Not much in the way of postings lately.
Last weekend I hauled a couple of yards of weeds and sod away from my house and replaced it with thee yards of fresh yellow limestone which matches the front of the house. I need to do the same on the south side of the house as well. That will be a bigger project as there is a weedy terrace and I would like to completely redo the area where the air conditioner and the compost resides. Eventually, I would like to also add a stair way, preferably stone, so that there is even less grass. I really should take a picture. I sure regret not taking a before picture, as it was such an eye sore. This project will probably improve my neighbors view more than mine.
Last week was chock full of complex meetings, which I am still recovering from.
I did almost nothing this weekend. The kids and I hung out at the park quite a bit.
The highlight of last week was taking a few co-workers from India out to St. Paul Saints ball game. They were familiar with Cricket, but baseball was, well for lack of a better word, foreign to them. I enjoy watching the Saints. I like outdoor baseball in general and the constant circus like atmosphere of the Saints makes for a good time. I ran into Dave P. at the game and stopped by to talk for a minute. As his blog reported, he did cut his hair. I am not sure he remembered me from LM. I also managed to get an overdue haircut at the game.
June 2004 Archives
Really interesting approach to categorizing web posts, the Dewey Decimal system. The really interesting thing about this approach is that it is consistent, I think, with the semantic web theory in some ways. It would really allow for a certain kind of ease of search without the complexity of OWL or Dublin Core.
Here are some links about people who study stuff dropped into the ocean.
I was listening to the radio the other day and heard a piece about East Wind Community. It was interesting to me as these people were living a non-traditional lifestyle, and because I happen to buy their peanut butter. I buy their peanut butter, as it comes in a five pound tub, it's natural without additives, and it's fairly cheap. Anyway, the good people who make this live in what might have been called a commune in hippie times. (They are accepting applications now if you are interested.) Now it's called an "egalitarian, democratic co-operative."
Anyway following the links from this page, I discovered there are actually a ton of "intentional communities." You can get the with or without gurus but apparently none in South Dakota.The most fascinating concept I ran across was cohousing. It's sort of like living in a town house complex, but with more elaborate common areas where people eat. It seems like people also pitch in on community maintenance. This is fascinating to me. I think I coould live in one of these. Of course, I never want to move again so it's unlikely to happen in the short term. If I am ever forced to move I'll definitely look into this kind of arrangement. The only real concern I would have is having a jerk neighbor I have to eat with a couple of times a week.
While I was aware of communes I had never heard of cohousing. It's a fascinating idea.
I am checking out WordPress. If I switch this would be my third blog software. Jury is still out at this time.
Import from MT went very smooth. I don't really like php, but it's good ol' GNU software. Doesn't seem to be the same level of community around this tool yet.
You're welcome to take a look, but it's likely to change and comments might not get retained.
Althought much has been happening in Iraq, I haven't been writing about it.
I thought I would spend a few minutes reflecting on the whole thing.
Seems like our pre-war intelligence on WMD was cooked up. Everyone suddenly admits that the Iraqi expatriots were willing to 'sex up' the data in order to manipulate the U.S. into invading. While I have no love for the former regime, no WMD, means low urgency in Iraq. If Iraqi dissidents and exiles cooked this whole thing up, can we send them a bill or at least charge them with fraud?
Perhaps our real goal was to destabilize Iraq.
An Iraqi civil could certainly mean an Iraq unable to threaten it's neighbors. This might be useful, but it seems likely to create a haven for anti-western forces and could create a hard line Iran theocracy.
A stable Iraq, if one appears, could mean a spread of free market and democratic liberalization in the Middle East, but this just seems so unlikely.
I always supposed that the rush to Iraq was part of a larger strategy or a result of intelligence information which wasn't being shared. Since neither of those seem to be true, I don't know what rational explanations I have left. It's so inconvenient that Iraq is situated on so much of our oil.
The world is better off without Saddam. But are we simply on a mission to rid the world of leaders who are oppressive murderers? Who's next and when do we stop?
Did the Bush administration lie about WMD, or were they misled? If they lied, why did they? I want proof one way or the other.
Speaking of the Middle East ...
What about the Saudi's? Something seems to blow up there weekly. Each time the perpetrators narrowly escape, leading me to believe the police are either incompetent keystone cops or somehow collaborating. If this keeps building it will become a civil war. (BTW, my favorite blog on Saudi Arabia is http://muttawa.blogspot.com/ )
Rarely am I in awe of a software feature. However, I finally dipped my toes into Excel 2003's Pivot tables. These are phenomenal. Combining them the pure web queries make gathering and analyzing data far too simple. Kudos to the good folks at MS for this set of cool features. Now if the pivot table would remember formatting, then I could be truly happy.
I don't watch it nearly often enough, but I find the Daily Show with Jon Stewart a stitch. I like the fact that he usually gives both sides of an issue the a sharp prod with his wit. I ran into a transcript of a commencement speech he gave at William and Mary. Pretty Funny stuff.
I especially like the bit declaring war on a non-noun (although I believe it actually is a noun, BTW) and then suggesting declaring war on ennui. Part of me wonders if this is fake like the Vonnegut speech, "Wear Sunscreen."
