A computer-generated 3-D animation of the surface of Mars, as crafted from the red and blue anaglyphs from NASA. You need to see this; it's almost like seeing the surface of Mars in 3-D but without the red and blue glasses (which I couldn't find, either).
3D Reconstruction of Mars
I'm about to create my own grid for determining how I'm going to vote. Right now, I'm interested in this:
The Art of Camouflage: David Kay comes clean, almost.
Is it a mark in favor of Bush? That in fact the CIA was in such bad shape that he couldn't have known that even Saddam himself was fooled by his own people? Or is it a mark against Bush? That, being the executive officer, his CIA should have been able to tell him what was really so?
I think it's a mark against, and here's why: I can't imagine that the CIA would have, indeed,
could have shown that there were unmistakable signs of developing WMD. There's only a lot of interpretation. Is that enough to justify a pre-emptive strike? Enough to intervene, against the will of the U.N., and kill thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of American soldiers? There have been so many evil despots in the world. There are others in Africa practicing genocide, aren't there? Why this one? Why not the others?
Save Disney!
I select only few causes to publicly support. This is one that I believe in.
Disney was, for me, a vital part of my childhood, and one that I want to share with my children and my grandchildren. I've seen it erode, over the years, into a magic-less corporation. Is it just because I've grown older and more cynical? I don't think so. And now I see that I'm not alone.
Roy Disney, last November, resigned from the board of directors at Disney, and started his own campaign to put Disney back where it belongs -- as Walt Disney would have wanted it -- the most magical place on Earth, and the creator of the most magical stories on Earth. I don't want Disney to be MORE and EVERYWHERE. I don't want Disney to be a giant mega-corporation that owns half the entertainment industry. I want Disney to be the one place that I can go to get away from all the schlock that everyone else creates, when I want to feel young again.
Save Disney!
Hey, this is a first for me: Jury Summons. I've never been asked to be on a jury yet, despite being plenty available.
Mid February. No, of course I'm not going to publish stuff I'm not supposed to, but I will be writing what I can.
BTW I have a tendency to agree with
Robert Heinlein's point of view about being a citizen -- that you have to serve your country in order to have the right to vote, among other things. Not sure that I would agree about that applied to juries; after all, the point about being tried by a jury of
peers is a pretty solid idea...
I'm reading this story,
No Heroes for Daniel: Many failed to help a bright child with unusual ways. by Helen O'Neill of the AP.
and I came across this paragraph:
The school blamed Daniel. He was a bright child, staff told investigators. If he applied himself and behaved, things would have been better for him.
I think of myself, and how often I've heard those words. "You have so much potential, you could do so much if you just applied yourself."
What does it mean, this "apply yourself" thing?
I knew what they meant, and at the same time, I had no idea what they meant. In many ways, it's like learning to ride a bike. "Just sit on the bike, hold the handlebars straight, pedal your feet, and you will go." That's really all it takes. No more knowledge is required. All else that is required are things which can't be broken down into instructions. They must simply be experienced. Until they are, nothing else that is said can truly educate or inform.
The book Psycho-Cybernetics suggests that your mind, as a goal-seeking machine, will figure out how to succeed without breaking every task down into the nth degree. But who tells this to children? The phrase, "you could succeed if you just applied yourself," includes a presupposed fact: that the child does not apply himself or herself. This goes straight into the goal-seeking machine's programming, and prevents the child from hitting the goal.
Now, I'm an adult that survived having my machine rigorously learn how to not hit the goal (because I subconsciously knew that I did not "apply myself"). What does "apply yourself" mean? It means, simply, this: "Do." And the not-so-simple version for those of us who start thinking about what that means is this: "Don't think, just do."
Like riding a bike.
Funny thing is that I see a lot of kids riding bikes. Who taught them? How did they learn it? A parent, an older sibling, and grandparent. But do these same people teach those kids that are thinking too much to "apply themselves?"
Education is a funny thing. As a child who thinks too much, you start thinking that school is about learning things: facts, procedures, classifications, methods, theories... and partly that's true. But school is also very much about one thing, which is never taught explicitly: doing. You either do, or you are labeled as a kid who "if he had just applied himself, then things would have been better."
How do you teach a thinking person to not think so much? I will have to give that some thought. (sigh)
