Powered by Twitter Tools.

Related posts:

1. Musings for the week of 2009-01-05
2. Musings for the week of 2009-01-12
3. Musings for the week of 2009-01-19

Powered by Twitter Tools.

Related posts:

1. Twitter Updates for 2008-08-18
2. Twitter Updates for 2008-07-23
3. Twitter Updates for 2008-09-03

From the outside, looking in, the culture seems muddied with the intermingling of past and present times.  Between incomplete reports from the news agencies, history, and modern documentaries, it is difficult at best to discern the true sociology for a given place and time.  My interpretation of the events that have transpired in the Middle East, especially those concerning the Taliban, were that I was getting a one-sided story and that the culture in general seemed very foreign – even hostile – to my Western upbringing.  I didn’t have a real appreciation for the victims, primarily because I felt as though the victims were only really victims because the U.S. government told them they were.  Because I didn’t have the contacts to speak to in the Middle East and I’ve never been to evaluate the situation for myself, I could only trust what I’m told for so far.

The Radio Lab podcast, Pop Music, went into a segment regarding one man’s experience in Afghanistan with his accordion.  The piece is really quite good and I encourage you to listen to it for my post to have it’s full impact.  At any rate, this novice accordion player discovers that some forms of music cross the boundaries – or preconceived boundaries – of our world’s cultures.  There are ideas that translate to sounds in music that are echoed through every civilization and tell the same story.  Afghanistan had just crawled out of very long period of silence during its war with Russia, then Taliban rule.  Music is one of those mediums that can insight such raw emotions in people and the Afghans were no exception.  After the cultural bans experienced through the previous years, this accordion player steps timidly onto a bar stage where prompted by his new audience and supported by his translator, performs Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire to “the best audience [ever].”  It wasn’t particularly well done, but the crowd goes wild.  At a certain point during the program, I was awashed with a feeling of joy, triumph, grief, and camaraderie.  There’s probably a more succinct way of stating that, but it isn’t anything that’s happened to me often enough to find the proper word for.

It was this last bit that really stuck with me.  I finally understood what it must have been like to live in such a stifled society as to be allowed no cultural displays; no music, no dancing, no art.  It’s an incredible feeling of sadness and hopelessness that I feel when I try to imagine it.

The Taliban were not the first to run a people in this way, and it’s doubtful they’ll be the last.  I just hope that I’m always in a place where I am free to explore my culture, or anybody else’s for that matter.  I really hope that people being oppressed in the world today find liberation and the strength to reunite with their forgotten past.

Further Reading: Afghanistan, Ahmad Zahir, Taliban

Related posts:

1. Polar Cities
2. A Night of Amazing Celtic Music!
3. How I Work

The one thing I didn’t do was create a site that would work on every browser. Unfortunately, this one was designed to work on IE 7 and Firefox 2+. I doubt you’ll get much love from previous versions of IE, though Firefox may not choke too much. At any rate, I don’t know that I’m going to spend a lot of time on making it compatible with other browses at the risk of losing functionality. I do have some minor kinks to work out, but I don’t think the average user will even notice them.

Have a look and let me know what you think – good or bad.

Cayce Terrell: Storyteller

Related posts:

1. How I Work
2. Zune 2.x
3. DiY PC: Antec Nine Hundred (Case)

China Regulates Buddhist Reincarnation – Newsweek Beliefs – MSNBC.com

Related posts:

1. Falun Gong Cultivation
2. Accident Involving American/Chinese – No Casulaties
3. Atlanta Trying for Bible Studies in the Classroom

I don’t even think they waited for the words of the prophecy.

Related posts:

1. Bring on the Cold, Bring on the Fire
2. Fire Bubbles
3. Bush Sandwich

Balthazar has been going on about a camping trip for days now. We’re not exactly sure where he picked this up, but I couldn’t be happier. I love camping and haven’t done any since becoming a father. Camping is one of those experiences I wanted to bring to my son however, and eagerly awaited the day. As the weather hasn’t been very favorable over the last week or so, there was concern about thunderstorms. Amy also thought that it be best to spend a single night out instead of a weekend or longer. As all of this came together, we finally decided to just setup a tent in the backyard near a fire pit I built in the late winter.

It has been raining off and on over the last few days, so wood was damp and difficult to burn. He saw how difficult it was to get a fire going, and how after a while of trying, the materials had dried and caught. Amy had to go inside to cook on the conventional stove – still hot dogs, however – but eventually the fire started up and looked like it would hold.

Then it started raining. The wind came in pretty fiercely and some low, rumbling thunder could be heard. There was also some minor lightning – the horizontal type, often behind the clouds. That was enough for Amy and she went in the house. Balthazar and I stayed out to brave the storm in the tent. As we were getting in, I spotted a baby snake moving through the grass. The boy got to watch as a young Copperhead slithered around to avoid the cat and eventually went under the tent. Not a good place for it, as a four-year-old in a tent is like a bull in a china shop. He was jumping all around and rolling even though I reminded him to try and not crush the snake. I hope it got away.

The trip was over by bedtime. Balthazar wanted to go back inside just before 10:00 when I told him it was time to go to sleep. I think he was hoping he could avoid having to go to sleep more than he wanted to leave the campsite. He said he had a great time anyway.

Unfortunately, it’s now been three days and the tent remains in the backyard. It rains about once a day and leaves the tent somewhat wet by the time I get home to do something about it. Oh well. At least it’s getting good and aired out for the first time in 10 years or so.

Related posts:

1. Fall Family Fun Camping Trip
2. The Disney World Report
3. A Baby Changes Everything

You see, the folks at Read/Write Web are right. The Search is “game-over.” Google has won. But there is still a search for the Google-killer.  Problem is, everybody is going after the wrong features. from Read/Write Web: From Search to (Re)Search…

• Cool new features – user interface, alerts, visualization or whatever. The problem is that no single feature is enough for users to switch from Google and most people don’t have the time or motivation to use multiple search engines.
• Natural Language. There is big money riding on this one. It feels wrong to me. This is too much heavy science to crack problems that are totally simple for humans; and Web 2.0 is getting pretty good at aggregating the expanding global pool of knowledge workers.
• Vertical Search and Human Search. I put the two together. Human Search works best in well-defined domains. There are lots of Vertical Search engines that already work well and plenty more will come.

The article cites some good ideas for what this mythical Web 2.0 app should be, but that’s where my idea diverges.

I’ve been mulling over the idea of “concept searching” in my mind as of late. The problem with today’s search engines is that they’re still related strictly to my search terms. The problem is exposed when I need to do a search for terms that may not appear exactly as I type them, but together form more of a characteristic or conceptual pattern of something else. For instance, if I search for red, orange, and yellow, I will get a wide diversity of sites which have these words prominently displayed in HTML content. But maybe what I’m really after is artistic impressions of warm color use. Or perhaps I’m looking for images of fire…

The point is, the terms I specified are related in ways beyond just their placement on a web site. Flickr does a very nice job of demonstrating the power of tagging, categorizing, and respectively searching. By combining definitions of the words we’re searching for, they’re able to build what are called “clusters.” Clusters are groups of tags that seem related and Flickr allows you to pick a cluster to further identify the concept you’re searching on. It’s not perfect yet, but it demonstrates my point very well.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/red/clusters/:

This is the next revolution in search engines. It’s a combination of Natural Language and research search types. By analyzing the words’ meanings and allowing the user to refine their particular definition, Conceptual Searching can be made possible.

*UPDATE:
I haven’t read into this much yet, but it looks like Microsoft is already entering into discussions based upon what I’ve said. I like to think they’re reading my blog and getting their best innovations here!

Microsoft Research

Related posts:

1. How I Work
2. Equifax Customer Service is Just Lip Service
3. Zune 2.x

A reader in Taiwan, Danny Bee, left a comment on an article I wrote (“Emily Yoffe Learns The Secret“). I had first assumed that the comment was spam, though the suspect spam did not follow my preconceived notions of spam. It had no sales pitch, no links, and no inappropriate words. However, it didn’t exactly fit the article on which it was submitted:

Yoffe captures my concerns about the modern inception of philosophical teachings. Not by coming out and saying it, but by a simple inference from her experiences. I’ll remind my readers that I’m not bashing these teachings, only the glossy cover and Cliff’s Notes by which so many establish their adoption.

…and Mr. Bee’s response:

Polar cities in the far distant future to house remnants of humankind
who survive the apocalypse of devastating global warming? The casual
reader might think I am an alarmist or a mere scare-monger, but I am
neither. I am a visionary.

So like a good blogger, I engaged Danny in some email communications (to verify he was a real person) and tossed out the idea that I write something up on my opinion of his comment. I did check into Polar Cities a bit. Wikipedia has a very brief explanation of them.

Polar cities are proposed sustainable polar retreats designed to house human beings in the future, in the event that global warming causes the central and middle regions of the Earth to become uninhabitable for a long period of time. Although they have not been built yet, some futurists have been giving considerable thought to the concepts involved.

High-population-density cities, to be built near the Arctic Rim with sustainable energy and transportation infrastructure, will require substantial nearby agriculture. Boreal soils are largely poor in key nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus, but nitrogen-fixing plants (such as thevarious alders) with the proper symbiotic microbes and mycorrhizal fungi can likely remedy such poverty without the need for petroleum-derived fertilizers. Regional probiotic soil improvement should perhaps rank high on any polar cities priority list. James Lovelock’s notion of a widely distributed almanac of science knowledge and post-industrial survival skills also appears to have value.

As Danny says it, he’s not an alarmist nor a scare-monger, just a visionary. He didn’t rule out cuckoo, though to be fair, zealous may be more apt.

The idea of Polar Cities is in response to doomsday concepts from global warming. Should the ecosystem collapse as a result of a massive build-up of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, then this idea has only rhetorical value. As for the development and planning of Polar Cities for this foreseen eventuality, I think it either a bad plan or at least very pessimistic.

The estimated surface area of our polar land masses seems pretty high – almost 30 million km². Our population is over 6.7 billion at the moment. If you do the math on just those numbers, you get population density of around 224 persons/km². But I think that argument is far too simple. If we assume that 3/4 of the earth’s population dies due to the volatility of the environment, you’re left with 1.675 billion people looking for ocean-front property. I was also being nice by saying that we had nearly 30 million square kilometers of land mass between our two polar regions. If you look at what happens after the ice sheets melt, land rises from a release in pressure, and volcanoes blow, you’re looking at a lot less inhabitable land after all. I’ll cut it in half to 15 million km² because I’m skeptical about our building too close to volcanoes, fault lines, and other natural disasters. I also have to account for the plethora of lake and rivers that would undoubtedly remain on Antarctica – not to mention its steep mountain sides and craggy peaks. Now you’re looking at a population density of around 112 persons per square kilometer. That’s actually not that bad. There are far worse places in the world as far as population density goes.

Now that we have a workable number of people, we can start analyzing what this new homestead would be like.

I imagine a world metropolis at each pole (technically, the Arctic surrounds the pole). All nations and all diversity of people have centralized in two locations of the planet. The central lands of Earth have become desolate and hostile. You can venture out onto them, but survivability is contingent upon resources and exposure. The populations live in high-rise hotels methodically placed in a grid over the available land masses. The fringe area of decent land would be more barren of people than the central, cooler parts. Unfortunately, most people would need to be in Antarctica because of its concentration of land at the pole. Each hotel would be surrounded by land necessary to grow food and raise livestock. Everyone in the square kilometer living unit would be required to do their share of work to earn their food and living quarters. I’m not entirely sure how waste would be dealt with – perhaps pumping it into magma faults would suffice, but it may also be problematic in maintaining such a system. A refinery would probably take up too much valuable land area.

There would certainly be a militant government in place at both polar regions. I doubt anything more than a form of Feudalism would be adopted. With so many different people from different backgrounds, humans would probably resort to brute strength. With anarchy-like crime abound and tough living conditions, citizens would surely profess an allegiance to a “king” for support.

A glimpse into what living in Polar Cities might be like seems more like a good idea for a Science Fiction novel than any reality we should plan for. I can almost see an adaptation of “Firefly” applying to Earth’s new living conditions. While interesting to contemplate, I think time is better spent learning what exactly is happening to the environment, and reducing our adverse impact to it. Then again, if the environmental changes are a natural evolution in planetary cycle, then we humans are going to go through some hard times. I don’t think Darwin’s theory of natural selection comes without its pain. A species must suffer untold losses to survive with its fittest.

Related posts:

1. Emily Yoffe Learns ‘The Secret’
2. The Home School Phenomenon
3. Federal Bureau of Inefficiency

As self-absorbed as I already am, I loved the permission the book gave to sink deeper into a Jacuzzi of megalomania. As The Secret points out: “You are the master of the Universe. You are the heir to the kingdom. You are the perfection of Life.” Just as I’d always suspected!

She exemplifies my biggest problems with the latest sweeping fad in intentional living. Materialism is one of the more obvious ones. I realize that these books include other ideas for using intention, but I suspect that the authors and marketers all know that pushing grandiose ideas of wealth attainment are sure-fire methods to lock-in people’s attention.

The appeal is obvious. Forget education, effort, performance. Everything you want—money, power, comfortable shoes—is yours simply by wanting it enough.

Amy and I talked about it at length. She’s a fervent supporter of the ideas of intention and recognizes this type of energy work, along with many others, as being ancient wisdom that the world has ‘forgotten.’ I agree with caveats. Which is another way of avoiding an actual argument over the details, when at the core we’re saying mostly the same thing. Essentially, we’re both on board with the idea of positive versus negative thinking and the direct effect on your perception and dealings with the world around you.

What I don’t like is the new bubble gum wrapper that’s been applied to the philosophy – I liken it to Yoffe’s discussion on watered-down Eastern philosophy. But it’s hard to make a best seller if you don’t present its teachings in a way that the mass public can understand. Despair.com reminds us that “none of us is as dumb as all of us.” So instead of writing a qualitative essay on setting goals and remaining optimistic – we could even push the energy aspect and explain the sociological effects of our attitude – the author of The Secret and other author’s modern adaptations of age-old concepts have chosen to ‘market’ these concepts to a mass, oft fickle, audience. I can easily see the argument against writing a technical essay on individual energy projection. If you don’t dumb it down some, you’re not getting your message out to people that wouldn’t have otherwise come to these ideas themselves. Unfortunately, I think the only way to teach complex philosophy is to live it. It requires success, failure, and time.

Byrne writes: “A shortcut to manifesting your desires is to see what you want as absolute fact.” … Secret-speak requires this odd future-present construction, which my husband came to call, “sounding like a moron.”

Yoffe captures my concerns about the modern inception of philosophical teachings. Not by coming out and saying it, but by a simple inference from her experiences. I’ll remind my readers that I’m not bashing these teachings, only the glossy cover and Cliff’s Notes by which so many establish their adoption.

I’ve Got The Secret: What happened when I followed the best-selling book’s advice for two months. — Emily Yoffe

Related posts:

1. Polar Cities
2. Falun Gong Cultivation
3. Raquy Danziger Workshop