A Bacterium For All Uses?

Biological remediation of contaminated sites has a huge potential, if we can be smart about it. A recent publication by Robert Anderson and his lab is one example of this. They used naturally occurring bacteria to convert uranium in an aquifer into an insoluble form, thus removing the radioactive element from the water supply.

Uranium Be Gone

By providing a food source, acetate, for the bacteria in a contaminated aquifer in Colorado, the researchers demonstrated that these bacteria could reduce the amount of soluble uranium present by 70% in just 50 days. This was an area with low levels of contamination. They will next look at what happens with higher levels of contamination.But 70% is pretty good.
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Morning verses

The gingko leaves in this morning light
are the brightest green.
Soon they will be the brightest yellow.
And then one night, suddenly, with silent cue,
They will all fall down.
Such order for a tree in fall's riot.

"The jargon of heraldry, its griffins, its mold warps, its wiverns, and its dragons."
- Sir W. Scott

risky wiver
the mascot here at whiskey river

a wiver is a fabulous two-legged, winged creature,
having the head of a dragon, and without spurs.

A Zen master lay dying. His monks had all gathered around his bed, from the most senior to the most novice monk. The senior monk leaned over to ask the dying master if he had any final words of advice for his monks. The old master slowly opened his eyes and in a weak voice whispered. "Tell them Truth is like a river." The senior monk passed this bit of wisdom in turn to the monk next to him, and it circulated around the room. When the words reached the youngest monk he asked, "What does he mean, 'Truth is like a river'?" The question was passed back around the room to the senior monk who leaned over the bed and asked, "Master, what do you mean, 'Truth is like a river'?" Slowly the master opened his eyes and in a weak voice whispered, "O.K., Truth is not like a river."

'If you ever reach total enlightenment while drinking beer, I bet it makes beer shoot out your nose.' - Jack Handy.

Biochemistry IS Chemistry

As a biochemist, I am always glad when the Nobel Prize committee recognizes that biochemistry belongs with chemistry and not necessarily medicine. Just because we work with really big molecules instead of small ones does not mean we do not do chemistry. In fact, both winners of this year's chemistry Nobel Prize increased our knowledge of how very large proteins can manipulate very small molecules, performing aspects of inorganic chemistry that are the envy of every human scientist.

Moving Molecules From One Side To The Other

One of the most important functions a cell membrane must do is keep some things out and some things in. It is a demarcation line that permits solutes to accumulate to a high enough concentration for enzymes to do their work, removing the products that are harmful and allowing in materials that are needed. An inability to do this will result in the cell's death.

Membrane Spanning Proteins

The Nobel Prize for chemistry was given to two men whose work has helped elucidate the cell membrane's ability to regulate what is inside or outside the cell by permitting the passage of certain small molecules or atoms. One of these is water. Another is ionic potassium.
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Cholly's Prayer

Tom's New Commonplace Book IMproPRieTies has already quoted from "Of Vanity" by Michel de Montaigne. But these days Montaigne's continuation seems even weightier than his chamber pots:

This is no jest. Scribbling seems to be a sort of symptom of an unruly age.
When did we write so much as since our dissensions began? When did the Romans write so much as in the time of their downfall? Besides the fact that mental refinement does not mean wiser conduct in a society, this idle occupation arises from the fact that everyone goes about the duties of his office laxly, and takes time off.



The corruption of the age is produced by the individual contribution of each one of us; some contribute treachery, others injustice, irreligion, tyranny, avarice, cruelty, in accordance with their greater power; the weaker ones bring stupidity, vanity, idleness, and I am one of them. It seems to be the season for empty things, when harmful ones weigh upon us. In a time when it is so common to do evil, it is practically praiseworthy to do what is merely useless. I console myself by thinking that I shall be one of the last on whom they will have to lay hands. While they are attending to the more urgent cases, I shall have leisure to reform.

Darwin on Reading

Do not despair about your style; your letters are excellently written, your scientific style is a little too ambitious. I never study style; all that I do is to try to get the subject as clear as I can in my own head, and express it in the commonest language which occurs to me. But I generally have to think a good deal before the simplest arrangement and words occur to me…

—Charles Darwin, from a letter to a young scientist.

I can’t think of a more unassuming, appealing genius than Darwin, who retreated from the world physically but engaged in vigorous correspondence. He was humble about his workhorse brain compared to the brilliance of friends like Robert Huxley, and forever anxious for approval, whether for his table manners or for The Origin of Species. His love for his children, his wife, and his friends glows from his letters and was evidently reciprocated. But it is Darwin the reader of whom I am fondest. “He read,” says his biographer Irvine in Apes, Angels, and Victorians, “not to be critical, but to be entertained, agreed with, stimulated to feeling.”

Charles’s reading falls into two classes and was done in two postures. Strenuous or disagreeable scientific reading he got through late at night in his study. Because of his long legs he raised himself by putting cushions in the seat of his study chair; then, to neutralize the effect, he raised his feet onto a footstool. One is tempted to imagine him, in the course of a long German work, rising rather close to the ceiling. For all other reading, he lay on a sofa. Such reading consisted in lighter or more agreeable scientific works, travel books, history, and above all fiction. He held a low opinion of novels as works of art, yet he frequently blessed all novelists. “A novel, according to my taste, does not come into the first class unless it contains some person whom one can thoroughly love, and if a pretty woman all the better.”

Passing much of his intellectual life on a sofa, he believed, with an almost missionary strenuousness, in easy and comfortable reading. At times he found every unnecessary movement, and even the weight of a book, intolerable. His remedy was surgery on the book. With a ruthless, unbibliophile hand he dismembered heavy and dignified tomes in order to read them in light and manageable sections. Even Lyell’s Elements of Geology was not exempt. “With great boldness,” he coolly informed its author, “[I] cut it in two pieces, and took it out of its cover.”

Darwin read the morning news—as he read world history—en pantoufles, without much attempt at analysis and criticism. In fact he found it difficult to be critical of anything:

“I have no great quicknesss of apprehension or wit which is so remarkable in some clever men, for instance, Huxley. I am therefore a poor critic: a paper or a book, when first read generally excites my admiration, and it is only after considerable reflection that I perceive the weak points. My power to follow a long and purely abstract train of thought is very limited; and therefore I could never have succeeded with metaphysics or mathematics.”

It’s comforting to share a weakness with a genius. I read widely, but find it difficult to articulate why a particular book is good or bad, despite a degree in literature.

"Hell is not punishment,
it's training."
- Shunryu Suzuki

Angstrom

I live with the best dog in the world -- Angstrom, whom you can see below. Technically he belongs to my housemate, but in practice I'm the one who feeds him, I'm the one who waters him, and I'm the one who walks/hikes with him -- and so I'm the one he sleeps with. He is also the hairiest dog in the world -- half black lab, half retriever -- and he leaves hair literally everywhere. Big black gobs of it, and frankly I gave up trying to control it about three months after getting to know him.

It has been heartbreakingly beautiful here the last few days--Indian summer at its most sublime, temperatures in the 70s and the New England trees turning every shade of gold and red -- and when I'm not working Angstrom and I have been walking and hiking and taking in our fill before the long winter ahead. The last few days we've been in the woods near here, and today we hiked up Blue Job Mountain. It's just a little hike -- just enough to make you sweat, just enough for him to drink out of mud puddles -- but it's been the final reminder before the deep frosts and the snow and the barren trees. So I haven't been blogging much. You can have your Schwarzeneggers and Plame Wars and Limbaugh drug addicts -- none of them is conducive to mental health, as I see it lately. This attitude will likely last at least though this long, leaf-peeping season, especially if the weather is warm and my new, used car (a reliable 2000 Saturn SL-1) continues to run smooth (if not excitingly) and calmly (and frankly I had had enough of the exciting sports car things). Tomorrow I plan to take Angstrom up Mt. Agimeniticus (look up the spelling for yourself -- I'm too distracted to find the link) in southern Maine, and Sunday back up Blue Job Mountain, at least to the fire tower, at least for awhile. He likes it, I like it -- what's the problem? I'll see you next week.

Ira Rothken on Sunncomm earlier settlement

Lileks In New York

IRREGULARITIES IN CALIFORNIA RACE!!
Long-shot candidates do startlingly well in Tulare County
DIEBOLD MACHINES YIELD FISHY RESULTS!!

My friend in South Carolina writes:

I ran a number crunch of CA counties that use Diebold machines to cast/count votes and found some weird figures that show a skim of votes from top candidates
to people who were unlikely to affect the outcome. I did my hand calculator work on the California election results (from the secretary of state's site) when 96% of precincts had reported. The website showed:

Counties using Diebold Touchscreens:
Alemeda, Plumas

Counties using Diebold Optiscan:
Fresno, Humboldt, Kern, Lassen, Marin, Placer, San Joaquin, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Trinity, Tulare.

There were a totalof 1,403,375 votes cast in these counties combined. The CA total was 7,842,630 at this stage of the count. Thus 17.89% of all the state votes were cast/counted on Diebold equipment.

I had earlier noticed some lower order candidates (ones who couldn't affect the result) were getting unusually large numbers of votes in Tulare county. I
decided to test to see if the these and other 'fringe' candidates might be used to receive skimmed votes in other Diebold counties.

Method:
I added all the votes cast/counted on Diebold equipment for each candidate and expressed it as a percentage of their total votes cast state wide. The following table lists: Candidate name, votes counted for them in Diebold counties, CA state total votes counted for that candidate and what percentage of that candidate's total votes were counted in Diebold counties.

It looks like, as one might expect, at the top of the list as if there is a slight variance from an even state wide distribution. However many 'lower ticket' candidates have vote totals that ONLY correlate with the use of Diebold equipment! I have included some
names chosen at random from the result list that show that not all lower order candidates were used to receive skimmed votes. Note that Diebold's counties are spread geographically over the whole of California.

I have checked background on the skewed result candidates and they are not residents of the counties where they got very high percentage results. In one case, Palmieri, the candidate was surprised to hear about Tulare county (I emailed him) and had not been
there nor had family or friends there. In fact, his platform was "Don't vote for me." He described this vote pattern as "strange."

State total 7,842,630.
Cast in Diebold counties 1,403,375
17.89% of the total votes cast.

Schwarzenegger 581,145 3,552,787 16.36%
Bustamante 447,008 2,379,740 18.78%
McLintock 186,923 979,234 19.08%
Camejo 39,199 207,270 18.9%
Huffington 7,498 42,131 17.79%
Ueberoth 3365 21378 15.74%
Flynt 2384 15010 15.88%
Coleman 1869 12443 15.02%
Simon 1351 7648 17.66%
Palmieri 2542 3717 68.3%
Louie 598 3198 18.7%
Kunzman 1957 2133 91.75%
Roscoe 325 1941 16.7%
Sprague 1026 1576 65.10%
Macaluso 592 1504 39.36%
Price 477 1011 47.18%
Quinn 220 433 50.8%
Martorana 165 420 39.28%
Gosse 60 419 14.3%

Conclusion
Based on the very unlikely distribution of votes for some candidates (a meteor hit my car twice this week sort of odds) a hand count of the affected counties to
compare with the machine reported count should be done. This would show that the machines had been tampered with to alter the results. As we already know, it is not possible to audit touchscreen machines because Diebold refuse to allow printing of a ballot to be placed in a box as a back up for use in just such an apparent tampering with votes.

For those who are unsure of figures:

California is huge and has a population similar to many European nations. Lower order candidates had little or no ability to spread any sort of message to parts of the state beyond their own home and/or where they have previously lived. One would expect some of
the 'fringe' candidates to do well in their home county and then to have a very even distribution across the rest of the state. That is not the case. In Diebold counties (those who use machines made by Diebold, a corporation that supports George Bush) the results are skewed towards low scoring candidates by unbelievably large amounts.

The probability of scoring twice the expected average county % could charitably be construed as the upper limit of the possible. Some candidates exceed that figure in Diebold counties by a four or five fold margin. If you have done statistics, you know that is so far beyond what might be expected that you would reject it as defective data. If it happened to one candidate in this election, I would be surprised but might accept it. There are a large number of candidates who have this same systematic pattern of receiving skimmed votes.

The California recall shows Diebold trying to affect the election outcome by moving votes from high ranked candidates to low ranked candidates.

By doing this, Diebold keep the total number of votes cast constant but rob some candidate of their votes. Before anyone makes this a partisan issue - it could be a Republican victim next time.

RIAA replies to Politech over "Net drivers licenses"

Lessons in Civility

But there's more going on than a simple attempt to impose a double standard. All this fuss about the rudeness of the Bush administration's critics is an attempt to preclude serious discussion of that administration's policies. For there is no way to be both honest and polite about what has happened in these past three years.

On the fiscal front, this administration has used deceptive accounting to ram through repeated long-run tax cuts in the face of mounting deficits. And it continues to push for more tax cuts, when even the most sober observers now talk starkly about the risk to our solvency. It's impolite to say that George W. Bush is the most fiscally irresponsible president in American history, but it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise.

On the foreign policy front, this administration hyped the threat from Iraq, ignoring warnings from military professionals that a prolonged postwar occupation would tie down much of our Army and undermine our military readiness. (Joseph Galloway, co-author of 'We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young,' says that 'we have perhaps the finest Army in history,' but that 'Donald H. Rumsfeld and his civilian aides have done just about everything they could to destroy that Army.') It's impolite to say that Mr. Bush has damaged our national security with his military adventurism, but it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise.

Still, some would say that criticism should focus only on Mr. Bush's policies, not on his person. But no administration in memory has made paeans to the president's character — his "honor and integrity" — so central to its political strategy. Nor has any previous administration been so determined to portray the president as a hero, going so far as to pose him in line with the heads on Mount Rushmore, or arrange that landing on the aircraft carrier. Surely, then, Mr. Bush's critics have the right to point out that the life story of the man inside the flight suit isn't particularly heroic — that he has never taken a risk or made a sacrifice for the sake of his country, and that his business career is a story of murky deals and insider privilege.

In the months after 9/11, a shocked nation wanted to believe the best of its leader, and Mr. Bush was treated with reverence. But he abused the trust placed in him, pushing a partisan agenda that has left the nation weakened and divided. Yes, I know that's a rude thing to say. But it's also the truth.
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Kedey Island Diary

Mysterious but welcome weather in Ottawa: 22°C in October! All the better to make my transition to rookie builder, though so far I’m just a fetch-and-carry slave and a puny one at that. I am learning several new terms, a few of which I can use in sentences. Yesterday I moved a giant woodpile and demolished an old outhouse with a crowbar. Today I assembled a complicated Malaysian wheelbarrow and got ready to move the washhouse fifty feet south to make room for the glorious winter cabin. My trusting nature comes in handy:

Q: But how do you move a washhouse?
A: Oh, you just jack it up and push.

[more]

European Commission study weighs privacy vs. security

Learn CPR!

Good news for surviving recipients of CPR - Canadian researchers have found that not only is CPR effective in helping someone survive sudden cardiac death but that survivors who had received CPR tend to do very well.

'According to the study we've just completed, your chances of survival are three times greater if you have a citizen bystander performing CPR,' said Dr. Ian Stiell of the Ottawa Hospital. Stiell and his colleagues looked at 268 people who had cardiac arrests in the community and survived. One year later, 86 per cent were functioning normally and were able to live independently.

Learn CPR!

Nobel For MRI

This week the Nobel Prize for medicine went to Paul Lauterbur of the University of Illinois in Urbana and Peter Mansfield of the University of Nottingham, UK , who were instrumental in the development of MRI technologies. This involves placing something in a magnetic field to align the magnetic poles of the molecules then sending a burst of radio waves through the sample. This causes the aligned molecules to wobble. This wobble is influenced by the proximity of other wobbling molecules. By using very careful measurements and some pretty fancy math, living tissue can be examined in real time.

Try And Fix A Knee Without One

Now, there have been a lot of people involved in developing MRI to the point that every obstetrician has access to one to allow new parents to see their baby or where soft tissue damage to the knee can be corrected with a simple outpatient procedure. There are often a lot of difficulties in deciding who should get the Nobel. In this case, these two gentlemen were the first to really develop graded magnetic fields, ones that increased the magnetic fields from one side of the object to the other. This breakthrough really started the technological revolution.

Not For Refrigerators

This still continues. In order to get higher resolution, you need bigger magnets. Bigger really is better. As this press release details, NYU is putting in a 7 Tesla magnet for imaging. This is 70,000 Gauss or about 140,000 times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field! The magnet weighs 7 tons and is wound with 420 kilometers of superconducting wire. The magnetic field generated will be shielded by 420 tons of steel.

What Would Austin Powers Do With This? Or Dr. Evil?

All I can say is nobody had better be wearing any ferric materials when near this thing. But is may provide enough resolution to see the chemical signatures of specific types of molecules inside a cell, not just how badly torn an ACL is. That could be a real breakthrough.

Using Custom Cursors For Specific Page Elements

"In IE 4+ and NS6+, the cursor shown when moving the mouse over elements can be customized to display a cursor type other than the pre-selected one by your OS. You can select from a pool of cursors to be associated with elements in a document when the mouse is over them. For example, wouldn't it be nice if you could replace the usual "hand" cursor with something else when moving the mouse over links, or give tables a "crosshair" cursor instead of the usual I-beam cursor? Well, thanks to IE 4/NS6's support for CSS, you can!"

"There are in general 7 types of cursors you can choose from to be associated with any (with the exception of a few) elements in a document. They are the "hand", "crosshair", "text", "wait", "move", "wait", and "resize" cursor. "

"Developer's note

You may be wondering why the "hand" style has two declarations within its tag. The reason is to please both NS6 and IE4+, the former of which recognizes "pointer", while the later, "hand"."

Errata

It's not funny.

+++

Read the post mortems, listen to the interviews, and you'll find no mention of what a governor might actually do for a living. According to our more reputable news sources, the California recall issues were those of 'character' rather than work; 'coldness' and 'groping' rather than conspiracy and sabotage. A political campaign is a wrestling match or star search or 'Big Brother' poll, not a job interview.

Subvert democracy when it goes against you, then ensure it doesn't do so again; open Q&A, debates, and policy disclosures are for losers. Following on last year's election, we can declare such precepts thoroughly vindicated: California's provided as pure a test case as imaginable. Missile defense research should be so lucky.

If 2001 wasn't enough to teach voters that elections have consequences, I doubt I'll live to see the lesson learned.

Morning verses

At 4:15 a.m.
he attacks.
Beard biter!
Eyebrow nipper!
Ear licker!

Ride the swell,
Break the softness of water
with your round snout,
Shiver and spout,
Black canvas on a wide blue sea,
Calls echo but unheard
Your wish for freedom
now endured,
As sweet vines of seaweed ripen,
And driftwood bob and nod,
Insipid loneliness turns into
your only beacon.

-kara

Luna is a young Orca whale who became separated from his Mother and pod during the winter of 2000/2001. He now interacts with humans for companionship and food.

California recall vote by county

Like, whatever

The winners of the worst analogy in a high school essay contest is floating around the Internet, even though it was first published in 1995 in the Washington Post. Among my favorites:

He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it. -- Joseph Romm, Washington

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't. -- Russell Beland, Springfield

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever. -- Unknown

He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree. -- Jack Bross, Chevy Chase

The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon. -- Unknown

I'm pretty sure these are deliberately stupid. The alternative is too dreadful to contemplate.

"It is essential to learn to confront the less pleasant aspects of existence. Our job as meditators is to learn to be patient with ourselves, to see ourselves in an unbiased way, complete with all our sorrows and inadequacies. We have to learn to be kind to ourselves. In the long run, avoiding unpleasantness is a very unkind thing to do to yourself. Paradoxically, kindness entails confronting unpleasantness when it arises. One popular human strategy for dealing with difficulty is autosuggestion: when something nasty pops up, you convince yourself it is pleasant rather than unpleasant. The Buddha's tactic is quite the reverse. Rather than hide it or disguise it, the Buddha's teaching urges you to examine it to death. Buddhism advises you not to implant feelings that you don't really have or avoid feelings that you do have. If you are miserable you are miserable; this is the reality, that is what is happening, so confront that. Look it square in the eye without flinching. When you are having a bad time, examine the badness, observe it mindfully, study the phenomenon and learn its mechanics. The way out of a trap is to study the trap itself, learn how it is built. You do this by taking the thing apart piece by piece. The trap can't trap you if it has been taken to pieces. The result is freedom.

This point is essential, but it is one of the least understood aspects of Buddhist philosophy.

<...snip...>

When you see a truck bearing down on you, by all means jump out of the way. But spend some time in meditation, too. Learning to deal with discomfort is the only way you'll be ready to handle the truck you didn't see."
- the Venerable Henepola Gunaratana
Mindfulness in Plain English
chapter 10

Exit Poll

conducted by Sherlock Jr. Assocs.)

Q: Would you prefer Rainer Wolfcastle or Troy McClure as Governor?

A: 'If that's what they cut out of an appropriations bill, what they leave in must be pure gold!'

"Mindfulness in a way is the opposite of grasping, or attachment, or identification. And it can go very, very deep when we allow ourselves, because what we start to see - if we slow down a little bit and pay attention - is how it is a kind of conditioned phenomenon, like a machine, the mind spins this stuff out in a very orderly way by habit - thoughts, fantasies and memories. The world works in certain conditioned patterns, and that's it's nature, and it's all impermanent and quite ungraspable. Where is yesterday? What happened to your weekend? Where is it? What happened to 1984, your 20's, or whatever it was - where did they go? They all disappeared, gone. Isn't that an amazing thing?

It's a very profound thing to start to be aware of life coming out of nothing and disappearing into nothing. A day appears for awhile, and then it's gone. It can't be grasped, it's like a bird flying. You cannot hold time and fundamentally you can't hold yourself."
- Jack Kornfield

CD-copy protection system said to have simple flaw

Tuesday October 7, 2:21 pm ET
By Ben Berkowitz

LOS ANGELES, Oct 7 (Reuters) - A Princeton graduate student said on Monday that he has figured out a way to defeat new software intended to keep music CDs from being copied on a computer -- simply by pressing the Shift-key.
ADVERTISEMENT


In a paper posted on his Web site late Monday, John Halderman said the MediaMax CD3 software developed by SunnComm Technologies Inc. (OTC BB:STEH.OB - News) could be defeated on computers running the Windows operating system by holding down the Shift key, disabling a Windows feature that automatically launches the encryption software on the disc.
Halderman said the protection could also be disabled by stopping the driver the CD installs when it is first inserted into a computer's drive.
Computers running Linux and older versions of the Mac operating system are unable to run the software and are able to copy the disc freely, he said.
The CD in question, Anthony Hamilton's 'Comin' From Where I'm From,' was released by BMG's Arista label in late September. Music retailers praised the release, which BMG touted as a breakthrough in the industry's efforts to prevent music piracy.
'SunnComm's claims of robust protection collapse, when subjected to scrutiny, and their system's weaknesses are not only academic,' Halderman said in the report.
[more]

As seen on TV: New $20 bill

By Theresa Howard, USA TODAY


Click here to see larger imageNEW YORK — Got change for a $20 bill? The U.S. government does and will roll out the revamped note this week, backed by a $30 million marketing campaign to alert businesses and enlist consumer help in the battle against counterfeiting.

On Thursday, about $19 billion worth of the bills — with a new watermark, color, security thread and unframed Andrew Jackson — go into distribution. The marketing includes TV ads, a sweepstakes and, in a government first, product placement in TV shows.
[more]

Anti-RIAA group calls for CD boycott

By Tony Smith
Posted: 07/10/2003 at 15:33 GMT

Music lovers are being asked to boycott the world's major recording labels in a bid to force them to encourage the Recording Industry Ass. of America (RIAA) to end its legal campaign against file sharers.

A certain phrase regarding the viability of snowballs in the Acheronic depths springs to mind at this point, but we'll put aside our scepticism and continue.

Describing the music industry as a bunch of 'bullies', a group calling themselves the Whose Niuews Crue are asking music fans to throw Halloween Raves in which only downloaded songs should be played. At the same time, listeners should vow not to buy music from any record label or any artist who supports suing folk who share songs over the Internet.
[more]

Then am I / A happy fly, / If I live, / Or if I die.

One of the pleasanter aspects to being a critic rather than a pundit or preacher is that we, by definition, don't want everyone else to be the same as ourselves. Because if they were, we'd vanish.

It's odd how many of us want to throw that advantage away.

Let us follow instead the example of Musca domestica, who buzzes and infects without debate or enmity.

Leaving The Yukon

My Dearest Readers, I am leaving the Yukon. This place of great space, unique and tolerant communities, of life still wild, has been the perfect womb for my Selfness. Incubated by this vastness to a state of complete readiness to make a gift of Me - My Love flowered in my arms.

And so, come Monday, I embark on a 5500 kilometer road trip to (re)join my soul-mate Cyndy. Our dreams will mesh as dharmatic, singular creativity - intrinsical immanence and certain explication. It is rare indeed to find that person who completes one's being, rarer still to have the calmness and courage to admit it - intense jealousy is the usual if repressed emotion experienced by those subjected to such professions.

Does that mean I'm being rude to you by expressing joy in our discovery? Are we so conditioned to the endlessly projected co-miserable states of quiet desperation that Love, sweet Love, is considered at best a passing neurochemical state (attribution implied, eh)? I think not. The singularity is, don't blink, missed IT.

Attention.

The Return of Cabin Girl

I have come up with a plan that Adam Stein deems “sufficiently asinine” to meet his approval. This verdict is from a man who bussed across China during the SARS epidemic, so I am proud.

Ranger Tim owns a log cabin on Kedey Island in the Ottawa River. It’s a beautiful cottage, built by a retired cop from Ottawa. Not surprisingly, the ex-Mountie didn’t manage to get the logs to fit as perfectly as the Finns who built the Beaver Rock camp in the 1920s, and so this cabin is not exactly winterproof. In fact, Tim clocked it at 26 below in the kitchen last February, with the small woodstove going full blast. I would start weeping and shedding extremities at those temperatures, but then, I am not Canadian.

So I am going to help him to build a small winter cabin before the Ottawa freezes, which should be any minute now. I’m considering it a second autumn. He doesn’t have a job. I don’t have a job. We have copies of A Pattern Language, The Timeless Way of Building, and several worrying titles along the lines of Fun Projects With Your Chainsaw. He just bought an outboard motor, a secondhand chainsaw, and several boxes of woodscrews. I bought steel-toed safety boots. I am all set for Cabin Girl: The Sequel.
[more]

Morning verses

Is there a woman who is not
at heart a fire,
a man who's not a chasm?
But to each lion, its particular thorn.

David Appell At BloggerCon Free Day

Maybe it's some vestage of the dot come bubble, maybe it's a disease that effects geeks in general, but their was a sense that blogs are a medium about to take over the world was, to me, very self-important and very off-putting. Why should I give a crap what Oliver Willis thinks about the presidential race? If it weren't for his blog he'd be just another schlub like the rest of us.

That was the biggest disappointment. Unfortunately, it was somewhat expected. The best part of the day was Eugene Volokh's session on Weblogs and the Law, where several aspects of blogging, public journalism, and the first amendment were discussed. Mostly what was cool is that Eugene is a cool guy who would surely make a great professor no matter what the topic, but especially did on his topic, which is media and the first amendment. Frankly, I could have listened to him all day long, and it's too bad I didn't get the chance.

UPDATE: The other thing was, I don't get this hyper-connectivity thing. During Eugene's session, someone was videotaping it directly to a Webcast. Dan Gillmor's brother was apparently watching this Webcast, and IM'd Doc Searls--surfing via WiFi--about some copyright comment that Dan Gillmore had just made live and in person. Searls felt compelled to share this with everyone in the room.

Please. Maybe it was a technically novel accomplishment, but if so it was a wasted accomplishment, because it failed to contribute even one iota to the discussion or to anyone's understanding of what was being discussed. In fact, frankly it was a distraction which cut away from, for a few/five/ten seconds, whatever collective, in-person, human concentration was taking place in the room. In a way it was cold and somewhat dumb, and left me with a metallic taste of what I hope the future never becomes.

Sometimes you just need to cut the cord.

"At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time."
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Oops. Jerry Sadowitz accidentally gives away the mechanics behind David Blaine's box stunt. While also surely also accidentally calling Blaine a "megalomaniacal, attention-seeking, time-wasting, Jesus-fixated American tit ":

"Imagine being David Blaine right now... how awful! Living in a box barely twice the size of the average studio flat in Camden, with only nutrients (food and drink) being fed to you through a tube by day; sneaking off on the back of a cherry-picker at night (under the guise of a man wiping/emptying the box); going to the effort of freeze-framing the "shot" of being asleep at night to fool the cameras (controlled by your own production company naturally); the effort of strategically positioning ground-lights at night so that passers-by can't see the back of the box when he makes the switch; and having to convince the whole world that you're starving and miserable when you have $50m, a gorgeous celebrity girlfriend and your delusions of grandeur satisfied by a media that can't get enough of you. It must be terrible..."

Will It Work This Time?

Teaching Your Box To Count

<form method="POST" name="wordcount">

  <script language="JavaScript">



function countit(){





var formcontent=document.wordcount.wordcount2.value

formcontent=formcontent.split(" ")

document.wordcount.wordcount3.value=formcontent.length

}

</script>

<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="440">

    <tr>

      <td width="80%"><textarea rows="12" name="wordcount2" cols="50" wrap="virtual">

Use this area to count the quotes you've found!  

Clear out this text, type one word per quote you've found, 

and then hit the button to calculate!  Woo!  (seperate each quote with a comma, 

don't use extra spaces!  example: quote1, quote2, quote3...)</textarea></td>

    </tr>

    <tr>

      <td width="80%"><div align="right"><p><input type="button" value="Number of Quotes:"

      onClick="countit()"> <input type="text" name="wordcount3" size="20"></div></td>

    </tr>

  </table>

</form>

Number 1 Google

Getting Ready For Halloween BATS!

Tales out of art school

How do you tell a graphic design major from a textile design major? Two Blowhards runs John Leavitt's profiles of the many varieties of art students at Manhattan's Fashion Institute of Technology.

Ad Design: Smug. Greedy. Dumb. Dress embarassingly up-to-date. Can't draw.

Graphic Design: Jerks. Undeservedly big egos. Neophiles (in love with everything new). Overly cozy with Ad Design. Can't draw.

Fine Arts: Drug-addicted. Lazy. Talentless. Dress like hobos despite trust funds. Can't draw.

Illustration (Women): Quiet Korean girls. Good draftsmen, if overly concerned with shading.

Illustration (Men): Fat. Live with parents. Can (sometimes) draw, if only busty barbarian babes.

Textile Design: Shy girls. Very Patient. Can Draw.

There's more -- with illustrations. Who knew it's possible to major in package design?

THE ARCTIC PERENNIAL SEA ICE COULD BE GONE BY END OF THE CENTURY

Polar Ice 1990 - 1999
Polar Ice 1990 - 1999A NASA study finds that perennial sea ice in the Arctic is melting faster than previously thought—at a rate of 9 percent per decade. If these melting rates continue for a few more decades, the perennial sea ice will likely disappear entirely within this century, due to rising temperatures and interactions between ice, ocean and the atmosphere that accelerate the melting process.

Perennial sea ice floats in the polar oceans and remains at the end of the summer, when the ice cover is at its minimum and seasonal sea ice has melted. This year-round ice averages about 3 meters (9.8 feet) in depth, but can be as thick as 7 meters (23 feet).

The study also finds that temperatures in the Arctic are increasing at the rate of 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 Fahrenheit) per decade.
[more]