One thing I've been meaning to blog on is my kids stories I tell at night.

When brianna was young, I used to tell little boy stories. These were stories from my young live, stories that made me into a hero, or I did crazy things, or I did stupid things, and my daughter would eat it up.

Second child, bryce, we moved into two different story types. One, where I would actually quickly draw pictures of chub and the princess....(bryce and brianna) doing crazy things on silly adventures. it took forever, so I went to Captain Yoder stories. These were pirate like stories, and i borrowed alot for Homer, and other mythology ( Xanadu, etc).
Then Ryan came around, and just as I ended those stories, Little Billy stories came about. This is a little billy story:

One day there was a little boy named billy. Billy was a good boy, he had brown hair and green eyes. He woke up one day in his dinosaur pajamas, the ones with the t-rexes in them. When he looked up ( or down or sideways or in the back yard)...he saw three lumps. These lumps were magical! So billy ran downstairs, and into the garage....but wait! Mom yanks him back and says " Little billy , you have to eat breakfast first!" Well, Little Billy was excited because mom made him Alien Pancakes! He ate seventeen of them!!

So, after that, he put his pants, and shoes and sox on, and then ran in to the garage, got his shovel with the red handle, and ran back up stairs. He started digging on those lumps....

Out of the first lump there was a frozen (sometimes not) Billy quickly ran to get warm water...and freed the guyy.

Second lump produced another good guy

Finally ,the third lump produced a BAD guy...and then a battle ensued, and the good guys find creative and funny ways to beat up the bad guys, and then they all run for ice cream or to the beach. Then they go back in there hole, and mom comes up, wonders what the mess is all about, and tells Ryan and Billy to get ready for dinner!

I know, that this time, there moments with my kids as their young still, are the very best times of my life. My only regret is that I cannot be a rich retired fart so that I can spend more time with my wonderful children. They are my life, a life I created with my wife.

Its awesome.

iGoogle

iGoogle: "The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
- Bertrand Russell"

iGoogle

iGoogle: "The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.
- John Cage"

more soon...must figure out better blog strategy......

Quote

iGoogle: "A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.
- Segal's Law"

boogle.com - google search engine with quotes

boogle.com - google search engine with quotes: "Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.

Horace"

Nitpicker / The Humane Interface

Nitpicker / The Humane Interface

Summary.

An interface should be effective, habituating, reliable, efficient, and tested. To the extent that doing so does not conflict with these essentials, an interface should also be attractive.

Cool Agile Quotes

Some great quotes on their website:

Distance is an excuse to postpone action. The more time you allocate to your projects, the longer it will be before you take action.

Transparency equals control. Transparency in product development means visibility into whats happening...and what isn't.

A note on that. Command and control is a paradigm of that a single hierarchical group or person can control complex systems behavior by establishing direction and by tightly controlling variance to that direction. Transparency, as I see it, means that there is only general direction, but that daily activities are visilbe to the stakeholders. So while they do not control the day to day activities, they can see them, and see what is causing them. You view behavior of a system rather than its individual components, and then correct by usually removing things outside of that system that are causing slowness or issues. If the problem is inside the system, since in Agile systems are small and peer-based, it should correct itself before its affect is obvious to an outside observer.

Agile Journal - Software Development Screwtape Letter

As both an agile advocate and a CS Lewis fan, this got me. One interesting concept from this, one that I had not heard, was that of a "cargo cult". I see cargo cults as the primary risk in going forward with top-down agile implementations, especially if the "top" doesn't get it.

Cargo cults:
During World War II a number of airbases were built on remote tropical islands inhabited by pre-industrial societies. During the war soldiers built airfields and control towers and engaged in various activities that resulted in large airplanes full of cargo landing and discharging their contents. The native inhabitants shared this cargo. After the war the soldiers departed and no more cargo was available to the natives. So they adopted, as best they could, the superficial form of airstrips, control towers, and ritual behaviors intended to induce the return of planes full of cargo. A cargo cult is any group that adopts form instead of substance and believes that doing so will bring about a desired result.

Agile Journal - Software Development Screwtape Letter

Happy New Year

Well, 2009 is here. Crapola, another year on the ticker. Hopefully I've got a lot of them left!

A quick list of resolutionites (mini-resolutions)

Personal:
1. Participate in the lukemia run this summer ( train now!)
2. Finishing Amici Picolli, my first children s book, and submitting to at least one agent. Date - End of year.
3. Building up HappyWisdom.com. This is crazy that I let that site linger. I want to refresh the page, get some fresh, systems thinking in there. Not sure. Maybe a new technology would help. So, goal: new content, one ad-drive at least. Date Fall, 09.
4. My book.. how about we just finish ONE chapter. The First Chapter, and then see what the interest is. Goal- One chapter and one query letter sent out. Summer 09.
5. Drawing. I need to really put resources into this, now that we have a new understanding of how healthy this is for your brain and innovation.

Travel:
1. Get julie down to Texas..
2. Get the fam to NY...?
3. Get us all to Disney...?

Work/School:
1. Stay employed (this is beyond me, but shows my mental state right now)
2. Bring innovation to my group via systems thinking.
3. Kick butt at a school and continue my enjoyable journey.
4. Go to Agile? Go to Pegasus in November. Lean conference(s)
Start the Tech Fellowship process - This happens NOW!

Love this quote

While I was generating anagrams, look what I find. NICE. :)


Internet Anagram Server : Anagrams for Fecarotta: "Thought of the Moment:

In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists. -Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)"

Ground Zero: Google Maps and Nuclear Weapons

Ground Zero: Google Maps and Nuclear Weapons

Now this is amazing. It'll tell you how bad you'd do if a major city near you got nuked.

Ode to my children

There is little that I can think of that compares to having children. My three babies are so central to who I am now I'm not sure where I end and they begin.

My oldest, Brianna, is the same sweet baby she's been her whole life, despite the layering of a pre-teen intellect and attitude. I'm very hopeful we'll get through her teenage years relatively unscathed.

I have to say it was very hard for me to watch her grow up. I actually had a nightmare, where I got up saying I can't let my baby go! It was a strong dream, and dug up some issues for my conscious mind to deal with. It was as if my subconscious was saying, "Look pal, you gotta face this. Don't leave me with this crap." Brianna is turning into such a beautiful woman. Her stature is amazing. She's going to get a lot of "attention".

Not going there.


The thing with babies, and here I refer to any human child under say 6, is that the relationship is VERY physical. They kiss, and hug, and tickle, and you can still pick them up. They're very much still a part of you, connected not by umbilical chord, but by constant physical contact. Even more so than my spouse. Ryan turns on his "kiss machine" where he starts kissing into the air and we drag him close to get some free kisses.

Its so wonderful I can't imagine a world without it.

And therein lies the turd. There is an end to it. I often kick myself for having the snipping done....thinking perhaps a 4th would have delayed this inevitable task of letting go. But only by a few years, at the enormous cost that comes with another child. Brianna needs julie to be on. She needs a teacher who's going to get our first homeschooled baby out the door and into college. We cannot fail her. Part of the decision to stop was that. Also, it would have been tough to do a masters with another baby. And we don't have all that much room. The cost financially....we're heavily leveraged in and very much upsidedown in this house now. Once again it seems I get to the party a bit too late. (Just know this: I tried very hard to wait for a house. This was not a case of me being surprised by the collapse of the housing market. It was those around me unable to wait, but that subject is for another post).

So there was every reason in the world to stop, but with Ryan turning 4 I have the unpleasant mental task of letting my last baby go in the next few years.... This kissing fest will end, to have nothing at all to replace it. How can this unending flow of love and unquestioning devotion end?

Having kids was so powerful because they love so strongly. Its so intense. They're so ridiculously cute, and vulnerable, and the eyes. Ryan's eyes are killer.

Then when we watch Brianna and Bryce. Bryce was a fireball, a sweet kissing baby. "can I kip it?" is what he'd say. What a fine young man he's turning out to be. He was speaking to an really old lady at church the other day. He was engaged, leaning over to talk with her, unflinching, and smilign. How many 9 year olds would have that spirit to talk to such a person? She loved him instantly. He's special.

YEs, the mispronunciations. Love them. Ryan turns all "k" sounds to "t"....so Diet Coke is Diet Tote. You see! Where the hell am I going to get stuff like that after he's grown up?

The hugging in bed -- bedtime ritual. We used to beat each other up , julie and i, when we'd lay with Brianna since you're not "supposed to" . Well, hell with that. We lay, and snuggle, and take a really poorly timed nap, right next to that little guy for 4 years now, and enjoy every minute of it. Screw the experts.

Ryan then joins us, sometime in the night, every night running in to finish the evening with us.

Love it. Then I get to wake up to hugs and kisses and love. Hugging.

Ryan has a balance to him, he loves to wrestle, he's fair, he's athletic. He's got a laugh that comes from his soul. He worships his brother.

Bryce loves Brianna, and respects her. We all still wrestle, though they're getting so big now. Brianna dotes on her littlest brother, and is best friends with Bryce. Awesome.

A quick, depressing timeline:

0-1 Total contact - they can't walk or do anything
1-2 alot of contact - still can't do much, but they're laughing now. So tickles start
2-4 contact. But wrestling now. You can throw a 2 year old a surprisng distance, and hold them with one hand upside-down, to the horror of the females around you. but their so light! I'm proud to say I've never dropped one. But this is about the time your shoulder wears out and your feeling the pain.
5-6 - Wrestling is more important. Hugs and kisses fall off precipitiously. More pain. Kids cause damage at this age.
7+ - Kisses upon request. Wrestling dies down with girls....but not boys. Mostly, they want to do stuff with you, but its their stuff. At least they stil want me around.
10+ Now they're anxious to go places with friends, sleepovers, trips to cabins with youth groups, etc etc. Kisses and hugs are at a low here. They're really started to leave you here. This is total crapola.

Is it just the hunger for touch that is causing this?

They're really funny too, toddlers are. They laugh alot, more than other older kids. Well, bryce laughs alot. They play easier, they're easier to please. Ryan will do anything I want with him really. Store. Movie, video game. Anything. When they get their own interests....its good, but its...different. Brianna's easy to hang out with. She's actually easy to go places with, bookstores and reading. We do homework together. That's nice. She's using photoshop. I'm teaching her what I can. She loves the internet.

Bryce beats me at video games with too much regularity. So that's fun too. (hmm, there's a pattern here...wait,I still want to be depressed. No shiny side yet!)

So you worry alot. But I worry no matter what age they are. But this is one thing that does get better with age. So much can take a 2 year old down. But not as much at 7 and beyond.

I'm trying to pin down why I love them so much and why it so hard to see them grow. It'll be the most calamitous event in my life when Ryan leaves. He's 4, so I've got a while. But the truth is is that they leave incrementally, piece by piece, so when they're 18 they've been gone for a while.

What can I do about it? Jack. Nadda. Nothing.

Ultimately we weep for our own life's passing. As more and more of my life passes I miss more and more of it. That's all. I miss the navy ( parts) , I miss my sisters and mom dearly, and I miss college. I miss the julie I met, and I like the julieI have now. I miss Dave and Tim, and dozens of friends in between...I'm upset I can't be with them more. I miss the old me, but I like me better now, for the most part. It pisses me off that we can't remember every detail. What they heck good is it living through all of this when you can hardly remember most of it. Just to get to old age and then forget the remainder. What is the point? I want to hold all of that. Always.

This post is morose. I'm nauseous from some bad popcorn, so forgive me. With this excellent grad program, and what seems to be a rebounding career at Boeing, and a great house, a lot of nice things, things are good. I should survive this downturn, and come out of it with a shiny new grad degree and some 5 years of consulting experience under my belt. Very nice. I'm moving into age with intention. I'm setting up my next career, potentially, and it has to be right. I really have to finish my last 60+ years (unless the singularity comes, then 600!) with intention and zeal. I fear death less these days. That's good. The sleep, and lack of worry, and getting that thing over with....that one fear that ultimately takes you. Who needs that? Someday I'll say, lets just get on with it....that day is not today.

My next career move has to be big, since it has to 1) support a better lifestyle ( will I ever ever be secure??) 2) support me following my kids around. 3) get me some fame. One good thing about stopping at 3 kids is now I have a chance to really make a dent in the world. I want to publish. PhD could happen. Consultation...who knows? I'm serious, I'd love to consult on the road with my family. See the country, get on the road, spend those last few precious years with my daughter before she leaves.

That will be a crushing day.

And I have no concept on how to deal with it in the least. I prepare them best I can for a day that I dread -- going to the world. Everything a parent does is to get the kid ready to leave the nest, which kills the parent. Giving live is taking it. She'll find a guy, get married, and I'll be a grandpa. There are certainly fun things in there, right? I really like my mother and father and brother in law.

So my kids will move away and have kids. Then, just maybe, kisses will come back to my life.

Will it be the same? Will that work?

It has to. It has to. It has to. It has to. It has to. It has to. It has to. It has to. It has to. It has to.

- Joe

Capitalism, dead? It hasn't even lived yet

One last thing, before you consider capitalism completely dead.....

Laissez-faire capitalism has a definite meaning, which is totally ignored, contradicted, and downright defiled by such statements as those quoted above. Laissez-faire capitalism is a politico-economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and in which the powers of the state are limited to the protection of the individual's rights against the initiation of physical force. This protection applies to the initiation of physical force by other private individuals, by foreign governments, and, most importantly, by the individual's own government. This last is accomplished by such means as a written constitution, a system of division of powers and checks and balances, an explicit bill of rights, and eternal vigilance on the part of a citizenry with the right to keep and bear arms. Under laissez-faire capitalism, the state consists essentially just of a police force, law courts, and a national defense establishment, which deter and combat those who initiate the use of physical force. And nothing more.

The utter absurdity of statements claiming that the present political-economic environment of the United States in some sense represents laissez-faire capitalism becomes as glaringly obvious as anything can be when one keeps in mind the extremely limited role of government under laissez-faire and then considers the following facts about the present-day United States:

1. Government spending in the United States currently equals more than forty percent of national income, i.e., the sum of all wages and salaries and profits and interest earned in the country. This is without counting any of the massive off-budget spending such as that on account of the government enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Nor does it count any of the recent spending on assorted "bailouts." What this means is that substantially more than forty dollars of every one hundred dollars of output are appropriated by the government against the will of the individual citizens who produce that output. The money and the goods involved are turned over to the government only because the individual citizens wish to stay out of jail. Their freedom to dispose of their own incomes and output is thus violated on a colossal scale. In contrast, under laissez-faire capitalism, government spending would be on such a modest scale that a mere revenue tariff might be sufficient to support it. The corporate and individual income taxes, inheritance and capital gains taxes, and social security and Medicare taxes would not exist.

2. There are presently fifteen federal cabinet departments, nine of which exist for the very purpose of respectively interfering with housing, transportation, healthcare, education, energy, mining, agriculture, labor, and commerce, and virtually all of which nowadays routinely ride roughshod over one or more important aspects of the economic freedom of the individual. Under laissez-faire capitalism, eleven of the fifteen cabinet departments would cease to exist and only the departments of justice, defense, state, and treasury would remain. Within those departments, moreover, further reductions would be made, such as the abolition of the IRS in the Treasury Department and the Antitrust Division in the Department of Justice.

3. The economic interference of today's cabinet departments is reinforced and amplified by more than one hundred federal agencies and commissions, the most well known of which include, besides the IRS, the FRB and FDIC, the FBI and CIA, the EPA, FDA, SEC, CFTC, NLRB, FTC, FCC, FERC, FEMA, FAA, CAA, INS, OHSA, CPSC, NHTSA, EEOC, BATF, DEA, NIH, and NASA. Under laissez-faire capitalism, all such agencies and commissions would be done away with, with the exception of the FBI, which would be reduced to the legitimate functions of counterespionage and combating crimes against person or property that take place across state lines.

4. To complete this catalog of government interference and its trampling of any vestige of laissez faire, as of the end of 2007, the last full year for which data are available, the Federal Register contained fully seventy-three thousand pages of detailed government regulations. This is an increase of more than ten thousand pages since 1978, the very years during which our system, according to one of The New York Times articles quoted above, has been "tilted in favor of business deregulation and against new rules." Under laissez-faire capitalism, there would be no Federal Register. The activities of the remaining government departments and their subdivisions would be controlled exclusively by duly enacted legislation, not the rule-making of unelected government officials.

5. And, of course, to all of this must be added the further massive apparatus of laws, departments, agencies, and regulations at the state and local level. Under laissez-faire capitalism, these too for the most part would be completely abolished and what remained would reflect the same kind of radical reductions in the size and scope of government activity as those carried out on the federal level.

What this brief account has shown is that the politico-economic system of the United States today is so far removed from laissez-faire capitalism that it is closer to the system of a police state. The ability of the media to ignore all of the massive government interference that exists today and to characterize our present economic system as one of laissez faire and economic freedom marks it as, if not profoundly dishonest, then as nothing less than delusional.

http://mises.org/story/3165

Gallery: Sci-Fi-Inspired Concept Ships Show Future of Travel

Coolness.

Gallery: Sci-Fi-Inspired Concept Ships Show Future of Travel

K12: K12 Inc. - Home schooling curriculum, public school options, virtual academy schools, virtual charter, distance learning programs for elementary

Man these things are growing like crazy. Homeschooling or non-government schooling is the future!

K12: K12 Inc. - Home schooling curriculum, public school options, virtual academy schools, virtual charter, distance learning programs for elementary & high school grades, in Science, Math, History, English, Language Arts and more!

Lifelike animation heralds new era for computer games - Times Online

A new level of realism has been attained for Computer graphics. It looks like they FINALLY got the eyes right!
Awesome job guys over at Image Metrics. This is Emily, which is significantly more impressive than any video I've seen, even from their website. I'm convinced that in my lifetime these will be standard in every digital experience, and even perhaps change how work occurs. What if its easier bandwidth wise to do this: 1. Video my face in standard lighting with HD. Then 2. Send just the coordinates of change over the pipe. The screen renders in realtime. Way easier than piping HD video over the Net. AND my appearance would be consistent without me doing any real work on it :)

Lifelike animation heralds new era for computer games - Times Online

June 2008

Just love quotes!

"Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.
- Robertson Davies

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
- Samuel Johnson

There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don't know.
- Ambrose Bierce"


Memoirs. Inherently egotistical, but I'm compelled to write one. Partly just to remember, to celebrate, but mostly to review for patterns of successful behaviors and draw conclusions, which usually only come via such experiences. My efforts to draw wisdom juice out of my 40 plus years will undoubtedly bore most people not in my circle of love, but I may have to try it, if just to silence the inner voice that nags me about it. These works ask to be born.

I've been thinking some about resonance, and about patterns. I've been looking at my work and how teams collaborate. I was humming in the public bathroom recently and I always have enjoyed how my lower register resonates in them. I meditated on that effect today, after the terrific Kung Fu Panda movie. Between a three year old boy and a 4 decade old bladder that is more of a gravity feed system now, I spend alot of time in toilets these days. When my voice resonates, its almost like someone else is singing with me. It is as if the voice inside of me has found life outside of me. Its louder clean bass tone. I feel it helping me stay on pitch. I am sad when I stop and it doesn't continue.

Is there a way that software development teams resonate? What patterns are there for effective teams? I recall this last football season. Despite losing the super bowl, the NE patriots were the best team of the year in my opinion. Their victories, 18 in a row, had an aire of inevitability. There were moments when each member of that team would pick up where the others would slack off. Now the Giants clearly had their weakspot figured out -- offensive line. The blitz was the death of Brady, and really in football the QB has to be secured or you can't perform. I imagine if their RB was just a bit more dominating they could have run against that crazy blitz, but I digress.

The Steelers, the 49ers, the Patriots. These teams seem to resonate on the field. Actors, in shows like X-files and MASH, true classics such as Lord of the Rings, Lost, The Matrix ( how about that energy between Neo and Trinity!) and X-files resonate with each other and the audience. Movies are an excellent example since if they do not resonate, they usually fail. Politics, art, science ( read about how those teams cracked the human genome)...every endeavor has some notion of resonance. What stops resonance? What causes it? Ponder I must.

Digg lunatics

I get an RSS feed from DIGG I continuously think of removing since its just a bunch of loonies ranting against Bush. What are they EVER going to do after the election?

Anyway, one fellow commented this, and it is AWESOME:


"My position is very clear: The time has come for decisive action to eliminate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. I'm a co-sponsor of the bipartisan Resolution that's presently under consideration in the Senate. Saddam Hussein's regime is a grave threat to America and our allies. We know that he has chemical and biological weapons today, that he's used them in the past, and that he's doing everything he can to build more. Every day he gets closer to his long-term goal of nuclear capability.

Democracy will not spring up by itself overnight in a multi-ethnic, complicated society that's suffered under one repressive regime after another for generations. The Iraqi people deserve and need our help to rebuild their lives and to create a prosperous, thriving, open society. All Iraqis, including Sunnis, Shia and Kurds, deserve to be represented. This is not just a moral imperative. It's a security imperative. It is in America's national interest to help build an Iraq at peace with itself and its neighbors, because a democratic, tolerant and accountable Iraq will be a peaceful regional partner, and such an Iraq could serve as a model for the entire Arab world."

Senator John Edwards (Democrat, North Carolina)
Speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
October 7, 2002

and this:

Impeach Bush? How quaint.

I fully expect the robot Libs to digg this down because the truth hurts too much to acknowledge.

Let's look at what some Democrats said about Iraq and Hussein, some of which were said BEFORE Bush was elected.

Nancy Pelosi: Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons-of-mass-destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.

Senator Clinton agreed, October 2002: In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical- and biological-weapons stock, his missile-delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al-Qaeda members.

Al Gore in September 2002: We know that [Saddam] has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country. Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter, and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.

John Kerry, also speaking in 2002: I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force--if necessary--to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.

Sen. Ted Kennedy: "We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."

Bill Clinton himself, speaking in 1998: If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction program.

Secretary of State Madeline Albright, also speaking in 1998: Iraq is a long way from [the USA], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risk that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.

Quite a list, wouldn't you say?

Nice!

Computer Reads Minds

Another one of these Transhuman things......popping up all over the place.

------

Computer trained to "read" mind images of words
Thu May 29, 2008 4:32pm EDT
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A computer has been trained to "read" people's minds by looking at scans of their brains as they thought about specific words, researchers said on Thursday.

They hope their study, published in the journal Science, might lead to better understanding of how and where the brain stores information.

This might lead to better treatments for language disorders and learning disabilities, said Tom Mitchell of the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, who helped lead the study.

"The question we are trying to get at is one people have been thinking about for centuries, which is: How does the brain organize knowledge?" Mitchell said in a telephone interview.

"It is only in the last 10 or 15 years that we have this way that we can study this question."

Mitchell's team used functional magnetic resonance imaging, a type of brain scan that can see real-time brain activity.

They calibrated the computer by having nine student volunteers think of 58 different words, while imaging their brain activity.

"We gave instructions to people where we would tell them, 'We are going to show you words and we would like you, when you see this word, to think about its properties,'" Mitchell said.

They imaged each of the nine people thinking about the 58 different words, to create a kind of "average" image of a word.

"If I show you the brain images for two words, the main thing you notice is that they look pretty much alike. If you look at them for a while you might see subtle differences," Mitchell said.

"We have the program calculate the mean brain activity over all of the words that somebody has looked at. That gives us the average when somebody thinks about a word, and then we subtract that average out from all those images," Mitchell added.

Then the test came.

"After we train on the other 58 words, we can say 'Here are two new words you have not seen, celery and airplane.'" The computer was asked to choose which brain image corresponded with which word.

The computer passed the test, predicting when a brain image was taken when a person thought about the word "celery" and when the assigned word was "airplane."

The next step is to study brain activity for phrases.

"If I say 'rabbit' or 'fast rabbit' or 'cuddly rabbit', those are very different ideas," Mitchell said.

"I want to basically use that as a kind of scaffolding for studying language processing in the brain."

Mitchell was surprised at how similar brain activity was among the nine volunteers, although the work was painstaking. For an MRI to work well, the patient must sit or lie very still for several minutes.

"It can be hard to focus," Mitchell said. "Somewhere in the middle of that their stomach growls. And all of sudden they think, 'I'm hungry -- oops.' It's not a controllable experiment."

(Editing by Eric Walsh)

Monkeys Control a Mechanical Arm With Their Thoughts - NYTimes.com

May 29, 2008
Monkeys Control a Robot Arm With Their Thoughts
By BENEDICT CAREY

Two monkeys with tiny sensors in their brains have learned to control a mechanical arm with just their thoughts, using it to reach for and grab food and even to adjust for the size and stickiness of morsels when necessary, scientists reported on Wednesday.

The report, released online by the journal Nature, is the most striking demonstration to date of brain-machine interface technology. Scientists expect that technology will eventually allow people with spinal cord injuries and other paralyzing conditions to gain more control over their lives.

The findings suggest that brain-controlled prosthetics, while not practical, are at least technically within reach.

In previous studies, researchers showed that humans who had been paralyzed for years could learn to control a cursor on a computer screen with their brain waves and that nonhuman primates could use their thoughts to move a mechanical arm, a robotic hand or a robot on a treadmill.

The new experiment goes a step further. In it, the monkeys’ brains seem to have adopted the mechanical appendage as their own, refining its movement as it interacted with real objects in real time. The monkeys had their own arms gently restrained while they learned to use the added one.

Experts not involved with the study said the findings were likely to accelerate interest in human testing, especially given the need to treat head and spinal injuries in veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

“This study really pulls together all the pieces from earlier work and provides a clear demonstration of what’s possible,” said Dr. William Heetderks , director of the extramural science program at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. Dr. John P. Donoghue, director of the Institute of Brain Science at Brown University, said the new report was “important because it’s the most comprehensive study showing how an animal interacts with complex objects, using only brain activity.”

The researchers, from the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, used monkeys partly because of their anatomical similarities to humans and partly because they are quick learners.

In the experiment, two macaques first used a joystick to gain a feel for the arm, which had shoulder joints, an elbow and a grasping claw with two mechanical fingers.

Then, just beneath the monkeys’ skulls, the scientists implanted a grid about the size of a large freckle. It sat on the motor cortex, over a patch of cells known to signal arm and hand movements. The grid held 100 tiny electrodes, each connecting to a single neuron, its wires running out of the brain and to a computer.

The computer was programmed to analyze the collective firing of these 100 motor neurons, translate that sum into an electronic command and send it instantaneously to the arm, which was mounted flush with the left shoulder.

The scientists used the computer to help the monkeys move the arm at first, essentially teaching them with biofeedback.

After several days, the monkeys needed no help. They sat stationary in a chair, repeatedly manipulating the arm with their brain to reach out and grab grapes, marshmallows and other nuggets dangled in front of them. The snacks reached the mouths about two-thirds of the time — an impressive rate, compared with earlier work.

The monkeys learned to hold the grip open on approaching the food, close it just enough to hold the food and gradually loosen the grip when feeding.

On several occasions, a monkey kept its claw open on the way back, with the food stuck to one finger. At other times, a monkey moved the arm to lick the fingers clean or to push a bit of food into its mouth while ignoring a newly presented morsel.

The animals were apparently freelancing, discovering new uses for the arm, showing “displays of embodiment that would never be seen in a virtual environment,” the researchers wrote.

“In the real world, things don’t work as expected,” said the senior author of the paper, Dr. Andrew Schwartz, a professor of neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh. “The marshmallow sticks to your hand or the food slips, and you can’t program a computer to anticipate all of that.

“But the monkeys’ brains adjusted. They were licking the marshmallow off the prosthetic gripper, pushing food into their mouth, as if it were their own hand.”

The co-authors were Meel Velliste, Sagi Perel, M. Chance Spalding and Andrew Whitford.

Scientists have to clear several hurdles before this technology becomes practical, experts said. Implantable electrode grids do not generally last more than a period of months, for reasons that remain unclear.

The equipment to read and transmit the signal can be cumbersome and in need of continual monitoring and recalibrating. And no one has yet demonstrated a workable wireless system that would eliminate the need for connections through the scalp.

Yet Dr. Schwartz’s team, Dr. Donoghue’s group and others are working on all of the problems, and the two macaques’ rapid learning curve in taking ownership of a foreign limb gives scientists confidence that the main obstacles are technical and, thus, negotiable.

In an editorial accompanying the Nature study, Dr. John F. Kalaska, a neuroscientist at the University of Montreal, argued that after such bugs had been worked out, scientists might even discover areas of the cortex that allow more intimate, subtle control of prosthetic devices.

Such systems, Dr. Kalaska wrote, “would allow patients with severe motor deficits to interact and communicate with the world not only by the moment-to-moment control of the motion of robotic devices, but also in a more natural and intuitive manner that reflects their overall goals, needs and preferences.”

Web 2.5: The emergence of platforms-as-a-service | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com

On the road to the elusive Web 3.0 (something to do with semantics, meaning, and context rather than just data, links, and AJAX), core infrastructure is beginning to move from the edge to a center inhabited by companies such as Amazon, Salesforce.com, Joyent, and now Google with its new App Engine.

Call it Web 2.5, where the platform-as-a-service providers allow developers to create Web applications via the cloud and for users to consume them on any Web-connected device, anytime and anywhere. It eliminates what Amazon's Jeff Bezos describes as the "muck," the undifferentiated heavy lifting, such as setting up and maintaining servers, databases, storage, and networks.

It also leverages data centers from large players like Amazon and Google that were built from the ground up to support Web applications at huge, virtualized scale and with high reliability and relatively low cost. And, it creates potentially giant subscription-based revenue streams for the platform-as-a-service providers. They become utilities providing Web services to the planet and managing the high-value personal profile data.

Google App Engine, which was unveiled tonight at Google's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, offers similar capabilities to Amazon's EC2, S3, and SimpleDB services. Google App Engine is limited to using the Python language, Google APIs, and a relatively modest amount of storage, compute cycles, and bandwidth per day currently, but you can see where this is heading.

Google could parlay its search and advertising technology, market dominance, and its infrastructure prowess into a powerful engine that runs and monetizes thousands or millions of externally developed applications.

Salesforce.com provides a more mature example today with its Force.com platform. It allows developers to write applications, mostly CRM-oriented, in a variety of languages that can run natively on the Salesforce.com software platform and data centers.
(Credit: salesforce.com)

In many ways it is the Microsoft model--you need a subscription (license in the old days) to the platform to run your application. In this case, "run" means that Salesforce.com provides developers all the software and hardware services in exchange for a fee, which is based on specific metrics, such as Web services calls.

Rival NetSuite, as well as smaller outfits such as Bungee Labs, are seizing on the concept of providing complete cloud-based development and deployment platform services.

Microsoft hasn't yet shown its cards in the platform-as-a-service arena. Nor has the object of its affection, Yahoo. Microsoft has talked about SQL Server Data Services and the grand synchronization mesh, but it hasn't revealed any plans for an end-to-end hosted platform-as-a-service for developing and serving applications from the cloud. Mary Jo Foley has some insight on that topic.

Web 3.0 as envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee is not around the corner, but it is busily percolating. In parallel, platform-as-a-service is evolving, the plateau of Web 2.5. When the two meet, Web 3.0 will have arrived.

Liang Qichao on Love - Quotation - MSN Encarta

Liang Qichao on Love - Quotation - MSN Encarta: "Where there is dynamism there is interpenetration; where there is interpenetration there is universal love, so all mutually sympathetic things cannot remain apart."

Liang Qichao (1873 - 1929)

Government

"A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away." -- Barry Goldwater

Well, that says it all.

Had a great birthday recently. We stayed home, rather than the traditional going out to eat, we cracked open the video cases and watched videos from my kid's childhood. It was awesome and I recommend it to everyone who has kids, or just old videos. Its simply wonderful to go back and recollect those moments. It compresses your timeline, it makes the past feel like the present, and it helps gather your thoughts in how the 11 year old in front of you was such a little muffin not so long ago.

Delta Funding -- out

Did I tell this wonderful blog audience that my previous employer, Delta Funding, is no more? They folded a few months ago. I avoided the axe once again. I have a knack at seeing the axe coming, thus my streak of zero unemployment since I was 18 ( save college, which was intentional.)

Its interesting to think what would have happened had I stayed. I'd be commuting to the city everyday, part of possibility the worst grind in the world. I'm fairly certain my life would be orders of magnitude worse. Virtual office, as my current employer allows, is a HUGE plus. It gives me freedom to work when I can, and get away when I need to, and still work effectively. Its huge. The commute? Nary 20 minutes. THere's NO Place in NY I could have that commute. The only option would have been to start my own gig.....which requires funds far beyond what I currently possess.

Playing a ton of Call Of Duty 4 on the PS3. With its easy online features, extraordinary graphics, and great titles, I just don't see PC gaming getting out of this decade as a big player. The consoles rule the world.

TopGun scored!

Went to my son, TopGun, basketball game this Saturday, and it was AWESOME. He shot, and scored, saving the game from certain defeat! It was a lot of fun. The team really needs to learn how to pass the ball, but the play is aggressive and fun to watch.

Other things...we're getting ready for a little trip up to the mountains next month to take advantage of the epic snow up there this year.

Chubbie has found computers! He's relentless about them.....every day playing this or that....miniclip.com or battlefield, which he is dangerously good at for a 3 year old.

ShortStuff, my 11 year old girl, made us breakfast today for the first time. Dressed Eggs....I really liked them. Nutmeg, eggs, and alot of butter. Awesome.

Work is busy and good....need a break. Went to Internet Retailer conference. lots of learning. Love lost....its great this year. House was great with Mira Sorvinio ( sp).

Tax time....paying down car loan. Require freedom!

Wife got a killer hair cut. Blonde.....ooooohhh... :)

Nice

iGoogle: "The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.
- Frank Herbert"

Stephen Hawking's Quotations

Hawking's wonderful. I especially enjoy 10 and 2...

10. "Einstein was wrong when he said "God does not play dice". Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen."

9. "I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road."

8. "My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all."

7. "I find that American & Scandinavian accents work better with women." In response to a question about the American accent of his synthesiser.

6. "Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales. In the end, however, I did put in one equation, Einstein's famous equation, E = mc2. I hope that this will not scare off half of my potential readers."

5. "My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus."

4. "To show this diagram properly, I would really need a four dimensional screen. However, because of government cuts, we could manage to provide only a two dimensional screen."

3. "Life would be tragic if it weren't funny."

2. "The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired."

1. "Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end."

Happy New Year!

Okay, so here I'm supposed to record my resolutions. Well, guess what: I haven't made any yet.

Things, off the top of my head, that I'd like to accomplish this year:

1. I'd really like to get serious about this portal of mine. I think there is something there....but the time! What concrete goal? 2. Fitness. I have to drop about 20 pounds....maybe 15+ muscle.
3. MBA -- I'm foolish if I don't at least start this. Start MBA == success ( take GMAT, get transcripts, etc)
4. The Book -- I've got a good book idea, lots of interesting research. Lets say we have at least 50k words written by the april writers colony thing. ( need to request vac for this)
5. Work - I want to increase my abilites there, and go to conferences, etc. Lets go to agile 08. Lets get some training, join PMI?, and lock down title. ( need metrics here)
6. Finanical -- Get serious about budgeting. I wonder if we could get gazelle intense and pay off this car of mine?
7. Family -- I want to go somewhere cool on vacation with my family. Snow vacation, and summer disney (?)

Just for note, I'm really having a great time in my life. If I was a bit more finanical secure I'd be happier, but other than that, I'm good.

God bless us and protect us for the year 2008!




Thats it for now. I should add some meat to this later....The only way

Year in Review

So, with all that has happened this year, its probably appropriate that during the break I make some entries to record what has happend. :) I really need to find a way to record events as they happen, since right now I'm only remembering the year as a really long blur of events.

Work:
Work has been going very well. I'm a project manager at Boeing, as many know, in IT, and its great work. Web stuff...agile....web 2.0. Good stuff. I feel that i'm adding a lot of value and that I would be difficult to replace, which is a nice feeling. I'm considering an MBA, which would I think increase my value. Paid overtime, some good people, great benes...its nice. The corporate slowness though seems to irritate me. I wish they could be faster. I worry sometimes about my employer's future, or at least IT's future, if we don't get faster.

Family:
2007 is the first full year we spend in our new house. Its a very special home, with wood everywhere. Summer was fine...not too many kids. Life seems so busy now...swimming lessons, homeschooling, everything is up and running and we're not sure where any of it is going, but we're taking the steps we think are best.

B1's, ShortStuff, art is advancing at a good clip. She's got a terrific teacher here who is guiding her well. I'm admitedly confused about how hard to pressure her. Is art like piano and math and other things that you press and press to really distinguish yourself? I think so....so I press. With the world is flat sort of thing, we need to have our little girl well adhead when the time comes for competition. I'll take the action to get her into some competitions this year, and expand her influences, try to work out some sort of career path....at 11 its a bit early...or is it?

B2's, TopGun, doing great...he's got some terrific wits about him. He's smart, logical, with a wonderfully excessive personality. He pushes you...right to the edge. He'll challenge you. He's monster into football. And I can no longer consistently defeat him at Madden...and he's 8. Yikes.

R, Beethoven, is the cutest thing in the world. I mean, funny affectionate, friendly, sensitive, listens to us....he's gold. He's 100% potty trained, before 3. We went to the Messaiah today and he loved it....as we all did. Prior to that we took them to the Nutcracker. My oh my, he never wanted to stop listening to the Transiberian version of that song. Then we went and did our "family shop" were we buy for each other. Went to the to Northgate. It was terrific.

My NY family is doing well. We still all miss eachother very much. Talk of them flyin' out here next year. That'd be really nice. That crazy thing with my sisters kid almost drowning...I mean yikes. I'm sure I'd be a basket case if that happened to mine. I may have had a heart attack and dropped dead right there.




Finances:
A constant worry with me, I worry that we've got too little saved at my age, etc. We'll try to reduce spending next year, keep a good ground game, and take a few passes deep. I'm going work on not worrying so much about this. If I enjoy my job, and prepare for it, I won't really want to retire anyway, just work less. So really, according to microtrends, I should be thinking more about family now, while they're young, and worry about work into the later years. This also could allieveitate the social secuirty crunch that's been hanging over our heads.

Creative:
I'm still writing a book...this time I think its a good one. Of course I'm sure the idea is taken, but I want to tell it and even with the same elements I'm sure mine will be different from others. I don't have the process down to write, but the story keeps playing and advancing inside my head in my subconsious. Ideas formulate, and I write them down. There is a creative thing coming up in April....i think Ill go.

With a potential for an MBA thing next year and if I work on this bbook of mine, plus my crazy job, I'm thinking I'm probably going write even less next year.

Yikes!

-- Joe

November update

iGoogle: "A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight. - Robertson Davies"

You know things are crazy. I'm enjoying my homelife, my work life, and I'm keeping the farm in the black. Its rockin' good times. Exceptional are my children. The two year old is so crazy sweet I don't know what to do with myself. The middle is a bundle of energy I can live off of. The eldest, a girl, is sweet and creative and interesting and smart...and getting so tall. She's 11.

The wife is keeping the homefront afloat while I work crazy hours to support same.

Done.

TheRecord.com - Business - Meet IvanAnywhere

This might be a fluff story, but really this or something more "real" could be very useful. The real question isn't if we can 100% accurately recreate a human, but if we can do it signficantly well.

TheRecord.com - Business - Meet IvanAnywhere

Meet IvanAnywhere
PETER LEE, RECORD STAFF

Right: Glenn Paulley, director of engineering query processing at Sybase iAnywhere, walks with IvanAnywhere as it motors down a corridor at the company's offices in Waterloo.
PETER LEE, RECORD STAFF

Above: Ivan Bowman is shown on his video screen (attached to the stalk of IvanAnywhere in photo at right) from his home in Halifax. From there, using the computerized IvanAnywhere, he can observe activities at iAnywhere Solutions Inc. in Waterloo, work on software coding, attend meetings, ask questions -- even gaze out the window. Ivan is little more than a webcam, screen and speakers mounted on a radio-controlled truck.
PETER LEE, RECORD STAFF

The webcam attached to Ivan Anywhere listens -- and watches -- during a meeting at the company's Waterloo offices.
1
PETER LEE, RECORD STAFF

Right: Glenn Paulley, director of engineering query processing at Sybase iAnywhere, walks with IvanAnywhere as it motors down a corridor at the company's offices in Waterloo.
2
PETER LEE, RECORD STAFF

Above: Ivan Bowman is shown on his video screen (attached to the stalk of IvanAnywhere in photo at right) from his home in Halifax. From there, using the computerized IvanAnywhere, he can observe activities at iAnywhere Solutions Inc. in Waterloo, work on software coding, attend meetings, ask questions -- even gaze out the window. Ivan is little more than a webcam, screen and speakers mounted on a radio-controlled truck.
3
PETER LEE, RECORD STAFF

The webcam attached to Ivan Anywhere listens -- and watches -- during a meeting at the company's Waterloo offices.
PETER LEE, RECORD STAFF

Right: Glenn Paulley, director of engineering query processing at Sybase iAnywhere, walks with IvanAnywhere as it motors down a corridor at the company's offices in Waterloo.
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It's the next best thing to being there; He'll write software, attend meetings and even chat with co-workers. Just don't expect this digital marvel to share a cup of coffee during your next break

October

"The world of poetry, mythology, and religion represents the world as a man would like to have it, while science represents the world as he gradually comes to discover it." -- Joseph Wood Krutch

One of the things you can deduce from my frequency writings is that its generally inversely proportional to how happy I am. These years, these busy years with young children and a burdgeoning career, these years will be my fondest memories.

HappyWisdom

iGoogle: "A liberal is a person whose interests aren't at stake at the moment. - Willis Player"

It is done

The Fecarotta family is now complete at five. I've taken to fix myself, with the help of a urologist. Thats right folks, a Vasectomy, the big V. 23rd of August, 2007 my boyz were cut to prevent further Fecarotta's. Its kinda sad, knowing that portion of our life is over, but also relieving knowing that there will not be any surprises. At 41, I'm tired. My style of parenting is 100% in. I am totally consumed by my children when they're around, especially the younger ones, and as such it takes a toll. I have other things to do with my life. I want to make an impact on the world beyond leaving my genetic code.... I want to author books, do more art, theology, politics, MBA, the list goes on and on. God forgive me if He wanted me to have another, but He's given us the ability to choose these things, and I have. My wife of course is pleased that this procedure is done. She's had enough of having things or chemicals put in her to stop pregnancy for 16 years....its time I did my part.

The procedure was not much worse than a dental thing, but unfortunately I did have minor panic attack. I was raised well, but I'm no Spartan. I moved around and groaned a bit. Whatever. But now, a few days later, its quite blue down there, and I still feel it. I'm on advil, no ice.

I'm excited. It appears that inside my mind I carried a bit of fear of pregnancy...now I can never think about it again. Sex is completely recreational, and that's nice.

I've got other things to report. Work is good. I'm a big Agile guy now. Went to Agile 2007 in DC, saw Alan Halac, a Navy friend. It felt like we were 20 again. Very good time. Agile is a terrific career event.

Still mulling the MBA.

House is great. Kids and wife are great. These are the best of times.

Quick update

"The breeze of love blows for an hour and makes amends for the ill winds of the whole of a lifetime."
Naguib Mahfouz

Heading to DC for Agile 2007. I'm very excited. I'm not comfortable in DC. I think its the obvious target for unsavory activity. Additonally, its 2000 degrees there.

Anyway, more updates later.

BTW, for those who are thinking about taking in a pregnant stray cat. DON'T DO IT!

July Update

There are no words for how tired I am here today. Work is great really....I love being a project manager now that we do scrum. I could see the desire rise in me to get tech again, and be directly responsible for stuff, but I kinda do that at the current place I'm at. I play in the design space, interface and stuff. I think its critical that PMs aren't solely just schedule and cost. There's gotta be an analyst or designer in there somewhere.

Big story on the block is how my nephew, Aidan, nearly drowned. We're all so thankful that he is okay, and didn't lose any brain function or anything. My wonderful mother discovered him floating face down in the pool, saving his life. He was blue and struggling, but a relative there with firefighting training saved his life with CPR. Its an extraordinary story that rocked everyones' life from coast to coast.

This story resets priorities. It sends people first to guilt, like my poor sister and her husband, who of course blame themselves. Being a parent is maddening. You simply cannot be everywhere. Sure there are things you can do. Apparently there is technology to help....but really we parents kid ourselves if we think we can stop things like this happening 100% of the time.


To learn life's priorities, I ocassionaly read about Zen. Though I am still a dedicated Christian I think we could and should learn from these other traditions. I read about separating yourself from the worldly bonds. Zen's teachings bring peace of mind and a shield, especially against the materialism of the West. Can one save his mind with this in the face of a loss of child? The author of ZAMM, Robert Prisig, lost his son at 18. He was totally despondent over it, but then had an epiphany that Chris was in the Pattern and lived on. He was unable, as I am, to separate my Soul from my children. This is why I find Christianity more edifying here. Its eternal life that gives meaning and justice to this world. It is what saves humanity. Even with Zen, the idea of a persistent something after death saved Prisig. He details an amazing moment when, at the doctor with his wife to abort an unwanted baby, they had an epiphany, or better, a communication from the Pattern to desist. They listened and they feel that it was somehow Chris, and are happy again.

Christians see this. We know that we are dust, and a wisp of smoke. We are visitors here to Earth, and we can take nothing to our next stop, but we can build it up from here. I'm not sure how that works, but that's not the point. God has lends us everything we have here. Everything is borrowed and must be returned. Our stuff, our kids ( to adulthood hopefully), our life, our buildings, our countries. We come here to turn energy into memes and memes into Beauty and Truth -- then we move on. Everything is a gift. Every day is an extraordinary miracle that we should be agog with joy and awe.

I'm very grateful my sister wasn't given the ultimate test --- loss of a young child. Nothing on Earth is more devastating. There would be no repair, no healing, no closure ever from such a loss. Children our greatest treasure from Heaven, and events like this remind us all of that fact.

"Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.
- Kurt Vonnegut"

Happy July

It may be that the old astrologers had the truth exactly reversed, when they believed that the stars controlled the destinies of men. The time may come when men control the destinies of stars.
- Arthur C. Clarke
What others think of us would be of little moment did it not, when known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves.
- Paul Valery
A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
- Thomas Mann".

Love all those quotes today. Not much to report. Work has been very challenging, busy, but rewarding. I've often wondered how to release stress. Stress comes, and then goes. Did I release it, or did I internalize it and did it do a sliver of damage? There is no biometric feedback on stress really..... I can't tell if I've relaxed enough to avoid damage, be it aging, graying, fat retention, or other more sinister effects.

I'm fairly certiain that working out improves things, but I guess I'm just a bit burnt on the whole scene. Its boring. ....but if it saves, extends, and improves your life, why not sacrifice the few hours a week?


I heard about a mite that re-evolved the ability to mate.

Reading a book by a Ms. Scary about Beauth and Truth. I simply can't believe she has to argue for beauty. Its simply bizarre that she has to fight this fight. I think there are horrendous affects of liberalism, post modern reduction, and constructionism. Its an outrage that they've robbed us, in the name of their truth, all that is good in this world, to avoid the establishment of objective standards.

I hope the next book by Ms. Scary is more accessible to the laypersons. This is an important subject.

4th Of July 2007

iGoogle: "Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories.
- John Wilmot"

A great 4th. Not much time to chat about it... Chub got a little burn, but otherwise it was fun. I had to buy fireworks, despite my general loathing of that tradition. I actually kinda enjoyed blowing things up. You're literally burning money though, and for some reason I have negative emotions with my dad on this day. I think he ALWAYS got time off, and ALWAYS drank, and then add explosives, and you tarnish my mind. But I had to put all that down for my kids, who want and enjoy fireworks. I am not my dad. I want to do this right.

Gave away a few kittens. What I now realize is this is going to be my kids first experience with loss. It will be a powerful character building event, as hard as it is to watch, and even initiate. We cannot possibly keep 7 cats! My wife caved in and decided to keep one. My lawyer like daughter made the salient point that Midnight adopted us, with Smokey we adopt him.

Going to Boston -- Theology update

Looks like for the first time since my relocating back to seattle I'm getting a chance to go back to NY. I've got a conference in Boston, Endeca, and then on Thursday night I'm blasting over to NY for a fun filled weekend with friends and family, and then back to Seattle.

I've got a very nice life right now. I have a house that I adore, a family that is settling back into life after 2 years of tumult and moving. I've got inlaws that I love and love me back....and healthy healthy kids. That is the prime thing now. The Seattle Times is doing this special every sunday on a Federal Way ( goodness) family that has 8 kids and one of them has cancer. Its really quite heartbreaking. 11 years old -- pretty girl. It seems to me that if God really wanted people to notice he'd come down once in a while and make one of these girls healthy. This is my primary reason that I've gone Whitehead in my belief.... God simply cannot change that sort of thing. His power exists in being the repository and guarantor of all pasts and all futures. Something like a massive dynamic database. ...with consiousness....but not abilty to enter into this space.

This leads to another thinking. Many recent articles are on Intelligent Design. Secular science says this is silly since its so messy ( the genome) and that there is so much detritus in there from the genetic journey through evolution its not at all designed.
A nice discussion on the difference between creationism, intelligent design, and Theistic Evolution.


So nice I'll just snag the whole thing....

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) and other organizations have tried to portray intelligent design as another variant of scientific creationism.

For example, when high school biology teacher Roger DeHart, of Burlington, Wash., tried to teach his students about intelligent design, the ACLU of Washington state accused him of "presenting the discredited and illegal theory of creationism." Similarly, they branded intelligent design as "a smoke screen for creationists who have lost in the courts."

Although intelligent design is compatible with many "creationist" perspectives, including scientific creationism, it is a distinct theoretical position. This can be seen by comparing the basic tenets of each view.

Legally, scientific creationism is defined by the following six tenets:

• The universe, energy and life were created from nothing.
• Mutations and natural selection cannot bring about the development of all living things from a single organism.
• "Created kinds" of plants and organism can vary only within fixed limits
• Humans and apes have different ancestries.
• Earth’s geology can be explained by catastrophism, primarily a worldwide flood
• The earth is young—in the range of 10,000 years or so.[1]

Intelligent design, on the other hand, involves two basic assumptions:

• Intelligent causes exist.
• These causes can be empirically detected (by looking for specified complexity).

"This is a very modest, minimalist position," says mathematician and philosopher William Dembski. "It doesn’t speculate about a Creator or his intentions."

In fact, there are only two general views that aren’t compatible with intelligent design: 1) a radical naturalism that denies the existence of any non-human intelligence, theistic or otherwise and 2) conventional theistic evolution.

It may seem surprising that the second view, conventional theistic evolution, is incompatible with intelligent design, since it clearly embraces the existence of God. But the view we generally associate with "theistic evolution" denies that God’s creative activity can be empirically detected. As Dembski points out:

Theistic evolution takes the Darwinian picture of the biological world and baptizes it, identifying this picture with the way God created life. When boiled down to its scientific content, however, theistic evolution is no different from atheistic evolution, treating only undirected natural processes in the origin and development of life.

Theistic evolution places theism and evolution in an odd tension. If God purposely created life through Darwinian means, then God’s purpose was ostensibly to conceal his purpose in creation. Within theistic evolution, God is a master of stealth who constantly eluded our best efforts to detect him empirically. Yes, the theistic evolutionist believes that the universe is designed. Yet insofar as there is design in the universe, it is design we recognize strictly through the eyes of faith. Accordingly the physical world in itself provides no evidence that life is designed.

Regarding the question of whether intelligent design is the same thing as scientific creationism, opponents of intelligent design have made much of a federal court case, Freiler v. Tangipahoa Parish Board of Education, in which the two positions were equated.

But according to David DeWolf, a law professor at the Gonzaga University School of Law, this finding came in a tangential statement in the judge’s decision.

The central issue in the case, DeWolf said, was not intelligent design, but the question of whether a disclaimer about evolution mandated by the Tangipahoa school district constituted an establishment of religion.

"The judge was simply laying out the general landscape of creation theories. In one sentence, he said intelligent design is another name by which you may know creationism."

The judge struck down the disclaimer, and his decision was upheld by a panel of the 5th circuit court of appeals. But in the appellate opinion, intelligent design was never even mentioned.

"There’s no finding in which you can say, ‘Aha! See, the courts have found that intelligent design is just the same,’" DeWolf said. "If you cited that as your authority in a lawsuit, a judge would be pretty mad at you for having misled him into thinking that this proposition had been established."

I like that bit about theistic evolution, to which I lean, but it seems like I could be swayed to ID.

This world is so brutish, so horriblly unjust I simply cannot find God in the design of it. It feels more like the Deists -- he wound the universe and just let it run.

I saw a lecture on biology and evolution. This fellow, a prof at UW, said something that stuck . He said the way life differs from computers and robots is that you can't shut life off without breaking it. So, the best quote was that evolutionary biology is akin to a Wright brother's airplane evolving into a 747 without ever landing. Life knows no other way to do things.....if found solutions and bolted solutions onto solutions...it keeps moving. There is no other way to do life.

So I thought, perhaps this is what God ran into. Perhaps Evolution is the only way to create independent and eventually sentient creatures. Perphaps the Devil chose the mechanism that we came from...that seems more likely given the harsh nature of it. I used to enjoy those animal shows, but animals are so amoral, extremely selfish and short sighted.

I've mentioned in this blog my other thought that the purpose of humanity could be thought of as converting energy to information. Exactly what I'm doing now.

So for me it seems that God is a word appened onto existing natural processes. Is this sufficient? I don't think so. Saying that is like saying sitting on the top of a mountain is just a change of elevation. Adding God, and the best of scripture and experiential information, humans behave generally better. They are better. I heard a story of a family that started skipping meals to give money to others. They lost weight and were able to be all the more generous. That sort of thing wouldn't happen without a sort of religious zeal.

For me it gives me hope that God is the antidote for evolution. God is design, is beauty and justice. In a cosmic connundrum, the very mechanism that God used to create the universe God also corrects for.

God is the antidote for his own creation. Interesting....

May 29th

"It's a dangerous business going out your front door.
- JRR Tolkien"

It seems like Nuclear energy is really the only way out of our energy crisis. I'm not a big supporter of coal since it does horrendous things to the environment, visually at least.

Got myself a little vacation goin' on here. One of those stay at home vacations that go really fast. Checkin' out some movies. Went to Spiderman 3, Shrek 3, and we're up for pirates 3 next. Sense a pattern here ? What is the deal? The only really 'original' movies coming out here are Simpsons and Transformers, both look good.

Looks like I'm getting to visit my ny home here in a few weeks, which is nice. I've missed my sisters and mom very much, and my friends, who were a big part of my fun there. I wonder if the mealoncholy will be as powerful upon my leaving there this time, after having spend 20 challenging months there. I do miss the guys at Delta Funding though....what a great bunch of guys.

I'm reading the book 1776, the non fiction one, it reads like butter. My oh my the things I'm ignorant of astound me. I'm sure at one time my excellent public screwl education gave me some of this information, but I recall none of it, so did it happen?

George Washington hasn't won a battle yet and I'm more than halfway through the story. Its stunning how inept he appears, but really he wasn't ready for the fight. The war machine of America wasn't ready...we hadn't had control of the sea nor did we have sufficient training. It was very impressive how they ran them out of Boston, but I think the brilliance of that came from Knox, not Washington. So far the only good thing I've heard of Washington is that he looks good in a uniform. I'm anxious to learn what events turn the thing around. Its interesting the Congress was so involved...down to specific battle strategies, and they were bad at it. I'm going to try to get to some of the sites where Washington stood down the British.

New Rush album! Ahh, the days that I can say that are not over yet! I'm so grateful for those guys....I should send them some notes on what they've done for me. Its a supreme irony that these atheists are so helpful to a Christian. What comes through so strong in all their tunes, even the most ardently secular songs, is a pure ethical humanism, a hopefulness in the future of humanity despite ourselves.

Family is great.. Chub is so cool....he's getting big though, very strong. He headbutts you and you see stars. Brianna got glasses and they look right on her. She's too pretty. Bryce is fabulous -- he's ramping up on Chess really fast. We bought the passable Chessmaster Challenge version, but I'm not terribly bowled over by it. 3 chess sets in it....? no tutorials. no animations....it just lacks the full features of what I thought the Chessmaster line had....oh well, its fun.

Prisig

"Whenever you kill a human being you are killing a source of thought too. A human being is a collection of ideas, and these ideas take moral precedence over a society. Ideas are patterns of value."
Robert T. Pirsig

I wonder if they screwed up his middle initial, since I bet this is the ZAMM author.

I love this meme.

Random thought

I saw a post by an 18 year-old on a blog somewhere labeled...what is the purpose of life. I loved it. I also had those wonderings....around this age if not before. 18 is not too young to ask it, but its most certainly too early to understand the answer.

I'm more than double this persons' age, and I still don't have it. I've been playing with the idea that humanity has placed upon it the task of finding Truth through experience. Humans turn energy into information. I sit on my chair, burning a small amount of calories, typing information into this page. Energy->Information. As I place information and communicate it, these are disseminated into Memes, small atomic ideas that may or may not have context.

As these memes are disseminated through the consciousness of humanity, for lack of a better term, they either survive or die based on their experiential merits. But is that it? Does humanity keep the "true" memes, or do we follow whatever meme is communicated loudest?

I'm optimistic. If humans were lambs following the loudest voice, Hitler would have succeeded. The West wouldn't not be predominant. China wouldn't have to limit its citizens' information flow. These memes are powerful, they're honed over human history, and resisting them is futile.

I see America as a provider of the Freedom Meme. We penetrated the curtain in Iraq, and we have our blood in the soil. Its not clear as if we should have occupied, but taking out tyranny? That is something I am for. The best way to do it, of course, is in a cold war containment method. Since these radical governments cannot get the best memes, due to their censorship, their economies do not generally work. Thus they are doomed, and it is the West that must determine with great skill how to complete the conversion of the world away from tyranny and to a world of freedom and opportunity.

I owe you words Blogger!

"We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the fact that many inventions had their birth as toys.
- Eric Hoffer"

Vacation is coming. I hope to do some writing and rejuv.

U.N. urges circumcision to fight HIV - USATODAY.com

U.N. urges circumcision to fight HIV - USATODAY.com

I'm not sure of the full history of Circumcision, but I think this is a Judeo-Christian tradition. If that's accurate, we have yet another old-world religious tradition, added to abstinence, that helps prevent very modern new-world problems.

Interestinnnngg...

"God not only plays dice. He also sometimes throws the dice where they cannot be seen."

Stephen Hawking

Whitehead

"Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe."

A. N. Whitehead

� 25 Code Snippets for Web Designers (Part1)

� 25 Code Snippets for Web Designers (Part1)

Moodle Demo Site

This bad boy could be really useful for quizzes and stuff.

Moodle Demo Site

Cool guy

Gmail, PGP, and the End to End Solution

Yeah, I should be studying. But before I head to the library to piece together my responses to the other two possible questions on the ethics exam I'll be taking tomorrow, I thought I'd perform a public service by explaining briefly how to get PGP working with Gmail using free tools. That's right. You can protect your privacy using free tools with Gmail.

WHAT I'M USING:
Windows XP
Thunderbird 1.0, available for download at www.mozilla.org.
Windows Privacy Tools, available for download at SourceForge. WinPT comes with an open source encryption program, GPG, which is compatible with PGP-style encryption.
Enigmail - an extension for Thunderbird that allows it to work with GPG. It's available at enigmail.mozdev.org.
Gmail. Let me know if you need an invitation. I've got a couple.

Download and install Thunderbird, and WinPT. WinPT will walk you through the process of creating a PGP compatible key for your gmail account. Instructions for setting up Thunderbird to read gmail (because it's pop3 compatible) are at gmail, under "Settings", "Forwarding and POP". Enable POP, and click on the Configuration instructions link.
Now download and install Enigmail. You'll probably have to download Enigmail to your hard drive, then open Thunderbird and go to "Tools"->"Extensions". Select the "install" button. Point it to the location where you saved Enigmail, and let it install Enigmail. Now restart Thunderbird.

When Thunderbird re-installs, you'll need to configure Enigmail. If it doesn't pull up a wizard to walk you through that, you can configure it through the new "Enigmail" menu. Select "Preferences". Enigmail needs to know where the GPG executable is. It should be in the same folder where WinPT was installed, in the GnuPG folder. If you installed it with default settings in a windows system, that's "c:\program files\Windows Privacy Tools\GnuPG\gpg.exe"

And that's it. You have an e-mail program that handles PGP compatible keys (Thunderbird and Enigmail), set to send and receive gmail.

UPDATE 1/17/05. This is by far the most popular post on this site. I'd like to know how useful these ideas and tools are. If you use this process, please let me know what you thought of it by sending me a quick email to zach *dot* ricks *at* gmail *dot* com. Likewise if you found this process difficult/impractical/non-functional. Thanks

James Brown, the 'Godfather of Soul,' dies at 73 - CNN.com

Thanks James Brown. We feel good for knowing you :)

James Brown, the 'Godfather of Soul,' dies at 73 - CNN.com: "'I would like to pass on the want to do something,' he told CNN in 2000. 'The need is there. Good lyrics are good things, but I would like to pass on that drive, that vigorous undying determination.'"


This Christmas, 2006, was among the most brilliant in my opinion. I think Santa hit a home run with the gifts, the Nintendo DS being the cornerstone. Two of those. Ouch. But a quick note about that system. Slick as moss on a rock, the DS feels right. It has a confidence about it, you feel that its ready to surprise you. I was skeptical about the dual screens. I didn't think two little screens was much better than one. However, what I couldn't understand before seeing it is that they've really abstracted the controls, not the display. This second touch screen is a superior interface to any hand held I've ever seen. The fav game so far of course is the Brain Age. Apparently I've got alot of work to do on my brain...more on that later.

The best thing about this Christmas is not the gifts though, its the context. I've got a delightful job as a Project Manager. We've just bought a house, closing on the 4th. I've got 10 days off -- by far the longest break I've had in memory. I NEEDED this break. I have websites to start, books to read, art to create. It won't be long enough.... I still wish we did things more like Europe and got more time off. There is also that new video game I got (Company of Heroes). :)

I do miss NY and The Sisters. This is the time of the year where they excel -- food and merriment. But we talk, and it feels right, or I guess more accurately, it feels normal. This is what we know, after being away for two decades.

Thats it for now.

Damocles - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Damocles - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "The Sword of Damocles is a frequently used allusion to this tale, epitomizing the imminent and ever-present peril faced by those in positions of power. More generally, it is used to denote a precarious situation and sense of foreboding thereof, especially one in which the onset of tragedy is restrained only by a delicate trigger or chance. Moreover, it can be seen as a lesson in the importance of understanding someone's experience."

"It is never any good dwelling on goodbyes. It is not the being together that it prolongs, it is the parting."

Elizabeth Charlotte Lucy Bibescu

"Education is a state-controlled manufactory of echoes.
- Norman Douglas"

Mad at God

"Reason must sit at the knee of instinct and learn reverence for the miraculous instinctual capacity for creation."

Jonathan Schell


So that sicko was mad at God, that shooter in Penn. Well I'm sure that the feeling is mutual.

Foley, another sicko, but its done with. Why should Hastertt resign. Stupid politics.

Dow near an all time high. And who cares? This malaise towards a strong economy shows the power of the Media-Democrat complex. If this was a Dem in office, you'd be hearing about the genius crack economic team that the White House has.

But now? Crickets.

CNN.com - Coroner: At least 6 dead in Amish school shooting - Oct 2, 2006

CNN.com - Coroner: At least 6 dead in Amish school shooting - Oct 2, 2006

I despair when I read this. Rural, Urban, white, black, Christian or Secular, these things are happening with alarming frequency. I'm deeply troubled by it, and I'll be looking for some sort of explanation. Why girls? Why so young? Why take our most precious gift from God? What ever happened to just killing yourself? Why take our children with you?

The only clear explanation is that demonic forces are at work every day to destroy our fabric of freedom. Satan is alive and well in the 21st century, taking our treasures, our babies.

This isn't a political issue. Gun control wouldn't help here....sickos like this would use a knife or any means necessary. This sicko brought 2x4s, cuffs and twist-ties. There would be no deterring this sort of thing passively, by laws and regulations. Their soul has been corrupted, and they want to hurt society. They want to hurt us all, and they succeed. They kill our innocent and then deny us the opportunity to learn by inspecting them. They off themselves, but are too evil to do it alone. They are demons. How does one become a demon? How can we protect ourselves? Our children? Why so many now?

Who needs international terrorism when we have our very own people killing kids in our schools? People like this have done much more than terrorists have to the USA recently at least.

These sickos are looking for pockets of innocence. Of purity. They want to strike, but they are impotent to do anything. They come from small, dead-end jobs. They've lost hope. They're disconnected. They feel slighted.

WE need psychologists to do more. We need more spiritual leadership. God gives purpose to people. Without this hope, with out the purpose of Heaven driving us through our frustrating life, we despair. Those who are not sound of mind, who cannot find meaning in the smallest things, such as children and family, lose. They lose that connection to humanity that prevents all of us from killing each other. The core remorse is erased. Their soul is killed, and they're now a tool of Satan.

Satan may or may not be an entity, but these acts are indicative of that entity. The darkness will not prevail. Those children who have been lost are now the newest angels. The Divine Compensation is enough for us. Divine Justice will correct this outrageous unbalance.

Meanwhile on earth we have to get better at screening our people. We know alot about the human brain, lets make some of that knowledge power. Bring on solutions: complusory psych tests before gun ownership and indeed throughout school, personality tracking, better defensive training on our school property, locking doors, arming people who wouldn't normally be armed.

Where we find the problem, be it in the soul or the grey matter, doesn't matter. All we know today is that Satan is alive and well, and we need to fight him back to Hell.

Dictionary.com/Word of the Day Archive/aesthete

Dictionary.com/Word of the Day Archive/aesthete: "aesthete \ES-theet\, noun:
One having or affecting great sensitivity to beauty, as in art or nature."

JCBSONG by Nizlopi: Monkeehub presents a music video to the single 'JCB' by band 'Nizlopi'. Nizlopi, Band, JCB, Song, FDM, FDM Records, Record, Track,

JCBSONG by Nizlopi

The Portrait of the Inventor Rational

Just so my kind readers know, I'm an ENTP. I'm on the border to iNTj, but the former description is much more accurate, as reflected below.

"Of the four aspects of strategic analysis and definition it is the functional engineering or inventive role that reaches the highest development in Inventors. It is so natural for these individuals to practice devising gadgets and mechanisms, that they start doing it even as young children. And they get such a kick out of it that they really never stop exercising their inventive bent. Of course as this kind of activity is practiced some structural engineering inevitably happens, so that the next kind of skill to develop in the Inventor is that of designing. Now planning contingencies and marshalling forces, though practiced in some degree in the course of engineering activity, develop more slowly and are soon left behind by the burgeoning of talent in engineering. However, any kind of strategic exercise tends to bring added strength to both engineering and organizing skills.

As the Inventors' engineering capabilities increase so does their desire to let others know about whatever has come of their engineering efforts. So they tend to take up an informative role in their social exchanges. On the other hand they have less and less desire, if they ever had any, to direct the activities of others, doing so only when forced to by circumstances. ( this part I'm not so sure of...)

As engineers of function Inventors wish to exercise their competence in the world of people and things, and thus they deal imaginatively with social systems as well as physical and technological systems. They are very alert to what is apt to occur next-under certain conditions, if certain criteria are met-and they are always sensitive to possibilities. Found in two percent (at most) of the population, Inventors are good at functional analysis, and have both a tolerance for and enjoyment of complex problems. Outgoing and intensely curious, Inventors are apt to express interest in finding out about everything they come into contact with, and this can be a source of inspiration to others, who find themselves admiring the Inventor's insatiable hunger for knowledge. Inventors are also endlessly inventive, and are the most reluctant of all the types to do things in a particular manner just because that is the way things have always been done. They characteristically have an eye out for a better way, always on the lookout for new projects, new activities, new procedures. Inventors are confident in the value of their interests and display a charming capacity to ignore the standard, the traditional, and the authoritative. As a result of this innovative attitude, they often bring fresh, new approaches to their work and their lives. "

Perhaps I need the real test though....
http://www.advisorteam.com/temperament_sorter/register.asp?partid=1



The Portrait of the Inventor Rational

Kathe Kollwitz Quotes - The Quotations Page

Kathe Kollwitz Quotes - The Quotations Page: "I do not want to die... until I have faithfully made the most of my talent and cultivated the seed that was placed in me until the last small twig has grown." --- Kathe Kollwitz

Italy offers to lead U.N. force for Lebanon�|�Top News�|�Reuters.com

Hah! This was tough to see coming. The French reduce their commitment.

"Turkey, Spain and other countries are still hesitating over whether to send contingents after France, earlier tipped to lead the force, sharply reduced its anticipated contribution."

Italy offers to lead U.N. force for Lebanon|Top News|Reuters.com

Israel Cease Fire -- Maintained by the French?

"France appears ready to lead the force and diplomats envision an initial French deployment of 2,000 soldiers. Many other contributors would be needed to bring the strength near 15,000. Italy has volunteered troops. So has Indonesia. Spain might also contribute."

So let me get this straight. To stand in the gap of a millenia old conflict of hate and history, a war of factions and 7th century religious fervor, who does the UN send? The French?? Did the UN tell the French that this conflict actually uses real bullets?

This I have to see.

High Speed and Photoinstrumentation Photographs - Exhibit 3

High Speed and Photoinstrumentation Photographs - Exhibit 3

Apogeevr

Oh my.....

Apogeevr

World Trade Center, September 13, 2001

Its good to be reminded of this occasionally......

World Trade Center, September 13, 2001

The Destruction of the World Trade Center:

The Destruction of the World Trade Center:

The fact that this retarded website comes from my new friends of Process Theology breaks my heart. They're rabid, foaming at the mouth liberals drawn to the fringe by their inabilty to accept reality.

iuiuiu

Digital Learning Commons

I joined cosmeo, but this looks great as well, especially for older ones....

Digital Learning Commons

"imbroglio: a complicated and embarrassing state of things."

Boy, have I been involved in some imbroglio's at some time.

I don't write because I simply have no time. Three kids, looking for a house, a second car, wondering if the world is going to stay together for a while: who has the time to record it?

I'm reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
To say that I'm enjoying it doesn't quite capture it. I am in two worlds now, Phaedrus' and my own. Its a burden of joy.

Pensees:
Its quite possible that in the average man's economic position that there is only choices between two nightmares. I must hastily purchase a home, or better, indebt myself an enormous amount, or wait, save, and by the time I've scratched together

More soon.

...:::: My US of Whateva ::::...

...:::: My US of Whateva ::::...

The digg on this was that both opponents and proponents of GWB would like this. They're right.

:)

Post Mortem

I'm anxious to put the endless worry and analysis that has gone into my move to NY and back. The project manager in me wants to do a "Lessons Learned", a post mortem on this experience.

That would go something like this:

What went right?

What went wrong?

What can we learn going forward?


What went right

The Trip: The trip was fun. There can be no denying that driving around the country was an enlightening experience. I never have felt so American as I do now, having met people in South Dakota, Alabama, and Utah. I can say that the people I've met have been nice, hard working, and interesting....and I'm proud to be counted as one of them. Then there are the amazing vistas, the shockingly beautiful Rocky Mountains, the chance to co-exist with the wildlife in Yellowstone, and the important Williamsburg, VA. The meme that we will never run out of space as long as Texas is a State.

The Holidays & Vacations: There has been no fun like being with family, especially MY family, during a holiday. My sisters party like crazy. They did my birthday like I was important. I felt loved and warm during those times, and it reminded me why I did that move. And Christmas in NYC? The Met. Manhattan. Pensslyvaina – Gettysburg and Hershey Park. Dead Manhattan ( see the kids for this one  ) The Intrepid. Times Square. All the crap I wanted to do when I was a kid. Done! What sort of greatness is that?

The Career: The move to Delta Funding was a shockingly good one. I got some leadership experience that I sorely needed. It created a leader out of me, or brought it out more. There were a lot of chiefs there, and I certainly didn’t know the business well enough to move too much higher too fast, but I was on the executive path there for sure. That experience gave me the audacity to try PM somewhere else. Taking that job was a GREAT move.


What went wrong

Family Bonding: Easily my biggest disappointment is that my wife and sisters and mom didn’t bond the way I hoped. They didn’t bond at all, since whatever bond was there was destroyed by us leaving. You can lead three women to your wife, but doesn’t mean they’re going to embrace her. The biggest reason? Too busy. Even only 20 minutes away, once the novelty of our arrival wore off we were relegated to being essentially alone there. If it were not for my wife’s Herculean efforts to make friends we would have been very alone. Is this my sisters fault? No! They have a life, and Homeschooling is our life. Schooling determines what sort of social life you’re going to have. Its amazing how public school ramifies itself into every corner of our society. While one sister would go to PTA meetings, Julie would fill her days otherwise. The other sister has preschoolers all, so we could get much bonding there. It is the details that interrupted the flow. This interrupts then my primary assumption for going to NY – that with two sisters and a mom that we would have more family interaction and help, since the sisters were in that stage in life. This was deeply flawed. The analogy I draw is of computers. If you cluster computers you typically get more processing power. 3 processors are better than one, obviously. Also you can fail over – one computer dies, the other takes the load. But in this case we didn’t have that. These “processors” were already beyond peak capacity. Adding them together was meaningless, and the only true fail over is when you live within 10 minutes. We were simply too late to the game, and despite the links to my kids, I don’t think this relationship, Fecarotta-to-Wife, was strengthened in any sustainable, significant way.

Finances: Another hope was that with all of the friends and family I have in the NY region I’d be able to “cheat” the system and get some cheap housing. I was thinking someone lending me an apartment or something. I was very clear with my family that I couldn’t possibly pay rent there and EVER buy a house. They forgot that. We ended up financially worse off than when we got there. So the moment I signed a lease for 1900 bucks a month I knew my days in NY were numbered, and I assumed my family did as well I was wrong there as well, bringing us to Number Three….

Communication — I botched the communication with my family in a severe way. I never updated them, never spoke to them about the literal, specific goals I had. It should have been no surprise that I was going to leave, but it hit them like a brick. I promised my family that if at the end of two years we’re not better off, we’re out. No one listened from my family. They kicked and screamed and cried the whole time we left They were so happy to have us there, and I know its out of love that they miss us, but there are limits.

Secondly, I announced this over email. BIG mistake. I think an in person thing would have been far better. I wanted to be able to frame this thing, and think it through. I write better than I speak. This ease of writing is a double-edged sword. They also enjoyed emailing. Emailing well-thought out invectives that would make a sailor blush. Email is too easy to share. My wife ended up reading some of the responses, all of which blamed her. Overall, the ending was just a symptom of my not managing expectations. If I would have even typed up a list of expectations, I think it would have gone a long way in deflecting the nightmare that happened when we first announced our intentions to return to the Northwest.


Take away wisdom
1. Take a chance – the whole adventure has made me proud of my families and proud of myself. I found strength, touched lives, and did things that were amazing. It resolved a lot of issues around NY for me, and I’m more pleased with the Northwest than ever.
2. Manage expectations — Never assume that family members know what you’re thinking. Communicate often and as honestly as possible with them.
3. Manufacture memories — Days come and go. If you just go to the pool every weekend, you’ll never forge the memories that sustain happiness and enrich your life and your family’s. Make the plans, go to that place you’ve always heard of. Do that thing that you’ve wondered about. You’ll be stuck at home enough. Get out there. Now!
4. Climate matters – Don’t think that weather is trivial. You enocounter the weather everyday. If you don’t like real cold or real hot, S.
5. Don’t believe what they say about New Yorkers. They’re really some of the nicest people in the USA.

That’s it. I’m making a DVD of my experience there as well. Should be fun. We did so much…and we’re not done yet!

AMERICA'S GOT TALENT -Kid singer Bianca Ryan

seriously now.

digg - Fox News Ratings Plummet

digg - Fox News Ratings Plummet

This crap drives me crazy. This was my comment:
I don't understand how the Left can berate Fox News for bias, when they have balanced reports with Hannity and Colmes, O'Reilly regularly attacks Big Oil, and so on. At the same time the Left gets their "news" from Jon Stewart? On the COMEDY CHANNEL?? Understand that you obtain your viewpoint from the authority you choose. And Lefties aren't automatically good guys!

Worse yet they listen to Opie and Andy, and then watch South Park for more great info. Then they flip over to MTV for their news, or Stewart or some other rabid foam at the mouth liberal comedian. Then they take that information and think they know stuff.

The smarter Lefties go to the New York Times and NPR. NPR is good, but the NYT is so far left they can't get out of their own way.

Listen folks, the only way to be a truly smart citizen in the West today is to read stuff from both sides of the political divide and then make a call using your own experience and belief system. Throw away notions that either side is either wholly good or wholly evil.

Life can be wildly tragic at times, and I've had my share. But whatever happens to you, you have to keep a slightly comic attitude. In the final analysis, you have got not to forget to laugh.


Katharine Hepburn (6)

Okay, so now we're back

So, now we're back in Seattle area and the whole world is supposed to be perfect? Of course not. There was no expectation of it. There was, with the understanding of the living conditions, an acknowledgement of the misery that we’d be through. With the property values continuing to escalate here, we knew that things were bad. We knew that when we got back here it would be challenging to live with people. My gracious in-laws have opened their home to us, and I am grateful for this chance. Living cheap on the land opens up more opportunity to get out of debt and get some sort of down payment going for the house. It was what I had hoped for in NY and never transpired. It is happening now, and as Dave Ramsey puts it, we’re gazelle intense on getting out of this debt thing as much as we can and then getting into a home. If we could I’d stay here two years and get completely out of debt, but that option isn’t open to us. Not only that, real estate here is going to continue to climb, up until it gets as ridiculous as New York. I can’t….no one can…save as fast as the real estate market is going up.

I wrote notes on the trip back. It was radically different coming over with a one-year old, than it was going over to New York. I have to admit it was a bit more fun when Ryan was inside of Julie. We just could do more. Of course, I was actually able to relax on the way home. No foreboding, no collapses of stomach lining, no grinding of teeth -- it was a homecoming. I did feel victorious when I arrived in NY. I wondered if somehow my family would get me a police escort ( since I have cops in my family), or if there would be a big party when we got there. There was the later. But for some reason, julie and I were freaking out. We were so scared that I had screwed up everything. It was about 1000 degrees outside, and the humidity was horrendous – then we had to move packages. But I have told that arrival horror story already.

We stopped first, on the Triumphant Return, in New York City. Getting out of our apartment, as I’ve mentioned, was a living nightmare, a deep torture that left permanent scars on my psyche. So the Plan A: Drive to Virginia on the first night, was dashed on the rocks.

The enormous fun we had in Manhattan! Books will be written, stories sung. Brianna got to go to the best toy store in the world, Toys R Us in Manhattan. We played in bookstores, had a great time in a surprisingly plush hotel for a Best Western. Small on the outside, but on the inside the place dripped with character that even the kids could feel. The fruit in front, the separate bedrooms, the look of the place. TI was almost worth the $300 bucks we spent on it. We spend more in one day in Manhattan that we did for the next 3 days nearly, and that includes the touristy Williamsburg, VA.

Williamsburg was also surprisingly terrific. Sadly we couldn’t get to DC. Time wouldn’t allow it. We played in VA for two great days. They have this bridge there with things that you would be losing as you went back in time. The courage of those men, the way they bristled at British rule. It makes you so proud of them, and you wish they could see what they’ve created. I’m a little stunned that the site didn’t have a higher tech re-enactment of any of the battles. This could have been great for Bryce if they had decent re-enactment’s. Have you been to Gettysburg? The battlefield of all battlefields, and what do they have on the site to reenact it? A bunch of Christmas lights in a floor. I mean, that was cool maybe 40 years ago. But now? When I get famous remind me to donate some software to both locations.

Nevertheless The King of Arms restaurant, Downtown Williamsburg, had the most terrific food of the trip. Such good Sweet Potatoes we absconded with one of their recipes and made it almost the first week we arrived in Seattle. The biggest letdown was the horse rides. 80 bucks. 80 BUCKS? I’m sorry, but that’s a rip-off.

Then it was to Alabama, but we didn’t see a lot there. The hotel was kinda nasty, but the people were nice. Then it was onto Texas, where we were duly impressed with how really big the state was, and how few people were there. Its amazing that more people don’t drop on in. Its 3 grand an acre, a very tempting price.

The stay at my sister in laws house was a nice break from the hotel bouncing we were doing. One thing I recommend to parents of a baby. Get the suites. It allows separation and relaxation when the baby is out at 8pm for everyone else to play. My crazy daughter wanted a pool every night. This is after hours of driving and all you want to do is lay down and die. She wants to swim the Olympics. We swam.

I ran up more that 20 bucks of data charges on my cell phone. That news reader is nice when you’re brain is slipping into a coma from the driving.

After leaving Heidi and everyone else, we bailed to the next location, Utah. I loved it there. In Moab we stayed in a small condo with more amenities than anyone really needed. The pillows were soft, the beds heavenly. The place rivaled the Manhattan experience. Yet, the most striking thing about Moab was the quiet. It was so quiet you could hear your spirit rustle inside of you. Like after a rock concert when your ears are numb to the sounds outside of your body. And the sunset ended the day with a grand concert of colors – blazing reds and purples. The place was remarkable, and I will return when the kids are older.
We tried to stop in Salt Lake City, you know, the hub of Utah, and with an episode of egregious misunderstanding between my wife and I we actually passed it. I don’t think she really wanted to stop, but she says she told me to pull off at any exit. We pushed those kids of mine so hard that day. Again I’m stunned by the strength of children. As long as the parents have a happy face and keep their turmoil under the skin, the kids are completely shielded. They deal with what they’re handed so well. Its only when you’re an adult that you think you can change everything.

The night in Utah was nice – about 20 miles north of Salt Lake City. But the morning held a surprise for us that we never suspected. At about 7am I woke, got to the window and opened it with the expectation of a brilliant mountain view. In Utah everyone has view property. But the light that streamed in wasn’t yellow with sun, it was florescent white. Snow. By all appearances we were, in April, snowed in, trapped in Utah, nary one day’s travel from Washington State.

Undaunted we got in the car and prayed for warm weather. Having our absolute fill of continental breakfasts and pools and hotel beds, everyone was worn thin. We need a home to stay in, we needed to end this journey.

And end this journey we did! The snow abated soon after we left the mountains, and though treacherous winds and rain still followed us, we got home to Tacoma, Washington the next day, April 10th, 2006 with great fanfare. Still no police escort, but this time I didn’t expect it.

I’m not sure why they wanted us here. The entrance of the Fecarotta family was completely disruptive to their life, and I hope they don’t regret it. We are most certainly getting our finances together, and I predict we could get a reasonably priced house this year. Everything is, though difficult still, on track.

The next entry will deal with the results. The summary of what I’ve learned in this journey.

Social Software

Social Software: "Process is an embedded reaction to prior stupidity."

The End of Project Hyperspace

"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."
Albert Einstein

I am terribly sorry my dear readers, all 3 of you, for the lack of updates to this blog. Usually I don't write much when things are either busy and good, which they both have been. My new employer, a large airplane manufacturer in the Pacific Northwest, is doing great, and my life is exciting and positive in almost every way.

I’ll update you in two entries hopefully done this week. First essay, this one, titled the End of Project Hyperspace, will review the reasons we had to leave NY and that impact. The second essay will detail the trip over and update where we are in the process to get a house, and looking forward what plans we’ll have.

The End of Project Hyperspace

How can I possibly summarize what has happened in the last two months? I finally got off of Long Island!! Through intense persistence on my part I ended my NY experiment with a self funded relocation back to the Pacific Northwest. To review, the reasons I couldn't stay there are simply put by the Four Cs – Cost, Congestion, Climate, Culture

Cost – Seattle is expensive, but New York/LI area is at least 20% more so. Much higher taxes, much more bureaucracy, income and state taxes. Seriously bad. Real estate was pretty much the show stopper. Even at 100k (which I WAS NOT making) it’d be 5 years before I would be able to purchase a home. Meantime my children grow up in a rental, where my boys can’t scream and bounce? Where my wife cannot play pianoforte? Where I can’t build and construct things, take up the drums, or play Rush at a decent volume? What about getting a dog? Can’t keep it trapped up there. The minute we got back we had a yard and a dog and a projection screen TV…but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Second C – Congestion -- There is three times the density of people per sq. mile than there is in the Seattle area. Look it up. The result is dingy, dirty buildings, houses, streets, and overrun facilities of every sort. Compare a bookstore in Smithtown to one in Federal Way. Go into the bathrooms. I dare you.

Third C – Climate is surprisingly important, and I couldn’t make the change – the damn place is too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter, too rainy in the fall. You actually can spend more time outside doing things in the northwest than in the sunny NY climate. In New York, the outside is something you encounter and battle. In Seattle you don’t have to factor it into your plans.

Culture, fourth C – this one is more about the way things roll there. The culture of private schools, summer camps, expensive horse riding lessons, pricey gift giving….the whole culture is saturated by expense and pomp and circumstance. The culture of Money is alive in New York. It defines you and if you’re not pulling in 300k things are going to be rough for you. Homeschooling is beyond the pale there. Many people there looked at us like we were simply crazy to even think about it. It became uncomfortable for everyone including my family to accept Homeschooling. I’ll address that at another time.

The fifth reason, and I know I said there were four, is the hidden one. New York simply isn’t the northwest, and vice versa. I defined myself by Seattle. It became me. I became it. The people, the pace, the environment. The area inspires me to write, to draw, to be creative, to go to the city, to network. New York has these things but its just not the same. Some people say that you draw your muse from your surroundings. The Northwest, with their newer buildings, perennial Evergreens, and pleasant people, awaken my muse, let him move around. In New York he was afraid of getting run over.

Result -- we left in March, arriving in Tacoma at the beginning of April. It was perhaps the most physically demanding time in my life. I, with my wife, packed and cleaned my entire house. The family couldn’t help, I had one friend for a few hours come over, but for the most part it was just us. I slaved. Julie slaved. It was a horrendous, stressful, graying event that I cannot put far enough behind me, far worse than the move out there.

My family was less than thrilled with my departure, which the surprisingly didn’t see coming the first time I broached it, and I think they still see it as a personal slight against them that we left. It’s an interesting side note that nearly all of my friends understood and even supported my position, echoing their own distaste for much of the things that are ailing New York. Friends were able to detach themselves emotionally and view this situation with reason easier than my family. The importance and utility of friends was one of the main lessons I learned during Project Hyperspace. Christian Love was also highlighted to me during this event. Those who gave most and knew us least, and yet helped us so much, were those who were Christians. Christians are called higher, and their boring basic labor loading and unloading, the packing of boxes, and cleaning rang out to me. This is Christian love, and without it we would have been in so much trouble. I won’t forget it.

People tend to personalize things, and leaving my family suggested to them somehow that they failed us. Nothing could be further from the truth. My family was and are great people. Fun and interesting and comfortable, NY is right for them, but not us. They never got that message, and I fear now that the connections established during those 2 years we spent there will be lost. A child’s memory is weak. They need to keep in the mind space of my children, and the communication has been sparse from them. I understand the busyness of life has taken their attentions away from a commitment made to my children, but I will see to it that those commitments fulfilled. 3000 Miles is nothing in a digital age.

So you have why I left. Now how? Really, it’s again about who you know. My friend Erik is a developer who now had a position. I got a phone interview and NAILED it, and after finding an honest contracting firm, I was at a better financial place in a cheaper area. At the same time my current employer in NY was promising me things, and when I told them my intentions they upped the ante. It was difficult to leave them. I loved the people at Delta Funding and still do. They were very good to me, they’re better at software than they think they are. They gave me tremendous opportunity and I learned a ton there. But larger forces conspired against them. I had to leave. This whole experiment was just that, and we knew very early into the trip that we would eventually leave. Julie loved her people too, and by going to New York she really defined what sort of groups and resources she would desire and seek out in the Pac NW.

The trip back is a blog entry on its one that I promise to do next. But suffice it to say that traveling 4000 miles with a 1-year old baby is a lot different than not. Chub became our obsession, but he did so very well. I was proud of him, and my other children who made sacrifices to keep him happy as well. Its amazing how tough kids can be. My wife was golden during the whole NY experiment and on the way back, and now remains doing the mundane work in a high quality fashion in difficult conditions.

The time in NY was not wasted. We saw so much, and learned an amazing amount about ourselves and what Julie and I want. The kids know my family now, providing its maintained. I have a better job in a cheaper place, and the finances are improving slowly. Julie is home with her mom and family, and I can rest every day because I know that she is where she belongs, my kids have a yard, a trampoline, a pool, a dog, and grandparents and uncles and church. A man receives joy from providing to his family, and I’ve felt this joy for almost two months now. This is no pedestrian life I’m leading with my family. It’s a rich, exciting life that I’m tremendously grateful for every day.

"The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds."

John Maynard Keynes

We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are - that is the fact.
- Jean-Paul Sartre

Twain

"The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.
- Mark Twain"

I've often thought of this vis-a-vis Angels and the Fall of Man. We were probably more like animals before The Fall, but when consciousness came to us, we were now able to decide. This makes us superior and inferior simultaneously.

Thus the "Apple" of Temptation is knowledge itself, and the Genesis mythology (in the CS. Lewis definition) bears that incredible insight.

BlenderNation

Perhaps I should look at this.

BlenderNation

Jeremy Zawodny's blog

Humans are so damn amazing sometimes. This guy, humble as pie, has balls of steel. Sorry, but thats the only way to put it, and you'll agree after you see this footage.

Pilot's Amazing footage

Google

Google: "At the present rate of progress, it is almost impossible to imagine any technical feat that cannot be achieved - if it can be achieved at all - within the next few hundred years.
- Arthur C. Clarke"

Google

Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible player.

Albert Einstein (31)

Google

Google: "In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination.
- Mark Twain"

Fueling Our Future

Fueling Our Future

Process Theology -- only for Liberals?

Why are the current crop of process thinkers so liberal? Whitehead was libertarian:

Alfred North Whitehead - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Now the intercourse between individuals and between social groups takes one of two forms, force or persuasion. Commerce is the great example of intercourse by way of persuasion. War, slavery, and governmental compulsion exemplify the reign of force.'"

Mass School is Normal - not!

Abnormality, Thy Name is Homeschool
by Steve Kellmeyer

For most Americans, homeschooling seems rather odd. Why bother with it? We have had public and private schools with us all of our lives, as have our parents before us and their parents before them from time immemorial. Why not stick with what works? The thought would be touching, if it were historically accurate. It isn’t.

The concept of compulsory schools with mass attendance is a radically new idea to Western civilization, no older than industrialization. Indeed, industrialization arguably could not have taken place without the mass school, and therein lies a tale.

As John Taylor Gatto points out in his impressive work, The Underground History of American Education (http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/index.htm) , America’s schools were not very much used prior to 1870. The reason is simple.

The printing press was invented less than 50 years before America was discovered. The press enabled the Protestant Reformation. Because Protestant Faith argues that Scripture alone is authoritative, Protestants have a strong drive to be literate. The religious wars in Europe also drove many Protestants to find safe haven. The discovery of America was fortuitous in that it gave Protestants, that is, literate men, a place to flee.

As a result, the United States had a uniquely literate population (http://bridegroompress.com/catalog/article_info.php?articles_id=166) . As numerous commentators of the time noted and US Census figures confirm, white men in America were essentially 100% literate prior to 1870. While schools existed, they were not much used. Like children from time immemorial, American children were educated at home and self-educated, not schooled.

The first compulsory school law was passed in Massachusetts in 1852. The second law would not be passed until 1864, in Washington D.C. The great wave of compulsory school laws were passed between 1870, with the last falling into place in 1917.

In 1860, one-third of the 300 high schools in the country were located in Massachusetts, where the school year was twelve weeks long, and only six of those weeks were consecutive. Even by 1890, the school year was only twelve to twenty weeks. Even by 1900, only six percent of American teenagers had graduated high school, only two percent of Americans 18 through 24 were enrolled in a college.

While most Americans had attended an elementary school of some sort prior to 1900, they spent no more than two to three years in it, if that – perhaps forty weeks total. While in school, they were generally not learning to read. They learned that at home.

Instead, they were reading. Fifth grade basal readers included works from William Shakespeare, Henry Thoreau, George Washington, Sir Walter Scott, Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Bunyan, Daniel Webster, Samuel Johnson, Lewis Carroll, Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The late-nineteenth century mass school system was America’s response to two enormous driving changes in American society: industrialization and massive immigration. Waves of Irish and German immigrants broke upon American shores between 1830 and 1860, with another massive wave entering from the Southern Mediterranean and Eastern Europe between 1890 and 1910. These immigrants tended to be poor, illiterate and Catholic.

As I noted in a previous essay (http://bridegroompress.com/catalog/article_info.php?articles_id=151) , the agrarian model of instruction required apprenticeships. For reasons beyond the scope of this article, Protestant American industrialization had to destroy that agrarian apprenticeship system. It did.

First, the states passed child labor laws, throwing young immigrant men and women out of apprenticeships and out of work. Once the streets were flooded with these legally invented delinquents, compulsory school laws were passed, requiring these same young men and women to attend school. These schools were consciously modeled on insane asylums. (http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/pedro31.html) The youth who were to be housed in them were, after all, immigrants, poor illiterate wastrels, often swarthy non-whites (Italians, Greeks and their neighbors can take a bow here), and worst of all, Catholic. They had no rights which a white man was bound to respect.

While compulsory school laws were passed, compulsory attendance was not popular. Armed troops were required to pacify the Massachusetts countryside as nearly eighty percent of the population fought the state government. As late as 1882, thirty years after the state had passed the compulsory attendance law, the militia had to march children to school. (http://anti-politics.net/school/) New York City parents rioted in 1917. The examples could be multiplied. The literacy rate began a steady decline that has reached its nadir today.

The school system is so effective at passing on knowledge and forming young minds that this entire history is lost to most of the Americans who pass through its gates. We no longer remember how or why today’s school system came to be what it is. The modern college student is radically less well-read and radically less moral than the average twelve-year old was in colonial America.

So, yes, homeschooling does seem a little odd to many. It seems unnecessary, not a good fit for most families. And in a certain sense, that assessment is correct. Homeschooling is not a good fit for the modern family, if only because the family has, in modern times, ceased to exist. Family cohesion has been obliterated by the mass school.

Our society requires massive consumption. Needy, ignorant people consume more goods and services than educated, emotionally stable people do. The quickest way to create needy people is to obliterate the family. The quickest way to create ignorant people is to divorce them from their parents. (http://www.sundaytimes.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,7034,12803677%255E950,00.html) The mass school is an excellent exercise in creating a market for your goods, whatever they might be. Unfortunately, what counts as goods for the market does not count as goods for the family.

This essay is based in large part on the soon-to-be-released book Deception: Catholic Education in America" (http://bridegroompress.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=21&products_id=60) and John Taylor Gatto’s "Underground History of American Education." (http://johntaylorgatto.com/underground/index.htm)

About the Writer: Steve Kellmeyer is a nationally recognized author and lecturer who integrates today's headlines with the Catholic Faith. His work is available through http://www.bridegroompress.com. He can be contacted at skellmeyer@bridegroompress.com.

Huge lesson here for me. You have to have both connections and resources if you're serious about launching new producs. This guy was very close to winning the day. I found the meme "Patent Troll"....which I do not like. Can't we just innovate? Why involve the lawyers all the time? Using the system against the system pisses me off.

"The man who nearly invented the iPod two decades ago let it slip through his fingers along with a fortune worth millions.

British inventor Kane Kramer came up with the world's first MP3 player in 1979, a device remarkably similar in appearance to the now ubiquitous music players.

A staggering 42 million iPods have been sold since it was launched in 2001, bringing its maker, Apple Computer (Nasdaq: AAPL) Latest News about Apple, an estimated US$9.2 billion (Pounds 5.2 billion). Every minute another 100 are snapped up worldwide. There is no doubt that had Kramer hung on to his invention, he would now be a millionaire several times over. Instead, he runs a furniture shop in Hertfordshire, England.
Click Here
Constant Reminders

Now Kramer is consulting lawyers to see whether he has any claim to the design and technology behind the MP3 player.

"I don't just get reminded once or twice that I didn't get any benefit out of my creative thinking," he said. "Every time I walk down the street I see people with the headphones, or adverts for iPods."

Kramer was 23 when he quit his job running a music industry trade exhibition in 1979 to begin work on a device that would store music in digital form on a computer chip Latest News about computer chips -- a radical idea at a time when music was recorded onto tape and played back on cassettes or vinyl records.

Working with friend and technical wizard James Campbell, he came up with the IXI, a device that would now be known as an MP3 player.

His sketches from 1979 show a credit card-sized player with a rectangular screen and a central menu button to scroll through a selection of music tracks using arrows for left, right, up and down.

Volume is controlled by keys on the left-hand side.

The iPod is a similar size with a display in the same place and a central dial to select and play songs.

The only catch was the amount of memory; the IXI only stored 3 1/2 minutes of music, but the team rightly believed that chip storage capacity would improve.

Kramer took out a patent for the technology in 1981 and set up a company to develop the idea.
Beatle Connection

In its first year, the firm nearly folded after Kramer was only able to raise half the $27,000 (Pounds 15,000) needed to renew the patents. Then Paul McCartney stepped in and paid the rest -- the cost of a detached house at the time -- in return for shares.

By 1986, the IXI could store 5 minutes of music and was described as "the most radical system yet -- a music recorder on a chip."

In 1988, on the brink of commercial success, the company was split by a boardroom coup.

Distracted and unable to raise money in time to renew patents across 120 countries, Kramer watched as the technology became public property.

"I was heartbroken," he said. "I'd put in a tremendous mental and physical effort. It was eight years of intense work." The recording industry began using digital technology in the early Nineties, and the first MP3 player was launched in 1999.

Two years later, the iPod became a design icon of the 21st Century.

"The iPod is the world's fastest selling electrical equipment ever," said Kramer, "and I suppose, in a way, I am the world's biggest failure."
Five More Who Came So Close ...

The literary agent. The first agent to whom J.K. Rowling sent Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone rejected her in little more than a day. Her second agent, Christopher Little, was turned down by 12 publishers before Bloomsbury said yes a year later.

Decca Records and the Beatles. In January 1962, The Beatles were turned down by Decca Records because they were considered too similar to the Shadows. They signed with Parlophone and became the world's most famous band.

Windscreen wipe-out. In 1967, Robert Kearns invented the intermittent car windscreen wiper. He took the idea to Ford but after several years of talks, the company began offering the wipers without paying Kearns, who sued. The legal battles dragged on for more than 20 years. Although Kearns eventually won $10.7 million (Pounds 6 million) from Ford, he lost his case against General Motors.

The forgotten genius. Nikola Tesla,a Serbian immigrant to America, invented the modern electric power system, the fluorescent bulb, neon lights, the speedometer and the basics behind radio, radar and the microwave oven. Others made millions from his inventions but he was paid a flat $216,000 fee.

The other Bill Gates. Software genius Gary Kildall invented the first operating system operating system for PCs in the early Seventies but missed out on supplying IBM because he went flying instead of meeting company bosses. Bill Gates later sold IBM the MS-DOS system. "

http://www.macnewsworld.com/rsstory/50019.html

Experts ponder a future of new sex gizmos, robots�|�Reuters.com

Experts ponder a future of new sex gizmos, robots�|�Reuters.com

"Technical skill is mastery of complexity while creativity is mastery of simplicity.'
E. C. Zeeman"

"'I saw Eternity the other night Like a great Ring of pure and endless light.'
Henry Vaughan"

40

So now I've turned 40. What the heck do I do now? Not sure what to think, what to feel, what to do. At my age of course I thought I'd be further along financially/career-wise, but I also am old enough to know people who have died, people who's children have died, and people who's life is far less fufilling and successful as my own.

So what? Do I mope around feeling sorry for my life now half over? Do I lament every decision I've made, wishing that somehow my younger self would have exercised more prescient judgment? Do I look in the mirror with horror over the gray, thinning hair, or be happy that I have hair? Do I look at the scale and gasp, or do I recall that I've recently lost about 12 lbs?

My family put together a wonderful party for me. The crowning achievement of what I've accomplished here. Despite the women of these families are very very busy, with 9 kids between us. My mom is struggling with health and finincial issues. But the celebration for my 4th decade, a true milestone, underscores the success of this move.

Yet, the normal grindings of everyday life have easily overwhelmed the joy of having me back in NY. This is why I have to leave. I am not interesting anymore. I am not the travelling brother who drops in with great excitement, I'm the financially troubled middle-aged man who's going to leave his mother and sisters once again. The man who cannot buy a house on Long Island. Here I am a failure, desipte health,hair, and good pay. I've come here with the hope of a hero and I am now a paraiah, or worse, just boring.

So lets I now must blow out the candles with my now closer family and make a wish for more.

Happy Birthday.

:)

Gray Lady Down

Wed Dec 28, 7:00 PM ET

Trust: The so-called mainstream media in general and The New York Times in particular are waging a relentless campaign undermining the war on terror. The Fourth Estate is beginning to look like a Fifth Column.
ADVERTISEMENT

It's hard to imagine a major American newspaper in 1942 announcing before the Battle of Midway that we had broken the Imperial Japanese code or before D-Day that the Allies had a machine that let us read the Nazis' highest-level transmissions.

Yet in the war on terror, that's exactly the kind of information that papers like the Times and The Washington Post, in the name of the "people's right to know," have provided our jihadist enemy -- from stories on secret
CIA prisons where our mortal enemies are held to wiretaps on al-Qaida operatives and their U.S. contacts.

Where was the defense of the "people's right to know" when the issue was who "revealed" the name of CIA desk jockey Valerie Plame and her Bush-bashing, mint tea-drinking husband, Joe Wilson? Then the issue was who was placing our covert agents in jeopardy and who should be indicted and sent to federal prison.

But when it comes to the Post disclosing classified information on CIA prisons, which we hope exist, or the Times telling the world that the CIA uses its own airline service, disguised as a private charter company, to move prisoners around, hey, that's Pulitzer Prize material.

Last May, the Times reported in painstaking detail on how "the civilian planes can go places American military craft would not be welcome." These revelations prompted widespread protests in Europe and elsewhere with demands for investigations into and the curtailing of these operations.

It is hard to see how making public this information in the middle of a war helps, say, a housewife in Des Moines. By compromising these weapons in the war on terror, it only places the American people in greater jeopardy. But it's easy to see how this information aids al-Qaida.

The Times finds itself in the unique position of publishing classified information at the same time it insists that terrorists in contact with their operatives in the U.S. have an expectation of privacy while plotting their next attack.

In its Dec. 16 story reporting that the National Security Agency eavesdropped on calls between terrorist suspects abroad and residents of the U.S. -- a practice that is not only legal and constitutional, but also has broken up several terrorist plots -- it alerted al-Qaida that we might be listening in.

As damaging as the story was, its timing was curious, to say the least. If the "people's right to know" was so important, why did the Times sit on the story for a year, only to publish it on the eve of the debate on renewing the Patriot Act, inciting a brouhaha that also drowned out the good news of
Iraq's successful and violence-free election of a permanent government?

Sen. John Cornyn (news, bio, voting record), R-Texas, says he knows of two senators who decided to vote against renewing the Patriot Act in its present form based on the Times piece. Did the Times intend to strip us of this vital tool in the war on terror by revealing a clandestine, successful operation that has thwarted another 9-11?

We enjoy press and other freedoms only because we have successfully defended our nation from those who would take away our freedoms, and our lives.

But with freedom comes responsibility.

Contextualization and Christianity

From Townhall.com...
I felt compelled to mirror this in its entirely, since it meets my criteria for brief, witty, and accurate. I wonder though if the author would be inclined to agree that in many ways Christiandom needs to synthesize its message, drop the old ideas, and embrace science when it can.


The Church and Contextualization Frustration

By Doug Giles

Dec 24, 2005

As a minister, the “mission field” with which I’m primarily concerned is that difficult-to-understand and freakishly lost people group commonly referred to as “America’s youth.” This extraordinarily confused demographic is the tribe that I feel particularly called to reach.

American young adults, though living in a nation inundated with Christianity and founded upon Christian principles, have become (through parental neglect and ecclesiastical nonchalance combined with a heavy dose of liberal acrimony) completely secularized.

This demographic seems more disinterested in Christianity than PDiddy is in driving a Corolla. Face it, Church, generally speaking, young adults do not attend, en masse, our worship services—unless they’re forced to. Nor do they listen to or care about Christian radio, and the majority of them think Christian TV is weird (and they’re right). American youth live in a world that is foreign to the American Christian, and it’s hard for the well meaning saint to understand why they don’t “get it.” The gospel is completely plain to us, yet confusingly strange to them.

I believe the culpability flow chart regarding this generation’s indifference and ignorance lies partly on the shoulders of the youth and to a degree upon the churches that refuse to contextualize the gospel message. Certain ill-bred sectors of evangelicalism blame the youth for their obstinacy and the devil for his constancy—but never condemn itself for its belligerency towards contextualization.

We have failed as American missionaries to appreciate and bridge the Grand Canyon-sized ideological and communication chasms that exist between this secularized age group and their believing, biblical predecessors. And I hate to put responsibility upon the lazy believers, but the initial onus to adjust falls to us and not to them.

In order to reach out to young adults effectively, we’ve got to seek first to understand them instead of attempting to make ourselves understood by them. Therefore, brailing their culture is a must. And here’s where the Christian’s commitment to duty hits the floor. Shallow as it might sound, not keeping up with modern society can be a real detriment to communication. The society that we’re living in here in the U.S. is undergoing more changes than a PMSing Emily Rose, and it’s incumbent upon the Christian to understand each cultural shift and adjust his means accordingly. We can’t afford to be monkish in our avoidance of the multi-faceted influences that affect our culture—the culture in which we have been sovereignly placed to reform.

This means keeping up with what’s going on in the young people’s world, paying attention to what’s on TV, in the theatres, on their iPOD’s and in their CD players. I’m not advocating spending endless and mindless amounts of time watching and listening to every hip-hop-Hollywood-come-lately diphthong; rather, listening as an evangelist and an apologist attempting to get the gist of where they’re coming from and where they intend to take your kids. As cultural analysts, we must dissect the beliefs and values of our youth’s gurus and their temporary icons, paying attention to the particular effects upon them and the Christian worldview.

Therefore, as we watch an estimated 50 hours a week of TV, between the giggles, our eleventh bag of Lay’s and our fifth Foster’s, we should pause to listen and maybe even scratch down some casual observations made while viewing an episode of SouthPark, a Green Day video or Napoleon Dynamite.

Simply increasing our sensitivity to what we are actually seeing and hearing will serve tremendously in making the gospel come alive to the youth by using current illustrations couched in a gospel context. The epoxying of the abovementioned will form a lethal bond of understanding with our audience, which when backed up by eternal wisdom from on high, will build a communicative platform that will help God get their attention.

“Our business is to present that which is timeless in the particular language of our own age. The bad preacher does exactly the opposite: he takes the ideas of our own age and tricks them out in the traditional language of Christianity. Your teaching must be timeless at its heart and wear a modern dress.”

-C. S. Lewis

"Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.
- Ellen Goodman"

At least I'm not the only one this occured to.

Rich Lowry on Oil on National Review Online

Apologize for the lack of updates on this blog. Simply exhausted all the way around is my days.

Here's an excellent article about the winfall profiteering of oil companies.

http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry200511040824.asp

Even in this boom, there’s nothing untoward about ExxonMobil’s profits. They are big, but it is a big company with big expenditures. What is important is the profit margin. For every dollar in sales, ExxonMobil makes 9.8 cents. McDonald’s and Coca-Cola make 13.8 cents and 21.2 cents, respectively. Google makes 24.2 cents, and Merck, Bank of America, Microsoft and Citigroup all make more than that.

'The core reductive mistake is...the idea of a single fundamental explanation.' --Mary Midgley

"Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. -- Samuel Ullman"