Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Monday, December 19, 2011
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Expose the "universe within every tweet." Tweets aren't just 140 characters -- there's also context like retweets and replies, and embedded content like videos, images, and songs. Today, accessing this material still feels like opening a "side drawer," said Costolo.
Read more: http://ping.fm/cIg31
Read more: http://ping.fm/cIg31
Friday, December 09, 2011
Thursday, December 08, 2011
Tuesday, December 06, 2011
Sunday, December 04, 2011
From Phillytyper.com
From The Haiku Master Nick Virgilio
He types this in a picture on that site:
My spring love affair
The old upright Remington
Wears a new ribbon
Reference: Simplyhaiku.com
Friday, December 02, 2011
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Monday, November 28, 2011
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
What holiday traditions do you and your family celebrate?
We put shoes on our heads and try to fetch silverware with wet towels. My shoe is still on my head from last year. I win!
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Why doesn't formspring let me choose about what I wish to receive questions?
Why doesn't formspring let me choose about what I wish to receive questions?
If you could have invented one thing, what would it have been?
What do you mean by "could have," infidel?
When you want to be alone, where do you go?
My head: While it isn't exactly a hospitable environment, it is a form of escape.
What's the most unselfish thing you've ever done?
Left someone alone (at least she was at the moment).
What's the last funny video you watched online?
"Catvertizing," a YouTube video submitted by Noelle Chun on Guy Kawasaki's "Holy Kaw."
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Monday, November 14, 2011
Don't Know Why I Do It
You know that place
Just down the street?
The cozy little diner
Where we used to meet?
I still visit there,
All of the time:
The kids all point,
Like they think it's mine.
I was there again today,
Went in snowblind;
I tracked up the floor,
Waitress said, "I don't mind."
I pretty sure she thinks
I've got a crush on her,
And she's pretty enough
That I feel like a cur.
I never noticed that
The walls in there are grey,
I always thought they were blue
When I knew you were on your way.
I sit and I ask myself
For what I might be waiting:
Then I wonder otherwise
What I might be anticipating.
The people seemed more interesting
When I knew you might be coming,
But I've started that old habit
Where my fingers start drumming.
I remember it as pleasant,
It was cheerful and bright,
Folks lost their sunny dispositions,
All their spirits in a blight.
All the girls used to be pretty,
When they crossed my view,
Now they just try too hard,
To look and act like you.
I got too much sugar in my coffee,
And played with it lukewarm,
I think it made me kinda sick
Or the place has lost its charm.
All the memories that fill the place
Will never make you care,
So I really have to ask myself
Why I keep on going there.
Just down the street?
The cozy little diner
Where we used to meet?
I still visit there,
All of the time:
The kids all point,
Like they think it's mine.
I was there again today,
Went in snowblind;
I tracked up the floor,
Waitress said, "I don't mind."
I pretty sure she thinks
I've got a crush on her,
And she's pretty enough
That I feel like a cur.
I never noticed that
The walls in there are grey,
I always thought they were blue
When I knew you were on your way.
I sit and I ask myself
For what I might be waiting:
Then I wonder otherwise
What I might be anticipating.
The people seemed more interesting
When I knew you might be coming,
But I've started that old habit
Where my fingers start drumming.
I remember it as pleasant,
It was cheerful and bright,
Folks lost their sunny dispositions,
All their spirits in a blight.
All the girls used to be pretty,
When they crossed my view,
Now they just try too hard,
To look and act like you.
I got too much sugar in my coffee,
And played with it lukewarm,
I think it made me kinda sick
Or the place has lost its charm.
All the memories that fill the place
Will never make you care,
So I really have to ask myself
Why I keep on going there.
Friday, November 11, 2011
Maybe I can get past this twitter following limit if I can get some support for http://ping.fm/q0gYo
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Escaped Attention Earlier
http://ping.fm/K1f3N
Ping is being a spazz about including the music, but I imagine people blew off the original post as history alone.
The term "bourgeoisie" had many meanings in eighteenth–century France, from the most literal sense of "citizens of a city" to a more sociological meaning of talented and cultivated members of the Third Estate. Some eighteenth–century writers also used the term to refer to merchants. However, it did not yet connote upper–middle–class status or adherence to certain dominant social norms, as the term would suggest today. In this passage, from the newspaper Révolutions de Paris, the journalist distinguishes between the "bonne bourgeoisie," who he says are "aristocratic" and "monarchist by instinct" and who fear that any political change will cost money, and the "petite bourgeoisie," who are allied with "the people" and have shown themselves to be patriotic supporters of the Revolution.
http://ping.fm/LakI5
I also recall the reaction of the nobility in "The Red and The Black" by Stendahl.
Ping is being a spazz about including the music, but I imagine people blew off the original post as history alone.
The term "bourgeoisie" had many meanings in eighteenth–century France, from the most literal sense of "citizens of a city" to a more sociological meaning of talented and cultivated members of the Third Estate. Some eighteenth–century writers also used the term to refer to merchants. However, it did not yet connote upper–middle–class status or adherence to certain dominant social norms, as the term would suggest today. In this passage, from the newspaper Révolutions de Paris, the journalist distinguishes between the "bonne bourgeoisie," who he says are "aristocratic" and "monarchist by instinct" and who fear that any political change will cost money, and the "petite bourgeoisie," who are allied with "the people" and have shown themselves to be patriotic supporters of the Revolution.
http://ping.fm/LakI5
I also recall the reaction of the nobility in "The Red and The Black" by Stendahl.
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
Monday, November 07, 2011
Cool Tool, Nice Tutorial: Using Valgrind to Find Memory Leaks - Cprogramming.com http://ping.fm/BWF2Y
Sunday, November 06, 2011
Saturday, November 05, 2011
Friday, November 04, 2011
Wednesday, November 02, 2011
Do you have a special diet like vegetarian, halal, kosher, gluten-free, etc? How long have you kept it for?
Not now. I kept one for 9 months, but it escaped.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Friday, October 21, 2011
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
My Other Handsome Blog: The Death of the Salesman http://ecordell.blogspot.com/2011/10/death-of-salesman.html
The Death of the Salesman
I'm so tired. I hardly feel able to post this rant, and as stories go, it's nothing new. It's the typical bad shopping experience of today's age, deriving its title from both an Arthur Miller play and the notion that customer service in the U.S. has fallen out of style.
My experience, today's latest in a series was at Safeway (a grocery store). One annoyance is that their automated checkout system has no routine for deducting the tare weight of an already-present shopping bag from the gross weight of the items scanned later, hence it complains that a bag is an "unexpected item in the bagging area." A bag in the bagging area? How unexpected!
I've been in quite a bit of pain lately from what seems to be a shoulder that did not seat in the joint properly after being dislocated. As it heals, I've tried to institute procedures that will minimize discomfort, but Safeway always seems to be able to undo my efforts with some new policy that would unnerve even a healthy, young athlete.
Today I struggled with the automated checkout and did receive some assistance from a cashier, though it changed no outcome. Nonetheless, it was a charming good-will gesture. Of course, I still have to carry my groceries home (yes, it's still done in the city), so the battle was not over for me.
Nor is it over for me now. I just posted this story plus whatever lines I wrote before and I received a "Posting Error" message. Of course, everything I typed beyond this point was lost, so I have to write it again.
Not having my former youth and vitality and also recently injured, I had decided to bring two canvas bags with the semi-rigid plastic bottoms, one for heavy items and another just for 4 loaves
of bread that I would carry with my bad arm. It was in the lighter bag that I put my receipt for easy retrieval. To my surprise, as I exited, a young lady working in the store requested this very receipt (something which has yet to happen with me in that store).
I extended my arm so that she might see the contents of the lighter bag (4 loaves of bread and 1 receipt, clearly visible) and before even looking she said, "I don't see it."
I told her, "It's in the bag." She looked at me as though I were mad for expecting her to look, but I was already at a walk next to the exit and there were no tables where I could relieve myself of my burden in order to take out the receipt for her. All she held was a clipboard, and she seemed to be young and in excellent shape.
In response to her demeaning glare I asked, "You do want to see it, don't you?" She extended a single fingernail to the edge of the bag as though she might contract a horrible contagion from reaching into it and without positioning herself to look into the bag, she repeated, "I don't see it."
I quickly understood that this wasn't about producing a receipt: It was a matter of a member from the ranks of today's amateur police abusing whatever minuscule power she was given over someone weaker than herself.
Sparing myself and them the pain of raising hell right there and then, I opted to treat the harassment as though it were no more than a fly buzzing about my head and I quite slowly and deliberately walked out of the door and down the street toward the building where I live. I didn't expect anyone to pursue me, but if someone had, I'd have simply offered my receipt again, hopefully to a more cooperative person.
Since I've had little success in lodging a complaint locally in the past, I came to my laptop to report the incident to the website. Naturally, my online account information had been lost. I called the website's customer support facility where an operator noted that my current loyalty card had been in effect since 1999, but there was no sign that I'd ever registered an online account (and I doubt that there is any source that documents my full 35 years of patronage and the vast sums of capital I bestowed upon Safeway in that interim).
He reported the mysterious disappearance of my account to the support staff in their IT department, but somehow I don't think all of this will resolve cleanly.
My experience, today's latest in a series was at Safeway (a grocery store). One annoyance is that their automated checkout system has no routine for deducting the tare weight of an already-present shopping bag from the gross weight of the items scanned later, hence it complains that a bag is an "unexpected item in the bagging area." A bag in the bagging area? How unexpected!
I've been in quite a bit of pain lately from what seems to be a shoulder that did not seat in the joint properly after being dislocated. As it heals, I've tried to institute procedures that will minimize discomfort, but Safeway always seems to be able to undo my efforts with some new policy that would unnerve even a healthy, young athlete.
Today I struggled with the automated checkout and did receive some assistance from a cashier, though it changed no outcome. Nonetheless, it was a charming good-will gesture. Of course, I still have to carry my groceries home (yes, it's still done in the city), so the battle was not over for me.
Nor is it over for me now. I just posted this story plus whatever lines I wrote before and I received a "Posting Error" message. Of course, everything I typed beyond this point was lost, so I have to write it again.
Not having my former youth and vitality and also recently injured, I had decided to bring two canvas bags with the semi-rigid plastic bottoms, one for heavy items and another just for 4 loaves
of bread that I would carry with my bad arm. It was in the lighter bag that I put my receipt for easy retrieval. To my surprise, as I exited, a young lady working in the store requested this very receipt (something which has yet to happen with me in that store).
I extended my arm so that she might see the contents of the lighter bag (4 loaves of bread and 1 receipt, clearly visible) and before even looking she said, "I don't see it."
I told her, "It's in the bag." She looked at me as though I were mad for expecting her to look, but I was already at a walk next to the exit and there were no tables where I could relieve myself of my burden in order to take out the receipt for her. All she held was a clipboard, and she seemed to be young and in excellent shape.
In response to her demeaning glare I asked, "You do want to see it, don't you?" She extended a single fingernail to the edge of the bag as though she might contract a horrible contagion from reaching into it and without positioning herself to look into the bag, she repeated, "I don't see it."
I quickly understood that this wasn't about producing a receipt: It was a matter of a member from the ranks of today's amateur police abusing whatever minuscule power she was given over someone weaker than herself.
Sparing myself and them the pain of raising hell right there and then, I opted to treat the harassment as though it were no more than a fly buzzing about my head and I quite slowly and deliberately walked out of the door and down the street toward the building where I live. I didn't expect anyone to pursue me, but if someone had, I'd have simply offered my receipt again, hopefully to a more cooperative person.
Since I've had little success in lodging a complaint locally in the past, I came to my laptop to report the incident to the website. Naturally, my online account information had been lost. I called the website's customer support facility where an operator noted that my current loyalty card had been in effect since 1999, but there was no sign that I'd ever registered an online account (and I doubt that there is any source that documents my full 35 years of patronage and the vast sums of capital I bestowed upon Safeway in that interim).
He reported the mysterious disappearance of my account to the support staff in their IT department, but somehow I don't think all of this will resolve cleanly.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Richard Stallman's comments on Steve Jobs
I've found articles on this subject twice and tried to post them to facebook. Facebook refused to post them with the "Something went wrong here and we're working on it" message, which has been its clever refrain for a couple weeks now every time I try to post.
I then posted a "note" with the same result and it didn't even have the decency to preserve my copy. Fortunately I saved my original comment that I had expected to post with the article(s) and here it is:
I understand the backward-looking grief over the loss of our techie-dominated black-or-green-screened havens, but making computing accessible to a larger community did not take that away from us. As much as I'd like to blame Bill Gates (who threw over XENIX for CP/M because of big blue dollars), it was unawareness of learning curves, market share-building and even belief in how much people would spend on the 'toys' of the early era of personal computing. I recall engineers laughing at me when I said we'd all have computers on our desks: "If you expect to have any core, your desk better be as big as this building!" They are the true dinosaurs, now, and so is anyone who opines that reaching a larger community has enslaved us: It didn't stop me from writing console code. If you want to say that using a computer as a typewriter is threading a needle with a sledgehammer, fine: But don't disrespect the guy who took the local traffic out of the fast lane.
I then posted a "note" with the same result and it didn't even have the decency to preserve my copy. Fortunately I saved my original comment that I had expected to post with the article(s) and here it is:
I understand the backward-looking grief over the loss of our techie-dominated black-or-green-screened havens, but making computing accessible to a larger community did not take that away from us. As much as I'd like to blame Bill Gates (who threw over XENIX for CP/M because of big blue dollars), it was unawareness of learning curves, market share-building and even belief in how much people would spend on the 'toys' of the early era of personal computing. I recall engineers laughing at me when I said we'd all have computers on our desks: "If you expect to have any core, your desk better be as big as this building!" They are the true dinosaurs, now, and so is anyone who opines that reaching a larger community has enslaved us: It didn't stop me from writing console code. If you want to say that using a computer as a typewriter is threading a needle with a sledgehammer, fine: But don't disrespect the guy who took the local traffic out of the fast lane.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Did you know you can now send a link with a question & that we launched 2 new ways to get more questions?
No, but it frightens me no less.
How did you celebrate your last birthday?
Do I look that bad? I wasn't aware that I had reached it yet.
Sunday, October 09, 2011
Saturday, October 08, 2011
Friday, October 07, 2011
What do you think of our new app for iPhone & iPod Touch? http://formspring.me/ios/app
Isn't there an app for that?
What's the weather like where you live?
It includes temperature, atmospheric pressure, precipitation and cosmic radiation, but that isn't important right now.
Thursday, October 06, 2011
Wednesday, October 05, 2011
Sunday, October 02, 2011
Thursday, September 29, 2011
If Mike could teach you how to play your three favorite Incubus songs, what would you choose?
Which will he cure first, the arthritis, or the carpal tunnel?
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Friday, September 09, 2011
What song makes you get up and dance?
I'd rather answer questions that my friends actually ask, Please!
What band do you want to see in a live concert?
I bought tickets a couple months ago and I didn't use them.
Friday, September 02, 2011
Thursday, September 01, 2011
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Monday, August 29, 2011
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Friday, August 26, 2011
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Who has the best hair in the band?
I'm pretty sure this question violates the hair equality act of 1967.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Do you believe in karma?
Karma is a very subtle Eastern Religious concept: Suffice it to say that before I converted to Christianity, I was a Buddhist, and if I am a Christian, it is because I am still a Buddhist. Apart from that, I decline to respond for fear that any answer I might give would be diluted by Western approximations of sophisticated interpretations.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Thursday, August 18, 2011
i could have sworn flying squirrels WERE space squirrels ? im going back to bed. this life is disappointing.
The differences are semantic. You have a life now? Things are looking up! ;)
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
formspring.me
You guys are no good at following instructions. Ask me about shifts and flip-flops. http://formspring.me/erniecordell
Who is the most important person in your life?
Who can remember that long ago? What are you doing for eternity?
i dont think i survived my birth. how did YOU get to be the lucky one ?
Birth? You had a birth? I had to materialize on the Pinetree Line. Did you get the coupons?
Monday, August 15, 2011
Sunday, August 14, 2011
seMissourian.com: International News: Germans mark wall's 50th anniversary (08/14/11) http://ping.fm/sFwt1
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Media Outlets Examine Unlikely Coincidence That All DC Murders Occur In Same City
Puzzlement and frustration plague this local News Center which wishes to remain anonymous as employees peruse data, looking for a logical connection.
"We simply do not understand," says Kyrgyz intern Hazmat Omoshev, "Sometimes the murders we report in Atlanta really occur in Takoma -- why should the Medlantech region be any different? Is it all the computers?"
Nobody in the press pretends to understand, though many claim they do. But the important and privileged members of the Fourth Estate continue to work hard so that you may reap the rewards of being informed by their illustrious efforts.
Funding for this article is derived strictly from public sources. No embezzlement occurred in order to plagiarize this information.
"We simply do not understand," says Kyrgyz intern Hazmat Omoshev, "Sometimes the murders we report in Atlanta really occur in Takoma -- why should the Medlantech region be any different? Is it all the computers?"
Nobody in the press pretends to understand, though many claim they do. But the important and privileged members of the Fourth Estate continue to work hard so that you may reap the rewards of being informed by their illustrious efforts.
Funding for this article is derived strictly from public sources. No embezzlement occurred in order to plagiarize this information.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Tuesday, August 09, 2011
Ernie Cordell wanted to share this with you:
The battle may be longer and harder than expected: I've monitored issues in membership and implementations of 'circles' in the Google forum and have also been frustrated by my omission as a test subject.
What MySpace's Tom Anderson Thinks of Google
http://shar.es/HIJwO
Google , the search giant's social network, has just received a strong endorsement from MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson.
The battle may be longer and harder than expected: I've monitored issues in membership and implementations of 'circles' in the Google forum and have also been frustrated by my omission as a test subject.
What MySpace's Tom Anderson Thinks of Google
http://shar.es/HIJwO
Google , the search giant's social network, has just received a strong endorsement from MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson.
Monday, August 08, 2011
Sunday, August 07, 2011
Friday, August 05, 2011
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
What's your favorite beach to surf on?
I am you; you are ME. You are the waves; I am the ocean. Know this and be free, be divine.
Monday, August 01, 2011
Check out my new profile photo and respond!
Next time get a professional to match your head colours.
Which really came first, the chicken or the egg?
Which came first, the human or the embryo? Which came first, the fish or the mammal? Which came first, the benzene or the cellular peptide? Which came first, the Buddha or the Ko-an?
Friday, July 29, 2011
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
How many profile photos do you have on your Formspring? Have you taken a profile photo with your computer's webcam yet?
No, I couldn't take a picture with my camera because I was using it at the time.
What’s your favorite Incubus concert memory?
The one in Phnom Penh where we were all mowed down by machine guns.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Monday mornings so depressing you won't crack a smile until 11.16am - Telegraph http://ping.fm/BVANq
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Friday, July 22, 2011
Would you rather play a team sport, or solo sport?
Can't I just get questions from real people who actually make sense?
What's your favorite way to stay cool when it's hot outside?
I already answered this at length: Where were you?
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
United States Code: Title 18,3182. Fugitives from State or Territory to State, District, or Territory | LII / Legal Information Institute http://ping.fm/RWA8D
Monday, July 18, 2011
It's Official: Charlie Sheen To Lionsgate Television's 'Anger Management' Sitcom - The Hollywood Reporter http://ping.fm/813HD
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Friday, July 15, 2011
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Friday, July 08, 2011
What's the best way to cool off on a summer day?
Seek the beverages associated with British Colonial Rule: Gin has juniper, which seems to have a cooling influence; maybe quinine is a sort of febrifuge, so you might want to splash a little tonic in that. It is hard to say what herbs may actually lower body temperature: Loss of blood might do it; any bodily fluid that can be released may conduct heat away from the body. Mints have a reputation, and may indeed have a role in the release of sweat. Some anti-inflammatories may have such a mechanism, releasing liquid from swollen tissues. I hate to tell people to consume herbal concoctions that are not generally available because individual chemistries, indications and advisories may vary over time and target population.
If you could ask a Formspring question to anyone in the world, who and what would you ask?
Why can't I ask a Formspring question to anyone in the world? I'm askin' you, Dude, cough it up!
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
Monday, July 04, 2011
Saturday, July 02, 2011
Friday, July 01, 2011
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
What is Serial Storage Architecture (SSA)? - Definition from Whatis.com
I just wish they'd used an acronym that didn't correspond to the Social Security Administration, the Seismological Society of America, among others . . .
From: http://ping.fm/uwzFe
From: http://ping.fm/uwzFe
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Today we announced that 25 million people have signed up for Formspring - pretty cool! Of the 25 million, what's your favorite Formspring account and why?
Assuming you have five senses, which one would you like to keep?
How to implement a resizable property sheet class that contains a menu bar in Visual C++ 6.0 http://ping.fm/8DKkD
Monday, June 27, 2011
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Honour Is Not Seemly For A Fool
King, Prince, Braggart, Thief, Liar, Agitator, Gossip, Sycophant, Egotist, Glutton, Fool, Drunkard, Sluggard, Meddler, Madman, Tattler, Brawler, Misanthrope, Deceiver, Flatterer, Blowhard, Deserter, Perverter, Quibbler, Usurer, Charlatan, Hypocrite, Huckster, Dissembler, Malingerer, Fugitive, Despot, Murderer, Usurper, Tyrant, Miser, Peacock and Coddler are written in the sand at our feet: We deny, bluster, bargain for rank, feel isolated, and either accept or perish.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Is Blogger Down? Post title here...
Vickie Howell
Looks like Blogger's down again. :(
2 minutes ago via Twitter · Like · · @VickieHowell on Twitter
Ernie Cordell And my buddy looks like it's up. Hmmm . . .
a few seconds ago · Like
Looks like Blogger's down again. :(
2 minutes ago via Twitter · Like · · @VickieHowell on Twitter
Ernie Cordell And my buddy looks like it's up. Hmmm . . .
a few seconds ago · Like
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Song of Solomon 5:4 My lover thrust his hand through the latch-opening; my heart began to pound for him. http://ping.fm/DyfIt
Friday, June 17, 2011
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011
Friday, June 10, 2011
World Wide Words: Bated breath
Let's try this again with the commentary that I not only originally intended, but actually wrote:
q1: The crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe . . .
q2: For those who know the older spelling or who stop to consider the matter, baited breath evokes an incongruous image; Geoffrey Taylor humorously (and consciously) captured it in verse in his poem Cruel Clever Cat:
Sally, having swallowed cheese,
Directs down holes the scented breeze,
Enticing thus with baited breath
Nice mice to an untimely death.
From: http://ping.fm/JVVIl
q1: The crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe . . .
q2: For those who know the older spelling or who stop to consider the matter, baited breath evokes an incongruous image; Geoffrey Taylor humorously (and consciously) captured it in verse in his poem Cruel Clever Cat:
Sally, having swallowed cheese,
Directs down holes the scented breeze,
Enticing thus with baited breath
Nice mice to an untimely death.
From: http://ping.fm/JVVIl
Bank Not Responsible for Letting Hackers Steal $300K From Customer | Threat Level | Wired.com http://ping.fm/0ZYIK
Thursday, June 09, 2011
Wednesday, June 08, 2011
Shroud of Turin: The Work of a Renaissance Artist?
Italian art historian Luciano Buso has a new and unique theory about the Shroud of Turin, the controversial 14-foot-long cloth in which some people believe Jesus Christ was buried. Rather than dismissing the battered linen relic—which may rank among the world’s most studied artifacts—as a fraud, he has suggested in recent interviews and a book that an authentic version did indeed exist at some point in history. By the early 1300s, however, it had disintegrated so much that the Catholic Church asked the famous Renaissance painter Giotto di Bondone to create a precise replica, according to Buso’s hypothesis. The original, meanwhile, either crumbled into nothingness or was lost or burned.
A full view of the Shroud of Turin.
For centuries, scientists and historians have pored over the mysterious Shroud of Turin, a bloodstained piece of linen that bears the faint outline of a crucified man, hoping to decode what the image represents and how it was created. The first documented reference to the relic dates back to the 14th century, and historical records suggest it changed hands many times until 1578, when it wound up in its current home at the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, Italy. While the Catholic Church has never taken an official position on the cloth’s authenticity, the Vatican has made statements attesting to its value and arranged for a number of public viewings, most recently in the spring of 2010.
The advent of photography in the late 19th century forever altered the course of the shroud’s history. In 1898, a lawyer named Secondo Pia took the first known photograph of the cloth, and his negative revealed new details, including strikingly clear facial features. Scientific interest in the relic immediately picked up. In 1902, the French anatomist Yves Delage, an agnostic, inspected the photographs and pronounced that the figure on the shroud was indeed Jesus Christ. The first direct examinations of the cloth were conducted in the 1970s, most famously by the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP), a team of scientists led by physicist John P. Jackson of the University of Colorado. The group found that the markings on the cloth were consistent with a crucified body and that the stains were real human blood; they also suggested that the image’s shading patterns contained three-dimensional information. However, they could not explain how the imprint ended up on the fabric in the first place.
In 1988, scientists removed a swatch of the shroud for radiocarbon testing. Three independent laboratories concluded that the material originated between 1260 and 1390, leading some to deem it inauthentic. Since then, however, further studies have called those findings into question, suggesting that the researchers inadvertently tested material grafted onto the original shroud during repairs made in the Middle Ages. Other analyses, many of which proved controversial and yielded conflicting results, have focused on the geographic origin of pollen traces and dirt particles detected on the fabric.
Giotto's "Kiss of Judas" fresco at the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy.
Buso is not the first expert to theorize that the shroud could have been the work of an artist. In May 2010, for instance, the American scientist Gregory S. Paul published a study claiming that the outline’s undersized head and unequal arm lengths were inconsistent with healthy modern humans’ proportions. He hypothesized that an amateurish Gothic artist with poor anatomical knowledge had painted the cloth and passed it off as a genuine relic. In 2009, the American artist Lillian Schwartz made waves when she maintained that Leonardo da Vinci had intentionally faked the Shroud of Turin to fool his contemporaries, using early photographic techniques and a sculpture of his own face to produce the shadowy image.
Buso believes that Giotto, a master painter best known for decorating the elaborate Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy, never intended to dupe believers and even used Jesus’ actual burial shroud as his model. He claims to have detected the artist’s signature and several faint appearances of the number 15—a reference, in his view, to the year in which Giotto created the replica—hidden in the subject’s face and hands. “[Giotto] wasn’t trying to fake anything, which is clear from the fact that he signed it…to authenticate it as his own work from 1315,” Buso told the Daily Mail.
Previous investigations have failed to uncover Giotto’s various stamps on the cloth because they were made with cryptic brushstroke patterns nearly invisible to the naked eye, Buso said. He also pointed out that his theory places the origin of the artifact squarely within the window of time pinpointed by the 1988 radiocarbon analysis. Buso’s hypothesis has been met with criticism, including by Bruno Barberis, director of the Holy Shroud Museum in Turin. A firm believer in the artifact’s authenticity, Barberis told the Daily Telegraph that physical and chemical tests have already proven that the shroud is not a painting.
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Posted in Art History, Christianity, Jesus Christ, Religion
From: http://ping.fm/B3LLc
A full view of the Shroud of Turin.
For centuries, scientists and historians have pored over the mysterious Shroud of Turin, a bloodstained piece of linen that bears the faint outline of a crucified man, hoping to decode what the image represents and how it was created. The first documented reference to the relic dates back to the 14th century, and historical records suggest it changed hands many times until 1578, when it wound up in its current home at the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, Italy. While the Catholic Church has never taken an official position on the cloth’s authenticity, the Vatican has made statements attesting to its value and arranged for a number of public viewings, most recently in the spring of 2010.
The advent of photography in the late 19th century forever altered the course of the shroud’s history. In 1898, a lawyer named Secondo Pia took the first known photograph of the cloth, and his negative revealed new details, including strikingly clear facial features. Scientific interest in the relic immediately picked up. In 1902, the French anatomist Yves Delage, an agnostic, inspected the photographs and pronounced that the figure on the shroud was indeed Jesus Christ. The first direct examinations of the cloth were conducted in the 1970s, most famously by the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP), a team of scientists led by physicist John P. Jackson of the University of Colorado. The group found that the markings on the cloth were consistent with a crucified body and that the stains were real human blood; they also suggested that the image’s shading patterns contained three-dimensional information. However, they could not explain how the imprint ended up on the fabric in the first place.
In 1988, scientists removed a swatch of the shroud for radiocarbon testing. Three independent laboratories concluded that the material originated between 1260 and 1390, leading some to deem it inauthentic. Since then, however, further studies have called those findings into question, suggesting that the researchers inadvertently tested material grafted onto the original shroud during repairs made in the Middle Ages. Other analyses, many of which proved controversial and yielded conflicting results, have focused on the geographic origin of pollen traces and dirt particles detected on the fabric.
Giotto's "Kiss of Judas" fresco at the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy.
Buso is not the first expert to theorize that the shroud could have been the work of an artist. In May 2010, for instance, the American scientist Gregory S. Paul published a study claiming that the outline’s undersized head and unequal arm lengths were inconsistent with healthy modern humans’ proportions. He hypothesized that an amateurish Gothic artist with poor anatomical knowledge had painted the cloth and passed it off as a genuine relic. In 2009, the American artist Lillian Schwartz made waves when she maintained that Leonardo da Vinci had intentionally faked the Shroud of Turin to fool his contemporaries, using early photographic techniques and a sculpture of his own face to produce the shadowy image.
Buso believes that Giotto, a master painter best known for decorating the elaborate Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy, never intended to dupe believers and even used Jesus’ actual burial shroud as his model. He claims to have detected the artist’s signature and several faint appearances of the number 15—a reference, in his view, to the year in which Giotto created the replica—hidden in the subject’s face and hands. “[Giotto] wasn’t trying to fake anything, which is clear from the fact that he signed it…to authenticate it as his own work from 1315,” Buso told the Daily Mail.
Previous investigations have failed to uncover Giotto’s various stamps on the cloth because they were made with cryptic brushstroke patterns nearly invisible to the naked eye, Buso said. He also pointed out that his theory places the origin of the artifact squarely within the window of time pinpointed by the 1988 radiocarbon analysis. Buso’s hypothesis has been met with criticism, including by Bruno Barberis, director of the Holy Shroud Museum in Turin. A firm believer in the artifact’s authenticity, Barberis told the Daily Telegraph that physical and chemical tests have already proven that the shroud is not a painting.
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Posted in Art History, Christianity, Jesus Christ, Religion
From: http://ping.fm/B3LLc
Tuesday, June 07, 2011
What do you think the next Question of the Day should be?
If you were a bucket of paint, who would do your job?
Monday, June 06, 2011
If you were given the money to start a new business, what business would you open?
Software Development: I already built the infrastructure.
Saturday, June 04, 2011
Friday, June 03, 2011
Paris Hilton wants to molest your stomach! Lol
This is a question? Internally or externally and with what implements or comestibles?
Thursday, June 02, 2011
ernie.cordell@gmail.com sent you a link to the following content:
Known Issue: Problems connecting Twitter accounts in Socialize
http://ping.fm/XkicO
The sender also included this note:
Where there's a Will, there's a Grace.
Known Issue: Problems connecting Twitter accounts in Socialize
http://ping.fm/XkicO
The sender also included this note:
Where there's a Will, there's a Grace.
ernie.cordell@gmail.com sent you a link to the following content:
Known Issue: Problems connecting Twitter accounts in Socialize
http://ping.fm/tjOci
The sender also included this note:
Where there's a Will, there's a Grace.
Known Issue: Problems connecting Twitter accounts in Socialize
http://ping.fm/tjOci
The sender also included this note:
Where there's a Will, there's a Grace.
There's a little more than spilled glue, since this is from whence I came:
http://ping.fm/77eKt(computer_science)
http://ping.fm/77eKt(computer_science)
Wednesday, June 01, 2011
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Monday, May 30, 2011
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Night of the Living Dead - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 American independent black-and-white zombie film directed by George A. Romero. It premiered on October 1, 1968, and was completed on a USD$114,000 budget. After decades of cinematic re-releases, it grossed $12 million domestically and $18 million internationally. Night of the Living Dead was heavily criticized during its release because of its explicit content. However, it eventually received critical acclaim and was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry as a film deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."
From: http://ping.fm/uP0jK
From: http://ping.fm/uP0jK
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Google Goggles - Info | Facebook
Check out this website I found at facebook.com
Just in case you happen to be looking for weird yellow phycomycetes and all the pages about it are now defunct. Or something like that.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Thursday, May 12, 2011
The Mind Research Network and Charting Creativity - NYTimes.com
“Creativity is kind of like pornography — you know it when you see it,” said Rex Jung, a research scientist at the Mind Research Network in Albuquerque.
(But wait! There's more . . . . )
From: http://ping.fm/pEzGa
(But wait! There's more . . . . )
From: http://ping.fm/pEzGa
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Christina Perri's "Distance"
The sun is filling up the room, and I can hear you dreaming.
Do you feel the way I do? Quiet now.
I wish we would just give up, 'cause the best part is falling.
Call it anything but love.
And I will make sure to keep my distance.
Say I love you, and you're not listening.
And how long can we keep it slow? Oh, oh.
Please don't stand so close to me; I'm having trouble breathing.
I'm afraid of what you'll see right now.
I give you everything I am, all my broken heartbeats, until I know you'll understand.
And I will make sure to keep my distance.
Say I love you, and you're not listening.
And how long can we keep it slow? Oh, oh, oh.
And I keep waiting for you to take me.
You keep waiting to say what we have.
So I'll make sure to keep my distance.
Say I love you, and you're not listening.
And how long can we keep it slow? Oh, oh, oh.
Make sure to keep my distance.
Say I love you, and you're not listening.
How long 'till we call this love, love, love?
More lyrics: http://ping.fm/PxVs5
Do you feel the way I do? Quiet now.
I wish we would just give up, 'cause the best part is falling.
Call it anything but love.
And I will make sure to keep my distance.
Say I love you, and you're not listening.
And how long can we keep it slow? Oh, oh.
Please don't stand so close to me; I'm having trouble breathing.
I'm afraid of what you'll see right now.
I give you everything I am, all my broken heartbeats, until I know you'll understand.
And I will make sure to keep my distance.
Say I love you, and you're not listening.
And how long can we keep it slow? Oh, oh, oh.
And I keep waiting for you to take me.
You keep waiting to say what we have.
So I'll make sure to keep my distance.
Say I love you, and you're not listening.
And how long can we keep it slow? Oh, oh, oh.
Make sure to keep my distance.
Say I love you, and you're not listening.
How long 'till we call this love, love, love?
More lyrics: http://ping.fm/PxVs5
Monday, May 09, 2011
Mine
Wait a minute I don't want you to know
It's the only way that I might grow
A secret's safe behind a pretty smile
And it's mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine
What's with all the late night liquored phone calls?
I don't think your love likes me at all
A secret's safe behind a pretty smile
But it's mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine
What, what might you do
To find out why I can't love you?
I can't love you!
Who said it was cool to be asking me these questions?
Who, what and when, where and why? I'm making my head spin
When was it an option to put your lips upon my lips?
And how did this happen?
And why are you laughing?
And how do I get back together again?
Ohhhh, ohhh, ohhhh, ohhh, ohhh
What, what might you do?
What, what might you do
To find out why
To find out why
I can't love you?
I can't love you!
More lyrics: http://ping.fm/OHRO7
It's the only way that I might grow
A secret's safe behind a pretty smile
And it's mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine
What's with all the late night liquored phone calls?
I don't think your love likes me at all
A secret's safe behind a pretty smile
But it's mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine
What, what might you do
To find out why I can't love you?
I can't love you!
Who said it was cool to be asking me these questions?
Who, what and when, where and why? I'm making my head spin
When was it an option to put your lips upon my lips?
And how did this happen?
And why are you laughing?
And how do I get back together again?
Ohhhh, ohhh, ohhhh, ohhh, ohhh
What, what might you do?
What, what might you do
To find out why
To find out why
I can't love you?
I can't love you!
More lyrics: http://ping.fm/OHRO7
Sunday, May 08, 2011
Ernie Admits Talking To Someone Called “Um No.”
Right at this time, Ernie Cordell was caught testing a blog tool, as well as having a simultaneous chat with someone: When asked if he would reveal the identity of this person he said, “Um, No.” Whether these are first and last names or a Chinese operative, we are unsure. We now return this blog to the control of his audience.
Saturday, May 07, 2011
formspring.me
You people are really bad about following instructions. Ask me about shifts and flip-flops. http://formspring.me/erniecordell
What historical time period would you most like to visit?
Yesterday, before I broke my time machine.
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
Monday, May 02, 2011
Sunday, May 01, 2011
Friday, April 29, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
HP Open Source and Linux on HP Integrity servers based on the Intel Itanium Processor 9100 series http://ping.fm/9IqFw
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
yfrog Photo : http://yfrog.com/h8xslwmj Shared by AvrilLavigne http://yfrog.com/h8xslwmj?sms_ss=pingfm&at_xt=4db7416fa81fdb6f%2C0
Monday, April 25, 2011
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Debunking Five Myths About Tape Storage
Tape is a key component in the enterprise data center, and that will continue to be the case well into the future. If you're investigating new storage technologies for backup and archive needs, it's worth being able to discern fact from myth as you consider your options.
From: http://ping.fm/8Jm7Z
From: http://ping.fm/8Jm7Z
Ernest Phillip Henry Clay Yates Kehoe Head Cordell | Just another WordPress.com site
Well, if the posts are not going to go through, there's another way to do this . . .
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Brazil closes first quarter with 38.5 million broadband connection
4/20/2011 Digital Convergence - Telecom - Brazil/191-04-1-2011-10:35
Section: Telecom
From the Newsroom:
Section: Telecom
Brazil closes first quarter with 38.5 million broadband connections
From the Newsroom:
The broadband access providers of fixed and mobile telecommunications services in Brazil reached 38.5 million in the first quarter of 2011, an increase of 51.5% compared to the amount at the end of March 2010, according to survey by the Brazilian Association of Telecommunications (Telebrasil). With this figure, Brazil, according to international consultants, sits in eighth position in the global mobile broadband and in ninth place among the countries with the largest number of access lines.
In the fixed broadband access reached 14 million at the end of the quarter, an increase of 20.5% compared to March 2010. Since the mobile broadband connections - which include those offered through modems connecting to the Internet terminals and third generation (3G), such as smartphones - had an increase of 77.7%, jumping from 13.7 million to 24 4 million in the same period.
According to data consolidated by Informa 4G Americas and the organization at the end of 2010 Brazil, where they are connected 25 new broadband connections every minute, has been ranked as the Latin American country with the largest growth in mobile broadband and leading with 59% ranking access to this service in the region, followed by Argentina with 10%, Mexico, Colombia and 6%, 5%. This progress is even more evident when one notes that Brazil has 36% of the total base of mobile phones in Latin America.
The survey also shows that the Telebrasil the fixed broadband access (Multimedia Communication Services) in Brazil with speeds below 1Mbps are in decline. The faster connections over 2Mbps, already represent 20% of access and it is this age that saw the largest growth rate. Several providers are making investments for the introduction of ultravelocidades (high-speed?), with the implementation of projects for FTTH (Fiber to the Home).
The survey calculates that more than eight out of 10 connections in Brazil are in residence. One consequence of this expansion, according to the survey Telebrasil, is that 79% of households already have computers surfing the internet at high speed. The figures include fixed broadband connections and those offered through modems to access the mobile Internet.
Copyright © 2011 Digital Convergence
http://convergenciadigital.uol.com.br/cgi/cgilua.exe/sys/start.htm?infoid=25970&sid=8
Christina Perri Reveals Sad Story Behind 'The Lonely' -- Exclusive Interview - AOL Music Blog http://ping.fm/FX3iA
Monday, April 18, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
What's the biggest risk you've ever taken? Are you glad you took it or do you regret it?
I probably don't even remember it.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Republican Government: Alexander Hamilton, Report on Manufactures
. . . minds of the strongest and most active powers for their proper objects fall below mediocrity and labour without effect, if confined to uncongenial pursuits. And it is thence to be inferred, that the results of human exertion may be immensely increased by diversifying its objects. When all the different kinds of industry obtain in a community, each individual can find his proper element, and can call into activity the whole vigour of his nature. And the community is benefitted by the services of its respective members, in the manner, in which each can serve it with most effect. -- Republican Government: Alexander Hamilton, Report on Manufactures http://bit.ly/gmgjMv
From: http://ping.fm/iHXUO
From: http://ping.fm/iHXUO
Saturday, April 09, 2011
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
Friday, April 01, 2011
Do You Think That Facebook Can Be The Cause Of Your Anxiety? « Reflections by Ron Schenone http://ping.fm/WT7bJ
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
The UFO Report: Recent News
In 1952-1953, the CIA formed the Robertson Panel in direct response to President Truman's orders to make recommendations to the Air Force on how to handle the UFO “problem.” The formation of this panel came to later be known as Project Bluebook. The panel was headed by Dr. H. P. Robertson, a physicist of the California Institute of Technology, and included various physicists, meteorologists, and engineers, and one astronomer (Hynek). The Robertson Panel first met on January 14, 1953 in order to formulate a response to the overwhelming public interest in UFOs.
Read more at Suite101: The UFO Report: Recent News http://ping.fm/ynDmE
From: http://ping.fm/zXCJK
Read more at Suite101: The UFO Report: Recent News http://ping.fm/ynDmE
From: http://ping.fm/zXCJK
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Friday, March 18, 2011
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Monday, March 14, 2011
La petite mort - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
female orgasm is associated with decreased blood flow in the orbitofrontal cortex, a part of the brain that is crucial for behavioural control
via en.wikipedia.org
This was posted on Wikipedia as further clarification (disambiguation) of "la petite morte" in both sexual and non-sexual senses, but I thought it may serve in some way to explain what many women have told me about impulse control and "bonding" in sexual relationships. Some have characterized it with a loss of impulse control, and mention is also made of the role of oxytocin as it relates to orgasm, pair bonding, social recognition, anxiety and maternal behaviors.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Sunday, March 06, 2011
Saturday, March 05, 2011
Characters Who Say What The Audience Is Thinking
Joss Whedon, in particular, has a great talent for lacing his shows and movies with smart-aleck rebels who provide a running commentary. His characters are often hyper-aware of the weird, outlandish situations they find themselves in.
From: http://ping.fm/b9HXo
From: http://ping.fm/b9HXo
In Defense of C.S. Lewis- Beliefnet.com
does having characters say "darkies" make Lewis racist? He was, after all, employing language then in common parlance�and placing it in the mouths of the wicked. "Many older books contain race or gender references discordant to modern ears," John G. West Jr., a co-editor of "The C. S. Lewis Reader's Encyclopedia," told me recently. "We don't stop reading Twain or Darwin because they used racial terms no author uses today."
Read more: http://ping.fm/pF1or
From: http://ping.fm/4YMOR
Read more: http://ping.fm/pF1or
From: http://ping.fm/4YMOR
Bible - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
There is no single Bible, and both the individual books (Biblical canon), their contents and their order vary between denominations. Mainstream Judaism divides the Tanakh into 24 books, while a minority stream of Judaism, the Samaritans, accepts only five. The 24 texts of the Hebrew Bible are divided into 39 books in Christian Old Testaments, and complete Christian Bibles range from the 66 books of the Protestant canon to the 81 books in the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible.[2]
From: http://ping.fm/eWxKL
From: http://ping.fm/eWxKL
Thursday, March 03, 2011
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
Save me. Clients want me to work on cam. Regulate Human Resource Departments: There must be a lot of misconduct http://bit.ly/gZngpS
Saturday, February 26, 2011
My Posts Aren't Getting Here
I'm trying to send posts to this blog from a variety of sources, but for some reason it's not working. The curious thing is that it worked before and I've done nothing to change it. I did notice that some methods 'expired' with the excuse that permissions were no longer set (likely because of cookies, though I haven't checked). Anyway, I thought I'd try a normal, old-fashioned post to see how it comes out.
Friday, February 18, 2011
The Violence of Theory and Practice
There are natural forces in the construction of an ideal that influence every belief system, whether that system is religion, political ideology or simply guideline and policy. There must be some form held pure and guided so that there may be a practice, which will invariably mutate into species that will be denounced and rejected by the body of proponency for the original ideal.
The reason for this duality is that some rationale must exist for the formulation of individual components, all of which must unite to form a virtually seamless whole. Both the wholeness and the seamlessness are illusory, a necessary feature that makes the finished product appear as though conceived in completeness as a "brainchild" like a Mozart Symphony. But to the human mind, credibility is a function of this pristine and inviolable condition, the immaculate conception of every great notion.
There will be a form of "practice" in the field, though, that will be gritty and rude, with all the features of a creature that evolves with a need to survive. The ideal will be adapted to match the character of the terrain in which this belief system must live. In arrid climes, it will retain a freshness that soothes the organs and organisms which it supports, where it is cold, it will provide warmth; where there is little stimulation the belief system will produce characteristics that nourish its subscribers.
The guardians of purity will assume one stance, defending the delicate crystalline suspension of frozen time wherein the kernel was originally conceived, and the staunch practitioners will fight for the species whose familiarity and comfort has sustained them through its adaptation to their applications. There will be the variety for the hunter-gatherers and nomads, there will be a form for the agrarian populations and the rooted settlers, there will be a rendition for the maritime cultures and any sufficiently advanced idea will shape itself around all other forms of practice where it can be applied.
In the way of example, if gardening were a religion, in some location where it is respected, there will be a central shrine: The location of this shrine itself may be a contested element because each population will want to own the source of its power, appoint its leaders and create its priesthooods. There will be an inevitable schism between the disparate bodies and the ways in which they communicate, which is also subject to weather and the demands of every cover type.
But let us say that one meditative capital where a gardening shrine is built might be London, where there would likely be an enormous Cathedral where claws, seeders and fertilizers surround a great golden trowel, a symbol in which so much value is invested that armed guards will be assigned to protect it and the social taboos against besmirching it will make hainous crimes of any offense that is an indication of disrespect for the great golden trowel.
The guardians of the ideal will surround the shrine and try to associate themselves with it both physically and intellectually: This is not to say that they are insincere; one must remember that the great golden trowel is not only the bread and butter of the gardening religion. The Great Golden Trowel will be a symbol of purity and goodness, poem and song will laud its virtues in a culture where great works of art are dedicated to it.
But the staunch practitioners will be the gardeners, whose tools are worn and bent, covered in the soil where they labor; this species of thought made pure through labor, this form embued with sanctity through habit and practice; the gardeners will adapt themselves to every conceivable environment where they may cultivate great stems and stalks or protect moss and lichens on some craggy cliff. The rituals will be specific to their needs and considered indispensible and necessary to all practitioners, whether it applies to their form of gardening or not. While the hallowed halls in London are polished to translucence, the implements in Mississippi will endearingly worn by the habits of the hands that manipulate them, filthy with the mud of whatever swamp or bog nourishes the flower of their art.
So when any religion, political ideology or policy grows to its production capacity, there will be a battle between those who tried to preserve its holy original form and those who manage its blessed gritty application. War is often inevitable: Humanity is characteristically poor at seeing its particular individual and social adaptations to the elements which limit them, and far more suited to a glorification of the attributes of its own practice that acknowledge the superiority of its sector of influence over the common "metademands" under which they must grunt and sweat. Their practice may be guided by weather, but it will not be the same weather; their habits may be formed by their terrain, the same Earth, but a different face thereof.
Somewhere in the midst of all this is the problem of communication: Occasionally understanding is achieved, however rare. While a certain basic symbology is agreed upon, there will be many varying interpretations that will confuse both priest and layperson alike: "Why must we examine every detai?" they will ask, "Is the trowel not universal?" The symbols of the discipline, the icon or the word is invested with meaning: With every practitioner, different semantics will be applied to the canon of the gardening religion.
In this struggle between purity and application, between theory and practice, whether acknowledged or denied by the body politic, there will be a point where principle is held above human life, and human life will fare very poorly. First it will be the individual, the sinner, the one who insults the trowel by the manner of his/her grasp, the force applied to the point or even whether there is a point to the trowel. Where there is one violator, there are associates, sympathizers, cohorts, organizers, dissenters and they will all eventually be prosecuted.
Everything is a matter of faith: We are born, we live, die and murder in accordance with our beliefs. For each of us there is a separate metric for purity and corruption but there will be some measures held pure and guided so that there may be a practice, which will invariably mutate into forms that will be denounced and rejected by the body of proponency for the original ideal.
The reason for this duality is that some rationale must exist for the formulation of individual components, all of which must unite to form a virtually seamless whole. Both the wholeness and the seamlessness are illusory, a necessary feature that makes the finished product appear as though conceived in completeness as a "brainchild" like a Mozart Symphony. But to the human mind, credibility is a function of this pristine and inviolable condition, the immaculate conception of every great notion.
There will be a form of "practice" in the field, though, that will be gritty and rude, with all the features of a creature that evolves with a need to survive. The ideal will be adapted to match the character of the terrain in which this belief system must live. In arrid climes, it will retain a freshness that soothes the organs and organisms which it supports, where it is cold, it will provide warmth; where there is little stimulation the belief system will produce characteristics that nourish its subscribers.
The guardians of purity will assume one stance, defending the delicate crystalline suspension of frozen time wherein the kernel was originally conceived, and the staunch practitioners will fight for the species whose familiarity and comfort has sustained them through its adaptation to their applications. There will be the variety for the hunter-gatherers and nomads, there will be a form for the agrarian populations and the rooted settlers, there will be a rendition for the maritime cultures and any sufficiently advanced idea will shape itself around all other forms of practice where it can be applied.
In the way of example, if gardening were a religion, in some location where it is respected, there will be a central shrine: The location of this shrine itself may be a contested element because each population will want to own the source of its power, appoint its leaders and create its priesthooods. There will be an inevitable schism between the disparate bodies and the ways in which they communicate, which is also subject to weather and the demands of every cover type.
But let us say that one meditative capital where a gardening shrine is built might be London, where there would likely be an enormous Cathedral where claws, seeders and fertilizers surround a great golden trowel, a symbol in which so much value is invested that armed guards will be assigned to protect it and the social taboos against besmirching it will make hainous crimes of any offense that is an indication of disrespect for the great golden trowel.
The guardians of the ideal will surround the shrine and try to associate themselves with it both physically and intellectually: This is not to say that they are insincere; one must remember that the great golden trowel is not only the bread and butter of the gardening religion. The Great Golden Trowel will be a symbol of purity and goodness, poem and song will laud its virtues in a culture where great works of art are dedicated to it.
But the staunch practitioners will be the gardeners, whose tools are worn and bent, covered in the soil where they labor; this species of thought made pure through labor, this form embued with sanctity through habit and practice; the gardeners will adapt themselves to every conceivable environment where they may cultivate great stems and stalks or protect moss and lichens on some craggy cliff. The rituals will be specific to their needs and considered indispensible and necessary to all practitioners, whether it applies to their form of gardening or not. While the hallowed halls in London are polished to translucence, the implements in Mississippi will endearingly worn by the habits of the hands that manipulate them, filthy with the mud of whatever swamp or bog nourishes the flower of their art.
So when any religion, political ideology or policy grows to its production capacity, there will be a battle between those who tried to preserve its holy original form and those who manage its blessed gritty application. War is often inevitable: Humanity is characteristically poor at seeing its particular individual and social adaptations to the elements which limit them, and far more suited to a glorification of the attributes of its own practice that acknowledge the superiority of its sector of influence over the common "metademands" under which they must grunt and sweat. Their practice may be guided by weather, but it will not be the same weather; their habits may be formed by their terrain, the same Earth, but a different face thereof.
Somewhere in the midst of all this is the problem of communication: Occasionally understanding is achieved, however rare. While a certain basic symbology is agreed upon, there will be many varying interpretations that will confuse both priest and layperson alike: "Why must we examine every detai?" they will ask, "Is the trowel not universal?" The symbols of the discipline, the icon or the word is invested with meaning: With every practitioner, different semantics will be applied to the canon of the gardening religion.
In this struggle between purity and application, between theory and practice, whether acknowledged or denied by the body politic, there will be a point where principle is held above human life, and human life will fare very poorly. First it will be the individual, the sinner, the one who insults the trowel by the manner of his/her grasp, the force applied to the point or even whether there is a point to the trowel. Where there is one violator, there are associates, sympathizers, cohorts, organizers, dissenters and they will all eventually be prosecuted.
Everything is a matter of faith: We are born, we live, die and murder in accordance with our beliefs. For each of us there is a separate metric for purity and corruption but there will be some measures held pure and guided so that there may be a practice, which will invariably mutate into forms that will be denounced and rejected by the body of proponency for the original ideal.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Do you think Watson will win on Jeopardy or do you think man will triumph over machine?
I don't think man wants it badly enough, and Watson is unable to want it. He'd better stop those senior moments, though, before IBM starts losing contracts.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
x22;Cupid" (1998) - IMDb user reviews
0 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
Cancellation a bad move?, 20 July 2006
Author: Ernie Cordell (ernie.cordell@cdumail.com) from Washington, DC, USA
While I feel that my impressions of this work is generally aligned with the other proponents of its continuation, I would largely omit many of the superlatives praising its art, performance and collection of virtues.
I don't mean to attack the show in my criticism, I'd just like to try the understated defense of that collection of virtues. In doing so, I'd like to try to guess why it was cancelled. Sponsorship strikes me first and foremost: I would guess that whatever it was supposed to be selling, it didn't hit the market demographic or some other equally enlightening pseudoscientific ratings language. This strikes me of the sort of industry error that one might compare to pitching to one person and charging another. If you make a show that a lot of people seem to like, it doesn't make sense to complain that it doesn't sell enough lawn-mowers to the 50+ crowd; or maybe it's just me.
A more legitimate reason might seem to be that the show relied too heavily on the bubbly babbling of the Jeremy Piven character(s). It might seem, from a production viewpoint, that it would be too difficult to sustain that Dolly-Madison-a-la-Streisand tenor over a series of a number of shows. While part of me says, "While the people are still watching, who cares?" but my realistic side says that we do have to predict the future when we write, produce, direct and play in performance art. Further complicating the idea of sustaining the expected tension is the notion of suspending disbelief or finally deciding whether our "Cupid" is a Greek God or someone with a personality disorder.
Maybe one of the things that the show failed to accomplish is its intent that was reflected in an episode of the series "Bewitched" about a witch, in this case, who conjures up Benjamin Franklin. Evidently the disbelieving public of that imaginary world were ready to commit poor Benny until witch Samantha Stevens steps in to defend Franklin's antics as "reminders of Benjamin Franklin's great deeds" whether he were a counterfeit Benjamin or not. While difficult to sustain throughout a series, a previous incarnation of "Relationship Rescue" might be to pay attention to a present-day interpretation of another, possibly slower-moving civilization's attitudes toward love and romance.
Whether a real "Cupid" or "Eros" would espouse the sanitized semi-serious sitcom alternative to pop psychology relationship advice is rather immaterial. After all, it is not a serious contrast of 20th century head-shrinking against Golden-Age Grecian attitudes on romance, it is an appeal to look at issues we consider agonizingly complex and idealize them into a simplicity we can digest. An irony that may have been lost on a big part of the audience is that this is both a goal of "science" and the more "holistic" approaches reflected in the modernized presentation of a Greek God's practical common sense.
Was it a bad move to cancel the show? I believe it was -- not so much because it was such stunningly good art -- but maybe because it could have been if effort were given to sustaining the mood and supporting the premise. If I might make a bad and clichéd comparison, it is as though the advice on romance were wholly missed by those who originally promoted it: They loved it enough to commit in the beginning, but they lacked the perspicacity to dedicate time and effort to solving the problems that may have plagued it in some projected future.
The pathology reminds me of current publishing policies: A good story told well isn't enough; we want the name recognition up front so that we don't have to cultivate a good thing.
38 reviews in totalRelated Links
Plot summary Ratings Awards Plot keywords Main details Your user reviews Your vote history
via imdb.com
Monday, February 07, 2011
Friday, January 28, 2011
USA.gov: The U.S. Government's Official Web Portal
As the U.S. government's official web portal, USA.gov makes it easy for the public to get U.S. government information and services on the web. USA.gov also serves as the catalyst for a growing electronic government.
From: http://www.usa.gov/
From: http://www.usa.gov/
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Too Freud to Rock'n'Roll, Too Jung to Care
A living part of me is encoded herein to be embedded in the collective unconscious as the archetype which builds tunnels between our dreams.
Monday, January 17, 2011
What Happened To Abstraction Of Lower-Level Function?
I keep running into "system-dependent" operations in programming languages.
I can understand if some "high-level assemblers" want to maintain a direct hardware approach to coding, but those that have carried the misnomer "third-generation language" should be based on standards which make common native operations accessible to the "higher level" programming languages.
It seems reasonable to me that what is often called a "hardware abstraction layer" have common functions within it for a more complete control of what might otherwise be considered a "low-level operation." It makes no sense to have different software platforms behaving differently, using different functions to control functions common to all platforms. We still plan to have keyboards, pointer devices, displays, etc., don't we?
If we are going to let a hardware abstraction layer intervene between the program and the disk-drive device, where did the notion go that would have us derive a data-storage device from a generic device that could have a form that would be a disk? What of the idea that it should make no difference to the higher-level language program code whether the data sink were a disk, memory or some network device? Why should this be true of a disk, but not of a keyboard, display or pointer?
Are we just giving up on principles of modelling so that we can continue to bicker about the superiority of one operating system or another? So the flame wars based on behavior we insist on continuing can continue, blaming one chip manufacturer or another for what we have imposed at higher levels of design?
Hey, I'm just askin' here, yanno?
I can understand if some "high-level assemblers" want to maintain a direct hardware approach to coding, but those that have carried the misnomer "third-generation language" should be based on standards which make common native operations accessible to the "higher level" programming languages.
It seems reasonable to me that what is often called a "hardware abstraction layer" have common functions within it for a more complete control of what might otherwise be considered a "low-level operation." It makes no sense to have different software platforms behaving differently, using different functions to control functions common to all platforms. We still plan to have keyboards, pointer devices, displays, etc., don't we?
If we are going to let a hardware abstraction layer intervene between the program and the disk-drive device, where did the notion go that would have us derive a data-storage device from a generic device that could have a form that would be a disk? What of the idea that it should make no difference to the higher-level language program code whether the data sink were a disk, memory or some network device? Why should this be true of a disk, but not of a keyboard, display or pointer?
Are we just giving up on principles of modelling so that we can continue to bicker about the superiority of one operating system or another? So the flame wars based on behavior we insist on continuing can continue, blaming one chip manufacturer or another for what we have imposed at higher levels of design?
Hey, I'm just askin' here, yanno?
Monday, January 10, 2011
You Might Want To Read This via @Karen Long
A friend posted this on another site. Normally I don't care so much about privacy issues, but this one I took the time to remove myself from. There's a site called spokeo.com that's a new online USA phone book w/personal information: everything from pics you've posted on FB or web, your approx credit score, home value, income, age. Remove yourself by searching your name, find the URL of your page, then go to the bottom right corner of the page and click on the Privacy button to remove yourself. Copy & re-post so your FB friends are aware. I went to check this out. This is the real deal. I removed my two main email accounts. Its scary. My main account showed a birds eye view of my house. This is an open blog. Share this with your friends. You need to know.
To remove your self.
1.Go to the website. www.spokeo.com
2.Type in your email address.
3. Copy the URL at the top of the page.
4. Scroll to the bottom and hit privacy.
5. Paste the URL you just copied into the box and type in the security code.
6. It will give you instructios to go to your email to complete removal. YOU MUST DO THIS!!! Once you have clicked to finish removal your email will be removed from the site as well as your personal information. If you have more than one email you had better do them all. More info - http://ping.fm/MdzJk
To remove your self.
1.Go to the website. www.spokeo.com
2.Type in your email address.
3. Copy the URL at the top of the page.
4. Scroll to the bottom and hit privacy.
5. Paste the URL you just copied into the box and type in the security code.
6. It will give you instructios to go to your email to complete removal. YOU MUST DO THIS!!! Once you have clicked to finish removal your email will be removed from the site as well as your personal information. If you have more than one email you had better do them all. More info - http://ping.fm/MdzJk
via Ping.fm
You Might Want To Read This via @Karen Long
A friend posted this on another site. Normally I don't care so much about privacy issues, but this one I took the time to remove myself from.
There's a site called spokeo.com that's a new online USA phone book w/personal information: everything from pics you've posted on FB or web, your approx credit score, home value, income, age. Remove yourself by searching your name, find the URL of your page, then go to the bottom right corner of the page and click on the Privacy button to remove yourself. Copy & re-post so your FB friends are aware.
I went to check this out. This is the real deal. I removed my two main email accounts. Its scary. My main account showed a birds eye view of my house. This is an open blog. Share this with your friends. You need to know.
To remove your self.
1.Go to the website. www.spokeo.com
2.Type in your email address.
3. Copy the URL at the top of the page.
4. Scroll to the bottom and hit privacy.
5. Paste the URL you just copied into the box and type in the security code.
6. It will give you instructios to go to your email to complete removal. YOU MUST DO THIS!!!
Once you have clicked to finish removal your email will be removed from the site as well as your personal information. If you have more than one email you had better do them all.
More info - http://ping.fm/MdzJk
There's a site called spokeo.com that's a new online USA phone book w/personal information: everything from pics you've posted on FB or web, your approx credit score, home value, income, age. Remove yourself by searching your name, find the URL of your page, then go to the bottom right corner of the page and click on the Privacy button to remove yourself. Copy & re-post so your FB friends are aware.
I went to check this out. This is the real deal. I removed my two main email accounts. Its scary. My main account showed a birds eye view of my house. This is an open blog. Share this with your friends. You need to know.
To remove your self.
1.Go to the website. www.spokeo.com
2.Type in your email address.
3. Copy the URL at the top of the page.
4. Scroll to the bottom and hit privacy.
5. Paste the URL you just copied into the box and type in the security code.
6. It will give you instructios to go to your email to complete removal. YOU MUST DO THIS!!!
Once you have clicked to finish removal your email will be removed from the site as well as your personal information. If you have more than one email you had better do them all.
More info - http://ping.fm/MdzJk
You Might Want To Read This via @Karen Long
A friend posted this on another site. Normally I don't care so much about privacy issues, but this one I took the time to remove myself from. There's a site called spokeo.com that's a new online USA phone book w/personal information: everything from pics you've posted on FB or web, your approx credit score, home value, income, age. Remove yourself by searching your name, find the URL of your page, then go to the bottom right corner of the page and click on the Privacy button to remove yourself. Copy & re-post so your FB friends are aware. I went to check this out. This is the real deal. I removed my two main email accounts. Its scary. My main account showed a birds eye view of my house. This is an open blog. Share this with your friends. You need to know.
To remove your self.
1.Go to the website. www.spokeo.com
2.Type in your email address.
3. Copy the URL at the top of the page.
4. Scroll to the bottom and hit privacy.
5. Paste the URL you just copied into the box and type in the security code.
6. It will give you instructios to go to your email to complete removal. YOU MUST DO THIS!!! Once you have clicked to finish removal your email will be removed from the site as well as your personal information. If you have more than one email you had better do them all. More info - http://ping.fm/NjjUh
To remove your self.
1.Go to the website. www.spokeo.com
2.Type in your email address.
3. Copy the URL at the top of the page.
4. Scroll to the bottom and hit privacy.
5. Paste the URL you just copied into the box and type in the security code.
6. It will give you instructios to go to your email to complete removal. YOU MUST DO THIS!!! Once you have clicked to finish removal your email will be removed from the site as well as your personal information. If you have more than one email you had better do them all. More info - http://ping.fm/NjjUh
via Ping.fm
You Might Want To Read This via @Karen Long
A friend posted this on another site. Normally I don't care so much about privacy issues, but this one I took the time to remove myself from.
There's a site called spokeo.com that's a new online USA phone book w/personal information: everything from pics you've posted on FB or web, your approx credit score, home value, income, age. Remove yourself by searching your name, find the URL of your page, then go to the bottom right corner of the page and click on the Privacy button to remove yourself. Copy & re-post so your FB friends are aware.
I went to check this out. This is the real deal. I removed my two main email accounts. Its scary. My main account showed a birds eye view of my house. This is an open blog. Share this with your friends. You need to know.
To remove your self.
1.Go to the website. www.spokeo.com
2.Type in your email address.
3. Copy the URL at the top of the page.
4. Scroll to the bottom and hit privacy.
5. Paste the URL you just copied into the box and type in the security code.
6. It will give you instructios to go to your email to complete removal. YOU MUST DO THIS!!!
Once you have clicked to finish removal your email will be removed from the site as well as your personal information. If you have more than one email you had better do them all.
More info - http://ping.fm/NjjUh
There's a site called spokeo.com that's a new online USA phone book w/personal information: everything from pics you've posted on FB or web, your approx credit score, home value, income, age. Remove yourself by searching your name, find the URL of your page, then go to the bottom right corner of the page and click on the Privacy button to remove yourself. Copy & re-post so your FB friends are aware.
I went to check this out. This is the real deal. I removed my two main email accounts. Its scary. My main account showed a birds eye view of my house. This is an open blog. Share this with your friends. You need to know.
To remove your self.
1.Go to the website. www.spokeo.com
2.Type in your email address.
3. Copy the URL at the top of the page.
4. Scroll to the bottom and hit privacy.
5. Paste the URL you just copied into the box and type in the security code.
6. It will give you instructios to go to your email to complete removal. YOU MUST DO THIS!!!
Once you have clicked to finish removal your email will be removed from the site as well as your personal information. If you have more than one email you had better do them all.
More info - http://ping.fm/NjjUh
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