August 2005

Friday, August 26, 2005

The Philosophy - 2005

Russ pointed me towards a link to one of my older posts (before Techorati alerted me) by on of my fellow nanovelists.

I’d comment there, but I’m not allowed, so I’ll post here instead.

Russ and I were just talking about that philosophy. I posted that almost three years ago (and have been living it for a full five) and in that time I’ve written three more novels, actually completed the marathon (and will probably do it again next spring), became a volunteer whale watch naturalist, started drinking and swearing, incessantly documented my life in photos and have traveled more to explore my passions.

In that time I haven’t updated the “list” of things to do in my life ... so it’s high time I did.

Happily my attitude about NaNo hasn’t changed: Lower your expectations, broaden your horizons. Life’s too short to keep talking yourself out of it. It goes for most other things in my life: If you want to do something, stop listing the things in your way and just do it. You wanna run, start running. Worry about distances later, worry about shoes later. You wanna write, start writing. Worry about publishing and format later. Do it now and if you want to do it better, do it again.

Here’s my current list of things I want to do (not in any particular order):

1. Go to the All Candy Expo in Chicago, Il
2. See the following cetaceans: Dall’s Porpoise, Risso’s Dolphin and Sperm Whale
3. Finish the LA Marathon in less than 6 hours and 12 minutes.
4. Do some other marathon (the Avenue of the Giants one sounds cool)
5. Redraft at least one novel to the point that it could be submitted to a publisher
6. Submit a novel to a publisher
7. Invent a recipe for a malted rice krispies square
8. Make more candy
9. Go to Alaska
10. Document 1,000 candies. (I’m about 12% there on candyblog)

POSTED BY Cybele AT 1:31 pm    

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

A Job They Couldn’t Pay Me Enough To Take

I know there’s been a lot of coverage about Pat Robertson over the past few days. I mean, he’s been praying for Supreme Court Justices to die and is now calling for the assassination of other leaders, so it’s only fair that he get wider coverage for his revolutionary political agenda.

Here’s the latest article that caught me up on the whole affair.

But it’s this passage that really got me:

When the AP called Robertson on Tuesday for elaboration, spokeswoman Angell Watts said Robertson would not do interviews and had no statement about his remarks. On Wednesday, Watts did not respond to two telephone messages, three pages and a fax seeking further comment.

My guess is that Angell Watts really does not want this job any longer. (And God Bless the reporter for really going after that comment!) I mean, I sure wouldn’t.

POSTED BY Cybele AT 3:15 pm    

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Finally the church is going after Newton

Really, if they’re going to go after Darwin because it threatens their faith, then they should have gone after Newton a loooong time ago.

Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity with ‘Intelligent Falling’ Theory

KANSAS CITY, KSóAs the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held “theory of gravity” is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.

Oh, and this quote: “Traditional scientists admit that they cannot explain how gravitation is supposed to work,” Carson [leading Intelligent Falling expert known for her work with the Kansan Youth Ministry] said. “What the gravity-agenda scientists need to realize is that ‘gravity waves’ and ‘gravitons’ are just secular words for ‘God can do whatever He wants.’”

The article doesn’t get much better than that ... I love the Onion. It’s like the Daily Show, only you have to read it, and it comes out once a week.

POSTED BY Cybele AT 8:36 pm    

Sunday, August 14, 2005

Gas Prices ... not a typical rant

I was reading about the gas price surge. I’m a little curious how the prices trickle down to the consumer. It seemed that no sooner were the crude oil prices announced in the news after the death of the King, suddenly the prices went up at the pump.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but the stuff we’re pumping into our cars today was probably purchased elsewhere (Venezuela, Canada, domestic or from the Middle East) probably a month before. So if the price goes up, they’ll pass it along right away (to ease us into it?) but if it goes down, how long does it take for us to feel it?

But the thing that really confuses me is this quote from a CNN article:

“Our demand for gasoline is always highest for June, July and August,” she said of the summer months, when families typically take vacations. She [Trilby Lundberg, publisher of the Lundberg Survey] said gasoline demand is expected to taper off after August.

The average American, as near as I can figure is 16 miles each way. That’s 32 miles a day ... 160 miles a week. If it’s a two parent household, they’re racking up 320 miles a week. Now, where are these people going on these car-based vacations? Is that really a jump in gas consumption? Or is this just a line the petroleum industry has been feeding us? Is it that the vehicles we drive for vacation are just less efficient. I’m talking about those Winnebagos and cars with trailers. And while we’re at it, what about those non-car vehicles like boats, jet-skis and hell, lawnmowers.

This article from last week says this: Americans burn 11.959 billions of gallons of gas compared to 10.318 billion gallons burned on average per month. So if we have a consistent 14% jump in gasoline demand every August, why don’t the petroleum providers just plan better? Have you ever gone to the gas station in August and they had run out?

POSTED BY Cybele AT 8:06 pm    

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Hyper-Super-Duper Local Journalism

I was approached yesterday to do an interview on Radio Open Source later this month.

But that’s not what this post is about.

Because I’d never heard of Radio Open Source, and now that I have, I think you should check it out.

Basically, it’s a daily radio program where they do interviews with a bunch of people on a topic. Not new, I know. What is cool is that they announce their topics well in advance and have a dialogue about it before the show goes on the air. As it’s on the air, they take calls, and after it’s on the air there’s more commenting. It’s about as close as you can get to open source radio interviews. In addition, they use Delicious tags so that everyone can add their sites that fit into the topic.

Today I listened to last night’s story on Hyperlocal Journalism - they covered Lawrence Journal-World which serves Lawrence, Kansas, H2OTown in Boston,  and Baristanet from Montclair, NJ. Definitely take an hour and check it out.

What it reminds me of is the good old days when I’d go to the bank downtown in Mechanicsburg or worked behind the counter at Jo-Jo’s Pizza and the cops would come in or the mayor and I’d find out what was going on. It’s harder, I think, in big cities or places next to big cities to find out what’s really going on. What was that boom? A transformer blowing up, but how are you supposed to know that if it’s not in the LA Times? Sites like Blogging.la, LABlogs.com, BlogDownTown.com, LAObserved and to a certain degree LAist (they had a really good piece about the Grove and how the employees aren’t allowed to park on the premises and the landlord doesn’t give a shit about people getting killed going back to their cars a half a mile away). Silverlake used to have a blog like this, Park2Park, but without a big base of support and probably a good group to fill in the gaps when someone gets really busy, it’s hard to maintain when you have a real life on the side.

Kudos to those who blog locally. I don’t think I’m ever going to be one of those people, I’m too lazy to get the story right but I applaud those who can do it.

POSTED BY Cybele AT 11:08 am    

Sunday, August 07, 2005

Flickr Quickr

I love the new stuff that folks come up with to take advantage of flickr.

The most useful one to date was just created by roschler, which allows you to go to any flickr photo and create quick html code for the small version (240x) with a link back to the photo and a link to the photo creator’s profile.

Flickr Photo Comment Tool

Expect some cool finds here because roschler has made it so easy to share cool pics. It’s a great addition to flickr’s blog this tool because you can just pull the code for posting elsewhere, like in comment forums. 

See original posting here.

And here’s a fun photo for today:

—from BlindGoofy

POSTED BY Cybele AT 5:09 pm     Curious News

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Yes, It’s the Media’s Fault

I was reading a story this morning that has Katherine Harris blaming the media for colorizing her photos to make her look like she had more makeup on.

Now, I don’t buy newspapers; I watch the TV news and I read the internets. I saw lots of coverage of her and I have a hard time believing that CNN and ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC and FOX all colorized their LIVE TV broadcasts of her press conferences.

Believe that you want, Katherine, but you really looked that bad.


  pith helmeted clown 
  Originally uploaded by tinkernoonoo.

POSTED BY Cybele AT 11:57 am    




 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ABOUT

CATEGORIES

CONTACT

  • .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

ARCHIVES

During November it's all about me writing a novel. Sometimes it's about whalewatching. You know, and then there's other stuff.