The net-to-brain interface is one step closer to fruition with the advent of Google Reader, from google labs. At first on hearing the description, I thought, oh, another run of the mill rss reader. At the time I'd been using Thunderbird to read news feeds I foolishly downloaded onto my hard drive, as if all the spam email wasn't enough. I've since chucked the bird and gone back to web-based email and rss reading. The great thing about reader is the interface. Unlike most readers, where you sift through folder after folder of feeds from different sources, Google Reader allows you to save all your subscriptions, and you can click on all links, and a steady stream of articles is displayed in a viewer. You can 'star' or tag interesting articles for later use, and to advance through the stream you just hit the space bar and it pages-down. The great thing is, the paging stops as soon you let off the space bar, so when you get fifty articles about something you don't care about, just hold the bar down and fast forward through the boring feeds until something catches your eye. As Jean Shepherd once said, it's not the big headlines that tell us about life, it's the small bits of trivia and curiousities that tell us about what's realing going on.
Here's some interesting links I've found recently:
- This google video contains a nature documentary on the 'Pika', the animal from which 'Pikachu' is derived. I had no idea it was based on a real animal. It's disgustingly adorable
- Website stencil revolution offers stencil templates designed by artists
- Boing Boing linked to a giant insect that appears to be eating Germany in Google Maps
- Boing Boing also linked to a matchstick model of Hogwarts academy, from Harry Potter
I was going to drive to work Friday night and it was raining, but little did I know what was in store. I knew when it rained hard that the poorly-thought out underpass leading to I-65 to Louisville becomes a small river, so I took the alternate route to Louisville, but as I headed down highway 31, visibility cut down to about fifteen feet and soon I felt like my car was driving more like a motorboat, with jets of water shooting up both sides. I pulled into a parking lot and turned back to higher ground.
All the lights went out on the highway and soon phone service went out. I called into work and called home to tell my wife, and on the way back
I saw a little neon up to its windshield in water.
Melissa, bless her heart, wanted to see for herself. This is classic flood stupid behavior, but our apartment was quite safe and we drove out but found the path to the highway flooded by a rising creek, a cadillac forded part way in but stalled. We turned into a shopping center parking lot to see a minivan and a strip mall flooded, including a dentist's office my mom frequents. A small torrent rushed out into the parking lot of a small fruit market and drive through of a bank and the adjacent road to the highway was cut off. We snapped some phone cam pictures, only to find our other way back home blocked by more water. We had to wait out the storm in the dry part of the lot until the flood waters receded.
I've never seen Elizabethtown flood this badly.
If you could only save one thing in a house fire (thing, not person), what would it be and why?
Submitted by donnunn.
I would 'save' the mattress. Most fires fizzle unless a mattress or couch starts to burn. If your house continues to burn, you could take the mattress to a friend's house to sleep on. That's my smarmy answer. My sentimental answer is my wife's scrapbook.
What time period would you have lived in, if you could have lived at any time?
Time is really only a way of perceiving things, a way of differentiating or delineating the space between events. Just as you can zoom in or out on the graph of a cyclic wave, so too, is the matter of time a matter of perception based around loose concepts like the length of an average day's available sunlight and the convenience of being able to divide those hours by numbers like two, three, and four. I think I have met only two people who could survive being transplanted in another time. Usually those who seem to lament about living in the past seem the least likely to make it. You can wax poetic about the past, but it's taken us this long to think that maybe concepts like racism aren't such a good thing. It's taken us this long to begin to question the idea of dying for nationalism. Most people today can't survive without air conditioning and refrigeration or fast food. People watch videos on their mobiles to keep from getting bored. Time is irrelevant.
In just a few hours my wife will go to the hospital to find out whether she is carrying a boy or a girl. I'm so excited, and anxious, I feel great like I've never felt before. This is a huge landmark in my time line, I think, whether or child will be a boy or a girl. We have mentally prepared for either event. I suppose the split between boy and girls isn't so much the butter-or-guns divergence it once was, but it's still quite a profound difference in our potential futures. Interesting to think about, definitely. I know we will be so happy either way. Last night I read the introduction to Thoreau's Walden to her belly. I don't know what the baby actually hears, but it was good for all of us, I think.
I just got a voicemail of my little baby-to-be's heartbeat from Melissa. I'm so excited and happy, and tomorrow, I find out whether it's a boy or girl! I love you so much sweetpea!
"I keep a close watch on this heart of mine
I keep my eyes wide open all the time
I keep the ends out for the tie that binds
Because you're mine, I walk the line"
Melissa and I rented two wonderful movies a few days ago, the Johnny and June Carter Cash biopic, Walk the Line, and the Squid and the Whale. Johnny Cash is often viewed in an approachable way, the man in black seems dark and sullen but in many ways is the everyman who made his mark and never forgot where he came from. In contrast to the flash-over substance cutesy hook lines of today's pop-country, Johnny Cash's song is part gospel, part blues, part rock, and ultimately, a lament of mans' condition in the world. The movie depicts a lighter side of the story but hints at Johnny's troubles but highlights his remarkable understanding of Christ's compassion and grace in a world that was puritan, uncaring, and judgemental.
The love story of Johnny Cash's unabaiting love for June is endearing and brings out the best and sometimes the worst in Cash, but in the end that love makes him become the man he has to be to gain her trust. The mistakes we make in the past are sometimes forgiven but unfortunately hard to forget.
Melissa and I watched the movie and she felt the baby kick and guided my hand to feel it move, and I was overcome with joy. My eyes teared up with happiness and love of the life we are bringing into the world. I only hope I can teach our child to know grace and compassion and love; what else is there?
