Backup Trauma Video
John Cleese...Very hoaky. Very suitable since I am leaving town...
« April 2005 | Main | June 2005 »
John Cleese...Very hoaky. Very suitable since I am leaving town...
As I opened my first flickr account (in addition to my Yahoo, Shutterfly and a few more...) and read all the fuss about unlimited image storage etc, I was confronted with the possibility of all my images going out there for the world to see and I am not sure I convinced myself I am up for it. But why, you say?
Marcus and I have two birds: Dimanche, a mutant society finch and Neptune, a white zebra finch. We also have two cats, Damien and Lilith, both short hair tuxedo cats. I have a myriad pictures of the cats but none of the birds.
Native cultures believe that being photographed weakens the soul so Marcus and I made an unspoken pact to never photograph the birds since Nan got sick and died two years ago. Dimanche was Nan's companion and Nan was born to Dos and Yon (Tres flew away). Nan's sibling (Askum) and parents starved for her to live after Marcus left them for awhile to tend to a crisis. Nan survived but was always sick. He drew pictures of her and Dimanche and emailed them to me when I still lived in Chicago. Perhaps even drawing Nan was too much for her little soul to take. We came home after a trip to the desert and found her lifeless body at the bottom of the cage. Losing animals is very hard.
Dimanche is still well and after some solitude we partnered him with Neptune. They make a great couple. They will never be photographed and we hope that they can be waking us up in the morning with their chirping for years to come. I tell people that if they want to see the birds, they have to really come see them. Photographs of the birds not allowed please.
Damien and Lilith after all have at least nine lives...
Featuring Dept Mom (Jen) and Step Mom (Marientina), graduation fashion and hugs and a larger than life Scott Fisher.
Yahoo Pix (sorry but Flickr was DOWN!)
More disturbing news. Yes, what a surprise that wars in two fronts and a large deficit are causing cuts to federally funded projects throughout the map. Yet funding for military projects abounds...
From Chronicle of Higher Education (05/20/05) Vol. 51, No. 37, P. A1; Kiernan, Vincent
The National Science Foundation's decision to withdraw funding for its three supercomputer centers is breeding uncertainty about the future of academic supercomputing in the United States. NSF supercomputers are critical to academic efforts because other federal supercomputing resources--though more powerful than NSF and university machines--are generally inaccessible to academics. The National Coordination Office for Information Technology Research and Development reports the foundation has requested a $307 million supercomputing budget for fiscal 2006, but this is paltry compared to the $1 billion-plus "cyberinfrastructure" budget recommended by an NSF advisory panel two years ago. The foundation elected to allow the five-year contracts for the San Diego Supercomputer Center, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center to expire. The agency has supplied additional money to sustain the operation of the first two facilities for three more years, and intends to invite new bids for their operation to researchers; but there is no assurance that any of the centers will get a contract, nor is any money being budgeted for new computer purchases. Researchers warn that the centers' host institutions stand to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in outside investment if the facilities are transferred, and Russ Miller with the State University of New York at Buffalo says the funding uncertainty adversely affects employee morale. NSF officials argue that competition helps guarantee the facilities fulfill scholars' requirements and are a good investment of taxpayers' money, while the foundation's Sangtae Kim is confident the centers can survive on grants from the NSF and other agencies.
Kurt, Mike, Todd, Stephanie, Will, Tripp: congratulations and may the best of luck (and the force) be with you!
I would like to thank each and every one of the students who helped out with the show, even if you showed up for five minutes. After much hard work, the show was a great success. It was greater to see you all at commencement, so few of you and yet so memorable will you be. Many, endless thank you's to Perry for working his ass off to get the show together and to Michael N. who guided the students to the finish line.
Some of you will stay around and some of you will go, but I wish for all of you to succeed and for the class of 2006, 2007 and so forth to keep raising the bar. May it never be set lower than the past -- if nothing else so that we don't bonk our heads... ;)
P.S. Please post your show pix!
From today's NY Times, Opinion Section, "The Latest Rumbling in the Blogosphere: Questions About Ethics"
"As blogs grow in readers and influence, bloggers should realize that if they want to reform the American media, that is going to have to include reforming themselves."
So apparently many blogs are drafting their own ethical conduct bylaws...The 'ethos' part focuses on journalistic conduct and fact-checking rather than monitoring 'sex, drugs and rock'n roll-type' content, but how long will it be before the question of ethics permeates to the next level? Practicing critical readership is all about doing your own fact-checking. Isn't that why many blogs got started in the first place?
The next generation faces a new cosmos of information that we didn't have: google. A greater investment shall be in finding ways to sharpen minds and encourage critical thinking. Scepticism is feared because it questions stability, but if scepticism were to be a constant state of mind, wouldn't that be a stable state?