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There are Four types of cofee jokes. All of them are tired and overdone.

Amen, Too Much Coffee Man, Amen.

Hey Mom. Hey Dave. Rick Mendosa’s Diabetes Directory is a great set of resources to know about.

Via Research Buzz. Tara Calishain is a web goddess worthy of worship.

I got the coolest thing in one of my exchanges through nervousness.org. I sent one of my card paintings and got a really cool Pocket Shrine custom made for me! Very, very cool.

I got presents from my Secret Santa yesterday. Very cool. Seems like a nice guy.

Very generous too. From the looks of it, he went over the limit. While I’m no deadbeat, I did stick to the limit. Well, it’s all good karma, I say.

Merry Christmas, Karl. Thanks for the cool stuff. I won’t open it until Christmas, like a good boy.

It’s about that time of year when all kids thoughts turn to Santa Claus.

My daughter quit believing in Santa Claus last year. This year she, I
think, is in transition, both grieving the loss of the childhood belief
and developing a larger understanding of what, and who, Santa Claus
really is. She doesn’t “believe” anymore, but she sees the joy of keeping
Santa alive in the eyes of children younger than her. She is turning
from a pure recipient of Santa to a participant in Santa Claus and all he
stands for.

The skeptics would say that she is complicit in telling the same lies
that were told to her, but I beg to differ.

Any parent knows how to make food developmentally appropriate for their
children. We heat it just right, chop into easy pieces, cut the crusts
off, put the milk in a spill-proof cup. To set a toddler down in front
of an adult plate of food would be frustrating, messy, and most likely
dangerous. So it is with adult ideas; we chop them down to size and
cut the crusts off. There’s no “lie” in making ideas easily digestible
for children.

Here’s where there is a lot of similarity in the development of our
beliefs in Santa Claus and our belief in God. They definitely start out as
simplistic, magical, parent-like concepts, but considering where young
kids are coming from, this is how they can best relate. Parents are
their world — care giver, law giver, posessed with (to them) unimaginable
powers.

Of course, they grow up and those concepts change. Or at least they
should. Parents become mere people. Santa, as you find out, was always
just your loved ones who worked to keep the Christmas magic alive for you.

The big difference is that, while very few people persist into
adulthood believing in the Childhood Santa, many — I’d guess the majority —
of people cling to their concept of the Childhood God well into
adulthood. Or they conclude that since the Childhood God is not the real God
after all, God must not exist. Or, worst of all, they hate, persecute,
and even kill those who threaten the childhood concept they are so
desperate to hold onto.

As a parent, I still believe in Santa Claus. I am Santa Claus to those
around me. Santa Claus is within me. Santa Claus is much, much bigger
than me. And I get the simultaneous joy of introducing one child to the
simplistic, “crusts-cut-off” Santa while I help another discover the
bigger, much richer world of Christmas beyond the Childhood Santa.

Same goes, as it is turning out, for our family’s faith in God.

More unfair futurist bashing.

Another criticism of futurists and the inaccuracy of predicitons. Yes, recent events since September 11th have raised doubts about the baseline future scenario — the “official future”, so to speak — but what this guy, like all the other futurist bashers, fail to see is that a futurist’s job is to anticipate a wide variety of alternatives. The prediction is always wrong, but futurists Don’t. Make. Predictions!

Almost in direct contrast to Faith Popcorn’s futurefluff below here’s the latest from futurist Peter Schwartz at GBN The New View on the Next Decade (via the FutureEdition Newsletter from the Arlington Institute)

From Slate: Adventures in Cheating - A guide to buying term papers online.

“One custom paper off the Web: $71.80. Not having to dredge up pointless poppycock for some po-mo obsessed, overrated lit-crit professor: priceless.”

Oh man, I’ve wanted to do this lots of times before. PowerPoint Presentation - You Have a Very Bad Hotel

I hope this guy gets results.

She’s Baaaack. Faith Popcorn, the Pop Futurist every serious futurist loves to hate has published a new Dictionary of the Future.

I have a hard time taking anyone seriously whose surname is Popcorn, but she does have this knack for coming up with cool names for stuff. Here’s some examples from the New York Post:

* Bruise palette: Predominance of black, purple and brown fashion.
* Dictator chic: new collecting mania for propaganda artifacts of communist and totalitarian countries.
* Facadism: preservation process which maintains an architectural facade, but demolishes everything else.
* Gap year: increasingly common practice of taking off a year between high school and college, either to accumulate funds, or to pad the resume with public service work.
* Mannies: unexpected growth of both domestic and foreign-born male nannies.
* Rent-a-Rembrandt: museums will lease their archives to wealthy individuals for a monthly fee.
* Boatominiums: floating condominiums, used by thewealthy as vacation homes.
* CoHo: short for corporate home office.
* Elderotica: erotica for senior citizens.
* Free-range children: kids who aren’t overprogrammed with lessons and playdates.
* Geriborgs: robots to do household chores for seniors.
* Nap tents: places for midnight oil-burning execs to take their power naps.
* The “Right, But” club: people who did the right thing, but for whom life didn’t work out as ordained. “I exercised but got heart disease.”
* Unobtanium: combination of “unobtainable” and “titanium,” describes something cutting edge and out of reach.
* Yogurt cities: places to live that have active cultures, as in museums and bookstores.

Now, I know that “Unobtanium” has come from biker culture. I hope she gives them credit in the book.

Hey I have one, Faith –

*Futuretainers: people who call themselves Futurists but play mainly to the mainstream crowd and ignore the “serious” futures studies community.

Sound Familiar?

Got this link via Memepool A pseudodictionary for words that wouldn’t make it into regular dictionaries. This is a good source for scanning. Emerging words come from the fringe culture and the emerging zeitgeist. ( I hate using that pretentious word, but I had to. What’s another word for zeitgeist?)

I already track Jargon Scout and The Word Spy, so it’s nice to have another source. I wonder if they read each other?

The emerging “next big thing” in kids’ reading: Lemony Snickett. Nickelodeon has already bought the movie and TV rights.

My daughter has already read the first four and is going to get the next three for Christmas. It’s nice to see her read something besides Harry Potter again — she’s read the whole series four times. My nine year old reads more than I do — I’d like to think it’s because she has more time.

My only problem with the Lemony Snickett books is that they’re so short. They don’t last my daughter more than a day or so.

I’m feeling sorry in advance for the lonely schmucks who collect the new Playboy Playmate Dolls.
Sad, sad, sad.

(via Factovision)

It’s a bit of a cobweb, but it’s a good repository of circa 1990’s Futures Studies pedagogy. Includes summaries of futurists’ opinions and the major change drivers that they agree upon. Even tho the site is ancient by web standards, some of the information and perspectives of the future in here are timeless.