and enjoy it, because you never know when it's all going to come to an end. These were the words of a man who would run the next-to-last Boston of his life that day. His words of encouragement were not empty, not in the least. In his final Boston last year, he had the support of a marathon entourage to protect him and help him along as he struggled to make his way through the six towns leading into Boston. He would courageously finish that race in 5:51, more than double his best of time of 2:42 set over 20 years ago. Despite the end result, he ran the race to the absolute best that his cancer-torn body would let him. In true "Dan Peterson" fashion, he and his marathon group stopped on Boylston Street, a mere few hundred yards from the finish, and tried to absorb the experience. [Taken from the Boston Globe article] "We learned that life is not about the finish line; it's about the journey," Peterson recalled, his voice a whisper. "We took a picture, shed a few tears, and hugged. Then we looked across the line and said, 'Let's go.' I think it touched every guy there." Rest in Peace - Dan Peterson, 1950-2006.
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FlickrBlog
News, offsite status and great photos daily.
Les 24 heures Flickr Ă Paris
Vous avez été très nombreux à participer à « 24 hours of Flickr » lancée le 5 mai dernier. Les photos publiées sur le groupe nous ont tous enthousiasmés. Merci à tous pour votre participation. Pour célébrer le succès de...
Sea Turtles Release
The Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center on Topsail Island, North Carolina, released thirteen Sea Turtles back into the wild earlier today. I'm not sure if this is Surf City, Kayak, Nelson, Progress II, Cedar III, Nettie, Fisher...
24 Stunden Flickr in Berlin
Am 5. Mai haben wir in der Gruppe 24 Stunden Flickr weltweit aufgerufen, euren Tag in einem Bild festzuhalten. Wir wollten es wissen: was passiert an einem Tag auf der Welt? … und eure Beiträge haben uns begeistert! Jetzt möchte...
Before & After: Eastern Market
A 3-alarm fire gutted Washington's historic Eastern Market on April 30th. See more in the Eastern Market Pool and photos tagged with eastern + market + fire + dc. Photos from ngolebiewski and ohad*.Suggested by ohad* via Flickr Central....
A Flickr Marriage
Hi Flickr People. Yesterday, June 2nd 2007, we got married, two and a half years after meeting each other here on Flickr. This is an amazing place, with amazing people, many of whom we've met around the world. Most importantly...
Pano 2
To quote the photographer: Happy Friday everyone! :) Photo from annabelletexter....
green + seats + munich
Photos from SophieMuc, ...like a chimp with coconuts, rp72, *mb**, yan ke and linolo.See more photos tagged with green + seats + munichSuggested by Dave Gorman via Flickr Central....
peace
my grandpa was a good man. he was a farmer for the majority of his life. he survived stomach cancer for 17 years. and finally gave in to lung cancer age 85. he was a fantastic cyclist. and a very...
There Ain't no Flies on Us
There ain't no flies on us! There ain't no flies on us! There may be flies on some of you guys, But there ain't no flies on us! Photos from Stewart and AirBrontosaurus. See more photos tagged with fly or...
We're going down...
Flickr will be down for (at most) two hours this evening from 8 - 10 PM Pacific (find out what time this is where you are) while Yahoo! Network Operations upgrades our switches. Our Flickr is having a massage message...
Save the date!
A quick heads up that Team Flickr is embarking on the first stage of a whirlwind tour next month to celebrate the publication of the 24 hours of Flickr. If you're in or around Berlin (6/12), Paris (6/14), London (6/18)...
Combinations
Photos from Ricohmatic. See more in Combinations....
How We Are Now: Photographing Britain
A few months ago, we were contacted by Tate Britain, who'd been talking amongst themselves about a new exhibition about the history of photography in Britain - How We Are Now: Photographing Britain. I was tickled pink that they considered...
Flickr Photo Frame at Maker Faire
If you didn't get the chance to come to Maker Faire today, don't fret! There's still plenty of time to head out this Sunday and take your very own Flickr polaroid home with you. Check out the full set of...
The Secret Life of Gummy Bears
It’s no secret around our office that I have an innate and unflinching affinity for anything sugar. But in all of my years as a cultivated candy connoisseur, I’ve never considered the mayhem that can be bred from a seemingly...
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The Google Weblog
new google news fast
Launch: searchmash, an experimental site started by Google
Uses Ajax and some other web2.0-ish features.
News: Google launches "Features, Not Products" initiative
Sergey Brin is telling employees to stop making old products and start improving new ones. "For example, said Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, Google plans to combine its spreadsheet, calendar and word-processing programs into one suite of Web-based applications."
Launch: Google Code Search
Google now lets you do searches -- including regular expression searches -- across public source code.
Preview: Google testing new site design
James Yu has a screenshot of a new design Google has been testing lately.
Launch: Google Pages, new Geocities-style site-building software
Google has released a new program that gives users 100MB of web space to make simple HTML pages in.
Launch: Google running AdWords in newspapers
Google is buying the leftover ad space in the _Chicago Sun-Times_ and filling it with AdWords ads related to the rest of the content. I wonder how they're going to charge advertisers. The domains posted are the real domains, so it can't exactly be pay-per-click.
Launch: Google Music, search for bands and albums
Story: Xooglers, Google's former Marketing Director tells his story
Some great stories about Google's early days, with more to come.
Launch: Click-to-Call AdWords, Google will let you call advertisers
(screenshot)
Update: Blind test reveals Google offers best results
The Search Engine Experiment gives you the results from Yahoo, MSN, and Google without saying which is which. Currently, 41% of those who have taken the test picked Google (33% Yahoo, 26% MSN).
Launch: Google Analytics, see the statistics on your website
A free version of Urchin, a company Google bought. (official blog post)
Announce: Google to unwire Mountain View, WiFi on street lamps
You could also buy equipment to extend it into your house. (proposal)
Launch: Google adds Creative Commons support
The Google advanced search page now lets you limit your search to CC-licensed results.
Launch: Google Local Mobile, get Google Maps and more on your mobile phone
Satellites, drag and drop, and more.
Preview: Google on the future of advertising
In a long <cite>New York Times</cite> piece, top Googlers speculate about the future of advertising, including Google selling TV ads, using more personalized information, and links to store inventory information.
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joyce's chalkboard
joycelin's Xanga Blog
Sunday, May 18, 2003
joycelin's entry on Sunday, May 18, 2003 at (6 comments)
Thursday, May 15, 2003
joycelin's entry on Thursday, May 15, 2003 at
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julsjuls's Xanga Site
julsjuls's Xanga Blog
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Just be limberrrrr
karrot's Xanga Blog
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
karrot's entry on Wednesday, August 01, 2007 at (8 comments)
girls, pearls and .. whirls? (Thursday, October 19, 2006 )
karrot's entry on Thursday, October 19, 2006 at (17 comments)
Thursday, September 14, 2006
karrot's entry on Thursday, September 14, 2006 at (5 comments)
Disturbing reality (Wednesday, June 14, 2006 )
karrot's entry on Wednesday, June 14, 2006 at (15 comments)
Karen's Summer FUN in NYC Guide 2006 (Thursday, June 08, 2006 )
karrot's entry on Thursday, June 08, 2006 at (11 comments)
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maboyden's Xanga site
maboyden's Xanga Blog
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MAKE Magazine
MAKE is a quarterly publication from O'Reilly for those who just can't stop tinkering, disassembling, re-creating, and inventing cool new uses for the technology in our lives. It's the first do-it-yourself magazine dedicated to the incorrigible and chronically incurable technology enthusiast in all of us. MAKE celebrates your right to tweak, hack, and bend technology any way you want.
Happy President's day from MAKE - a look at a President who made things - Thomas Jefferson
<img src="http://blog.makezine.com/MountRushmore_monument.jpg" height="406" width="500" border="0" hspace="4" vspace="4" alt="Mountrushmore Monument" /><br /> President's day was once associated with just Washington (and later Lincoln) but now all Presidents are celebrated today, and by that I mean you might have the day off. Here's @ MAKE we're going to take a look at Thomas Jefferson. <img src="http://blog.makezine.com/MAKE_PT0424.jpg" height="604" width="500" border="0" hspace="4" vspace="4" alt="Make Pt0424" /><br /> Not only was Jefferson the author of the Declaration of Independence, the third president of the United States but an inventor. Here's a look at some of the things he made (or remade). <img src="http://blog.makezine.com/wheelcipher_lg.jpg" height="162" width="500" border="0" hspace="4" vspace="4" alt="Wheelcipher Lg" /><br /> <img src="http://blog.makezine.com/disassembled_wheel_lg.jpg" height="306" width="500" border="0" hspace="4" vspace="4" alt="Disassembled Wheel Lg" /><br /> Wheel cipher - In 1792 while Jefferson was US Secretary of State he developed a wheel cipher to encode and decode secret messages (here's how it works). <img src="http://blog.makezine.com/vc59.1.jpg" height="355" width="500" border="0" hspace="4" vspace="4" alt="Vc59.1" /><br /> Portable copying press - called the polygraph, Jefferson helped perfect this two-pen writing device used to copy letters and used it for all his correspondance. It's like a manual BCC'ing! Here's a Quicktime VR of the device. <img src="http://blog.makezine.com/plowttttt.jpg" height="246" width="500" border="0" hspace="4" vspace="4" alt="Plowttttt" /><br /> Plow "Moldboard of least resistance" - using math, Jefferson designed a better plow to lift and turn over sod more effectively - this new plow had a huge impact and instead of patenting the invention, Jefferson gave it away it - to be "solely used for the good of the people and not for the advancement of the inventor, Jefferson encouraged public use of this easily duplicated invention". <img src="http://blog.makezine.com/greatclock.jpg" height="598" width="500" border="0" hspace="4" vspace="4" alt="Greatclock" /><br /> The Great Clock - Jefferson created a cool clock - made from hanging cannonballs, this gravity power clock was connected to a giant gong on the roof of the entrance hall at Monticello. He also needed to invent a folding ladder to repair it (which was later used for other things like getting books and trimming trees).<br /> <br /> <br /> <strong>Others:</strong><br /> <ul><li>Macaroni machine</li><li>Sundial</li><li>Dumb waiters</li><li>Automatic double doors</li><li>Revolving bookstand</li><li>Beds that lift</li><li>Revolving chairs</li></ul> <br /> All these and more can be found at the Jefferson's inventions page - Link.<br /> <br /> <strong>Further reading:</strong><br /> <ul><li>Thomas Jefferson - His Life as an Inventor - Link.</li><li>Jefferson @ Monticello - Link.</li><li>Jefferson @ Wikipedia - Link.</li></ul> [Read this article] [Comment on this article]
Vector MAME
<br /> <img src="http://blog.makezine.com/vector_mame.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="vector_mame.jpg"/> Jason at HACKS writes: <blockquote> <p style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">There's a special place reserved in my digital heart for the classic arcades like Tempest and Asteroids, and ironically it's because of the flawless analog goodness of their vector-based displays. I still boot up a Tempest emulator for the Dreamcast from time to time, though while it remains fun to play, it just has no soul on a standard CRT. The ZVG connects to your PC via parallel port, and Zector claims it is able to drive most old analog vector monitors that you are able to obtain. It's even able to drive an oscilloscope in X/Y mode. VectorMAME provides the ZVG drivers for DosMAME, which would allow you to put together a MAME cabinet that will play all of the old vector games on a real X/Y monitor. The hardware will set you back a couple hundred bucks, but it appears that this might be the only way to play some of your old favorites in all their glory. </blockquote> <p style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Zector Vector Generator and VectorMAME - [via] Link. [Read this article] [Comment on this article]
MAKE Flickr pool weekly roundup
<img alt="weekly_wrap.jpg" src="http://blog.makezine.com/weekly_wrap-thumb.jpg" width="500" height="750" /><br /> From the MAKE Flickr pool The hits keep coming as we draw closer to our Flickr contest submission deadline of 2/29. A big thanks to everyone who posted so far - We've got well over 20,000 photos in the pool now! It's a lot of fun see what everyone's been up to! <br /> <ul><br /> <li>LED tunnel of noise . . . box -Link<br /> <li>Box organ + breath controller (top-right) -Link<br /> <li>USB Memory Pill -Link<br /> <li>A moment of maker zen . . . -Link<br /> <li>Happy *BLEEP* Valentines!-Link<br /> <li>Homemade snake game-Link<br /> <li>Heart of Hearts -Link<br /> <li>Rattrap racer-Link<br /> <li>RSS Photo Frame -Link<br /> <li>The tiniest deadbug proto (top-left)-Link<br /> <li>Low frequency percussion mic (middle-left) -Link<br /> <li>Coconut amp (middle-right)-Link<br /> <li>Toastmaster skateboard (bottom-left)-Link<br /> <li>Touch activated LED valentine-Link<br /> <li>Water mortar (bottom-right) -Link<br /> </ul> [Read this article] [Comment on this article]
Best of CRAFT
<img src="http://blog.craftzine.com/shoneythesquid.jpg" width="500" height="375" border="0"><br /> Here are some of my favorite posts from the CRAFT blog this week: <ul><li> HOW TO - Knit and Felt a Squid - Link.</li> <li> Felted Sweater Flowers with Betz White - CRAFT Video Podcast - Link.</li> <li> Make Paper Cuts with Skinny laMinx - Link.</li> <li> Ethernet Cable Plant Hanger - Link.</li> <li> HOW TO - Sew a Silk Tie - Link.</li></ul> [Read this article] [Comment on this article]
Time lapse video: making a tire playground
<object width="500" height="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/fVLM-JYGt08&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/fVLM-JYGt08&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object> Jackson from The Steel Yard wrote in with this time-lapse video of the construction of a tire playground in Providence, RI:<br /> <blockquote>The Steel Yard joined Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse, City of Providence Parks Department, Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council and other community partners on September 29th, 2007 to help construct a playground at Riverside Park in Olneyville, Providence, as part of James W Rouse Community Service Day. Also helping out was a hard working group of volunteers from Rhode Island School of Design. Immediately after construction was finished on the recycled tire structure, local youth came out and took full advantage of the Steel Yard designed structure. Howie Sneider and Joel Taplin helped lead the project from conception to completion. A huge thanks goes out to our staff, Donny butler, Dave Anderson, RISD volunteers, and everyone else who helped with the project. Thank you!</blockquote><br /> Riverside Park Tire Playground, Providence, RI - Link & flickr set [Read this article] [Comment on this article]
Peeking inside some LEDs
<img alt="emsl_led_closeup.jpg" src="http://blog.makezine.com/emsl_led_closeup.jpg" width="500" height="375" /> Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories gets up close to some LEDs, and takes a peek beyond the light:<br /> <blockquote>I took some close-up pictures of LEDs to get a look at what's inside. These are just standard T-1 3/4 (5 mm) package superbright LEDs with clear lenses, one of the most common types, and I took the photos by placing my the lens of my camera (Canon S3 IS) right up to them.</blockquote><br /> Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories/Peeking in on some LEDs - Link & flickr set [Read this article] [Comment on this article]
Solar charging, electric lawn mower
<img alt="md_mower.jpg" src="http://blog.makezine.com/md_mower.jpg" width="500" height="375" /><br /> The solar charging system makes this DIY electric mower different from the rest. You will never have to put those gas cans in your car again, and the maintenance is a whole lot less too! There aren't a lot of eco-friendly mowers out there, never mind this one was made out of a lot of recycled materials. - [via] Link [Read this article] [Comment on this article]
Knitted electromagnetic shields
<img src="http://blog.makezine.com/knitted_kitchen.jpg" height="488" width="390" border="0" hspace="4" vspace="4" alt="Knitted Kitchen" /><br /> Becky @ CRAFT spotted a nice design noir project, she writes - <blockquote>From the technophobic department, Zoe Papadopoulou at the Royal Academy of Art is making these shields for anything electric, knitting a copper filament in her cozies and electrically grounding it. This provides some shielding from the electromagnetic fields these devices emit. Truth is, however, that the waves running through the air (cell phone frequencies, mainly) are a lot farther reaching than those from your toaster. That's why they invented shielding fabric and paint! They're still nice as a social commentary art piece, though.</blockquote> Craftzine.com blog: Knitted Electromagnetic Shields - Link.<br /> <br /> Related:<br /> <img src="http://blog.makezine.com/41Q4R9MSRYL._SS500_.jpg" height="500" width="500" border="0" hspace="4" vspace="4" alt="41Q4R9Msryl. Ss500 " /><br /> Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objects - Link.<br /> <br /> <br /> Dunne and Raby investigate the real physical and cultural effects of the digital domain, demonstrating that mobile phones, computers and other electronic objects such as televisions profoundly influence people's experience of their environment. Their ideas have important implications for architecture and design. In this, their first major book, they introduce their extraordinary new way of thinking about objects, space and behaviour to a broad audience. The book is divided into three sections: 1. Manifesto, introducing the authors' ideas about electromagnetic space. 2. Conversations, in which Dunne and Raby talk to a variety of designers, architects and artists about the impact electronic technology has on their practice. 3. Placebo, presenting the intriguing results of a project involving Dunne and Raby's working furniture prototypes, including a chair that lets the sitter know when radiation is passing through his body.<br /> <br /> Design Noir @ Amazon - Link. <br /> <br /> [Read this article] [Comment on this article]
Grindstone attached to bicycle
<img src="http://blog.makezine.com/MAKE_PT0423.jpg" height="356" width="492" border="0" hspace="4" vspace="4" alt="Make Pt0423" /><br /> Clever way to sharpen knives, Science And Mechanics 1936 - Link.<br /> <br /> Related:<br /> <object width="500" height="412"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Cwh6A95kJzQ&rel=1&border=0"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Cwh6A95kJzQ&rel=1&border=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent"width="500" height="412"></embed></object><br /> Knife sharpening tricks (video) - Link.<br /> [Read this article] [Comment on this article]
Strange light bulb actually works
<img alt="wala1.jpg" src="http://blog.makezine.com/wala1.jpg" width="400" height="325"/> Here's a cool project you can do in a few hours, if you're crazy (this is pretty dangerous) - build a lightbulb with two socket bases. Check out the link below for meticulous step-by-step instructions! <br /> How to make a working weird looking bulb - [via], Link [Read this article] [Comment on this article]
AVR oscilloscope
<img alt="md_scope.jpg" src="http://blog.makezine.com/md_scope.jpg" width="500" height="667" /><br /> This is an amazing DIY oscilloscope that is controlled by a WinAVR microprocessor. The source code, schematic and PCB are all well documented and available for download. If you try this one out, don't forget to post it in the MAKE flickr photo pool - Link [Read this article] [Comment on this article]
Call for Makers: Maker Faire Bay Area 2008 - Febrary 17, 2008
<img src="http://makerfaire.com/images/makerfaire/ba08/textbar.gif" border="0" height="29" width="514" /><img alt="makerFaire08.jpg" src="http://blog.makezine.com/MAKE_640.jpg" width="500" height="332" border="0" hspace="4" vspace="4" /><br /> <!-- end bay area text bar --> <span style="font-size: 20px; font-weight: bold;"><br /> Build, <span class="cczine">CRAFT</span>, hack, play, <span class="mczine">MAKE</span>.</span><br /> <!-- topics was q/279 --><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; text-transform: uppercase; color: rgb(0, 72, 131);">Arts • Crafts • Engineering • Green • Music • Science <br /> We are thrilled to announce that the Call for Makers is now open for Maker Faire Bay Area 2008! On Febrary 17, 2008 we have Maker Faire Tryouts (designed for new Makers and Makers that have projects that they would like to show us before the event) Where and when:<br /> Exploratorium - noon - 4:00pm<br /> San Francisco<br /> Please email sherry@oreilly.com to reserve a space More information about the Faire and the application process can be found on the Maker Faire site here & more important dates to remember for Maker Faire here - Link.<br /> [Read this article] [Comment on this article]
Name the MAKE race team - WINNER
<img src="http://blog.makezine.com/MAKE_PT0390-1.jpg" height="306" width="406" border="0" hspace="4" vspace="4" alt="Make Pt0390-1" /><br /> <img src="http://blog.makezine.com/MAKE_PT0422-1.jpg" height="76" width="406" border="0" hspace="4" vspace="4" alt="Make Pt0422-1" /><br /> We're pleased to announce a winner for the "Name the MAKE race team" contest. With over 137 commenters and 200+ entries it was a hard choice! But there can be only one - SilverPill drop me an email to get your prize! - Link.<br /> [Read this article] [Comment on this article]
20-Watt Solar Panel - A Primer @ MAKE
<img src="http://blog.makezine.com/MAKE_PT0401.jpg" height="363" width="500" border="0" hspace="4" vspace="4" alt="Make Pt0401" /><br /> <img src="http://blog.makezine.com/MAKE_PT0402.jpg" height="356" width="500" border="0" hspace="4" vspace="4" alt="Make Pt0402" /><br /> 20-Watt Solar Panel by Parker Jardine in Primer. With a few solar-cells and a plastic case, you can utilize the sun's energy to power anything from a light bulb to your entire house. Page 158 - MAKE 12. Read this article now in the MAKE digital edition. <img src="http://blog.makezine.com/MAKE_PT0403.jpg" height="704" width="500" border="0" hspace="4" vspace="4" alt="Make Pt0403" /><br /> Or get MAKE 12 from the Maker store and/or subscribe to MAKE (use code CMAKE for $5 off USD). You can view all our in depth Primers from MAKE here too.<br /> <br /> <br /> [Read this article] [Comment on this article]
Making flexible circuits with an inkjet printer
<img alt="conductiveFabric.jpg" src="http://blog.makezine.com/conductiveFabric.jpg" width="500" height="489" border="0" hspace="4" vspace="4" /><br /> Here's a how-to on using an inkjet printer to assist in the creation of flexible conductive circuits. The printer is only used to transfer the circuit image onto the conductive fabric. You still have to paint the resist on by hand. Conductive Fabric: Make Flexible Circuits Using An Inkjet Printer. - Link<br /> [Read this article] [Comment on this article]
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Megatokyo Comics
News and Comics from Megatokyo.
Comic [1088] "what they wanted"
Chapter 9: "overlo4d" comic 1088 <br/>[read...] <br/>[permalink]
Comic [1087] "someone who understands her"
Chapter 9: "overlo4d" comic 1087 <br/>[read...] <br/>[permalink]
Comic [1086] "secure positions"
Chapter 9: "overlo4d" comic 1086 <br/>[read...] <br/>[permalink]
Comic [1085] "out here"
Chapter 9: "overlo4d" comic 1085 <br/>[read...] <br/>[permalink]
Comic [1084] "pay attention"
Chapter 9: "overlo4d" comic 1084 <br/>[read...] <br/>[permalink]
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- updated: Feb 18 09:18AM
MIT Campus News
Campus news headlines from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology News Office.
'Cycle-logical' bonding for students, professor
It's not unusual for MIT professors and their students to socialize outside the laboratory. But here's a word of warning to would-be members of Jeff Tester's lab: You might want to think about getting in shape.
Awards and honors
Recent achievements by members of the MIT community.
Inclusiveness, optimism among strengths of HST's Gray
Martha Gray, director of the Harvard-MIT Department of Health Sciences and Technology, displays an optimism that explains why, on an exceptionally snowy night in March, dozens of people flocked to her home to read poetry and to enjoy chance meetings.
Saving the rainforest with … toys?
Some villagers in Honduran communities who used to take part in the illegal trade in mahogany have turned to sustainable wood harvesting. But they need more markets. And that's where MIT Sloan School master's student Craig Doescher comes in.
Digitalk: Where IT's at
News from MIT Information Services and Technology.
Bustani lectures to feature Boutros-Ghali, Avishai
The Emile Bustani Middle East Seminar at MIT, now in its 22nd year, will present two lectures this spring on contemporary Middle Eastern affairs.
Sports, innovation share stage at Sloan event
A love of sports can lead to exultation and heartbreak. But it can also lead to technical innovation, a point emphasized in one of the panels during the second annual MIT Sloan Sports Business Conference, held Feb. 9.
Profiles in excellence at MIT
MIT is known for bringing out the best in its students academically, but that ambition also applies to athletics. MIT's volleyball teams have achieved stellar success, and much of the credit goes to Coach Paul Dill, who will receive a 2008 Excellence Award for Bringing Out the Best.
Suresh to receive 2008 Eringen Medal
The Society of Engineering Science has chosen Subra Suresh, Dean of the School of Engineering and Ford Professor of Engineering, to receive the A.C. Eringen Medal for 2008, in recognition of "sustained outstanding achievements in engineering science."
MIT to review U.S. energy technology innovation
A two-year, $2-million grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation will enable researchers at MIT to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the energy technology innovation system in the United States.
IAP 2008 in photos
A sampling of images of the diverse offerings in MIT's Independent Activities Period 2008, which ran from Jan. 7 to Feb. 1.
Application for IDDS 2008 now available
The International Development Design Summit (IDDS) 2008 will take place from July 14 through Aug. 8.
John Meyer, nuclear engineer, 76
MIT Professor Emeritus John Meyer, a nuclear engineer who spent more than 25 years at MIT until his retirement in 2001, passed away Jan. 11. He was 76.
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"ComingSoon.net - 20 most recent trailers"
Do you know what's coming?
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
added the international teaser trailer, which includes some minor differences from the North American version
WALL•E
updated the vacuum vignette with High Definition QuickTime
Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns
we've got two exclusive TV spots from the dramedy
Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D
watch the new trailer for the sci-fi/fantasy action-adventure, with Brendan Fraser, Josh Hutcherson and Anita Briem
Big Stan
added the trailer for the new Rob Schneider comedy
My Blueberry Nights
posted a Japanes trailer for the Wong Kar Wai film
Nim's Island
posted an international trailer for the fantasy-adventure
Transsiberian
added a new international trailer for the thriller, with Woody Harrelson, Ben Kingsley and Emily Mortimer
Love Songs
posted the trailer for Christophe Honore's dramatic musical
Pineapple Express
check out a Red Band trailer for the Seth Rogen and James Franco action-comedy!
Be Kind Rewind
linked to two clips from the comedy
The Signal
added a new webisode on the horror film
The Visitor
posted a trailer for the Thomas McCarthy dramedy
Roman de Gare
added the trailer for the drama, starring Audrey Dana, Dominique Pinon and Fanny Ardant
Priceless
updated the trailer with High Definition QuickTime
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LOVE
myssbond's Xanga Blog
a little therapy (Saturday, February 16, 2008 )
myssbond's entry on Saturday, February 16, 2008 at (1 comment)
goalllssss (Thursday, February 14, 2008 )
myssbond's entry on Thursday, February 14, 2008 at
update on the rooster (Tuesday, February 12, 2008 )
myssbond's entry on Tuesday, February 12, 2008 at (1 comment)
Real Music. (Monday, February 11, 2008 )
myssbond's entry on Monday, February 11, 2008 at
aaaand....what. (Saturday, February 09, 2008 )
myssbond's entry on Saturday, February 09, 2008 at (1 comment)
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Clay Shirky's Essays
Clay Shirky's Essays
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Official Google Blog
More types of gadgets for iGoogle
Posted by Mendel Chuang, Product Marketing ManagerGoogle Desktop lets you not only search your computer easily, but you can also personalize your desktop. From cultivating a virtual potted plant, to reading the latest news and checking the weather forecast, you can customize your desktop with a variety of gadgets and a sidebar. Some of you have asked if you can also put gadgets on iGoogle homepages next to your other gadgets. And starting today, the answer is yes.With Google Desktop 5.5 Beta, you can you now embed Google Desktop Gadgets right into your iGoogle homepage. Gadgets on an iGoogle homepage can have more advanced functionality, such as playing music from your computer. You can find them alongside other gadgets in the iGoogle Content Directory. We've also improved some of the other features; such as better looking Quick Search Box, support for multiple copies of a gadget, and improved Outlook search functionality. Read more on the Google Desktop Blog and check out these gadgets you can now add to your iGoogle homepage.
3 short weeks
Posted by Scott Petry, Founder, PostiniThree weeks ago today was the official close of Google's acquisition of Postini -- and what a three weeks it's been. "Official close" meant that integration work could legally begin, and so the Google Apps team and Postini team have been burning the midnight oil to get our services integrated. Now, Google Apps customers, Postini customers and everyone else can see the results.Postini security and compliance capabilities are officially part of Google Apps Premier Edition. Google Apps customers get these services for free. Postini customers get an extended trial period for Apps. New customers can choose their entry point: Apps (including Postini security and compliance) or any of the standalone Postini services.The benefits of software as a service are numerous -- that's why we're seeing a huge interest in Apps. Businesses of all sizes are asking for these services, and we need to help customers embrace Apps without loss of features, functions, or security. I'm proud that Postini plays a role in this offering.Postini was founded in 1999 with the vision of transforming how IT organizations consumed security and compliance products. We recognized the service delivery model brings huge leverage, and 36,000 customers around the world validated that vision. Google Enterprise is now scaling that vision. No one knows what the next three weeks will bring, but we're all excited to be part of it.
Got a blog? Help a student.
Posted by Josh Mendelsohn, Program ManagerWhen it comes to philanthropy, everyone’s got something different to give – some people have money, others have time, and bloggers have devoted readers. The creative folks at DonorsChoose have a few ideas about how bloggers can help students and teachers.In case you’re not familiar with DonorsChoose, it’s a site where teachers post needs they have for their classrooms, and donors fund those projects directly. If you’ve got a blog, a website, or even an email account, you can help by creating what’s called a challenge. Just pick some of your favorite projects and challenge your family, friends, and readers to fund them. If you’ve got a Blogger account, it’s easy to add your challenge to your blog in just a few clicks.To support their recent expansion to schools all across the U.S., the DonorsChoose team is holding a little competition, keeping track of which bloggers and webmasters drive the most funding to schools.We think this is a cool idea, so we want to help it succeed. We’re going to reward the winning bloggers with exactly what they gave to DonorsChoose, students, and teachers: traffic. The competition will remain open until the end of October - we'll then take a look to see who has helped raise the most money in each of the eight DonorsChoose challenge categories. We’ll post links to the winners’ blogs here, and we’ll also throw in a $500 gift certificate for each winner to spend on DonorsChoose.So here’s our challenge to you: go create a challenge on DonorsChoose.
International Cleanup Weekend: Think globally, clean locally
Posted by Steve Miller, Google Earth OutreachOn October 13th and 14th, Googlers and many people around the world will head out to clean up local parks, beaches, trails and other places close to home. We'll be planning our cleanups using Google Maps and sharing our plans with friends and families, along with an invitation to help. So far, Googlers have sent in almost 100 cleanup maps and proposed plans, and have invited more than 900 of their personal contacts to help.And since many small cleanups add up to one big impact, we hope you'll join in too. It takes just a few minutes to plan your own cleanup, make a map of it, and send your map to us -- we'll add it to a growing map of all the cleanups around the world. If you keep your cleanup small (groups of 6-10 people work best) and close to home, it'll be easy to organize and you can be sure that you're doing what's most important for your neighborhood. After your cleanup, share your work with the world by posting photos and videos to your map.If you'd like to join this global effort, you can get started here.
YouTube and Checkout for the non-profit world
Posted by Maryrose Dunton, Product Manager, YouTube, and Prem Ramaswami, Product Manager, Google CheckoutEver since YouTube first launched, people and organizations have been using it to broadcast their causes and engage supporters around the issues they care about. In that spirit, today YouTube unveiled its Non-Profit Program at the Clinton Global Initiative to help non-profit organizations more easily connect with the world's largest online video community. In the past few years, online video has emerged as a key tool for grassroots organizing on the Internet -- a short, simple video can demonstrate the impact and the needs of an organization in a uniquely compelling fashion. This program will enable non-profits to create dedicated YouTube channels for themselves, making it even easier for people to find, watch, and engage with the organization's video content. The initial participants are 13 organizations including the American Cancer Society, Friends of the Earth, and YouthNoise.One other thing the YouTube Non-Profit Program offers: the ability to collect donations directly from these channels using the new Google Checkout for Non-Profits. Checkout for Non-Profits -- which can also be integrated directly into a non-profit's site -- helps drive more donations for U.S.-based 501(c)(3) groups by making it possible for supporters to contribute quickly and securely. It also offers supporters the satisfaction of knowing that 100 percent of their contributions will be sent to the non-profit, as Google has committed to processing donations through Checkout for free through at least the end of 2008. This functionality is particularly exciting, as today's fund-raising is increasingly moving online -- and Checkout for Non-Profits makes the entire process even easier. You can learn more here.
Our testimony on Google-DoubleClick
Posted by Pablo Chavez, Policy CounselYou may have read that a U.S. Senate committee in Washington is holding a hearing today looking at online advertising and our acquisition of DoubleClick. Check out our Public Policy blog for more details about Google's testimony.
A new caffeine-free way to stay alert
Posted by Amy Wu, Associate Product Manager, and Rajat Mukherjee, Group Product ManagerSince new videos are constantly appearing all over the web, it's difficult to keep tabs on all of them. But now Google Alerts will make it easy for you to add video to your other Alerts: News, Web, Blog and Groups.Video Alerts enables you to specify any topics or queries of interest so we can deliver interesting and relevant videos on a daily, weekly, or as-it-happens basis (your choice) to you via email. To start receiving Video Alerts, you can visit the Google Alerts homepage directly or set up the alert during your normal video searches. Videos may come from Google Video, YouTube, or many other video sources on the web.What are you waiting for? Stay up to date with the One Laptop Per Child program. Find the latest videos on the Lunar X-Prize. Impress Grandma by updating your scarf-knitting skills.
Search privacy and Personalized Search
Posted by Jane Horvath, Senior Privacy CounselOnline privacy isn’t always an easy thing to understand—or to explain. When I recently joined the company, I was happy to learn that Google was continuing with the effort to make our privacy practices (and your choices) even clearer and more accessible. We are using YouTube to post videos that explain how, when, and why we collect information about searches, and how you can protect your privacy while using our search engine.If you watched the first privacy video, you learned about some of the information we collect (IP addresses, cookies, and search queries) and how we use this information to improve your search experience as well as prevent against fraud and other abuses. We appreciated all of the feedback we got in response to the first video.In response to your requests for more detailed information, in our second video we're offering a closer look at personalization and the privacy tools available when you choose to personalize your search. Personalization has been an area that raises concerns about privacy, and we want you to understand how we personalize search results while protecting your privacy.As the video explains, search algorithms that are designed to take your personal preferences into account, including the things you search for and the sites you visit, have better odds of delivering useful results for you. So if you’ve been checking out sites about the Louvre and you search for [Paris], you’re more likely to get results about the French capital than the celebrity heiress. The privacy tools we’ve designed — such as “pause” and “remove” buttons — help put you in control of personalization.So sit back, take a look, and then tell us what you think about this video (and the earlier one too). We look forward to hearing from you.
It's all about today
Posted by Niv Efron and Eyal Molad, Google Trends Engineers, Tel-AvivA lot of us love video games, and everyone here has their favorite from the latest generation of consoles. We have a game room in our building that happens to have all three of the latest systems: Artem loves Microsoft's Xbox 360, Niv can't part with Sony's Playstation 3, and Corey is hopelessly addicted to the Nintendo Wii. After some serious work organizing the world's information, we like to kick back with a round of Wii Tennis or a trip to Rapture. The problem is that there's only one TV in the game room, and of course only one system can be played at a time. In true Googley fashion, we look to data to decide which console gets first dibs. For that, we used Google Trends, which lets us see what the world is searching for.Take, for example, a comparison across the systems:Looks like a pretty tight race. Let's take a closer look at 2007.Wow, they're definitely neck and neck (and neck) -- the top console could change anytime. Fortunately, Google Trends is now updated every day with the latest information. (Until now, Trends was only updated once a month.) Now we can follow the console race (or any other topic) every 24 hours, whether it's The Office vs Heroes or the candidates for the next presidential election.In addition to daily updates, we've also created an iGoogle gadget and a feed for Hot Trends. If you have ever wanted to know what the Internet was thinking right now, Hot Trends can tell you just that. Hot Trends shows you what the fastest rising search queries are on Google. Now you can keep track of Hot Trends three ways: by visiting the site, adding the gadget to your homepage, or subscribing to the feed by adding the feed URL to Google Reader or your favorite feed reader.We'd love to hear about any interesting trends you've discovered. Please send them to us at cooltrends@google.com. We'll feature the best ones in a future post.
Pour on the pedal power
Posted by Dan Reicher, Google.orgYou may already know that we're working to reduce our impact on the environment in a number of ways. We opt for locally-grown food whenever possible in all of our cafes. We've covered our roofs with solar panels. We offer a rebate on our employees' fuel-efficient car purchases. When it comes to getting people to the office, we offer round-trip shuttle service to our Bay Area Googlers, as well as incentives for creative commuting, from walking to biking and even to kayaking (depending, of course, on where the office is).Over at Google.org, the RechargeIT project is collecting data on plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) in an effort to accelerate commercial adoption of the cars as well as vehicle to grid technology. To the same end, we just issued a $10 million request for investment proposals to encourage companies and individuals to develop sustainable transportation solutions.And now, we encourage all of you to get your wheels spinning to offset climate change. Google has teamed up with Specialized and Goodby Silverstein & Partners on the Innovate or Die Pedal-Powered Machine Challenge, to give you problem-solvers a chance to show us with a YouTube video how you harness pedal power in innovative ways. In January, you could win $5,000 in cash and Specialized Globe bikes to keep up your commitment. We're doing our bit to support new solutions. Are you feeling inspired?
iGoogle tackles the Rugby World Cup
Posted by Thomas Gayno, Associate Product Marketing Manager, FranceSalut! You may have heard by now that France (relieved after our recent win over Namibia) is currently hosting the sixth Rugby World Cup, which is a gathering of the best rugby teams from around the world competing for the coveted Ellis Cup. You Yanks should imagine the Super Bowl, but held only once every four years, with 20 teams from around the globe -- and without padding or helmets!Four years ago, when England won the last Rugby World Cup, we French Rooster fans began planning for the next global matchup. Meanwhile, our French superstar SĂ©bastien Chabal -- otherwise known as The French Beast, The Anesthetist, Attila or the Caveman -- has grown longer hair, a longer beard and bigger muscles. And he's back for this year's World Cup! To help track The French Beast's team's (or any other team's) progress towards victory, we created an iGoogle tab complete with a variety of gadgets that puts you in the middle of the action. The tab features live scores, group standings, a map of the venues, fan videos from YouTube, and a fun "make some noise" gadget that lets you cheer on your favorite team. With the iGoogle Rugby World Cup tab, you can experience the action in an entirely new way. Even if you've never used iGoogle before, you can add the tab here. Alternatively, type [rugby] into the Google search box and click on "add to my Google page."In line with the international aspect of this sporting event, this tab is available in the following countries: USA, Canada, Portugal, Ireland, UK (Wales, Scotland and England), Romania, Georgia, Namibia, South Africa, Japan, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, France, Italy and Argentina. Whether you're a fan of SĂ©bastian Chabal, Dan Carter or Stirling Mortlock, use the iGoogle Rugby tab to keep track of the action. And if these names don't mean anything to you, tune into the Rugby World Cup and they soon will!
Google Reader goes multilingual
Posted by Kevin Systrom, Product Marketing ManagerI've been traveling a bunch in the past few days, and the one thing I've noticed is the variety of newspapers you're offered on every flight in Europe. In London, where I am now, my hotel has between 10 and 15 newspapers in the lobby from around the world in different languages. So I started thinking about how news plays an increasingly important role across the world.Of course, blogs have also become an international phenomenon. They're not constrained by language or nationality — in fact, blogs have become an important way to bring rise to independent reporters and writers. And there are more and more people who wish to read blogs in other languages. Up until now, our blog and news site service, Google Reader, was only available in English. As of today, it supports these languages: French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, English (UK), Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Japanese, and Korean.With this announcement (you might enjoy this take from the Reader blog), I'm also happy to tell you that we're removing the "Labs" label from Google Reader. It's a small textual change, but we believe it solidifies our commitment to make reading blogs and news sites easier than ever. So try Google Reader and get all your blogs and news sites in one place.Update: Added Dutch, which is now live.
Our feature presentation
Posted by Attila Bodis, Software EngineerIn April we announced that we were working to bring presentations to Google Docs. (Astute readers may recall learning about this even earlier, which caused a bit of excitement around here.) And today we're unveiling the new Google Docs presentations feature and invite you to try it at documents.google.com. Maybe more than any other type of document, presentations are created to be shared. But assembling slide decks by emailing them around is as frustrating as it is time-consuming. The new presentations feature of Google Docs helps you to easily organize, share, present, and collaborate on presentations, using only a web browser.Starting today, presentations -- whether imported from existing files or created using the new slide editor -- are listed alongside documents and spreadsheets in the Google Docs document list. They can be edited, shared, and published using the familiar Google Docs interface, with several collaborators working on a slide deck simultaneously, in real time. When it's time to present, participants can simply click a link to follow along as the presenter takes the audience through the slideshow. Participants are connected through Google Talk and can chat about the presentation as they're watching. Not wanting anyone to feel left out, we've made the presentation feature available in 25 languages; Google Apps customers can also access it as part of Google Docs.We hope the millions of people who already create and share documents and spreadsheets will find presentations a welcome addition to the Google Docs family, and we can't wait to add even more features and enhancements.If you're new to Google Docs, watch this video to learn more about creating and collaborating on documents (and now presentations!).
Australia readies itself for a Google election
Posted by Julian Sonego and Rob Shilkin, Google AustraliaLooking from down under, the long U.S. election cycle ensures that there is no shortage of political headlines generated more than a year out from the actual Presidential election. Many of you may not realise that Australia is also readying itself to enter campaign mode. A federal election is anticipated to be held before the end of the year. You can be sure as the Australian parties get out on the hustings, babies will be kissed, doors knocked and hands vigorously shook -- but this election campaign is already a lot different to others, with digital media playing a new and important role.Today, in Sydney, we announced the launch of a Google Australia election website, so that Australian voters can have an intimate look at the parties, candidates and election issues, all in one Google location. These services, spanning Search, Maps, News, video, Earth, Trends, and iGoogle, enable voters to organise, find and share Australian election information more easily than ever.We created a Picasa Web Album to showcase all the elements, and we're pleased to offer these world-first tools that were developed in our Australian office. Here's hoping Australians will find them useful and even fun. It's our view that democracy on the web works -- and the web can work for democracy.
We've officially acquired Postini
Posted by Dave Girouard, Vice President & General Manager, Google EnterpriseAs of today, Postini becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of Google, and we couldn’t be happier about it. (Here's the FAQ.) Since July 9, when we announced the agreement to acquire Postini, plenty of businesses have told us how much they respect Postini and how the acquisition makes sense for customers of both companies.We view this as welcome news, but also a sign of things to come. With the more than 100,000 businesses on Google Apps, 35,000 businesses and more than 10 million users of Postini products, we see great potential on both sides. We're committed to continue to deliver the type of innovative and useful business products our customers have come to expect. And we plan to announce even more product offerings in the very near future.Separately, both companies shared a vision for what the world of hosted applications can become for businesses of all sizes. Together, we look forward to achieving it.
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- updated: Oct 07 09:23AM
The Chandler Project Blog
Chandler Project Status Upate
It’s been a couple of weeks since our last update. Some developments on the release front… Last week we released Chandler 0.7.4. There was also a Chandler Server release, 0.12.0. We are close to rolling out a Chandler 0.7.4.1 which addresses a bug that complicated upgrades [...]
What makes a Task a Task?
We’ve decided to remove the notion of Task entirely from Chandler and add the notion of a ‘Star’. The Star isn’t so much a replacement for Tasks. Tasks are nouns, they are a Kind of item, like Notes, Messages and Events. By contrast, the Star is simply an adjective, a way to describe Note, Message [...]
Desktop 1.0 Work Queue
Over the past 2 weeks, we’ve been plugging away at a Work Queue for Chandler Desktop. By we, I mean Grant. The thinking behind the work queue is to isolate the half-dozen or so usability issues we feel are the biggest blockers to new users understanding what Chandler is, and how to set about using [...]
Chandler Desktop 0.7.4 released
The Chandler Project is pleased to announce the 0.7.4 release of Chandler Desktop! Chandler Desktop is an open source, standards-based personal information manager (PIM) built around small group collaboration and a core set of information management workflows modelled on Inbox usage patterns. The 0.7.4 release adds a Tip of the day feature and a German translation contributed [...]
Chandler Server (Cosmo) 0.12.0 released
The Chandler Project is pleased to announce the 0.12.0 release of Chandler Server (Cosmo)! Chandler Server is a server and Ajax web UI for managing and sharing calendars, events, and tasks. It implements open data standards including CalDAV, WebDAV, Atom, and Atompub. This release supports a standalone WAR form of Cosmo ready to drop in to an [...]
OSAF’s Next Steps
Last week the staff got together in person and took a critical look at where the project is now and what we want to achieve in the next year. We asked ourselves a series of questions, including: “We have some successful, enthusiastic users who rely on Chandler daily: how are they using it? What are their [...]
More Blogging and Fewer Mailing Lists
To help focus as a team, we have consolidated our various mailing lists in the following ways: Chandler-dev is now the working list for all things pertaining to the Chandler Project. This includes planning, design and bug prioritization for both Chandler Desktop and Chandler Hub as well as general interest topics like the project wiki, evangelism, [...]
Chandler Project Status Update
With so many changes around the restructuring we thought it would be helpful to start blogging about our project status on a regular basis so people get a sense of the ongoing activities. While we work the strategic next steps, our new team will focus on getting a release out for both the desktop and server. Chandler [...]
Introducing: myself and chandler.el
Katie’s post OSAF 2.0 Team seems like a good opportunity to introduce myself in this space. When I first joined OSAF I was asked to do this by Pieter Hartsook but a combination of a bad memory and busy schedule has kept this task triaged Later. I’m originally from a small town about 45 minutes outside [...]
OSAF 2.0 Team
Several folks have asked who is staying on for the next phase — who is remaining on the staff. Mimi Yin continues on as our Product Designer, Sheila Mooney in Program and Product Management, and Jared Rhine running the Hub Service. Jared will add more IT responsibilities, as well as build and release responsibilities to his [...]
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- updated: Feb 18 04:23PM
Penny Arcade
Comics for gamers
The Spore Cult
Professor Layton And The Perpetual Torment
Travel Form, And I'm Out
Pharmacopsychiatry
We Are Only Trying To Help
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- updated: Feb 18 03:15AM
Philip Greenspun's Weblog
A posting every day; an interesting idea every three months...
News matters in Turkey
Our host family in Turkey watched the TV news every night.ďľ My father, who was a teenager during WWII has the same habit of taking news seriously.ďľ Within the memory of our hosts and their 18-year-old son, Turkey has been through financial crises, military coups, more than 30,000 people killed by Kurdish separatists, and small [...]
Good way to get rich in Turkey: Get married
One guide talked about the Turkish custom of giving substantial cash to newlyweds:ďľ “I make between $500 and $1000 per month.ďľ If I were invited to a wedding, I would have to give at least $200 to the couple or people would talk about me.” We learned later that the president and prime minister of Turkey [...]
Reflections on our trip to Turkey
The Turkey trip is winding to a close.ďľ Here were some of the highlights (this posting is mostly for friends and family)… Days 0-2: Istanbul.ďľ Loved the boat rides on the Bosphorus.ďľ Had fun on the main pedestrian street of Beyoglu (home to three Starbucks, one McDonald’s, one Pizza Hut, etc.).ďľ A “pedestrian street” in Turkey [...]
The Turkish Bath
All of the Turks with whom we spoke reacted with horror when we expressed interest in going to a Turkish Bath (hamam):ďľ “You’ll come out dirtier than when you went in”; “They are for poor travelers to the city”; “A 200 lb. hairy Turkish guy will scrub you raw”; “Anyone with money who wants a [...]
Dating tips for foreigners in Turkey
One of my guides in Cappadocia was kind enough to give me some dating advice for Turkey.ďľ Heďľ is a handsome fellow in his late 20s with aďľ gorgeousďľ girlfriend so he speaks with some authority.ďľ ”Forget about girls in the eastern portion of Turkey who haven’t been to university,” he started, “the real action begins at age 19 [...]
Three books about an exotic polyglot Near East
I’ve finished three books about exotic cities with a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious population. The first is Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul: Memories and the City.ďľ The publisher pushes this as essential reading for tourists who want to learn about Istanbul.ďľ About half of the text of the book is devoted to the author’s feelings and memories of [...]
The day that Turkey joins the EU…
… a lot of the 70+ million Turks may consider emigration. Sampling of prices… Gasoline: $8.50/gallon. Diet Coke in a cafe: $6. Museum admission: $8-16. Haagen-Daz in the supermarket: $12.50/pint. Crummy Yellow Tail Shiraz from Australia in the supermarket: $32/bottle. Local table wine: $15-20/bottle.ďľ Burger (or “McTurco”), fries, Coke at McDonald’s: $6.ďľ Dinner for three at [...]
Good hotel in Istanbul
Mallory and I stumbled upon a great hotel in Istanbul, right next to the Blue Mosque:ďľ Hotel Sultan Hill.ďľ The building is a converted Ottoman-era house, which means that most of the rooms have windows on two sides and therefore much better light than a typical hotel room.ďľ The rooms were small but very clean [...]
Sights seen in Istanbul so far…
A report for friends and family from Istanbul.ďľ Some sights seen in the last 36 hours… A packed American Airlines 777 coach cabin with static through the audio system connector rendering the fancy multi-channel video system unusable.ďľ A Danish novel called the Exception that got a great review in New Yorker magazine but that I can’t [...]
Barack Obama’s Dreams from my Father
I decided that I needed to vote for Barack Obama for president because (a) all of my friends in Cambridge want to vote for him, and (b) he seems to make people feel good (like Reagan, but without the tax cuts).ďľ I thought that maybe it would be good to learn at least one thing [...]
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- updated: Oct 13 01:24PM
Taegan Goddard's Political Wire
Clinton Seen Leading the "Edwards Primary"
The Associated Press: "The couple has been impressed with Clinton, who has more effectively courted them since the 2004 vice presidential nominee dropped out, people who talk to the Edwardses say. Obama has been less attentive, they say, and some of those close to the Edwardses have been annoyed that Obama has continued to ridicule him for once saying his biggest weakness is that he has a powerful response to seeing pain in others."
Clinton To Leave Wisconsin Early
Sen. Hillary Clinton "has scaled back her Wisconsin campaign schedule by a full day, and is now planning to leave the state after Monday morning instead of Tuesday morning," according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. "The move suggests the campaign does not think it can overtake rival Barack Obama here. Obama has already campaigned in the state Tuesday night, Wednesday, Friday, and today. He also has single events planned for Sunday and Monday." Wisconsin's primary is on Tuesday.
Obama Secretly Meets Edwards
Sen. Barack Obama "paid a secret visit to his former rival, John Edwards, in quest of his endorsement on Sunday," The Politico reports. "The meeting in Chapel Hill, N.C., where Edwards lives, is the latest effort by Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) to win 'the Edwards primary' -- the heatedly sought endorsement of the third-place finisher in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination." Like Clinton's visit earlier this month, Obama managed to pull off his without the notice of the national press corps. However. WTVD-TV claims to have video of the visit which it will air later today.Mark Halperin explains why Edwards' endorsement matters.
ARG Poll: Clinton Leads in Wisconsin
A new American Research Group survey in Wisconsin shows Sen. Hillary Clinton leading Sen. Barack Obama, 49% to 43%. Key findings: "Obama leads among men 48% to 42% and Clinton leads among women 55% to 39%. Clinton leads among white voters 52% to 40%, Obama leads among African American voters 85% to 9%, and Clinton leads among Latino voters 50% to 44%." On the Republican side, Sen. John McCain leads Mike Huckabee 46% to 42%.
Quote of the Day
"They need to send him out of the country for a long, long time. I am angry at Bill Clinton and I think there are other Hillary people who are angry at Bill, who felt that she was running a very good, solid campaign -- she wasn't the exciting one, but she was the solid one -- and then he came in and made it nasty, and single-handedly pushed away black voters." -- A superdelegate supporting Sen. Hillary Clinton, quoted by the Baltimore Sun, adding the former president "has screwed this thing up for her big-time."
Obama Takes National Lead
Sen. Barack Obama enjoys his first statistically significant lead in the Gallup tracking poll, 49% to 42%, over Sen. Hillary Clinton. Additionally, the 49% support for Obama represents the high point for him in the daily survey. On the Republican side, Sen. John McCain leads Mike Huckabee, 54% to 28%.
Quote of the Day
"I told President Clinton that I thought it was really important that pledged delegates be the deciding factor. And he agreed with me." Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK), quoted by Tulsa World.
Gore May Act As Power Broker
Al Gore and a number of other senior Democrats "plan to remain neutral for now in the presidential race in part to keep open the option to broker a peaceful resolution to what they fear could be a bitterly divided convention," the New York Times reports. "The signs that party elders are weighing whether and how to intervene reflects the extraordinary nature of the contest now and the concern among some Democrats that they not risk an internal battle that could harm the party in the general election." In a related article, CQ Politics notes some Democratic superdelegates "say they have little incentive to choose sides early if the presidential nomination fight may not be decided until, or just before, the party’s convention in August."
Lewis Not Talking
Sen. Barack Obama "had not spoken with Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) as of Friday morning. Neither had Hillary Clinton. Lewis and his staff weren't returning calls," the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. "That lack of communication left a vacuum in Friday's political spin cycle after the overnight bombshell report that Lewis planned to drop Clinton and cast his superdelegate vote for Obama at the Democratic Party's national convention in August." "Lewis' spokeswoman would only say that the New York Times report that Lewis would back Obama was 'inaccurate,' but provided no details and did not respond to requests for more. Jeff Zeleny, the Times reporter who interviewed Lewis on Thursday, later told CNN that Lewis 'unequivocally' said he would support Obama."
Quote of the Day
"It would be a problem for the party if the verdict would be something different than the public has decided."-- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), quoted by the San Francisco Chronicle, on how superdelegates should vote at the Democratic National Convention.
R2000: Obama Leading Clinton in Wisconsin
A new Research 2000 poll in Wisconsin, shows Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential race, 47% to 42%, with 11% still undecided.The Wisconsin primary is on Tuesday.
ARG Poll: Obama Leads in Texas
A new American Research Group poll in Texas finds Sen. Barack Obama ahead of Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential race, 48% to 42%.Key findings: "Hillary Clinton leads Barack Obama among self-described Democrats 47% to 42%. Obama leads Clinton among self-described independents and Republicans 24% to 71%. Obama leads among men 55% to 29% (47% of likely Democratic primary voters) and Clinton leads among women 54% to 42%. Clinton leads Obama among white voters 51% to 40% (53% of likely Democratic primary voters), Obama leads Clinton among African American voters 76% to 17% (22% of likely Democratic primary voters), and Clinton leads Obama among Latino voters 44% to 42%."Update: The Burnt Orange Report shows two other polls today that have Clinton in the lead.
Rasmussen: Obama Slightly Ahead in Wisconsin
A new Rasmussen Reports survey in Wisconsin finds Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. Hillary Clinton, 47% to 43%. Key finding: "Nearly one-fourth of the voters say there’s a good chance they might change their mind. Five percent (5%) of those who currently support Obama and Clinton say there’s a good chance they could change their mind before voting."
Obama Snags Key Union Endorsement
Sen. Barack Obama "is expected to rack up more labor backing on Friday," the Wall Street Journal reports. "The Service Employees International Union, one of the most politically active unions, is expected to announce a national endorsement for him, according to people familiar with the matter. The move would give him organizational support in Ohio and Texas in March."
Superdelegates Get Campaign Cash
A new study finds Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama have been making campaign contributions to superdelegates. "And while it would be unseemly for the candidates to hand out thousands of dollars to primary voters, or to the delegates pledged to represent the will of those voters, elected officials who are superdelegates have received at least $890,000 from Obama and Clinton in the form of campaign contributions over the last three years, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics."
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- updated: Feb 18 05:16AM
Reason Magazine - Hit & Run
Eddie Lee Howard: Mississippi's Next Exoneration?
Now that Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks have been freed, the Innocence Project is calling for a criminal investigation into Dr. Michael West. Peter Neufeld is asking that every case in which West has ever testified be reviewed. The linked article notes that there are 20 or more Mississippians in prison right now due at least in part to West's testimony.West still stands by his testimony. He's now saying that even if Brooks and Brewer did not commit the two murders a third man has since confessed to committing, his testimony wasn't incorrect: Brewer and Brooks still bit those little girls. To believe West, you'd have to believe that in two cases that occurred at about the same time, two men living just miles apart coincidentally each repeatedly bit a little girl in their care just hours before a third man unknown to either of them abducted, raped, and killed said little girls. Alternately, you could believe that Dr. West is a quack who makes shit up. I know which theory my money's on. The next case involving the unholy triumvirate of West, Hayne, and District Attorney Forrest Allgood that may embarrass Mississippi is that of Eddie Lee Howard, currently on death row in Parchman for the gruesome murder of an elderly woman. The assailant stabbed the woman to death, then set her house on fire and left her to burn. Dr. Hayne testified at trial that the woman was also raped, though no semen or second-party blood or pubic hair showed up in the rape kit. Hayne did not find any bite marks. The victim was buried. In a now-familiar pattern, Hayne then brought his buddy Dr. West onto the case. Three days later, the police detained Howard without a warrant, then immediately took him to Dr. West's dental practice, where West took an impression of Howard's teeth. Police then exhumed the victim, at which point West once again claimed to find bite marks no one else could see. He then noted there were similarities between Mr. Howard's dental impression and the bite marks he said he'd found on the burned body. There was no biological evidence linking Howard to the crime scene. The sole evidence against him was West's testimony and the testimony of a police investigator who says Howard basically confessed to him, though the investigator never asked Howard to sign a statement of confession, nor is there any recording of it.Eddie Lee Howard clearly has some psychological problems. The Mississippi Supreme Court granted him a new trial in 1997 after finding the trial court improperly allowed Howard, who is mentally ill, to represent himself in his own murder trial. Howard was convicted in the second trial, too. In 2006, the Mississippi State Supreme Court upheld the second conviction, and explicitly refused to throw out Dr. West's testimony. This was well after West's credibility had been thoroughly dismantled in the national media, after DNA proved he'd been wrong in the Kennedy Brewer case, and after he'd been thrown out of several professional organizations.Bizarrely, the court determined that it was Howard's fault his attorney didn't call an expert witness to rebut West's testimony but that, at the same time, the fact that his attorney didn't didn't amount to ineffective assistance of counsel. After acknowledging that Howard's new lawyers filed piles and piles of affidavits from experts explaining that Dr. West is basically a quack, the court awkwardly came to this conclusion:Just because Dr. West has been wrong a lot, does not mean, without something more, that he was wrong here. If Howard is cleared, it will be the fourth (that I know of) murder exoneration involving District Attorney Forrest Allgood. Three of those people were sentenced to death. It will be the third (that I know of) involving Dr. Hayne and Dr. West. I'm investigating several others. The Innocence Project chapters in Mississippi and New York are, too.
John P. Morgan, RIP
John P. Morgan, a physician and pharmacologist who has played a prominent role in the drug policy reform movement for many years, died on Friday at the age of 67 from acute myeloid leukemia. I saw him at the International Drug Policy Reform Conference in early December and had no idea he was ill. Perhaps he didn't either; this disease is often rapidly fatal after the symptoms are first detected. Morgan, a professor of pharmacology at the City University of New York from 1977 to 2004 and a longtime adviser to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, brought to the anti-prohibitionist movement the deep knowledge, openness to argument, and calm and measured manner of a careful scholar. These traits were evident in what he said (see above for an example) and in what he wrote. Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts, the 1997 book he co-authored with Queens College sociologist Lynn Zimmer, concisely and authoritatively debunked the major themes of anti-pot propaganda, but it's really not a pro-pot book. It could more accurately be described as a pro-science book. Morgan emphasized that every drug has its hazards but insisted that they be assessed dispassionately, without regard to the drug's current legal status.Sometimes that's tricky, because making a drug illegal has a way of enhancing its dangers, a phenomenon to which Morgan frequently drew attention. In a 1990 speech at the Hoover Institution, for instance, he used the experience with adulterated ginger "jake"during alcohol prohibition to illustrate four features of drug prohibition:1. Prohibition engenders criminal enterprises and criminal subcultures.2. Prohibition generates more potent forms of the forbidden substance.3. Prohibition enlarges drug toxicity by contamination and adulteration.4. Those poisoned by interdicted substances in their potent or contaminated forms are blamed for their disabilities, or even their deaths, because they were engaging in outlawed conduct.My last interaction with Morgan occurred at the conference in December, when I participated in a panel on methamphetamine. My presentation dealt with responsible, controlled use of amphetamines, a topic I broached with some trepidation, since meth has a bad rap even among critics of the war on drugs and even among illegal drug users ("Speed Kills" and all that). During the question-and-answer session, Morgan said he agreed that concern about the "methamphetamine epidemic" had made it difficult to talk about the drug's legitimate uses, which do not necessarily require a doctor's prescription to validate them. He said he had personally found methamphetamine tremendously useful during his education and career, calling it one of the safest drugs around when used responsibly. Coming from most people in most contexts, this would have been a startling admission. But coming from the eminently reasonable Morgan and delivered in his usual matter-of-fact tone, it cut through the hysteria and introduced a much-needed alternative perspective. Morgan made a career of doing that, and his well-informed skepticism will be sorely missed. [via Celebstoner]
The Friday Political Thread: Get Ready for President's Day Edition
Sometime tomorrow I'll be on the America's Future Foundation podcast, right here.The Week in Brief- Barack Obama and John McCain swept the Virginia, Maryland and DC primaries: Only McCain had any trouble, winning by only 9 points in the commonwealth.- In Maryland, Republican Rep. Wayne Gilchrest and Democratic Rep. Al Wynn were defeated, by surprisingly large margins, by challengers more in step with their parties.- Mitt Romney endorsed John McCain; John Edwards' circle let slip that the ex-candidate might endorse Hillary Clinton. Larger IssuesThe Big Lie. I'm not counting Hillary Clinton out of the presidential race, but it's sad what her apparatchiks have been reduced to. Unless they romp in the March 4 primaries, they'll have to count on unelected superdelegates to erase Obama's lead and secure the nomination for her. And voila: Lanny Davis, a longtime Clinton friend and spinner, writes at the HuffPo that superdelegates are the best thing to happen to the Democrats since Bill Clinton gave his first stemwinder. The superdelegates were necessary, Davis says, because the ultra-open reforms of the 60s wrecked the party. It did not seem entirely coincidental that the nominees since the Democratic Party reforms -- Senator George McGovern in 1972 and Jimmy Carter for reelection in 1980 -- suffered landslide defeats.We were also reminded that before these reforms, the "smoke-filled rooms" of Democratic Party leaders had led to the nomination and election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson and John F. Kennedy. Not bad.There are two problems with this. One is that Jimmy Carter was also nominated in 1976 and, obviously, won. So the Democrats had a 1-2 record in the pre-superdelegate era and, so far, a 2-4 record in the Glorious Age of Lanny Davis.The other problem is that Roosevelt and Kennedy were actually nominated via primaries. Few states held primaries in 1932 and 1960, but the CQ Politics blog has the rundown on both races.1932: Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, the governor of New York, outpaced his nearest rival by a ratio of more than 2 to 1 in the overall primary vote en route to winning his first of four nominations and elections for president.1960: Sen. John F. Kennedy, a little less than two months short of his 43rd birthday, established himself as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination by winning the April 5 primary in Wisconsin — the first after the New Hampshire contest March 8, which Kennedy, of neighboring Massachusetts, won easily. Kennedy appeared to be at a regional disadvantage in his one-on-one matchup with Minnesota Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey, making his 13 percentage-point victory margin even more impressive. The contest was captured in the well-regarded documentary film “Primary.” Kennedy went on to another impressive win, and effectively ended Humphrey’s hopes for the nomination by winning easily in West Virginia, overcoming doubts that the state’s overwhelmingly Protestant electorate would go for Kennedy’s bid to become the nation’s first Roman Catholic president. Kennedy faced competitors at the convention — including Texas Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson, who would become Kennedy’s vice president and ultimate successor — but clinched the nomination on the first ballot. It's possible that FDR would have been nominated in a smoke-filled room, but not a sure thing. The rules were different in 1932 (you needed 2/3 of all delegates to secure the nomination) and party insiders might have fretted about FDR's handicap, while voters didn't realize how severe it was. It's less like Kennedy would have been nominated in 1960—he badly needed to win those primaries to prove that a national Catholic candidate could win (or in the case of West Virginia, buy) elections in Democratic states. Again, I'm not counting Clinton out, but there's an argument to make for reforming the primaries and changing the role of the great unwashed. This isn't it. James Robbins has a snarkier take on the same thing.Below the Fold- Holly Yeager combs through data and sees Barack Obama stealing Hillary Clinton's base.- Ben Smith asks what happened to Clinton's support in the right-wing media.- Brian Beutler wraps up the career of Tom Lantos.No special theme for Politics 'n' Prog: Just Lemmy, a space woman, and a whole lotta riffin'.
Being in Congress Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry...
Rep. Henry Waxman, the mastermind behind the latest waste of congressional time (and taxpayers' money), says that he's sorry about this week's idiotic foray into whether Major League Baseball players, most notably Roger "The Rocket" Clemens, used performance-enhancing drugs.Then again, it's not the Congressman's fault:"I'm sorry we had the hearing. I regret that we had the hearing. And the only reason we had the hearing was because Roger Clemens and his lawyers insisted on it," Waxman said.Clemens' lawyer says that Waxman is dishing junk:Clemens' lawyer, Rusty Hardin, disputes Waxman's claims, calling the congressman's statements, "unbelievable, disingenuous and outrageous.""He is the one who created this circus in the first place," Hardin said.More here.And some recent reason stuff on the matter here.Here, Matt Welch raises the question of why Congress was wondering if Clemens' buttocks ever hosted a "palpable mass," which sounds like something that happens between confession and Easter services
I'm Dreaming of a Libertarian Obama
Jeffrey Rosen pens a short essay in The New Republic arguing that Barack Obama can be, in Rosen's words, "the first civil libertarian president."After Obama was elected to the Illinois state Senate in 1996, he defended individual rights in a way that might have marginalized him: He joined only two other senators in voting against a bill to forbid convicts on probation from having contact with street gangs, and he voted against a bill to expand the death penalty to gang-related murders. But Obama nevertheless won the respect of police and prosecutors in Chicago by building those "alliances of consent." One of his greatest legislative triumphs was a bill to require the videotaping of all confessions and interrogations in capital cases. Initially, police, state prosecutors, and the newly elected Democratic governor were strongly opposed, some death-penalty abolitionists viewed the bill as too moderate, and legislators were afraid of being soft on crime. But Obama led daily negotiations (without reporters) during which he emphasized his opponents' common values. At the end, the bill had the support of all parties, passed unanimously, and today has been adopted as a model by four states and the District of Columbia.There's more recent stuff and a hashing-out of how John McCain would attack Obama on this front. Rosen expects Obama to parry better than Dukakis did versus Bush; I agree, and I think the criminal issues that sunk Dukakis have less salience than the war on terror issues that inflame the gonads of the McCain Right. I heard way too many arguments that the PATRIOT Act vote would sink Russ Feingold or the wireless wiretap debate would save Denny Haster's job to take that line too seriously.But what about those other liberties? Aswini Aburajan reports from Obama's last presser, which came after the NIU killings.Asked to comment on Cheney's decision to add his signature to a brief supported by 55 senators and 250 congressmen to have the Supreme Court overturn a ban on handguns by the District of Columbia, Obama said he wasn't familiar with the statements made by either the Vice President or members of Congress.However, he went on to defend the right of municipalities to establish their own handgun laws. "The city of Chicago has gun laws, so does Washington, D.C.," Obama said. "The notion that somehow local jurisdictions can't initiate gun safety laws to deal with gangbangers and random shootings on the street isn't born out by our constitution." Washington, D.C., Mayor Adrian Fenty is an endorser of Obama.Asked to elaborate on his understanding of what the second amendment actually means, Obama said that he does believe the second amendment "speaks to an individual's right." But he said that right could be "subject to common-sense regulation just like most of our rights are subject to common-sense regulation. So I think there's a lot of room before you [sic] bumping against a constitutional barrier for us to institute some of the common-sense gun laws." So: Obama is a civil libertarian, except when he is not.
The "Brown-Black" Race Card?
Over at Politico, "libertarian Democrat," former press secretary for the Democratic National Committee, and occasional reason contributor Terry Michael writes about whether Hillary Clinton is exploiting tensions between Hispanics and blacks in the Donkey Party:Stipulated, I am a partisan of my fellow Illinoisan Obama, who I believe is transcending race in this campaign. But, putting on my media critic hat, I would urge those whose business it is to interpret our politics, the press corps, to carefully observe how Clinton Inc. plays the "brown-black" race card as the campaign moves toward Texas. That extra scrutiny was earned by trash talk from the Supreme and Un-Fireable Manager of Clinton Inc. (our "first black president") between Iowa and South Carolina. All of this could have been predicted for a political party (I lament it is mine) that has been playing identity politics with a vengeance for the past several decades. With an unfortunate focus on granting entitlements based on tribal affinity rather than celebrating the rights, liberties and personal responsibilities of individuals in a pluralistic democracy, strengthened by civic cultural assimilation, we Democrats have been courting racialist warfare for a long time. More here.
New at Reason
In "Rodney King's Children," reason Managing Editor Jesse Walker talks with a leader of a human rights group that is fighting oppression and torture by posting video on the web.Read all about it here.
Internists Endorse Access to Medical Marijuana
In a new position paper, the American College of Physicians (ACP) "urges review of marijuana's status as a schedule I controlled substance and its reclassification into a more appropriate schedule, given the scientific evidence regarding marijuana's safety and efficacy in some clinical conditions." It also "strongly urges protection from criminal or civil penalties for patients who use medical marijuana as permitted under state laws." The ACP, which represents 124,000 internal medicine specialists and publishes Annals of Internal Medicine, is the second largest physician group in the country. (The American Medical Association claims about 244,000 members, of which some 135,000 are practicing physicians, according to MedPage Today.) The Marijuana Policy Project calls the ACP's position "the most significant organizational endorsement of medical marijuana access in the field of medicine and science."I discussed such endorsements in November, when the Assembly of the American Psychiatric Association unanimously urged the federal government to stop interfering with the medical use of marijuana in states where it's legal.
A Purge Too Far?
GOP blogger guru Patrick Ruffini wants to boot Ron Paul from Congress.Chris Peden is a traditional conservative Republican candidate for Congress in Texas’s 14th Congressional district...Here’s what Ron Paul says about TX-14: “If I were to lose the primary for my congressional seat, all our opponents would react with glee.”Give what you can. Ron Paul is running scared — using his Presidential campaign’s donors’ money to subsidize a desperate last-minute attempt to save his Congressional seat.The source for that claim is a paraphrase of Mark Elam... I'm going to assume the campaign isn't actually defying federal law and is using its new, rEVOLution-enhanced donor list to raise TX-14 money. UPDATE: Patrick Semmens from the Paul campaign responds:Patrick Ruffini is wrong, as no money from the presidential campaign is has been transferred to the congressional campaign. As you correctly note, doing so would be a violation of federal law.The only way funds from the presidential campaign could go towards Dr. Paul's congressional race would be for Paul to end the presidential run and close the committee. He has made it very clear that he has no plans to do that.I've e-mailed Ruffini for a response.This isn't Ruffini's first call to support a GOP insurgent. Last year he rattled the tin cup for Jim Ogonowski, an underfunded Republican who made a manful effort in an open Massachusetts House seat. (Sadly, Ogonowski passed on another run in favor of a nine-month beatdown by John Kerry.) Maybe a depressed GOP online base will overcome the McCain malady by chucking coins at Chris Peden. Peden could use it: He could sleep a little easier about the $150,000 loan he's given his own campaign. And he could use it to overcome the $315,000 Paul's raised since the start of the quarter.If the campaign gets close, though, it won't be because of money. It's all about the war—and that makes me skeptical of the purge. Peden isn't sending around flyers about Paul's newsletters or his have-cake-and-eat-it-too earmark policy. He's claiming Paul "blames America for 9/11" and "votes against our troops." (He is attacking Paul on his votes against free trade agreements, so, partial credit.) That's the oxygen for his campaign.One problem with this campaign that I don't think the joiners have thought through... what does Ron Paul do the day after he loses a congressional primary? His only firm, titanium-strength committment not to run third party came when he... was appealing to donors to save him in TX-14. If the Libertarian Party calls a defeated Rep. Ron Paul on March 5 and offers him its nomination on a silk pillow, does anyone think he tells them to go away?
Imad and Me
A couple of things struck me about the New York Times coverage of Hezbollah leader Imad Mugniyah's assassination. First of all, in this publicity shot from the Hezbollah Media Office, Mugniyah looks like a an older, pudgier, camouflage-wearing version of me: I gather this picture was taken before the plastic surgery he supposedly had. Despite his Semitic looks (I know, I know: Arabs are Semites too!), this was a guy who considered blowing up a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires a legitimate tactic in a war with Israel. In his view, killing any random Jew, anywhere in the world, was just retaliation for wrongs committed by the Israeli government. Yet I was still surprised to see the Times unambiguously call Mugniyah, who headed Hezbollah's Islamic Jihad Organization, a terrorist.The headline over the main story about Mugniyah's death, "Bomb in Syria Kills Militant Sought as Terrorist," equivocates a bit, but the text calls him "one of the most wanted and elusive terrorists in the world." A sidebar summarizing his murderous career calls him "perhaps the world's most feared terrorist" before 9/11 and notes that "the list of those who might seek justice or revenge against him was a lengthy one." By contrast, the Times usually calls Arab terrorists who target Israelis "militants." The Times story about last week's suicide bombing at a shopping center in Dimona, for instance, called the Fatah-affiliated Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which initially claimed responsibility for killing an Israeli woman at the shopping center, "militant groups." (It also called the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades a "militia.") Later, when the Qassam Brigades took credit for the murder, the Times described that organization as "the military wing of Hamas," which it called a "militant Islamic group."So what exactly does it take for a "militant" to be recognized as a "terrorist" in The New York Times? Evidently he needs to target Jewish civilians not only outside Gaza and the West Bank but outside of Israel, preferably on a different continent. I think it also helps if he attacks Americans, as Mugniyah repeatedly did. The Times does not seem to be squeamish about calling Al Qaeda "a terrorist group." If Osama bin Laden had crashed a plane into a building in Tel Aviv instead of New York City, would he be merely a militant?
Robert Jastrow, R.I.P.
Physicist Robert Jastrow, founder and director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Mount Wilson Institute which manages Mount Wilson Observatory in California died last week at the age of 82. Jastrow, an excellent popularizer of science, was the author of Red Giants and White Dwarfs and The Enchanted Loom: Mind in the Universe.The New York Times' obituary correctly notes:“He had a deep sense of the need to interpret science and make it available to the public,” said Albert Arking, a former student of Dr. Jastrow. As an ambassador of science, he was a natural, Dr. Arking recalled, saying, “His enthusiasm for science was infectious.” Besides being a fan of his books, I got to know Jastrow in the mid-1980s when I was working as a television producer for the PBS foreign policy program American Interests. We had him on as a guest to debate the feasibility of President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative a number of times. I later encountered him as a skeptic in the debate over the seriousness of man-made climate change (he was the head of the Marshall Institute which has published numerous reports highlighting defects in climate models, temperature data sets and the politicization of climate change science). Ironically, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies is now home to cllimate modeler James Hansen, one of the biggest proponents of the argument that unmitigated global warming is likely to be catastrophic. Setting aside those scientific controversies, I will always fondly remember Jastrow for his generosity in taking me on a personal tour of the Mount Wilson Observatory several years ago. I got to see and touch the 100-inch Hooker telescope that enabled astronomer Edwin Hubble to discover in the 1920s that Milky Way was just one of billions of galaxies and that the universe was expanding. That was a moment of true awe for me.The world will miss this happy warrior for science.
President of Mississippi State Medical Association Denounces Dr. Hayne
I just spoke on the phone with Dr. Dwalia South, president of the Mississippi State Medical Association, the state branch of the AMA.Coincidentally, Dr. South has been working on an editorial for the organization's newsletter raising questions about why the state medical examiner position in Mississippi has been vacant since 1995. In doing some research, she found my personal blog, contacted me, and we chatted this morning."I don't know why Dr. Hayne is still a member of our organization," she says. "I'm going to try to get him booted. I can't believe he is allowed to take the stand and use our organization's name to boost his credentials. That isn't right. I'm going to do what I can to change that. I'm going to do what I can make people care about this."Dr. South has firsthand experience with Hayne and with Mississippi's broken forensics system. She was once the elected coroner for Tippah County, and one of the few county coroners who bucked Hayne's grip on the system. That might have something to do with the fact that unlike most of the state's coroners, she's an actual physician. The state requires only a high school diploma to run for coroner. "We had all sorts of people in that office. Farmers, morticians, a really diverse group of people for that kind of office. The guy I replaced couldn't read or write. Can you believe that? An illiterate was in charge of this county's death investigations. He was letting the families of the deceased fill out the death certificates. Really unbelievable. When I heard that, I decided, well, I'm going to run. I did, and I won."One of the reforms implemented by Dr. Lloyd White, who was a state medical examiner in Mississippi before Hayne and his allies drove him out, was that the coroners at least had to take continuing courses in death investigation. According to Dr. South, many of those classes are, perversely, taught by Dr. Hayne."He's actually a very good lecturer," she says. "At least when it comes to his style. Very charming. The coroners loved him. He really owned them."But South wasn't in office long before she started to learn about Hayne's practices. "I was hearing some really horrible things about him," she says. "The more I learned, the more troubled I was. What he's doing is unethical and unprofessional. it's malpractice. If the truth was known about him, there would be an upheaval in our penitentiary system, because there are probably a lot of people he's helped put there who don't deserve to be there.""I'm really blown out of the water by this," she says. "One of my goals when I became president was to shed some light on this. Mississippi doesn't need this. There's got to be something that we as a group of doctors can do to blow the whistle on this guy."The Mississippi State Medical Association's next board meeting is in three weeks. My reason feature on Dr. Hayne here.
New at Reason
In the latest edition of Friday Funnies, Scott Stantis sketches the wacky adventures of kid John McCain.
More Fun with Price Controls
It was with astonishment that The Economist surveyed Hugo Chávez's first five years in office: "In the five years to 2003, Mr Chávez's performance was disastrous. The proportion of households below the poverty line increased by more than 11 percentage points...It was the first time since data were collected that poverty rose even as the oil price did too." But in the past few years, the Venezuelan economy has undergone significant growth, with an influx of oil money resulting in 18 percent growth in 2004 and 10 percent in 2005 (though the economic expansion has tapered off in recent months). Back in 2006, Latin American studies Professor Michael Shifter, who is somewhat sympathetic to the Chavism, said that while the economy has improved, and "record oil profits...are funding social spending, [Chavez's] initiatives have yielded only very modest gains." In a previous piece on the caudillo of Caracas, I quoted former chief economist of the Venezuelan National Assembly Francisco Rodriguez on the much-heralded decrease in poverty: "It's normal for poverty to decline during economic expansions and that the decline under Chávez is not unprecedented—indeed, it is smaller than the decline observed during similar periods in the past." And despite oil hovering at around $100 a barrel, the economic situation seems to be getting worse. This is what one must endure if one wants to buy "subsidized food" in the city of San Antonio de Tachir:The New York Times' excellent Latin America correspondent Simon Romero has a must-read (well, for those interested in such things) on Chavez's eroding popularity. A sample:While Mr. Chávez remains Venezuela's most powerful political figure, his once unquestionable authority is showing signs of erosion. Unthinkable a few months ago, graffiti began appearing here in the capital in January reading, "Diosdado Presidente," a show of support for a possible presidential bid by Diosdado Cabello, a Chávez supporter and governor of the populous Miranda State.Outbreaks of dengue fever and Chagas disease have alarmed families living in the heart of this city. Fears of a devaluation of the new currency, called the "strong bolívar," are fueling capital flight. While the economy may grow 6 percent this year, lifted by high oil prices, production in oil fields controlled by the national oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, has declined. Inflation soared by 3 percent in January, its highest monthly level in a decade.Add to this Exxon's court-approved freezing of $12 billion in PdVSA (Venezuela's state oil company) assets and widespread food shortages (those pesky price controls again!) and it looks like Chavez's Bolivarian revolution is, at long last, in decline.
Judges Create Sex Toy Rights
Activist moonbat judges deem sex toys legal in Texas. Weep for democracy! The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Texas law making it illegal to sell or promote obscene devices, punishable by as many as two years in jail, violated the right to privacy guaranteed by the 14th Amendment."Just as in Lawrence, the state here wants to use its laws to enforce a public moral code by restricting private intimate conduct," the appeals judges wrote. "The case is not about public sex. It is not about controlling commerce in sex. It is about controlling what people do in the privacy of their own homes because the state is morally opposed to a certain type of consensual private intimate conduct. This is an insufficient justification after Lawrence." Alabama and Mississippi residents, alas, still risk prosecution every time they brandish a dildo.Reason on why we love activist judges here, sex toys here. Hat Tip: Rick Davis.
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del.icio.us/ryan.s.lee
Local Food - FoodRoutes
Effing the Ineffable » Building a Wiimote USB sensor bar
Give Me Toys Sesame Street Cookie Monster Finger Puppet Plush
Antti Aarne - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
32 oz. Breaded Lamb Rocky Mountain Oysters
Office of the Clerk
Save A Film
The Simpsons Archive: Troy McClure
Old-Tyme Flavor: How to season and care for your cast iron pan. - CHOW
COLOURlovers :: Color Trends + Palettes
Coworking / CoworkingBoston
Quantum Random Bit Generator Service
Qwerty Ranch: Dogland
Ascription is an Anathema to any Enthusiasm » Blog Archive » Openssh authorized key commands
Welcome to SeatGuru! Your Guide to Airplane Seats and In-flight Amenities
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Sam Ruby
It's just data
MSDN 1.0
Mihai Parparita: Blogs hosted on MSDN seem to have started to generate Atom 1.0 recently. However, perhaps due to a misreading of the Atom 1.0 spec, each entry contains a link node with the relation set to “self” when pointing to the HTML version of it (instead of "alternate"). Google Groups did this for a while too when it switched to Atom 1.0, so it seems to be a common error with developers that are just starting out with Atom generation. It would be nice if the validator could flag these errors. Done It looks like there are two errors, both should be easily correctable.ďľ I’m confident that MSDN will address them quickly.
Rocket Science
Luke Hutteman: I mean, it’s not like this stuff is exactly rocket science, is it?
Feed Icon
Rogers Cadenhead: I’ve adopted the icon on Workbench this afternoon, because I think it could spark greater adoption of syndication with the general public To date, I’ve avoided the garrish orange icon because quite frankly, I always thought it was ugly.ďľ I prefer a less graphic intensive page. ...
Open Source Web 2.0
Dave Johnson: Web 2.0 is not about having cool software to install on your own personal web server, it’s about getting locked into services provided by and trusting your data to Web sites that you do not control. It doesn’t have to be that way, of course, and perhaps I’m exaggerating a bit just for fun (and hits).
Family Friendly Calendaring
Jon Udell: the calendaring problem is just one of the many ways that real life challenges on our prevailing enterprise security model, with its bankrupt notion of an inside and an outside divided by a wall. The longest living application I wrote for my personal use is a family calendar.ďľ It is written in PHP.ďľ It is password protected. ...
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SecurityFocus Vulnerabilities
SecurityFocus is the most comprehensive and trusted source of security information on the Internet. We are a vendor-neutral site that provides objective, timely and comprehensive security information to all members of the security community, from end users, security hobbyists and network administrators to security consultants, IT Managers, CIOs and CSOs.
Vuln: Hosting Controller Multiple Remote Vulnerabilities
Hosting Controller Multiple Remote Vulnerabilities
Vuln: Jooget! 'id' Parameter SQL Injection Vulnerability
Jooget! 'id' Parameter SQL Injection Vulnerability
Vuln: WordPress Plugin WP-Forum SQL Injection Vulnerability
WordPress Plugin WP-Forum SQL Injection Vulnerability
Vuln: Nagios Plugins Location Header Remote Buffer Overflow Vulnerability
Nagios Plugins Location Header Remote Buffer Overflow Vulnerability
Bugtraq: Crafty Syntax Xss Vulnerability
Crafty Syntax Xss Vulnerability
Bugtraq: ProjectPier <= 0.80 Cross Site Scripting and Request Forgery
ProjectPier <= 0.80 Cross Site Scripting and Request Forgery
Bugtraq: ATutor <= 1.5.5 Cross Site Scripting
ATutor <= 1.5.5 Cross Site Scripting
Bugtraq: RUXCON 2008 CALL FOR PAPERS
RUXCON 2008 CALL FOR PAPERS
More rss feeds from SecurityFocus
News, Infocus, Columns, Vulnerabilities, Bugtraq ...
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The SIMILE Blog
Blogging about the SIMILE Project
Timeplot Fans: IE Joins the Club
And you don’t need to change a thing. It gives me great pleasure to inform you that your existing timeplots should simply function, now, when you browse to them in Internet Explorer 6 or 7. Go ahead, go and look, maybe give it a shift-reload to clear that now-untrue incompatibility message. Or [...]
Web App Makeover - A Complete, Automated Scraping Scenario
Our project offers quite a diverse toolkit of more than a dozen tools. And these tools are at different levels of maturity. Consequently, sometimes it can be hard for people other than our team to understand how all of these pieces fit together into a coherent, compelling story. Once in a while, we need to [...]
Exhibit on the OLPC XO
Yesterday I got my hand on an OLPC XO and I tried to load Exhibit onto its browser. And it worked! That’s the Presidents exhibit running with both map and timeline views! This would be pretty delightful if kids can generate these visualizations themselves about whatever topics that interest them, or whatever issues that are pressing in [...]
Wibbit 1.0 beta (MediaWiki extension for Exhibit)
Gabe and I are happy to announce the availability of Wibbit 1.0 beta, a MediaWiki extension for creating exhibits inside wiki pages. http://simile.mit.edu/wiki/Wibbit Please try it out and let us know what you think! - Margaret and Gabe
MiniZeitgeist Released
MiniZeitgeist is a plugin for WordPress that tracks your daily Akismet spam comment activity and plots it out for you using Timeplot, similar in appearance to the overall Akismet Spam Zeitgeist. Visit the MiniZeitgeist page for more on how to obtain and install the plugin.
Piggy Bank 3.1 and Appalachian 1.6 Released - Together
I’m happy to announce the release of the latest versions of Piggy Bank and Appalachian, now bundled together for your convenience. This latest revision of Piggy Bank begins a shift in architecture to separate out browser components from storage components by moving the ‘Publish’ action into the browser; see the wiki for details. [...]
Exhibit 2.0 (beta)
On behalf of the Simile team, our summer Haystack interns, and our contributors, I’m happy to announce the availability of Exhibit 2.0 (beta): http://simile.mit.edu/exhibit/ Check out the examples to understand the significant changes in this version. Useful links: What’s new: http://simile.mit.edu/wiki/Exhibit/2.0_Release Migrating from 1.0 to 2.0: http://simile.mit.edu/wiki/Exhibit/2.0/Migration
Timeplot 1.0 Released
The SIMILE development team is happy to announce the availability of Timeplot, a DHTML Ajaxy widget use to plot time series. Timeplot extends our existing Timeline widget to provide the ability to overlay time series over existing Timeline event data. Follow the link to the Timeplot home page to see several examples of that. Timeplot is based [...]
Potluck (beta)
On behalf of the SIMILE team, I’m announcing the availability of Potluck (beta) for trying out. Potluck allows casual users to mash-up data on the web using direct manipulation and simultaneous editing techniques: http://simile.mit.edu/potluck/ Please try it out and send us your comments. Note that Firefox is the browser of choice and IE support is limited. This [...]
New Great Audio/Video Tutorial for Exhibit Available
There are times where it’s a little frustrating to see all your tools used and very little to come back, but today is not one of those days. Tom Woodward (a former english and history teacher) has produced an incredibly detailed audio/video tutorial to bring teachers up-to-speed in using Exhibit in their classrooms and we were [...]
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So sue me
Jon Lech Johansen's blog
C# developer needed at DoubleTwist
We have an opening for an experienced C# developer at DoubleTwist: Should have 5+ years experience in software development Should have 3+ years of experience with .NET, C# and web services Should have a degree in Computer Science or related field Experience developing digital media applications is a plus Experience with .NET under Linux (Mono) is a plus You will be [...]
Monkeys needed at DoubleTwist
If breaking down proprietary barriers and empowering consumers sounds like your cup of tea, send us your rĂ©sumĂ©. If you know of someone who might be interested, please forward this to them. Opening: Reverse Engineering Monkey We’re looking for a code monkey to work on our DRM interoperability technology. Must possess strong skills in the areas of [...]
Apple TV hacks
What else to do when jet lagged than to unpack my brand new Apple TV? I wonder if the Apple TV is powered by a nuclear reactor because it runs fracking hot! Has anyone determined which photo they’re referring to? My unmodified Apple TV running vanilla MacOS X off a USB harddrive: I enabled SSH and then installed [...]
EMI goes DRM-free at higher pricepoint
EMI has been rumored for months to start licensing DRM-free tracks at a higher pricepoint. From today’s press release: London, 2 April 2007 — EMI Music today announced that it is launching new premium downloads for retail on a global basis, making all of its digital repertoire available at a much higher sound quality than existing [...]
Apple TV first impression
I dropped by the Apple Store the other day to check out the Apple TV. I was disappointed with how the Apple TVs were demoed in the store. They were sharing the same Internet connection as all the Macs and due to the bandwidth being completely saturated by people browsing the web, it took several [...]
New notebook?
I’m in the market for a new notebook. I’ve only ever owned ThinkPads (except for a brief fling with a PowerBook a couple of years ago). My current ThinkPad T42p has served proudly in the DRM wars and is entering retirement. It still does its job, but I want a notebook that’s not as heavy. I’ve been [...]
Tumi Sucks
On a recent trip to San Francisco I bought a Tumi Vista Super Light 20″ Wheeled Carry-On. On the way back to Oslo, having completed the SF-London leg, this happened: It weighed 10 kgs (they weigh all carry-ons at Stansted) and I mostly used the wheels. I had heard good things about Tumi and their reputation [...]
Chocolate Mousse
Note: Bumped this old post for all of you chocolate lovers out there! Ingredients 4 dl cream 4 eggs 100 g sugar 300 g dark (70%) chocolate 100 g butter cognac Directions 1. Melt the chocolate and butter together. 2. Whip the cream until stiff. Put it in the fridge. 3. Whip the egg whites until stiff, adding half the sugar slowly at the end of [...]
DAAP Licensing
DAAP (Digital Audio Access Protocol) is a protocol defined by Apple and used for iTunes streaming. Apple has licensed the DAAP protocol to at least one company: Roku. Their SoundBridge product is a networked music player that streams music from your computer. Thanks to Bonjour and DAAP the SoundBridge can stream music from an iTunes [...]
Steve on licensing FairPlay
This is the 3rd and last post about Steve’s “Thoughts on Music” However, a key provision of our agreements with the music companies is that if our DRM system is compromised and their music becomes playable on unauthorized devices, we have only a small number of weeks to fix the problem or they can [...]
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spideyblue's Xanga site
spideyblue's Xanga Blog
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steflounder's Xanga site
steflounder's Xanga Blog
Saturday, October 06, 2007
steflounder's entry on Saturday, October 06, 2007 at (12 comments)
Thursday, September 20, 2007
steflounder's entry on Thursday, September 20, 2007 at (1 comment)
Friday, August 10, 2007
steflounder's entry on Friday, August 10, 2007 at (3 comments)
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
steflounder's entry on Tuesday, July 10, 2007 at (3 comments)
Sunday, May 27, 2007
steflounder's entry on Sunday, May 27, 2007 at (12 comments)
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Dan Rubin's SuperfluousBanter
Suffering from chronic idiocy since 1977
Pink forďľ October
As you may have noticed (if you're viewing this site in a standard browser), I've ditched orange in favor of pink, and things will stay that way for the rest of October. I'm doing this, along with many other sites, to support Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
Sidebar Creative Interviewed by Digitalďľ Web
Matthew Pennell of Digital Web Magazine recently sat down with the boys from Sidebar Creative for a group chat about our little design collective.
Interviewed by Designerďľ Interviews
'Tis the season for being interviewed—this time I sat down (virtually) for some Q&A with Helen from Design Interviews, and now the fruits of our labor have been published for your enjoyment.
Customize your iPhone:ďľ SummerBoard
Learn how to customize your iPhone's home screen, plus add your own custom wallpaper and dock background using SummerBoard Themes.
Customize your iPhone:ďľ DockSwap
Learn how to customize your iPhone's dock to look like the new iPod Touch, complete with reflections and a Photoshop template file so you can create your own.
Customize yourďľ iPhone
Introducing a series of simple tutorials to help personalize your iPhone UI.
Interviewed byďľ Adii
It's always nice when someone shows interest in your background, and I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Adii a few weeks ago, and the result is now online.
Setting up IMAP in Appleďľ Mail
It has been brought to my attention that a surprisingly large number of people don't know all the steps involved in properly configuring an IMAP account in Apple's Mail.app. Though this has been covered elsewhere I'm sure, I thought I'd share the steps in a quick-start way to help reduce the frustration that results from assuming some things are done by default.
Web 2.0ďľ Cultists
Lately I've found myself having the following "discussion" (I prefer "heated debate" myself) regarding ‘Web 2.0’, usually with someone who has consumed a certain amount of Web 2.0 Kool-aid...
OMG I’mďľ Naked!
So, I had this dream last night, and I was standing in front of the entire internet <em>totally naked</em>, and when I woke up, I realized <strong>it wasn't a dream!</strong>
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- updated: Feb 18 11:19AM
Technology Review Feed - Tech Review Top Stories
Technology Review exists to promote the understanding of emerging technologies and their impact.
A Better Way to Capture Carbon
New materials provide a potentially cheaper way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.
Improving Toxicity Tests
A new initiative will work on cell-based toxicity tests for chemicals.
Mobile Carriers See Gold in Femtocells
If consumers buy in to private wireless phone networks, the industry could save money.
Power from Fabrics
Nanowires that convert motion into current could lead to textiles that can generate power.
Bandwidth on Demand
An academic internet provides clues about ways to improve the commercial Internet.
Rethinking the Cell Phone
An Israeli startup has made a modular mobile phone that can work on its own or slip into other electronic devices. Will it catch on?
Wiring Up DNA
Measuring the conductivity of DNA could provide a way to detect mutations.
Plucking Cells out of the Bloodstream
A new implantable device can extract stem cells for therapeutic transplant or program cancer cells to die.
Discovering Novel Pathogens
Next-generation sequencing uncovers disease-causing microbes.
Flash Goes Mobile
Opera's latest browser tries to improve the mobile Internet experience with Flash.
The Next Generation of iPhone Hacks
Apple's plan to release a software kit that lets people create legitimate add-ons for the iPhone could make the device appeal to an even wider audience.
Higher-Capacity Memory
A new type of memory could soon be available to device makers.
Maintaining Multiple Personas Online
A new site lets users create profiles for the different sides of their personality.
Preventing Concussions
A new football helmet could help players avoid brain injuries.
Lighting Ballasts That Direct Patients
An innovative navigation system uses optical signals from hospital lights to guide patients with traumatic brain injuries around hospitals.
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TheForce.Net
Your Daily Dose of Star Wars
Darth Vader Highlighted on NPR
"The Tragic Man Behind the Mask"
Star Wars Tech Repeat Tonight
8:00 pm on The History Channel
Indy Meets Star Wars
In Matt Busch's Mash-Up
He's Got His Sights On Boba Fett
Star Wars IG-88 Kotobukiya Statue
UPDATE: Jedi Journals Bookshelf: Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia
Looks like we're getting a new version of Steve Sansweet's Encyclopedia, just in time for Christmas.
Force-Cast: Special Report - Toy Fair 2008
"Curto-Cast" from the floor of Toy Fair in NYC
Blu-Ray Wins The Format War?
Now what?
Génération Star Wars 2008
April 26 and 27
Random Weekend Star Wars Fun (2/16 & 17)
Love and The Clone Wars
Rumor Alert: Who's Ashoka's Voice?
Updated! Nothing officially announced but...
Indy-Cast: Episode 14
Best trailer ever!
Lucasfilm Sues Gen Con
Updated! Issues stemming from C4...
Toy Fair 2008
Coverage begins now!
Spike TV To Air All 6 Star Wars Films
Coming in April 2008
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The Smoking Gun
The Official TSG RSS Feed
The Not Rick James Batch
This installment of our end-of-the-week mug shot roundup raises a few important questions: 1) Guys still wear those "I'm Rick James..." t-shirts? 2) Women can pose for their booking photos without tops?
A Slave To "Research"
When radio talk show host Bernie Ward was arrested last year on child pornography charges, his lawyers downplayed the federal rap, saying that his client was merely doing research for a book when he accessed and distributed illicit images.
Probation For Anthrax Hoaxer
The California man convicted of sending threatening letters containing a white powder to public figures like David Letterman and Jon Stewart has been sentenced to probation and ordered to check into a halfway house, where he will be required to take medications recommended by doctors.
Slanderous Kook: I'm a Slander Victim
Ratcheting up the crazy, the Minnesota man who last month posted a YouTube video in which he claimed to have engaged in a sex-and-drugs party with Senator Barack Obama has filed a federal lawsuit against the presidential candidate and the Democratic party.
2 Guys, 1 Bucket
Meet Chad Hacker and James Schwartz. The two Cincinnati men were arrested yesterday after they allegedly dumped a bucket filled with vomit and feces on a 20-year-old woman.
The Usual Suspects
You know the routine by now: We've reached the week's end, so it's time for our mug shot roundup, an assortment of favorite new booking photos.
Heidi Fleiss Busted
Former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss was arrested by Nevada cops and charged with drunk driving, illegal possession of prescription drugs, and driving without a license.
Roger Clemens's Stash
Lawyers for Brian McNamee, the trainer who has accused ex-client Roger Clemens of using performance-enhancing drugs, today released photos purporting to show syringes, blood-specked gauze pads, and drug vials used by the embattled baseball star.
"Jena Six" Member In School Arrest
One of the "Jena Six" defendants was arrested yesterday for allegedly assaulting a fellow student at a Texas high school.
"Bobby The Jew," 61 Others Indicted
Dozens of reputed Gambino crime family members and associates were named today in a racketeering indictment charging the New York-based Mafia family with most of the felonies covered in the United States Code.
Heath Ledger Death: Accidental Overdose
Heath Ledger died of an accidental drug overdose, according to autopsy findings released today by the New York City medical examiner.
Rap Rap For Florida Man
A 19-year-old man was arrested Sunday night for singing the lyrics to a profane rap song as he walked on a Florida street.
Britney's Mom Seeks To Stop Osama
As if anyone needs another glimpse into the lunacy that is Brtitney Spears's life (and that of her assorted footmen and paparazzi cohorts), the singer's mother has filed a court declaration purporting to describe how her troubled daughter came under the sway of a manipulative manager who drugged the pop star and drove her further from reality.
Beer Before Babes
When cops pulled Tina Williams over for erratic driving Sunday afternoon, they discovered that the 46-year-old Florida woman had her seat belt priorities scrambled.
Super Mugs
Our end-of-week mug shot collection features a Giants fan, a Patriots fan, and a monkey-with-a-big banana t-shirt.
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- updated: Feb 18 06:16AM
ongoing
Ongoing fragmented essay by Tim Bray.
The Prompt of Doom
<p>You know the one I mean; when you visit some site that you haven’t been to for a while, long enough that you’ve changed browsers or something expired, and it asks you for your your username and password and you don’t have the vaguest idea, so you guess, and the browser says “Remember this username/password?” I always get a sinking sensation, knowing that my immediate future probably contains email confirmations (which will probably end up in the spambucket) and half-forgotten password (is the answer case-sensitive or not?) hints. I confess to rankly superstitious behavior, telling the browser “No, don’t remember it.” in the hopes that the general orneriness of things will cause me to guess right. I know some Internet Identity gurus, and they say “It’s about so much more than single sign-on”, but dammit, do I ever want single sign-on; and I can’t be the only one.</p>
Germany 0 Italy 2
<p>Well, that was quite a show. Hey, LazyWeb, where’s the deep, erudite, funny, World Cup commentary to be found? Who’s the Roger Angell of soccer? The best I’ve found is <a href='http://mondial2006.blogs.liberation.fr/mon_weblog/'>Mondial 2006</a>, but something in my own language would be nice. As for the game: Cannavaro Cannavaro Cannavaro, what else is there to say? <i>[Update: <a href='http://www.oscarm.org/'>Oscar Merida</a> writes to point at <a href='http://www.soccerblogs.net'>Soccer Blogs</a>, an aggregation with some good stuff, while Marc Lacoste points to <a href='http://www.cahiersdufootball.com'>les cahiers du football</a> (en français, obviously).]</i>...</p>
5✭♫: Tabula Rasa
<p>This is the title of an album of music by <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvo_Part'>Arvo Pärt</a>, and of a composition on that album. I have a lot of music by Pärt, but if I had to recommend one record, or one piece, both would be <cite>Tabula Rasa</cite>. It’s complex, deep, and austere; and contains some of the most beautiful sounds ever recorded. <i>(“5✭♫” series introduction <a href='/ongoing/When/200x/2006/01/23/5-Star-Music'>here</a>; with <a href='/ongoing/When/200x/2006/01/23/5-Star-Music#p-1'>an explanation</a> of why the title may look broken.)</i>...</p><p><img align='top' src='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/07/03/-tn/ap1.png'/> <img align='top' src='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/07/03/-tn/ap2.png'/> </p>
Canada Day Fireworks
<p>The only substantial show in Vancouver this year was at Nat Bailey, the minor-league ballpark ten blocks from home, much written-about in this space. Since Canada’s birthday is also my son’s we took him along and let him stay til the end to see them. They aren’t the world’s biggest fireworks, but the intimacy you get in a little park like that is hard to beat, and nothing improves the enjoyment of the fireworks experience so much as having a kid along. Now I’m going to waste your bandwidth with six different fireworks pictures, none exhibiting any photo-realism...</p><p><img align='top' src='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/07/03/-tn/IMGP3592.png'/> <img align='top' src='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/07/03/-tn/IMGP3601.png'/> <img align='top' src='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/07/03/-tn/IMGP3605.png'/> <img align='top' src='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/07/03/-tn/IMGP3607.png'/> <img align='top' src='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/07/03/-tn/IMGP3620.png'/> <img align='top' src='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/07/03/-tn/IMGP3635.png'/> </p>
Open Source and Money
<p>Simon Phipps made a speech at OSBC (he claims that, whatever was reported, <a href='http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/webmink?entry=software_market_3_0'>this is what he meant</a>). Ben Rockwood, who’s a really smart guy, is <a href='http://cuddletech.com/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=686'>eloquently revolted</a> by OSBC in general and Simon’s message in particular. <i>[Ed. note: I have a bunch of technothings to write about which I’ve been putting off till midsummer braindeadness abates, but this is too urgent.]</i>...</p>
Raccoontongue
<p>In the neighbors’ back yard there’s an immense cherry tree; someone told me it was a leftover from the orchard that was here before the houses were built, but ours was built in 1919 and it’s hard to believe the tree’s <em>that</em> old. Anyhow, the cherries—as is common with old fruit trees—are probably not that tasty any more, but we don’t know because they’re way up there and hard to come at, and the wildlife get them first. This evening in the late sun there were two raccoons having cherries for dinner, and I got a couple of pictures...</p><p><img align='top' src='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/07/02/-tn/IMGP3639.png'/> <img align='top' src='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/07/02/-tn/IMGP3644.png'/> <img align='top' src='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/07/02/-tn/IMGP3645.png'/> </p>
Statistics
<p>Almost every Sunday I grab the week’s <span class="o">ongoing</span> logfiles and update my numbers. I find it interesting and maybe others will too, so this entry is now the charts’ permanent home. I’ll update it most weeks, probably. <i>[Updated: 2006/07/02.]</i>...</p><p><img align='top' src='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/12/12/-tn/Browser-Market-Share.png'/> <img align='top' src='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/12/12/-tn/Browsers-via-search.png'/> <img align='top' src='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/12/12/-tn/Search-Engines.png'/> <img align='top' src='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/12/12/-tn/Feeds.png'/> </p>
World Cup, the Quarterfinals
<p>I managed to watch most of all four games, and boy, were <a href='/ongoing/When/200x/2006/06/26/World-Cup'>my predictions</a> ever wrong. The quarterfinals produced few creative triumphs, but were still pretty entertaining...</p>
2006 World Cup
<p>I enjoy sports on TV, but not enough (usually) to plan ahead on watching them; but we’ve been making an exception for the World Cup. This weekend, I stuck my head in the boy’s room both days and said “eight o’clock” and we watched the quarter-finals together while the girls slept upstairs. <i>[Oops, I wrote this last weekend but apparently never posted it.]</i>...</p>
Apple Hates Grandmothers
<p>Actually, I’m being unfair. Maybe it’s just the QuickTime team who hates them. Alternatively, it’s plausibly someone in the Windows team at Microsoft. Just possibly it’s someone at Sony. And in fact this fragment is only vaguely about grandmothers, it’s about the failures of consumer video technology. But it <em>is</em> the grandmothers who are being hurt...</p><p><img align='top' src='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/07/01/-tn/PLF.png'/> </p>
Atom Newsreel
<p>I work on lots of different things, but Atom is the most important, don’t you forget it. <i>Item:</i> Atom 1.0 isn’t even a year old and it already has its first standardized extension, for feed threading; announcement <a href='http://www.snellspace.com/wp/?p=371'>chez James Snell</a>, who did most of the work. <i>Item:</i> Bloglines has resumed work on their Atom 1.0 parser, and it’s considerably less broken than it used to be. You can actually use it to read <a href='/ongoing/ongoing.atom'>my Atom feed</a> and it no longer messes up the white space. The relative-link handling still needs work, though; my pictures don’t show up, and some internal links are broken (not all... puzzling). Anyhow, good on ya guys, this is the right direction. <i>Item:</i> The working group just published Draft 9 of the protocol (<a href='http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-atompub-protocol-09.txt'>official</a> and <a href='http://bitworking.org/projects/atom/'>HTML</a> versions). My opinion is that nothing in here will change much, and there will be a couple of very small additions, and then we’ll go for IETF last call. For Atomic pedants, the change here is <a href='http://bitworking.org/projects/atom/draft-ietf-atompub-protocol-09.html#media-link-entries'>what happens</a> when you post something that isn’t an Entry, like for example a movie or a picture.</p>
Real Social Networks
<p>It’s like this: John is the guy who’s building the new room for the new kid; he was recommended by Diane, who’s a friend who used to work with Lauren and got me to do the XBRL keynote and lives ten blocks west, near the Pilates studio where we work out and Lauren swaps computer maintenance for private consultations, and it turns out that John’s stepson Joe was in our kid’s kindergarten class and we already knew him; Joe and John and Rudy live just down the street from Brennan, who was also in the kindergarten class and whose mom gives our kid piano lessons. We got in Albin to do the electrical work, he’s worked on the house before and knows the ropes; I met Albin through my old friend Glen, I rent an office from Glen over a clothing boutique he runs as a sideline, he uses my pictures on the covers of his neutraceuticals-company catalog and he brought Albin in to run the wires for the DSL at the store/office. Matt, who used to work for me and Glen at a former business we were in, set up the DSL at the store, and he helps us do the firewalls on the Debian box in our basement, and he also hosts <span class="o">ongoing</span> on a server he runs for his political party, and he just wrote me asking to pitch in against some DMCA-like legislation looming foully over the Canadian horizon, and I helped Sun sell some Ultras to the lab where Matt works at a local university, and then helped straighten things up when manufacturing screwed up and sent the wrong CD with the computers. Turns out John is going to be doing some work for Tracy three doors down, whose boy and ours play all the time and sleep over and so on; but Tracy met John not through us but via Nick’s mom; Nick was also in that kindergarten class and played soccer with our kid on the team that I co-coached with Phil, who does secret stuff for Apple and used to do the XML conference proceedings for Lauren and sits on the ECMA committee trying to put lipstick on the Microsoft Office XML pig. Anyhow, John and Albin hit it off and they’ll probably call each other in for carpentry and electrical work in future. Why do we need computers to help us with this?</p>
Freedom to Leave
<p>That’s the title of a remarkable <a href='http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/webmink?entry=freedom_to_leave'>piece by Simon Phipps</a>, long but worth reading all of. I suspect that most people who read <span class="o">ongoing</span> have had a chance to hear Simon speak; but if you haven’t and you get a chance, take it. I think he’s actually better on the stage than on the page, and since this is a very good piece, the speech that went with it will have been outstanding.</p>
Dabble DB, Check It Out
<p>Paul Kedrosky <a href='http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2006/06/26/dabble_db_news.html'>broke the story</a>: Vancouver’s own <a href='http://dabbledb.com/'>Dabble DB</a> has taken some investment money and are <a href='http://dabbledb.com/pricing/'>open for business</a>. I get pitched by a <em>lot</em> of startups, and Dabble DB is the best I’ve seen in years. It’s Software as a Service; an online personal database. Millions of of people in businesses large and small around the world do this kind of thing via Excel kludges, sometimes with some Access and Outlook in the mix. Only Dabble doesn’t need any software on the desktop and still has a better user interface than anything Microsoft ships. In fact, one smart person told me it didn’t matter that much what Dabble <em>did</em>, because its authors Avi Bryant and Andrew Catton are such great UI designers they could make a cemetery scheduler interesting. But it does matter, because Dabble is in that magic category where it does something that you realize you need after you’ve tried it, and there’s nothing else that does it. Go check it out; but if you like it, you’ll have to pay (not much) to use it; what a concept! <i>Disclosure:</i> Avi and Andrew and I have bought each other lots of lunches. I advised them, repeatedly, not to take VC money, arguing that there’s a deep disconnect between venture investing as it’s currently done, and the realities of Web-based businesses. Paul Kedrosky and Ventures West are making a determined attempt to prove me wrong; I can’t talk about the details but I’m really impressed at the creativity they’ve brought to the table. I couldn’t in good conscience advise the guys to pass on the deal; but I did ask if I could take a piece of it.</p>
WinFS
<p>Wow, <a href='http://blogs.msdn.com/winfs/archive/2006/06/23/644706.aspx'>it’s dead</a>. You have to be sad when anything goes south that so many people have worked on so hard for so long. Still, I remember being told in the early Nineties, when I was talking up Unix servers, that I was silly and wrong because the <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_%28operating_system%29'>Cairo</a> object filesystem would make everything else irrelevant. And then years later, when I was selling search and content management for a living, being told once again that we’d all be casualties of the WinFS bandwagon. I wonder if, in other professions as in ours, the conventional wisdom is so often so wrong? <i>[Update: Lots of thoughtful coverage: <a href='http://www.osreview.com/2006/06/25/the-sad-tale-of-winfs-and-the-vista-user-experience/'>The OS Review</a>, <a href='http://www.1060.org/blogxter/entry?publicid=E020A17EE61C70F5433B401BFD1C06B1'>Developing on the Edge</a>, <a href='http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2006/06/25/we_come_to_bury_winfs'>The Fishbowl</a>, <a href='http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=43532b55-f8f8-4b72-a532-c7343b4e1b9e'>Dare Obasanjo</a>, <a href='http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/webmink?entry=a_tales_of_two_filesystems'>Simon Phipps</a>.]</i></p>
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- updated: Jul 06 06:47AM
VentureBlog
A Random Walk Down Sand Hill Road
Obsession is the Fuel of Silicon Valley
An interesting debate has broken out between Glenn Kelman and Mike Arrington. Glenn is the CEO of Redfin, a Seattle-based startup that is trying to modernize the process of buying and selling homes. Glenn's a smart guy and a great entrepreneur. And he has always struck me as quite thoughtful. Which is why I was surprised to read his recent blog post entitled, "How Green Was My Valley." In that post, Glenn extolls the virtues of Seattle, while attacking Silicon Valley: "the Valley's monomania is really just a kind of pubescence. What else could account for the Valley's self-righteousness, its congregations of frustrated dudes, its all-nighters, idealism, delusions of grandeur, mood-swings, longings, dramas, hero-worship and pranks? Anywhere else by contrast seems all grown-up." Wow. Those are strong words. And the rest of his post is equally provocative. Glenn doesn't just praise Seattle. He berates the Bay Area. When I first read Glenn's post, I almost took the bait. But I thought better of it. Mike Arrington, on the other hand, did not. Mike couldn't have Glenn badmouth the Bay Area as a "heartless amnesiac" without pointing out to Glenn that the Bay Area knows better than to waste its time focusing on the past. Mike couldn't let Glenn get away with praising the Seattle lifestyle without pointing out that it is just that, a lifestyle; the Bay Area has better things to do than worry about lifestyle. Mike couldn't let Glenn get away with baldly suggesting that Bay Area businesses are trendy and Seattle businesses focus on "what works" without giving a single concrete example; the Bay Area is all about specific examples, not baseless accusations. Mike couldn't let Glenn get away with any of it. That's just not something Mike can do. I don't raise this to join in the rumble against Glenn. I am a fan of Seattle. My partners at August Capital have funded some great companies in Seattle, not the least of which is Microsoft. But I do want to take issue with one of Glenn's criticisms of the Bay Area. Glenn refers in a number of different ways to the obsessiveness of the Bay Area and suggests that the Bay Area's "monomania" is somehow a detriment to company building. I have to disagree. I love the obsessiveness of the Bay Area. It is the drug that fuels the Bay Area's startup economy. And it is the drug that fuels my every day as a tech investor. I love the fact that I can talk about entrepreneurship at AYSO. I love the fact that I can have conference calls with my CEO's at 1am. I love the fact that wildly successful entrepreneurs who could retire for life dive into their next venture within six months of leaving their last. I love the fact that Palo Alto's newest yogurt shop is a hotbed of tech recruiting. I love the fact that I funded a company after bumping into them at a local coffee shop. I love the fact that school auctions include items like "a tour of Facebook" and "10 hours with a trademark attorney" and "company logo design." Is it obsessive? You bet. Is it good for business? You bet. To tell you the truth, I don't actually think that the obsessiveness of successful startups in the Bay Area is any different from that of successful startups in Seattle. I happen to know that Glenn himself is completely obsessed with entrepreneurship and building Redfin into the next great company. What is unique about the Bay Area is the pervasiveness of that obsession. It is everywhere you go. And I don't think that's a bug. I think it's a feature.
Startups Have Bigger Things to Worry About Than MicroHoo!
I am definitely late to the party in praising Marc Andreessen's incredibly great Blog. That said, my failure to extoll the virtues of Marc and his dead-on insights is not the result of me personally arriving late at the lovefest. I have been thrilled to read Marc's uniformly interesting and well-reasoned insights since blog post #1. I just haven't had the right opportunity to suck up to Marc and tell him how much I care. Thankfully, that moment has come! If you are as big a Techmeme addict as am I, you have probably noticed this little discussion going on in the blog world about the would-be Microsoft/Yahoo merger. I have never seen a single issue take over Techmeme so completely. And the discussion about MicroHoo! or YahooSoft! has been pretty overwhelmingly damning of Microsoft and its proposal in general. A friend of mine recently referred to Microsoft as the Big Bad Wolf, which I think pretty much sums up what tech commentators have to say about the deal. But out of the increasingly loud chants of "Burn the Witch" came a voice of dissent (reason?) -- Marc Andreessen self-titled "contrarian view" (the full title is "Silicon Valley after a Microsoft/Yahoo merger: a contrarian view") poses, well, a contrarian view. In six broad points, Marc argues that with or without the MicroHoo! deal, nothing has changed in Silicon Valley. There are lots of startups out there. There are lots of acquirers out there. But, more importantly, there are millions of steps between the two and a preoccupation with the contraction or expansion of the potential pool of acquirers distracts from the real job at hand, which is building meaningful companies. I am tempted to quote Marc in his entirety on this point (you should definitely go read it all) but I think this chunk sums it up well -- Marc writes: Building your startup with a goal of getting acquired is foolishness anyway, in my opinion. Smart people disagree with me on this, but I'll make my case in two points: * Big companies don't want to buy startups that want to get bought. Instead, big companies buy startups that have built something of value that they decide is important to them. * You can't possibly guess what things of value big companies are going to want to own in one or two or three years. The world is changing too fast -- witness the Microsoft hostile bid for Yahoo itself! -- and besides, big companies are Moby Dick and you can't understand the reasoning behind their decisions anyway. Combine those two points with the fact that no big company buys that many startups each year anyway, and it's easy to see that the odds of you successfully anticipating something that a big company is going to want in the future and then actually selling your company to them -- as your strategy -- is a very risky proposition that is highly prone to failure. Precisely! Not only is this the right answer to concerns about a Microsoft/Yahoo! merger, this has also been my answer to concerns about a recession. Startups have too many things to worry about along the path to creating a meaningful business for these macro trends to be more than a distraction. They may have an impact on timing -- when you may or may not get bought or go public -- but they rarely if ever have an impact on your ultimate success. Marc's "contrarian" view concludes, "Your job is exactly the same as before: build something people want, scale it up, make sure it's defensible, and make sure you can make money with it. Build a company you are proud of." Right on, Marc. That's a great summary of how I view my job every day. That should be my VC credo: to find, fund and build companies to be proud of! And nothing about MicroHoo! or the subprime debt crisis is going to change how I go about that. So carry on Silicon Valley. We've got a lot of hard work to do building great companies. Everything else is just a distraction.
Entrepreneurial Success According to Paul Graham and Madeline Albright
Driving home from the city yesterday I was listening to a very interesting interview of Madeline Albright on NPR. Albright made a range of insightful observations about diplomacy, world affairs and the Presidency. During the course of the interview, one statement in particular jumped out at me. Albright said that she would rather have a President who was confident than a President who was certain. She noted that a confident President could take principled positions and stand for things that mattered, but would still have the good sense to listen to those around him and take counsel from a range of brilliant advisors. In contrast, a certain President would have no need for advisors because the appropriate course would be "clear" to him. Madeline Albright's comments reminded me of a talk I heard Paul Graham give at Foo Camp a couple summers ago. Paul was discussing the attributes of successful enterpreneurs, and he argued that the best entrepreneurs were open minded and had good judgment. He contrasted that with failed entrepreneurs who were stubborn and had bad judgment. Paul stated that while having bad judgment could be a handicap for an entrepreneur, if you had both bad judgment and were stubborn, you would necessarily fail. I suppose in Graham's parlance, the President that Madeline Albright is looking for would be confident but open minded. I am in complete agreement with Madeline Albright and Paul Graham. Startup success requires confidence but not certainty. I have worked with startup CEOs in the past who spent more time at board meetings defending their positions than listening to the board's feedback. Sure, some of the time those CEOs were right and some of the time the Board was wrong. But board meetings shouldn't be about certainty. The should be about confidence. The confidence to hear what other smart people have to say. The confidence to listen. The confidence to stand firm on things you believe are critical to the success of your company. And the confidence to change your position when clearer minds prevail. Like great Presidents, the best CEOs will have the character and the confidence to lead while listening. It isn't easy. But it can mean the difference between success and failure.
Pitching a VC -- The Basics Revisited
When I first started writing VentureBlog, I used to talk a lot about entrepreneurship. At the time, not a lot had been written about pitching VCs or the Venture Capital process, so there was lots of virgin territory. Since that time, dozens of VCs have started blogging and much has been said about what it takes to get a VC down the isle. Bits and pieces here and there -- a good Google archeologist can pull it all together. But having spent the week pontificating about PowerPoint and the likes, I've decided to take one more swing through the basics of pitching a VC. As I thought about the process of pitching a business, it struck me that no matter what the stage, the information was essentially the same. A good elevator pitch contains the same content as a good executive summary contains the same content as a good PowerPoint contains the same content as a good business plan. The distinction among these business descriptions is not the substance, it is the degree to which the essential elements are fleshed out. Each document contains slightly more detail than the preceding. Elevator Pitch --> Executive Summary --> PowerPoint --> Business Plan This makes good intuitive sense. There is no reason that the things that are most compelling about your business would change based upon the nature of the business description. Nor would an investor be interested in different things by virtue of the form that description takes. What, then, are the essential elements that make up a good PowerPoint, a persuasive elevator pitch, a compelling executive summary? I have no doubt that VCs will differ somewhat on the precise list, as well as the order and the emphasis. But at its core, I believe that a successful business description should include the following elements: 1. Introduction 2. Team 3. Product 4. Market 5. Business Model 6. Competition 7. Financials 8. Conclusion If you are pitching a VC, start with these 8 slides. If you are writing an executive summary, start with these 8 headings. Obviously some businesses will require additional information that is outside the scope of these basics. I am not suggesting for a second that you should always pigeonhole your business into these categories alone. But they are a great starting point from which to build a persuasive description of your business.
Entrepreneurship for Lawyers
I was recently reading some old posts on Venture Blog and couldn't believe how short they were. One might call them pithy. Or one might also call them lazy. Either way, they were short. I should really try that again. I have been teaching a class at Harvard Law School this winter semester called Venture Capital and the Technology Start-up with John Palfrey, the Executive Director of the Berkman Center. It is really fun to be back at the law school and working with John. I have been blown away by the energy that the law students are bringing to the topic of Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital. Sadly, I never had a VC or Entrepreneurship class in law school. Lets see, I had torts, contracts, criminal law, federal courts, administrative law, property, intellectual property, corporations, securities regulation, constitutional law . . . but no entrepreneurship. Then again, I don't know that I would have had the sense to actually take a VC or Entrepreneurship class back then. So its presence would have been wasted on me. Today my students had to actually pitch business ideas to real live VCs from the Boston area. And they did a great job. As I was discussing with them how to think about company building and pitching, it struck me that much like the law, building great companies is all about applying precedent. Only, instead of the applicable precedent being case law in this instance, the applicable precedent is a business case. Pitching your business is all about finding the right business analogs and describing how they apply to the company you're building (e.g., "we're the Amazon.com of funeral supplies."). That isn't so different from finding the right case analogs and describing how they apply to the lawsuit you're defending. So there may be hope that we lawyers are able to figure out this entrepreneurship stuff yet.
Venture Capital in China
For the last several years there has been a lot of talk on Sand Hill Road about investing in China. To a certain degree there has been a lot of talk about all the BRIC countries -- Brazil, Russia, India and China. But the most excitement is clearly around China. (Interestingly, while India is a relatively close second, I have yet to hear of a single Bay Area VC exploring investment in either Brazil or Russia). Drawn by huge markets and a rapidly expanding economy, American VC's are heading to China to stake their claims. Go East young VC's. Go East. Venture Capital investment in China has not, however, been a headlong dive. Bay Area VC's seem to be sending over exploratory parties. By way of example, David Chao from Doll Capital has been in and out of China for some time. Now a number of his partners are getting in on the act as well. Paul Koontz from Foundation Capital spent a year in China exploring the market. And perhaps the best indicator that the Chinese market is hot is Dick Kramlich's pilgrimage to China this year. Kramlich is one of the founding fathers of Sand Hill Road -- a 25 year veteran of the venture capital business. Not one to miss out on a big opportunity, Kramlich has headed over to China for 2008 to catch the wave of entrepreneurship and, perhaps, some of the Beijing olympics. Chow, Koontz and Kramlich are not the only US VC's headed to China by any stretch of the imagination. But these high profile forays into the Chinese market are excellent indicators of the level of interest in the market. It is hard not to be intrigued by the Chinese market. With 1.3 Billion people, you don't need a huge amount of penetration to hit big numbers. One percent of the Chinese market is 13 million people. As they say, if you are "one in a million" in China, there are thirteen-hundred people just like you. What's more, the Chinese government anticipates that approximately 300 Million people will move from the countryside to urban centers in the next decade -- that's the same number as the entire population of the United States. The combination of massive aggregate numbers, rapid urban migration (and the commensurate increase in wages) and relatively low concentrations of modernized business processes, suggest a market ripe for investment. And that is precisely the conclusion many of my brethren on Sand Hill Road have drawn. Given all that, I was anxious to check out China for myself. And right before the new year, I had the good fortune to do just that -- I accompanied a group of Stanford Business School students on a ten day study trip to China. We met with senior executives from companies like China Telecom, Alibaba, GM China and Bao Steel, as well as senior government officials and party leaders (yes, it is still a Communist country). But the most interesting discussions, to my mind, were with the leading private investors in China. (Because my meetings with these private investors took place as part of a study trip, there was no expectation that I would blog about the content of our conversations -- thus, I have decided to exclude the names of the specific investors so as not to violate any confidences they may have reasonable expected.) These investors gave a surprisingly candid view of venture capital throughout the country -- the good, the bad and the ugly. To the mind of the Chinese investing community, the market dynamics described above well outweigh the risks of investing in the current environment. Huge markets with lots of business white space provides for numerous opportunities for economic gain. While American investors are busy debating the degree to which the US startup market is saturated, Chinese investors are having trouble keeping up with the inflow of opportunities. The opportunities in China seem unbounded, making foreign investors starry-eyed. But despite the glories of the Chinese market -- and there is no denying that the demographic trends in China are glorious -- I heard more than enough from Chinese investors to scare me away from the market. As an initial matter, the biggest challenge that investors find in building Chinese startups is identifying great entrepreneurs. Because there has been all but no startup culture prior to a handful of years ago, there are essentially no seasoned entrepreneurs. A few native Chinese business expats are returning from abroad to take advantage of China's increasingly open economy. But those numbers are de minimis and do nothing to staff the rest of the enterprise. Meanwhile, Chinese executives have been trained to function in a business culture of bureaucracy and Party connections -- not the fast-paced, fluid environment of the startup world. The investors with whom I met lamented the lack of qualified executives and warned about the significant challenges of doing diligence on Chinese entrepreneurs. The second challenge with entrepreneurship in China is grounded in the laws of China. The legal structures needed to support a vibrant startup economy are, at best, embryonic. Neither entrepreneurs nor investors are particularly well protected by the Chinese legal system. One investor with who I met on my trip described a recent situation in which he funded an entrepreneur, only to have that entrepreneur turn around and leave for business school months later. The entrepreneur assured the investor that he would be better situated to make the business a success after the two years of school. The investor had no recourse as his money left the country with the entrepreneur. In another instance, an investor backed an entrepreneur in a business that thereafter appeared to be failing. However, a couple years later when the same company started thriving, the entrepreneur informed the investor that it was not the company he had backed. The investor was incredulous. He told the entrepreneur that it was the very same company with the same team and even the same name. The entrepreneur assured the investor that it was, in fact, a different company and that he had not invested in this successful company, his investment was in the previous failed venture. Despite the obvious deception, the investor told me that he again had no legal recourse. In many ways, venture capital in China is like the wild west. There are big opportunities, but they are not well defined and capturing their full value may well require manipulating the law to your own devices. One investor with whom I met described entrepreneurship in the United States like a zoo and entrepreneurship in China like a jungle. In the United States, he said, while there is always a lion next to you with sharp claws, driven by self-interest, there is a cage between you and the lion to keep you safe. You can count on the cage to protect you from unreasonable or illegal behavior. In China, on the other hand, there is no cage between you and the Lion -- if you don't take great pains to protect yourself from the self-interested behavior of the lion, you are going to get bitten. Case in point, one Chinese executive with whom I met on my trip described how he was able to leverage his dominant market position to force his competitors to sell at a discount. What's more, the entrepreneur described with pride that once he had bought up all of his competition, he was able to raise his prices three-fold. Yet another significant challenge for United States VC's seeking to invest in China is the government itself. While China appears to be making huge market-driven strides in its economy, there remains a significant wild-card in all business transactions -- the Communist government. On my trip it was repeatedly pointed out to us that government officials don't make laws, Party leaders do. The government officials are tasked with managing the bureaucracies of their localities, but the party leaders are tasked with making the decisions. The Communist Party single-handedly makes all of the rules in China. For example, by mandate of the Party, no Chinese financial institution may be majority-owned by foreign investors. Thus, the fasted growing segment of the Chinese market is off-limits to foreign investment. What is to stop the Chinese government from making similar mandates in other market segments? This lack of predictability of the fundament legal underpinnings of business in China is sufficient in and of itself to make me take pause. I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to China. The shear scale of Beijing and Shanghai was absolutely stunning, as was the velocity of the growth in both cities. And the extraordinarily candid conversations we had with Chinese business leaders and Party officials was both surprising and invaluable. But rather than leaving China emboldened to invest in their great economy, I returned to the United States surprised that my fellow VC's could accept the risks inherent in investing in China. I could not. And I don't anticipate that changing any time soon.
The Lobby Conference
I spent this week in Hawaii at a conference I hosted called The Lobby. The idea behind The Lobby was to gather together a fantastic group of people with a shared interest in the future of media and facilitate a conversation among the participants. There were no speakers on stages, no panels addressing broad themes, no big name mucky-mucks invited to draw crowds, just a fantastically engaged and engaging group of subject-matter experts eager to connect and talk. Everyone who attended would have been those speakers, those panelists, those mucky-mucks at other conferences, but this conference wasn't about being the center of attention -- it was about participating. And man did everyone participate. From dawn to well-past dusk, the folks at The Lobby devoured the conversations. The energy was frenetic, a veritable Type A Power Plant. By the time I got on a plane to head home this morning I was literally spent. I suspect it will be weeks before I'm fully recharged. And I will take the next 12 months to follow up on everything I've learned, connect with everyone I've met, and prepare for next year's Lobby conference. The Lobby would never have happened had it not been for the encouragement, expertise and friendship of the incredible Lia Lorenzano-Kennett. Lia is the high priestess of conference production. She was one of the first Producers of the Apple Developers Conference, ran Demo and Agenda, was the President of IDG Executive Forums, and worked with Walt and Kara to create the phenomenal All This Digital conference, of which she still is the Producer. When I first met with Lia to talk about my idea for The Lobby, she told me that she had always wondered what made a great conference -- was it the speakers or the audience? And she had always wondered what was the answer to the age old conference chicken and egg problem. Was a conference made great by the people who attended? Or did great people only attend great conferences? As The Lobby wound to a close this week, Lia turned to me and said "so now we know -- it's the chicken." And man were there some great chickens in attendance at The Lobby. I would love to tell you more about The Lobby, but that's about all that I can say without breaching my own terms of the conference. The Lobby was from the very outset touted as an off the record conversation about the future of media. When attendees registered for the conference, they confirmed that they would not report on anything said by the other attendees. My theory was that if everyone felt comfortable that their discussions and conversations would not be reported beyond the confines of the event, people would speak more freely and we would all get a lot more out of it. I still believe that is true, although I am not certain how realistic it is to assume that in this day and age there is such a thing as off the record. It is too easy for information to be disseminated, either with attribution or anonymously. And what constitutes "off the record"? Is it still off the record if you report what was said at the event but don't attribute it to anyone in particular? Is it still off the record when you Twitter "having great conversations at The Lobby" or "Will sell bead clue for $100"? Is it still off the record when you post a public photo of the event to Flickr or Photobucket? What if that photo paints another attendee in a less than flattering light? Is it off the record if you simply report that you are attending The Lobby, even if you never mention more than the meals you had at the event? For what it is worth, my goal was to keep the content of the conversations off the record (attributed or otherwise, during sessions or at the bar, to a few or to thousands). My slogan for The Lobby was "the content is the conversation" -- off the record was about promoting open discussion, not creating a secret society. But it is a tough line to draw and I will continue to ponder these questions in anticipation of The Lobby 2. Until that time, I look forward to continuing to participate in the rapid evolution of digital media and hope that The Lobby has played some small role in that evolution.
Sick Blogging: Graphing Social Patterns and DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge
One of the good things about being home sick is that you have time to blog. So let me catch up on a couple of quick things. Graphing Social Patterns Conference: The first one is that my friend Dave McClure has organized an interesting conference that is coming up called "Graphing Social Patterns: The Business and Technology of Facebook" The event is all about Facebook as a platform for other businesses and will have some great speakers like Tim O'Reilly and Reid Hoffman. The Facebook phenomenon is sweeping Silicon Valley and this is the first event to try to put it in some perspective. The conference is in San Jose from October 7th through 9th and you can REGISTER HERE to get a 25% discount on the conference (because VentureBlog isn't just about information, it is also all about value). Also, don't miss the VideoEgg conference called App Camp on how to build a real business on Facebook. VideoEgg have become The experts on rich media advertising and monetization of social media. Given that, App Camp will be a very interesting discussion of how to actually make money on Facebook. I have been saying for a long time that I believed social networking (or, the "social graph" in today's parlance) would become a core piece of infrastructure in all sorts of applications and the Facebook platform is the perfect extension of that observation -- now application providers can outsource the entire social networking infrastructure to Facebook and focus on the overlying application. It will be interesting to see how these applications and monetization continue to evolve. DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge: The second random snippet of this fine sick day is Kara Swisher's quest for lunch with Jerry Yang. According to Kara, the Yahoo PR machine won't give her direct access to Jerry, so she is working on an end run to the problem. In support of the DonorsChoose blogger challenge, Yahoo has offered a lunch with Jerry for the blogger who gets the most donors to give money to schools through DonorChoose.org. Kara is hoping to earn that honor so that she can dine with Jerry and, no doubt, put it on video tape. The DonorsChoose blogger challenge is a fantastic way to help out worthy school projects. But since I'm late to the challenge, I may as well lend my support to Kara, who has chosen some great projects to fund. So if you are interested in contributing to some worthy causes, click HERE to get to Kara's DonorChoose page. Hope you all are healthy. I strongly recommend getting flu shots. Trust me. Get the shots.
The Ramblings of an Itinerant VentureBlogger
Hello VentureBlog readers. Are there still any of you out there? My hat is off to folks like Fred Wilson who blog religiously on a daily basis. While I post a thing or two daily to my personal Vox blog, that's usually a picture, a quote, a video. Fully formed sentences are a bonus on my Vox blog. But what it lacks in structure and depth, it makes up in cute pictures and video of my kids. Sure, my mom is willing to read VentureBlog and pretend she gives a crap about liquidation preference because I'm her son, but when it comes to cute pictures of her grandchildren, she'll check that blog with OCD consistency. My mom's desire for more info on her grandchildren, however, is no excuse for neglecting VentureBlog. And so I return to the hallowed pages of VentureBlog (I hope it is more hallowed than hollow). Do you ever read a newspaper column and get annoyed when it is just a bunch of little snippets without any overriding theme or structure. Lazy, lazy, lazy. Well, for the sake of easing back into VentureBlog, this post is going to smack of those lazy columns. Sorry about that. I'll try to do better next time. First things first, welcome to the New and Improved VentureBlog. Do not be confused by its near identical appearance to the old and not yet improved VentureBlog (particularly if you are reading this via my RSS feed :)). VentureBlog is now running on MT4. There's been a ton said out there about MT4 -- lots and lots of praise for its depth, simplicity and beautiful new UI. I second all of that (and not just because I'm an investor). It is a pleasure to use and the MT team deserves a pile of credit for continuing to raise the bar for blogging software. Not surprising to most of you, I'm sure, I spent the beginning part of this week at the TechCrunch40 conference. While folks like Walt Mossberg, Kara Swisher, Chris Anderson, John Battelle, make it look easy, the conference business is anything but. It takes a pile of planning, a huge amount of leg work, some real personality and a fair bit of luck to make a new conference work. But Mike, Jason and Heather pulled it off in a big way. The TechCrunch40 had the necessary mix of startup energy, investors trolling the halls, journalists chasing down stories, and ice cream bars. So congratulations to them for a great conference. If you couldn't make it to the TechCrunch40 and want to get a feel for the energy in the halls, Craig and I recorded a VentureCast show there that I am sure Craig will be posting shortly. While I was at the TC40 event, I bumped into Michael Copeland. Michael is a great guy and an equally great journalist. It saddened me to see "Fortune" on his name tag. I don't have any problem with Fortune. I like the magazine and I'm thrilled that Michael is writing for them now. But it was just a reminder of the terrible decision by Time Inc. to shut down Business 2.0. The crew at Business 2.0 worked hard to understand and articulate the underlying trends that continue to power this round of Internet innovation. They weren't content to simply write about the fads after they had been outed by the blogosphere. They dug in. I was lucky enough to attend a couple of the Business 2.0 gatherings of their "Next Net" companies. They were lively debates orchestrated by Erick Schonfeld and the rest of the Business 2.0 editorial team. It is a shame that there won't be any more of those gatherings. Maybe Michael can carry the tradition over to Fortune. [I wrote this post on a plane this morning and then read this evening that Erick Schonfeld has joined TechCrunch as Co-Editor with Arrington. That is fantastic news for TechCrunch -- Congratulations to Erick, Mike and Heather.] As is par for the course, I didn't actually spend much time in the conference hall during the TechCrunch40. But during one interesting session in which Marc Andreessen and Dave Filo were explaining to Chad Hurley how they invented the Internet, I peaked in and saw Eric Savitz in the front row blogging away madly. Have I ever mentioned on VentureBlog how incredibly great Eric Savitz is? He really is. Unfortunately, because he writes for Barrons he blogs mostly about the public markets. Somehow he managed to even make posts about earnings calls entertaining. And when he is blogging at things like TechCrunch40, his stuff is just awesome. If you haven't read Eric's blog, go check it out now. It has been really impressive how quickly his blog has become one of the standard bearing tech blogs. As a bookend to Shameless Self Promotion Month, I should mention that over the summer I funded a great company called Jaxtr. Jaxtr is what I like to think of as "social telephony." You can put a Jaxtr widget on your blog, social network, eBay listing, etc. and enable click to call. Jaxtr then establishes a virtual phone number for you that is local for the person calling -- if someone is calling you from India, they get a local India number, same in Europe or China or Iowa. And because the number is virtual and lives on top of a voip platform, you can then control the destination of those incoming calls. It can come to your cell phone, your home phone, Jaxtr voicemail, whatever you prefer. Better yet, you can determine the path of the call by individual. These features are just the beginning for Jaxtr, which will increasingly take advantage of voip and the social graph (oh crap, I swore I wouldn't use that term) to create more control, leverage, cost efficiency and fun for users. I'm thrilled to be involved with the company (along side many of the earliest Skype investors). Incidentally, I did get a fair number of comments and emails telling me that Shameless Self Promotion Month sucked and that I should cut it out. Fair enough. We now return to our ordinarily scheduled program of pontification and sarcasm. I guess that's enough for now. Sorry for the rambling. It is good to be back.
Splunk: A Software Enabled Platform for Data Search
When I first met with the team at Splunk, they were working away on building a system that could accurately track a transaction as it traversed the entire enterprise stack. If the transaction broke somewhere along the way, their software could help IT discover the cause of that failure. While it was clearly a pain point for some businesses, there was no clear customer and the value proposition was a relatively hard one to articulate. But the technology they were building created a whole lot of intelligence built on the fumes of the data center (namely the log files). I was interested in what they were doing, but not interested enough to fund them. One day I got a call from Michael Baum, CEO of Splunk. He told me that they had "figured it out" and that we should meet up. I was certainly game to hear what they had figured out and we got together again a short time later. So what had Splunk figured out? They had figured out that if they could track, manage and correlate log files across the entire data center in near real time, that they could create the killer IT Search Engine that would allow an end user to see into their enterprise stack in a way never before possible. The Splunk guys showed me a very simple example using Voip data and how one could track all systems that touched a particular extension by simply searching for that extension in the Splunk engine. I was an instant believer -- it was clearly a better way to manage the massive amounts of IT data that exist in enterprises today. I invested in the Series A and the Splunk team got to building the software that they had envisioned. A short time after investing in Splunk, I was meeting with a group of managers from one of August Capital's biggest Limited Partners (the folks who invest in our fund). I was describing for them what Splunk was planning to build and they asked me "so what's the market size for that?" I quickly answered as best I could -- "I have no idea." Needless to say, this was not the most satisfying answer they had ever received and they stared back at me with a look that suggested perhaps I should come up with a better answer. But the reality was that I didn't have a better answer. Not because it was unclear if there was any market for what Splunk was building. But, more importantly, because once Splunk had built their search engine, it was unclear what market they would go after. I explained to my investors that Splunk had a number of multi-billion dollar markets in which they might play (management, compliance, BI, security, capacity planning, development, etc.) and the only question was which ones they would choose to go after first. That conversation with my Limited Partners was over two and a half years ago. And since that time, the Splunk team has built precisely what they promised -- a large-scale, high-speed search technology for your data center. But despite the fact that Splunk's software has been downloaded by over 100,000 users and despite the fact that there are now more than 350 paying enterprise customers (including 21st Century Insurance, BEA, British Telecom, Catholic Healthcare West, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Comcast, Dow Jones, FedEx, Fiserv, GE Consumer Finance, LinkedIn, Mantech, Mozilla.org, NASA, Shopzilla, Telstra, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of State, Vodafone and Yahoo!), I would still have a tough time answering the question posed by my Limited Partner. Splunk has not built an application. Nor is Splunk merely selling software. Splunk has created a software enabled platform that continues to be extremely broadly applicable. Is Splunk mission critical when it comes to maintaining availability of large scale enterprise systems? Yes. Is Splunk invaluable in the fight to maintain the security of your data center? Yes. Does Splunk uniquely simplify the process of data compliance? Yes. Can Splunk help you dig into your data and analyze it like no other solution? Yes. But, frankly, that's just the tip of the iceberg -- once you are able to query individual pieces of data across your entire data center in real time, the applicability of the platform is limited only by the creativity of its end users. And those end users are driving value back into the platform, creating applications we hadn't thought of before. So what is the market for Splunk? i still couldn't say for certain. But I can tell you one thing -- it is awfully big. And in the venture business, that's big enough.
DoneRight: Pay For Performance for Service Professionals
It appears that Shameless Self-Promotion Week has become Shameless Self-Promotion Month. Not that I am promoting any more companies than I had originally planned. I am still only talking about those businesses in which I have invested on behalf of August Capital. But, it turns out, it takes more time than I had anticipated to sing the praises of such a fantastic group of companies. Just this past Friday, Craig Syverson and I recorded the latest installment of VentureCast at University Cafe in downtown Palo Alto. I had recently been discussing with a friend the fact that University Cafe has very much become a part of the startup economy again. Folks like Rajeev Motwani and Ron Conway spend a fair bit of time meeting with companies at University Cafe. Practically any time you're there you can look around a see deals getting done. In fact, shortly before Craig and I started recording VentureCast, the guys at the table next to ours were banging out the details of some sort of financing. Unfortunately, they had finished their negotiations before we started recording, or we might have captured the blow by blow on tape. A couple years ago I was meeting with an executive from one of my portfolio companies at University Cafe. While we were talking, Rajeev wandered by and told me to come say "hi" before I headed out. Rajeev was talking with a smart group of guys about their new company in the local advertising space. Those folks were the founding team from DoneRight (at the time called Perform Local). I was intrigued by their business, impressed with the team, and a short time later I ended up funding their company. The CEO of DoneRight was -- and is -- Paul Ryan. Paul is a phenomenal technologist. He had most recently been the CTO at Overture and, thus, had been part of the team that had pioneered the very concept of pay for performance. The idea at DoneRight was to create a pay for performance local advertising network that would allow local service providers to purchase valuable leads through DoneRight. By aggregating demand through on and off-line lead generation techniques, service providers could use DoneRight as their marketing arm, paying only for the leads they received. On behalf of the consumer, DoneRight would screen service providers for professional licenses, BBB complaints and the like, and only accept professionals onto the service that DoneRight was comfortable guarantying. Given this data-intensive, data-driven service, there was no one better to build DoneRight than Paul. Because local services are . . . well . . . local, DoneRight has been rolling out their network on a city by city basis. With each new city, DoneRight gains more insight into how best to provide consumers with the information they need to make informed buying decisions, while providing service professionals with the channel they need to scale their businesses. The service launched in San Diego, and has rolled out to Denver, Chicago, Houston and Dallas over the course of this year. In 2008, DoneRight will expand considerably, using what they've learned in their first five metropolitan areas to optimize the DoneRight experience on a nationwide basis. To date, over 1,000 home improvement professionals have entered into prepaid performance agreements with DoneRight. While other online services have failed to gain meaningful sales traction with local businesses, DoneRight has been able to sign up its first thousand paying customers in record time, because it is providing real, measurable results for its business customers -- In the short time that it has been doing business in these few metropolitan areas, DoneRight has processed nearly 500,000 consumer requests for referral to a DoneRight certified service professional. And that number will scale dramatically as DoneRight expands nationwide. DoneRight is another business in which I invested because of my love of data. Ultimately, the lead generation business is a numbers game. How much does it cost to acquire a lead? What will a service provider pay for it? Does it scale? Those were the questions that needed answering. And given Paul Ryan's background, I invested, confident that Paul would be able to produce the necessary infrastructure to answer those questions and create a scalable business. And he has. Better yet, as Paul and the company learn more about lead generation on a local level, they are able to apply that knowledge to each of their metropolitan areas, making each city more efficient and the overall business decidedly more profitable. If you live in San Diego, Denver, Chicago, Houston or Dallas and are looking for a guaranteed service professional, DoneRight.com is the place to go. And if you are living elsewhere, stay tuned. DoneRight will be coming to your neighborhood soon.
VideoEgg: Three Quart of a Billion Served
While I'm talking about user statistics, I might as well talk about VideoEgg. When I first started meeting with the team from VideoEgg, they had all but no traffic. They had a fantastic video upload tool. Their solution was really elegant. But they were serving thousands of videos at best. The discussion within my partnership was about the degree to which they could compete in a market that was dominated by YouTube and a group of fast followers. Nonetheless, I was really impressed with the team and was excited to see how we might be able to put the VideoEgg software and service to good use. Having determined that creating another video destination site was tantamount to suicide, the VidoeEgg team decided to partner with various services across the web to provide them with the necessary infrastructure to ingest, manage and serve video onto their respective sites. Because the VideoEgg technology and business proposition were so compelling, they quickly signed up a large number of partners, including: Bebo, hi5, Piczo, Consumating, Current TV, Flixster, AOL, Glam.com, Military.com, BlackPlanet, MyYearbook, ringo, Tagged, AsianAve, theU.com, Dogster, MiGente and many more. The results have been staggering. In the month of June, VideoEgg will serve in the vicinity of 25 million videos per day or nearly three quarters of a billion videos per month. Those videos will be watched by approximately 23 million unique visitors, a number which is growing by 15% month over month. If that trend continues, VideoEgg will serve about 53 million unique visitors by years end. What's more, VideoEgg is able to leverage the distribution across its network to promote original content. For example, in partnership with Motorola, VideoEgg will stream more than 14 million views of The Burg throughout the VideoEgg network. As the network continues to grow, the opportunity to act as a meaningful channel for original content will grow as well. Which is precisely why I view VideoEgg as a next generation television network. I was just asked today on a panel if I thought that the market for online video was approaching saturation and my answer was an emphatic "no." I am not predicting the demise of television in the near term by any means. But I am predicting exponential growth in online video as the next generation of media consumers spends an increasingly large percentage of their time online. And I anticipate that VideoEgg will play an important role in that media evolution.
Changing Titles
In an incredible breach of blogging etiquette, I have decided to change the titles of my posts from Shameless Self-Promotion Week. When I started writing this set of posts, I thought it would be nice to have a unified look to the titles. Thus, I adopted the "Shameless Self-Promotion Week: [Company X]" title format. But I have decided that I really hate it. It doesn't say anything about the posts. It is hard to understand out of context. It was just a bad decision. So my apologies but I'm changing titles.
Six Apart's Traffic is Huge!
A lot has been said about Six Apart in the past, including by me. I have never been shy about making clear my love of MovableType (VentureBlog), TypePad (SaysMe) and Vox (Hornik, Hornik and More Hornik). I use each of Six Apart's platforms, which makes me an investor, a customer and an evangelist. But what hasn't been said about Six Apart to date? Perhaps what hasn't been said is that when it comes to web traffic Six Apart is HUGE. According to Comscore, Six Apart's hosted properties (TypePad, Blogs, LiveJournal, Vox, etc.) put Six Apart in the 50 most trafficked sites on the Web. Six Apart has approximately 39 Million unique visitors a month and growing. Six Apart served just over 600 Million world-wide page views in April, of which over a quarter of a billion page views came from the United States alone. And those page views do not even include the massive traffic of the innumerable branded sites that live on Six Apart's hosted platforms, including TheSuperficial, SocialiteLife, Gothamist, BoingBoing, HuffingtonPost, AskDaveTaylor, TreeHugger, ZDNet Blogs, Celebrity-Babies, CuteOverload, Kottke, CoolHunting, and thousands more. Where are all those page views coming from? There are nearly 20 Million Six Apart bloggers across the various platforms. In the US, they are posting on LiveJournal, TypePad, Vox.... Internationally, they are posting on Friendster, Nifty, NTT.... On nearly any topic on the planet that one might search, there will be results hosted by Six Apart. The number of bloggers is constantly growing, the number of pages is constantly growing, the number of page views is constantly growing. The power of blogging! On top of that, there are hundreds of thousands of users of MovableType, which represent innumerable millions of page views which Six Apart does not host and does not track. MovableType is the predominant platform for enterprise blogging. Many corporations use MovableType for external blogs, many more are using MovableType internally. While in no way comprehensive, check out this list of companies using MT for their own blogs: ABC, CMP Media Conde Nast, Gannett, Hearst, NBC Universal, NPR, Playboy, USA Today, Time, Walt Disney, Washington Post, Warner Brothers, FedEx, Interpublic, Ogilvy, Organic, UPS, Adobe, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, Nokia, Oracle, SAP, Symantec, Verizon, GE Heathcare, GE Medical Systems, Genetech, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, American Express, Deutsche Bank, the Federal Reserve Bank, Intuit, Standard & Poors, Wells Fargo, American Eagle Outfitters, American Girl, General Mills, L'Oreal, Mattel, Miller Brewing, Mike, P&G, Patagoinia, Wal-Mart, Whole Foods, General Motors, Boeing, Lockheed, Brown, Columbia, MIT, NYU, Princeton, Yale.... And, of course, VentureBlog! When I invested in Six Apart, I was excited about the incredibly broad applicability of Six Apart's technology. If anything, I've been surprised by just how broadly Six Apart's platforms have been applied. From Standard & Poors to Playboy to CuteOverload to BoingBoing to NPR to my mom's Vox blog, Six Apart has enabled a distributed media "empire" that is truly vast, and growing. It will be exciting to see how Six Apart continues to flourish in the coming years. I am thrilled to be a part of it.
Nomis Solutions: Price Optimization Guru Focuses on Financial Services
I am a bit of a broken record when it comes to my "its all about the team" mantra. But I really believe it. Yes, it is important to have a good idea. Yes, it is important to be chasing a big market. But as important as both of those things are, they pale in comparison to the need for great entrepreneurs. I've also written a fair bit about what it means to be a great entrepreneur. Some founders are incredibly good entrepreneurs by virtue of their sheer fanaticism and determination -- they thrive on the challenge of building a businesses out of whole cloth and hate to lose. Some founders are "serial entrepreneurs" and get the benefit of the doubt because they have done it before -- they have managed to run the startup gauntlet and make their investors a bunch of money. And other founders are incredible domain experts -- if anyone is going to figure out how to build an interesting business in their particular field, it will be them. If an entrepreneur falls into any one of these categories, you will do well to back them. A few years ago I was approached about backing a company called Nomis Solutions. The idea behind Nomis was to apply modern price optimization techniques to the financial services sector. While banks and insurance companies do a great job of measuring and optimizing risk, they have historically done less well at measuring and optimizing pricing. As a result, the industry as a whole has left a lot of money on the table. The founders of Nomis intended to build a software solution to help financial institutions engage in profit-based pricing -- pricing that would create the greatest profitability on a product by product basis (auto finance, mortgage, home equity, personal lending, etc.). Was it a good idea? You bet. Any time a piece of software can increase your profitability by 10 to 20%, it is a good idea. Was it a big market? Monstrous. Financial institutions are historically very difficult to sell software into, nonetheless, they are monumentally large accounts if you can find your way in. So my investment decision came down to the question of how was the team. While there were four fantastic entrepreneurs when I funded Nomis, and I do not in any way want to slight Nomis's other spectacular founders, I want to take a closer look at Nomis founder Dr. Robert Phillips. Bob Phillips personifies the best characteristics of a great entrepreneur. He thrives on company creation and refuses to lose (when I made diligence calls on Bob, I was assured that he was a killer entrepreneur and that I would do well to back him but that I should never ever play him at Trivial Pursuit). Bob is also a serial entrepreneurs who has made a bunch of money for his investors in the past. As the founder and CEO of Talus Solution, Bob created the worlds largest price optimization company in its day, which he sold to Manugistics for hundreds of millions of dollars. And Bob is the guru of price optimization -- there is no bigger domain expert. If you have been annoyed by the fact that the guy sitting next to you on a plane paid significantly less for his ticket than you did, you have Bob Phillips to blame for that. He introduced revenue optimization to the airline industry many years ago. He literally wrote the price optimization text book and teaches it at Stanford and Columbia Business Schools. It would be hard to find a better example of a fundable entrepreneur than Bob Phillips. So it will come as no surprise to you that Bob and his co-founders have managed to build an incredible company at Nomis. Their customers are literally a who's who of the banking industry, from Ford Motor Credit to HBoS to GE Consumer Finance to Washington Mutual. And their results have been nothing short of spectacular -- by installing Nomis's software, a bank can increase the profitability of its business by between ten and twenty percent. On a multi-billion dollar loan portfolio, that adds up to real money quickly. As a result, Nomis has been able to make great inroads into a really tough market. I don't want to ignore the excellent work of Bob Phillips' co-founders. Nor do I want to understate the degree to which great hiring has helped make the company a market leader. But Bob Phillips remains the world's expert in revenue optimization and I would sooner bet with Bob than against him when it comes to price optimization. It truly is all about the team.
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- updated: Feb 16 11:52AM
Web Standards Project BUZZ
The Buzz: the Web Standards Project Weblog. Fighting for standards that ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all.
Web Standards in Small Organisations
I don’t really make resolutions at new year, but perhaps if I did it should be this. To be more...
Another Failed Redesign: IEEE
Oh the irony -- that a standards body should ignore standards in creating their new Web site! As a member...
Failed Redesigns
Joe Clark recently wrote about several Failed Redesigns. His post has such a classic WaSP tone, that I hope he...
Star HTML and Microsoft IE7
Chris Wilson, Group Program Manager for IE Platform and Security at Microsoft, and Position is Everything's Big John Gallant have...
A Final End to IE/Mac
Microsoft has announced that they will cease all support for IE/Mac as of December 31, 2005 and will cease all...
The Bad Old Days Linger On
Most professional web developers understand why browser sniffing sucks, and have long since moved on to more robust techniques like...
Prince 5.1 Passes Acid2
Prince, a program that converts XML documents styled with CSS into PDF files for printing, has passed the Acid2 test....
Microsoft Tweaks IE's Handling of ActiveX, Java
Microsoft has announced that they'll be changing the way IE handles ActiveX controls and Java applets to avoid liability in...
24 Ways to Impress Your Friends
It's an online advent calender, and behind each door* you'll find a web development tip/tutorial (all standards-based goodness, of course)...
Pandora's Box (Model) of CSS Hacks And Other Good Intentions
This Thanksgiving I've decided it's about time that I provided some more background and analysis on one of the things...
Beyond New Professionalism
In Molly's recent WaSP buzz, Web Standards and The New Professionalism she offers: Today, I want to express that I...
Web Standards and The New Professionalism
With the aftermath of the Disney UK Store redesign fiasco still ringing in our collective ears, I am coming to...
An Open Letter to Disney Store UK
Dear Disney Store UK, I would write this to you directly via your site feedback page but it is throwing...
IE7 Conditional Comments
In mid October, the IE Blog urged developers to stop using CSS hacks to workaround IE's problems, and start relying...
WaSP Microsoft Task Force Update: Upcoming Products, XAML, Acid2, SXSW, and IE7 Revealed
The WaSP Microsoft Task Force held another face-to-face meeting with available members on Tuesday. We met in a Starbucks along...
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- updated: Jan 30 07:20PM
Dictionary.com Word of the Day
A new word is presented every day with its definition and example sentences from actual published works.
pestiferous: Dictionary.com Word of the Day
pestiferous: bearing or bringing disease, moral harm, or annoyance.
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- updated: Feb 18 01:14AM
Year 23
"I know nothing with any certainty but that the sight of stars makes me dream" ~ van gogh
I MOVED :)
Check out the new home of year 23! It's still a bit under construction but it's where you will find all my new posts. Thanks Blogspot - you've been good to me!!! http://staffjourney.typepad.com/year23/
muted
I have so much I want to talk about and I've realized that I've stopped writing a lot of things out of fear of offending people or something along those lines. I don't want this blog to be a place where i'm constantly thinking "well, maybe I can create another blog and write about this topic there". It's just too crazy for me - juggling multiple blogs and writing spheres. I am sort of thinking of stopping this blog on August 1st - that would be 2 years to the day since its inception. I believe it's been an amazing run and folks have been so faithful in reading my very random and non-linear thoughts. I have already begun creating a new blog - though the name will be not be distributed until I'm clear about what sort of purpose I would like it to have. I want a place where I can feel free to write about all the topics on my mind - to be vulnerable and real but in a way that won't put relationships at risk. Also, I just really love writing and this blog has been a place where I have been insanely affirmed in that area - I want to continue to practice composing my thoughts - maybe one day a book will come out of it! I want to thank all of you for being such fantastic readers. I would like to invite all of you to my new blog and new space online. If you are interested in reading about my new journey - i'm turning 25, so i figure that constitutes a new journey ;) then feel free to post a comment and I will hook you up with the link. If any of you out there have any alternate suggestions - throw them at me. I need more insight into this crazy communication tool! much love to all of you~ d~nice
if you are trying to contact me.....
email me. this will probably be one of my only public service announcements - but today i think i've realized the need to communicate this very important piece of info. about reaching me during the day. i do not answer my phone or even check my phone till i go to bed on most days. I am officially giving out word to the world - calling me is a horrible way to get in touch with me throughout the day. However, i check email a gagillion times a day and it doesn't interfere with work the way calling does. calling my cell during the work day - this is probably one of my only pet peeves. so PLEASE don't do it. email me. that is all. one more time.....email me! :) i say this only because folks keep missing me. if you want to chat on the phone with me - set a date and time - that way I can be prepared to have my phone near me and ready for a conversation. I'm just not the kind of person who is on her phone all day and i don't think i ever will be. I hate to be a grouch about this - please forgive me for not being more receptive - I am trying to grow in this - but understand that there used to be a day and age where people weren't expected to have this kind of accessibility on a minute-to-minute basis. It's going to take some time for me to grow more intentional about the phone - until then, have patience and oh yeah, email me.
just write....
You've probably noticed my lack of writing in the past month or so. It's semi-hilarious to me that I write when I'm feeling particularly happy or sad or angry - it's a way that seems to diffuse or focus my emotion into something practical. In this one spiritual direction book I was reading awhile back it talked about ways people tend to get stuck in two modes of processing. The three modes they laid out were thinking, feeling and acting or T, F and A. My personality tends to get caught up in a cycle of F and T - first I'll feel something, then think about it, then feel something, then think and I'll drive myself nuts! Adding an A to the cycle balances out my processing and it's crazy how well it focuses me. So if I'm thinking and feeling a ton, which tends to be always, when I add an A component - something simple like creatively drawing out how I'm feeling or journaling, cooking or anything that's hand's on and outside of my head and heart and more in my body helps me to process. There are those who vaciliate between F and A - or T and A - which I think is more the Northeast culture, very industrious, always on the move and doing something. The problem with vaciliating between say, a T and A is that there is never any connection with the heart - a lot may get done, but when you step back and evaluate, it might very well be that it wasn't necessary or even useful to yourself or anyone else. The F and A - maybe that looks more impulsive - spontaneous - equally as dangerous as other modes. So i'm trying to be more intentional about writing and sharing my thoughts. I've had many and have found that I'm keeping them to myself - there are stories of what God is doing in my life and I've been holding them a bit too tightly. This is not what I've been asked to do - I'm called to tell my story as that is part of the process of honoring Him and giving glory to Him. It's also freeing - liberating - for me. What's scary about sharing my story is the way I must be vulnerable. When you talk about how He's saved you it's evident that there was something in you that needed to be saved. Going into the light and being exposed isn't something we should be afraid of - living in shadows is more dangerous. That's where feeling can very much steer you in the wrong direction. A good friend shared with me awhile back about how God doesn't speak through fear and intimidation - the kind of fear that stops you in your tracks and pulls you into yourself, forcing you to retreat from life. For example, I always get scared when getting on a plane and for awhile I always wondered if that was God trying to tell me not to get on. But when I think about the ways God speaks to folks in the bible - He tells them things that their first response is always fear (hence the constant assurance, do not be afraid). Fear tends to be how we respond to His call - but that is not how He is speaking to us nor how He wants us to feel. Now don't get me wrong, there is the fear of God that is good stuff and something I'll get into in the next post when I talk about shame. And I think we all could think of examples when you are like - well, I'm glad I was scared, it knocked me out of doing something horrible to myself or others. But then again, isn't that wisdom? Shouldn't we be doing things out of wisdom and reverence to Him instead of out just wanting to save our hides? Anyway, I digress. Getting on the plane I realized that His voice was the one trying to calm me down - pouring peace over me and bringing me back to what my life is all about - Him. The voices of impending death and eventual destruction and plane pieces scattered across the mountains - that's not Him. That's me and that's the Enemy. I don't think we fear too little. I might even say that there are those who you think are fearless who are still acting out of fear not out of love or out of peace or joy. I don't like the english language for the way fear feels like the only word for something that I think there are multiple definitions. There is something God wants us to have - fear of the Lord - but it's not the fear I'm talking about, that's another kind. I need some greek and hebrew scholars now! So for my next posts: 1) Shame 2) Confession 3) Lost - the game
a new discovery
i think i might be an enfj. one thing that has never made a lick of sense to me in the enfp descriptions is the whole need to be "authentic", how they experience emotion deeply but then always feel "split" from themeselves. that's not me. i don't berate myself for not being me or being truly me. i took the test today and came out as an enfj - something i have never come out as before so have never read. usually i'll come out as enfp or infj. the nf is always really strong - but the e and p change depending on my mood. when i look at the kind of leader i am - especially when i was filling out this one application - the way i described myself is almost verbatim the "teacher" description of an enfj. this is kind of cool. what do ya'll think? i would be sad to not be a p anymore as it's been quite the bonding experience to be a p - but alas - i actually love deadlines - i need structure - and i put frames on my photographs!! i wonder if the p was more of a rebellion against the status quo and expectations as an oldest child. after some talk with key folks though in the past few weeks - and even throughout the years - i see my personality manifesting itself more like the teacher - with the fall backs of the teacher. the underlying difference is motivation. i'm motivated to see others succeed - not so much in relaying events like a journalist. just ask my roommate - i hate answering questions that are about information. I'd rather talk about what's going on with folks - think more about ways to grow, etc. i've known that about myself since high school - it's one of the reasons i feel led to counseling - pastoring even. so crazy. i think i'm an enfj. check out these links: enfp enfj
world cup baby!!!
So stoked - it's world cup time and that means global cheering for a month!! Check out the schedule and teams here. They're in germany - i used to be in germany...man, i want to go back!! Can you imagine being there for the world cup?? At work the other day we were talking about large groups of people and most of my co-workers don't like crowds. I've come to realize that I LOVE them. Still figuring out why that is - but part of it is the opportunity to share with people all at once an exciting experience - there's energy. wow - and tennis is coming up...... and more baseball games.... i'm in sports heaven!
so hot !
it's been so long since we've had hot weather here, i'm not really prepared! I need to get an air conditioner or something for my room because it's just too much during the summer to have four fans going and it STILL be too hot. have much to say on the topic of "thanksgiving" but am too hot to write at the moment. But my room desperately needs my attention - so once it's clean my reward is to sit and write out what i've been thinking about lately. and maybe also play more of LOST (the online game..)
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- updated: Jan 04 03:09PM
Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report
Web design news and insights since 1995
Lord of the Rains
I saw the bus doors closing. I saw a strange lady taking my daughter away.
Facebook, Twitter, and Bird Flu
If "Our Broken Borders" should someday turn into a ratings loser for CNN's Lou Dobbs, perhaps he can switch to "The Dwindling Productivity of the American Worker: Is Facebook Sapping Our National Vigor?"
Happy fourth birthday, real world semantics
Four years ago today, Tantek Çelik and Kevin Marks gave a presentation on real-world semantics. Working backwards from HTML extensions like XFN (created by Tantek, Matt Mullenweg, and Eric Meyer), the paper showed how designers and developers could add semantics to today's web rather than starting from scratch or waiting for a "purer" markup language.
ALA 252: New library, long hallway
Keep your markup clean with DOM scripting and learn to play nice in the long hallway.
All Bits on Deck!
We're as pleased as pale punch to welcome web designer, CSS whiz, microformats monger, icon designer, outstanding public speaker, and best-selling CSS-design-book author Dan Cederholm and his freshly redesigned SimpleBits site to The Deck, our advertising network targeting web, design and creative professionals.
In defense of version targeting
We knew when we published this issue of <cite>A List Apart</cite> that it would light a match to the gaseous underbelly of standards-based web design, but we thought more than a handful of readers would respect the parties involved enough to consider the proposal on its merits. Alas, the ingrained dislike of Microsoft is too strong, and the desire to see every site built with web standards is too ardently felt, for the proposal to get a fair viewing.
Not your father’s standards switch
For seven years, the DOCTYPE switch has stood designers and developers in good stead as a toggle between standards mode and quirks mode. But when IE7 "broke the web," the quest was on to find a more reliable ensurer of forward compatibility. Is version targeting the answer?
The no-access road
A stranger and I just helped a disabled lady in a motorized scooter mount the inaccessible curb adjoining the treatment center for disabled people in wheelchairs and scooters. The medical center has been there for probably thirty years. And for probably thirty years, the inaccessible curb has barred the way for people seeking treatment.
Girl. Dog. Night. Day.
A series of incidents.
Usability problems with .Mac sync
I'm afraid this is another of those entries outlining bizarre design decisions and perplexing usability quirks in the otherwise brilliant world of Apple computers and phones
Everything that can be iPhonelike, will be
The iPhone is too great a leap forward in interface design to be confined to, well, the iPhone.
An Event Apart New Orleans
An Event Apart, the design conference for people who make websites, kicks off its 2008 season with An Event Apart New Orleans, a monster, 19-hour, two-day creative session. Join us April 24–25 at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside for two intense, 9.5-hour-long days of learning and inspiration, featuring twelve of your favorite web design authors.
Self-publishing is the new blogging
When you've flown this far from Gutenberg, the only place to travel is back.
Morning has broken
A technological lament in eight Tweets.
Let me hear your standards body talk
Jeremy Keith's "Year Zero" beautifully explains why the W3C needs our backs, not our bullets.
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- updated: Feb 18 04:23PM
Ars Technica
New BotSniffer better able to detect foul stench of botnets
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have unveiled a new program they call BotSniffer. The application is designed to detect botnet activity through an analysis of IRC and HTTP traffic rather than using signature-based detection.Read More...
Study: familiarity often breeds votes for the next president
Never mind debates over candidates' policies or their ability to lead. A series of Stanford studies suggest that our votes may come down to how much a candidate can be made to look like us.Read More...
Report: implementation flaws hound wireless security
Security firm Codenomicon has released a report detailing its findings when testing the robustness of many current wireless security devices. The implications of the firm's findings (if upheld) are troubling for any user or IT administrator considering the use of any wireless technology.Read More...
Intel writing massive check for Sprint-Clearwire WiMAX deal
Intel is reportedly preparing to pump $2 billion into a joint venture between Sprint and Clearwire that should give WiMAX some much-needed exposure by year end.Read More...
Great firewall of China may hinder blogging Olympians
The International Olympic Committee has given athletes the green light to blog from the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, but bloggers will have to make sure their posts can make it through the great firewall of China.Read More...
Can an IPv4 stock market stave off address depletion, IPv6?
Today, obtaining IPv4 addresses is an administrative procedure, one that will end around 2012 as we run out of IPv4 address to give out. Proponents of an IPv4 "commodities market" believe that it could keep IPv4 viable for a few more years, but skepticism remains over that's a likely outcome.Read More...
HD DVD death still not official; what they're mulling
Toshiba has made no (zip, zero, nada) official announcements about killing off HD DVD, and today they're still defiant. Here's a picture of what we understand is going on in the HD DVD camp.Read More...
ISP blunder exposes entire domain's worth of e-mail to FBI
A report obtained by the EFF under the Freedom of Information Act reveals that an unnamed ISP accidentally coughed up e-mail for an entire domain to the FBI even though access was only authorized for a single address.Read More...
Labels want piece of the ad-supported music market
Major labels are reportedly in talks over a joint venture with MySpace that would give the labels an equity stake in the ad-supported music business. But will the new service offer DRM-free downloads or just online-only streams?Read More...
ICANN panel questions Network Solutions on frontrunning
ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee investigated user-submitted cases of domain name frontrunning and says that there hasn't been a single shred of evidence to prove that it's actually happening. So why is Network Solutions engaging in controversial domain practices to protect customers against frontrunners? ICANN wants to know, too. Read More...
Researcher maps out plan to target BitTorrent uploaders
A security expert helps out the MPAA by suggesting a mechanism for blocking BitTorrent movie downloads and possibly identifying individual users. Ars looks at whether the plan is feasible and likely to be adopted by the motion picture industry. Read More...
Booty call: Music has-beens line up to sue The Pirate Bay
Justice or money grab? Bands are lining up to sue The Pirate Bay now that the Swedish government has indicted the site's owners, but the plans could backfire as the promises of sunken treasure give way to reality.Read More...
Netroots seek to send legal scholar Lessig to Congress
Lawrence Lessig is a crusader for copyright reform and a major influence on thinking about the relationship of culture and content. Now, thousands want him to run for Congress, and Lessig even tells Ars he's considering it.Read More...
Tagoo, you're it! New MP3 search engine unfazed by IFPI
As you read this, the IFPI is likely preparing to pick up its mallet again. A new mole in the form of a music search engine just appeared that makes searching for and downloading MP3s easier than ever.Read More...
First look: latest Google Android SDK a big improvement
Google has announced another prerelease version of the Android SDK. We took a close look at how it performs and found that Google is listening to feedback—the new SDK is a solid improvement over its predecessor.Read More...
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- updated: Feb 18 07:24PM
Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories
Read the front page stories of csmonitor.com.
After declaring independence, Kosovo looks to cautious next steps
President Bush hailed the controversial move, as the EU and UN met to form their responses.
Will Wisconsin primary build Obama streak?
Clinton needs a Dairy State win to prevent him from winning nine primaries in a row.
Lebanese turmoil withers 'Beirut Spring' optimism
But many young activists are still struggling to maintain the movement that followed in the wake of Hariri's death.
Credit squeeze's potential ripple effects
As lenders tighten standards, the possibility of a recession increases.
Angry opposition youths oppose Kenya compromise
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Kenya Monday to press for a power-sharing agreement.
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- updated: Feb 18 07:24PM
Moreover Technologies - CNET
CNET - more than 340 categories of real-time RSS news feeds
cnet at Shopping.com - Sponsored Link
Ad - www.Shopping.com Feb 18 2008 9:28PM GMT
C|Net reviews
CNET Feb 18 2008 9:28PM GMT
Olympus E-3 (body only)
CNET Feb 15 2008 9:40PM GMT
2008 Honda Fit Sport
CNET Feb 15 2008 9:40PM GMT
Cambridge SoundWorks i765
CNET Feb 15 2008 7:34PM GMT
Loco for NTT DoCoMo superphones
CNET Feb 14 2008 11:24PM GMT
What IT can learn from botnets
CNET Feb 14 2008 11:10PM GMT
Dell Inspiron 1525 (Intel Pentium(R) Dual Core T2330 1.60GHz, 80GB HDD, 512MB RAM)
CNET Feb 14 2008 9:40PM GMT
Hasta Luego to GSMA
CNET Feb 14 2008 9:28PM GMT
Loco for NTT DoCoMo super phones
CNET Feb 14 2008 8:42PM GMT
Dell Inspiron 1525 (Intel Pentium(R) Dual Core T2330 1.60GHz, 120GB HDD, 512MB RAM)
CNET Feb 14 2008 8:41PM GMT
Battle of the trade shows: Why Europe rules
CNET Feb 14 2008 6:04PM GMT
2008 Audi A4 2.0T Quattro Turbo 6M
CNET Feb 14 2008 5:38PM GMT
2008 Infiniti G35 Journey
CNET Feb 14 2008 10:44AM GMT
Sins of a Solar Empire (PC)
CNET Feb 14 2008 10:44AM GMT
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- updated: Feb 18 07:24PM
CNN.com
CNN.com delivers up-to-the-minute news and information on the latest top stories, weather, entertainment, politics and more.
Satellite-shootdown try days away, sources say
The U.S. Navy will likely attempt to shoot down a faulty spy satellite on Thursday, the day after the space shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to land, two officials told CNN today. The Navy plans to fire a missile at the satellite as it enters Earth's atmosphere.
Pakistan opposition sees early good news
Polls in Pakistan's first parliamentary elections in six years -- and some of its most pivotal -- closed with relatively little violence and no overt evidence of vote-rigging. Now, the country waits as the tallying begins.
Admiral: Al Qaeda in Iraq killing ex-allies
Video provided to CNN shows an al Qaeda in Iraq firing squad executing one-time allies -- fellow Sunni extremists -- who were not loyal enough to the terror organization, coalition military analysts said. The video shows armed men wearing masks standing behind nine kneeling men.
U.S. recognizes independent Kosovo
The United States today officially recognized Kosovo -- the Balkan state which split from Serbia on Sunday -- as an independent nation, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a written statement. "We congratulate the people of Kosovo on this historic occasion," Rice said.
Texas poll shows dead heat among Dems
It's all tied up in Texas.
D.A.: Antifreeze suicide theory 'ridiculous'
Read full story for latest details.
CNN.com readers: Are we safe on campus?
If a shooter came into some of the biggest classrooms at the University of California-Berkeley, recent graduate Scott Alto wonders whether students would be able to protect themselves.
Ancient frog was size of bowling ball
Read full story for latest details.
Flock forgives confessed-killer minister
Read full story for latest details.
Pitcher Pettitte apologizes for HGH use
Read full story for latest details.
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- updated: Feb 18 07:24PM
CNN: World
Real time updated news from the first worldwide TV channel specialized in world information (By http://www.newsisfree.com/syndicate.php - FOR PERSONAL AND NON COMMERCIAL USE ONLY!)
Admiral: Al Qaeda in Iraq killing former allies
Video provided to CNN shows an al Qaeda in Iraq firing squad executing one-time allies -- fellow Sunni extremists -- who were not loyal enough to the terror organization, coalition military analysts said.
More homes raided in German tax-fraud probe
Read full story for latest details.
Rice demands 'real power sharing' in Kenya
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in Kenya to support efforts to reach political reconciliation, said Kenya's opposing factions must form a "grand coalition" that provides "real power sharing."
Al Fayed gives evidence in Diana inquest
The father of Princess Diana's boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, was expected to testify Monday for the first time at the inquest into their deaths more than a decade ago.
Cyclone besieges Madagascar
A cyclone with sustained winds of 69 mph swept across Madagascar on Sunday, knocking out power in some areas and making damage assessment difficult.
Bush promotes health solution in Africa
President George W. Bush focused on a low-tech way to save the lives of African children Monday as he and first lady Laura Bush toured a Tanzanian clinic.
Serbia takes Kosovo anger to U.N.
The U.N. Security Council will meet Monday to discuss Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia amid bitter divisions over the future of the Balkan territory.
Bush promotes U.S. role in war on malaria
Read full story for latest details.
Pakistan polls open amid violence
Pakistanis cast their votes in parliamentary elections on Monday amid fears of violence, accusations of vote-rigging and surveys indicating opposition parties could fare well.
Surprise result in Cypriot elections
Read full story for latest details.
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kuro5hin.org
technology and culture, from the trenches
The Origin of Valentine's Day
The herstory of Valentine's Day can be traced to St. Valentine of Jerusalem, the first priest of the Catholic church. Saint Valentine was, conicidentally both born and martyred on February 1st. It might be difficult to understand how this man's life gave birth to the rather later holiday we know today, but there is a connection!
Apples to Oranges
Much criticism is thrown in the direction of teacher unions. Steve Jobs, one of the recent critics, blasts ""I believe that what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way," "This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy."
eavier's guide to enjoying straight pr0n in the company of other heterosexual males.
While sitting in the company of three male friends last weekend watching Hustler's "Campus Confessions" (excellent btw), it came to me that enjoying porn with and in the company of other men is a delicate business. One wrong move can ruin, what was up until that point, a spotless heterosexual record. First off, watching porn in a male pack is a weird act. But it happens. Somebody inevitably will think it a good idea to bring an adult DVD to watch after the game. Disagreeing to watch or a sudden show of hesitancy will only get your friends questioning your heterosexuality. Secondly, you will in no way enjoy the porn as much as you would watching it by yourself, or with your significant other. In all likelihood, the pack porn party, if everyone is honest, is way too structured for anyone to have any fun at all. But they happen, and here's ten pointers to keep yourself "straight" in everyone's mind after the "fun" is over.
Million Dollar Pinball: Part I
In the early 1990s, Los Angeles' area Commerce Casino was a hot bed of activity. At the time, the casino was just a card room where low and high stakes poker was played. Off to a side room, the last dying breath of high-stakes Backgammon was still being played, and mostly by some of the top players in the world including "Action" Dan Harrington. The casino was very popular and a lot of top players would play there when they were visiting the LA area. This caused a problem - lines for games, especially Poker, would get too long and players would get impatient. The owner of the casino, a man I've never met, came up with a brilliant idea: install several pinball machines to keep the waiting list happy.
Skinhacking: A DIY Guide to Facials, Laxatives, and Moisturizers
I have dry skin. Heating systems at home, school, and work all conspire with the general dryness of Zone 5 Winter to leave me with a flaky, sensitive epidermis that not only feels papery and prone but, in some areas, cracks or reddens. To combat this I began using, for the first time in my life, commercially available moisturizers like Aloe & Chamomile Advanced Therapy Lotion (St. Ives) and Norwegian Formula Body Moisturizer (Neutrogena). After becoming wary of their exotic additives and unpronounceables, I decided to try making my own in order to ascertain what's really responsible for rehydrating my skin.
Demonology '08
In the new year the Berkeley Software Distribution family of Unix-like operating systems is growing at a phenomenal rate and excitement over the possibilities for this operating system family is in the air. After unprecedented development and adoption as well as major shifts in the marketplace, it's time to take a look at what's new with this demonic family of operating systems. Don't fear, the word demon means Unix goodness at just the right price.
Your Army Of Dupes Should Be Quaking In Fear!
13-year old Megan Meier, after being cruelly taunted by a "Josh Evans" on MySpace, hung herself in her closet with a belt. Lori Drew, the mother of one of Megan's former friends, admitted in a police report that Josh Evans was really her, but later denied it. The police investigated, but were unable to find any crime they could charge Mrs. Drew with. The state of Missouri is proposing to outlaw internet harassment, but under the US Constitution, such a law could not apply retroactively. But Federal prosecutors may have found a way to prosecute Mrs. Drew...
How I met the Queen in a Canadian cornfield
In the summer of 1973 I hitched a series of rides from Boston through Maine and New Brunswick to my mother's house in Pictou County Nova Scotia. It's hard to describe the location any better than that because she originally lived in a hamlet called Poplar Hill ... until the Poplar Hill School, a one-room schoolhouse across the street from my mothers house, closed. From there her address wandered from RR2, Meadowville to RR2 Scotsburn and finally to RR2 in the unincorporated county of Pictou. Civilization had abandoned Poplar Hill. All my mother would say was that she was four miles up the Tony River road between Tatamagouche and Antigonish.
Scoop is Bringing Down the Right!
RedState is apparently failing because all Scoop developers are liberals so they couldn't get any support for Scoop which crashes all the time so they abandoned Scoop and their website sucks and I think that's funny and rusty should maybe consider fixing Scoop but it's not really his problem because Bush is the devil and we know how saintly rusty is and he wouldn't work for the devil.
Jalapeno Eyewash and the Suicide Attemptress
If you have ever fixed nachos with fresh jalapenos, it only takes one time to figure out that you don't pick your nose, take a piss or rub your eyes...especially you don't rub your eyes. Doing cunnilingus after eating jalapenos is out of the question too...doing so is a mistake you make only once.
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ofben's Xanga
Sorry, ofben has chosen not to publish an RSS feed. Please visit their Xanga site here: http://www.xanga.com/ofben
Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:24:42 GMT
Sorry, ofben has chosen not to publish an RSS feed. Please visit their Xanga site here: http://www.xanga.com/ofben
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Plastic: Most Recent
Politics, Culture, Point Of View
House Lets Defense Of America Act Expire
Plastic::Politics::Terrorism: US Congress Refuses to Service Bush On Valentine's Day; White House Now Especially Cranky
Controversially Blocked Medical Checklist Unblocked [Updated]
Plastic::SciTech::Health: In a move unsurprising to observers of this administration, the Office for Human Research Protections moves to "protect patients" by forbidding the use of a checklist that has saved thousands of lives, and millions of dollars.
Debating Science Agendas
Plastic::SciTech::Politics: 23 Nobel laureates, 32 government leaders (Democrats and Republicans), 31 major business leaders, 89 organisations, 44 college and university presidents, and lots of editors and journalists are among the 13,000 people who have joined in the call
Breaking News - U.S. Recognizes Kosovo Independence
Plastic::Politics::International: Kosovo's parliament declared independence on Sunday, pledging to establish a "democratic and multi-ethnic" state.
A Problematic Spy Satellite
Plastic::SciTech::Military: The U.S. has decided to shoot it down before it can reenter the atmosphere.
Monorail To Nowhere
Plastic::Work::Travel: sounded like such a great idea at the time. Las Vegas built a $650 million monorail system on the Las Vegas Strip entirely with private money.
Dying To Kick The Habit
Plastic::SciTech::Medicine: How badly do you want to kick the tobacco habit? Bad enough to experience anxiety, nervousness, depressed mood and some stray thoughts of suicide?
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Slashdot
News for nerds, stuff that matters
Using the Ruby Dev-Tools plug-in for Eclipse
Mark Newport's Knitted Heroes
Fortune Takes a Look at Bram Cohen
Datels 4GB Hard Drive for PSP Reviewed
IMDb Turns 15
PTO Eliminates "Technological Arts" Requirement
The Perl Foundation Gets New Leadership
Jack Thompson Rescinds Offer
Interview with Tony 'Say No to Windows' Bove
New Hopes From Sun's Idea Factory
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- updated: Oct 17 07:51PM
Wired: Top Stories
The best of Wired.com, as it happens.
Doctor Urges Creation of 'Science of Healthcare Delivery'
While treatments have multiplied, the operations and processes for delivering those medicines haven't kept pace, slowing health improvement in developing and developed countries. Alexis Madrigal reports from the AAAS annual meeting in Boston.
Highlights From the Floor of the AAAS Annual Meeting
Alexis Madrigal reports from the AAAS annual meeting in Boston on the goings-on on the convention floor, where the booths are filled by scientific projects and resources doing their best to illuminate or explain some corner of the universe, body, or planet.
Jargon Watch: Agrichar, Passive Obesity, iBricking
Keep up with the latest in Wired words. Make sure you don't socially advertise your passive obesity.
World's Longest Accelerator Probes Universe's Tiniest Particles
Tech-hungry photographer and reporter Dave Bullock tours the particle-physics labs at the Stanford Linear Accelerator.
Negroponte Keynote: Electronics Are 'Obese'
Nicholas Negroponte, co-founder of both the MIT Media Lab and the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child, delivers the last keynote at the American Academy for the Advancement of Sciences annual meeting, focusing on the groundbreaking work of the OLPC, which has delivered thousands of laptops to children in the developing world. Alexis Madrigal reports from Boston.
Inside the Bizarre World of Japanese Pickup Schools
In Japan there are night schools for everything, including how to pick up women on the streets. Lisa Katayama reports from Tokyo.
Gallery: Students of the Pickup School for Geeks
The Pickup School for Men Who Can't Get Any promises to turn any awkward geek into a womanizing pro. Meet the school's founder and some of his top students.
Feb. 18, 1913: 'Isotope' Goes From Greek to Geek
The Greek word for "at the same place" suits Frederick Soddy very well, for he has just identified disparate elements with something very big in common.
Eliot Van Buskirk's Listening Post: Major Label Fights Google-ization of Music With SeeqPod Lawsuit
Rather than attacking SeeqPod, a popular music search engine, the major labels should view it as a template for how to make money on the internet, which isn't going away any time soon.
Burn, Baby, Burn
As part of a session called "Seeing Science" at the 2008 AAAS conference, Chris Johnson, director of the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute at the University of Utah, presents examples of the cutting edge visualizations being produced by his group. Greta Lorge reports from Boston.
Space Crews Bid Emotional Adieu
The crews of the space shuttle and station say a teary farewell after more than a week of working tirelessly together to build a bigger and better scientific outpost in orbit. Atlantis is scheduled to undock early Monday, its load considerably lighter than when it arrived Feb. 9 with Europe's premiere space laboratory, Columbus.
The Chinese Government's Plans for Nanotechnology
UC Santa Barbara researchers present their findings on the state of Chinese nanotechnology at the AAAS annual meeting. China aims to leapfrog the United States in technological development with substantial investment in nanotechnology, but whether those efforts will actually pay off is still unclear. Alexis Madrigal reports from Boston.
The Future of the Global Food System
What is the future of the global food system? In this speech delivered at the AAAS annual meeting, Cornell Professor Per Pinstrup-Andersen, argues that the food system is broken and needs to be fixed. Alexis Madrigal reports from Boston.
Scientists Break Down Baseball, Find Jeter Does Suck
A scientist at the annual AAAS conference presents a new statistical method for evaluating fielding performance in baseball. The Spatial Aggregate Fielding Evaluation uses a probability model to fit a smooth curve for entire teams, particular positions or individual players. Greta Lorge reports from Boston.
The Other Carbon: Reducing Black Carbon's Role in Global Warming
A professor at the annual AAAS meeting gives a talk on the role of black carbon, the other carbon, in global climate change. A mere 10% reduction in black carbon would be equivalent to eliminating 25 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions. Alexis Madrigal reports from Boston.
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Pentecostal Tabernacle
Where everybody is somebody and Jesus Christ is Lord!
Special Announcements:
Calling all singers and musicians! The Praise and Worship Team is looking for you. Those interested must (1) be a full member or a Watch Care member, and (2) audition. For more information, please see or contact Lady Carmen Greene.
Watchcare Membership
The next Watch Care Membership Class will be held. This class serves those seeking temporary membership while residing in the Boston area (i.e., students or those on temporary assignment). Please see Sis. Debbie Plummer for an application or additional information.
Weekly Prayer Focus (2/10-2/16)
Lord please begin to allow us to see Your work of spiritual renewal in Pentecostal Tabernacle.
Christians 4 Life Meeting
Christian 4 Life, the Youth Ministry of PT (ages 12-18), will hold a meeting, on the 2nd floor of Washington Street. Come learn about living for Christ while having fun, food, and hanging out with fellow teens.
Wednesday Bible Study
Join us as we come together for a time of prayer with a special guest speaker during our consecration. There will be no small groups on the week of February 4th.
Weekly Prayer Focus (2/3-2/9)
During this week of prayer, fasting, and consecration, let's ask God to reveal Himself to us both individually and as a congregation.
O Well, Nobody’s Perfect!
It’s been six hours now since one of the greatest upsets in Super Bowl history. The New York Giants defeated the New England Patriots by three points, even though they were picked to lose by at least twelve. Up until last evening, the Patriots had yet to lose ...
Consecration Week
We will be have a week of consecration starting Monday, February 4th - Sunday, February 10th by performing the Daniel Fast (PDF; see last year's for plain text). There will be no small groups the week of February 4th. We will have a guest speaker on Wednesday, February ...
W.O.R.T.H Event
W.O.R.T.H (Women of Reaping the Harvest) will hold their next session entitled "Home Improvement, Maintaining your Temple" in the lower sanctuary.
Change Agents: Bible Study
Stressed out by school and work? What does the Word say about stress and anxiety? Theďľ Change Agents, the young adult ministry (ages 18 to 30), will hold a Bible study and discussion focused on "Change Inhibitor: Stress, Imbalances, & the Pressures of Life." Join us for prayer at 7pm ...
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- updated: Feb 16 04:48AM
U.S. Box Office Top 10
What the American moviegoing public watched the weekend starting 8 February 2008
1. Fool's Gold
Earned US$21,589,295, running 1 week
2. Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins
Earned US$16,207,730, running 1 week
3. Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour
Earned US$10,295,922, running 2 weeks
4. The Eye
Earned US$6,528,301, running 2 weeks
5. Juno
Earned US$5,601,149, running 10 weeks
6. 27 Dresses
Earned US$5,409,671, running 4 weeks
7. The Bucket List
Earned US$5,277,433, running 7 weeks
8. Rambo
Earned US$4,482,012, running 3 weeks
9. Meet the Spartans
Earned US$4,110,561, running 3 weeks
10. There Will Be Blood
Earned US$3,978,322, running 7 weeks
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- updated: Feb 16 07:56PM
World Wide Web Consortium
Leading the Web to Its Full Potential...
XML is Ten!
2008-02-12: Ten years ago, on 10 February 1998, W3C published Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 as a W3C Recommendation. W3C is marking the ten-year anniversary of XML by celebrating "XML10" and extending thanks to the dedicated communities -- including people who have participated in W3C's XML groups and mailing lists, the SGML community, and xml-dev -- whose efforts have created a successful family of technologies based on the solid XML 1.0 foundation. The success of XML is a strong indicator of how dedicated individuals, working within the W3C Process, can engage with a larger community to produce industry-changing results. "Today we celebrate the success of open standards in preserving Web data from proprietary ownership," said Jon Bosak, who led the W3C Working Group that produced XML 1.0. Read the press release and testimonials. Send W3C a greeting and learn more about XML at W3C. (Permalink)
Note: Best Practices for XML Internationalization
2008-02-13: The Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Working Group has published a Group Note of Best Practices for XML Internationalization. This document provides a set of guidelines for developing XML documents and schemas that are internationalized properly. Following the best practices describes here allow both the developer of XML applications, as well as the author of XML content to create material in different languages. Learn more about the Internationalization Activity. (Permalink)
W3C mobileOK Checker "Beta" Released for Mobile World Congress
2008-02-08: W3C invites Web content authors to run the beta release of the W3C mobileOK checker and make their content work on a broad range of mobile devices. This new version provides more accurate results and a more reliable experience. Visitors of the Mobile World Congress (in Barcelona, starting Monday, 11 February) are welcome to stop by the W3C Mobile Web Initiative booth (in Hall 7) to learn more about this tool for making Web sites mobile-friendly. (Permalink)
Call for Review: Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fifth Edition) Proposed Edited Recommendation
2008-02-06: The XML Core Working Group has published the Proposed Edited Recommendation of Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fifth Edition). This revision of XML 1.0 incorporates all known errata for XML 1.0 Fourth Edition; see the diff-marked specification for changes. This version of the XML 1.0 specification contains one major change, to the definition of names, bringing one major benefit of XML 1.1 into XML 1.0; please read the background for this change as part of any review. Comments are welcome through 16 May. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity. (Permalink)
WAI-ARIA for Accessible Rich Web Applications: First Public Working Drafts
2008-02-04: The Protocols and Formats Working Group published First Public Working Drafts of:
W3C Talks in February
2008-02-01: Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel. (Permalink)
Toward More Transparent Government: Workshop Report on eGovernment and the Web
2008-01-31: W3C has published a Workshop Report: eGovernment and the Web Workshop: "Toward More Transparent Government". Participants discussed ways to facilitate the deployment of Web standards across government sites and how to shape the ongoing research agenda in the development of Web technology and public policy in order to realize the potential of the Web for access to and use of government information. Held 18-19 June (press release), in Washington D.C., USA, the Workshop was jointly organized by W3C and WSRI. Learn more about eGovernment at W3C. (Permalink)
Call for Review: Canonical XML 1.1 Proposed Recommendation
2008-01-29: The XML Core Working Group has published the Proposed Recommendation of Canonical XML 1.1. The specification establishes a method for determining whether two documents are identical, or whether an application has not changed a document, except for transformations permitted by XML 1.0 and Namespaces in XML. Canonical XML 1.1 is a revision to Canonical XML 1.0 designed to address issues related to inheritance of attributes in the XML namespace when canonicalizing document subsets, including the requirement not to inherit xml:id, and to treat xml:base URI path processing properly. Comments are welcome through 07 March. Learn more about W3C's XML Activity. (Permalink)
Best Practice Recipes for Publishing RDF Vocabularies
2008-01-29: The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group has published the Working Draft of Best Practice Recipes for Publishing RDF Vocabularies. This document describes best practice recipes for publishing vocabularies or ontologies on the Web (in RDF Schema or OWL). Each recipe introduces general principles and an example configuration for use with an Apache HTTP server (which may be adapted to other environments). The recipes are all designed to be consistent with the architecture of the Web as currently specified. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)
SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System Reference (First Public Working Draft)
2008-01-25: The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System Reference. This document defines the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS), a common data model for sharing and linking knowledge organization systems via the Semantic Web. SKOS provides a standard, low-cost means to describe the semantic relationships between existing knowledge systems and to port those systems to the Semantic Web. SKOS also provides a lightweight, intuitive language for developing and sharing new knowledge organization systems. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)
W3C Publishes HTML 5 Draft, Future of Web Content
2008-01-22: W3C today published an early draft of HTML 5, a major revision of the markup language for the Web. The HTML Working Group is creating HTML 5 to be the open, royalty-free specification for rich Web content and Web applications. "HTML is of course a very important standard," said Tim Berners-Lee, author of the first version of HTML and W3C Director. "I am glad to see that the community of developers, including browser vendors, is working together to create the best possible path for the Web." New features include APIs for drawing two-dimensional graphics and ways to embed and control audio and video content. HTML 5 helps to improve interoperability and reduce software costs by giving precise rules not only about how to handle all correct HTML documents but also how to recover from errors. Discover other new features, read the press release, and learn more about the future of HTML. (Permalink)
Relationship Between Mobile Web and Web Content Accessibility (First Public Working Draft)
2008-01-22: The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group and the WAI Education and Outreach Working Group have published the First Public Working Draft of Relationship Between Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. See the announcement email.
W3C Advisory Committee Elects TAG Participants
2008-01-22: The W3C Advisory Committee has elected Ashok Malhotra (Oracle), T.V. Raman (Google), and Henry Thompson (University of Edinburgh) to the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG). Continuing TAG participants are Noah Mendelsohn (IBM), David Orchard (BEA), Jonathan Rees (Science Commons), Norm Walsh (Sun), and Stuart Williams (HP), who co-Chairs the TAG with Tim Berners-Lee. The mission of the TAG is to build consensus around principles of Web architecture and to interpret and clarify these principles when necessary, to resolve issues involving general Web architecture brought to the TAG, and to help coordinate cross-technology architecture developments inside and outside W3C. (Permalink)
SPARQL Standard Opens Data on the Web
2008-01-15: Today, the World Wide Web Consortium made it easier to share and reuse data across application, enterprise, and community boundaries with the publication of three new Semantic Web standards for SPARQL (pronounced "sparkle"). SPARQL is the query language for the Semantic Web (see Semantic Web use cases). SPARQL queries hide the details of data management, which lowers costs and increases robustness of data integration on the Web. "Trying to use the Semantic Web without SPARQL is like trying to use a relational database without SQL," explained Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director. There are already 14 implementations of the standard, which is comprised of three W3C Recommendations: SPARQL Query Language for RDF, SPARQL Protocol for RDF, and SPARQL Query Results XML Format. Read the press release, testimonials and learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)
W3C Invites Implementations of SMIL 3.0 (Candidate Recommendation)
2008-01-15: The SYMM Working Group has published the Candidate Recommendation of Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL 3.0), an XML-based language that allows authors to create interactive multimedia presentations. Using SMIL 3.0, an author can describe the temporal behavior of a multimedia presentation, associate hyperlinks with media objects and describe the layout of the presentation on a screen. The Working Group is building a test suite help ensure interoperable implementation. Learn more about W3C work on Synchronized Multimedia (Permalink)
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A List Apart
A List Apart Issue 252
Keeping Your Elements’ Kids in Line with Offspring
Alex Bischoff introduces Offspring, a JavaScript library bringing the power of advanced CSS selectors to browsers that can’t quite handle the real thing. Hide Your Shame: The A List Apart Store and T-Shirt Emporium is back. Hot new designs! Old favorites remixed! S, M, L, XL. Come shop with us!
The Rules of Digital Engagement
Jonathan Follett takes another trip down the "the long hallway":http://www.alistapart.com/articles/longhallway, looking at ways to collaborate, communicate, and manage conflict in virtual space. Hide Your Shame: The A List Apart Store and T-Shirt Emporium is back. Hot new designs! Old favorites remixed! S, M, L, XL. Come shop with us!
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- updated: Feb 18 01:14AM
AppleGeeks
AppleGeeks
Issue 428 | Morgan Freeman
<img src="http://applegeeks.com/comics/issue428thumb.gif" /><br />
Issue 427 | Sonny
<img src="http://applegeeks.com/comics/issue427thumb.gif" /><br />
Issue 426 | Dud
<img src="http://applegeeks.com/comics/issue426thumb.gif" /><br />
Issue 425 | Unfappable
<img src="http://applegeeks.com/comics/issue425thumb.gif" /><br />
Issue 424 | His Passion
<img src="http://applegeeks.com/comics/issue424thumb.gif" /><br />
Issue 423 | Back or not
<img src="http://applegeeks.com/comics/issue423thumb.gif" /><br />
Issue 422 | Kick it
<img src="http://applegeeks.com/comics/issue422thumb.gif" /><br />
AG Lite - Issue 265 | Katsucon 2008
<img src="http://applegeeks.com/lite/strips/aglite265.jpg" /><br />
AG Lite - Issue 264 | Cooties
<img src="http://applegeeks.com/lite/strips/aglite264.jpg" /><br />
AG Lite - Issue 263 | Poem
<img src="http://applegeeks.com/lite/strips/aglite263.jpg" /><br />
AG Lite - Issue 262 | Bodies
<img src="http://applegeeks.com/lite/strips/aglite262.jpg" /><br />
AG Lite - Issue 261 | really suspicious
<img src="http://applegeeks.com/lite/strips/aglite261.jpg" /><br />
AG Lite - Issue 260 | Day After
<img src="http://applegeeks.com/lite/strips/aglite260.jpg" /><br />
AG Lite - Issue 259 | awkward
<img src="http://applegeeks.com/lite/strips/aglite259.jpg" /><br />
AG Lite - Issue 258 | imagination
<img src="http://applegeeks.com/lite/strips/aglite258.jpg" /><br />
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- updated: Feb 18 04:23PM
Bible in a Year
Read through the entire Bible in one year on this schedule; set ?version= and ?language= in the feed URI to switch versions and languages.
Numbers 4-6
2008-02-18, day 49
Numbers 1-3
2008-02-17, day 48
Leviticus 23-27
2008-02-16, day 47
Leviticus 20-22, Psalm 95
2008-02-15, day 46
Leviticus 17-19
2008-02-14, day 45
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- updated: Feb 18 01:14AM
Boing Boing
Jasmina Tešanović: Kosovo
Ed. Note: the following essay is by periodic BB contributor Jasmina Tešanović; as I format this post and prepare to hit "publish," Jasmina sends a second email: "Update: groups of hooligans have thrown stones on American and Slovenian (presiding country of EU) embassies, on police members and journalists...several people are hurt ...they are cruising town now here in Belgrade but police are controlling them...reporters are following up..." Image: "Orthodox Church," cc-licensed photo from Flickr by decafinata. - - - - - - - - - - The Sirens :: 02.17.2008 It's starting again: the language of war is the daily bread in Serbia. The sirens of nationalism are turned on again, as if nothing had changed in the eight years after Milosevic was toppled. Or as if nothing had changed since the year 1389 and the mythic battle of Kosovo: a myth is a myth, a dictator who uses the language of myths is squandering people s minds as well as their lives. Today, 17 February. at 15 hours Kosovo province unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia. It been ten years now since I wrote my "Diary of a Political Idiot," a book that started with riots in Kosovo. Although I've tried to stop writing that book, I have never been allowed to. The Balkan disorder became the model of world disorder. I can hear the voice of my dead mother, who passed away in 1999 after the NATO bombings, with her last words: "take care of Kosovo." She didn't mention her granddaughter, my daughter, whom she loved more than herself or me. She instead scolded me, the traitor, severely: Kosovo is not yours and you cannot give it away. You and your similar traitors don't have pants on their asses and you are giving Kosovo, our heritage, away. Last week in Geneva, I talked to a young Albanian blogger. He told me: this time "independence" will be declared for real, because it is not our independent decision but that of the world community. Nobody asks us anything anymore. They just give us orders and set rules....<br style="clear: both;"/> <img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=cddbc300acd1aa0e678b6e324f25b69e" height="1" width="1"/> <img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=cddbc300acd1aa0e678b6e324f25b69e" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>
Ellen Forney of Lustlab
Susannah Breslin writes, Ellen Forney is a Seattle-based artist, cartoonist, and illustrator who has a new book out, Lust: Kinky Online Personal Ads from Seattle's The Stranger, from the boys at Fantagraphics. (Her last book, I Love Led Zeppelin, was nominated for an Eisner.) Lust brings together three years worth of Forney's "Lustlab Ad of the Week" series in which she creates comic works inspired by real ads that appear in the Stranger's personal ad section: Lustlab. For the second installment of Fast and Dirty, I interviewed Forney about what it's like to bring the secret fetishes of Seattle freaks to life. Buy your own copy of Lust here. Read Susannah's interview with Ms. Forney here....<br style="clear: both;"/> <img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=d68798a6ce2eaa05cdaf4856008f24d4" height="1" width="1"/> <img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=d68798a6ce2eaa05cdaf4856008f24d4" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>
Balloon Man visits a nursing home.
A balloon artist visits a nursing home, shapes crazy hats and bracelets and geegaws out of balloons, and makes a lot of elderly people very happy for a while. That's it. No catch, no irony. Video link. (thanks, nirvan) Update: From the comments thread, nirvan adds: The balloon artist is Addi Somekh. All of Addi's YouTube videos are pretty amazing. The music is by The Evangenitals....<br style="clear: both;"/> <img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=7146a4a4e0ad3958afbec1ad383ee109" height="1" width="1"/> <img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=7146a4a4e0ad3958afbec1ad383ee109" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>
Another success in Homeland Security's War on Babies
A 14-day-old Samoan infant died in DHS detention at Honolulu airport earlier this week, and American Samoa's delegate to Congress is calling for an investigation: The baby had been flown to Honolulu for emergency heart surgery. He died while detained inside a customs' room at the Honolulu airport with his mother and a nurse. Link (thanks Nithya)...<br style="clear: both;"/> <img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=a137c459779e666a88ad26bcb7d66310" height="1" width="1"/> <img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=a137c459779e666a88ad26bcb7d66310" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>
Objectivism in Bioshock
Kotaku has a doozy of a post up today -- Yaron Brooks, the president of the Ayn Rand Institute, talking about the use of objectivism in the first-person-shooter game Bioshock: BioShock may have been conceived as a study in nuance, a place for gamers to discover and explore at their own pace, but its dip into the ethical morass of Ayn Rand's objectivist philosophies has brought her beliefs back into the mainstream spotlight and even piqued the interest of the Ayn Rand Institute's president, Yaron Brook. Brook, a former member of the Israeli Army military intelligence and award-winning finance professor at Santa Clara University, first took notice of the game when he discovered his 18-year-old son playing it. It's a fact that didn't bother Brook despite his son's objectivist beliefs and the game's not so positive take on the philosophy. "My son has to find his own way in life," he said. "There are certain games I wouldn't want him to play, like Grand Theft Auto, games that celebrate criminality. But a game that might lead him to think and have him challenge his ideas, I'm fine with. "Luckily for me he doesn't agree with the game, he still seems to believe in objectivism." Link (thanks, Brian Crecente!)...<br style="clear: both;"/> <img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=575be737ad005fe09d38f23e2d0e57ec" height="1" width="1"/> <img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=575be737ad005fe09d38f23e2d0e57ec" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>
Submersible car
The Rinspeed sQuba is an amphibious electric vehicle inspired by the submersible Lotus Esprit that Q gave to James Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me. There's only one sQuba in existence and it cost more than $1.5 million to engineer and build. "For safety reasons, we have built the vehicle as an open car so that the occupants can get out quickly in an emergency," said (Rinspeed CEO Frank) Rinderknecht, 52. Passengers will be able to keep breathing underwater through an integrated tank of compressed air similar to what is used in scuba diving. The sQuba's top speed on land is about 77 mph, but it slows down to 3 mph on the surface of the water, and 1.8 mph underwater...."We always want to do cars that are outrageous, which nobody has done before. So we thought, 'Let's make a car dive,"' said Rinderknecht, whose innovative company has made transparent, flying and voice-activated cars in previous attention-grabbing displays at the Geneva Auto Show. Link to CNN, Link to Rinspeed (Thanks, Lindsay Tiemeyer!)...<br style="clear: both;"/> <a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=09cc468409e25fcfaee7d12631d5aafc"><img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=09cc468409e25fcfaee7d12631d5aafc"/></a> <img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=09cc468409e25fcfaee7d12631d5aafc" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>
Warren Ellis: Freak Angels
Freak Angels: the latest from Warren Ellis, with Paul Duffield, version 0001 is now online and it's lovely....<br style="clear: both;"/> <img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=9f6907a3ca6ec7e7084901df67b9d7b9" height="1" width="1"/> <img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=9f6907a3ca6ec7e7084901df67b9d7b9" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>
Cambridge University's secret porn stash isn't
The Cambridge University Library's tower has long been rumored to be packed with vintage pornography books from the Victorian era. Now, a million dollar grant is funding the online cataloging of the 170,000 publications in the 17 floor tower. Turns out, the closest thing to erotica up there are titles like "A Golden Guide To Matrimony" and "Flirting Made Easy." They're mixed in with the likes of "How to mesmerize" and "Wasps have stings; or, beware of tight-lacing." (Shhhh... I heard they moved the real hardcore stuff to the library's sub-basement.) From The Telegraph: Students of pornography can take heart, however, because more recent erotica is kept there thanks to its copyright library status. (Vanessa Lacey, the manager of the Cambridge University Library Tower Project,) said: "There's plenty of pornography in the library which is more recent. "People can come and have a look at it - for their research. But there's nothing terribly racy from the 19th century. What we found is the Mills and Boon of the era." Link to The Telegraph, Link to the Cambridge University Library Tower Project (via Cabinet of Wonders)...<br style="clear: both;"/> <img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=3649ec50a8256ee289fe24d61ffdf8b6" height="1" width="1"/> <img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=3649ec50a8256ee289fe24d61ffdf8b6" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>
Julian Cope's Japrocksampler blog
COOP says: I've been enjoying Julian Cope's highly-recommended new book on Japanese 60's/70's freak/psych/noise rock very much, and I'm just beginning the process of tracking down some of the music therein (and so far, it is just as crazy and interesting as described!) For someone with a 20-year+ music addiction, it is a great thrill to be turned on to a whole chunk of great stuff that you previously knew nothing about. Anyway, I just noticed that Mr. Cope has a companion website, with a full A-Z encyclopedia of artists and albums. If the sight of all those crazy LPs doesn't whet your appetite, you deserve to listen to the new Britney Spears CD instead! Link to Japrocksampler blog, Link to buy Japrocksampler book...<br style="clear: both;"/> <img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=63d03195ae4e2c6633689bc2cae359af" height="1" width="1"/> <img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=63d03195ae4e2c6633689bc2cae359af" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>
Truth about teleportation
Scientific American's JR Minkel interviewed CalTech physicist H. Jeff Kimble about quantum teleportation. In the article, Kimble explains in simple terms why recent experiments in quantum teleportation have nothing to do with the Star Trek transporter. As Minkel sums it up, the phenomenon "turns out to be more relevant to computing than to commuiting." From the interview: Scientific American: What's the biggest misconception about teleportation? Jeff Kimble: That the object itself is being sent. We're not sending around material stuff. If I wanted to send you a Boeing 757, I could send you all the parts, or I could send you a blueprint showing all the parts, and it's much easier to send a blueprint. Teleportation is a protocol about how to send a quantum state—a wave function—from one place to another. Link...<br style="clear: both;"/> <img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=fa79e58931382b020b0fc30705286ab5" height="1" width="1"/> <img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=fa79e58931382b020b0fc30705286ab5" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>
Graphic novel recommendation: Casanova Book 1: Luxuria
In Casanova Book 1: Luxuria, the people of Earth are under the control of E.M.P.I.R.E.'s (Extra-Military Police Intelligence, Rescue, and Espionage) Cornelius Quinn, a tough-as-molybdenum son-of-a-bitch with a huge body, a little head and not much more empathy for his charges than the enemy he's sworn to defeat, W.A.S.TE. (an acronym that changes meaning at the whim of its insane bandage-faced leader, Newman Xeno). Quinn has a loyal daughter, Zephyr, and a ne'er-do-well son, Casanova, a partying lothario who resembles a cross between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Zephyr is a respected agent of E.M.P.I.R.E., while twin brother Cass has worked as hard at making his father disappointed in him as he has at being a creep-for-hire. Shortly after Zephyr dies on a mission, Xeno kidnaps Cass and inserts him into an alternate space-time where his sister is the black sheep and Cass is was good son (who got killed on a mission, just as his sister did back on the other Earth). Xeno orders Cass to destroy E.M.P.I.R.E. while making it look like he's still on their side. It's not as easy as Cass thinks at first, what with the torture his sister enjoys inflicting on him and the hard time his father gives him for suddenly becoming into something of a screw-up. (After all, the Cornelius Quinn in this dimension doesn't know that his good son has been replaced by this work-shirking hustler from an alternate universe, who's trying his best to keep up the ruse.) Plenty of freakish and fun villains (my favorite is the Kirby-esque Fabula Berserko -- "a big mutant brain... three monks that practiced some form of occult Zen for so long they fused together in a wad) and weird scenes, like an island where sexual orgone energy fuels non-stop orgies with sentient sex robots and humans, give this darkly-humored science fiction a quirky kick. It also introduced me to the respectable talents of Matt Fraction (Author) and Gabriel Ba (Author). (This edition collects Casanova #1-7.) Link...<br style="clear: both;"/> <img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=b3facbdc104595f4792176e33d7e9ffd" height="1" width="1"/> <img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=b3facbdc104595f4792176e33d7e9ffd" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>
New Jim Flora Print
Our friend Irwin Chusid has released a new Jim Flora print, and it's lovely. Jim Flora Art LLC has produced a limited-edition, archival-quality fine art print of a 1954 Jim Flora hand-tinted woodcut entitled Manhattan. The cityscape depicts New York in its 1950s glory, including a number of gotham landmarks such as the Empire State Building, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Madison Square Garden, the Statue of Liberty, famous theaters and legendary musical bistros, Washington Square arch, subways, taxis, horse-drawn carriages and tourists. Only twenty-five (25) prints of Manhattan were produced for this edition. We are offering five (5) prints (#21/25 through #25/25) now on eBay. After these five prints are sold at the asking price, prices will increase for the rest of the edition. Link...<br style="clear: both;"/> <a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=954df4f37cfcd2e19b3cdb2cb8f611b0"><img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=954df4f37cfcd2e19b3cdb2cb8f611b0"/></a> <img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=954df4f37cfcd2e19b3cdb2cb8f611b0" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>
Worn Free's vintage tees made famous by rockers
In the discussion following Xeni's post about Yoko Ono yesterday, Shawn Wolfe referenced having just bought one of Worn Free's "Yoko Ono" t-shirts, just like John Lennon used to wear. I checked out Worn Free and they have a very cool business idea. They recreate obscure vintage t-shirts famously worn by rockers, like Lennon's "Working Class Hero" tee, Iggy Pop's "I Wiped Out The 60's" tee, Debbie Harry's "Punk" tee, Frank Zappa's "Rental" tee, Joey Ramone's "Capitol Theatre" tee, and a slew of others. My favorite is the "Yoko Ono" and Joey Ramone's "Punk Magazine" tee. Link...<br style="clear: both;"/> <img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=014e0ef6a96741ec8a2b084cf42839a7" height="1" width="1"/> <img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=014e0ef6a96741ec8a2b084cf42839a7" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>
Boing Boing tv: Monochrom's Marxist sock puppets
Web 2.0 meets Marxist (Foucaultian?) economic theory in the latest video hijinks from Austrian subversive art collective monochrom. Meet an online porn monster ("iPhone? noooom nom nom nom") and learn how Google-y eyed neo-liberalism screws over the proletariat in "Kiki, Bubu, and the Shift." Link to Boing Boing tv post with comments thread and downloadable video. More monochrom episodes on Boing Boing tv: * Monochrom: MyFaceSpace, the musical * Monochrom: Campfire at Will * Monochrom: Falco Stairs * Monochrom: Bar code artist Scott Blake / Falco stencil memorial * Human USB Hack / Very Simple Motor * Mark's Curie Engine / Monochrom's love song for Lessig Update: monochrom has the longer-form, uncut director's version up on their site....<br style="clear: both;"/> <img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=d731be44f6d2239bd2993ec3b3a8010c" height="1" width="1"/> <img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=d731be44f6d2239bd2993ec3b3a8010c" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>
Color the brain's fear system
(Click on image to embiggen) I went to the California Science Center with my four-year-old daughter and they had a great exhibit called Goosebumps: The Science of Fear. One station shocked kids at random intervals, another station made it seem like you were sticking your hand into a terrarium filled with poison snakes and spider, another one had a device that you strapped yourself into to simulate falling. I liked this handout for kids to color the brain's fear system. Link...<br style="clear: both;"/> <img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=fa0507cb91aa802019c8b5db97d27a67" height="1" width="1"/> <img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=fa0507cb91aa802019c8b5db97d27a67" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>
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A typical sporadic weblog. With or without chunks.
Final Upgrade
Testing the final 4.01 MT upgrade....
Xerox Park
BK Broiler does it his way with a Pocky related TV ad....
Beer? Check. DB Restored? Check. Images Directory? ...
Whenever I decide to clean my office, move a service from machine to machine, or some similar form of housekeeping...
The New Roos
If not the *new* Roos ... definitely not older than the last gen....
Mind The Gap
From Toucan Dan....
NCAA Time!
From Jimmy Mac, after celebrating a big Gerogetown win this weekend, we enjoyed bad mascots,...
Uninnovate.com
While searching for debug information about Amazon's unbox, I stumbled upon Uninnovate.com. And found the following excellent video:...
Wear Your Seatbelt ...
.. and you can walk away, too. Check out this RS6 wreck. From AW....
Rocket Robin, Tweet Tweet Tweet
From Toucan Dan, another take on the space shuttle....
Drink Up
Thanks, Hewbrocca!...
iPhone vs LG KE850
It's a few mintes in, but listening to this Apple fanboy "get all hot and bothered" is funny. Enjoy the...
Wii Laptop
From Hewbrocca, enjoy the Wii laptop....
Winter Fun
It Is Here.
My PS3 is here and still sealed 24 hours later. If only I could buy time ......
Better Than "TV's Greatest Commercials"
If you haven't already, go check out Adpunch. It has fun things like this ad for iced coffee....
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swords - insects - frustrations - funnies - art - amber - more swords
chosetec's Xanga Blog
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Friday, February 08, 2008
i do not recall ever snowboardingI've said this here before, but I totally have a "don't ask, don't tell" policy with my parents regarding snowboarding. My parents learned all they need to know about snow sports from all those news stories about skiers breaking their necks from falling off a mountain. Growing up, we never participated in snow sports, maybe possibly because we lived in LA, but also because if I broke my neck, then I wouldn't be able to practice the piano.But once I left home (and years after I quit playing piano), I might have gone to higher elevations to partake in some snowboarding and I think I might have even skiied once. But I don't talk about it with my parents, and they only find out if they ask some direct question like "what is this tag for 'Alpine Meadows' hanging from your jacket?" or "Have you been snowboarding this winter?" in which case I then try to change the subject. I never give them advance notice of any such trips that I might hypothetically take, and I try not to mention them after I do go.A few weekends ago, I was at Safeway picking up a bottle for wine for a dinner at a friend's place, when my phone rang. It was maybe 5pm on a Saturday, and right after I said hello, my mom said "WHERE ARE YOU?!!!!" in that voice that said, "you're in big trouble." Immediately, I thought OMG, I missed my Grandmother's 90th birthday! Or some other big family event! What weekend was it? Was I supposed to be somewhere? Aiya... so I timidly said, "At Safeway?" to which she replied, "Which Safeway?" Oh gosh, was I at the wrong Safeway? I won't buy the wine! "Um... the one by Valley Fair?" "Oh, okay" my mom replied. "You're not in Lake Tahoe." Apparently there were some avalanches that were all over the news (nevermind that those were in Mammoth, not Tahoe) and she was was worried... Aw, thanks Ma! And eventually, my heart started beating again, and I finished my shopping at Safeway.Grandma's 90th is next weekend. Happy (early) Birthday Grandma, Dad, and j2yu!
Sunday, January 27, 2008
wolf! wolf!The fire alarm in our building went off again today. We're all pretty well-rehearsed in our evacuation plan, but today none of us wanted to trek across the parking lot to the designated assembly area. Is it really safer if you have to walk under power lines during a storm? Or better yet, during an earthquake? Today it was just raining, but windy enough that umbrellas are useless and at the risk of getting broken. We huddled under the overhang just outside the lobby until someone point out that the building next door was warm and dry and their alarms weren't going off. The first time the alarms went off, I remember we chastized a pregnant coworker because she took the time to not only save her work, but also shut down and pack her laptop to take with her, lest something happen to her computer. Now, 3 or 4 false alarms later (once for burnt popcorn, twice for "server room" issues), we file out in an orderly manner, but groaning and complaining as we do. Even the fire trucks were slow to respond this time, which makes me think that they too, are growing indifferent to our alarm system. People are just this way, with things that are both less important and more important than fire alarms. Is there anything that can be done?
Thursday, January 24, 2008
oh.me: So does your microwave work? other1: yeah me: What about your stove? other1: yeah me: What about your oven? Does that work? other1: yeah, it works. Everything works, microwave, stove, oven. Everything except for the ceiling. me: I'm thinking of doing something different with my hairother2: Oh yeah?me: Yeah, like cutting it or straightening it. What do you think I should do?other2: I dunno, brush it?other3: Nice dress you're wearingme: why thank you!other3: is it new?me: no, it's actually quite oldother3: I like the fabric. What's that called?me: It's called "tweed"other3: Ah, nice, I like it a lot. And it could double as a maternity dress!And somewhat but not completely unrelated, 10 Things You Should Never Say to a Woman
Friday, January 04, 2008
a list from up northAfter I got picked up from the Toronto airport, I noted aloud that "Wow, everything is a little different here," in reference to the different branding and east coast architecture. M said "yes, it's almost like a foreign country!" Ah, yes. Or a renegade province.I went to a wedding in Toronto, for a couple that used to live in the Bay Area. It was a small reception (55 people!), which made for a relaxing, fun, and nice time. It was odd seeing so many Bay Area people (Canadians and fake Canadians) together so far away.I went Tobogganing! At first, I balked at the course, which was treacherous and (very) slightly downhill, with a small jump built into it. But if the not-quite-2-year-old can do it without crying, well then so can I! You may wonder, what is the difference between a "toboggan" and a "sled"? It's like when Canucks say "Mountie" when they mean "Police" or "a boot" when they mean "about." Sam Ting.The not-quite-2-year-old can sing "Baa Baa Black Sheep," and quite well, which is supercute. I find myself singing it to myself, days later. "Yes sir, yes sir, three bags FULL!" We went ice skating outdoors, then warmed up with hot chocolate from Tim Horton's. You can get a small for only $1.07 CDN, which is only $1.07 in real money. I'm a believer! (And note to self: next time get the XL).And now, blustery and wet weather in California. Stay warm everyone!
Thursday, January 03, 2008
xin nian kuai leI went home for the holidays, and spent a good amount of time eating and sleeping, the great and wonderful pastimes of the holidays. One morning, my brother saw something out on the deck and went to see what it was. Later, my dad said that he'd heard an owl the night before, which explained the teeny baby wabbit feet that my brother found left behind on the deck. Sad huh? *pictures are examples, and not indicative of any actual wabbits.------If you haven''t done this before, go to this website to opt out of those pesky credit card offers.--- 2008 Resolutions:The one I will mention here is that I plan to run the Nike Half Marathon in October. Anyone want to join me?
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Google searches that come into my blog"people who tuck sweaters into pants""tastes like its got butter inside""suspenders very cool and in to wear 2007""scrabble colored squares""suspenders 2007" (seriously, who are you and what are you looking for?)
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Isn't it time to blog again?It's a good thing that I have a day job, because if blogging was it, I'd fail miserably. Sometimes I think I should carry around a pen and a little notebook to jot down the minutiae that I encounter each that that I *could* conceivably write about. But then inertia kicks in and eh, am I so self-important as that? I read www.dooce.com and I'm always entertained by her posts and sometimes think hey! I could do that too. Hm... maybe if I got a dog. For now, here are some inspiring bits of art in my world (announced without permission, hope that's okay!):dozi design. Paper and fabric design, not yet available for purchase, but I hope to see it on Etsy someday. Comics about a particular brand of college angst (from "the school for kids who are really good at math and physics"). Seriously, who withdraws recommendations? I love the whimsy in color.And a song that I can't stop singing. Sing along with me!
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
good morning, how is your breakfast?A long time ago, I went to training for work (when I worked for the Evil Empire), which inspired a series of posts about scones. Scones? Really? Yes really, and though I do have that post somewhere, it is no longer here, otherwise I would unhide it to remind myself how silly this blog is sometimes.Instead, I shall demonstrate that point yet again. So I bought these whole-wheat english muffins from Trader Joe's the day. They had some highbrow sounding British name, like Crackhallow and Fieldstone, or something like that, which made them sound fancy, and TJ's is usually pretty good with their yuppie baked goods. And with 3g of fiber per "muffin" (not a muffin) nd no preservatives, I thought it a good breakfast choice. Yeah, except they were no good. Let me count the ways:Thomas' English MuffinsTJ's whole wheat "English" "Muffins"nooks and cranniescorrugation, kinda like cardboardfork-splityeah that, though don't you always still need a knife?taste like it's got butter insideWYSIWYG: takes like cardboardtoasts evenly and packs quite the crunchyou can toast it to the point of burning and the middle is still soggy. Not sure why, they weren't even frozen!full of white flour and "butter taste"End up full of peanut butter, honey, and there would be jam too if I had some. And it's not enough. Coffee helps.Sorry TJ's, I'm moving on. Up next: faux healthy "Low Fat NutriGrain Eggos"I miss breakfast in China. We bought stuff off the streets, which were were later advised against by the locals. Seriously, but where else can you get man tou for 1RMB! Or a dan bing for 1RMB! Soy milk, 1RMB! Do you see a pattern here?mmmm.... those rumors about the street vendors using recycle oil have to be false... right?
Saturday, November 10, 2007
belt 0, suspenders 1Well, so much posting every day. I posted every day for one day. I've been slammed by work and getting over a cold + jet lag. And now my China trip seems like a distant memory, even though I got back less than 2 weeks ago. Well, at least there are the memories! And of course, pictures.One anecdote: (blogged upon request by my mother)So you know how when you go through security, you need to wait in line, wait in line, empty your pockets, and disrobe slightly (belt, shoes, jacket)? Then once you are on the other side of the metal detector, you need to collect your stuff and put everything back on, and real quick so you don't hold up the line. And especially quickly if you still had something that made you beep, because TSA scans their beep wands over you and makes the line back up behind you. Well, my dad had a lot of things to take off (hat, jacket, belt) and take out (wallet, terrorism lotion, phone, who knows what else) and of course, he still beeped so he had to wait. By the time they let him out, his ever-patient (haha) family was also through the process. We walked away from the screening area, re-adjusted our things, and hurred to the gate. Yes, hurry, because you know, we only had 3 hours left until our flight.We hadn't gone far before we realized my dad's pants were not staying where they should. Oops, he'd left his belt behind at the security gate.My dad likes to wear his pants big, though not so they fall down on purpose, more for a medical thing and so he has extra room to breathe. By my own estimation, his pants are about +4 what they should be, but he likes them that way, so what can you do? But now we were at the airport, and his belt was nowhere to be found. Not to be dramatic, but this was a serious problem. My dad's arms were full with carry-on baggage, and after a few steps, well, he could either carry a bag or deal with the pants problem.His belt was not at the security gate, not at the lost and found, though the cops at the lost and found would have given us the other belts they had. Unfortunately, one was filthy, and another was a ginormous, and so we had to resort to other means."Dad, how about you tuck your sweater into your pants?"He thought that was a great idea, and I won't even go into his layering system and what else he was wearing under his sweater. The best part was the people next to us, how they laughed, pretended to hide it, offered us belts (in Spanish), and had to turn away to control themselves. Well, crisis averted, and the first day we got to Hong Kong, we got suspenders for my dad. Doesn't he look debonair? Now he complains that his pants are too big (pants pictured here belong to the brat bro) and that he only wants suspenders.
Friday, November 02, 2007
Nietzsche would say that Xanga is dead tooI actually typed out a post and evidently forgot to hit save, but all that I said was that it's been a while, I've gone to China and come back, and I haven't really missed anything on Xanga. Remember back in the day when you'd check multiple times a day to see what was going on, and whenever you'd checked, there would actually be something new? Now, not so much, though I am highly entertained by flying babies.I had a good time in China (Shanghai and Hong Kong) and was fed quite abundantly. I met a lot of my parents' old friends, some extended family, and did some touristy shopping and sightseeing, which I guess is basically what you do on a trip with your family. I'd forgotten how crazy China can be, and I have a newfound appreciation for Shanghai taxi cab drivers. I've never heard so many people speak Shanghainese, and it was quite strange to me. I will post pictures soon and maybe tell some stories soon.Someone who doesn't know lisa_hsu once asked me if we were still friends. I said sure, why not? The person had noticed that Lisa, one of my most faithful readers and commenters, had stopped commenting on my every blog post. Had we had a falling out? We were no longer on commenting terms? I am happy to say that Lisa and I *are* still good friends, in fact, she is currently here visiting from Boston and vacuuming my room this very moment! (I couldn't stop her ;p)
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Cox & Forkum
C&F Original Art For Sale
The originals for many of our cartoons are available for purchase. The artworks are 9" x 6.5" ink illustrations on 11" x 7" acid-free bristol boards. All are signed and dated by me and John. If there are cartoons you're...
Final Bow
(NOTE: The orginal date of this post was September 30, 2007. The post has been redated to keep it on the front page.) With mixed emotions I announce: John and I will no longer be producing editorial cartoons. John...
Cox & Forkum Book Collections
Black & White World Volumes II, III, and IV can all be ordered from this page. Volume I is out of print. Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble also have all three titles. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ THIS PAGE FOR U.S. ORDERS ONLY: International...
C&F in Best-of-Year book
You'll find a few Cox & Forkum cartoons in the newly released book The Best Political Cartoons of the Year 2008. The book is compiled by Daryl Cagle, a cartoonist who also runs the most popular editorial cartoon Web...
John's Comic Book Available
Matamoros, John's comic book project, is finally complete and available for order here. See John's announcement at his blog and a few more sneak peeks here and here. I enjoyed the book, particularly seeing how John applied his talents...
Libertad Digital retrospective
Libertad Digital is an online magazine based in Spain that used Cox & Forkum editorial cartoons for years. They have put together a retrospective featuring our "25 best cartoons, according to our readers and our staff." To see the...
International book orders available
We are now accepting international book orders, but there are special instructions to follow. International customers must e-mail their orders to us at "contact -- at -- coxandforkum.com" Choose which books you want and how many: Black & White...
Props
We did this one because it's a running joke with me and John. Just had to get it our of our system. The dialogue refers to this cartoon and this cartoon. The biggest exaggeration is not the chest of...
Bombs Away
From FOX News: Senate Approves Symbolic Rebuke of Iran The Senate on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a measure sending another rebuke to Tehran, this one aimed at sending a message to the Islamic regime to end military tactics targeting U.S....
Valor Blind
This cartoon was originally posted on June 13, 2006, and is one of over 400 illustrations y