BB here,

Hello folks just wanted to let you see how much I have grown up and I thought I would teach you a few of the things I have learned so far,

• If you whine long enough and give them the sad eyes they will give you what you want.
• If Maggie or Lou Lou play a little too rough just let out a loud yelp and dad will come running to help me out.
• The baby of the family always gets more attention than anyone else.
• If I don’t get caught in the act they always think that Lou Lou did it.

Well I guess I’ll play this puppy thing out for as long as I can,

BB “Queen of the blues”

Since the beginning of time, we humans have dreamed of joining the birds and leaving our earth bound existence. For most of our history, this privilege has been denied to us. It is a dream that crosses cultural, religious, and ethnic divides – both the Bible and the Koran refer to flying as a form of freedom – and references to the desire to fly are found in almost all of the works we consider to be classic. Flight, as a dream, has been a magnificent topic in the thousands of poems and songs that have been composed.

Genius and artist Leonardo da Vinci created a sketch of a machine, which he believed would enable humans to fly, way back in the 16th century. Leonardo’s spirit was flying free more than three hundred years before his vision of powered flight was turned into reality by the Orville and Wilbur Wright; themselves working from the stepping stones put into existence through other flight machine inventors, in 1903.

Breaking Free Via Flight

While it may be hard to believe, humans have really only been flying in planes for just over a century. Amazing advances have been made in flight in such a short amount of time! Airplanes now exist in a variety of shapes and sizes, as well as capacities. Flight lessons, that will give you the chance to move out of the ordinary, are truly affordable for most people.

For those of us who have discovered the joy of flying, there simply is no better way to break free from our every day work world than by taking to the skies. There is no traffic, no traffic lights, and no stress caused by having to share space with thousands of other drivers. When you are soaring through the sky, there is only you, and your flight tools.

Bring New Perspective to Your Life

Being able to soar through the air in total solitude is just one of the many benefits of flight. You will also get to see beautiful landscapes, and fly over large spans of undeveloped country enjoying views that are nearly or completely impossible to access by land; you will surely see the world from a new perspective. The earthbound will never see such sights!

Many consider personal flight to be an inaccessible thing, either due to its price or due to the skills required. However, the truth remains that acquiring access to flight is quite an easy thing. You can easily find lessons at very good rates. Even though you may never be able to afford your own private aircraft, there are still many affordable rentals available countrywide.

If you’ve ever considered the freedom offered through flight, what’s stopping you? Discover the incredible sense of freedom that comes from flying a plane, and take advantage of the progress humans have made in the area of flight!

SUICIDE RISK Assessment: 6 Steps to a Better Instrument, Brenda Hermes, Kathy Deakin, Kathy Lee, Sherry Robinson. Journal of Psychosocial Nursing & Mental Health Services. Jun 2009. Vol. 47, Iss. 6; p. 44-50

Abstract:

Recent research indicates that commonly used instruments to assess suicidal ideation identify patients at chronic risk for suicide but do not identify those who are at acute (imminent) risk for suicide while hospitalized. Items to measure anxiety and agitation, identified as more appropriate risk factors, should be incorporated into suicide risk assessments. The purpose of this article was to develop an evidence-based imminent suicide risk instrument for an inpatient psychiatric unit. The Iowa Model of Evidence-Based Practice to Promote Quality Care guided development. Two validated instruments, the Hamilton Anxiety Scale (to measure anxiety) and the Behavioral Activity Rating Scale (to measure agitation) were applied to 75 patients to help create an evidence-based instrument, which should more accurately identify hospitalized patients at risk for imminent suicide.

Lancashire Care staff can request the full-text of this paper, email: susan.jennings@lancashirecare.nhs.uk

My colleagues, especially the academic ones, are often rather critical of ‘popular’ science writings. On the one hand they all espouse the current politically correct fad that more and better writing about science is needed to illuminate the ever increasing fraction of the population that is ignorant of science. On the other hand they are very critical, fearful in some cases, of the wranglings of journalists and mediasts in their presentation of science. And on the third hand, as Pournelle has given us, is criticism that the popular science writings in their own and related disciplines are inaccurate and inadequate.

The third hand is patently lesser and can be ameliorated by noting that when one has a reasonable approximation of mastery of a discipline or field, then popular writings will be inadequate and inaccurate just because they cannot be too overwhelming. Aside from the obvious hypocrisy of these good people, few ever attempt to write for the non-specialist, much less learn how to do so; most write some paragraphs, which are simplified only in the theaters of their own minds, and then hand the paragraphs over to the public affairs people and then bitch and groan at how their incomprehensible maunderings were polluted and distorted. But more crucially, they quite miss or dismiss the idea that no amount of writing or speaking is going to have any benefit or effect if the communication is not closed. In effect, the bottleneck in expounding science to the great ‘unwashed’ masses is that the latter have to have an interest: they have to question; they have to listen; they have to cogitate. Otherwise we are little better than tourists shouting into an echo canyon and no more constructive.

I was reminded of this rather pleasantly yesterday. One of my family’s new traditions is a Post Dinosaur Day breakfast at a rustic location – a decidedly not-chain-restaurant where food is still food and not just manufactured goods. Such places are not as common as they were in my youth, sadly, and so we had to venture out into the boonies where parking lots are dignified with gravel but not concrete or asphalt and roads are poorly mis-maintained by venial county governments. The saving grace of these is that the decor to deliciousness ratio is about 0.1 as compared to 10 at a chain restaurant and the tenor is survival rather than convenience.

Following this overabundant, both in quality and quantity, repast, happily so intense that familial conversational blather guttered out and never returned, FD SCP drug me off to Scottsborough for a bit of Schwartz Freitag at the unclaimed baggage emporium and then the Hammers, one of the few remaining of authentic junkiness. As I was queued up to exchange portraiture of dead caucasian politicians for other peoples’ lost items, I came to have one of those spontaneous queue conversations with people who were most obviously a military family: the husband had the stoic steady grace of a centurion; the wife the enduring independence of a deployment widow; the children, somewhat too young for the couple had that strange childish perfection of disciplined manners peppered with occasional endearing bursts of boisterousness.

The conversation developed and continued through several meandering scatterings until I was asked the question “Since you are a rocket science, what is it?” I was immediately stunned with the epiphany of the responsibility of explaining matters scientifical to others and awed with the difficulty. Laboriously, not very glibly, I tried to explain that rocket science is not about understanding alone but also doing. That there are two types of understanding, the things you understand can be done or are by reading or other information exchange, and those things you understand from inside your head and thereby understand that something can be done that has not been done before. That latter is what rocket science is all about, doing something that has not been done before based on your own understanding of reality.

My fumbling attempts at communications amidst swirling thongs (for Scottsborough) of pactiophilic [1] shoppers evidently was successful. A couple of derivative questions, indicative of concept grasp, followed and then both content with the interchange we returned to our consumerist pursuits. My insights on the necessity of the question being asked before it can be answered for communicating science to non-scientists were validated. Indeed, in a sense this was rocket science for not only had I understood that I could communicate with a new human, one I had not communicated with before, but the communication was accomplished. And we were enriched by it, the two of us and any other humans we may later communicate with.

That breakfast looks like a good new tradition after all.

[1] pactiophilic – bargain loving

Controversy and the games industry go hand in hand like Ico and Yorda if you’ll forgive the incredibly nerdy analogy. And if you’ll forgive that, please forgive my blatant theft of a quote from Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw. Despite it not being an original comment of mine, you know the saying; if the shoe fits and there is no more snug fit for this comment than Left 4 Dead 2.

A comparison to the original Left 4 Dead is inevitable in any review. You can dodge it all you want but in the end, reviewers must face the fact that this is a sequel. So let’s get one thing straight: Left 4 Dead 2 is NOT Left 4 Dead. The underlying principles and gameplay mechanics are all there but so much has changed that a direct comparison between the two is unfair. With that out of the way, let’s get into the sole of Left 4 Dead 2.

Taking things a few steps beyond the traditional point and click affair of the genre, Valve have taken old concepts and utilised them in new and unique ways. Melee weapons are by far not a new idea within first person shooters but they’ve always played a background role, something you rely upon once you’ve exhausted everything else, or a way to humiliate that AWPing scumbag who didn’t have the foresight to move after he killed you last time. There is an impressive array of melee weapons to choose from and, despite what you might have heard, they are not all the same with a different skin, Some are more powerful, some are faster, some even have larger areas of effect. However when it comes right down to it, they all perform the same basic function and once you know how to utilise them it simply becomes a matter of preference whether you prefer a Katana, Cricket Bat, Guitar or any of the other 5 melee weapons in the game.

Valve also more than doubled the selection of weapons available from Left 4 Dead but considering the range of choices back then this may be seen less as an improvement and more as a necessity to add some variety to the mix. You now have a range of primary weapons to choose from all with different attributes to suit every gamer and the introduction of the new pistol (Desert Eagle) is very welcome. Not content with simply providing new weapons however, Valve also gives you a small ability to upgrade them with Laser Sights which increase accuracy dramatically and two new types of ammo; Incendiary and Explosive. These new ammo types either set on fire or stun targets respectively. Nifty little tools which add another element of strategy to the game.

Speaking of strategy, it hits the ground running right from the beginning and if you don’t catch up, you will be left behind and you will die. With the introduction of three new special infected and 4 new uncommon infected, the forces stacked against your chances of survival have greatly increased since last time. Particularly in the new Realism mode, players must work very efficiently as a team if they hope to make it to the end of the campaigns. The difficulty has been stepped up since the previous game and you’ll also find that the pathing on infected has greatly improved along with the number of ways that they can approach you. The “running climaxes”, despite sounding like a dirty movie, really seal the deal in making Left 4 Dead 2 feel like a frantic struggle for survival in a highly dangerous world. It captures the feeling of survival that you might obtain by being the sole surviving team member on a paintball field, or watching from your University Classroom as “zombies” stream past in a game of Humans versus Zombies.

The campaigns are more evocative and story focused than they previously were. There is a much greater emphasis on story this time around and each campaign links to the next, creating a wonderful sense of progression from Dead Center all the way to the thrilling finale of The Parish. Standard old game types are back with Versus rearing its ugly, trash-talk inducing head. Survival, which was a recent addition to Left 4 Dead, returns and little has changed there either. Scavenge is an interesting new game mode similar to versus except the survivors must obtain enough gas to escape and the infected must stop them and I’ve already mentioned Realism mode. In regards to replayability, if you don’t play Left 4 Dead 2 with friends you probably won’t feel like you’ve gotten your moneys worth. This is a game where you really need to play it with other people to obtain the full satisfaction of working together to complete some quite difficult scenarios.

That and the AI is absolutely terrible. No really, there were complaints about the survivor AI back in the original and in a surprising case of back-pedaling, Valve has managed to make the surivor AI worse. Whether this is to further encourage teams and social play I don’t know. Oh there’s another thing I need to mention; you can now form teams and go up against other teams to make Versus and Scavenge matches a little more balanced for Average Joe who just hits “quick match”. I don’t know if this will really catapult Left 4 Dead 2 into the competitive market but you never know.

In the end, what is Left 4 Dead 2? It’s certainly fun. I would say it’s a lot more fun than the original Left 4 Dead, but I still don’t agree that it’s a sequel. To me, Left 4 Dead 2 feels more like the final release of a beta. A beta I had to pay fifty US dollars for. I would go so far as to say that it’s worth the investment, with the caveat that the original Left 4 Dead was not. Having seen how much they were able to improve upon in one year and knowing that it certainly wouldn’t have taken them that long to impliment these changes in the original game I can’t help but feel a little bit cheated out of money that I had a year ago. So I’d put this up as a recommendation. It’s a fun game with truly interesting concepts and I’m not going to get into the whole censorship debacle because we’re saving that for a different article. Enjoy your zombie killing mayhem!



Human beings are pretty terrifying creatures, from the perspective of other animals. I don’t mean in some kind of OMG EXTINCTION way, either. Humans are the global heavyweight champions of endurance running.

Primitive man would take some rocks – later on they’d use slings or spears or even bow and arrows, basically some type of projectile- and they would find an animal, and then start chasing it. The projectiles were mostly to harass the poor prey. A fit human being can run for hours and hours, whereas most of the animals humans ate can only sustain a sprint for a few minutes. Humans hunted by more or less running their prey to death. Or, rather, chasing them until they couldn’t run any more, at which point said animal would be killed. For some animals we found we could save effort by driving them over cliffs.

As for the other animals with great endurance, rather than hunting them, we domesticated them as herd animals. Ancient goats, sheep, cows, horses… those were the animals humans couldn’t outrun over marathon distances.

So, from the perspective of a delicious animal, a human being represents a predator that can strike from a distance, can thwart all but the most heroic attempts at escape, and will not stop chasing you until you die. And they hunt in packs. Like wolves.

Aliens should be afraid of humans, too. We’re crazy, for God’s sake. We constantly fight each other in horrible, bitter wars that frequently have no better reason to be fought than petty arguments. A bunch of humans went and executed one of their gods.

It’s nice to know that you’re a member of a completely badass species, huh? It sort of begins to make up for the terrible fatties we’ve become. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

P.S. For more information, check this out.

This is ME, some years ago.

“From My Past” for Photo Friday

Merasa ‘musti’ posting hari ini, ini aja deh temanya: Gotri = Gowes bareng istri.

Trek harus disesuaikan, jaraknya, rutenya, cari yang teduh, ditutup dengan site makanan dan minuman yang menarik…. hehehe… Ini di suatu pagi di seputaran kompleks kami tinggal; Cikarang Baru

Acara genjot berkeringat harus disertai dengan photo session biar menarik dan lupa bakar kalori…

Ran across this lovely cartoon yesterday while catching up on missed information access in the course of maintaining existence. [Link]

I am moved to offer that I will disperse all monies I obtain from blogging equally among commentators. With suitable charges for shipping and handling.

Since I have to date realized zero income from blogging I would not encourage those few who comment to anticipate riches beyond compare, or even tax tokens.

It seems that in the relief of not having to go to anyone’s house and partake of their cooking, or even endure relatives (have to do that this morning,) I inadvertantly missed the expected ‘what I am thankful for’ blot.

OK.

I am thankful for not having to go to other people’s houses, partake of their cookage, make socially nice, and exchange irrelevant and boring conversation.

I am thankful that I can think. That may sound a bit whacked but I lost a very considerable capacity to do so in the aftermath of the physicians mucking with my corpus following heart attack. Evidently the anesthetic they used had a very detrimental and long lasting effect on my cognitive faculties. Of course, this is only something that a nerd would be thankful for as bogs are thankful that they cannot and do not.

This is a blog about technology. And Humans. And their interaction. Ever wonder what it would be like if technology had a voice? What would it say to us humans? Do they have a world of their own?

This blog is an imaginative and funny exploration of technologies that (may) speak. The main characters in the blog are everyday technologies that humans use for their daily work and living.

Enjoy the conversation and provide feedback.

I highly recommend you go see The Blind Side.  Even if you are not a sports fan.  Teachers, parents, brothers, sisters, coaches, players, sports fans, humanitarians,  HUMANS.  There truly is something for everyone in this movie.  The Blind Side shows what it truly means to be a good person. 

Leigh Ann Touhy took in a homeless child, Michael Oher, made sure he made the best of his education and gave him the gift of being able to go to college on scholarship for football.  Being from the south (even though I currently do not live there) I pride myself on being a stong southern woman.  I was raised by a strong southern woman.  My Great-Grandmother Ora is perhaps the strongest sothern woman I have ever met.  She raised more than a dozen of her own children and several that like Leigh Ann Touhy were not her own, made sure they got an education; which in the 40s in Appalachia West Virginia was not common.  She pushed them to go on to college, police academies, and the military.  Unlike the Touhy’s though she didn’t have money.  She was “just” a small town farmer.  My Grandfather in turn married a strong sothern womon, a woman who went to college (in WV in the 50s!), who also pushed her children to get an education.  My aunts have college degrees which again was not that common in West Virginia in the 70s.  My Dad and uncle have college degrees (my Dad a masters) and both served over 20 years each in the military.  I have a college degree and this year my younger cousins will follow suit and earn theirs, and will be followed shortly by their siblings.  I think it’s safe to say that all of us were able to do this because of the strong women that are behind us.  It is because of strong southern woman that the men and women in my family are where they are today.  My Mom had a strong southern woman behind her and was the first woman in her family to not only go to college but to finish.  I was the second.  I hope to be the first to earn a Masters and maybe even a PhD.

Sandra Bullock did an amazing job in The Blind Side portraying what is truly means to be a strong southern woman.  She didn’t take no for an answer from anyone.  She did what she had to for not only her biological children but this random child, Michael Oher, she saw needed her.  I hope that some day I can be 1/2 the woman Leigh Ann Touhy is.  Or that my Great-Grandmother, Grandmothers, and Mom were and are.  

So today I am thankful the the Strong Southern Women behind not only me and the rest of my family, but for all of the Strong Sothern Women that are behind someone pushing them to be everything they can be and more.

This is the second shelter we’ve been in, and it’s not been easy. The first shelter was just awful, there were six women there including me and my mother. For a hot second there were seven. It was a night shelter so we had to be out by eight in the morning, and check in by six. We had to be back by nine. It was clean…but then again it was an old and run down place, right smack dab in the middle of town, and all the women had stories…some were sad, but some I just didn’t want to hear. And there was no system to help any of them, help any of us. The woman running the place, Jennie as we’ll call her, was a little less the pleasant. To your face she was a sweet old grandma type, but she just plain refused to help my mother. Making any excuse not to give any form of help to her. One ladies was suicidal, one wasn’t going anywhere with her life, one person was old and clearly enjoyed being a part of that ‘homeless crowd’ (had been homeless and on disability for 12 years) and your telling me you couldn’t find a little cheap apartment somewhere? The last woman was just an unfortunate woman, with an abusive past.

All the ‘Hosts’ as they were called, were anything else. You see, every night a set of people would ‘over see’ the shelter. It was a range of people, from college students to ‘Grandma Moses’ as my mother called one. There was an unusually large amount of ‘Barbie’ type women, who had a picture perfect American Dream family at home, with their star-studded husbands. They were there doing their charity to the community.  They nearly disgusted me with the way they seemed to always be looking down on us, even while striking up a conversation and smiling. They said “We offer breakfast, lunch and dinner.” Breakfast was a sandwich bag with a juice box, a granola bar, and a cup of fruit. Lunch was a juice box, a granola bar, a cup of chips, and a cup of fruit. Dinner was anything from dried up ravioli, to a day old box of pizza. Luckily we had food stamps, so we were never hungry.

Don’t get me wrong, I was happy to have a place to stay, but if I could help it, I was sleeping at a friend’s.

Eventually we accepted someone’s invitation to stay at their house. Little did we know that it was a short-lived invitation. We stay with her as long as possible, but Mommy said she might have to stay in a shelter a few nights to perhaps speed up the ‘helping’ process. All of her help fell through though. She thought she was putting me in a good school, but it was ghetto as hell, as well as the education was just terrible. It was anything but good. In fact everything she tried to help with only got worst. Not long after she made it quite apparent neither of us were welcome. So we both ended up in a second shelter. Granted, it was much cleaner, and more structured then the first, but “It’s still a fucking shelter.” As my mom so bluntly put it.

And it is, oh it is. Sure here, we get breakfast, lunch, and dinner, a snack halfway between every meal, but that doesn’t consulate for the maggots we found in the granola bars, nor the fifty billion rules we have to abide by in hopes of not getting kicked out. They have a point system, where when you run out a points, you no longer have a place to stay. Rules include, no walking around barefoot, or in just a tank top. No cellphones, food, drinks, mp3 players, or laptops in the ‘dorm’, kids are to stay with their mothers at all times. Be dressed by 8, up by 5:45 during the week, including days off. Be in bed by 8:30 if you’re a child, 9 if you’re a teen, and 10 if you’re an adult.  If you take your medication without checking it into the office first, you get an automatic out. No changing in the dorm, no leaving your baby unattended, or letting it sleep in while your get ready in the morning. Those are all the rules I can think of right now, but there are more. You can’t breath wrong or you lose points, and get that much closer to getting a outdate.

They don’t really care because they don’t have to eat here, they don’t have to sleep here, this is a job to them. Some of them care, and some of us just think of us as Business Transactions. That is who, no what we are when we walk in the front doors of the “Piece of Heaven.”

Doesn’t matter if we don’t have a place to stay, in or out, your matter very little.

Hi Ocho the black cat here, I just got back in town.

After a particularly rough Halloween season I took an extended vacation to Cancun Mexico. I didn’t get as much rest as I would of liked because they have this little mouse down there named Speedy Gonzales and he was at the same hotel as me. I see how he got his nickname, I never did catch him.

There is always something to spoil my plans, I must be jinxed or something,

Ocho the black cat

Q: If the Pilgrims were alive today, what would they be most famous for?

A: Their age.  Muhaha.

In 1621, the Pilgrims sat down to dine with their Native American comrades at the First Thanksgiving.  They wore strange hats and brought all kinds of European diseases.  Tomorrow, my family will sit down to dine at the 388th Thanksgiving.  We’re old enough that we’ve stopped making paper pilgrim hats, and hopefully no one will bring the H1N1.  But who knows.  I’m bringing a dog and a cake:

My blessings are too many to count (and we know math is not my strong suit), so that post title was a bit of lie.  Still, I am thankful for my family and always look forward to spending time together.  My parents are the best.  I am thankful for Nick.  I am thankful for my health, our home, each meal I nearly burn, and every day we get to work and play.  I am thankful for my patient and cooperative co-worker and for everyone else who make my life funnier, easier, happier and generally… better.  I am thankful for always having something to read.  I am thankful for the CVS on W. Broadway, for selling a Snuggie for Pets for $9.99.

Also On Tap for Today:

• Check the weather report and pack to head home for a few days
• DVR Victoria Kennedy on Oprah

What are you most thankful for?  And what are your plans for the holiday?

Rupanya susah banget memotret Human Interest. Sampai sekarang saya masih belum dapat clue bagaimana sih para fotografer bisa mendapatkan foto dengan konten dan cerita latar belakang yang kuat dari sebuah objek ‘human interst’??

Foto diatas berusaha memanfaatkan lensa tele dan mencoba menangkap ekspresi obyek, seorang tukang parkir yang tampak lelah dan bekerja di bawah terik matahari.

Ini berusaha menangkap objek perpektif yang bagus banget menurut saya, deretan rolling door dari toko-toko buku yang belum buka. Ditambah adanya obyek yang sedang berjalan. Dari ekspresi obyek tampak bahwa saya, seorang yang membawa kamera, terasa sangat tidak natural dan ada ‘rasa heran’ terpancar dari wajah objek. Susah banget ya bisa ‘welcome’ di sekitar obyek?

Obyek pada foto diatas punya tatanan rambut yang sangat menarik (yang saya baru tahu kemudian juga, bukan saat mengambil foto). Secara natural komposisi gambar ini juga memberikan ‘framing’ hitam yang menurut saya keren. Tapi eksekusi akhirnya sampai menjadi hasil akhir kok kerasa mentah juga…

Yang ini mencoba lowlight dan menguji kestabilan tangan memegang kamera. Dari banyak shot, 80% gagal !! Tanganku memang masih ’shaky’ neh…

Foto-foto lain dari obyek lain yang memuaskan saya taruh di http://hartography.wordpress.com/

What with a boondoggle to the campus of the Black Warrior to abuse large children Lecture graduate students, [1] and the early observation of Dinosaur Day to accommodate the complexity of obligations among family members, [2] I didn;t get an opportunity to collect up the articles of note that had accumulated over the week.

So much for the fiction that Sol has set on the English Empire, [3] in the wake of that English politician mouthing off about giving up meat, now an Asiaindian [4] politician has announced [Link]

“The single most important cause of (carbon) emissions is eating beef. My formula is stop eating beef. This would stop the emission of methane, Beef leads to emission of methane which is 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide,”

Of course asiaindians have all sorts of religious beliefs about eating meat so no hardship for them. All I can observe of this is that we are approaching statistical significance of anecdotal evidence of the validity of the theory that human intelligence is directly related to the digestion of animal protein.

Next, [Link] some interesting information from a survey [5] of the hedonistic behaviors of students residing in coeducational [6] dorms. A summary:

“university students in coed housing are 2.5 times more likely to binge drink every week, likely to have more sexual partners, and, pornography use was higher.”

But what was telling is the statement:

“that doesn’t put coed housing on par with fraternity and sorority houses”

Seems like the real hedonists are the Greeks. So if your child belongs to a fraternity or sorority you know they are not getting either an education or career training. Not that this is any different from when I was an undergraduate. So perhaps this is just another fine downlieing (as opposed to upstanding) American tradition?

In a spasm (orgasm?) of journalistic analysis, I am appraised that the Sony and Barnes and Noble eReaders are sold out for the Winter Solstice season, leaving the field open to the Amazon eReader. [Link] The intriguing component here is the conclusion that this is the result of some brilliance on the part of Amazon. One has to rather suspect that the journalists had help here, probably from economists or Wall Street financial experts, if not both. Last I checked there are several other eReaders out there; indeed, most of the ads I receive daily for eReaders are other brands.

Second, and perhaps most telling, is that Sony and B&N have sold out and Amazon has not. Could this have something to do with the desirability of these two former eReaders compared to the latter? I am instantly minded of the recent All Hallows Eve season that we recently endured. The particular is candy. Has anyone ever tried to to buy Halloween candy late? The choices are rather strange

One has to wonder if the two situations are the same? Not that I was going to run out and purchase. The Nook does look a lot more intriguing with its improvements, injecting some constructive improvements into the fray, but there is still far to go to equal the resolution of the printed paper page. And the selection? Still abysmal, get some real nerd book, like Gradshteyn and Rhyzik’s integral tables, or Stegun and Abramowitz.

[1] If they’re still in shul then they’re still children aren’t they? Sort of like the Trobriand Islanders’ definition that babies aren’t really human until they’re weaned, about age three because of the contraceptive effects, which rather puts all the arguments against abortion in a dismal illumination.

[2] Makes me rather glad that FD SCP and I are way-out-in-the-tails-of-the-distribution introverts and don;t even like going to the family thing, much less other social nonsense.

[3] Which happily we disattached ourselves from two hundred plus years ago are the point of a bayonet. Of course we still have to put up with them as allies and general nuisances, largely because of the fiction of a shared language. Anyone who has tried to converse with an Englisher knows there is nothing shared in speech.

[4] How to tell asian indians from american indians? Neither is strictly native as claimed since all humans originated in Africa (some debate there depending on when you start calling hominids human.) My new world archaeology professor used to call the asian variety ‘injians’ but he had spent the Second Great War in the China-Burma-India theatre, mostly the latter, and was given to eating a broiled onion daily at luncheon in a habit learned there to ‘control the intestinal parasites.’ My academically unctuous (that’s new speak for politically correct) colleagues refer to american indians as Amerindians so the others must be Asiaindians?

[5] Horribly small sample size, a population of 500 spread over five campuses. That makes the confidence on the estimates of something like 0.1 or so. But it is entertaining and undoubtedly made great use of bail out monies and kept several graduate students employed.

[6] As a parent and former college student, I have my doubts of the educational aspect of the term. Is hedonism educational? If so, it would seem that a more economical path would be to drink, drug, and congress at home. Isn’t that why we have automobiles?

[7] Aha! You though I would use the “I” word didn’t you?

it’s not like magic, it’s like

all big real things

compressed into tiny discs

shut in lockets

around necks that

play songs from

skin-wrapped breastbones,

tones shake marrow, echo

off vessel walls and drive

animals to the hills.

humans hear and burn

their houses, feed their

daughters to coyotes,

bash their sons’ heads

in with bricks and scatter

bone-chunked fistfuls

all over the backyard

like carrion Easter

for vulture children.

Dear Mother,

We don’t believe in your god.

We don’t now nor will we later

We never want to believe what you believe

and we can’t see how we could possibly

believe what you believe

unless we went insane

This is when we are suppose to apologize

Notice however we did not.

Sincerely,

your children

The dishes are dirty and they are on the countertop.  Someone must do something about this.  I am too busy to rinse off the dishes and put them in the dishwasher and after all that put soap in it, and close it and then turn it on.

It is too much.  It a shackle around 30 minutes.   There are more important things for me to do.   I would very much like to address a much needed bath and bottle of Spanish wine.  As well, I have the important task of briefly looking at papers and then putting them in order of importance, and then finding a place to put the papers until they become irrelevant.

There are other serious problems.  The fact I can’t command my coffee cup to fill itself and come to my beckoning is very disturbing.  It is not the worst problem but it is a good indicator at how bad things really are.  No one I’ve talked to can order their coffee cup full.

Don’t think I’ve forgotten the bathroom.  Or caring for clothes and other fabrics.  It is almost too much to bear   – think about it.  How can I be expected to get any of this done while I am in the tub watching the soft flicker of candles as I listen to public radio’s jazz hour and reread “The Marching Drum”?

As a move toward solidarity and progress, we should seek to end these horrendous problems that infect billions of people with chronic suffering through these problems tedious continuality and lasting residue on their lives’ time.

No one should turn their eyes away from these atrocities that cripple time and force people into predictive patterns of humdrum behaviors.  No one should have to clean a toilet again!   Can you imagine a world where all tasks of maintenance  are performed automatically?  The windows clean themselves?

When objects do as they are commanded?  “Come here keys!”  could be heard all over the world.  We the American people need to be a good example for rest of the world and move forward to solve these problems of human life.  How much suffering should people be expected to endure?  All possible resources should be put into these problems. The inefficiency of these problems is costing us too heavy a price.   We are supposed to be happy with automated vacuum cleaners or airplanes or radios that don’t even work well?  I tell you now -these sloppy quick fixes are not enough.

Self-care, productivity, and leisure, or dimensions of occupational experience? Rethinking occupational “categories”     Karen Whalley Hammell. The Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy,  2009. Vol. 76, Iss. 2; p. 107

Abstract:

Background. Critics contend that occupational therapy’s theories of occupation are culturally specific, class-bound, and ableist, and that the division of all occupations into three simplistic categories of self-care, productivity, and leisure is arbitrary, lacks supportive evidence, and promotes a doctrine of individualism. Purpose. To add to the work of critics who advocate a fundamental rethinking of occupational therapy’s conceptualizations of occupation in terms of subjective qualities of experience that address intrinsic needs. Key issues. This paper suggests that if categories of occupation were informed by the ways in which people experience their occupations, these might be labelled as restorative, as ways to connect and contribute, as engagement in doing, and as ways to connect the past and present to a hopeful future. Implications. If occupational therapists enabled diverse clients’ perspectives to inform occupational categories, perhaps relationships between occupations and well-being might more easily be identified in theory and addressed in practice.

Lancashire Care staff can request the full-text of this paper, email: susan.jennings@lancashirecare.nhs.uk

Societies have the rather strange nature of being in part comprised of opposites: those people who are seen as the least productive are often the most; those who are seen as the most valuable are often the least.