Just in case you haven’t remembered to check out The Big Picture for some amazing shots of the volcano activity in Iceland, here’s the link.
What are we going to do if it turns out that we’re just at the beginning of a lengthy period of volcanoes spewing ash? Yeah, you’re right. We’re screwed, as far as air travel goes.
Still, there is something really, really cool about an event like this, isn’t there?
More from Eyjafjallajokull – The Big Picture – Boston.com: “”
Can there be anything more horrifying than being responsible for your child’s death?
This story by Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post won a Pullitzer Prize. It’s a terribly sad topic but an important one. Consider this:
“Death by hyperthermia” is the official designation. When it happens to young children, the facts are often the same: An otherwise loving and attentive parent one day gets busy, or distracted, or upset, or confused by a change in his or her daily routine, and just… forgets a child is in the car. It happens that way somewhere in the United States 15 to 25 times a year, parceled out through the spring, summer and early fall. The season is almost upon us.
These are wrenching stories. But they’re told by a good writer who shows us why we should care.
Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime?: “”
It seems that each new release of the latest, greatest tech gadget is quickly followed by people talking about the death of the paper-bound book. So with the release of the iPad last week, we’re now seeing stories about how the conventional book business has got to be over.
Dire predictions aside, books are still around, despite the various new ways for people to express themselves. Fortunately, not everyone has jumped on the “end of the book” bandwagon.
Shel Holtz is a social media advocate, a podcaster and also an author and book lover. Today, in “iPad apps won’t replace the narrative art form known as a “book”” he presents a wonderful argument to support his thesis that the book, far from being at death’s door, will continue to enjoy an esteemed place in our culture.
It’s a great piece and I recommend you head over to his blog to read the whole thing.
Here’s a short excerpt:
The notion that reading will wither with the onslaught of new technologies isn’t exactly a new one. The same fears were voiced when television gained popularity. But those unaware of history are doomed to repeat it, so we’re hearing the same old predictions today that were articulated 50 years ago. It didn’t happen then and it won’t happen now. The media landscape is expanding. There are more choices, not replacements, for expression.
What the doomsayers fail to recognize is that writing is, in fact, a form of artistic expression. Photography didn’t kill painting. Movies didn’t kill live theater. Artists continue to find an outlet in these art forms and their work continues to find audiences that love it.
Authors and books are no different.
Here’s the link to his post.
I never knew either of my grandfathers. My Dad’s father died when he was just a year old. Mom’s Dad died many years before I was born.
For most of my life, it wasn’t an issue. But now, as I move into the years when I am looking forward to becoming a grandparent, I am more aware of stories of grandparents and their relationships with their children’s children. I wonder whether my lack of experience with a grandfather will affect how I act as one.
It’s funny how perspective changes everything. It wasn’t that long ago that we were warning our kids to be careful. We didn’t want any “accidents” to upset the order of their lives. Now, with all of them safely moving past their teens, we’re suggesting that this would be a good time to start producing progeny, even if they’re not settled down. No wonder kids complain about mixed messages.
I’ve always heard about how the grand role is different from a parent. Grands I know joke that the good thing is that you get to hand the crying baby back to the parents to handle. But there’s obviously more to the relationship.
To be honest, I don’t know what sort of grandfather I’m going to be. My own father enjoyed the role but he was not the type to gush about his feelings or let things get too emotional. You weren’t always sure how much fun he was having. I suspect that he would have become close to his grandchildren as they got older. Unfortunately, that never happened.
I expect that when it happens, I’ll be stunned by what happens. The birth of our son was like that. I was intimately involved in Heather’s pregnancy and the preparations for the birth, especially because we were going to be at home. But when Cory arrived, the joy and wonder was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. Then it happened twice more, with the birth of Jaime and then Kelly.
Parenting in all its forms is always life-changing. You are constantly shaped and transformed by what you do and the results. I hope being a grandparent brings that same delight to my life.
Today I came across a moving article by a Victoria writer, Christine Shaw Roome, who wrote about the death of her grandfather at the age of 99. She writes about how her relationship with him evolved as she grew into her own life and learned more about his. They had a special relationship. That’s what I’m looking forward to.
By the way, the blog that published Christine’s story is called Life as a Human. It describes itself as “a lifezine that explores, celebrates and discusses the weird, wonderful, challenging, funny and poignant experience of being human.” I recommend it.
I Don’t Buy the Argument: On Losing a Grandparent : Life As A Human
The debate over the health care package in the US was hard to watch. As it devolved into a hate and blame match, it seemed pretty obvious that the lofty hopes and aspirations of Barack Obama’s ascent to the presidency had crashed and burned.
But when the bill finally passed, by the narrowest of margins, I couldn’t help but hope that maybe Obama’s promise of social change hadn’t been entirely wiped out. Perhaps there was a spark left that might be fanned back into life.
This morning, I came across this re-mix of wil.i.am’s original Yes We Can video. (link to the original) It’s a brilliant piece of work and vividly contrasts Obama’s original message of hope with the Republican’s single-minded argument of anger and denial. Maybe we can.
You can watch it below, or click here to see it on YouTube.
And one more thing. You might want to skip the comments on the video if you’d rather not get dragged into the muck.
– via Rob Cottingham
This just in from the “You can’t make stuff like this up,” department.
Here’s the gist of it:
WASHINGTON — The nation’s space agency paid the out-of-this-world price of $66 a person a day for bagels, cookies and juice at a conference, a new report found.
The subject of the NASA conference? It was a training session for its procurement officials — the people who do the buying with taxpayer funds.
During the three-day conference, the 317 attendees snacked on “light refreshments” of soda, coffee, fruit, bagels and cookies at a cost of $62,611, according to a NASA Inspector General report. That’s $66 a day per person.
And that wasn’t the only problem. The NASA financial watchdog criticized the financially strapped space agency’s spending on conferences in general. The inspector general said NASA didn’t price shop to get cheaper locations for conferences and that NASA’s spending on food and drinks was “excessive.”
The agency needs to come up with firm rules and conference costs, like the Justice Department, the inspector general recommended in the report released late Wednesday.
NASA promised it would come up with better conference spending rules.
If you want to leave a comment on this blog, you’ll notice that there’s an extra step involved.
I’ve been getting a lot of Comment spam lately and most of it appears to be generated by robots. It’s not a huge hassle to moderate but it does take time. So I’m going to ask commenters to show me they’re human.
I know that you’re human so I hope you don’t take offence. But those others – I’m not so sure.
So feel free to comment as long as you’re really a person. And if you run into problems, leave me a comment.
If you’re a photographer – or just a viewer – you’ll know that the ability of someone to “Photoshop” an image to have it display something different from what was visible through the camera lens has come a long way. So far, in fact, that most of us realize that the “photographic record” is probably an oxymoron.
Of course, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. You can do wonderful things with your photos by manipulating them. What you end up with in a photograph is often not what you were seeing – at least not the scene that you remember. Playing with the light and shadows, colours, etc. can often recreate something closer to what you were hoping to capture.
If you’re the type that likes that sort of thing, prepare yourself for the next “really cool” step. Photoshop is readying a new tool called Content Aware that brings the ability to fine tune images to a whole new level. To see what I mean, watch this video on YouTube.
(Note that I haven’t verified whether this is really a post from the Photoshop team. It might be someone’s idea of a prank. But it does look convincing.)
Here’s a good example of how Twitter fits into my daily routine – and why I like it so much.
While browsing through my Twitter feed this morning, I came across this note from Dave Winer:
Design – Why @ Is Held in Such High Design Esteem. http://r2.ly/yaf6
I see the @ sign every day but I’ve never thought of it as a design element. So I followed the link in his Tweet.
And lo and behold, there’s a lot of story there – something I probably wouldn’t have come across any other way.
I like that.
Design – Why @ Is Held in Such High Design Esteem – NYTimes.com
(Via @davewiner)
I admit that I had fallen into the camp that says we don’t need to use serial commas. But a recent editing job made me realize that I was on the wrong side of this argument.
Not sure what I’m talking about? Well, here’s a definition from Wikipedia:
The serial comma or series comma (also known as the Oxford comma or Harvard comma) is the comma used immediately before a grammatical conjunction (usually and or or, sometimes nor) preceding the final item in a list of three or more items. For example, a list of three countries can be punctuated as either “Portugal, Spain, and France” (with the serial comma) or as “Portugal, Spain and France” (without the serial comma).
Opinions vary among writers and editors on the usage or avoidance of the serial comma. In American English the serial comma is standard in most non-journalistic writing, which typically follows the Chicago Manual of Style. Journalists, however, usually follow the Associated Press Style Guide, which advises against it. It is less often used in British English. In many languages (e.g. French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish) the serial comma is not the norm – it may even go against punctuation rules – but it may be recommended in some cases to avoid ambiguity or to aid prosody.
As for why we still need it, consider this little gem, from a review in The Times of a documentary by Peter Ustinov:
“Highlights of his global tour include encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector.”
If you like this sort of thing, you really should read the whole Wikipedia article.
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