2020 Hindsight

Monday Along The Five

Here are some images of California's Central Valley, taken along Interstate 5 (or "the five" as we Southern Californians call it) from the drive south.

At a stop at Harris Ranch:

These are the hills near the Grapevine:

The wildflowers in the Tejon Ranch area (Grapevine, Gorman) are in amazing splendor. I hope to bring a more detailed report after next weekend.

En route, I listened to the Valley Public Radio station. Heard a talk show, a Jeffersonian perspective. One of the speakers on the show wrote a Bush victory speech as tho Bush were a Jeffersonian (to get the whole thing you gotta pay bucks to support the show, but this page has a taste of it.)

Book Fair Redux

I missed the LA Times Festival of Books, as I went to San Francisco for a wedding. Heard it was good. (the festival, not the wedding. I KNOW the wedding was good) Thank God for friends who get tapes of the speaker sessions that interested me. Grrl was there. Go read her report.

Digital Storytelling Festival moves to Sedona

I saw a mention of the Digital Storytelling Festival on Scott Rosenberg's weblog, noted the Sedona location, and wondered if it's being held at Yavapai College's beautiful lab? Checked the Festival's website, and sure enough, it is!

Yavapai College's digital arts center is the same place where BryceCamp was last year. It's an absolutely wonderful location. I've got two pages with pictures (here's a couple of 'em).

Heh. Storytelling... Sedona.....Last year at the BryceCamp show-n-tell, I didn't show any Bryce stuff, but read a story I'd written. Doing so was a mistake, but you never learn these things before the fact (note this weblog's name). Perhaps if I'd've read a shorter story, or just kept it at reciting Ladle Rat Rotten Hut, a 3-4 minute recitation --and a requested one at that. I read a several-page-long story to a group that was expecting to see Bryce images. In the end, I got a vigorous round of applause. Then no one talked to me afterwards. At all. Uh oh. Avoidance is an eloquent form of feedback, however painful. Vigor comes from relief as well as appreciation. Oh well. After intermittent cringing over the next coupla weeks, I told myself that, well, at least it was a risk taken, you're allowed one freebie mistake to learn from, etc. Maybe the Digital Storytelling Festival is the better place for that kind of thing. Tho I'd still want to shorten that story.

Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaaf hired by Microsoft

(Redmond, Washington) In the latest press conference regarding the security issues surrounding XP,

newly-hired Microsoft spokesman Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaaf, reiterated that

all security issues have been satisfactorily met in a webcast last Thursday:

"Windows XP is a blessing upon the face of the world. The Linux infidels

lie like dogs in a Persian bathhouse when they boldfacedly tell you that

Windows XP (R) has security holes. The holes are in their dead, rotting

corpses. Windows XP has no faults as befits this blessing from the hands of

the most high. I know because I tell the truth."

This weekend: Festival of Books at UCLA

Lotsa good stuff on the panels there. Alas I'll miss it this year, but I know people who'll attend and am looking forward to their reports (one current events one I'd like to see: Eric Alterman et. al discussing Is the Media Biased)

Craig Clevenger, author of The Contortionist's Handbook will be signing: Saturday 12-1pm at the Mystery Mystery Bookstore booth (#411) and Sunday 11am-noon at the Borders booth (#351).

Bob Edwards talks about the press and its freedoms

If I were to pull a quote from it, I might be tempted to excerpt the whole thing. Media ownership, consolidation, Clear Channel, the rarity of press conferences by Bush, and the questions that shoulda been asked, and what in fact was asked...and what underlies it.

Okay, I couldn't *not* do an excerpt:

Now why are the tough questions not being asked? Do journalists wearing their flag lapel pins on TV not want to appear unpatriotic in time of war? The answer is yes. [...]

[T]he owners of today’s media, who are business tycoons, not journalists, would like us to be good representatives of the corporate brands. But that is not our job. We are supposed to be surrogates for the public — the eyes and ears of citizens who don’t have the access we have.

Just read it. Now.

P.O.W.: Name, rank, serial number... woops! identity theft

A reservist attorney named Reynolds (no, not that Reynolds) wrote a lengthy critique of the military code of conduct.

Captured servicemembers for decades have been giving the enemy their name, rank and serial number.

A judge advocate says the practice should be abolished because a captor can now use a prisoner’s serial number — that is, his Social Security number — against him.

...If a prisoner’s captors are computer savvy, Reynolds said, they can know a prisoner’s address and family members in less than an hour.

Problem w/ other (more popular) Iraq card deck: copyright!

In an e-mail message sent to Stripes on Monday that was followed by a telephone interview, George White, the company’s vice president for marketing, said that the images of the joker used on two cards in DIA’s decks are trademarked by Hoyle Official, a subsidiary of the United States Playing Card Co.

One of the joker cards shows Iraqi military ranks and the other shows Arab tribal titles.

And I was wondering if the Joker was a picture of The Iraqi Information Minister...

There is no copyright violation here! Not within a hundred miles of here! All our brave playing cards are slaughtering you!

Deck o cards - Iraq's most wanted (looted) treasures

Running through the suits from the deuces to the fives. Not yet a full deck. (I guess the site hasn't put out cards for the really high-ticket items.) [via boingBoing]

A Fashionable Dictionary

put together by the folks at Butterflies and Wheels, this one is a must-read. Found after googling postmodernism (have heard and seen lotsa references to post-modernism/PoMo, but WTF is it, anyhow?)

A sampling:

Assumption: Something to be examined when it is our opponent's and taken for granted when it is our own.

Difficult: Disciplines like physics, math, engineering, which is why I don't want to do them.

Human Gnome Project: Most likely something to do with genetic engineering. Probably the idea is to create a new race of tiny human beings.

Nature: A beautiful, spiritual thing, to be treated with great respect, except when we really do need to buy a Sport Utility Vehicle, but Nature will understand.

Opinion: Everything. Often confused, by prepostmodern people, with entities like truth, reality, the world. "That's just your opinion," is the approved rebuke in such cases.

Paradigm: A thing that shifts, thus proving that scientists merely make up their findings.