Too cool not to blog. Heard about this from Boing Boing and wanted to spread the word as I am all for encouraging this kind of thing..
Members of a a music mailing list got together and created an open source, collborative online CD called Two Zombies Later. The album, which comes complete with cover art and bookelt insert, will be downloadable for exactly three months when it will be taken down.
Get ‘em while they’re hot and free.
Ahhh. It’s beginning to look a lot like Giftmas! Christmas decorations everywhere you go. Carols playing incessantly in the stores… Wait, that was Halloween.
Oh, but yesterday was the true start of the Giftmas season. We’ve had the first shopper trampling of the shopping season. Not that I am completely against Giftmas, but I don’t think it’s something people should do without the proper protective gear. Everyone needs a wild-eyed slobbering shopping frenzy now and then, but safety first, folks. Safety first.
I have to read this online statistics text for a training class at work. Well, more like half of it. It’s actually not a bad online statistics resource if you need a refresher. My Prob and Stat class was a loooong time ago.
Forget about the personal printers i mentioned before. This interview with MIT scientist Neil Gershenfeld will blow your mind. Think beyond 3-d printers to personal fabrication — factories on your desktop that can make anything. Moving parts, actuators, circuits, anything.. Then go beyind that to biological, molecular, and quantum computing paradigms that turn the analog/digital dichotomy on its ear, then from there to thermodynamic scale computing that would possibly allow us to “control” chaotic systems.
Now I may have gotten some of that wrong. My head is still sort of swimming. I think I’ll read it again when my brain stops hurting. (Credit to the IFTF guys for the find.)
So the shade grown coffee you paid a premium for is more earth friendly, right? Are you sure?
Here’s my favorite way to use leftover turkey:
Dice leftover turkey into small cubes.
Dice swiss cheese into small cubes of the same size.
Mix with dried cranberries and toasted pecans.
Throw in some tiny minced red onions and celery.
(Proportions on the above are up to your taste. I go easy on the onions.)
Add just enough ranch dressing to moisten the ingredients (about a tablespoon)
Sprinkle with kosher salt.
Ta Da! You have a spiffy turkey salad.
What’s your favorite way to use leftover turkey?
Blog it and the jokes will write themselves: Apparently they’re having a hard time finding women to test a new orgasm machine. Yes. Orgasm machine. Not enough volunteers.
My only question is, why don’t the men get one? Must be the Porn Lobby trying to stop it from cutting into their business.
Seriously, we scanned this a year or so ago — a story about a woman who had this odd and pleasant side effect from a spinal treatment — for a client. We had extrapolated orgasmatron style devices from the discovery back then. We went on to cross this embedded orgasm device with other trends like ubiquitous computing, increased bandwidth availability, wearble computers, social software, and got a lot of really entertaining possible scenarios. Gives new meaning to the saying “Reach out and touch someone.”
So you’re putting your kids’ christmas toys - “some assembly required” - together and you realize you don’t have part L-23, that pin thingy that holds flange G to plate 12c. So you go out to the company website and pay 50 cents to download the little part onto your hard drive.
Now all you need is one of these 3-d printers to print it out. Yeah, it’s a few years down the road. But in a month or so, as I’m crawling around on the floor looking for L-23, I’ll think of it.
“Every good fortune,
Wives, friends, houses, lands,
All these gifts and riches …
They are a dream,
A juggling act,
A traveling show!
A few days, and they are gone.”
-Ashtavakra Gita 10:2
This reminds me of something I read from one of Fr. Anthony DeMello’s books. Imagine you are falling through infinite space. Enlightenment is realizing that everything you grasp at to stop your fall is also falling.
Not a very cheery thought leading up to Thanksgiving, but such is my mood today. It is a good Thanksgiving message — be mindful of what you’re thankful for, why you are thankful, and how tightly you cling.
Bad Art Night is:
A. A Bad Idea in the first place.
B. A Good Idea that few people actually want to do.
C. A Good Idea that I lack the ability and motivation to promote properly.
D. A Good Idea that would work if I weren’t trying to do it in the suburbs.
E. A Good Idea that might work if I were willing to do it on a weekend night.
I suspect the best answer is “F. All but A.” I was pretty much ready to scrap the whole idea last night, sitting there making cardboard retablos by myself. But my daughter liked it, so I promised I’d try it a few more times before giving up.
I know I said I was willing to sit alone like the Lone Art Dork if I had to, to suffer for art if I had to. Question is, did I really mean it? I’m starting to have my doubts.
Nice Poem for a Monday morning.
Conjure something glowing
Take this day
You were born with hands for spinning
Talent for dreams and making them real
Roll the hours like yarn
Spin something that makes you feel full
And big and open to talk
Make this day your own square
In your own life quilt
So shining it brightens the whole of your years
This far
Make this day like one of God’s seven.
— Ruth Forman
Friday night we went to my sister-in-law’s birthday party to this Austiney place and listened to this Austiney band with a whole lot of hip Austiney People who are cooler than us. But it was all good. We danced like Austiney yuppies and drank Austiney beers and had a general Austiney good time.
Saturday we played in the Austin sunshine and drove around to the tunes on this Austiney radio station where you can hear Willie Nelson, Talking Heads, Neil Young, Rusted Root, and Bruce Springteen (the old good stuff) in the same broadcast half hour. Dinner was under the stars at this Austiney cafe in the Hill Country. We ate brunch the next day at another Austiney scenester spot. It was an Austiney-Good weekend.
What does “Austiney” mean? It’s hard to describe. If you’ve spent any time in Austin, you have an idea. It’s what makes everyone who goes to UT Austin want to stay in Austin to live. It’s what makes jobs in Austin scarce and rent in Austin inflated. It’s what motivates people with PHDs to wait tables for a living just so they can stay. It’s the only place I’ve ever been where upper middle class white people wear do-rags without a shred of irony. Where Kinky Friedman is a household name. Where you can find an art gallery, a transmission shop, and a high-tech startup in the same building.
Austin is artsy without the fartsy. Folksy, laid-back, progressive, where geek hangs with chic. Where people are allowed the pretension of believing they have no pretensions. It’s no wonder the republicans have divided Austin up into, like, forty-three different congressional districts. Letting the whole city vote as one block would be just too dangerous.
As we drove away toward Houston, I had a vague urge to buy something made of hemp. So when we got to Houston, I took a good deep breath of the polluted air. I was going to be fine. We got out just in time.
Our little visitor went home today. I kind of miss him even though we just had him three days. I was just starting to get attached. And he was making progress in the night sleep department, sleeping four and a half hours at a stretch. Before I packed him up to send him back, he and I had a little talk about his progress and how progress was important so that it would be easier for his mommy to take care of him. We exchanged a solemn nod and a kiss. Now he’s going home.
Luther’s mother had second thoughts about giving him up for adoption and asked to have him back. This, I hope, is great news. A kid needs his mommy. but he needs his mommy to be committed, so I hope her decision does not waver yet again. I also hope and pray that she finds the strength and the support to help her with the task of raising a newborn as a single mom.
It had to help that she had a few days to get good sleep. Or at least she had the opportunity to get good sleep. If I were wrestling with the question of whether to give my child away or not, I might lose some sleep over it. But at least she didn’t have a little living alarm clock waking her up every three hours. I’ve done the newborn in the middle of the night thing six times now (kept three) and I know well how that particular brand of sleep deprivation can become tinged with a certain desperation that kind of muddles your thinking.
So maybe, hopefully, Luther’s Mom is thinking clearly after a little break. And, hopefully, Luther is home to stay.
A new poster popped up recently at work as part of the Work Safety Program in which our management has invested a fair amount of effort and attention. I love this poster as its message, while it applies well to Safety On The Job, makes good advice for life in general. It is a rare blend of classic workplace propaganda kitsch and time-honored spiritual wisdom. An instant classic.
Anyway, it reads:
“Present Moment Thinking
Live in the present — Take time to think about what you are doing
Evaluate your environment or the situation
Think about the consequences of what you are about to undertake
Use all of your senses
Call a time out if something does not seem right”
Yes indeed.
This also applies in a tangential way to an issue addressed at Kurt’s blog recently about the balance between contemplation and action. Meditation is the practice of present moment thinking. Contemplation is the present moment thinking applied to life. There is no conflict between contemplation and action. They depend on each other.
Skillfulness is another word for it — the application of present moment thinking to action.
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