I hate PowerPoint. It’s nefarious effects are now working its tentacles into the romantic world: link
The Accordion Guy’s blog is pretty good, I may add him to my side panels — I certainly have much pathos for him after this story.
For those of us with an art versus practical side, gapingvoid.com offers these ten insights about being creative.
Remember how when you were a kid you had a favorite everything: color, food, pet, friend?
I don’t have a whole lot of favorites these days - but I do have a favorite wild animal:
Elephants!
I love elephants! They are so interesting, smart, capable, and have a very complex social structure (this may be a warning against watching too much Animal Planet).
They’re also great terraformers! The indigenous flora of Africa often has less-than optimal effects on the fauna in the area. What’s the natural solution? Knock crap over!
These four-legged bulldozers take out and redecorate as they see fit and at a rate that would rival 3 house/room/swap/clean reality shows on the learning channel.
OK, and now to up the mush factor, baby elephants are the funniest and most playful creatures. You get so used to an elephant being a slow and lumbering savannah-yachts — but I saw this baby elephant chasing one of those birds that usually ride on the adults. He was lashing his trunk in an attempt to swat it while running. It was hilarious.
Baby elephants can’t really control their trunks as precisely as adults and they tend to flop them around in circles. It cracks me up.
I cannot watch an elephant and stay in a bad mood.
They also use extremely sub-sonic noises to communicate across the savannah. For years biologists thought that it was some sort of radar, or ESP, or something, or something else. Instead of attributing amazing advances to mysterious phenomena, like our president, we know today it is just science. Imagine that.
In any case, elephants, their unfortunate association with Republicans aside, are amazing creatures.
I also like octopods too. But they’re not cute, they’re just amazing.
Wednesday was just another day, but the world lost a visionary, a pioneer. One of the most important and seminal scientists of our age, Francis Crick, died on Wednesday.
Crick and his colleague, James Watson, are credited with the discovery of deoxyribonucleic acid, a substance that we, today, casually refer to as “dee-enn-ay” (DNA) .
How much richer is our understanding of the world, our understanding of science with this acronym in our collective lexicon? Any biologist can tell you that - Crick and “DNA” defined the boundaries, the terms, the task of biology in the 21st century.
But let me ask, “How much richer are so many non-scientific disciplines with only the mere idea of this substance?”
Vendors of anti-spam technology today include, in their literature I read, references to a “digital DNA”. From the layperson manager to the geekiest sysadmin technorati - we know instantly that this “Digital DNA” speaks of the essence of a thing, and that it is something that is propagated, extracted, communicated.
[Addendum (10 August 2003): A vendor is here to promote their anti-spam solution, guess what the background image is: a double helix, the word “genetic” in the background]
In our times “DNA” means “essence, the source of identity, the method of creation”.
{ This reminds me of the Silver Jews’ line: “All houses dream in blueprints” }
In the Literary Criticism camp we hear of the study of memetics, the notion of ideas as viruses …. and what, my friends is a virus, but a quasi-sentient, roving, carrier of genetic information (like an author, or perhaps a book itself, or an e-book - this interesting debate, brought to you by Crick)?
DNA, as a modernist art principle speaks to our age as well. It is a simple lattice made of strong and simple materials - sugars and phosphorates - that interweave in an ascending ladder to net something far greater than the sum of the parts.
Is this not the essential design ethic of our age? From simple and strong alloys shall we remake space, order, and line in our image - and in doing so we shall reflect ourselves again, and again, and again.
If you have one nearby, visit an Apple store — experience DNA as store.
(Although on a busy Sunday before the start of Stanford’s start of semester, the chaos reminds me of the unzip and replication process versus the stoic order of the lattice - as if a replication fork bomb of capitalism has blasted the academic nucleotide students into sheer chaos)
Back to the Biology sphere, DNA’s native conceputal home. In DNA, in the idea of a ladder in a cell, we have opened the possibilities into true medicine, changing cells at the core, rewriting the product from the template with gene-therapy.
Slowly Crick, Watson, and those brilliant people that destroyed my view with their Mission Bay biolabs in SF are turning God from Microsoft into GNU - they’re making His work open source (surely the copyright was lapsed, anyway) and giving it away.
This DNA meme (I do love infinite recursion) has enriched so many areas of intellectual development, I simply cannot imagine where so many diverse and exciting areas of intellectual development would be without Crick.
Thank you Mr. Crick…..
Keep in mind, my friends, that the kind of intellectual inquiry that builds on Crick’s work, embryonic stem cell research, has actively been opposed to and constrained by George W. Bush [link here].
Stem-cell research is essential for keeping America at the forefront of the economic race of high tech, and it ensures that great Americans, like Ronald Reagan, grandmothers with Parkinsons, and children with diabetes can have longer and happier lives. Remember in November voting for Bush is voting against science.
— Revisions: [ 3.VIII.04 - Fixed typo, clarified that Bush is against embryonic s-c research ] [ 3.VIII.04 - Decided to fill out some of the points a bit more after Dedman’s linking-to ] [18.VIII.04 - Added addendum, cleaned up]
…on what to sleep in (clothing wise)
. I sleep naked 07/23 10:07 … … … You’ll swear by it until there’s an ? 07/23 11:45
On Monday I was in training learning about Exchange.
As much as I enjoy learning new things in the collegiate lecture atmosphere…
As much as I enjoy learning new things in general
I have decided that I abhor the Silicon Valley technical training institution. The only exception is Red Hat’s training class — the lectures and labs are geared to make you learn something.
At Sun’s training and Microsoft’s trainings though … even if you have the most competent, rhetorically gifted teacher — you will find yourself using the majority of your time trying not to let your eyes close.
“When confiuring server monitors the MiMS can be … zzz”
I was talking with my neighbor about this and I said I spent 5 years in school and she has attained her masters in computer engineering - we were left marvelling about how we never slept through those, but go narcoleptic in these.
I bought PJ Harvey’s “To Bring you My Love” about ten years ago.
During that time I was hanging around with wonderfriend Mike and, one night, on a whim, I bought this album. The video for “C’mon Billy” had been in moderately high rotation on MTV (when they used to show videos during reasonable hours) with its strange whispered chant:
little fish, big fish, swimmin’ in the water, come back here and gimme my daughter
I would never have said “I love this album” - but I never tire of it either.
In recent years I’ve come to believe that the album is essentially maternal. In many ways, I wonder if the “love” she is singing about is the blood of a child, the father of whom is away, has left, or is dead.
Here’s a brief catalog of some of the turns of phrase dealing with child quickening, birthing, or the act by which life is perpetuated:
Here she’s talking about this deep desire to bring this love, and the offspring to this mysterious, dark, absent, father.
Cast down on my knees I’ve laid with the devil Cursed god above Forsaken heaven To bring you my love
I believe she believes this devil to be the father, perhaps named William?
C’mon Billy You’re the only one Don’t you think it’s time now You met your only son
Or about a lost daughter?
Oh, help me Jesus come through this storm I had to lose her to do her harm I heard her holler, I heard her moan My lovely daughter I took her home
Birthing children reaches a final desparate plea with her desparate wailing of:
Left alone in desert This house become a hell This love become a tether This room becomes a cell Mommy, daddy, please Send him back to me
How long must I suffer? Dear God, I’ve served my time This love becomes my torture This love, my only crime Lover please release me My arms too weak to grip My eyes to dry for weeping My lips too dry to kiss Calling ,Jesus, please Send his love to me I’m begging ,Jesus, please Send his love to me
It just leaves me in the mind of dark-haired Polly Jean in some dusty, western, hardscrabble town, her lover leaving, her belly swelling… It just shows what a desparate act - a sneer in the face of circumstance - birth can be. It’s all very Schopenhauerian .
One of my co-workers sent me a quicktime movie ad for IKEA in France.
You may want to watch this video and see something that is wrong, very wrong.
[ Warning, this video might remind you that your parents may have done something after that something resulted in you ]
I was so appalled I had to appeal to the only source of response that I could think of: mid-nineties Houston death metal band, Dead Horse, whose lead-in to Satan kissed my dog always answers the unanswerable (like supercalifragilisticexpialidocious).
Satan kissed my dog and cracked his moral shell dressed him up in a kilt and sent him to a Scottish hell
Whew, thank you Dead Horse.
Patrik F?ltstr?m, TCP/IP Guru, IETF social butterfly, and co-worker, told me that he had the privilege of drinking a beer with Nina at the Nobel prize ceremony.
Patrik is one smart mamma-jamma who is also a fan of “Communication” in addition to a fan of OSX.
Mrs. Elyse Luray - (something)
I love the way you sleuth history.
I love the way you research.
I like your hi-lights and perfect teeth and the way you seem to enjoy trolling in dusty old tomes.
I love the way you have trendy sunglasses and that you wear them into dusty archives.
Thank you for giving hope to all the girls who volunteer in the library - and the guys who love them.
The Cure star Robert Smith has blasted The Darkness because they remind him of how much he hated Queen.
The goth superstar admits he thinks the “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” hit makers are “a comedy band.”
Smith says, “I can honestly say I hated Queen and everything that they did. To have that rehashed and reheated for a second time around is pretty weird … I don’t like The Darkness at all.”
From World Entertainment News Network: Link I don’t really care for Queen either (I admit, one good song, Bohemian Raphsody).