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Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy (perhaps)

I don’t know about the veracity of this, but it’s still cute.
 

Deep Thoughts

            by Jack Handy

 

If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is “God is crying.” And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is “Probably because of something you did.”

Newsvine

I’ve been experimenting with Newsvine lately, and it seems very similar to what we were trying to do at Backwash. Are any of you familiar with this? Let me know what you think.

 

Just one more thing

I always feel a need to do just one more thing. Whether it's zipping of one more email before a meeting, or trying to clean one more space before bed. It just seems that there is always one more thing to do, no matter how many things I've already done. Endless, maddening, and, actually, peace inducing, for it really speaks to the infinite, to continuity. Well, the peace comes when I accept that there will always be something undone, and that's not only fine but good.
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The Power of Cheese

A clever piece from over at Diversity, Inc. This guest editorial by Ahmed Tharwat, who’s probably best know for his Minnesota Public TV show, Belahdan, explores multicultural issues by comparing Feta and American cheese in the context of the War on Iraq and other post-9/11 cultural issues here in the States.

Immortality

One of the biggest pieces of BS I was feed as a youth was this notion of youth having an "immortality complex". Immediately noticed for what it was, I had this picture of a young guy, confronted with drugs foir the first time, saying "aw, what the heck, it's not like I can die or anything, I'm immortal". It's not an immortality complex that hampers youth, it's the inability to look into the future. More simply put, we didn't consider the longer term, we couldn't look farther than the window of action. And current research seems to add to that idea, that the adolecent mind is not, generally, capable of looking to the future.
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Neologism Du Jour

Try this one for size: egolarity, a combination of "ego" and "singularity". This would be that person with so dense an ego that nothing can escape, nor penetrate, the event horizon. I'm thinking of the person so absorbed by their cell-phone conversation that they're oblivious to the rest of humanity that surrounds them, especially other traffic.
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Facts

My friend Aaron put me up to this.

Here’s how you play: Once you’ve been tagged you have to write a blog with 10 weird, random, facts, habits or goals about yourself.

1. I detest rodents.

2. I spent my childhood drifting around the country. Thus, I was born in Rhode Island, though I haven’t been there since I was 3.

3. I am a graduate of the Navy’s Nuclear Power Program, and trained on the same prototype as my father.

4. I started school in Chantilly, VA.

5. I lived for several years on the Subic Bay Naval base as a kid. What I remember most from there are the beaches, and the monkeys. We had a troupe of monkeys who would perch in the trees out of our backyard.

6. I hate guns. When I was in 8th grade, my best friend’s father murdered his mother then committed suicide. He (Bill, my friend Adam’s father) taught me hunter safety and made all kinds of NRA noise about how to keep your house gun-safe. Repeat: I hate guns. (This did make some trouble for me in the Navy.)

7. Before 6, I did some competitive shooting.

8. I have a certificate in information processing from the Tongue Point Job Corps Center (Astoria, OR). Astoria is one of my most favorite towns, and I love the Oregon Coast.

9. I have formally studied the following subjects (declared as majors at various institutions): music, electronics technology, mechanical engineering, computer science, business, political science, sociology, and English/creative writing. To date, I’ve completed a degree in exactly zero disciplines.

10. I realized that I was a bit different from my classmates in Junior High, when I first read Euclid and Plato, and was reading Asimov for light reading. Most of my cohort was reading Steven King.

A day in Metro Cebu

A day in Metro Cebu

 

Written by Jaime R. Vergara, it’s a powerfully written exploration of life in a remote portion of the Philippines. Well, not as remote as it was when I lived in Subic Bay and San Miguel (mid-to-late 1970’s).  Anyway, it’s a good read and brought back many memories. It also makes me reflect on the economic disparities that exist in our world, and how many of them are exploited.

Introducing the Chumby

My first thought about seeing this was something akin to “what the heck is it?” And, after reading this bit from CNet, I still have that question. I can answer the basic question, that it’s a linux based internet appliance, one part clock radio and mp3 player (an mp3 player that has no battery , though it has the ability to add one if you can splice and solder your own – no portability cripples this thing), another part widget player (Flickr photo viewer, etc) that you can’t edit from the device – you need to go to a internet connected computer and adjust the setting through the company’s website.

 

This is, still, an important device. First, a mainstream device with a customized linux interface is important (Palm can’t have all the fun). Also, since this thing is built on open standards (not just linux, but also Adobe’s Flash Lite), the possibility of someone crafting the perfect app for this is immense. That just depends on gathering enough geek attention for someone to craft something useful. I’m not going to drop $179 for this, but I might be willing to play around with something like this were the price to drop lower.

My World View

What is Your World View?
created with QuizFarm.com
You scored as Cultural Creative

Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational.

Cultural Creative

81%

Postmodernist

75%

Materialist

69%

Idealist

69%

Romanticist

63%

Existentialist

44%

Modernist

31%

Fundamentalist

25%