Networking Nightmare

Sorry for the extended silence. I've been busy, partly with a family situation that prompted me to (reluctantly) join Facebook, and partly with Google+. As a newcomer to both Facebook and Google+,* I'm simultaneously overwhelmed (by all the data suddenly streaming into my life, from Google+ and from relatives via Facebook), underwhelmed (by Facebook's interface), and enthralled (by Google+, and I mean that in both the "Wow!" and "I've sold my soul to Google" senses).

Things are starting to settle down, though, and I'm looking forward to the weekend. I hope to drop by the Oklahoma Freethought Convention tomorrow at least long enough to sit in on ERV's talk. I've seen ERV (a.k.a. Abbie Smith) give a couple of other presentations, and they were simultaneously entertaining and informative. I'm not as familiar with the other scheduled speakers (Matt Dillahunty, "AronRa," "The Thinking Atheist," Matt Silverstein, and Dr. William G. Morgan), so I'll just be playing it by ear once Abbie is done.

Have a good weekend, y'all.

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* And social networking in general, although I've used LinkedIn for about a year, and have participated in various user forums to some degree for decades, starting in the era of dial-up Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs). If the phrase "HI MAGGI" means anything to you, you're probably in my neighborhood, both age- and location-wise.

Meriting Badges?

I've capitulated. I've joined Google Plus (a.k.a. "Google+" or just "G+"). And for the most part, I'm enjoying it, although I'm following (or "have circled") so many celebrities† that my Google+ "Stream" is getting quite long. I really need a way to collapse comments so I don't have to scroll forever to get past the stuff posted by the followers of the people I'm following.

A sure sign of Google+'s popularity (however fleeting it may be) is the number of celebrities and celebrity impersonators it's attracted in the three weeks it's been live. Google would obviously be pleased to have celebrities endorse Google+ by using it, so the company is working on a "celebrity acquisition plan" and a scheme for verifying that celebrities are who they claim to be. (William Shatner would probably have appreciated an opportunity to prove his identity before his Google+ account was suspended, but the error has been corrected.)

Google+ isn't the only new feature that Google is working on this week. Google News, "a computer-generated news site that aggregates headlines from news sources worldwide, groups similar stories together, and displays them according to each reader's personalized interests," has implemented a system of "badges" for subjects that you read up on frequently. By default, your badges are shown only to you, but you can share (publicize) them if you want. I'm not sure whether I want to earn, let alone share, Google badges, since at first blush they seem about as useful as those cheesy certificates I got in elementary school for reading library books during summer vacation. And to earn badges, I'd have to actually click on links to read news articles. No more pretending to be up-to-date on current events by just skimming headlines!

PC World suggests that if badges catch on, "it's going to become increasingly easy to spot spammers simply looking to promote a brand without any knowledge of it. Authentic businesses (and individuals behind them) will get a credibility boost by displaying their high-level badges." Maybe so, but Google still needs to work on the algorithms that determine the subjects of articles before I'll take the badge system seriously. I'm on my way to earning a badge about Google itself, which is appropriate since I've recently read about a dozen articles on the company. But instead of giving me points for reading articles on Scientology, Google hints that I might qualify for a badge on prominent Scientologist Tom Cruise. Bleah.

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† Well, celebrities to me, anyway. People like John Halamka (who doesn't seem to be posting anything to Google+ yet) and Greg Laden (who is active on Google+) would probably not be considered "celebrities" by most people.

Insisting On ID

I've been hoping that Google+ would be a better, more private alternative for social networking than Facebook. One of the reasons I don't use Facebook is their policy that users must sign up under their real names,† and now I hear that Google+ has the same policy. (To be nit-picky, the "real name" requirement seems to be tied to Google Profiles, not directly to Google+, but the two services are tightly linked, and I believe that you have to have a Google Profile to use Google+.)

Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, said in a CNBC interview a couple of years ago: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." For the average person who just wants to keep in touch with classmates, coworkers, friends and relatives, "Don't do stupid stuff" (or at least, "Don't post evidence of stupid stuff you've done where the whole world can see it") is a reasonable attitude. For those who have legitimate reasons to conceal their legal name, gender, likeness, and location from all but selected individuals, it's less reasonable. Whistleblowers, victims of abuse, and those suffering from embarrassing medical or psychiatric conditions, for example, need social interaction just as much as (or more than) the rest of us, but are unlikely to seek it in a public forum. And as the CNET article points out, "People's online names, while not on their birth certificates, often are a real persona--reputation and all." That's one reason I prefer to be known as "Ckbep"...that, and the fact that being an atheist in a state that's so red it's maroon requires a certain amount of discretion. There's no dishonor in declining to pin a target on your own chest.

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† Which are visible to everyone.

Posting Early

Apparently I'm not the only one who prepares posts in advance:

I try to be a little more careful about what I actually publish, though! (In case you haven't already heard, the news story shown at the top of the screenshot is the correct one. The final flight of the US space shuttle program successfully launched earlier today, despite forecasts of foul weather and a brief delay to ensure that a "vent arm," whatever that is, had properly retracted.)

I've got plans for Saturday, so I'm posting a day early. Have a great weekend, y'all!

Writing Off Penmanship

I've been waiting with trepidation for the day when schools officially embrace SMS-inspired abbreviations like u r ("you are"), l8r ("later"), and i <3 u ("I 'heart' [love] you"), and spelling tests disappear or at least are graded more leniently. So I shouldn't have been surprised to hear that Indiana public schools will no longer be required to teach cursive handwriting, but I was.

Although my own handwriting is often illegible even to myself, I'm oddly fond of cursive, maybe because it's been championed by people I admire. My mother's gorgeous handwriting looks like an example from a penmanship manual because "that's how we were taught to write back then," she says. When I took a couple of semesters of Russian in college, the instructor, a native Russian, allowed the class to print (in Cyrillic, of course) only for the first half of the first semester. After that, she started deducting points from homework assignments and tests that weren't written in cursive. "In Russia, only little children print," she explained.

I'm thrilled to wave bye-bye to most skills that are obsolete, or nearly so. Thanks to electronic banking, I've only had to write about ten checks in the last five years. I never really got the hang of manual record turntables, and almost always produced that horrid zipping/scratching sound when putting the needle on a vinyl record. Typing on an actual typewriter—I even had a manual (non-electric) student model in my youth—and using Wite-Out® correction fluid are now as antiquated as getting up from the sofa to change TV channels. There are some things I'll miss, though. I never got, and now never will get, my chance to pilot the space shuttle, darn it. And there are a few practices that I stubbornly refuse to let die. I mow my lawn with an old-fashioned push mower; it's good for the environment and my cardiovascular system. I baked a cake from scratch just last week. I handle most correspondence via emails or greeting cards, but I still write condolence letters by hand (even though I first compose them on computer, then copy them out in pen). Writing still has its place.

Indiana schools that want to teach cursive handwriting will be allowed to do so, but my guess is that most won't bother. Andree Anderson of the Indiana University Northwest Urban Teacher Education Program says that cursive lessons have been a low priority for a while now. Keyboard proficiency will be the new focus, and eventually even that will be supplemented or replaced by something else: voice commands, multi-touch gestures like "pinch to zoom," neural implants...who knows? I think that the use of paper and pencil will eventually be limited to the briefest of notes, probably no more than will fit on a Post-It®. Until someone invents disposable devices that'll display text and stick to pretty much anything, we've got to at least have Post-Its!

Aging In Absentia

Had she lived, Princess Diana would have celebrated her 50th birthday last Friday, but even in death, she can't escape reporters and the post-mortem version of paparazzi. Newsweek's Tina Brown spins a yarn of what Diana's life could have been like if she'd lived, after she'd broken up with Dodi Al-Fayed (as Ms. Brown assumes that she would have). Brown's conjectures about the middle-aged Diana's taste in men, what cosmetic procedures she'd have used, and whether she'd have forgiven those who wronged her could serve as the outline for a romance novel. They'd have to find a better cover picture for the novel than the "age progressed" and "updated" photo that accompanied the Newsweek article, though.

One of the minor—perhaps only—consolations of losing someone who died much too young is that in your memory, they'll always be young. Thanks, Newsweek, for screwing with my memories. The periodical's motive for publishing the article and the modified photograph is, I'm sure, to titillate readers and sell as many magazines as possible. I think they chickened out, though. Given the popularity of television dramas like "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," why not just go whole hawg and print a projection of what Diana's actual remains look like today?

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N.B. I thought about including a copy of the doctored photo with this post, then decided it's not an image that I want to perpetuate. If you want to see it, go check out the article and photo on Newsweek's site. I couldn't find the original of the modified photo, but did find one that could serve as a reasonable comparison. Here's how I'd prefer to remember Diana:

Liking What You See?

I've mentioned that I don't use Facebook because I like my privacy. "Privacy" and "Facebook" are very nearly mutually exclusive concepts. I'm more comfortable with Google, and use several of its services (including, obviously, Blogger). Now Google has announced a new service called Google+, which seems poised to be a competitor—or at least alternative—to Facebook, and with much better privacy controls.

Google+ is currently in the testing stage and available only by invitation, but even when it becomes available to the general public, I'm still going to consider carefully whether I want to use it or not. Privacy issues aside, Google's reputation isn't what it used to be. Features that were rolled out with much fanfare, like Google Health and Google Wave, died lonely, pitiful deaths. The launch of Google Buzz was fraught with missteps, and Google's chairman, Eric Schmidt, admitted that he was too "busy" to pay much attention to social networking as services like Facebook and LinkedIn were experiencing explosive growth.

Mistrust of Facebook/Google/et al. isn't the biggest impediment to my participation in social networking, though. My problem is that I just don't get it. I overthink it, and that removes much of the potential for fun. Take something as simple as a "Like" button, for example. In the context of the Internet, what exactly does the word "like" mean? When I'm reading news and blog posts via Google Reader, I'm fine with clicking "Like" on an item that brings a smile to my face, or that was particularly well-written, or tells me something I really need to know. But on what level can I "like" a story such as the following?

"Body in public pool undetected for days: Authorities say the body of a woman who died in a Massachusetts public pool went undetected for days as swimmers continued to use the pool before the victim was found floating."

8 people "liked" this. Ewww...

For the morbidly curious, there's more info below the jump. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Putting the Chicken Before the Egg

What is this object?

If you said "an egg," you're wrong. It's a baby chicken.

Seriously. It's a chicken, the moral equivalent of this:

That's Personhood USA's take on the matter, anyway. According to the group, "preborn children" "begin to exist immediately at first contact of the sperm with the oocyte [egg]" and are "created in the image of God."

So this:

was made in the image of this:

Got it?

If the group achieves its goal of changing the legal definition of "personhood" to include fertilized eggs, any birth control method that interferes with the implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus—including intrauterine devices (IUDs) and some birth control pills—would be outlawed.†  All abortions would be banned, even for rape victims. Rebecca Kiessling, who was conceived via rape and is a featured speaker on Personhood Mississippi's "Conceived in Rape" tour (you've got to wonder what kind of T-shirt they came up with for that tour), states, "A baby is not the worst thing that could ever happen to a rape victim—an abortion is."

While I can't speak from first-hand experience, my guess is that rape is a prime contender for "the worst thing that could ever happen to a rape victim."

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† Medically, pregnancy is considered to begin when a fertilized egg "implants", or becomes attached to the uterine wall.

Adorning the Driller

The Golden Driller is a 76-foot-tall statue of an oilfield worker that's stood at the Tulsa County Fairgrounds for most of my life. "Golden" is probably not the most accurate description of the big guy's color, but then, "Mustardy Driller" isn't a very catchy moniker, is it? Whatever color he is, he's a Tulsa icon. (And as I just now discovered, the Driller is also the official monument of the state of Oklahoma. He isn't included on the official "Oklahoma State Icons" page, but is listed in the "Oklahoma Emblems" section of this "Welcome to Oklahoma" pamphlet.)

As you can imagine, dressing a 76-foot-tall statue is no minor feat, but it can be done. A local radio station drapes the Driller in a tent-sized T-shirt every year during the state fair, and now the Oklahoma Scottish Festival wants to draw attention to their annual event and give His Goldenness a touch of class by draping him in the world's largest kilt. And we, his adoring fans, get to decide which tartan (pattern) will be used! Will it be the official City of Tulsa tartan? The Johnnie Walker tartan (the corporate tartan for Johnnie Walker Whisky)? Your own clan's tartan? You can buy as many votes as you want for only $1 apiece; the tartan with the most votes at 4:00 PM CST on June 1st, 2011 (that's tomorrow!) will win. I chipped in $10 to vote for the official tartan of my family. It's a small clan that hasn't a hope of winning, but whatever pattern prevails, it'll be cool to see the Driller in a kilt.

Fortunately the Driller already has permanently-installed trousers over which the kilt can be wrapped. Yeah, "regimental" is the way that true Scotsmen wear their kilts, but I don't think the Driller's a Scot, and that line from "Oklahoma!" about "the wind [that] comes sweepin' down the plain" is all too accurate.

Teaching the Controversy

"It is well to know something of the manners of various peoples, in order more sanely to judge our own, and that we do not think that everything against our modes is ridiculous, and against reason, as those who have seen nothing are accustomed to think."—René Descartes, philosopher and mathematician (1596-1650)

More than 100,000 people signed a petition in support of making Religious Education (RE) a requirement for British students. Actually, I thought it already was required, and I wish that American school systems required comparative religion classes. As Stephen Prothero, author of Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know — And Doesn't, wrote in a USA Today article, "Even if religion doesn't make any sense to you, you can't make sense of the world without knowing something about the world's religions."

Surprisingly, at least to me, British faith leaders agree that RE should be required. They claim that without it, "a generation of children will have no knowledge of the role Faith plays in society" (capitalization in the original). Is this an acknowledgment that Brits just don't spend much time in church anymore? Personally, if I were religious and had kids, I'd worry that the knowledge they were exposed to in RE classes might encourage them to "comparison shop" and adopt a religion that appealed to them more than mine. That may be the concern of some Canadian parents who have unsuccessfully tried to keep their children out of the controversial Ethics and Religious Culture program taught in Quebec's schools on the grounds that the class could interfere with their children's moral education.

I couldn't find anything specifically about the effect of comparative religion classes on religious belief, although there are studies that show a negative correlation between education in general and religiosity. In other words, the more educated a person is, the less likely s/he is to be religious. And while you might think that people who've been exposed to lots of different religions are likely to believe in one of them, studies show that having an overwhelming number of choices may actually discourage people from making any choice.

Wow. As an atheist, I strongly oppose indoctrinating kids into religion, but now I have even more reason to support teaching them about as many religions as possible!

H/T to Howard Friedman at Religion Clause

Weathering the Storm

I'm normally quite fond of the color pink, but not so much when the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center has it plastered over the part of the map that corresponds to my home. The predictions for "HIGH RISK OF SVR TSTMS ACROSS PARTS OF KS/OK/NRN TX" and "EXPECTATIONS FOR AN OUTBREAK OF TORNADOES ACROSS KS/OK/TX" have already proven accurate; a local TV station is reporting two deaths and major damage in El Reno, Oklahoma. I'll save for later the post that I was planning to finish up and publish tonight; I'm too busy watching the news.

Stay safe, y'all.

Running a Little Behind

I have houseguests this weekend, so instead of a thoughtfully composed blog post, I offer a quiet de-stresser: a video of "micro-origami" unfolding itself after being placed in water:

Flottille (detail) from Etienne Cliquet on Vimeo

Check out the shadows of the rectangular "sculptures"; the paper's edges look smooth but the shadows are scalloped. How cool! I like the first piece and the one at the 4:20 mark the best, but the whole thing makes me want to go find some rice paper, a pair of very sharp scissors, and a bowl of water.

I found the video on BoingBoing but it looks like it's all over the net by now. Enjoy. :-)

Taking Their Voice But Not Their Spirit

Christopher Hitchens is dying...as are we all, of course, but unlike those of us who have no idea when our end will come, Hitchens has suspicions about the timing of his, although he's doing what he can to stave it off. Of the many indignities that his cancer has imposed on him, the the loss of his voice seems to be the one that he minds the most. No big deal, you might think; he's a magnificent writer and he can still express himself that way, but I think I can identify in the tiniest degree with his statement that "Deprivation of the ability to speak is more like an attack of impotence, or the amputation of part of the personality." I can't even interact with my cat properly when I've got a mouthful of food; trying to shoo her off the dining room table with a wave of a hand instead of a stern "Get down!" just doesn't cut it. (Not that ordering her around works very well either, but loud noises at least have more impact on her than angry gestures.) When a sore throat led to a few days of laryngitis last winter, I tried communicating via an iPhone text-to-speech app, thinking it'd be more understandable than notes scribbled in my sloppy handwriting, but I gave up when I learned how much time and effort was required to produce even short phrases. Accomplishing the everyday tasks of life silently—answering the telephone, shopping, communicating with friends—and particularly the chores of trying to stay alive while battling a serious illness—keeping loved ones up-to-date, negotiating with insurance companies, dealing with healthcare providers—must be exhausting.

Film critic Roger Ebert, who has lost his voice permanently due to complications of thyroid cancer, wrote in his journal earlier this year:

When first coming to terms with the fact that I would never speak again, I filled my head with denial and coping strategies. I would use my computer voice, for example. And I do. But that is no way to participate in the flow of a conversation, and I realize so clearly now that conversations are all about the flow, the timing, the music.

I find it interesting that although Hitchens had "never been able to sing" and Ebert said the same thing about himself (back when he could still speak), they both associate speech and conversation with music.

Ebert reports that he uses social media and "writes more than ever," and I imagine that Hitchens writes as much as his condition and schedule allow. I look forward to many more years of blunt opinions and lyrical prose from both men even if I do have to read it rather than hear it. But as I read their words, I'll be hearing their voices in my head.

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N.B. I'm trying to get into the habit of posting on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, but Blogger didn't consult me about scheduling the maintenance/downtime that occurred Thursday afternoon through this morning, so this post is a day late.

Wishing Hubble a Happy 21st Birthday!

I've been an armchair astronomer since my late teens or early twenties; that's what comes of reading and watching tons of science fiction. I've never owned a telescope or even a decent pair of binoculars; I barely know the major constellations (although I'm oddly fond of Orion, maybe because its "belt" is so easy to spot in my part of the world). Aside from one Science and Engineering Club field trip in college, I've never driven out to the country (away from all the light pollution in town) to get a decent look at the sky. I get my astronomy "fix" from photos like the ones taken by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), which was launched into space 21 years ago this month. Here's one of my all-time favorite HST shots, of the "Tadpole" galaxy (officially known as "UGC 10214" or "Arp 188"):

The Tadpole probably got its long "tail" as a result of a collision with another, smaller galaxy. What beauty can come of intergalactic violence! What really gets me about this picture, though, is the huge number of more distant galaxies that it shows...galaxies that could be just as big and complex and diverse as our own (the Milky Way). When I see a picture like this, I imagine myself being about as important in the grand scheme of things as a microbe living on a chip of rock in a pile of rubble in a valley in some barren, windswept mountain range. Even if I was doing all the things that a microbe is supposed to do—eating, growing, excreting, making lots of little baby microbes, etc.—you'd never know it from the top of the mountain range. Anyone who can look at a photo like the one above, grasp the vastness and complexity that it represents (of just one tiny bit of our universe, mind you), and still believe that s/he was deliberately, "intelligently" designed to occupy one particular spot on an insignificant planet in "the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy" has a far more vivid imagination than I do.

H/T to Phil "Bad Astronomer" Plait...even though he initially got the HST's launch date wrong. (He's fixed it now.) I actually started writing this post without realizing that this is Hubble's birthday month, before Phil said anything about it on his blog. When I read his post, I realized that I'd accidentally managed to time my thoughts really well!

Nosing Around

The latest email from my neighborhood association reports two recent break-ins within a few blocks of my house, and specifically asks me to be a "nosy neighbor" to deter future criminal activity. If I see a person or vehicle that "doesn't seem to belong in the neighborhood," the email recommends "slowing down and acting interested," getting a description (e.g., noting cars' license plate numbers) and passing that info along to the neighborhood association, and/or calling the police department's non-emergency number.

I'm all for "acting interested" in what's going on in my neighborhood (that's just being neighborly), and I help law enforcement in any way I can, but now I'm torn between...

• my desire (if not my tendency) to think the best of others, and my desire to protect my property (and that of my neighbors);
• my dismay over the idea of targeting people based on race and/or perceived economic class, and the knowledge that recent thefts—and one I personally witnessed last summer—involved black men (some driving older, beat-up vehicles);
• my commitment to behaving as a law-abiding citizen (apart from a slight tendency to regard speed limits as "suggestions"), and my resentment of scrutiny from my fellow citizens and from law enforcement.

Is there such a thing as "situationally induced multiple personality disorder"?

The neighborhood association is meeting tonight, and I plan to attend. A representative from the police department is scheduled to give a presentation, which I hope will include some tips on "how to protect your neighborhood without feeling like a government informant."

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Later...

I'm home from the meeting, which had a generally upbeat tone and was well-attended (in comparison to previous meetings I've been to in my five years in the neighborhood). The recurring theme was "get to know your neighbors so you'll know who belongs in the neighborhood and who doesn't." The police officer who attended didn't offer much specific advice other than "do your own research" (on alarm systems, the pros and cons of gun ownership, etc.), and the few specifics he did share—about the recent and upcoming decreases in the number of officers on the force—were depressing. But he did say that the neighborhood isn't being specifically targeted by criminals, and he repeatedly encouraged us to report any suspicious behavior, as that kind of reporting has helped solve cases in the past. The phrase "racial profiling" was used by a resident, but the officer dismissed it, saying "we don't do that."

There are no immediate answers to the neighborhood's problems, but after tonight's meeting, I feel reassured that even though I bought my house based primarily on its price and location, I chose my neighbors well.

Parodying the Ridiculous

I've never watched Glen Beck's show (from which Beck will be "transition[ing] off later this year"), and now thanks to Jon Stewart, I don't have to!

I'd also managed to avoid watching the "Friday" music video by Rebecca Black that went viral earlier this year, but finally gave in after Hemant posted the "Sunday" parody video that was produced by a Christian church near him. I thought at first that the parody must be a really horrible knockoff of the original, but after watching at least a full minute of each of them (about as much as I could stand), I'd say they're equally bad. Would somebody please tell me why anybody needs Auto-Tune for a song with a range of about 4 notes? If you can't manage to sing that much on-key without electronic aids, please confine your performances to your own shower.

H/T to Ed Brayton at Dispatches From the Culture Wars and Hemant at Friendly Atheist

Reliving My Youth

The Commodore 64, with its iconic beige case and built-in keyboard, is coming back. If—like me—you're a geek of a certain age, the thought makes your heart beat a little faster; you almost certainly remember the C64 and might have had one yourself. I still have mine, although it's been sitting out in the garage for years now and is probably infested with spiders.

I remember bringing it home from Target (the one I still shop at) on a Saturday evening. I felt like a new parent bringing the baby home from the hospital. I started out small, just the basic unit and the standalone floppy disk drive, but the Commodore-brand monitor soon followed (no more hooking up to the TV set!), then the 300-baud modem. When Quantum Link (the precursor to America Online) became available, I upgraded to a 1200-baud modem and felt like I was flying. I'd used CompuServe a few times but QLink was different, cooler. I participated in some of the user forums (known collectively as "People Connection") and exchanged emails with folks I met there, although I don't think I knew anybody IRL (in real life) who used the service. In the age before emoticons ("smilies") were common, I discovered how easily hastily-typed messages can be misinterpreted, and I learned to read and write more thoughtfully. I spent a memorable, though largely sleepless, couple of weeks playing my way through the Neuromancer video game from Interplay...the first and last time I allowed myself to become that thoroughly engrossed in any game. I can hear the soundtrack (by Devo) in my head now.

The CNET article says that "Commodore doesn't seem to have given any clues as to when it will release the new computer." Damn, I've been overcome by a wave of nostalgia but I hate waiting. Does anybody know how to get spiders out of a floppy disk drive?

Redding Up†

Criticism is easy. Praise may take a bit more effort but is so much more satisfying for everybody:



The young lady in the video seems to be handling the unexpected attention very gracefully. I'd have gone as red as the caps that the flash-mobbers wore.

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† For those who aren't from Pennsylvania and haven't seen the "Law & Order: CI" episode in which the phrase "redd up" is explained, see http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19980526.

Fooling Around (Not)

I briefly toyed with the idea of posting something April-Foolish today, but I chickened out. Maybe I'm humor-impaired. I just couldn't come up with anything that would initially seem reasonable but would still be identifiable as a joke after a moment's reflection, and I don't feel like kidding about something important like breaking my new (and beloved) iPad 2 or finally succumbing to Ray Comfort's passionate but proofless pleas to accept Christianity.

So instead, I'll just wish my stepdad a very happy 80th birthday! Jack, thank you for many years of great stepfatherhood (especially those first few...several...years during which I was a less-than-stellar stepchild). And thank you also for arranging to be born on a day that's so easy to remember!

Fast Forwarding Through Life

My home security cameras, which both comfort me and make me paranoid, have given me an idea for an art project. (Well, what a geek with minimal creativity considers an "art project"!) Each camera takes a still photo every 30 seconds, and most evenings, I fast-forward through the pictures from that day. Hardly a day goes by without something interesting being captured: squirrels chasing each other up and down trees, that sweet but shy orange tomcat who likes to hang out under the wooden deck behind my house, and flocks of birds that descend on my yard en masse for a few seconds then disappear as fast as they came. Watching snow accumulate over a period of hours or intricate patterns of dry leaves formed then dissolved by gusts of wind is fascinating. And those are just the natural events; I’m not even counting the human passers-by.

I think the view I enjoy the most is from the camera that points at the driveway. That’s the one that has the best view of the vegetation in my yard and in the neighbors’. What if I picked a time of day (late morning, I think, when the sun is well up but not shining right in the camera and causing lens flares), and saved the picture from that time, from that camera, every day for a year, then fast-forwarded through those? Wouldn’t it be cool to watch the seasons change? And given the number of crimes that have been captured by Google Street View, who knows what else I’ll see?