digital detritus

My brother is getting married!

Ok, so that’s not really news but I wanted to shout it. They’ve asked me to help and come up with a play list for the drinks and lounging portion of the reception. So far I’ve come up with this but I’m going to keep working on it. I love del.icio.us.

!inlineRSS:weddinglicious

As a chronic procrastinator and a generally unorganized person I’ve always been drawn towards calendars. I suppose I like them because for a moment I can pretend to be organized. Although I do find that the more I use them the better I get about remembering things.

I also really like the idea of communities of people and the online calendars that are available today allow for communities of people to gather and connect in a way that didn’t exist in the past. One of the problems I run into is trying to get enough people in one place at one time for the group to coalesce. With online calendars a lot of the negotiation about when to meet can be handled by machines as it should be. I won’t pretend that this manages some of the big problems that groups face. But it may help to get some of the details and bookkeeping out of the way.

So, here’s what I’ve found so far (more to follow). I haven’t looked at all of these yet so this list is really the order that I found them in:

!inlineRSS:calendarlicious

The thing that makes me sad about this article Mutant Human Species Imminent is that even 50 years later the majority of people in the United States think that this could actually happen. What I mean by that is that biology education is so poor in this country that folks really think that Natural Selection (evolution) is a linear process. That there are “steps” in evolution and we are just waiting for the next to pop up. Of course I’m excluding all of the folks who think that creation myths are equivalent to science, that’s for another day.

It’s one of those things that really makes me crazy. Basic science education just plain sucks these days and it scares me that I don’t see things getting better in the near future.

Evolutionary theory isn’t really hard to understand, not when explained well. And explaining it well isn’t hard. The same is true for chemistry and physics.

Here’s what I wish folks really understood:

1. A trait has to exist before a change in the environment can make it a benefit or a hindrance. Organisms don’t change because the environment does.
2. Most mutations aren’t positive ones. Most mutations prove to be detrimental.
3. Mutations are small changes not huge ones. No one is going to give birth to a child with wings or laser beam eyes any time soon.
4. There is no directionality to evolution. What works now may not work later on.
5. When the environment changes some species will be able to handle it and some won’t and there’s no telling until it happens what may or may not be successful.

I don’t know, maybe I’m asking to much.

Now that I’ve done some serious whining I’d like to give some heartfelt props to Steve Lodefink over at Finkbuilt for a terrific article about some great artwork in old magazines. And for the fine kids over at Boing Boing for their post that pointed me to Finkbuilt.

Right now I don’t know if I should be proud or jealous of my friend Sonny.

Here’s the deal, Sonny is the IT guy for the Craft Emergency Relief Fund which means that he gets to be a nerd for really cool people doing really cool work. And it means that he gets to write terrific and insightful articles like this one on Google Calendar has arrived - The On Demand Nonprofit ever closer.

The short version of what Sonny has to say is that with the advent of things like Google Mail and Google Calendar and other online services the ability for a nonprofit to use these services means that they no longer have to have this kind of stuff in house. Simply brilliant.

Don’t even get me started on the fact that he lives in Montpelier, Vermont.

The world is going to hell in a hand basket, George W. is on the verge of being impeached (I hope, I hope, I hope) and the U.S. is being run into the ground by a bunch of crazed religious fanatics.

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.

Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness

Fear not faithful reader, all is not lost.

So today I discovered LibriVox and it may well have changed my life. The fine folks of LibriVox (all of them volunteers) are hard at work creating audio versions of books in the public domain. How cool is that?

So far I’ve listened to portions of Heart of Darkness and Treasure Island. I think I’m going to grab copies of The Marvelous Land of Oz and The Road to Oz next.

Oh, and did I mention that they have a podcast?

Bill’s lily (light)
Originally uploaded by colinj .

IMG_2200
Originally uploaded by colinj .

Two of my favorite things are taking pictures and playing with new technology. So all this really is me seeing what I can do with Wordpress, Ecto and Flickr.

The top picture is a lily that one of my co-workers got from his wife.

The bottom picture is the sunset as seen from the Boston Commons.

Go on about your business.