Morels

The following shot was from last May (very early May)

Goes to show that you don't have to look deep in the woods...

Trillium

Spring is in the air
In a few days the trees will leaf out, but for now the sun gets to the forest floor

Trillium unfolding
Forest floor covered with the lush green of wild leeks


Morels soon

Before long there will be the canopy of green, the forest floor will be shaded
For now, we can still see the "bones of the land" all the nooks and crannies, the hillocks and swales.
Soon all will be softened with a blanket of leafs.

Mongolian Scale Wind Chimes

Music of the Spheres

The Wind Chimes are up, breeze is a bit on the cool side, but OK
Click on Mongolian Bass for sample

"The Mongolian scale, a livelier version of the Chinese, is reminiscent of church and temple bells. The major pentatonic scale in root position in the key of A, ... Genghis Khan conquered an empire unmatched in size, yet never heard chimes as lovely as these."

Followup to End of the (advertising) World

Looney Dunes: The Doc Searls : Adage

With MSM (Main Stream Media) in disarray, Hugh has a great cartoon

Fifty Thousand

Mars-ology

Hard-Working Mars Rovers: On the Scent Of Science:

“So we will have time to carefully examine this new site the way you would if you stumbled upon it in the field here on Earth,” Crumpler said. “In fact, it is just this sort of low, small outcrop with visible evidence of tilting that one usually gets excited about -- and learns a lot about the geology from – right here on Earth. This is real field geology on another planet.”

Thanks to the work of Spirit and Opportunity, there’s an important take home message – this time for those blueprinting future expeditions of humans to the red planet.



“There’s a clear message,” Arvidson said. “What we’re doing is reconnaissance…understanding the geological evolution and the role of water…helping to hone in on the sites where you want to do detailed work,” he said.

“It’s another new mission,” said Ray Arvidson, Chair of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri and the deputy principal investigator for the Mars Exploration Rovers.

At some point in the future, there will be humans on the surface of Mars, Arvidson said.

What’s apparent to Arvidson is that the optimal way to do exploration is with humans and robots acting together. “You can have a dozen of these rovers moving off in various directions. Astronauts can be directing the robots, with humans then field-checking key areas. I look at it as an integrated system,” he concluded.

Economist.com | The future of journalism

Internal Blogrolling
I posted stuff here:
BlogBlog: Economist.com | The future of journalism

and before, here:

BlogBlog: Dan Gilmore on same subject

But Doc had a great comment:

More Rain On A Flatter World Turns The Mainstream Into A Braided River
Killer connect, blogtools and Tom Friedman's Flat World

Braided river:
Braid river description and images

Which caused flashback:
Kicking Horse River : late 60's was hiking in the Canadian Rockies and pitched my tent high up a valley just below the Kicking Horse Pass.
Well above the treeline, pretty exposed, Baniff National Park, the Alberta side of the Continental divide.
Of course, a big old storm came up in the night, flattened my tent, in general taught me a lesson.

I suppose that to bring the analogy full circle, if you are going to camp out in the wilderness, keep an eye on the weather... or some such.

gapingvoid on LesBlogs

gapingvoid: "There a was session there where journalists were asking a lot of questions. I came away thinking, 'Dinosaurs don't like meteors'. There is no point trying to sell a dinosaur a meteor. He/She ain't buying, so stop trying to sell him/her the meteor story etc."

ROFLOL

Something to Think About

The New York Times > Science > Improved Scanning Technique Uses Brain as Portal to Thought

"The scanning technique, known as functional magnetic resonance imaging, is a more powerful version of a technique widely used in hospitals. It can show which regions of the brain are actively performing some task, but until now has lacked the resolution to track specific groups of neurons, as the functional units of the brain are called.

The improvement lies not in the scanners themselves but in a new analytic technique developed by Dr. Frank Tong, a psychologist at Vanderbilt University. In today's issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, he and a colleague, Dr. Yukiyasu Kamitani, report that they were able with the scanner to distinguish the orientation of a test pattern of lines being observed by their subjects.

The scanner was able to furnish the necessary data because it was looking into a region of the brain known as the primary visual cortex, where information from the eye is processed. One of the first relay stations from the retina, an area of the visual cortex called V1, holds columns of neurons that burst into activity when lines or edges are perceived, with each column responding to a specific angle of orientation.

Comment: does this pattern to work being done by Jeff Hawkins?
He spoke at PCForum this year on brain structure

On Intelligence

Goal of building "intelligent" machines

Redwood Neuroscience Inst

CeleBlog?

The New York Times > Technology > A Boldface Name Invites Others to Blog With Her

Could be interesting, could be a flop
Will these folks be able to come out from behind the PR curtain?
Will they be able to engage in conversations or just make pronouncements?
Will they be willing to expose themselves to criticisms?
Will they be well-rounded individuals or "sock puppets"?

"Arianna Huffington, the columnist and onetime candidate for governor of California, is about to move blogging from the realm of the anonymous individual to the realm of the celebrity collective.

She has lined up more than 250 of what she calls "the most creative minds" in the country to write a group blog that will range over topics from politics and entertainment to sports and religion. It is essentially a nonstop virtual talk show that will be part of a Web site that will also serve up breaking news around the clock. It is to be introduced May 9.

Having prominent people join the blogosphere, Ms. Huffington said in an interview, "is an affirmation of its success and will only enrich and strengthen its impact on the national conversation." Among those signed up to contribute are Walter Cronkite, David Mamet, Nora Ephron, Warren Beatty, James Fallows, Vernon E. Jordan Jr., Maggie Gyllenhaal, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Diane Keaton, Norman Mailer and Mortimer B. Zuckerman."

Will it work, only time will tell ...

And BTW :
Thank's Doc
Doc Searls

Watching TV Makes You Smarter !

The New York Times > Magazine > Watching TV Makes You Smarter

No more "Boob Tube"?
I wasn't too sure how to take till until I read through the whole thing
Then read the tag line
Steven Johnson was the lunchon speaker at PCForum '04

Bottom line, Prime Time has more complex story lines, and "Sub Prime" such as "Reality" TV is more like complex games where you have to learn the rules while you play.

Multiple Theading - example's from Hill St. Blues with mulitple story lines, through The Sopranos
Flashing Arrows - cues to the layperson as to what's important (the person asking questions of the scientist in the lab)
Social networks - how games like "Survivor" or "The Apprentice" are played

Better reviews than mine at:
blogrunner

Enough Already

Weather.
Well, there's the old saying about Michigan weather "If you don't like it right now, just wait, it'll change"

We were in shorts and sweatin a week ago...


So far, just a "dusting"

Local TV covers it best :
SUMMARY:
A potential late season winter storm will bear down on northern Michigan this weekend. As low-pressure tracks across Illinois and Indiana Friday, clouds ahead of this system will thicken up through the day Friday with the area becoming overcast by late Friday evening. Low-pressure will then move into Ohio pulling colder air south wrapping it into the strengthening storm system. So, as the storm system increases in intensity, rain will develop and switch over to snow Friday night and become all snow by Saturday. Hard to believe after some area hit the 80’s earlier this week. Any snow accumulations late Friday night/Saturday should stay manageable with the least amounts west of Interstate-75 in the Eastern U.P. and west of U.S.-131 in the Lower Peninsula where by Saturday evening, 1-3” of snow is possible. East of these locations, closer to the low-pressure, higher snow totals are likely with 4-7” of snow possible by Saturday night. The winds will howl as well with gusts to near 40 mph possible Saturday into Sunday. The best chance for heavy snow will come Sunday as this storm system stalls out to our east and cold northerly winds drag in snow on the backside of this storm. It will be brisk with blowing/drifting snow; especially east of Interstate-75 in places such as DeTour Village, Rogers City and Alpena where there is the potential for 5-10” of snow. Locations west of the interstate will see significantly less snow in places such as Newberry, Petoskey and Traverse City where another couple inches is possible. The snow will slowly wind down by Monday morning with some rain mixing back in with the snow.

It's Moore's Law, but Another Had the Idea First

The New York Times > Technology > It's Moore's Law, but Another Had the Idea First

Well, Moore's law seems to roll off the toung a bit easier than Engelbart's Law.

Both are major thinkers in the development of micro-circuitry
---
Significantly, the two pioneers represent twin Silicon Valley cultures that have combined to create the digital economy.

Mr. Moore, who co-founded Intel, is an icon of the precise and perhaps narrower chip engineering discipline that today continues to progress by layering sheets of individual molecules, one on top of the other, and by making wires that are finer in diameter than a wavelength of light.

"Gordon was the classic engineer," said Craig Barrett, Intel's chief executive, who had just begun to teach engineering at Stanford University when Mr. Moore made his famous prediction. The chart that accompanied his article was a plot that showed just five data points over seven years and extrapolated out into the future as far as 1975, when a single chip would be able to hold as many as 65,000 transistors. Forty years later, memory chip capacity has gone far beyond one billion of the tiny switches.

Mr. Engelbart, in contrast, was the architect of a passionately held view that computing could extend or "augment" the power of the human mind. His ideas were set out most clearly in 1968, in a famous demonstration in San Francisco of his Pentagon-financed Augment computing system. Many things were shown to the world for the first time, including the mouse, videoconferencing, interactive text editing, hypertext and networking - basically the outlines of modern Internet-style computing.

Mr. Engelbart had an epiphany in 1950, in which he imagined what would decades later become today's Internet-connected PC. He set about building it. At the time he had no idea of how he would build such a machine, but it soon became clear that it would require a computer that did not yet exist.

All Right! about 10lbs to go

The New York Times > Health > Some Extra Heft May Be Helpful, New Study Says

Will continue to work on weight loss (down some 25-30lbs so far) but looks like my goal is reasonable.

---
People who are overweight but not obese have a lower risk of death than those of normal weight, federal researchers are reporting today.

The researchers - statisticians and epidemiologists from the National Cancer Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - also found that increased risk of death from obesity was seen for the most part in the extremely obese, a group constituting only 8 percent of Americans.

And being very thin, even though the thinness was longstanding and unlikely to stem from disease, caused a slight increase in the risk of death, the researchers said.

---
The study has caused some controversy, but:

The study did not explain why overweight appeared best as far as mortality was concerned. But Dr. Williamson said the reason might be that most people die when they are over 70. Having a bit of extra fat in old age appears to be protective, he said, giving rise to more muscle and more bone.

Prius resale prices

There was a piece on CNN this AM about sky high resale prices on Prius's
As much as $10K over purchase.

I thought it was totally crazy.
No way it makes any economic sense, it would take forever to recover the price in gas savings.

Then it hit me.
Managed market, marketing hype.
Are dealers buying 1st generation Prius's then reselling with big mark-up?
Hyping the market, feeding news stories to the press?

Recalls the old Harley Davidson plan of controling production, creating image of scarcity, getting PR out of how hard it was to get one.

Wonder if the same thing is happening here?

Followup to "Flight School" Bezos to Space

Blue Origin Spaceport Plans are Talk of Texas Town

Flight School

Posted in it's entirety as it may disappear:

---
Blue Origin Spaceport Plans are Talk of Texas Town
By Michael Graczyk
Associated Press Writer
posted: 15 March 2005
6:30 p.m. ET

VAN HORN, Texas (AP) -- Even skeptical locals, who've become wary over the years of city slickers with big ideas for their town, perked up when Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos made his pitch -- a spaceport for commercial travel into the beyond.

Bezos flew into this West Texas town a few weeks ago to tell key leaders how he planned to use his newly acquired 165,000 acres of desolate ranch land. He also gave his only interview so far on the spaceport to the Van Horn Advocate, the weekly newspaper Larry Simpson runs from the back of his Radio Shack store.

“He walked in and said: 'Hi, I'm Jeff Bezos,' and sat down right in that chair there,'' Simpson said, pointing to spot in his small cluttered office.

Over the next 30 to 40 minutes, Simpson said Bezos told him the goal of his venture - known as Blue Origin - was to send a spaceship into orbit that launches and lands vertically, like a rocket.

“He told me their first spacecraft is going to carry three people up to the edge of space and back,'' Simpson said. “But ultimately, his thing is space colonization.”

Bezos, 41, was accompanied by Rob Meyerson, Blue Origin's program manager, whose history includes stints as a manager on the space shuttle emergency return vehicle project and lead aerodynamics engineer developing the shuttle's parachute landing system.

Bezos said Blue Origin would first build basic structures at the Texas site, such as an engine test stand, fuel and water tanks and an office building, then begin flight tests in six to seven years, Simpson said.

He said most of its initial research and development would be done in Seattle, where Bezos and his companies are based.

Bezos has said nothing else publicly about his project, and did not grant an interview request made by The Associated Press.

A Houston-based spokesman for Blue Origin, which was incorporated in September 2000 in Washington state, said there was “not much to see or tell” and that the project “won't go anywhere any time soon.'”

The spokesman, Bruce Hicks, provided a short news release and a company fact sheet, which included Blue Origin's mission statement - to “facilitate an enduring human presence in space.”

Bezos isn't the only tech industry billionaire with stars in his eyes and ties to Texas, where Bezos attended elementary school for three years in Houston while his stepfather was an engineer at Exxon.

SpaceX, started by PayPal founder Elon Musk, plans to launch and deploy a military satellite this year using a rocket. The California-based company has conducted much of its testing in McGregor, Texas, near the Fort Hood military base.

John Carmack, who made a fortune on “Doom” and “Quake” through his video game company ID Software, owns Armadillo Aerospace based in suburban Dallas. The venture also hopes to launch its own brand of space rockets.

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen spent $20 million to fund the SpaceShipOne rocket plane that last fall successfully reached the edge of space and returned. It was dropped from beneath a flying craft and landed like a plane. (The NASA space shuttle, which takes off vertically, also lands like a plane.)

Winning the space race takes talented people, and Blue Origin's Web site lists several job ads for engineers -
”highly qualified and dedicated individuals ... among the most technically gifted in his or her field.”

That's a tall order for the 3,000 or so residents of Van Horn, many of whom believe the biggest thing to happen in recent years was construction of a new truck stop on Interstate 10.

About 120 miles east of El Paso, Van Horn primarily is a rest stop for travelers along I-10, the nation's southernmost cross-country highway. About 50 miles to the north is Guadalupe Mountains National Park, which contains many of the highest mountains in Texas, including the signature 8,085-foot El Capitan. It can be seen from a distance on Bezos' property amid desert and cattle-grazing terrain and salt lake beds.

Broadway, Van Horn's main street which parallels the freeway, is dotted with long-abandoned businesses, many of them flat-roofed adobe-style buildings, and two vehicles waiting at the street's lone stop light constitute a traffic jam.

Bill Talley, whose Van Horn Pharmacy is the only place to get a prescription filled within a 90-mile radius, said he was surprised by Bezos' project but was withholding judgment until he knew more. His wife, Mary, was more blunt.

“We're used to it,” she said of “exploiters” who have raised residents' hopes and then fled.

More than a decade ago, some businessmen touted a mica mining venture that created a buzz but went nowhere. Fields along I-10 heading east toward Midland and Odessa are littered with rusting oil field equipment, monuments to the oil industry crash of the 1980s.

“We've had gentlemen come in here to change the world,'' said John Conoly, 76, the Culberson County judge for the past 30 years. “And nothing ever came of it.'”

But Bezos is different, Conoly said.

“After meeting and visiting with him, I have every confidence in the world he will do what he says he will do,'' the judge said. “I know he's going to have some of the best minds for this project. He doesn't do things halfway or second class.''

Bezos also told the Van Horn group that he wanted to give his family the opportunity to enjoy life on a ranch just as he did as a child. The Internet retailer chief executive spent summers at his grandfather's spread in Cotulla in South Texas.

While Bezos' spaceship plans were a surprise, his presence in Van Horn wasn't. His private jet had been seen a number of times in the past year at the local airstrip as he scouted the area and purchased three ranches.

On Bezos' new property, the only noticeable change, residents say, are the new “No Trespassing'' signs posted every mile or so on the rusty barbed wire cattle fences bordering Texas Highway 54.

Conoly said people aren't real excited yet, but that could change once construction begins.

For Spanish-speaking residents like Manuel Baeaza, 47, who works at a marble mine in the mountains that adjoin Bezos' property, the project known as “El Estacion” or “the station,'' brings promise.

“More jobs, it would be a blessing,'' said Baeaza, who's lived in the area for 14 years.

Ricky Hutson, who works at used bookstore and resale shop where he also lives, was a bit more philosophical.

“With (Bezos) coming out here, this is going to force this town to change for the better,'' he said. “If you've lived a hard life, this is a place you can live in peace. But if you're used to the high-tech lifestyle, you might not want to come here.

“Maybe we'll actually get some business. As you can tell, this town is pretty behind the times.”

Iridium Flare

Iridium Flare Details

Another Flare
This time Shirley had joined me in the tub
A few min later, just after commenting that we'd keep an eye out for satellite's ... bingo! there it was

Moments later she spotted :
Lacrosse 4 Rocket

BusinessWeek Hybrid Hype: Plug & Play

Giving Hybrids A Real Jolt

Business Week (4/11/04 issue) jumps on the plug & play Prius bandwagon

How wonderful it is to save gas
But the math is missing: "...not clear how much more people will pay for the cars. Hybrids are estimated to cost $2,000 to $5,000 more than conventional cars to make, and the larger batteries for plug-ins would add several thousands dollars more."

simpleton math (mine):
6K cost above non hybrid ... just to pull numbers together
Gas at $2.50
Need 2.4K gallons to breakeven
Avg stock Prius milage - assume 42.5MPG
Tells me in only 102K miles I'm at breakeven

Shift to $3gas and it's 85K miles

Now this analysis does not include the electricity costs
It ain't free.

What happens to electric costs as fuel costs rise, assuming that as oil prices rise, utilities will be able to pass along "cost increases" (whether they use oil or not).

Did anybody ask about battery replacement/recycling costs?

More analysis needs to be done.

Blue Skys

Hard to work indoors on a day like this
Not a cloud in the sky
Not a soul around

Mid Day
Mid April

Some years we still have snow right now

BTW - cablemodem, wifi and "outdoor office" for now...

The Doc Searls : Adage

The Doc Searls Weblog : Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Quote :
Senior moment
I've got an AdAge newsletter here with the title, IS THE AD INDUSTRY HEADED FOR CHAOS? It reads,
BACKGROUND: In an epic 5,500-word front-page article in the April 4 print edition of Advertising Age, columnist Bob Garfield laid out a sweeping vision of an advertising industry caroming toward chaos and disruption wrought by the digital media revolution. Boiled down, his theory goes something like this: The marketing industry is currently whistling past the graveyard and largely ignoring signs of massive, fundamental changes in how the business of mass marketing will be conducted in the near future. The broadcast TV model is working less well each year and will eventually cave in on itself as it reaches ever-fewer viewers with a fare of low-quality programming and mind-numbing clutter. Marketers will increasingly abandon it. But despite their glitzy promise, the aggregate of new digital technologies -- from Web sites and e-mail to cell phone content and video on demand -- lack the infrastructure or scale to support the minimum amount of mainstream marketing required to smoothly sustain the U.S. economy. The result, as the old systems are abandoned and the insufficient new systems struggle to carry an impossible advertising load, is what Garfield calls "The Chaos Scenario" -- a period of serious disruption moving like a tsunami through the marketing business as well as the economy and the broader society itself.
No link, though. And searches on the site for chaos, chaos theory and Bob Garfield all yield no useful results.
Still, who knew mainstream marketing was required to "smoothly sustain the U.S. economy"?

---

Oh my my, without a "smoothly functioning" advertising industry to feed the message to the masses, we'll head back to the dark ages.

What a crock!

TiVo is a threat to the economy, depression ahead !
We need to get consumer butts back on the couch and mindlessly watch what is fed to them.

Eyes on the Road: maximum Bob on Hybrids

WSJ.com - Eyes on the Road

Brief backgrounder then brief interview with Bob Lutz, now in charge of GM's development and engineering worldwide.

Bob "Get's it" ... Impressions Count !
---
At a recent conference in New York City hosted by Morgan Stanley auto analyst Stephen Girsky, GM's vice chairman for product development, Bob Lutz, offered some candid comments on industry trends and vehicle technology. Mr. Girsky set up a quiz-show format in which he tossed out the name of a feature and Mr. Lutz weighed in on whether consumers considered it important or not. Mr. Lutz's presentation was accessible by a conference call.

Mr. Lutz's responses indicate that GM has done an intellectual 180 on the issue of hybrid gas-electric vehicles. Not long ago, GM executives expressed little enthusiasm for hybrid vehicles, and pooh-poohed the Toyota Prius as a money loser that made little contribution to saving fuel and distracted the industry from efforts to build cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells.

Mr. Lutz, who last week took control of GM's vehicle development and engineering strategy world-wide, now acknowledges that "Toyota scored a major coup with hybrids even though they didn't have a business case." Having hybrid vehicles, he said, is now a symbol of whether a car maker is technologically capable and environmentally aware. GM recently announced efforts to mass-produce hybrid gas-electric SUVs by 2007. As for commercially viable fuel-cell cars? Maybe by 2010, Mr. Lutz says.

---

Note ! Prius as Marketing Masterstroke, not necessarily as engineering marvel.

---
The interview excerpt:

Here's part of Mr. Lutz's exchange with Mr. Girsky, based on a recording of the conference call:

Mr. Girsky: Horsepower?

Mr. Lutz: Important.

Q: ABS [anti-lock brakes]?

A: (Pause) Was unimportant. Now it becomes important as we standardize vehicle stability systems, because you can't have [vehicle-stability systems] without ABS.

Q: Stability control?

A: Very important.

Q: Airbags?

A: Very important.

Q: The more the merrier?

A: I think there's a logical conclusion. I told our guys at some point we are going to design one huge inflatable thing that fills the whole [car] … so where if you hit a lamp post you find yourself pressed against the seat as if you were lying under the belly of a beached whale.

Q: Satellite radio?

A: Very important.

Q: Navigation [systems]?

A: Growing. [In] premium cars it's almost a necessity now. If you don't have it, the customer wants to know why.

Q: Heated steering wheels?

A: Not important. I think it's nice, but it's not a huge-selling feature. If you have heated seats, then it is.

Q: Auto dimming mirrors?

A: Normal expectation? No.

Q: All-wheel drive?

A: You can still live without it, but [it's] growing.

Q: Hybrid?

A: Growing. And whether the market becomes giant, or flattens out at 300,000 units a year -- which in the context of the American market is a pittance -- it has become symbolic of: "Is this company technologically capable? Is this company environmentally aware?" And it's a sort of go/no-go gauge. If you have hybrids you're OK, and if you don't you're not. I'd say Toyota scored a major coup with hybrids even though they didn't have a business case.

Q: They still may not have a business case.

A: Doesn't matter. Again, we have this artificial separation in our minds between what we spend on consumer influence in advertising and what we spend on the product. And sometimes the most effective form of consumer influence is to do things like the hybrid.

Q: Remote start?

A: Surprised me, but it's a big feature on the [Pontiac] G6 and [Chevrolet] Malibu.

Mix of Print and Blogs?

WSJ.com - News Sites Solicit Articles
Straight From Readers

Newspapers seek to find ways to stem the losses
"At the Greensboro News & Record's Web site, registered users can submit their own stories by clicking on a link. An editor gathers submissions, makes a few small edits, then publishes the articles online -- sometimes within hours. Among recent stories written by readers: a feature on an upcoming cotton-mill convention and a primer on Social-Security reform.

The Northwest Voice, from the publisher of the Bakersfield Californian newspaper, includes news articles and photographs submitted by readers.

In the past year, a handful of small newspapers have launched variations on that model. Newspaper publishers are eager to find new ways to connect to readers -- daily newspaper circulation dropped 11% between 1990 and 2003, according to Editor & Publisher magazine. Now, as do-it-yourself Web publishing tools are making it easier for laypeople to create blogs, newspapers are borrowing ideas from those informal Web journals in an effort to make their own coverage more accessible, and, they hope, attract more readers.

"If they didn't host these conversations, they would still occur outside the confines of the news organization," says Al Tompkins, an online-journalism professor at the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit training center for journalists in St. Petersburg, Fla. "It's much smarter for us to be somehow involved in this."

---
Maybe patterns to NYTimes buy of About.com
---

Local newspapers have long accepted submissions from readers, but they typically come in the form of letters to the opinion page or society columns about goings-on about town. The sites are betting the new approach will help them uncover feature stories that residents find interesting, but that their staff reporters are unlikely to write about.

"A newspaper staff has no monopoly on knowledge," says blogger Dan Gillmor, a former San Jose Mercury News columnist who has been a vocal advocate for what he calls grassroots journalism. "In fact, every reporter should realize that, collectively, the readers know more than they do about what they write about."
---

And so the story evolves.

Migration from ink to displays, along with decentralization of information and opinion.

---

Aside : It's Annual Paper Week

Would Marcel Marceau Blog ?

Marceau Foundation

From an exchange with Doc
To wit:
"Rollo May says writers differ from all other creative types in that
"they suffer the illusion that the world really needs what they have
to say."

Doc : "Without that principle, there would be no blogging. :-) "

Soooo it ocurred to me
Would the world's greatest Mime Blog

If so ... how would it "read"

Iridium Flare Details

Iridium Flare Details

Very cool tool
Thanks Doc

Wasn't looking for it, but happened to catch it from hot tub

Looked for it on J-Pass, but couldn't find it
Several other satallite passes, but not the Iridium

J-Pass

Good skys the last few days
Clear, no moon.

Doc with good quote on online influence

The Doc Searls Weblog : Wednesday, April 6, 2005

Quoting Terry Heaton:

"The New York Times gives material freely to the bloggers, and the bloggers reward them with influence. This is why the people who run The Times should think very carefully before charging fees or otherwise locking up their content. This is why logical (Modernist) attempts to force demand by restricting access are playing a dangerous game with their online futures. And this is why online media companies need to make their archives freely available as well. Free is the operative word here. Influence is the currency.
Free online access to content is also good business, because money follows influence, even online."

Right on

Canoeing in April

Trying to get the damn image to work



There - GOT IT!

OK, so what
Well, it's April 9th
About 3 weeks ago I was X Country skiing at about the same spot
(see below)

Some years we get snow in April, today, mid 60's

About a mile out, roughly noon today

Here's shot from Mid March (Ides of March) about the same place, view north, late afternoon:


Bit of a change ...

Like Who cares - but the hat ! gotta note it

The Charles and Camilla, Married, Without a Hitch

First shot in the times was "head on" with a "crown" that looked like the Goddess Ceres ... oh my

Sent to daughter, saying looked like Candy Bergen
She thought it was an insult to Candice ...


Photo

Hybrid-Car Tinkerers Scoff at No-Plug-In Rule

The New York Times > Business > Hybrid-Car Tinkerers Scoff at No-Plug-In Rule

Snake oil time

I have enough of a hard time keeping a battery "alive" through the winter in my scooters

So I really want to load up my car with a bunch of batteries ...
Then, when, not if, I crash (BTW been a long time since last one, but who knows) I really want that mess.

Sorry, but right now, tell me about the physics of hauling around a bunch of lead, and how that is efficient use of energy.

Granted, once you get rolling, you should continue rolling, but to stop and turn?

OK, lets get past the vechile dynamics, what is the Electric Company charging for the "plug in"
Where does the electricity come from?
Coal?
Gas?
Nukes?