Overflow

Now this is a cool church. Sunday services in a coffee house. Bible study with a mug of Peet’s. Sounds like a religious experience to me.

If you’re an environmental scanner like me, you’re always looking for a good content aggregator. Backwash.com is interesting. It’s kind of an “About.com” meets “Blogger.com” thing — web logging organized by personality type. It features “channels” of collaborative weblogging organized by similar interests. Could be useful to a future geek like myself who does lots of scanning and channel hopping.

It’s never been so easy to have a short attention span. The Internet is enabling a golden age of adult ADD and I’m rolling with it. Woohoo!

Now, I’m not saying that the Pilot G2 Gel pen is not still my favorite, but I acquired a Uni-ball Vision “free-ink” pen and it’s pretty fine. I think I gotta go try a Vison Elite.

Yeah, baby. I loves me some high-tech pens. Maybe Santa will bring me a box.

Salon has a gratifyingly clear-eyed response by an Australian woman to anti-American sentiments since 9/11 — America the scapegoat

This isn’t syrupy glurge like that famous and oft-forwarded Canadian essay. This takes a square-shouldered stance toward American weaknesses and strengths in its rebuttal of knee-jerk anti-American epithets. Bravo.

“I see a different America. I see a grieving, vulnerable America shocked out of its self-absorption, an America that is indeed questioning, debating, and attempting to understand the root causes of its predicament, seeking to educate itself about Islam and Muslim cultures, seeking to defend itself against further attacks. I see an America that has welcomed more people from more countries around the globe than any other country in the history of mankind. I see an America whose embrace of democracy and vision of freedom, however less than perfectly realized, beats in every American heart. I see an America that deserves compassion in response to its misfortunes, and acknowledgement of its virtues and better strivings, however often they may fail or produce unforeseen consequences. And I see a world that would be less without it. “

I wish people would forward *this* kind of stuff into my in box.

I might have to stay home and watch Good Morning America on Monday. Seems that Diane Sawyer let it slip that ‘It’ may finally be revealed. I’ve been holding out a lot of hope for Dean Kamen’s secretive project. If it is what they say — a scooter powered by a stirling engine — I’ll want one if it’s affordable.

But the good news will be the Stirling engine. An commercially viable and efficient Stirling engine would be the true pearl in the oyster. A scooter would not have revolutionary effects, but a reliable, efficient, clean source of energy would truly rearrange our society, especially if it enabled distributed electricity generation away from the grid.

A lot of my hopes, my positive scenarios for the future, the ones that don’t involve societal and environmental collapse, predicate on the invention of some sort of clean, cheap energy. Fusion is looking better, thanks to the new MAST project and its recent successes, but a commercially viable Stirling engine would be really cool.

I’m hoping Kamen the wunderkind will pull this out of his hat. I may end up being disappointed, but it’s fun to dream.

A high-tech scooter would be kinda cool too.