Wallpaper that updates with an photorealistic image of the Earth as it would be seen from space at that precise moment!
Topic: Review
http://codefromthe70s.org/desktopearth_dl.asp

This is the illest killer app for desktops ever if you use Windows ("All hail Lord Gates, Prince of Darkness, Destroyer of Worlds"). At night you can see the continents light up with cities picked out in gold on an indigo blue night.

"Desktop Earth is a wallpaper generator for Windows. It runs whenever you're logged on and updates your wallpaper with an accurate representation of the Earth as it would be seen from space at that precise moment."

Taiwan to China: "Take your pandas and shove it."
Topic: Opinion
Trojan Panda Saga continues.

First, there was this story:

Panda Politics: A pair of the world's most adorable animals has unwittingly been thrown into the long-running conflict between China and Taiwan. Jan. 10 2006 Newsweek

A photoshop of a Trojan Panda naturally must be created (by yours truly of course):

A month later:

China warns Taiwan against independence "The leader of the Taiwan authorities directly provoked the one-China principle and seriously undermined peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. His moves are extremely adventurous, dangerous and deceptive. We are now closely following the ongoing developments and are fully prepared for all eventualities." March 14 2006

Oh SNAP!

Trojan Panda: "I told you I was hard-core!"

And yesterday:

Taiwan to China: "Take your pandas and shove it." Not the actual exact words per se, but close enough in meaning: "'At the current stage we cannot issue an import permit for the two pandas offered by China,' said Lee Tao-shen, vice director of the Forestry Bureau which was in charge of evaluating the panda offer." AFP March 31 2006

Happy Moments
Topic: Personal
A finch, perched on the railing of the fire escape of my very old office building, singing his heart out, curls of steam rising from his beak in the morning air over the city;

Stepping off the Trolley and looking up over my apartment building, seeing a Cheshire Cat smile of a waxing moon in an indigo sky;

Using algebra to solve a problem at work;

Snagging a fantastic pearl and silver necklace in an on-line jewelry auction for $22 (score!);

The potter who made my blue rabbit teapot also made me some teacups to match;

Watching the sky over the Coronado Bridge turn pink at sunset.

Caffein Inhaler ( I hope they're kidding )
Topic: Review
http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/buzzaire.shtml

Buzzaire is, quite simply, a caffeine inhaler. One squeeze, one inhale, and you've just rushed 150mg of caffeine into your blood stream. Mints or drinks have to go through your digestive tract first before partying in your blood (or through your skin, in the case of caffeinated soap). But the lung/blood barrier is the fastest way (other than injection or IV) to get caffeine into your system. Not only will you get one heck of a rush, but you'll also freshen your breath! A hint of peppermint oil in each puff will give you a little extra perk with its peppy zing. Buzzaire can beat up your air!

From ThinkGeek.com

Make Your Own SUV Ad
Topic: Fun
Chevy asked people to 'make their own' ads for GM's gas-guzzling Tahoe SUV... What could possibly go wrong?

They ended up with ads that link SUVs with environmental degradation and destruction of the world. Go see them before Chevy yanks them off the website.

http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/50539

Baby Blues
Topic: Personal
I went to see a girlfriend from work who just had her first baby, and I got nailed by the baby while holding her - actually had to borrow a clean shirt from Marissa to change into so I can drive home. Poor Marissa, she is so completely stressed out - I'm a little concerned about post-partum depression for her. As soon as I walked in she told me how the baby cried all day and so she cried all day too - "I felt like the worst mother in the whole world!" A true friend, I looked at her and said, "Surely not the whole world... Spring Valley, maybe." Of course this made her laugh so it stopped the tears at least.

She is so ready to come back to work after only 6 weeks out on Maternity. I think I would be like that too if I had a baby - I mean, I complain about my job, but like Marissa said, she totally misses adult conversations and grown-up thoughts. We may work with people who act like babies, but at least we don't have to change their diapers.

Oh, this is funny - while I was holding the baby so her mother can go get a bottle, the kid pressed her face into my breast and started - I swear - to look for a snack. I was like, "Sorry little dudette, nothing there yet!" At which point she let fly down my blouse. Marissa was horrified, but I really didn't mind all that much - "Oh well, I knew one of my friends' kids would ruin one of my shirts one day...".

Books That Changed the World
Topic: Review
The Sunday Times - Review March 19, 2006

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2092174,00.html


by Melvyn Bragg

...for those of us who love to read, the idea that a book can have an influence is not news. Our perceptions have been shaped through books, our store of information heaped up, our tastes extended, perhaps refined, our sense of humour tickled, our sense of well-being restored or reinforced; we have been excited, alerted, moved, consoled, felt less alone, even felt morally improved and inspired; at least for a while. We know that books can change us as individuals.

...What I wanted the books on my list to have in common was that they changed the world to that in which we now live. They could be reduced to plausible snapshots. You could walk into a pub or an airport, go on an outing or just stay in your house, and be aware of what these books had delivered to the lives you daily led and saw.

Newton took us to the moon; Faraday gave us electricity; Darwin took away God and the gods who had been there since civilisation began; Mary Wollstonecraft started the struggle for the equality of women and Marie Stopes for their right to control and enjoy their sex and family lives.

After Wilberforce the equality of the races was on the march and Magna Carta is the keystone of opposition to the exercise of tyrannic power. Our markets operate through the laws of Adam Smith, our imaginations are most exercised by Shakespeare, our work organised by Arkwright, our language and religious thought by the King James Bible and our world-dominating sport by the FA Book of Rules.

It seems to me all but miraculous that amid the tumult of events and the melee of competing dramas, despite the uproars of wars and politics and all the bombast of the daily news, these British voices began, all of them, with the quiet strokes of a quill or a pen and were formed in seclusion to be sent out into the world, where a fuse was lit. There then followed a conceptual chain reaction, sometimes of awesome proportions, which changed the way all of us lead and experience our lives.

Melvyn Bragg 2006 Extracted from Twelve Books that Changed the World, by Melvyn Bragg, to be published on April 10 by Hodder & Stoughton at ?20. Copies can be ordered for ?17.99 including postage from The Sunday Times BooksFirst on 0870 165 8585. ITV series begins on April 16

TWELVE BOOKS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

Principia Mathematica (1687) by Isaac Newton

Married Love (1918) by Marie Stopes

Magna Carta (1215) by members of the English ruling classes

Book of Rules of Association Football (1863) by a group of former English public-school men

On the Origin of Species (1859) by Charles Darwin

On the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1789) by William Wilberforce in Parliament, immediately printed in several versions

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) by Mary Wollstonecraft

Experimental Researches in Electricity (three volumes, 1839, 1844, 1855) by Michael Faraday

Patent Specification for Arkwright's Spinning Machine (1769) by Richard Arkwright

The King James Bible (1611) by William Tyndale and 54 scholars appointed by the king

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) by Adam Smith

The First Folio (1623) by William Shakespeare

Books to Read Before You Die
Topic: Review
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1721526,00.html

Harper Lee tops librarians' must-read list

MIchelle Pauli
Thursday March 2, 2006

It was published over 40 years ago and its American author has lived as a virtual recluse ever since, but according to Britain's librarians, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mocking Bird is the book that everyone should read.

The Pulitzer prize-winning classic has topped a World Book Day poll conducted by the Museum, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), in which librarians around the country were asked the question, "Which book should every adult read before they die?"

According to Diana Ashcroft, one of the librarians who voted for the book, it "has all the factors of a great read. It is touching and funny but has a serious message about prejudice, fighting for justice and coming of age."

To Kill a Mocking Bird heads an odd triumvirate at the top of the librarians' list: it is followed by the Bible and, in third place, the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Further down the rankings, a mixture of classics and popular contemporary titles feature. Dickens and Austen both appear in the top 10, along with Philip Pullman's His Dark Material trilogy and Sebastian Faulks' first world war novel, Birdsong. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold and The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger - both favourites of Richard and Judy's Book Club - also find a place in the top 30, alongside more established classics such as A Clockwork Orange and the Lord of the Flies.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Bible
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
1984 by George Orwell
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
All Quite on the Western Front by E M Remarque
His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
Tess of the D'urbevilles by Thomas Hardy
Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn

Hamas Ready to Present New Government...
Topic: Opinion
...Confirmation hearings soon to begin for new head of Department of Self-Detonation.

I'm kidding, of course. Mahmoud Zahar of Hamas (see article) is ready to burst onto the new political scene! Or maybe he meant to burst all over the political scene; the translation may have been unclear.

Seriously though - how in the world did Hamas win control (not 'seize' control, as one might have imagined as a more probable method for this group) of the Palestinian government? Even they themselves seem surprsied. I had this one filed under "Unlikely" before the election but have now moved it into my "I Hope Someone's Keeping An Eye On This" file.

http://www.forbes.com/business/energy/feeds/ap/2006/03/18/ap2604681.html

Topic: Personal
I spent all of Friday evening working as the official photographer at the Santee Father-Daughter Dance; I got sucked into it by a friend who's one of the organizers, and I had to ask Kathie, "Why do you want me there? I don't have a daughter, I'm not going to the dance with my dad, and I don't even live in Santee!" Apparently, no one else, even Kathie's husband who works in the video production profession, was willing to sit under a roasting light with a camera en tripod and take 300 pictures of 150 girls and their fathers. Well, if I have to work an event, I much rather be the photographer than the food-server or ticket-taker.

It was still quite a lot of work, and after the final photo I asked Kathie "Am I done shouting '1-2-3-smile!' for the night?" Her husband said "I think you're done for the year!" They're pretty funny. At one point Kathie pointed out me and another volunteer, a Chinese girl name Melissa, "Wow, there's two Asians in Santee tonight!" I said, "That's two more than usual!" Santee having a reputation of being a bit of a white-bread red-neck town. Some of the more unkind San Diegans are wont to refer to Santee as Klantee. It's not really like that, but you see why we're making fun.

The post-production was even more work... I had to examine all 300 photos and adjust color/lighting, doing away with red-eye, and airbrushing away the acne on the teenage girls. The crowd was pretty interesting - the girls are K-8, so from the age of about 6 to about 14. Most of them are there with their fathers, and it was really cute to watch these men with their little darlings. However, family structures having changed as they have, there were a few grandfathers, uncles, stepdads and adopted dads. This event is a pretty interesting microcosm of a changing society and the way men interact with their children. One of the volunteers, working the photo table where they get organized before being sent to my camera corner, swears that some of the fathers has had a few before coming to the dance. [Hey, if you were to spend the evening with 150 screaming girls and forced to wear a giant straw hat throughout, wouldn't you want to have a beer before getting there?]

It's plain to see that some of the men have a better connection with their daughters than others - most of the girls are more than happy to sit down on their father's lap and throw their arms around him. One man was there with his five (5!) adopted daughters and it heartened me to see how lavishly he loved them and how they absolutely adored him. Some are not so much - either the men simply do not have a good relationship with their daughter, or in the case of at least one pairing, was simply Mommy's New Boyfriend. At least most of these girls have some kind of man in their lives - last year one of the girls showed up with her older brother, who was no more than 16. That just broke my heart - first for the girl, who at age 12 have no adult male role model in her life, and then for the boy, who must be under so much pressure at 16 to be the man of the family.

As the night closed, Kathie said, "Lori will send you a cheque for tonight" which stopped me dead in the midst of packing away my gear:
"I didn't know I was being paid for this, I thought I was volunteering?"
"Oh no, we're going to pay you like we pay any other photographer."
"Damn, if I knew this was paid work, I would have done a better job."
"If it makes you feel any better, we're not paying you nearly as much as we would a real photographer."
"Oh, that's alright then. Before the Asians leave Santee, is there any math or kung-fu you need to have done?"
"Nah, only some driving, but we know not to ask you to do that!"