hello, typepad

Rebecca's Pocket: Want to avoid Alzheimer's? Become more conscientious.

Fun IMDB thread about Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

"Everyone looks all geeky and not self-conscious and not trying to look cool. Everyone was kind of jumping around. No one knew how to dance." - Henry Rollins, from Punk Love over at Radar.

Save Pluto

Pluto has been demoted. Jason and Meg are having a mnemonic device contest in protest. Mule is offering a badge for those who want to show their solidarity.

Update: Shortly after posting the above satellite images of Pluto and Charon, CNN replaced it with this revisionist image of our solar system:

Update (2): Mike says: "Using dwarf as a modifier to cancel out the relationship of the parent noun is insulting." I agree.

Developing...

Print on Demand book from the Internet Archive

Print on Demand book from the Internet Archive
Originally uploaded by JoshB.

Brewster Kahle explained the Internet Archive's BookMobile project, where they have a mobile unit that can print and bind a physical copy of a book for the cost of about $1. They have these all over the world, and need a whole lot more!

Venus, if you will

Venus, if you will
Originally uploaded by Lady Macabea.

An oldy but goody!

SCHMUCK RD

SCHMUCK RD
Originally uploaded by david.

Blog All Open Tabs, Part III

I am clearing out my Marsedit "draft" posts. Incoherence follows. As Chris says:

Away from my keyboard, I "write" exemplary posts to my mind's blog. It occurs to me that a shunt for the mentally unpublished would be nicer software for me to help build.

Hey Six Apart, get on that!

From The New Yorker:

"Superman" doesn't have enough conviction or courage to be solidly square and dumb; it keeps pushing smarmy big emotions at us, but half-heartedly. It has a sour, scared undertone. And you can't help being aware that this is the sort of movie that increases the cynicism and sense of futility among actors. In order to sell the film as star-studded, a great many famous performers were signed up and then stuck in among the plastic bric-a-brac of Krypton; performers who get solo screen credits, with the full blast of trumpets and timpani, turn out to have walk-ons. Susannah York is up there as the infant Superman's mother, but, though Krypton is very advanced, this mother seems to have no part in the decision to send her baby to Earth. York has no part of any kind; she stares at the camera and moves her mouth as if she'd got a bit of food stuck in a back tooth. Of all the actors gathered here—all acting in different styles—she, maybe, by her placid distaste, communicates with us most directly.

Pauline Kael's review of Superman could have been written about nearly any blockbuster between then and now, and indeed she wrote this message into her reviews and reviews over and over. Today Kael looks like a literary giant next to the numbskulls currently reviewing films for the The New Yorker, but here she is simply dead wrong. The original Superman is a masterpiece. (Via kottke.)

Neither your friend nor your boss will be impressed when you quote [Oscar] Wilde. Yet he has yet another one-liner to describe this process: “Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.” Asking students to draw the line was my lesson plan.

From a nice post by my Mom about a presentation she gave to other English teachers this month.

Nicolas Nova's essay "Guy Debord and how IT renews the urban experience" is an uneven but worthy read.

Rebecca has been compiling summer reading lists. They're all worthy, but the Interaction Design summer reading list caught my attention.

KRS One has a myspace page.

Bill "Spaceman" Lee, on when he hurt his elbow once and was given drugs by the Red Sox:

They're going, 'Here, take this, take this, take this.' Afterwards, I've got sterazolidin, butazolidin, Clenerol, Indicin. I've got everything in me. I can pitch in the American League, but I couldn't run in the Kentucky Derby. Holy cow, I'm glowing in the dark. Now all of a sudden (current players) are doing it on their own and now it's a crime?!

That's a quote from the Baseball Prospectus' 5000th article, a landmark worthy of note from the best sports site on the Internet. Bill Lee also said:

The other day they asked me about mandatory drug testing. I said I believed in drug testing a long time ago. All through the sixties I tested everything.

This should give you an idea of how dramatically the discussion around drugs in Baseball has shifted.

Finally, ramps pizza at Otto's.

Google Maps v. Thinkpad

Miyagawa has released a hack to allow the Thinkpad's accelerometer to control Google Maps. You can check the source out of his svn repository.

Miyagawa writes:

My recommendation is to choose Satellite mode, with the 3rd Zoom level. It makes me feel like flying in the sky, just as birds. Because of Google Maps JS library prefetching images, sometimes you have a delay (latency) moving, but other than that, it is quite fantastic.

randomwalks/dj

The front page of my my reblog is currently "fantastic". Today you'll find that the army is lifeblogging, how to judge asparagus, a rocketboom interview with Negativland, the craziest (best) use of bluetooth I've ever seen, and Star Wars bookends.

Here are the Star Wars Bookends, because it is really important that you see them:

I also finally dropped that garish layout. It's better now.

April is

April is
Originally uploaded by Lady Macabea.

Birkin Still in Beta

Paging Mena Trott!

I bought this second-hand [sporran purse] in Edinburgh three years ago, and a more useful little thing one couldn't own. It's the envy of Paris. I gave up on the [Birkin] bag right away. That bloody thing. I told Hermes they were mad to make it. My one was always full and it ended up giving me tendonitis.

Jane Birkin abandons the Birkin, via Agenda Inc.
Also of interest: Tom Cruise is "still in Theta." Mena's Corner is now no longer a dinosaur feed according to NetNewsWire. Stingy Bar and Scribbling.Net remain.

Mars Rover Update

"Our current focus is to drive like hell … and try to get [Spirit] to safe winter havens before the power situation gets really bad," said Steve Squyres, lead Mars Rover Exploration scientist at Cornell University.

Spirit is trying to get to safe ground before the Mars Winter, so its solar plates can keep it chugging along until next year. The Mars Rovers were supposed to have been long since broken down and left for dead by now, so of course this is an eventuality that Spirit was not designed for. Good luck, my rover friend!

Opportunity is out of danger, apparently on the other side of Mars. In my dreams I see them driving side by side, not on opposite sides of the planet.

The Mars Rovers have even outlasted the Space.com "Best of Mars Rover" images site, which appears broken. You can still view their top 20 rated Mars Rover images, but that's all for now, maybe until the Apache winter is over.

Sopranos vs. Sleeper Cell II

Anil beat me to the post [1] regarding the amazing "Mobsters vs. Arabs" CNN Poll. After reading his post this afternoon, I reconsidered the article.

56,000 votes in and more than thirty five thousand people trust the Mafia, whereas only around twenty thousand people trust an "Arab-based" company. This is "why they hate us" (tm) - because we hate them. Given the choice between an "Arab" company and the Mafia, who are infamous for murder, graft and anti-social behavior, we choose the Mafia. We assume that an anonymous "Arab-based" group is probably going to be worse than the Gambinos, Lucheesis or Gottis. That's absolutely astounding, even moreso when you consider that cnn.com readers probably lean left.

[1] In the past week, Anil scooped Ray Ozzie on cut & paste and he beat me to a CNN critique. That's pretty good!

Sopranos or Sleeper Cell?

Just when I thought Time Warner had given me the greatest gift they could possibly give me - New York 1 on Demand - my old favorite CNN raises the bar with this article that suggests that the local danger at our ports (corrupt port managers, the mob) may be as dire as the external (arab terrorists). This is Sopranos 101, people. And where are my "Arab-based ports company" email alerts?

Around 2/3rs of CNN readers are more scared of the Mob than the Arabs. Fine. I wish CNN's little social experiment was a little more controlled. What if CNN took it to the next level and offered a simlar poll item next to every piece of contraversial or bad news they posted on their web site? "Who would you rather go on a hunting trip with, Dick Cheney or the US-based mafia?" "Who would you rather host the Oscars, Jon Stewart or the US-based mafia?" and so on.

mny1tiu

My dreams are answered
Originally uploaded by david.

I like to watch The Wire, Deadwood and whatever's playing on New York 1. Customers of Time Warner Cable can now get NY1 on demand, as if it wasn't already convenient enough that they replay every story every hour.

Anil jokingly calls NY1 "The Subway Strike Channel." I'm not laughing! As gothamist and others (including the New York Times, but behind their paywall) noted, NY1's strike coverage was unrivaled. If they offered a "Best of the 2005 Subway Strike Coverage" DVD for $30, I'd buy it. I am hoping for another strike this year, even though I know that's impossible, just so NY1 can cover it again.

Barry Bonds and Hypocrisy Redux

Barry Bonds, Steroids, and Hypocrisy is far and away the most trafficed post on Hello, Typepad. Since the San Francisco Chronicle and Sports Illustrated published excerpts of an upcoming book that alleges an absurdly high amount of Steroid use on the part of Bonds and other athletes associated with Balco (including Hello, Typepad favorite Marion Jones), interest in this topic has peaked (see my measure map graph for this post, to the left) so I thought I'd just reiterate my opinion, because I'm stubborn like that.

If indeed Bonds is guilty of everything the Chronicle reporters say that he is, and more, he is at least behaving consistently. There's blood in the water around Bonds, but there's money too, and don't think for a second that reporters wouldn't be covering this story if there wasn't. We know this because it's been going on for twenty years and no one started talking about it until Jose Canseco came out with his book. What's more, Baseball didn't even have a real Steroids policy until three years ago.

The fans and press are exactly as hypocritical as Bonds himself in this case. As sad as it makes me that he clearly cheated, his behavior is a symptom, not a disease.

Zebra

Zebra
Originally uploaded by Lady Macabea.

Boy do I love this picture Adriana took on 5th Avenue in Portland this past Sunday.

We were driving around when Adriana exclaimed "WOW!" and started snapping away.

Rear View Mirror

DSC_3070.NEF
Originally uploaded by Lady Macabea.

I am sucker for mirror shots, so here's one Adriana took as we were driving out of Portland on Sunday night.

Good Accounting (In which I Become a Corporate Schill for American Express)

Since I started working for myself in the middle of last year, I've had to change my entire approach to how I approach and arrange my finances. I've fastidiously kept almost every receipt and missive from cable, mobile, credit card, student loan companies and anything that could remotely approach relevance come the Ides of April. Despite this, the pile of paper and impending math is intimidating, and I am constantly afraid of the mess that is my accounting "system." Since I do so much banking on-line, I'd been frustrated that my credit card companies couldn't offer me a spreadsheet of all my purchases, which would make all of this math much easier. I still get mail every week from American Express addressed to $$FIRST_NAME$$ $$LAST_NAME$$.

This week they offered $$FIRST_NAME$$ a "Year End Summary." Curious, I clicked through, and my dreams were answered. Here are all my purchases, not only in PDF, CSV or XLS, but broken down by category. I am floored! There's even an "interactive" version where you can re-categorize misfiled items, although it appears they did a great job. And they should, it's what they do!

Highs and Lows:

• $2000 in "travel" expenses, broken down into airfare, lodging, and other. "Other," the largest chunk, consists entirely of Subway and Amtrak fares. South By Southwest accommodations and three plane trips account for the balance. It would be nice if they could connect the name on the reservations, in two cases Adriana's, into the spreadsheet since I can't write off her tickets on my taxes.


• $1300 in restaurants - less than I would have guessed, but probably because it's so common to pay with cash in New York.


• $0 automobile related charge, account related charges and late fees.


• $[embarrassingly large number] in "Merchandise," the vast majority of which is mobile phone and server costs that I passed on to clients and co-workers. The rest is video games and books. Why did I make three trips to H&M in July? And Apple - wow. Just, wow. Five trips to Whole Foods: $474. Got to get that under control this year!

we*heart*prints

If you heart art, you'll heart we*heart*prints. Fantastic!

Prospect Park NYC

Imapix at Work
Originally uploaded by lefion.

Inspired by the US team's curling success, surveying work has begun on a curling ice in Prospect Park, hopefully to be finished before next winter.

OMG shirt

OMG shirt
Originally uploaded by Mike Monteiro.

I recommend the purchase of this shirt, with apologies to my more sensitive readers.

Places I Went in 2005

Brooklyn, NY*
Fairfax, VA*
Paris, France
Oakland, CA
Cary, NC
Sagaponack, NY*
San Diego, CA
San Francisco, CA
Washington, DC*

My favorite thing about watching this meme spread is that there's not yet a "google maps mash-up" to support it. Plain text is so refreshing sometimes!

Places I visited but did not spend the night:
Princeton, NJ
Sacramento, CA

Re: Hello, 2006

I'm ending this year happier and more content than I started it. All in all, a success. I feel great about the relationships in my life and work, and I'm enthusiastic for the new year. Some of my ambitions for this blog haven't come to fruition, but I think they will in 2006.

In the spirit of holiday giving, here are all my open tabs with commentary. I'll start with what I think are my smartest comments, so when you get bored you can just stop reading.

Of all the "2006 predictions" I've read, none of them have much to do with the one laptop per child initiative. If it's even one quarter as successful as it is ambitious, it's going to change the face of the education forever. Counter-intuitively, it's going to make Google even more powerful than Yahoo and Microsoft, since Google is stronger in infrastructure and internationalization than it's competitors. It's also going to force a real business model to emerge around micropayments, since that's more in tune with the way third world economies already operate. Also, Google's Blogger is still the best completely free blogging option.

I'm reblogging at Eyebeam for the next couple of weeks. (Thanks for the kind words, Michael.) I love Eyebeam, and their projects. Part of my motivation for becoming a consultant was so that I could carve out more time to explore the more creative side of computer science, and Eyebeam's doing some of the best work out there right now. Reblogging makes reading and writing easier, which is the essence of blogging. And please submit links if there's anything you think I should see.

My buddy Charlie wonders if is Google behind T-mobile's Web 'n' Walk. My answer "it doesn't matter." Check out Christian Lindholm's remote (mobile???) contribution to Les Blogs 2.0:

The mobile industry is in a stalemate. The handset vendors are desperately trying to escape the “phone” legacy, a wonderful legacy in many ways, but the mobile phone we all love to talk on is perfected.

I've been playing around with the N70 and N90 a bit - and they are phenomenal phones. I didn't think the phone experience could get much better, but Nokia really nailed the details in a way they haven't done in a long time. But going forward, the real innovations are going to come from devices like the Nokia 770, which is one iteration away from challenging the low-end laptop market. I'm not sure if Lenovo, Nokia, Apple or wal-mart are going to get there first, but someone is. In two years we'll all be carrying around an iPod, a 770-like tablet, and a Nokia N-series style phone.

I was going to reblog unmediated's pointer to the flickr mobile API how-to. Then I realized they reblogged it out of MY delicious links. Talk about a closed loop

I'd buy the new ReadyMade book in a heartbeat, but there's a new order on our bookshelves - for us to buy a new book we have to read a book AND reduce another book. There are some low hanging fruit (Lego Mindstorms manual, old textbooks) but it's going to be a challenge. But hopefully Adriana and I can do some good book blogging this year.

Jason's lists of the best links of the year and the rest of the best more than justify my micropatron dollars, not that he had to justify anything. This is the kind of idea that crosses a lot of people's minds but no one finishes the job quite like Kottke.

In Steal from Google, a Businessweek columnist proposes that local newspapers should try and saturate the print market the same way google did the on-line space, by giving away ad space for virtually nothing to build eyeballs. The difference is, newspapers don't have built in search, the number of "eyeballs" in a few zip codes is limited, and the cost of paper is going up, while the cost of servers is going down.

Stale tabs I meant to spend more time with but probably won't: thoughts on Language Design, complete list of delicious tools, and yet another way to annotate images with CSS. (Now they're closed. Buh-bye!)

Fetching tags produces funny little tags for your dog. And people say our economy is hurting. The dooce claims Salma Hayek doesn't exercise, she just takes multi-vitamins. No way.

I was going to cut my hair, but now that Andy Samberg is hitting it big I'm going to let it grow out.

Mr. T

Mr. T
Originally uploaded by david.

Bless this mess.

Dreamful Attraction

Jackson is well known for applying the principles of Zen to the game of basketball, and O'Neal says that Jackson's methods meshed with his own strategies for victory. "I control my dreams," O'Neal told me. "So-called educated people call it meditation, but I don't. I call it 'dreamful attraction.' The mind controls everything, so you just close your eyes and see yourself dribbling, see yourself shooting." Contrary to some reports, O'Neal says that Jackson has not induced the team to practice yoga. "We tried Tai Chi one year, but the guys didn't like it, because, even though it was stretching, it would make us tight," he said. "Anyway, I don't stretch. I just play."

Henry @ True Hoop just re-posted this Rebecca Mead article about Shaquille O'Neal which is one of my favorite things ever. I think about Dreamful Attraction almost every day, and when we play basketball in the summer, I see good results.

Classic New York

heave ho
Originally uploaded by dmansouri.

This is a fantastic New York moment captured by Daryoush. Half the people in the picture struggle to keep a stoplight, the canonical embodiment of government responsibility and infrastructure, from falling into the sidewalk, and half the people are just walking by or turning their backs as if they couldn't be bothered. And check out that pink hair!

My Wayfaring

Wayfaring is a cool new Ruby/Maps mash-up application. I know these are practically a dime a dozen, but two aspects of Wayfaring stick out. One is that it's the first app that is an in-place replacemnt for the current maps.google.com, if you want it to be. Sure, it doesn't have the local integration, but presumably it will be able to leverage all of the user curated contributions even more efficiently than Google does. Second, they mention on blog that they prescribe to the "release early and often" practice of software deisgn, and they're sticking to it. It looks like they've stomped out some bugs very quickly (and publicly) and there are definitely some rough edges. But it definitely works, and that's enough. (thanks, Finn, for the heads up).

I love the map of the "tough" climbs in the 2006 Tour de France. This continues the precedent of Tour de France maps being the gold standard of mapping hacks. Or at least, I hope they become the standard, because I love them.

Death Needs Time

Photographed as it rested in the dry mud next to Fats Domino's abandoned house, the one he was rescued from, in the devastated Ninth Ward of New Orleans: a clock.

I won't thumbnail ("excerpt") the photos here, because they should be experienced in the manner Clayton intended. If you aren't subscribed to the Operation Eden feed and you enjoy great photography, I offer my highest recommendation.

Greenhouse at sunset

Greenhouse at sunset
Originally uploaded by adami.

Adam's PVC Greenhouse is nearing completion! His pictures usually outpace his progress on the blog by a few days.

The Catch

Paul Greenberg's The Catch is ostensibly the story of the Chilean Sea Bass, but the story of the Sea Bass is so epic that it's background characters include Augusto Pinochet, los artesanales - a generations-deep band of independent fisherman struggling to keep up with multinational conglomerates and fish-farms, modern day pirates, celebrity chefs, environmentalists, incompetent bureaucrats, and a giant squid.

With nowhere else to go but farther out to sea, los artesanales moved onto the abyssal waters of the continental slope. Bobbing around in small, brightly colored boats, they let their lines down farther and farther, all the way down into the Humboldt current, a frigid shunt of water that moves along the base of the Chilean continental slope at depths exceeding 5,000 feet. It was then that they began to haul out a strange fish they had never seen before.

About the size of a German shepherd, the animal had an air of the prehistoric to it. Thick scales covered its body. It had large eyes, mounted near the top of its head. Those, combined with a set of sharp teeth jutting from an underslung jaw, gave it a kind of cross-eyed, Alfred E. Neuman grin. When the fishermen gutted them, they found their innards were as cold as the polar seas. Toothfish, it seemed, were using the Humboldt current to make their way from Antarctica up the Chilean coast.

Who knew the Chilean Sea Bass was the size of a German Shepherd? Not I. I used to sit near Paul at Mediarights.org, so I know that he has spent months researching this story because he was constantly disappearing for weeks at a time to Chile, the Falkland Islands, and other wayward ports. And by the way, the world is running out of fish. (If you've read this far, now is the time to click over to The Catch)

DIY greenhouse

Adam from Dread Lobster is building a greenhouse on the roof of his Park Slope abode.

Last year I overwintered my trees and shrubs by simply packing them with additional mulch and pushing them against the building where there was a slight overhang. They didn't do too well. ...

The goal is to have a sturdy structure, that is light weight, as air-tight as possible, that can be broken down in the spring and stored behind the fence out of view.

Get a sneak preview of Adam's progress in his flickr tagset: greenhouse.

update: Now Adam has started the PVC Greenhouse blog just for this project.

Holy Cow I Look Just Like My Dad

Holy Cow I Look Just Like My Dad
Originally uploaded by david.

savor the details and see the big picture

savor the details and see the big picture:

Isn't it weird how we can't focus on a cup on the table and a picture on the back wall at the same time? You need to refocus your eyes. Clear your cookies. Have another drink.

I was blasting through my feeds, and one sentence in I knew this was an Erik Benson creation. Hello, Erik. I love this man.

On Optimism

The Doc Searls:.

This event will change the country as much as 9/11 did, and perhaps even more so. After Katrina, we will again begin investing in real homeland security, real infrastructure, real caring for the civilizing natures of vital cities and family farms, of small towns and real communities, and government bodies that care more about their people than the high-dollar sources of election funding.

I love the optimism, but I have to admit I almost spit out my tea. Not with this administration.

Scripting News and New Orleans

The best coverage of the hurricane I've read is over at Scripting News. It's nice when Dave is a bulldog about something other than XML.

Naming the Moon

Erik Benson on naming the moon:

I know that there are tons of science people out there that want to be immortalized on the canvas of the universe... why look deep into the telescopes naming specks of dust in your eye when you can name the bloody MOON? Until someone challenges me and kills me, I'm naming it Wisky.

This reminds me of the time I tried to name the google browser waggle. I like Wisky, too. My guess is I have roughly equal chances of setting foot on Wisky and browsing the world on Waggle.

Bookmark Today's Weather

AIM hacked

Gizmodo (I know) breaks the news that hackers more or less had their way with AIM screen names this weekend, hijacking many high profile AIM and AOL screen names and accounts. A gizmodo reader writes: "There’s really no countermeasures when these holes are found, other than to stop using AIM."

Remember This?

An oldy-but-goody. Thanks, Dave, for the pointer.

Tour de France Google Earth Maps

Tour de France Google Earth Maps
Originally uploaded by plemeljr.

Tour De France Maps for Google Earth allow PC users to track the stages through Google Earth's satellite view.

Get a Tour De France cyclist to wear a GPS and map it on Google Earth real time, and then I'll be really impressed.

What else can go wrong with a road ?

What else can go wrong with a road ?

The Future of Open Mobile Technology

Great hack: GPS on a Nokia 6630 using Google Maps. If that's not a hack built to get on Boing Boing, I don't know what is. [ed: it's already on boing boing].

We're barely reaching the point where phones have the hardware to run relatively processor intensive applications, the network is fast enough to download images faster than you can scroll through them and (most importantly), the phone vendors open up their APIs so developers can innovate. In this case enabler is Python for Series 60 and the python libraries made available by "rancid bacon." [ed: If they ever invent a time machine, I'm going to go back to 1995 and say that sentence to somebody: "In this case, the enabler is ... Python libraries made available by rancid bacon."]

I wrote my first few lines of python this weekend, and it wasn't altogether unpleasant. Somedays I'm afraid Perl has taken me as far as it is going to, and that I need to adapt. Not that I don't have a ton to learn, just that it's hard to motivate myself to sharpen an existing skill compared with the excitement of something totally new.

[ed: is it self-indulgent to say that the future of open mobile technology involves "rancid bacon" and "python"? [ed: hello jason]]

Blog All Open Tabs

I was debating between "blog all open tabs" series of posts and a "last 100 posts" post, but I decided it was better to be future facing at this moment.

I still don't have the "blog all open tabs" tool I've been dreaming about, mainly because I'm too lazy to build it. Blogging all open tabs is more than just posting links in sequence to delicious, since it's relevant that you were looking at all the weblog posts at the same time. Until then, I have MarsEdit, which is fully scriptable and stable. If you already have a weblog and download MarsEdit, it takes you about 15 seconds to configure, if not less. Download the software, and type in your weblog's name - it's as simple as it could possibly be.

It was somewhat traumatizing to have co-edited (along with Anil) Jason's links for a week. After posting a remaindered link I would inevitable see it pop up in 10 or so other places within the next couple hours. Before posting on kottke.org, I never had a need to watch delicious feeds or technorati watchlists, since Hello, Typepad is relatively low trafficed, but I have to admit it was exciting to see some of the links go so far so fast. "Bru" theorized that readers buy the "man," not the blog, but I'm not sure I buy that. I think people with newsreaders kept coming back, but people without newsreaders took the week off.

Three Lobed Schizocarp

Crown of Thorns w/ Brain
Originally uploaded by david.

Last week my favorite cactus began to develop a brain-like growth. For the last ten days I have been tortured by the questions "What the heck is that brain growing on my Crown of Thorns?" and "What do I do with it?"

A little googling led me to this report (PDF) produced by the University of Florida Miami-Dade.

Seeds can be used to propagate E. milii, but are mainly used for developing new cvs. In Florida plants rarely produce fruit (a three lobed schizocarp) without help from man. Pollen release & receptivity of the stigma usually do not coincide for a single plant, which in nature encourages out-crossing. So you need 2 or more plants, preferably of different cvs. Controlled pollination increases seed set, & is used by breeders to develop new cvs. Seedlings will bloom in 5-8 months.

At least I'm not crazy for thinking the growth was "brain-like," since the three lobes are well defined. I am worried though, that my window of life is closing on this thing. I still have no idea what to do. If you have any advice, I'd really appreciate it.

Google Maps and the New York Subway

Finally, the subway map and Google Maps have been juxtaposed. I found this link while reading Kottke.org. I wonder if this will inspire Google to act faster or allow them to drag their feet while they fry bigger fish. When the Craiglist apartments map was posted, there was a lot of hand wringing about whether or not Google was going to "break it," but in fact they featured it on Code.google.com: "While we have no official API for Maps yet, work like this really is amazing and deserves recognition. Good job Paul!" That's what I like to hear.

Of course, the state holds the best GIS data of all, but their maps offering is so meager it makes me a little sad to pay taxes. This morning I looked up my apartment and then tried to drag the map over to my friend's house. Silly me. By the way, look at all those Open Source GIS projects. What are they, chopped liver?

The "Holy Grail" of NYC GIS Maps, the "NYCMAP" (pronounced "Nice Map") is still not available to the public.

Jiiiha!

Jiiiha! 
Originally uploaded by Bummelisa.

 

Morning Foxy

Morning Foxy 
Originally uploaded by pachanga.

 

Don't Fight it, You Will Become Your Parents

By the way, how do I go about replying to comments? I wanted to reply to an anonymous parent, but when I hit "send" it was one of those airplane things that just flies around and around the computer and never gets sent. (Do you know what I'm talking about? Smtp or something.)

One of my Mom's student's parents was checking their browser history, they found TeacherTalk and left a comment with a bad e-mail address. My Mom has been blogging, and so we've been emailing more than ... well more than we ever have, partially because of tech support questions such as the above. She's always known about hello, typepad, and she's known about randomWalks since 1999, but she never really understood blogs until she started writing her own. I don't think this is unique to blogging, since reading and writing are complimentary skills.

Anyway, my Mom has been reading the archives. Her favorite posts are the same as mine - Serena Williams on Law & Order, and Defending Derrida. She never knew I read Derrida, even though she's the one who sent me to Oberlin! If anything, I read him by osmosis. More importantly, we've got things in common that we may have never known.

"Remember Diana Rigg?" my Mom asks. We also used to take pictures of the TV. "Also, what's that cactus called?" "The Crown of Thorns," I answer. "We used to grow that, I loved it."

I love it too. More recently, I received a scolding email for my Seabiscuit review, "Even my Mom, who couldn't care one way or the other about horses, loves this book." My mom writes:

to set the record straight, Joanie and I were OBSESSED by horses when we were growing up. We went to horseback overnight camp two summers in a row (a month each summer) and went riding every single saturday morning in either Golden Gate Park or along the beach---which would be deserted. I still remember the thrill of galloping along the hard part where the waves had packed the sand.

Who knew? I'll leave my original review for posterity, but please consider the record straightened. I'm eagerly anticipating her post about rooming with Laurie Anderson in college. Also, she once had pet rats.

George Bush / Issues

"After standing on the stage, after the debates, I made it very plain: We will not have an all-volunteer army," Bush told a rally in Daytona Beach.

George Bush rarely slips up, he just says what he's really thinking. Rock the Vote has been all over the Draft issue, and I applaud them for it. It's clear to me that Bush is going to reinstate the draft if he wins - why wouldn't he?

Many of my liberal friends, including almost all of my co-workers, pause before they identify the key issues motivating them to vote for John Kerry - this is a sad byproduct of the campaign for Anyone But Bush. For me, it's because of his strong stand on the Death Penalty. Over at Deadline, Katherine wrote about Scott Turow's analysis of the issue. Basically, Kerry doesn't want to alienate pro-death penalty voters in the middle, and Bush doesn't want to lose anti-death penalty voters on the right.

Angela points out that "...keeping the death penalty out of the mind of the public makes the work of abolitionists so much more difficult. It really provides more evidence that people are afraid to have any real dialogue around this issue." I think a strong third or fourth candidate's presence would encourage all the candidates to be more honest, but America can hardly generate two acceptable Presidential candidates, much less three, four or ten.

Defending Derrida

Jonathan Kandell’s obituary for Jacques Derrida is mean-spirited and uninformed. To characterize Derrida, one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, as an "Abstruse Theorist" is to employ criteria which would disqualify Einstein, Wittgenstein, and Heisenberg.  

With scarcely concealed xenophobia, Kandell describes deconstruction as another of those "fashionable, slippery philosophies that ... emerged from France ... undermining many of the traditional standards of classical education." In fact, Derrida wrestled with central works of the Western tradition, including Plato, Shakespeare, and the Declaration of Independence - none of which he slighted.

Remembering Jacques Derrida, signed by over three hundred academics, is an answer to the patronizing New York Times obituary from last week. You can add your name to the list.

Judith Butler wrote a second, more direct letter:

Jonathan Kandell's vitriolic and disparaging obituary of Jacques Derrida takes the occasion of this accomplished philosopher's death to re-wage a culture war that has surely passed its time.  Why would the New York Times assign the obituary to someone whose polemics are so unrestrained and intellectual limitations so obvious? ... Why would the NY Times want to join ranks with American reactionary anti-intellectualism precisely at a time when critical thinking is most urgently required?

Why indeed. I wish I could sign this letter. I once saw Judith Butler getting coffee in Oakland.

Elsewhere, Judith Zissman posted a picture the New York Times headline, and Caterina pulled out a funny quote from the Washington Post's story: "The lack of fixed meaning in a text did not keep Mr. Derrida from publishing hundreds of books."

Like Angela and Adriana, I recommend Kirby Dick and Amy Kofman's documentary on Derrida, which our friend Kirsten Johnson also worked on.

Five Weeks Left to Train

Euphorbia Abdelkuri!

I love when geek pursuits collide, and that's what happened this morning on the Crown of Thorns Yahoo Group when a Harry Potter 5 enthusiast offered up a botanical analysis of the book:

The Power of Links

I loved you, Aaron, and I still love you.

Your negro,
George

I have to admit that when I read George's entry about missing Aaron, author of Uppity-Negro.com, I thought to myself "What's up with all these links to blogs after their authors take breaks? What the heck does that mean? Bloggers are always taking breaks like web sites are constantly under construction. It's meaningless."

After making such a jerk judgement I clicked through to Jen Trance's Diary Land page (which I had never visited before) and realized Aaron wasn't taking a break, but was dead. I'm sad, even though I never met or even exchanged correspondence him. I did feel connected to him though, through randomWalks and through other friends of mine who were friends with him.

Jen's recent archives give us a hint of what was going through her head:

My friend is still missing, and really, it's more than likely no big deal, or at least I tell myself that every forty seconds. A grown man can go places and do things without consulting other people, and perhaps I am being a stereotypically nervous Jewish mama, and maybe I worry too much.

It's been days, though. Several days now. A police report has been filed, many ponderings have been pondered, theories have been fabricated, the friend in question has been psychoanalyzed, and people have freaked out in varying degrees.

It sort of makes me feel silly because sometimes when I don't update this page or answer my phone I get messages and comments like "OMG JEN RU DEAD" and "Oh shit, Girl's cheese done finally slipped offa her cracker", and "WTF JEN RU OK?". I always shake my head a little, but I know that people worry because admittedly I am not the most stable person, plus there's that whole brain disease thing.

Adriana often chides me for being a lazy reader, because "you don't fully experience a blog post unless you read all of the links," which I rarely do. Now I understand. George, thanks for the post.

In the continuation, I've collected a few references to Aaron and Uppity Negro from randomWalks.

Living The Good Life

Did you ever wake up one morning and declare that from this point forward your life would be radically different? Did you then commit your scheme to paper, structuring your ideal day into constituent ideal parts all aimed at the goal of improving mind, body, and spirit? Did you make strong decisions, vow to give up coffee, alcohol, meat, and your little job, too? If this sounds familiar, then I have an old book for you. It is called "Living the Good Life," and it celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.

My friend Paul's article "The Really Simple Life" was in the Boston Globe today. It's a fiftieth anniversary survey and celebration of sorts of Helen and Scott Nearing's seminal "back to the land" book Living The Good Life. Here's one of my favorite passages:

In Vermont the Nearings lived without electricity, indoor plumbing, or any source of heat beyond hand-split firewood. They ate most of their food raw out of wooden bowls with chopsticks. They foreswore alcohol, caffeine, and tobacco. They divided their days into three units: four hours for "bread labor;" four hours for music, writing, and other avocations; and four hours for social interaction. They avoided cash as much as possible. What money they did handle came as a result of a maple sugaring operation they used to create specialty candy and syrup. Scott's exacting practices amazed even Helen. "I bet you fold your toilet paper neat and square," she once chided him. He acknowledged that he did.

I have lots of friends who fold TP like this.