September 2007 Archives

We need more examples of this in our nation to help begin to reshape the American focus on greed, excess, extravagance, selfishness, and hubris.

Like most people, Chuck Feeney takes the subway, rides cabs, buys clothes off the rack and flies coach.

But this seemingly ordinary man is one of the most generous — and secretive — philanthropists today.

Once hailed by Forbes magazine as the 23rd richest man alive, with assets in the billions, Feeney transferred all of his wealth in 1987 to his foundation, The Atlantic Philanthropies. Atlantic, which has around $4 billion in assets, gives away about $350 million a year.

Below the Radar

Born in New Jersey to a blue-collar Irish-American family, Feeney made his fortune as founder of Duty Free Shoppers, the world's largest duty-free retail chain. But he worked hard to disguise his fortune and his giving: He stayed out of the news, gave anonymously and even established Atlantic in Bermuda, to avoid disclosures required in the United States.

But today, Feeney is coming out of the shadows by cooperating in a new biography, The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune, by Conor O'Clery.

Feeney says he's determined to see the foundation give away its entire endowment before he dies.

"He is the opposite of the grotesque consumption and excess that has been coursing through American society for decades, where ostentatious wealth is not something to be ashamed of but flattered. He turned that extravagance on its head to defy all the lurid conventions of our society."

"Chuck Feeney," he wrote in the Daily News, "is what Donald Trump would be if he lived his entire existence backward."

Source: Reclusive Philanthropist Steps into Spotlight: NPR

This is an interesting little tool that provides the stats on your community (or any community) based on zip code and census data.

Enter your zip code in the application ZIPskinny and find information from the 2000 census report. ... Link -via Big Shot Bob in Texas

Source: ZIPskinny

In my zip code the median household income is $94,740 (which seems impossibly low to afford the outrageous cost of property here!) with an unemployment rate of: 0% and 2.5% living below the poverty line. Almost 98% have a high school diploma or higher with 76.4% having at least 4 years of college. 39.9% have never been married and 41% are presently married. The median age is 36.2. I'm just an old fart among the youthlettes I guess.

You can compare your zip code with up to 19 others simultaneously. Naturally I compared here with where I worked, where I grew up, where my grandparents lived, etc. It yields some fascinating and eye-opening information.

Let me see, do I want to go to war today? Umm, well... Nah.

The MySpace generation is a "somewhat alien life force," a Navy recruiting presentation contends -- with a language and lifestyle that's almost unrecognizable to adults. And because the kids are such "coddled," "narcissistic praise junkies," they'll be beyond tough to bring into the military. Propensity to join the armed forces among these so-called "millennials" has dropped to as little as 3%; that's down from 26% in 2001.

Source: Danger Room - Wired Blogs

Well, it could be worse. It could be much worse! They could just be mean little brats.

But let's be clear: the recruiting powerpoint is quoting the term, "narcissistic praise junkies," not inventing it. I can first find the term used in The Wall Street Journal in an article, The Most-Praised Generation Goes to Work, by Jeffrey Zaslow, printed on April 20, 2007. I don't think you can get to the article without a subscription. But I found a copy at this link. Goodness, if the Navy recruiters are reading The Wall Street Journal, I'm very impressed!

One final note: the powerpoint is worth reading!

I need one! I want one now if it will allow me to connect the same number of devices my USB hub presently connects!!

Printers, cameras, MP3 players, hard drives-as the number of USB devices that connect to your computer continues to increase, so does cable clutter.

Belkin's Wireless USB Hub eliminates the hassle of searching, untangling, and plugging in the right cables each time you want to print, back up files, or listen to music.

Now, you can easily connect up to four USB devices and access them wirelessly at any time.

Source: Belkin : Wireless USB Hub

First I posted about Verizon's effort to squelch freedom of speech. Now AT&T has added to their terms of service contract with end users the statement excerpted below. I have added the emphasis, which does not appear in their contract.

AT&T Legal Policy
5.1 Suspension/Termination. Your Service may be suspended or terminated if your payment is past due and such condition continues un-remedied for thirty (30) days. In addition, AT&T may immediately terminate or suspend all or a portion of your Service, any Member ID, electronic mail address, IP address, Universal Resource Locator or domain name used by you, without notice, for conduct that AT&T believes (a) violates the Acceptable Use Policy; (b) constitutes a violation of any law, regulation or tariff (including, without limitation, copyright and intellectual property laws) or a violation of these TOS, or any applicable policies or guidelines, or (c) tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries. Termination or suspension by AT&T of Service also constitutes termination or suspension (as applicable) of your license to use any Software. AT&T may also terminate or suspend your Service if you provide false or inaccurate information that is required for the provision of Service or is necessary to allow AT&T to bill you for Service.

I couldn't believe this when I first read about it in boingboing. Slander is one thing. It's wrong. It's illegal. Sue the people that slander you. But this is yet another example of corporate America crossing the line. Why suddenly does corporate America (in the telecommunications industry) feel empowered to deny Americans access to what have become essential communications networks when the corporate entity disagrees with the content of the communication? Does this not scream of censorship, of denial of the freedom of speech?

Pssst. It's time for a change!

I have to gloat! Everyone seems to hate this OS as much as I do! Why can't a company with the vast resources of this software giant create the perfect operating system?

The people have spoken and Microsoft is listening. The company has decided to continue selling Windows XP through the end of June 2008, which is five months past the original deadline. ...

“There are some customers who need a little more time to make the switch to Windows Vista,” says Mike Nash, the head of Windows product management, in an interview on the Microsoft PR site. “We’re responding to feedback we have gotten from our OEM partners that some customers will benefit by extending availability of Windows XP.”

There’s been much ado about Windows Vista and it’s hardware requirements versus XP, and the web is filled with tales of disgruntled users “upgrading” back to XP after experiencing problems with Vista. CNet recently ran an editorial calling for Microsoft to abandon Vista, or the OS “will bring the software giant to its knees.”

Source: Compiler - Wired Blogs

I would expect the Urban Institute would provide a bit more of a scientific approach to what they assert to be research! Two events happening in the same time period do not begin to establish causation from one to the other. This is nonsense! But if they can make this claim, then I can also assert that having George Bush as president for a second term has caused a surge in the violent crime rate.

The recent increase in violent crime defies easy explanation, and many hypotheses have been put forward for debate. In this brief, we propose that the rise in violent offending and the explosion in the sales of iPods and other portable media devices is more than coincidental. We propose that, over the past two years, America may have experienced an iCrime wave.

Source: Is There an iCrime Wave?

Whether I agree with the content or not, this once was the land of the free! Increasingly people are foisting their views on others. I am very, very disappointed in Verizon, and I am a revenue source for them!

Verizon Wireless last week rejected a request last week from the abortion rights group NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League) to send txts over the Verizon network to subscribers who chose to receive them.

SMS "call to action" messages are a common tactic in the US and elsewhere for political and social advocacy groups, and Verizon's network is often used in this manner, as are all the other major US carriers. Txting isn't just for pro-choicers or lefties, either: conservative groups and the Republican National Committee do this too.

Source: Verizon agrees to allow abortion-related txts

Yet, what I don't understand, Atlanta is in hyper-drive mega-development mode as if water resources abound.

With Lake Allatoona dropping about a foot a week, [WHAT?!!] officials ... if the drought continues as is, Allatoona could be empty by February. ... there's a concern Allatoona ... will not be able to reach its normal level next summer. ... On some days, more water is evaporating off Allatoona and being pulled out for drinking water than is entering the lake through its rivers and streams. ... "If that trend were to continue through the winter, which all indicators are that it will, and if we don't cut back at Allatoona, we're just going to run out of water," Otto said.

Source: Corps cuts lake releases | ajc.com

Apparently the president admits to not being a good student. In fact, a friend of mine who also attended Yale, says he was "just plain stupid." He laughs and jokes about his mangled public speech, which the White House routinely cleans up or tries to prevent. Frankly, I just don't think it's funny!

During his first presidential campaign, Bush -- who promised to be the "education president" -- once asked: "Is our children learning?"

On Wednesday, Bush seemed to answer his own question [in a made-for-media event to urge reauthorizing NCLB] with the same kind of grammatical twist.

"As yesterday's positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured," he said.

Source: Childrens do learn, Bush tells school kids | U.S. | Reuters

Tonight a friend and I were having dinner while discussing what we as American citizens really need from our government, what we feel we are getting, and why we find such a huge disconnect between the two. We talked about how good people feel they are bound by their patriotic duty to accept this state of our nation and feel that any of voice of dissent is immoral and/or unpatriotic. We both confessed to finding a burdening, oppressive, almost suffocating and endless emphasis on that which is of so little importance, is inane and non-consequential, is bathed in fear or the transience of a pop culture that evaporates after it anesthetizes.

This conversation was born in part from an email I received today from another friend who brought forward the notion of the use of impoverished language (limited vocabulary and elementary syntax--perhaps as best illustrated by the American president) as a sharp tool to inhibit complex thinking and critical reasoning. The repeated use of symbolic language and symbols themselves for the purpose of subtly conveying new meaning to the terms and symbols is an observation that has troubled me over the past few years.

I already posted about Al Gore, who, in his book, Assault on Reason, speaks to the media's constant emphasis on the trivial instead of the substantive--lulling the American people into passive complacence.

Then, after coming home to battle with Windows Vista, the post below popped into my RSS aggregator from Thomas Hawk's site (a photographer extraordinaire whose brilliant photography I idolize!):

Noam Chomsky: "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum -- even encourage the more critical and dissident views."

Source: Is He Still Watching?

Wow! Are the planets aligned? Psst! Does any of this have the ring of truth in your life experience? It's time for a change.

Windows Vista is the worst operating system on this planet. I detest it. Indeed, I loathe it in every way! Those who use it regularly are nothing short of victims of abuse. The OS is always in my face, always asking me to confirm this or do that. Always giving me some warning message. It's like the political fear machinery.

Go Away!! Leave me alone. Let me work without being harassed by the your operating system!!

And today Windows Vista decided it needed to be re-authorized. Well, OK. Fine. I'll play along. It authorized just fine.

Then it decided to announce to me that "This copy of Windows is not genuine."

What?!

Update: I rebooted and now everything is happy again--everything except me! What a needless annoyance!!

I'm not a fan of "cute." But this was just too cute! This seagull in Scotland is in the habit of stealing chips from a neighborhood shop. The seagull nonchalantly strolls into the store (as if seagulls do this regularly), waits until the shopkeeper isn't looking, grabs a snack-size bag of cheese Doritos, and then rushes out of the store. Once outside, the bag gets ripped open and shared with the other birds. Interestingly, the bird always takes the same type of chips.

Customers have begun paying for the seagull's stolen bags of chips because they think it's so funny.

Click above to play

Coffee is the world's second largest item of international commerce. The first item? Petroleum. If you think about it, both are just different types of fuel. What is caffeine doing to you? Find out at Neatorama's Caffeine Facts article.

Source: Trivia: Coffee in International Commerce

Life is just pattern recognition. This blog features a number of photos that cause our brain to recognize the pattern: face. So odd and interesting all at once because none of these are pictures of a face. :o)

Source: Faces In Places

Source: 6emeia

be on a rant, but I just returned from Borders Bookstore. The entrance is plastered with 2008 calendars. I don't recall a time in my lifetime (was I just not paying attention?) when so many people were ready to get rid of the president. Five calendars were specific to counting down the days to the end of the Bush administration. Next to these were calendars focused on Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Also at the entrance was a book proporting to be the "inside story" on the Bush administration. In my mind that conjures up the concepts of greed, excess, maximized corporate profit margins, minimized attention to the needs of average Americans, lies, deception, arrogance, deceit, narrow-mindedness, ignorance, and just plain mono-syllabic stupidity.

Contrast that with what appeared next to the Bush book: President Bill Clinton's book, Giving.

From President Clinton's foundation's website:

But the true story of giving is being written everyday with individuals like you. With the power of the internet, everyone has the unprecedented ability to change the world. I look forward to learning your stories and working together to give our children the gift of a brighter tomorrow.

--Bill Clinton

Listen to an inspirational message from President Clinton.

Thinking people go to bookstores, buy books, read, and think. Bookstores market what sells. Don't look to Fox News to tell you that thinking Americans are disgusted beyond any measure. Look inside your local bookstore, and see what's flying off of the shelves.

What a contrast. Night and day. Psst... It's time for a change!

I came across this and loved it! You know, I think that Sally is probably correct!

FOX censored Sally Field's anti-war comments during her acceptance speech at the Emmys.

Some people want to claim it's because she said "god damn", but clearly FOX has no qualms airing "god damn" cause on a recent FOX News program they aired it 5 times in the span of a couple of minutes.

Oh, and the FCC ruled that "goddamn" is perfectly acceptable on broadcast television.

FOX just didn't want you to hear what Sally said, and the majority of Americans already know, that "if mothers ruled the world there'd be no goddamn wars in the first place."

A big thanks to ChrisBG at the Newshounds for remembering this "god damn" segment on FOX News and then actually finding it!

Source: Video: FOX Attacks Goddamn Sally Field

I hope this is a sign of things to come: paying attention to everyone's needs!

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger calls a special session of the legislature to work out a statewide health care plan. It would cover the 6.5 million Californians without insurance. Success in California could be a precursor to the plans offered by presidential candidates for 47 million people.

Source: NPR : California Aims for Statewide Health Care

I find my life littered with too much unsolicited advertising as it is. I want all of my visual space less polluted with unsolicited advertising. I want my audio space less polluted with unsolicited advertising--in fact, just less polluted with noise (including the constant beat of what someone else defines as "music") in general. My email box...my mailbox... I want the physical and virtual space I live in to be noise and clutter free! I dream. Sadly, methinks more is to come! Nothing is free--not even space.

It starts with Starbucks - hear a song you like while sipping a latte, connect your iPhone to their wifi, buy it. Take it a step further, and when you walk into a Target, Nordstroms, or Sephora (for example) and get targeted deals sent right to your promiscuous iPhone. Obviously you don’t have to choose to view it, or use the wifi in such stores, but there’s the model! Maybe this Starbucks collaboration will lead to essentially free (ad-driven) wifi in more places. This could really turn the tide as it seems more and more wifi is closing the doors to being offered up for free.

Source: Why Starbucks/Apple Collab is so Interesting

I'm surprised it took this long! But perhaps timing is everythings. Now that the political tides are changing, I hope to see a lot of things "set right."

Dan Rather, the former CBS Evening News anchor, names the network, parent company Viacom Inc. and three of his former bosses in a $70 million suit. Rather, 75, says the network made him a "scapegoat" for a discredited story about President Bush's National Guard service in Texas.

Source: Rather Sues CBS for $70 Million

Be Nice to America Or We'll
Bring Democracy to Your Country

The New York Times will stop charging for access to parts of its Web site, effective at midnight tonight.

The move comes two years to the day after The Times began the subscription program, TimesSelect, which has charged $49.95 a year, or $7.95 a month, for online access to the work of its columnists and to the newspaper’s archives. TimesSelect has been free to print subscribers to The Times and to some students and educators.

In addition to opening the entire site to all readers, The Times will also make available its archives from 1987 to the present without charge, as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain. There will be charges for some material from the period 1923 to 1986, and some will be free.

Source: Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site - New York Times

Am I the only person left in the nation that thinks the anti-trust laws were a good thing? I mean really, do we want Rupert Murdoch to own the whole country?! How much of our access to news does he currently own or influence? How wealthy and how powerful does a single person need to be before they have enough? Maybe I would feel a bit different if we didn't have so many people in poverty, so many people living on the streets in Atlanta... in every larger city.

Heads up boys and girls! Pay attention! Think! Exercise your political influence. Things need to change. We need to get back in touch with the soul of our national social conscience. Enough greed already!

So, naturally, it's time for another bumper sticker:

A PBS Mind
in a Fox News World

Wow, doesn't that nicely sum things up!

Few things are as much fun as having your camera with you at just the right moment. These two photographs were shot within minutes of each other.

Out to Pasture

Tastes So Good

I've had a couple of emails asking the above question. So, there are probably several others wondering the same thing. Here's the answer:

When I travel, I always do at least two things with the pictures: make a 100 page hardback book and post some of my favorites to my blog. Sometimes I even print a poster-sized version to frame here at home. So I spend a good bit of time making the pictures print-worthy. This trip's pictures posed some challenges in that regard and are therefore taking a lot of extra time. (And as a novice to all of this, I'm already slow!)

For whatever reason, despite the constant use of compressed air and lens cleaner, two of my three lens seemed to keep dust on them. And "something" invisible to the naked eye appears to be on my 30D's image sensor. Those cursed tiny little spots! Usually, just about every single picture has to be touched in Aperture to tweak exposure settings, normalize luminance levels, and do white balance. That's all fairly fast. But most of these pictures required more detailed work in Photoshop to remove lots of spots. (While this can also be done in Aperture, I like the Photoshop workflow much better.) At its best, taking out lots of spots is tedious and time consuming to me.

I also shot all of the aerial pictures of the mountain, Denali, in camera raw format (a first for me) and had to do so directly facing the sun! I didn't want to mess up this one-time opportunity to shoot the mountain in the air. And since camera raw format gives the most control of the image after it's shot, I decided to go for it. So each of the mountain pictures has required a lot of fine-tuning to bring out the details of the images, crop out blown out areas caused by the sun in the lens, etc. Raw image parameters were completely alien to me, so I had to come up to speed on these.

And as each picture was shot through the heavily tinted glass of the airplane window, the color tinting had to be removed from each image. And, of course, 85% of the pictures of the mountain also had some piece of the airplane's wing or rudder in the picture, requiring they be cropped as well. (While strapped into the tiny seat in the super tiny plane I tried to position myself jammed next to the window to use the wing to block the direct angle of the sun as much as I could. So I really can't complain too much about the plane parts! It was a memorable experience to say the least!)

I'm also trying to caption (for the book) most of, and tag all of, the pictures this time. I've always been very bad about the former.

I think I may use a new program (the new iWeb) to generate the core code for the online photo pages. The new version has some very nice photo presentation features. But I'll have to edit each page to give the Alaska Gallery the same overall look and feel (read banner and navigation bread crumbs) of my blog's photo galleries. So, I'll first have to figure out how to do it and then touch the code on every page--read "lots of time!" I'll try to figure out a way to at least semi-automate this process. Is nothing simple any more?! :o)

All of this to say that these pictures are requiring a lot of extra work at a time when I'm busier than ever. Carving out the time has been very difficult. I hope to spend a good bit of time on them this weekend. (But I thought the same thing last weekend, too!) And they must to be done before I head off to Scotland and back to London in October!

So to answer the question: While I can't be sure, I'm hoping they will be up in a couple more weeks??? I would work on them now, but I've got to get to sleep!

I was cruzin' through my RSS feed reader. I have a folder for software releases and updates. I saw that Apple released Keyboard Software Update 1.2. I was curious. I read the post and a few comments. The update only works with Apple's new, sleek aluminum keyboard, which apparently only works on the new sleek aluminum iMacs. But look at the stunning new functionality it adds according to one commenter:

"Toilet now automatically flushes when pressing CONTROL+2+EJECT"

I'm having interesting experiences in the routine restaurant rotation. Tonight, at another familiar restaurant, I noticed something odd taped up as high as it could go on the inside glass above the door. I have no idea what it is, but have developed some highly entertaining theories full of mystery, danger, and intrigue. Here is what is known:

• Taped too high to reach, even if very tall. Conclusion: not placed there as a prank but with intent
• Owner denied knowing anything about it while it is impossible to miss. Claimed to not know that to which I was referring. Conclusion: Knows full well what it is and doesn't want to acknowledge its existence: a mysterious avoidance
• Consists of a metal (foil-like) colored etching in front of a cloth on which oriental symbols (words?) have been written.
• The cloth is taped to the glass with simple scotch tape and appears to hold the metal up in front of it.

Here is a picture of the mysterious artifact. (Once again, the ever watchful iPhone camera at work!) As it was so high up, the picture is poor. You can't see the writing on the cloth. Click on the picture to enlarge it. If you have any idea what it is or what it says, please, by all means, share your knowledge. Inquiring minds have to know!

I had dinner tonight at one of the restaurants in my ordinary rotation. A new waitress was working there. Her outfit and hair style were very creative. I don't know exactly how to describe the look: somewhere between retro and an urban doll? I don't know. I'm just not good with fashion descriptions.

At any rate, her look was cute so I asked her if I could take her picture with my iPhone and place it on my blog. She seemed flattered, agreed, posed, click. Enjoy her visual flare. Her personality seemed to match it.

And below you will find another iPhone photo. This one was taken out of the plane window as we were approaching Hartsfield/Jackson earlier in the week. The clouds just looked unique. So, camera in the iPhone makes it easy. Snap!

I hate mosquitos. Mosquitos love me. I went to Alaska. Mosquitos live there. Large mosquitos. I used Deet to protect me from them. Deet hated my rain jacket. I loved my rain jacket. Where the Deet touched the rain jacket, it melted. What does Deet do to my body? I bought a new rain jacket.

My old rain jacket, like a good friend, has traveled everywhere with me and always kept me comfortable and completely dry: Italy, France, the UK, Norway, Japan, Africa, and all around the US. So I replaced it with the exact same thing, which I highly recommend to everyone! It's made by Marmot and is the PreCip™ jacket line.

The key to PreCip™ is its barrier technology: a microporous polyurethane that is impregnated with silicon dioxide particles. These particles create small, numerous, very consistent holes that allow the barrier to pass small water vapor molecules but not the bigger liquid ones. This keeps the rain out while letting your sweat vapor work its way outside, away from your body, to keep you dry from the inside as well as from the outside. PreCip™ rainwear is compressible enough to stuff into a water bottle and comes in enough colors and styles to travel with you anywhere– to the mountains, the city or overseas

I love it when a manufacturer's marketing department goes crazy like that! But hey, the jacket is comfy, very lightweight, lets me breath, and keeps me dry. Order yours today. :o)

This is fascinating. This new technology resizes images without much distortion and could perhaps have significant implications for web design. Can the algorithms be programed into a device's OS so as to resize the image just before it is drawn on the screen so it fits the native size of the screen? This could afford people seeing the same image on devices with significantly different sized screens the ability to actually see quite different images that fit their screen size even though it's the same image.

I have always felt guilty about how little I tag. I see the value of it. I just never think about it when I write. Now tagging goes to a new level pushing the bounds of broadcast technology, making it more interactive.

Thursday, September 06, 2007 - 10:10 PM EDT
Responding to the desire of millions of people who discover music via their favorite local radio broadcasts, Apple, iBiquity Digital, and major radio broadcasting groups unveiled today the result of an industry-wide initiative to create a new, free service called "iTunes Tagging."

iTunes Tagging is designed to make music discovery, purchase and listening even more fun and simple for all. iTunes Tagging enables consumers using HD Radio receivers that have been equipped with a special Tag button, to "tag" songs that they hear on the FM dial for subsequent purchase via iTunes.

"iTunes tagging takes music discovery on the radio to the next level," said Greg Joswiak, Apple's vice president of iPod Product Marketing, in the press release. "When a song plays on your HD Radio that you like, a simple push of a button will tag it and later give you the chance to preview, purchase, and enjoy it with iTunes and your iPod."

Source: MacDailyNews - Apple, iBiquity Digital, major radio broadcasters announce iTunes tagging for HD Radio

Technorati Tags: Apple, itunes, media

This web service, flattenme, allows you to upload your child's photo and first name. Send them a little more than $30, and you have a very nicely produced hardback book featuring your child as a pictured character in the story. The graphics work seems to be beautiful.

But part of me hates this as more of the "it's all about me" mentality that has sucked the social conscience out of our nation. Part of me thinks it's adorable. Part of me thinks it blurs the lines between reality and fantasy. Part of me thinks it would be a wonderful keepsake. Part of me thinks it is yet another example of the monetization of childhood. Part of me thinks it's creative and clever.

I read a small excerpt from an interview with William Gibson*, as part of his new book (Spook Country) promotion. Here are some interesting notions: because everyone Google's everything, even printed book media now has a hyper-text cloud that swirls around it, a Google ether cloud. And because you construct your own Google searches, your own mind is the most significant limitation to your capacity to use this tool. Except for sheer luck, when Google plops something before you that you've never seen before, something completely unanticipated, you're "still really inside some annotated version of your own head."

Gibson said that eBay is annotating and cataloging the world's attic. "The tentacles of that operation extend into every flea market and thrift shop and basement and attic in the world" making it possible for a person in some remote location to be a curator of the absurd, of "some tiny obscure area of stuff. ... It's like some sort of vast unconscious curatorial movement."

Gibson's last two books, Spook Country and Pattern Recognition, are more about the world we live in now than his science fiction vision of the future. He stated,

"Well, I thought that writing about the world today as I perceive it would probably be more challenging, in the real sense of science fiction, than continuing just to make things up. And I found that to absolutely be the case. If I'm going to write fiction set in an imaginary future now, I'm going to need a yardstick that gives me some accurate sense of how weird things are now. 'Cause I'm going to have to go beyond that. And I think definitely over the course of these last two books--I don't think I'm done yet--I've been getting a yardstick together. But I don't know if I'll be able to do it again. I don't know if I'll be able to make up an imaginary future in the same way. In the '80s and '90s, as strange as it may seem to say this, we had such luxury of stability. Things weren't changing quite so quickly in the '80s and '90s. And when things are changing too quickly, as one of the characters in Pattern Recognition says, you don't have any place to stand from which to imagine a very elaborate future."

And I think he's right, the 80's and 90's were a period of some stability. Since the turn of the century, we have lost our national sense of security and stability. Yet I would argue this has far less to do with the terrorists than with the use of fear to shift the balance of power to the office of the presidency (republican or democratic being irrelevant) and the significant aggregation of wealth to fewer and fewer people.

Gibson visited Second Life last December and made these observations about the experience:

Well, you know I didn't go as myself. I went as the guy that I cooked up when I signed up, so nobody knew it was me. ... It's deserted. It seems like functionally it has to be deserted. If it's not deserted it crashes. So there's all this empty, empty architecture. There's whole cities where there's only one other person and they don't even want to get close to you. And when you do succeed in finding a group of other avatars, people aren't very nice. ... They're meaner than they are in the real world. ...

You know what really worried me about Second Life? It's that after I'd spent maybe like four or five hours checking it out last December, I was walking around in the Christmas shopping crowds here, and every so often I would see somebody from Second Life walking down the street. There are people, always well under 30, who look like they've escaped from Second Life. ... They dress like an avatar, they're built like an avatar. It's a very spooky thing. And I think somewhere in my file of lines for fiction there's one about a guy, his girlfriend looks like he found her in Second Life.

Source: Amazon Bookstore's Blog: Writing Fiction in the Age of Google: William Gibson Q&A;

• "Spook Country" (William Gibson) (book at Amazon)
• Audiobook on iTunes

*Science fiction writer Gibson is credited with creating the term "cyberspace" in 1984 with his revolutionary novel, Neuromancer

For what it's worth, probably not much, I greatly prefer the white background on the Apple web site and wish they would leave their experiments with the black background behind!

(CNN) -- Famed opera tenor Luciano Pavarotti, who appeared on stage with singers as varied as opera star Dame Joan Sutherland, U2's Bono and Liza Minnelli, died Thursday after suffering from pancreatic cancer, his manager Terri Robson said in a statement. He was 71.

"The great tenor, Luciano Pavarotti, died today at 5:00 a.m. at his home in Modena, the city of his birth," according to Robson.

"The Maestro fought a long, tough battle against the pancreatic cancer which eventually took his life. In fitting with the approach that characterized his life and work, he remained positive until finally succumbing to the last stages of his illness."

Source: Tenor Luciano Pavarotti dead at 71 - CNN.com

Celebrate his great artistry by clicking on the video below.

"In the US of all the music releases in 2006, 32% were digital-only releases. They weren't released on a CD. Live concerts, independents. Look how far we've come. One third of the music released in this country was digital only."

A childhood friend of mine actually had this record when we were in college. We would listen to it when we needed a good laugh. It's beyond "the worst thing I've ever hear in my life!" It's so bad, it's great! A must-hear!

Believe it or not, Florence Foster Jenkins managed, despite being famously awful, to sell out an entire concert at Carnegie Hall. She had many admirers (among them Enrico Caruso). This has to be heard to be believed. As a particular point of interest, after she recorded this song, she told the sound engineer that no second try was needed as it was perfect. See for yourself. Listen for yourself. Source

Via: Worst Singer Ever

Strobist highly recommends Ni-MHs (Nickel-Metal Hydride )rechargeable batteries for photographers' flash devices, stating they are cheaper, more convenient, have a faster recycle time, and greener. [I've even noticed how fast they recharge, thinking it didn't even work!] Also stated in the article:

Ni-MH's: Selection, Care and Feeding

Driving Ni-MH's are a little different than alkalines. So there are a few things you'll want to know.

First, "mAH" matters. mAH stands for miliamp-hours, and it tells you how much power the little guys can hold. All things being equal, go for the higher number. In fact, I would say get at least 2500 mAH batteries. Unless you see 2750's, in which case buy them. They are so cheap over the long haul that you may as well buy yourself more capacity.

Second, resist the temptation to get the 15-minute chargers. They work, but are very hard on the batts. Best for them is the overnight trickle chargers, but that could cramp your style. (I like to rotate shooting an charging sets on location.) The 1-hour, or 1.5-hour chargers are a very good compromise.

Third, think about your batteries as being a quartet. They like to sing together. Batteries that are charged and discharged together over time perform better and last longer. I like to label my sets with a number or letter. ...

There is one blemish on the record of Ni-MH's. They self-dischage faster than alkalines. Which means two things to consider. First, I tend to top them off (no memory - top them off any time) within a couple days of when I am going to need them. Basically, I am just always shooting and rotating them through chargers, which they really seem to like.

It is for that reason that I still use Ni-MH's in my Pocket Wizards, which are so stingy on power that I have to try to remember when the last time I changed the batteries was.

Some people swear by the new Ni-MH "Eneloop" batteries (by Sanyo) which reportedly self-discharge more slowly. I have not tried them yet but plan to. If you use them, please report on them in the comments.

Where to Get Them

...For $18, I get a set of 2700 mAH's and a 1.5-hour charger that works on US A/C, car battery or in A/C in Europe. I get the "B" set of batteries for each flash (no charger needed) for another $8.00. ...

Source: Strobist: Feed Your Flash Ni-MH's

While I'm sitting here in Hartsfield/Jackson International Airport waiting on my flight, CNN carried some live speech of our simpleton president talking to the troops. As is no surprise to my readers, I detest what I believe this man represents (not who).

I don't know that I've ever disclosed on this blog how close this war is to my immediate family. The news I get from the front is that it's bad, really bad there: death narrowly cheated yet again just in the last few days. Her friends and fellow soldiers are being killed all but weekly.

And today the opinion shaping machinery here on the home front was trying to still pedal the "convert the region to democracy" prattle. I am now so nauseated when I hear this oaf that I can not continue to listen. As I couldn't leave the noise of the CNN monitors all around the terminal, I had to put in my earphones and fire up iTunes. Diana Krall is the best in these moments!

I can't believe I've neglected to post about this until now. As I've mentioned in in the past, this insulin pump has been a major miracle in my life, making my diabetes management very successful. My blood glucose levels are consitently normal now--amazing!

While in Seward, Alaska, I went up to Exit Glacier. I thought the walk was to be very casual--completely unlike my experience in Norway last year. However, a portion of the walk was uphill, a significant enough incline to lower my blood sugar to well below normal--a reaction, a really bad one. (See hypoglycemia at Wikipedia or just hold your mouse over the Snaps icon at the end of the link.)

I had not thought to bring any sugar with me and was miles from the ranger station and my car. What was so frightening was that my reaching the car or the station before I passed out (and likely would have died like my poor cousin) was an impossibilty. But, as I had no other options, off I stumbled.

The angel of mercy appeared within a couple of minutes--a backpack-laden park ranger. I asked him if the ranger station had any sweets. He immediately realized my problem and pulled two Snickers bars from his backpack. He carried them to demonstrate how some strata in the earth bend while others break when under pressure.

I'm just profoundly greatful for his teaching aids! Had he not "happened" upon my path when he did, things in my life would have been very different!

My sincere appreciation to our nation's park rangers and services!
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posted from my iPhone