Falsifiability and Christianity

For the past day or so, fellow twitterers "Peter Rock," Clay Burell, and I have been having a mostly-civil discussion of religion over at Pete's blog. At one point I noted:

Just produce a corpse/set of bones/ossuary/occupied grave (with good provenance, of course) that can be positively identified as belonging to a 1st-century CE itinerant rabble-rouser/rabbi/healer/preacher named Y’shua Ben Y’suf, of Nazareth (or Capernum), where the body is that of a robust man in his early thirties, and has been scourged and crucified in the Roman manner.

Clay suggested that the falsifiability argument is silly - we can't find Adam's grave, either.

But it's not silly. Not at all. You see, it's not possible to disprove any other religion. You can argue that their teachings are silly, or dangerous, or inconsistent with archaeology, but it is not possible DISPROVE them. But it IS possible to disprove Christianity. It may nt be probable, but it is possible. There've even been novels written exploring what might happen if someone discovered the body of Jesus.

Why is it such a big deal?

Because the Empty Tomb is absolutely central to Christianity. Paul wrote, "If Christ is not risen, then all our teaching is in vain, and I am the most miserable of men, for I have been spreading false hope."

But how did this belief get started? The earliest written documentation of the belief in a literal resurrection are the letters of Paul, written ~55CE. They clearly show that belief in a literal, physical resurrection was central to "The Way." The earliest copies of the first Gospel to be written, Mark, include the discovery of the empty tomb.

Jesus was not buried in some common grave in a potter's field. He was buried in a rich man's tomb, and a guard was set over it by the Romans at the specific request of the Sanhedrin. And then the tomb was empty.

So what happened?

Muslims believe that it's wasn't Jesus, but someone else who was crucified that day. There was a last-minute switch. The only evidence they cite is the Q'ran. That's the only evidence they need. Mohammed said it happened that way? Case closed.


It's been suggested that Jesus wasn't really dead, and that he revived in the cool tomb. This of course flies in the face of modern trauma medicine and what we know about the physiology of crucifixion. (Not to mention the fact that the professional executioners were so sure he was dead that they didn't bother to break his legs.)


Maybe the disciples stole the body? Interesting hypothesis. Not a shred of supporting evidence, unfortunately. First of all, the record shows that the disciples didn't understand that Jesus would rise again. They thought he was dead and gone. Second, they were unsophisticated country folks, not exactly the sort of calculating crew that could pull off a truly world-class burglary and cover-up - and do it almost literally overnight. Besides, as Watergate felon Chuck Colson notes, conspiracies *always* fall apart. The conspiracy idea also omits the fact that the disciples were devout Jews, who would NOT about to defile themselves on the first Sabbath of Passover by handling a dead body.


There's an argument that the story is derived from Mithraism, which shares some interesting similarities - a demi-god hero who goes to the underworld and returns, a ritual meal, baptism. The first problem with this idea is culture. Mithraism was a secret cult popular among Roman soldiers. The first followers of Jesus were Jews - the last people you'd find adopting practices of the Roman soldiers. The second problem is time. Jesus died in the year 30CE. Paul wrote his letters around 55-60, after spending five years or so travelling around (sometimes with Luke).

Twenty years is nowhere near enough time for the folklore of Mithras to get jumbled up with the folklore of Jesus. There are folks *today* in the hills of Kentucky who sing songs their ancestors brought over from Scotland and England, and the songs are nearly identical to the "folk songs of the British Isles" collected by F. J. Child in the late 1800s.


There are a couple of other twists to the story that I find interesting. Both speak to the historical reliability of the Gospel accounts of Easter morning.

First, no one is recorded as having witnessed the moment of the resurrection itself. This is THE most dramatic moment in human history. If you were writing fiction, wouldn't you have someone there who could later say, "I was weeping next to the body when suddenly there was a blinding light and the sound of angels singing..."? But instead, we get two women who find the tomb empty and are bewildered. Women were not considered reliable witnesses in those days. They could not even testify in court. So not only do we not have any witness to the resurrection itself, the witnesses we do have are suspect.

It may seem counterintuitive at first, but those facts strengthen the case for the Gospels being collections of eyewitness testimony. If they're fiction, they're pretty bad fiction.


When the disciples started seeing Jesus alive again, they got excited and started talking about it. Just a few weeks later at Shauvot (the Jewish harvest festival akak Pentecost) they caused a big ruckus. (See Acts 2.) The Romans and the Sanhedrin had plenty of motive to haul out the body of Jesus and shut down these fanatics. It should have been easy - if they could have located the body. :-)

It all adds up

My wife was having a conversation with The FMO (age four-and-a-half) the other day:

FMO: "Mommy, is one hundred and three the biggest number?"

Wife: "No, honey. You can add one to one hundred and three and get one hundred and four. Infinity is the biggest number."

*pause*

FMO (with furrowed brow): "*How* old is Daddy?"

The obligatory "How I use Twitter" post

"Twitter lets me subscribe to the brains of smart people who are kind enough to think in public."

That's the line I use to describe the wildy popular and addictive Web2.0/SMS/SocialNetworking phenomenon that encourages you to "Connect with your colleagues, friends and family by answering one simple question in 140 characters or less: What are you doing?"

But if you're new to Twitter, have few followers and no idea how to find folks to follow, you may not "get" the whole Twitter thing and give up on it.

A number of folks have made excellent blog posts about how to use Twitter. For example, GeekMommy's post on blocking vs. following is a keeper, and Caroline Middlebrook's Big Juicy Twitter Guide is encyclopedic.

But I'm not looking to use Twitter for marketing or as part of an internet business. It's part of my Personal Learning Network, which feeds my efforts at Viral Professional Development. So here's how I use Twitter:

I became aware of Twitter quite some time ago via several blogs I read, notably Alec Couros and Alan Levine. I'm a late adopter - I wait to try out something new until I see that folks are talking about it consistently. (Kind of a "Keep up with the Jones' - eventually" mentality.) Late last summer I finally decided that it was something I needed to get involved with. So, I looked up Alec and Alan on Twitter as soon as I set up my account and followed them.

When you follow someone, you can see all their posts, including the @username posts directed at another user. On twitter @username posts become a conversation. Quite often, the half of the conversation I see is interesting. (I follow smart people, and they follow smart people.) So I'll click on the @username link, which takes me to the tweetstream (list of posts) of that person, which includes their Twitter profile - name, link, and bio.

When someone follows me (that started happening when got to about 25 follows/followers) I get an email with a link to their tweetstream / profile page as well. I just click the link in the email and in a few seconds, I can see whether or not I want to follow that person as well.

Here's what I look for:

• Posts with @'s - that means they're having a conversation with other people.
• Posts with links - that means they're sharing resources
• Posts that are interesting to read. I like witty. I don't like snarky.
• Posts @ people I already follow
• A profile that includes a description of what they do - I pretty much automatically follow folks in my profession (educational technology)
• A profile that links to that person's blog or website
• Reasonable numbers for "following" and "followers." A few hundred is manageable. More than that, they're not likely to engage in conversation.*
• A ratio for "following" vs "followers" that's close to 1:1. Someone who's following thousands but has only a handful of followers is a broadcaster or a bot, not a person I want to be feeding data to. That gets blocked tut suite.

If I like what I see, and want to see more, I just click the Follow button. Simple - another brain subscribed to. I don't follow everyone who follows me, or who @s with someone I follow. Some folks only Tweet about their personal lives. Some are way-technical geeks whose tweets are over my head - or al about systems and tools that I don't use. Remember, I use Twitter mostly as a professional-development tool both for myself and the faculty I serve. Yes, it comes with a nice side serving of social chitchat, but I look at that as water-cooler chatter.

So, that's how I use Twitter. I hope to @you there!


*I do make a few exceptions. For example, Howard Rheingold has a gajillion followers, but he actually engages folks and his observations are of course interesting. Besides, it lets me name-drop shamelessly: "I was talking with Howard Rheingold about this last week..." :-)

Schooled Bully

This is a true story. Obviously, names have been changed. Details have been reconstructed and simplified somewhat, and some dramatic license has been taken in imagining inner dialogues. But it happened pretty much this way, as far as I can tell.


There are two boys. One we'll call Eric. The other, Kenny. Both are in 7th grade at a very good suburban middle school.

Eric has a good reputation. He's a straight-A student, active in extra-curricular activities and sports, and a popular kid. He's funny, cool, easy-going, enjoys playing the class clown and high-fiving people in the hallways. But he's just a little too busy, involved in just a few too many things. It doesn't help that he's a perfectionist. So... he has stress. Most of the time he keeps it deep down inside.

Kenny also has a reputation. He is well-known to the school administrators, but for all the wrong reasons. He undoubtedly has stress, too. But he lets it out in all the wrong ways. He is failing his classes, and proud of the fact. He enjoys vandalizing school property and picking on other kids. He is widely disliked by the other students.

Kenny decides that Eric is to be his new victim. He starts tripping Eric as they pass in the hallway each day. Eric doesn't report this to an adult - that would violate The Code. When you're 13, you're expected to solve your social problems yourself. Eric does his best to ignore Kenny. Day after day, he just picks himself up and goes on. Turns the other cheek. Restrains himself.

He's not giving Kenny much amusement.

So Kenny ups the ante. He posts obscene comments about Eric online, which Eric's friends forward to him. Eric doesn't tell an adult about this, either, despite having several caring adults in his circle who'd hear him out on any subject. When you're 13, certain subjects are on the uncomfortable teetering edge between really gross and quite interesting. The only thing you're really sure of is that you don't want to talk about them. And you sure as heck don't want some jerk you hate spouting off about you and... certain subjects.

Eric is on a slow simmer the next day. The very last person he wants anything to do with is Kenny. But there he is in the hallway, coming Eric's way. Eric grits his teeth and says nothing. And as they pass, Kenny trips Eric and saunters away, grinning.

Now, Kenny almost certainly did not know that Eric is a black belt in karate. A state champion, in fact, with a shelf-full of trophies.

Ignorance is not always bliss.

Eric's foot lands squarely between Kenny's shoulder blades and knocks him into the lockers. Kenny's a tough scrapper, though, and comes back swinging. The boys grapple as the crowd backs away. Kenny throws a haymaker punch at Eric's head and knocks him across the hall, slamming his head into a locker. But Eric takes control of his momentum as he bounces off the lockers and spins around, landing on his feet in a low crouch.

His head *hurts*, dammit, and now he's mad. Really mad.

All that stress he's been carrying is about to come out.

His landing out of the spin has wound Eric like a spring. He's poised to launch a flying roundhouse kick and plant his foot on Kenny's ear. Eric has broken boards with this kick, many times. He's knocked over the large, heavy punching bag at the dojo with this kick, many times.

Kenny weighs half of what that bag does. He's not going *into* the wall. He's going *through* the wall.

Eric is *not* thinking that he could do permanent, severe physical damage to another human being. He's not thinking of the possibility of his family being sued into permanent penury to pay for Kenny's lifetime nursing-home care. Eric's not thinking at all, really. He just knows that Kenny has been begging for a first-class ass-kicking for a very long time, and the time has come to deliver it.

Kenny *is* thinking, though - about just how wrong his earlier thinking had been. He had thought that Eric was just a short, skinny kid that he could push around. And when Eric fought back, Kenny had thought that he could stop him with his best shot. Head punch, right across the hall, face-first into the lockers. Eric *should* have crumpled to the ground. Instead, he *bounced off the wall* and came up locked and loaded.

With eyes full of flame. Kenny looks at Eric and sees his doom. A low murmur ripples through the crowd.

In that instant, a third boy jumps between the two and stops the action - a very brave move, all things considered.

After a long moment, Eric picks up his backpack and glares at the white-faced Kenny as he shoves past. Later, goes to the nurse to get an icepack, and the administration finds out about the altercation. Eric will serve a Saturday detention. Kenny is a repeat offender and will face harsher penalties.

Later that day, Kenny comes up to Eric and offers friendship. Eric's not interested, but he knows that Kenny won't be bothering him again.

A postcard from Twitter

Todd Jordan (aka Tojosan) is one of the smart people who think in public whose brains I subscribe to via Twitter.

The other day he tweeted an offer of a postcard to the first ten people who responded via DM. I couldn't DM him because he didn't also follow me, so I tweeted @him directly. (If you use Twitter, you'll understand what I just said. If you don't use Twitter, you probably think my rye toast was tinged with ergot.)

He was good enough to immediately follow me, so I DMed him my work address.

Today, I came back from somewhere on campus to find a postcard propped up on my keyboard. I'd post a scan of it, but I'm at home right now and the postcard is at work. (Lame excuse, I know.)

Here's the point, though:


Forget Soylent Green. The Internet is People!

Digital identies redux

It's bad enough that Al Upton got his class blog yanked, but now a teacher has lost his job over his online presence.

FWIW, this was the fellow from Doha, Qatar, who joined me and Clay Burell on an amazing Skype chat a few weeks ago.

It's not as if he posted pr0n or hatespeech, or that he posted anything offensive at all - according to his account, the problem was the fact that he linked his personal life to his professional life.

It's horribly ironic that recently a number of us were talking about the very same thing, and I concluded that I've pretty much given up trying to separate my "public and professional" online identity from my "private" online self. I think I even left a comment on the post that Jabiz felt obliged to take down.

How can we teach our students to be transparent, integrated, whole human beings if we are forced to compartmentalize ourselves?

Just feed them through the bunghole

Oh, for crying out loud.

Australian educator Al Upton has been ordered by the government to shut down his class blog. Apparently a parent - despite previously giving permission for their little darling to participate in an innovative, authentic learning activity with other students and teachers from around the globe - got upset that said little darling's picture was not removed faster than it was technically possible. Said clueless parent threatened legal action and contacted the Aussie Feds.

Look, I have kids, and I understand a parent's concerns. And if you read this blog you'll understand that I am hardly a libertine. But the risks to kids from online predators have been grossly overstated. And besides, these kids are in Australia! Are the little darlings really at risk from people who live on the OTHER SIDE OF THE PLANET?!?! Hull-lo?

Let's just put the kids in a barrel and feed them through the bunghole. Then they'll really be safe.

Addendum:
Nancy White has a typically wiser and more thoughful response over at Full Circle. I'm still a bit too cranky to be wise and thoughtful at the moment.

Something in the water

In the news today: AP probe finds drugs in drinking water

Not exactly news - I blogged about this last May.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose

I posted the following as a comment over at ReadWriteWeb in a thread about the Economist debates on whether Web technology is making our lives better.

A man universally renowned for his wisdom once said, "There is nothing new under the sun. All is vanity and chasing after wind."

Human nature has not changed since the beginnings of recorded history. Look at the Greek or Norse gods, Native American tales, Gilgamesh, the Baghvadgita, the Bible, Confucius, the Arthur cycle, the Edda, Chaucer, Shakespeare, etc., etc. You will see the very same human wants, needs, faults, and foibles as we see today.

Want to see a struggle to improve one's lot in life? See the ancient African tales of Anansi the Spider, or the Native American tales of Coyote. Noble sacrifice for a great cause? Look to the Spartans of Thermopylae, Roland at Roncesvaux, or today's Medal of Honor recipients. Soap-opera infidelity? Peek at Guinevere and Lancelot, or King David and Bathsheba.

Human needs have not changed. What *has* changed is the way we go about meeting those needs. For entertainment we download MP3s - remix our own - instead of waiting for a traveling minstrel to come through town. For news we have an RSS feed piped to our Blackberry. To communicate long-distance we use Twitter or Skype rather than couriers carrying sealed scrolls.

The ends are the same, but the means have changed. On those means, though, are industries and empires built and lost. There's not much of a market for sealing wax these days. But build a killer Facebook app, and you might make a buck.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. The more that things change, the more they stay the same.

Four Barriers? Really? - Fireside Learning

Reason # 954 why I love Twitter. BudTheTeacher did one of those irresistable "Excellent discussion. http://tinyurl.com/2jfxep" tweets, which led to this post on Nathan Lowell's blog. (Nathan is one of the Smart Folks to whose brains I subscribe.)

He seeded a class discussion by outlining four barriers to educational equity (the "digital divide") and let the students have at it. Great stuff.

Election 2008

Gen. George Patton vs Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Discuss.

The Long Tail doesn't have to be lonely

A couple of days ago Kelly Christopherson wrote a thoughtful piece entitled, "Let’s meet them at the door." In it, he mused about what it's like being an edublogger who isn't Dave Warlick, Will Richardson, or one of the other "big names."

Diane Cordell gave the post a shout-out on Twitter. I'm a sucker for Tweets that say, "@whoever - great post! tinyurl.com/abcxyz," so I clicked through.

The post was indeed teriffic. As were the comments - reflections on how this amazing new way of connecting with peers and mentors has transformed the way so many of us think about our work.

The blogosphere is often described as having a Long Tail - If you sort the readership of all the blogs, there are a few with lots and lots of readers, and lots and lots and LOTS of blogs with just a few.

The Long Tail is often depicted like this:

stretched out along a long, lonely line.

In reality, though, thanks to tools such as Twitter, the long tail becomes something like this,

intertwined with itself, overlapping and intersecting at many points.

We may be "the little folk."
But there are a lot of us, and we talk together, we do.

We do.

We put the "fun" in dysfunctional

With Super Tuesday a few hours away (as I write this), let's look at the Presidential field as a family reunion. Imagine you're a little kid....

Aunt Hillary has that wierd laugh. She's kinda scary. And though she tries real hard to act like she loves you, you know better. Uncle Bill is great fun, and when he looks you in the eye you believe whatever he says. He makes you just a little uneasy sometimes, though. Momma tells the girls not to be alone with him.

Cousin Barak is cool. He plays volleyball and lets you win. You feel good just being around him. And he says he's gonna take you shopping for toys the next visit. Now, though, he wants to be in charge of the food. But you don't recall ever seeing him working the grill or cleaning fish with the grown-ups.

On the other hand, Grandpa John has been around forever, it seems. He's a gen-u-ine war hero, and thinks for hisself, thankYOUveryMUCH. Odd thing is, he gets along with everyone (even Aunt Hil). So long as they don't cross him, that is. Lawsy-mercy, do NOT get on his bad side!

Uncle Mitt is real smart and has a ton of money. But he sometimes seems kinda fakey, somehow. Nothing you can put your finger on. It's like he's still running for class president. But! He's like Midas, man. Whatever he touches turns to gold. Is that why so many of the other grown-ups hate him?

Pastor Mike is your uncle, but everyone calls him Pastor, except for some of the old ladies who call him Brother Mike. He's really funny sometimes.

And then there's crazy old Uncle Ron. Just don't get him started, OK?

Another lesson in customer service

There's an old saying in marketing: Make it easy for your customer to buy from you.

Over the weekend my wife wanted to buy a single song from a certain online retailer, renamed here as "acertainonlineretailer.com."

When she went to "check out" she got a somewhat cryptic error message with an email address for customer service. We copied sent error message to the customer service address.

Here's the response we got back:

Thank you for taking the time to contact us regarding your thatcompanywebsite.com download order. We apologize for the difficulty you've had with your purchase.

We have reset the download access and resent the link. You should now be able to log in to your Download Manager and access the music. Please review the system requirements listed in our FAQ's 13.6 and 13.16 at the following link before making your attempt: http://www.acertainonlineretailer.com/.../cms_content?page=762841

Internet Explorer is recommended to allow receipt of the license along with download files. Please make sure that any popup blockers or firewalls are deactivated during the download process. (These may be in Internet Explorer; in your Antivirus program; in any Antispyware programs; and in any Internet/firewall programs you have.)

Here are the instructions for accessing your purchased item:

1. Go to our website (www.acertainonlineretailer.com) and click on the "ACCOUNT" link toward the top right.

2. Enter your email address and password to get to the Account screen.

3. Once on the Account screen, scroll down to "My Downloads" on the lower left and click on the "Access Your Downloadable Purchases" link to get the download screen. After filling in the next password challenge, your files should be listed under the "Currently Active Purchases" section. At the bottom of that section, your downloads will be listed under the "Music" heading. Click the green DOWNLOAD button to the right of each song to start the download process.

Note: Please check the top of your browser during this process to make sure you don't get a popup warning about a download. If this should come up (it's usually a tan-color), please follow the instructions to be able to start the download. Otherwise your computer will not allow it.

Please remember to choose "Save" (as opposed to "Open" - which only gives one-time access) when presented with that option after clicking the download link. It may be best to save the music in a folder (such as 'MY MUSIC' or 'MY MEDIA'), although you can also save it onto your Desktop if that makes it easier for you to find later.

We strongly suggest using Windows Media Player to initially listen to any downloaded music files to verify that the required licenses have been properly connected to the music.

If you need any further assistance, please let us know.

If it's this hard to buy a legit copy, is it any wonder that folks download illegally?

I don't want to write this post...

...for a couple of reasons.

One, I have not watched and analyzed every video in this list. Some might argue that I therefore can't comment on any of them. (I haven't eaten every anchovy ever canned, either, but I still don't want them on my pizza.) And it's possible - perhaps likely - that somewhere in the hours of humorous, be-hatted, alarmist YouTubery linked above, my objections are answered. (Maybe some kind commentor with more patience than I will provide the link.)

Secondly, I am not a climatalogist, nor do I (ahem) play one on the internet. As far as climate change / global warming is concerned, I figure I'll do what most humans do when faced with changing conditions: adapt. Hey - it worked for the Cro-Magnons when the woolly mammoths went away. (I'd love to see a New Yorker cartoon showing a caveman with a "Stop Global Warming - Save the Mammoths" sign.)

Third, I really would prefer to do other things with my time. For example, watching videos like this (in my dreams...) or this (the boys still have it!).

Fourth, the chance of anything I write having the slightest impact relative to the hours of content churned out by Greg aka "wonderingmind42" aka "that science teacher with the hats" is pretty slim. But the subtitle of this blog IS, "We speak of things that matter, with words that must be said." As an ethologist might say, I've reached my blogging activation threshold on this topic.

So what's my beef with Greg the Hatted? Two things. One, he's misusing one of my favorite rhetorical devices, Pascal's Wager. Second, he presents a three-dimensional problem in two, ignoring a critical aspect of the debate that totally changes the risk-management equation.

First, Pascal's Wager. The whole point of the Wager as a decision-making tool (or rhetorical device) is that it presents us with a pair of linked dichotomies. Either God exists or He doesn't/ Either we believe or we don't. These are binary choices. Either-or. There is no spectrum, no range of options, no middle ground. Your daughter is either pregnant, or she is not. She is either married, or not. There's no "sorta-kinda" in a Pascal's Wager decision matrix.

But the decisions that Greg presents are both spectra, not binary choices. It's not, "Is climate change happening, or not?" It's "To what extent is it happening?" It's not, "Either we do nothing, or we do something." We're NOT doing nothing. Individuals - and big companies - are voluntarily taking steps to reduce their carbon footprints. The question is, "How far are we going to go?" More on that in a minute.

The second problem I have with Greg is that he leaves out a critical 3rd dimension of the decision matrix - to what extent can we do anything about it?

Here's Greg's argument in a nutshell (ok, a hand-coded HTML table):

	We do something	We do nothing
It's not real	I: Economic inconvenience	II: No worries, mate!
It's real	III: Different but livable	IV: End of the world

Ok, so I've oversimplified an oversimplification, but there it is:

Quadrant I: If global warming (GW) isn't real, but we try to fight it, we have some economic disruptions.

Quadrant II: If GW isn't real, and we do nothing, no problem, mon.

Quadrant III: If GW is real, and we do something, the world will be different but livable.

Quadrant IV: If GW is real and we do nothing, Game Over.

There are two problems with this analysis beyond false dichotomies already described. One, it glosses over the nature and scope of the economic impact of making a really significant impact on carbon emissions, never mind the political intricacies of getting India and China to go along. We're not talking about curbside recycling, folks. We're talking about turning out the lights and shuttering whole industries. Massive disruptions in the global economy. Millions thrown out of work.

"Different but livable?" Sure. The Middle Ages was "different but livable". The Amish have a "different but livable" lifestyle. To take it to an absurd extreme, we know that the cattle industry produces a whole LOT of methane. Should we then kill all the cows and enforce a worldwide "diet for a small planet?"

The second problem is that it assumes that we can do anything about it. Maybe we're past the tipping point. Or maybe the largest component of GW is solar activity, or it's just the natural climatic cycle, like the past several ice ages and warming periods. Maybe no matter WHAT we do, climate change is (or isn't) going to happen. So let's look at that table again:

It doesn't matter what we do	We do something	We do nothing
It's not real	I: Economic disaster	II: No worries, mate!
It's real	III: Climate catastrophe PLUS economic disaster	IV: Climate catastrophe BUT we have resources to adapt

See how that changes things? The picture is much bleaker - now we have THREE chances of bad things happening.

Quad I: If GW is not real and we wreck our economy for no reason, then we've ... wrecked our economy for no reason.

Quad II: If GW is not real and we do nothing.. :-)

Quad III: GW is real, but remember, in this table there's nothing we can do about it. So we blow all our economic resources on commanding the tide to not come in. Ecological disaster plus economic disaster. Hey buddy - got a spare soylent cracker?

Quad IV: In this scenario, GW is real. Eco-catastrophe. But at least we'll have the resources to adapt, since we didn't destroy the global economy trying to forestall the inevitable.

We can relocate the coastal cities, build bio-domes, starships, whatever. But at least we'll have options.

The third dimension - does it matter what we do? - totally changes the risk-management analysis.

If we CAN make a difference, then we get one of two flavors of Doomsday. Choose your poison - economic collapse (Quad I) or ecological collapse (Quad IV). Presumably, if we CAN avoid climate change by dint of human effort, then Quad III will be simply "different but livable." (But no, you can't haz chzbrgr. We had to kill all the cows to save the planet.)

But check this out - if it turns out that it doesn't matter what we do, the climate is gonna change anyway, we get THREE flavors of Apocalypse! Economic disaster - but no climate disruptions (Quad I), ecological disaster - but economic resources to deal with it (Quad IV), or a combination of both (Quad III).

If we can have an impact, Quad III is "different but livable."

If we can't...

Instead of Amish Paradise we get Soylent Green.

Mad Max.

Waterworld.

Or this.

How NOT to do customer service

FWIW, I found out about this story via Twitter. What an amazing tool.

A couple of days ago I wrote about lessons learned while serving time working in the food-service industry.

Lesson #1 is, Customer Service is Job One.

A manager and trainer at a certain Steak n Shake need to learn that.

A Deaf Mom Shares Her World: Steak and Shake Denies Service

I went through the empty drive through and drove past the speaker. After waiting a few minutes at the window, I finally honked the horn and waited some more. After a second honk a few minutes later, a young man appeared.

"Hi! I didn't order back there as I can't hear," I said, pointing to my ear. "I'd like two small shakes, one vanilla and one chocolate."

"You'll have to drive around again so I can take your order through the speaker," the guy said.

"I can't hear back there, so I'll need you to take my order here," I explained.

"No, it's our policy. You'll have to just drive around and tell me your order and then I can take your order."

Believe it or not, it gets worse. Much worse. Read the whole thing.

b-duh, b-duh, b-duh....

Call my mind officially blown. Scrape up the grey matter and reassemble, please.

Backstory: Susan Reynolds is a blogger who's battling breast cancer. She's active on Twitter. (oh, look it up!) A community of Twittering supporters has materialized over the past few months.

Somehow a TV producer got wind of the story and decided to do a story on Susan.

Tonight, someone on Twitter suggested creating an online map of folks who support Susan to show to the TV folks.It took about fifteen minutes for someone to do it.

The Economist debate on social networking in education

The Economist is hosting an important debate. Proposed: Social Networking technologies will bring large [positive] changes to educational methods, in and out of the classroom. (Thanks to Will Richardson for Tweeting on it.) Here's my take:

I have been an educator in one form or fashion for over three decades, with students ranging from pre-kindergarten to post-graduate. Of all the degree programs, lectures, seminars, colloquia, books, et cetera ad nauseum I have experienced / endured, the single thing that has had the most profound impact on my thinking and professional practice is informally sharing ideas with colleagues.

"Social Networking" is just another name for "Community of Practice." The question is, what is being practiced? I can use YouTube, Twitter, del.icio.us, etc. to fritter away the hours with ephemera (and frankly, sometimes I want to do just that!). Or I can use these tools to subscribe to the brains of some really smart people that I would otherwise never meet.

"SN" is just a tool, like a screwdriver is just a tool. You can use a screwdriver to poke holes in a wall, pry open a can, or assemble a mechanical marvel. (You can even drive a nail with it in a pinch.)

It's a set of affordances and constraints, no more, no less. Our students use these tools already. Are we going to try to make them stop using them, disregard them as useless, or will we try to open their minds to using them to learn in new ways?

The story goes that Ben Franklin was invited to witness one of the Montgolfier Brothers' balloon flights. A fellow next to him scoffed, "What use is THAT?" Franklin murmured, "Indeed. And what use is a newborn baby?"

Podcast with Clay Burell on helping students build Personal Learning Networks

“Quick In, Quick Out” Podcast: PLN Class Design Discussion with Cleveland, Maryland, NYC, Qatar, and Seoul

Wow. I happened to be on Twitter at lunchtime. I noted that minutes before, a fellow I had recently started "following" (because another of my Twitter contacts replied to him, and I liked what I saw) asked for folks to join him in a quick Skype call to talk about the class he's teaching on Personal Learning Networks. I finally installed Skype just last week in order to chat with a couple of other Twitter folk, I had a few minutes, so what the heck - I looked Clay up, added him to my (very short) contact list, and called him.

The 40-minute spontaneous conversation that ensued spanned the globe - literally. I'm no expert in Web 2.0, but via Twitter, RSS, del.icio.us, etc., I can subscribe to the brains of people who are. This stuff is really amazing. You gotta try it.

Sage advice?

A fellow in my network is thinking about ditching engineering and going to work in a kitchen.

I started out at Burger King in high school. I did 18 months in fast food. Fry station, counter, drive-though, finally A-line. "Hold the pickles hold the lettuce..." - That was me. I was in the Flow. In the Zone. Hard work with a good team is a helluvalot of fun. ZipZapZoop - I cannot be fazed. I OWN this line.

Until someone yells, "TRUCK!" (That's the 18-wheeler with a week's worthe of supplies.)

I earned my keep in kitchens until about a year after I got my Master's.

In college, a buddy was the Grill God of the local Mickey D's. 80 hours/week, because he *would*. One afternoon (after a morning after the "night before"), he wailed, "The eggs were SMILING at me!!!"

He had a nightmare once: He was all alone in the store. Every beeper in the place was going off - the grill, the fries, the pies, the fish... A tornado passed overhead, ripping off the roof and drenching the lobby. He has to go grab a mop. Then a school bus pulls in...

You will sweat. You will dance. You might sing. You will get cut, burned, and bruised. You may get fired for telling your boss he's violating the health code, and bask in quiet satisfaction later when the place closes. You'll get sick of the smell of teriyaki sauce. You will be able to break four eggs, using two hands, in three seconds.

You will understand the following at a deep level:

1. Customer Service is Job 1.
2. Rotate the stock.
3. Clean as you go.
4. You can get LOT done in thirty seconds.

Finally, whatever you do later in life, you will be able to will look back at your time in the kitchen and say, "I've worked harder for less money."

Recalling the previous generation

My Dad served in the US Navy during WW2. He liked to say, "I served with Nimitz... (pause) ...along with a couple million other guys." He was an Electrician's Mate, tasked with servicing the radars and radar altimiters of the new night fighters such as the F6FN Hellcat and F7F Tigercat. Most of his time in service was spent in Florida. He never saw combat. (His older brothers and in-laws saw their share, though. One was a paratrooper at Normandy and The Bulge, another lost a finger to a Howitzer breech mechanism somewhere in France, another had several ships torpedoed out from under him in the Merchant Marine.) Dad had some good stories, though. Here's one:

Dad was training new F6F pilots (excuse me - Naval Aviators) how to use their radar altimiters.

He explained how the unit shot a radio pulse (traveling at the speed of light) down to the water's surface, and measured the time until the reflected pulse was received. The altimeter automatically converted the travel time of the radio pulse into altitude above the water. (The unit had a toggle switch that would set its sensitivity to +/-50 ft or +/-500 ft. Quite a few pilots died in training until it was realized that they'd left the switch at "+/-500" while flying below 100 feet. They figured it out after fishing a few of the birds out of the drink and noticing the switch position.)

During one training session, one hotshot Naval Aviator was lounging back and clearly not paying much attention. Dad said, "Hey - you don't think this is important?" The flyboy replied, "Man, I'm cruising at three hundred miles per hour. By the time your little ray-di-oh blip bounces off the water, I'm looong gone!"

Hello, Twits!

Thanks, Sue, for flogging my lil' segment of the Long Tail to your Twitter network.

I was astonished to realize that I've passed three years here. If you're curious about the name of the blog, the first post explains it.

I'm sure there's plenty in the archives that's cringe-worthy, looking back, so I won't. (I do like last month's "Geese" post, though.)

Note - many posts (especially from '04) offer up political opinion from the right side of the aisle. You Have Been Warned. :-)

So welcome, have a look around, drop me a comment if you like.

Remember the old Toyota commercial?

Note - this post is 90% content-free. It's not exactly "ad ipso factum moribuni garlactorium ibid" Greekign, but it's close.

I've lately gotten into Twitter, big-time. (I'm rapidy approaching my first KiloTweet.) Being the shameless attention-wh.. uh, self-promoter that I am, I Tweeted the fact that I'd updated SDDC a time or two. One of my TwitFriends (Hi, Sue!) graciously added me to her feed reader, and was then good enough to let me know (via Twit DM) that the feed was broken.

Being the not-nearly-as-technically-savvy-as-some-folk-take-me-to-be lazy person that I am, I took the low road and clicked the happy "Upgrade Now!" button in the Blogger dashboard.

Fortunately, that process broke a lot less than I feared, and gave me more new options than I expected. (A very rare upgrade, I must say!)

So I posted a couple of short notes, thinking that that might demonstrate whether or not the RSS feed was now working.

Note - I have not set up an RSS feed manually. I assume that Blogger has that built in, for those who want to subscribe to Blogger blogs. As I said, I'm lazy. Or maybe I just have a user-centered mindset - the application should do the hard stuff. Yeah, that's the ticket! I'm not lazy, I'm user-centered! w00t!

But apparently, the posts I'd posted weren't long enough to validate whether the RSS feeder was doing its thing. I needed a longer post. Great. It's the beginning of the semester. I'm swamped with faculty coming to me saying, "Hi. Can I have a Blackboard site for my class?" (This is not a Bad Thing, mind you. It just takes a fair amount of time.) And I need to post a long post.

So, for the benefit of Sue and anyone else needing to see if their RSS reader can pick up a freshly-updated Blogger site, here's a long post. You asked for it, you got it. (If I was less lazy, I'd find and link to an old Toyota commercial.)

Hello, Readers!

Wow. I knew that'd been promoted to Adorable Little Rodent from Flappy Bird in the TTLB Ecosystem, but I assumed that was because I'd started posting more. Until I added the FeedJit map, I had NO CLUE that I was getting traffic from anywhere.

I mean, no one hardly ever leaves a comment. hint... hint...

So I've upgraded

A few clicks, and I've blindly accepted whatever new coding schema the Google Overlords have cooked up. I was able to add a map of visitors to the site, though, and massage the layout without hand-coding the template html.

Will this make me a better blogger in 2008? Who knows? I still have to insert br tags by hand, it seems.

Observing the next generation

So the kids got Nintendo DSs for Christmas.

The DS is a handheld game/communication device that can communicate via wireless with any other DS in range, about 100 feet. You can share games, play together, and swap notes that include drawings via "PictoChat." It has two touch-sensitive screens, the usual game-controller buttons, and a microphone and speaker. Games come on cartridges that insert into a slot in the unit. It folds closed.

A few random observations...

When the boys play together, they are running around a futuristic landscape blowing up evil robots and shooting lightning bolts at each other. Sample conversation snippets: "Over there! Get 'im!" "Hey! Why'd you shoot me?!?!"
When the girls play together, they are training puppies. Sample conversation snippets: "Here, Daisy!" "Hey - she's drinking out of my dog's water dish!"
Gender differences? What gender differences?

Four kids in the back of the van, faces illuminated by a soft blue glow. They are racing cartoon go-karts against each other. Conversation snippets: "Hey! Who threw that banana?" "I got a King Mushroom!" "Balloon! I need a balloon!"

Making use of the affordances of the platform....

To train your puppy, you stroke its nose with the stylus, then speak a command and the dog's name. "Sit, Daisy!" After a number of trials, you can just say, "Sit, Daisy" and the little pup plops proudly down on his virtual derriere. Rub his nose vigorously and you can make him sneeze a little puppy sneeze. It's waaay cute.

In another game you face a monster that looks something like a giant yellow rubber rabbit, bouncing all over the place and threatening to squash you. However fearsome it may be, it actually is a very timid creature. If you yell at it, it runs away.

At one point in one of the games, you have acquired a talisman that must be placed into a niche in a door. Problem: The talisman is on one screen. The door is on the other screen. There's no way to drag it from one to the other. Solution: Close the unit, thus pressing the screens together and transferring the talisman to the other screen. (Darned clever, if you ask me.)

Why can't our educational tools be this interesting, inventive, and engaging? Of course, the DS is an educational tool. The kids are learning to solve their own problems, to find solutions from others, to share, to communicate, to figure it out on their own. They are also learning that if you give something away you can sell more of it.

(The preteen noted that the feature that lets you share games will result in more games being sold, since you'll want your own copy so you can save your progress.)

These are all valuable lessons that will serve them well throught their lives. Pity we can't measure them with a Scantron sheet.

I wrotez a poem

Actually, I don't write poems. They grab me by the throat and demand to be set down.

Last night was one such occasion:


Grade Crossing, Prairie, Night
Black box silhouettes hurtle across my path, invisible, from horizon to horizon
A million tons of treasure, trinkets, tabletops, marbles, alarm bells
Made in China (and its suburbs) for purchase in our own
A single light the only warning.

Peggy Noonan on "The Speech"

I love it when someone really smart agrees with me. It gives me hope that I'm not a total dunderhead. Peggy Noonan also thinks Romney did a very good job, and that he missed an opportunity in not reaching out to people of no faith.

"The Speech"

Mitt Romney's "Faith in America" speech.

Hewitt may be right. As a political event, Romney may have hit a grand slam given the attention given to it. Or not, if you read other's opinions.

IMO The Speech rates a B+, maybe an A-. It was a very good speech (though not quite Peggy Noonan quality), competently delivered. However, it fell short of Reagan's dulcet tones (and was unsettlingly reminiscent of W's choppy delivery - do I want to listen to that or to Rudy for the next eight years?).

He made no mention of non-Abrahamic worldviews. Buddhists and freethinkers may not be a large voting bloc, but the intelligentsia and media elite hold them in high esteem. A couple of sentences could have undercut paragraphs of criticism.

Minor verbal whoops such as "two century laters" show that he's human, at least.

It'll be interesting to watch the polls over the next few days as the spin works its way out to the folks who not only didn't live-blog it, but aren't quite sure who this Mitt Romney fellow is.

Geese

Geese fly in V formations.



This lets each goose (except the lead, of course) surf on the wingtip vortex generated by the goose ahead, reducing the amount of energy needed to stay aloft. The aerodynamics of wingtip vortices is well-understood. It's the reason that most modern airliners have "winglets" - those small vertical blades at the ends of their wings.


The winglets reduce the size of the vortex produced by the wingtip, and therefore reduce the drag.

Of course, geese don't have winglets - they're gonna create vortices. But as a group, they can work together. Like NASCAR drivers "drafting", geese maintain a precise relative position to take maximum aerodynamic advantage.


But did you ever notice that the V is almost always asymmetrical? One side is usually longer than the other. Turns out there's a precise mathematical reason for that, too.



















There's more geese on that side.

Fearfully and wonderfully made

TED | Talks | David Bolinsky: Fantastic voyage inside a cell.

This is all just emergent behavior. It all just arose by chance, by the random combining of molecules over millions of years. It has no purpose. No desgner, no creator, no engineer set it in motion.

It.
Just.
Happened.



Sure. Tell me another funny story.

UPDATED - Open Phone Tests versus Just Knowing It

Will Richardson (Weblogg-ed) starts the day with a thought-provoking post about a student who sends text messages with his phone in his pocket.

---------------------------------- UPDATE Challenged by Barry(16) in the comments thread at Weblogg-ed, I re-read the article. It does not in fact say that Insoo was texting during a test, only that he was texting *in class*. That's the equivalent of passing notes, and hardly a character issue on the level of cheating on an exam. Further, the full article notes that he wants a new phone, the price of which is doing well on his exams. I've edited this post accordingly. Sorry to impugn your character, Insoo. -----------------------------------

This raises all sorts of interesting questions, being battered about in the comments thread and on Twitter. "If they can find the answer on the Net (including their personal learning network of friends and trusted strangers), is the question worth asking?" and so forth.

These are good and valuable questions to batter about. But...

As Charles says in the comments on Will's post, unless the networking is somehow helping Insoo grasp the mathematical concepts, then he isn't learning math. He may be learning something, but it isn't what was assigned. And what was assigned, we may assume, is something that is of value to society. Kids are always whining, "Do I really have to know this?" Cheating - of any form - is that whine put into action. We can argue about the relevancy of the curriculum. And we should listen to our students so we can make it relevant. But they don't get to decide what they need to learn and what they can slough off.

Second, there needs to be a recognition that sometimes you Just Need To Know It. If I'm on an airplane and the engine catches fire, I don't want the pilot texting his Personal Learning Network for a solution. I want him to "Execute the Engine Fire Checklist from memory with no prompting in less than 30 seconds with 100% accuracy." (Thank you, Mr. Mager!)

There's no question that we educators - with help from our madly-connected 21st-century students - need to devise relevant, authentic learning activities that leverage the power of these new communications tools and paradigms.

But it's fair for us to expect that they'll learn what we ask them to.

Black Friday

Game Somethingerother with #1 son. He can not only keep a secret, but feign surprise and delight. Besides, I needed an SME to keep from buying the wrong thing.

Then, across town to meet the wife and younger three at the sports store. A recument bike has been on the watch list, as we both need to reverse the caloric input/output ratio. Sale price expires in ten minutes. Smart clerk sized us up instantly. ("Not in shape, reasons to live, able to pay.") The box was waiting at the door when I walked in. My airplane will have fewer buttons and controls.

The all-you-can-eat pizza place was *right there*, so...



Hey. I had a salad, and only one "seconds" trip on the pizza. Progess, not perfection, right?

Finally, Sears and JCPs with the Daughters looking for a suitable Christmas dress. 12 tried. One settled on, after I said, "Oh, well. Looks like we struck out. No, we're not doing Macy's. Let's go home." It looks FINE. Really.

Then today, "Enchanted" and "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium" followed by take-home pints from Hershey's Ice Cream.

All in all a very expensive weekend. And thank You, Big Guy, for making it possible. Feels okay to blow a bonus check on stuff for the fambly when you've already tithed on it. :-)

Digital Identities

"Glassbeed" has an interesting post about Kids and Digital Identities today.

I originally had several online IDs in order to keep professional, personal, and political commentary separate. I was concerned that prejudice about my personal views might color people's perceptions of my professional capabilities.

I quickly realized that it was far too much work to keep them totally separate. If someone takes a dim view of my professional contributions because they don't like the way I vote or worship, that's their problem.

Revealing comments

CNN.com - CNN Political Ticker Wrestler Ric Flair supporting Mike Huckabee «

Back many months ago I thought Huckabee had a shot at the national ticket. It's clear he's at best a second-tier candidate with regional appeal. (That *could* come in handy to balance Rudy, though.)

That "regional appeal" becomes more clear with his recent endorsements - Chuck Norris, Ted Nugent, and now a famous pro wrestler (whom I've never heard of, since the last time I watched "rasslin'" was when LBJ was President).

What's really revealing, though, is the reaction in the comments section at the CNN ticker site linked above. The hatred and bigotry that is expressed there is truly breathtaking.


But it isn't coming from the fans of Chuck, Ted, and the WWF.

New Technology Makes Aircraft More Crash-Resistant.

"The Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands will demonstrate how the application of Fault Tolerant Control can be used to keep damaged aircraft flying and improve their chances of being successfully recovered. "

It probably would not have helped in this case, though.

Amen, amen, and yea verily I say unto ye again, amen

Will Richardson at Weblogg-ed:

"At some point, I want one of the goals and outcomes for the students at my kids’ school system to be that they will graduate with the ability to build their own learning networks in effective, ethical and safe ways. But that will only happen when enough of the administrators and teachers understand that for themselves. Only then will they be able to help my kids add dots to their world maps in ways that teach them the power of networks in the ways we already know it."

emphasis added

I think we may have turned a corner...

...in the war of Radical Islamism against Western Civilization. Not only is there continued good news from Iraq (a "surge" division is going home) but the the enemy is fodder for ridicule. (Think "In Der Fuhrer's Face") Note - the second link above is NSW, non-PC, and potentially offensive. YHBW, YMMV, etc.

A parable for teachers

From the email inbox:

Once there was a king who decided to set aside a special day to honor his greatest subject. When the big day arrived, a large gathering took place in the palace courtyard and four finalists were brought forward.

The first person was a wealthy philanthropist. This man was deserving of the king's honor because of his great humanitarian efforts. He had given much of his wealth to the poor, building orphanages, schools and hospitals throughout the land. The second was a celebrated physician. This outstanding doctor was deserving of honor for rendering his faithful and dedicated service to the sick for many years and discovering medicines that saved many lives. The third was a distinguished judge. He was noted for his wisdom, his fairness and his many a brilliant decision.

The last person presented before the king was an elderly woman. Her manner was quite humble, as was her dress. She hardly looked the part of someone who would be honored as the greatest subject in the kingdom. What chance could she possibly have, when compared to the other three, who had accomplished so very much?

The king was intrigued, to say the least and was somewhat puzzled by her presence. He asked who she was. Then the answer came: "Well, my king, do you see the philanthropist, the doctor, and the judge over here? She was their teacher!"

A large hmmm factor

What happens when you take public dataset A, merge it with public dataset B, and make the results public - and easy to use?

Betchablog has links and commentary.

A human in the loop

Astronauts fix ripped solar wing

Sometimes, there's just no substitute for real "hands-on" problem-solving.

We have become masters of automation. Since the beginning of the Industrial Age, it's been all about faster and cheaper. Since people are slow and expensive (especially in space) that means getting people out of the loop. The more we can turn the work over to the machines, the more work can get done.

Until something goes worgn.

Machines are far better than people at performing pre-programmed tasks with precision. Star Wars - the 1977 pre-digital-effects original (a purist, I refuse to call it Episode IV) - could not have been made with human camera operators. But when the machines break down (as they always do), people must step in to fix it.

It's the same with learning. We can design all sorts of systems that automatically mold themselves to the student. We can create algorthims to diagnose and adapt to a specific "learning style", or anticipate a learner's probable errors and stand ready with remediation at an atomic level of detail.

But there will always come a point when a student steps off the design document.

It doesn't happen with every student, but a dollar gets you a doughnut it happens with every "automated instruction system" if it has enough users. Eventually, a student comes up with a question the designer didn't anticpate.

As the old pre-PC "Little Rascals"put it, "Now what, Buckwheat?"

But if we can put a human being back into the loop - someone who can interpret the lost look, the six-days-without-logging-in pattern, the forum post that is so clearly off-track - then we don't have to analyze the content to death.

Just build an additional component into the sysem: a teacher, a tutor, a peer mentor. (If you call them "a network of organic, analog feedback devices" you might even be able to get grant money to pay them.)

This is why we have a human in the loop

Doctor to fix space station's torn wing - Yahoo! News

Willow Creek

A Shocking “Confession” from Willow Creek Community Church

Willow Creek has been at the forefront of the "seeker friendly" movement in the Evangelical Christian world. Offer lots of social services, upbeat music, stay away from the fire and brimstone, and you'll pack 'em in. Apparently they decided to do an internal study and found that while the church was growing, the people weren't.

An update on Thunder

Aimlessly looking at back links (it's a slow day), I recalled the Green Pea incident described here. I thought my legions of faithful readers might appreciate an update. Thunder died a couple of months ago. The tank sits empty, the pump stilled.

Useful web 2.0 links

From a Sloan-C workshop (yes, I know it's a mess) Burks'/Ray's 20 Top Web 2.0 Applications for Education Below are links to 20 top, stable Web 2.0 applications that are widely-used in higher education. Please take a look at any of these that you have not previously used. Blog http://blogger.com Wiki http://pbwiki.com Podomatic http://www.podomatic.com Flickr http://www.flickr.com Google Docs http://docs.google.com Google Calendar http://www.google.com/calendar/ GooglePages http://googlepages.com Del.icio.us http://del.icio.us MySpace http://www.myspace.com Citizendium http://www.citizendium.org YouTube http://www.youtube.com Gliffy http://gliffy.com/ Skype http://www.skype.com Kartoo http://www.kartoo.com Elluminate Vroom http://www.elluminate.com/vroom/ Second Life http://www.secondlife.com Odeo http://www.odeo.com Digg http://www.digg.com Xdrive http://www.xdrive.com zoho http://zoho.com/ Webware 100 - "the best 100 Web 2.0 sites" Here are links to many more top Web 2.0 applications identified by CNet as being among the top 100 Web 2.0 sites online. You are encouraged to explore these as well: http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100.html Links and brief descriptions of the finalists by category: Browsing finalists: http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100/2007/browsing_info.html Communication finalists: http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100/2007/communication_info.html Community finalists: http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100/2007/community_info.html Data finalists: http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100/2007/data_info.html Media finalists: http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100/2007/media_info.html Mobile finalists: http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100/2007/mobile_info.html Productivity finalists: http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100/2007/productivity_info.html Publishing finalists: http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100/2007/publishing_info.html Reference finalists: http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100/2007/reference_info.html

Now I don't feel so bad about the ALCS

Sox 13, Rockies 1

California is Burning

Hundreds of homes in flames, half a million people evacuated.

How long until someone blames this on George Bush?

Age of Wonders

In the film "Master and Commander," 19th-century British sea captain Jack Aubry is handed a wooden model of a new warship. He examines it carefully, noting its many innovative features. Finally he sets it down, saying, "What an age of wonders we live in."

If he had only known what was just over the horizon.
Since the Renaissance, every age has been an Age of Wonders, it seems. The colonies of the New World had limitless wealth. The Enlightenment promised a new dawn of scientific understanding. Steam would provide inexhaustible power. The telegraph allowed messages to be sent thousands of miles. Bell's telephone transmitted the human voice over a wire. In 1900, the Patent Office concluded that everything that could be invented, had been.

But more wonders were yet to come. As the new century dawned, Thomas Edison was working tirelessly to find a way to produce light with electricity. Henry Ford was realizing that an automobile could be built cheaply if the work was broken down to the smallest task. And in Ohio, two brothers were building a machine that could fly.

Within only fifty years, the electric light, the automobile, and the airplane had totally transformed society. By the end of World War II it was hard to imagine life without them.

Not long afterward, my father went to work for International Business Machines. He was initially set to work repairing price-calculating grocer's scales - the core of the business. Within a few years he was assigned to a new area called "data processing". Engineers had created an experimental calculating machine twice the size of anything previously attempted, with 40,000 characters of memory. It cost millions, and filled a large room.

In the mid-1950's, the most powerful computer in the world had 39k of memory.

Just a few decades later, Seymour Cray was building supercomputers. They were the size of refrigerators and orders of magnitude faster than anything else on the planet. They didn't have cooling fans - they had radiators. Researchers waited for months to get a few seconds of precious time on the mammoth machines.

Today, my kids' Playstation 2 has more processing power than any Cray ever had. For the price of lunch you can put 2 gigabytes of storage on a keychain: 20,000 of the room-sized machines my dad worked on, the size of a pack of gum. For less than $150, you can buy a 500 Gb hard drive. That's 200 billion pages of text - 33,000 college libraries. It's the size of a paperback book.

We're connected in ways Captain Aubrey could never have imagined. You can shoot video with a cell phone, upload it to YouTube, and it can instantly be viewed by millions of people, worldwide. If you have a question - any question - "just Google it" and you will likely get an answer in moments. If you like a song, you can buy it for a buck on iTunes (or steal it elsewhere). You can look up anything at all on Wikipedia, a reference thousands of times larger than the Encyclopedia Britannica - and change it yourself if you spot an error.

Welcome to the 21st century. Everything is different, now, isn't it?

Well, yes and no. True, people today seem to live in a cloud of constant sensory input, resulting in what one writer called, "continuous partial attention." Many of our students can't imagine living without computers, portable music players, game systems, and the like. Others have only heard about these wonders, and worry about what they're missing.

For those of us who teach (and who directly support the teachers), this is a huge challenge. Many of our students know far more than we do about the new tools and toys. Others struggle with basic skills most of us mastered years ago. Every semester faculty come to me and say, "Please get me set up with Blackboard. My students say I need to use it."

But in truth, the technology doesn't matter all that much. Regardless of the tools they use, people are still people. We all have the same basic human needs: for food and shelter, for security, for love and belonging, for esteem, for self-actualization. Under the iPod and Razr, behind the email or discussion board post, is a human being with the same fundamental needs as his or her great-great grandparents.

They just meet those needs in different ways, that's all. iTunes is not so very different than the traveling minstrel of Chaucer's time. It just has a larger repertoire.

A tool is merely a set of affordances and constraints - stuff it lets you do easily, and stuff it makes it hard to do. That applies to tools used for teaching, too. You can teach in the 3D simulated world of Second Life, where people can fly and a student may appear as an alien with an orange mohawk (ok, bad example - that can show up on campus, too). But you also can teach while sitting on a log and using your finger to draw in the dirt (hey - digital interactive multimedia!)

Drawing in the dirt is a quick and easy way to show something - to a person who's there with you. Teaching online lets you bring in all sorts of resources and frees the student from having to be in a certain place at a certain time - but you lose eye contact and facial expressions. Is that good? Is it bad?

Neither. It's just different.

You can't replicate a classroom online. Don't try. You can only work to replicate the results of the classroom. That's the most fun part of my job - helping faculty figure out how to use these new tools to get the same (or sometimes, better) results. Of course, the capabilities of the tools keep changing, and new tools keep appearing. (Some of them are so new we don't know how to really use them well.) We often feel like hamsters on a wheel that's spinning faster than we can run. But we keep up as best we can with what's going on "out there." We try new things. Sometimes they work better than we'd planned. Sometimes they crash and burn. We pick up the pieces, learn from the experience, and try, try again. We have to, if we want to prepare our students for the next Age of Wonders.

It's just over the horizon.

My ride on a B-17

Our little local airshow had never had a website. I made one for this year's show. (www.usaviationmuseum.com) It's gotten a fair amount of traffic, even after the show. (I concocted a photo contest to drive traffic after the show and reinforce the experience.)

During the show I work the flightline. (I get to tell pilots where to go, hee hee.) So Friday midday I'm out on the ramp, sweating and getting sore feet and a sunburn. (Hey, at least I don't have to pay for the priviledge.) Actually, it's a very nice day. A few clouds, a breeze, high 70s and severe clear. VERY nice day.

Around 2:20 the show boss called me over and asked, "What are you doing at 2:45 today?" I replied, "Whatever you want." (Of course.) Pointing to the fully restored B-17 Flying Fortress behind her, she said, "Be on that plane."

I replied, "Yes, ma'am!" (Of course.)

I signed the waiver, got my ID sticker. Went over to the flightline chief and told him that I'd been assigned to "special duty" until the '17 landed. He smiled a bit and nodded. He got a ride last year.

I waited, waited some more, then we were assembled and briefed by the flight engineer. "You have to stay seated until the wheels are up. Then you can move around at will, go up front to the bombardier's station, whatever, except for the tail and ball turret."

We boarded and strapped in. I was in the radio compartment. They opened up the "skylight" so we didn't bake.

There's a very loud, somewhat unpleasant screetchy sound, sort of like what you hear on an Airbus 320 when it's about to start its engines. I assume it's an hydraulic pump.

I'm on the starboard side, with a glimpse out a tiny window. I can see a LOT of rivets on the right wing and the #3 engine (inboard right side) That's the one that starts first. The prop starts turning. 14 blades, then a cough, grumble, roar. #4 turns, starts. #1, #2. All four engines are now idling, each consuming 20 gallons per hour of $5/gal avgas. A penny per second, just to sit there with the motors running.

The whole airframe shakes with suppressed power. This is no Walter Mitty pocketa-pocketa fantasy. This is a serious machine built for a serious purpose - to defeat a serious and determined enemy.

The sound increases and we start to move. The brakes squeal. From my seat I can look forward and see the ground through the open bomb bay doors. More loud sound, and the bomb bay doors close.

We taxi for a long time. The airfield has no parallel taxiway, so you back-taxi down the active runway to a turnaround at the end. No control tower, and the airport is open, so it's up to the pilots in the pattern to talk to each other in order to avoid... unpleasantness. You can imagine the radio calls: "Lost Nation traffic, Cessna Three Four Bravo five miles south, inbound for Two Eight, Lost Nation." "Three Four Bravo, be advised, a B-17 is back-taxiing on Two Eight." "Three Four Bravo, we'll extend."

We complete the slow turn - the taxiway is barely wider than the our gear - and take the active runway. The engines rev up to takeoff power.

The airplane had been quivering at idle and taxiing, like a dog eager for the owner to loose the leash. Now the leash is off, and the animal leaps forward. The acceleration isn't the shove-you-back-in-your-seat thrill of a sports car. It's not the relentless, smooth press of a commercial jet meeting a schedule.

It's more *purposeful* somehow. We have a war to win, I think. Thousands of people back home have labored to build this machine so that we can use it stop Hitler and end this damned war. I don't imagine what it must be like to feel that, I actually feel it. It's a fleeting moment, but a real and powerful one.

We lift off easily at our light weight, and I think of what it must have been like to know you were thousands of pounds over gross, willing the wing to lift, not being able to see forward but knowing that this. takeoff. is. taking. a. really. long. time...

We climb out straight ahead. I can see out the sliver of window a local landmark near my house. We must be nearly directly overhead, at less than a thousand feet. A phone call while waiting to start engines had alerted the home crew. They were outside and waving as we flew overhead, they tell me later. I might have seen them if the bomb bay doors had been open.

The gear is up, and we get the word (ok, a hand wave and a nod) that we can unstrap and move around.

I realize quickly (with much gratitude) that a pudgy out-of-shape 45-year-old has about the same dimensions and flexibility as a skinny nineteen-year old in a sheepskin flight suit. We squeeze past each other, grin madly, take turns at the waist guns. badda-baada-baddabadda! ("Yah, Sven, dere vas Fokkers above, Fokkers below, Fokkers to da left and right. And alla dem fokkers vas Messerschmits!").

Yeah, funny. But holding the waist gun, looking out the window, hunched over peering through a ring sight... I've seen the films. "Dem Messerchmits" are small targets, moving fast, and they are trying to kill you. The '17's skin is thin. The helmet and flak jacket don't cover everthing.

The moment passes.

This was a media flight. A local reporter was on board, with a camera ship flying in formation to get some shots with downtown or the lake in the background.

Also in formation, a pair of P-51 scale replicas. 3/4 the size of the real thing, and 1/20 the cost.

The crew had removed the "sunroof" - the large clear panel over the radio room. We could (carefully) look out this large opening and have a perfectly clear view of the tail and the sky all around.

I take off my hat, hold onto my glasses, and look back at the tail and the lakeshore below. Holding station at five o'clock high and seven o'clock high are a pair of P-51s.

I know it's 2007. I know those are scale replicas, not the real thing. But for some reason, standing in a B-17, looking out at a pair of P-51s, I feel... protected.

We pass over the lakefront downtown airport, LOW, and hit the airshow smoke on #2. Someone downtown calls 911 thinking we're on fire.

We climb and turn, and I have a magnificent view of downtown and the lakeshore out the open hatch. I make my way forward, squeezing through the bomb bay catwalk to the flight deck. The three-man crew is all cool professionalism in their flight suits. There's a GPS moving map attached to the panel. I try to ignore it.

I squeeze down between the pilots' seats to the nose compartment. I imagine peering through those little windows on the side, trying to spot the enemy fighters. I imagine deadly black flowers of flak blossoming outside the big clear bubble at the very front. Nothing you can do but hope they miss. Bombardiers and navigators suffered the highest casualty rates.

I make my way back to the engineer's station - we're minutes from landing, now. But I pop up into the top turret one more time, look towards the shore, and I can see my house. I wave, knowing the kids can't see me.

We take our seats and strap in for landing. I'm wedged into the radio compartment again. A long, low final approach - the airport neighbors who hate airplanes must be LOVING this! - we cross the threshold, three quick screetches and we're rolling.

Taxing in and shutting down is anticlimactic. As the props stop, I once again think of the kids, now old men, who took this airplane into harm's way. They had no idea that their sacrifice would ensure that my kids would grow up in freedom. They just wanted to get the job done.

I look at the guy across from me and say, "Twenty-four more, and we can go home."

The Ratings Always Drop Twice

I'm not normally a big fan of noir, but this satire from Iowqahawk is rich.

Note - if you don't get the inside jokes, you obviously don't read the center-right blogs. He left out a few folks, but the "Jimmy Fargo" and "Dragon Lady" references are classic.

Thunderstruck

Watch this video: Duty In The Desert: "Green Light"

Now consider this: The men who do this, volunteer to do it. Not only that, they compete for the honor of being allowed to do it.

And when they hit the ground, they are armed to the teeth, ready to move out in minutes, and spoiling for a fight.

I'm glad they're on our side.

Blue Löbster Cult

Rare blue lobster avoids the cooker

Or maybe the Lobster Blues?

Gimme twelve bars in A, boys, 1, 2, 3, and...

I'm mindin' my bus'ness, looking for a bit o' food.
Jess mindin' my bus'ness, looking for a bit o' food.
See a funny cave, lawdy boy don' it smell good.

I goes inside, it's crowded as it might be.
I goes inside, it's crowded as it might be.
Tries to leave, done made a fool o' me.


Got dem los' mah freedom, headed fo' da steampot blues....

The new culture of death

More Americans support doctor-precribed poison than not:

The new AP-Ipsos poll asked whether it should be legal for doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to help terminally ill patients end their own lives — a practice currently allowed in Oregon but in no other states. Forty-eight percent said it should be legal; 44 percent said it should be illegal.

The incessant "right to die" drumbeat of the past few decades has been successful, it seems. What's next? one wonders.

Something to ponder over a tasty soylent cracker, eh?

Are you an Information Omnivore?

Pew Research has a new study out on how people use information and communication technology.



You can take an online survey to see where you fit on the spectrum. (FWIW I'm a "Connector", second from the top tier, "Omnivores".)

Here's a direct link to the PDF version of the full report.

"It's quite interesting, and a little disturbing," she said.

If you read the little thin-paper inserts that come with your prescription meds, you'll often find a discussion of "bioavailability." That's the percentage of the drug that actually gets into your bloodstream and does you good.

Ever wonder what happens to the rest?

Apropos of nothing...

Gas

I had to return a library video ("The Matrix") today. I forgot to drop it off on the way to work. I had to work late, so I thought I'd run out after the regular work day and before my evening teaching and drop it off. I HATE being late returning videos, since the library charges a dollar a day.

But first I had to get gas, since the "Fuel It or Push It" light was on.

$3.19 a gallon.

My car gets about 15 mpg. It now costs me about a dollar to drive five miles.

It was cheaper to pay the fine than drive the round-trip to the library.

I dropped the DVD in the after-hours box on the way home.




An early Father's Day tale?

A moment of silence, please. Leo the goldfish has died.

Leo was a good fish, well-loved by my older daughter. He enjoyed blowing bubbles and swimming briskly. He didn't let Thunder, his larger tankmate, bully him out of his share of fish flakes.

We don't know what killed Leo. He turned up missing yesterday morning, and a search of the tank eventually turned up his remains down among the gravel. Thunder, the larger fish belonging to my youngest son, was still swimming. (Note - Thunder is not a suspect in Leo's demise. Goldfish die, and they decay quickly. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.)

So last night I cleaned the tank, thoroughly. I transferred Thunder to a bowl of freshly-filtered water while I boiled the gravel and scrubbed the tank.

But Thunder wasn't looking so good, himself. He was listless, tending to float tail-up. I don't know much about goldfish, but even I could tell that Something Was Not Right with Thunder.

How did we cope before Google? Thunder very likely had swim bladder disease. The cure: Green peas. Yes, green peas are apparently a miracle food for goldfish. Post after post on fish-fan message boards extoll the life-bestowing, heath-restoring virtues of green peas. Green Peas, the Legume of Life.

Chicken soup for goldfish.

So after I reassembled and refilled the tank, and poured the ailing Thunder out of the bowl back into his home, I searched the freezer for a bag of green peas. No luck. The pantry? Success! But since they were far too large for little Thunder to injest, I peeled them open in the hopes that the listless little fish would ingest some of the green miracle mush inside.

Please bear in mind that Thunder is not a fancy mutant goldfish. He's not a lionhead, koi or waikin. He doesn't have flowing fins three times his body length. His eyes do not pop out like marbles. He's a ten-cent carnival prize. A miniature carp. He lives in a ten-dollar tank and eats cheap fish flakes. A grade-schooler's first pet.

But there I was, peeling canned green peas at two in the morning, trying to save him.


Most folks would call me crazy. But Dads understand.



Oh - this morning Thunder looked much better. Maybe there's something to peas after all.

I wouldn't use 'em , myself

Headline: Freight train with shuttle parts derails.

Reminder to NASA brass considering using those booster segments: Apollo 13's O2 tank was dropped about six inches.

Why I love country music

In case you don't recognize him, the speaker is Jeff "You might be a redneck if..." Foxworthy.

(Disclaimer: I was raised up on both kinds of music: Country, and Western.)

Jesus' Last Parable

"My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?"

It is no accident that Jesus quoted Psalm 22 as he was dying. It gives us an important clue about what really happened on the Cross.

You see, the Crucifixion was Jesus' final parable. While Jesus' agony was horrible, how could a few hours of suffering - even scourging and crucifixion - possibly begin to atone for the sins of billions? The simple answer is, it could not, and it did not.

John tells us, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning." Since before time began, Jesus and the Father had shared the closest possible communication. Their father-son bond is the envy of every parent, every child. When Jesus prayed, he always referred to God as his Father. And he prayed out loud mostly for the benefit of his disciples, because he knew that God the Father already knew his heart and mind.

When Jesus was in anguish in the Garden after the Last Supper, he cried out, "Daddy, is there any other way?"

But there *was* no other way. If there had been, would God have sent his beloved Son to the cross?

But the physical agony of the cross was only a shadow of reality. You see, as Jesus hung there in excruciating pain - beaten, bloody, mocked, reviled, humiliated, and rejected by men, "he who knew no sin *became* sin."

His chest heaving in its final spasms, Jesus looked up to His Father.

And God, the Holy One, eternally, perfectly Just and Righteous, looked down.

He did *not* see his perfect, kind, gentle, loving Son, the one in whom He was well pleased. He did *not* see the obedient child who had scampered about Joseph's workshop. He did *not* see the eager student questioning the teachers in the Temple. He did *not* see the gentle healer who gave sight to the blind, made lepers clean, and made the lame walk.

God looked down at Jesus on the Cross and saw only sin.

He saw every sin I have ever committed. Every sin you have ever committed. Every sin ever committed by every person who has ever - or who will ever - put their faith in Christ. He saw hate and anger and murder and lies and deceit and slander and sloth and lust and gluttony and envy and adultery and covetousness and idolatry.

God looked down at Sin, and turned away in disgust.

And Jesus, for the first time in all eternity, was utterly Alone. As that terrible emptiness, the full weight of God's wrath fell on him, is it any wonder that he cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

And then he said, "It is finished," because it *was* finished. There was nothing left to do but die.

So that He could rise again...

White House Involved In New Scandal

White House Involved In New Scandal

This is MY President!

h/t Hugh

Peace of Mind

The Heavenly Chorus just gained a new lead. I've got the vinyl Boston LP I bought with my high school Burger King earnings on the turntable right now. I never could cover Boston. The rhythm parts are pretty easy, and the lead parts aren't all that challenging if you have the Tom Sholtz-designed RockMan (or can dial in a close-enough balance of gain, distortion and chorus). I've even got a decent tenor most days. (With a chest cold, a passable baritone.) But Bradley Delp sang on a completely different plane.

Yum!

New ice cream named for Stephen Colbert

I'm not a Colbert fan, since I don't watch much TV. And I'm not going to get into the liberal bias of the media here. But vanilla ice cream with fudge-covered waffle cone pieces and caramel?

Yum.

And hey - they could have included three kinds of nuts, but didn't. So props to that.





Ok, look. I'm over 40. Vanilla IS a flavor.

Yum!

New ice cream named for Stephen Colbert

I'm not a Colbert fan, since I don't watch much TV. And I'm not going to get into the liberal bias of the media here. But vanilla ice cream with fudge-covered waffle cone pieces and caramel?

Yum.

And hey - they could have included three kinds of nuts, but didn't. So props to that.





Ok, look. I'm over 40. Vanilla IS a flavor.

Gar - this is just getting SO tedious...

The MS Sslams our soldiers. again. I don't want to spend much to much time on this, but, dangit, it's going to get MSM play despite the fact that it warrants zero attention. The article claims that the military is lowering its standards, wasting no time to get in an editorial jab.

"The Army and Marine Corps are letting in more recruits with criminal records, including some with felony convictions, reflecting the increased pressure of five years of war and its mounting casualties. "

Emphasis added. I'll let you read the article and see for yourself how slanted it is, but here's a sample:

"The Army granted more than double the number of waivers for felonies and misdemeanors in 2006 than it did in 2003."

More than double? Double what? Compared to what? Can we have some real numbers, please? In statgeekspeak, "What's the n"? In MSMspeak, "What's the data, Kenneth"?

Ah, but.

Read down TEN paragraphs to see who instigated this kerfuffle. It's Aaron Belkin, director of the Michael D. Palm center, which Google reveals as a "think tank" apparently dedicated to opposing the (Clinton-era) "don't-ask-don't-tell" US military policy on in-the-ranks homosexuality.

I guess that it's a Bad Thing to let kids who've had a brush with the law volunteer to risk getting their butts blown off, while at the same time...

Nope. Not gonna say it.

Wouldn't be prudent.

A day late and a dollar short, as usual

Click the link above and listen.

Oh-ay. Did that?
Good. Now, I know, it's Far Too Late (i.e., > 30 seconds) for me to have any effect on that particular conversation, but...

1. I LIKE Barney, hokay? Barney is Nice (as opposed to Niiice). You grok the difference, eh?
2. I learned some really useful stuff from a wannabe ethnomusicologist. So I got no gripes on dem, yaknow? Hokay.
3. I put a World Music course online, an' it seems t'be doing reasonably well.
4. Zither an'bone flute, hit can work, maann...

But.

Still.

Sometimes music needs to be used as a weapon of mass irritation.

Ask me about Pete and the laundry, hokay?

Da Game... eh, well, da Halftime Show, eh?

SERIOUS PROPS to the behind-the-scenes folks who made it possible for The Nameless One to play LIVE in pouring rain!!
His unspoken yet obviously heartfelt tribute to Dylan and Jimi... Well done.

Next year, and every year until 2010, some fifty-odd Sociology 202 students will write about how at SB41 a black guitarist paid musical tribute to an amazing black guitarist at the halftime show where for the first time two black head coaches squared off...

And in another thirty years kids will come across that and think, "Huh? What's the deal with skin color?"

And in 2047 someone will actually get a Ph.D. based on whether Prince did or did not play a Chuck Berry lick in his halftime show.

The cost of lessons

Hrmphf.

I'm in a bit of a conundrum. On the one hand, I thoroughly disagree with folks on the left who want America to lose in Iraq so that we will "learn a lesson."

On the other hand, I agree that the spineless, feckless, craven Senators who put their personal political fortunes above victory need to be taught a lesson.

It seems a bit... inconsistent, non?. But is there a difference?

Yes. It has to do with intentions, consequences and outcomes. If several Senators come up short in their fundraising and therefore lose their races in '08, they will probably lose to pro-victory GOP primary opponents. Depending on whether the electorate at large wants victory, the general election will go to either a pro-victory or pro-retreat candidate. If the electorate wants retreat, then the incumbents will defeat their pro-victory primary opponents anyway.

If, however, these Senators notice The Pledge and grow some backbone, then victory is more likely (though not assured, given the pro-defeat media).

The Pledge signers don't want these Senators to lose per se, we want them to support victory. That's the lesson we want them to learn, and soon.

The "lesson" that the Left wants America to learn requires that we first be defeated and humiliated. In the process, the Middle East will become exponentially more unstable, with a failed-state Iraq becoming a training ground for Iranian-backed terrorists, likely war between Turkey and a new Kurdistan (putting NATO in quite a conundrum), and the Saudis and Israelis perhaps being forced to engage Iran militarily.

Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions will die.

Persian Gulf oil production and transport will plummet, sending prices skyrocketing and ushering in a worldwide economic crisis.

But the Left doesn't care about any of those things so long as the US "learns a lesson."

Yes, that's the point.

While buying a stereo system component, James Lileks observed: "A manager had to be called to cancel the transaction, and as the fellow deftly entered in a series of codes I wondered how many skills exist today that cannot be transferred from one job to another. Once upon a time, you made barrels for one guy, you could make barrels for another. But the moment you leave BestBuy, your knowledge of their point-of-sale codes is useless. You can transfer the ability to learn, but not the thing you actually learned. In the end it’s your ability to master the system that’s the skill, I suppose. " (Emphasis added.)

Yes, exactly.

Somebody explain this to me, please

The senate unanimously confirms General Petraus as the new U.S. commander in Iraq. During his confirmation hearings he told them in no uncertain terms that a lack of resolve will only strengthen and encourage the enemy.

And at the same time Senators are scrambling to get on record as opposing the strategy that General Petraus will implement.

The collective cognitive dissonance in the Capitol is astounding.

The Pledge

I say this as one who grew up when Nixon was President. My father supported him. I was skeptical. In college, I opposed Reagan. Later, I volunteered for Paul Wellstone.

The pendulum swings. Read the archives, and you'll know that I these days support a President who is not at all like Carter or Clinton. Read between the lines, and you might guess (correctly) that I support the "surge." In the last election, I held my nose and supported the GOP.

The pendulum swings.

The Pledge.

It's simple.

If you're a Republican Senator running for re-election in '08, and you support the craven, defeatist, dare-I-say-treasonous "Sense of the Senate" resolutions such as the ones proposed by Sens Biden and Warner condemning the President's strategy - and therefore giving aid and comfort to the enemy (hence the "treason" charge) - let this unnoticed post serve to inform you that I will not contribute one dime or one minute of my time to your re-election.

In fact, I just might support your opponent.

Not that you care. I'm just one obscure blogger, right? But take note - there are ten thousand more like me.

for later analysis

Two Hand Tap Guitar Demo - Jon Lukas - Yahoo! Videommm...

Well, THAT was certainly enlightening!

Mystery of world's biggest, yuckiest flower solved

NOT.

"These plants are so bizarre that no matter where you put them with any group of plants, you're going to have a lot of explaining to do," Davis said.

H'lo, Reuters? Anyone?

Tears in my eyes

Holiday travel, late 2006. Oh, man, that HURTS.

Re-fighting the last war

Conscientious Rejector? - Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone From Yahoo! News You'd think it was 1971 all over again. Except it's not.

To the Moon!

YES!!

NASA says it will set up moon outpost by 2024. A quarter-century behind schedule according to Arthur C. Clarke's timetable, but better late than never! Whoo-hoo! As a child of the space age, I'd been starting to get very down lately, thinking that I wouldn't see a moon base in my lifetime.

VERY nice

Unplugged guitar tips - Bammerwiki.

Excellent step-by-step explanation of a complex psychomotor task.

Looming civil war in Mexico?

The Governator was amused by the fisticuffs in the Mexican Congress.

But keep reading. 3,000 dead in a drug war? Oaxaca in ruins because of riots? teh losing presidential candiate leading protest marches, refusing to concede, declaring himself the legitmate leader of the country? Things could get real ugly.

Illegal immigrants are one thing. Waves of refugees are something entirely different.

How about that border fence, eh?

Oh, Sweet Jesus....

In Congo, children are being forced onto the streets.It's beyond heartbreaking.