Hold Your Fire

The REAL truth about goatees

Posted on February 11th, 2007 — Filed under Personal

Finally: a real, working tanning cream

Posted on January 11th, 2007 — Filed under News and Science

NPR : Experimental Lotion Could Be Secret to a Safe Tan:

Dermatologists have spent years searching for a way to help people tan without the associated health risks. Now, a lab in Boston has created mice that may hold the secret to safe tanning. The mice were coated with an experimental skin lotion which seems to protect them from developing skin cancer. If the cream works on humans, it would be the first true tan, available in a tube.

Coming from the root of a “traditional Hindu plant,” it gave the mice a pretty deep tan. I’ll keep an eye on this one.

tagged with: science
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Why We Stereotype

Posted on January 8th, 2007 — Filed under Personal

was asked recently why people make generalizations about groups of people. This particular case was in regard to theists and atheists.

Here is my perspective: by nature, humans are good pattern matchers. We learn quickly to analyze people, ideas, things and situations in order to determine whether or not they are worth further consideration (safe/dangerous, for instance).

As a result, we have an internal sorting system that quickly places things into very general boxes (theist, atheist) with a very general, lowest-common denominator description that could basically describe all the contents in each box. This description will always list towards each individual’s own biases, observations and preconceptions.

If we CHOOSE TO, we can take a further deliberate look into a particular box and sort its contents further (extremist, centrist, etc).

At each successive step, we sort things into smaller and smaller boxes, using finer and finer filters to effect the sort. At some point we might reach a point where each person, idea or situation is in it’s own individual box. At that point, we’ve reached some semblance of understanding (at least in our own mind).

The problem with this is that it takes time and thought, and in our fast-paced world, neither of these commodities is in abundance. Or at least in enough abundance to sort every single generalization we face.

So I think that the less we care about a particular topic, the more we tend to generalize (obviously). The usefulness here comes in learning to recognize that when we or others generalize, it’s probably because we don’t understand the fullness of the topic at hand.

Unrelated note: In my last entry, I talked about daily blogging. What I meant was daily writing. For the most part, I’ve kept up with that promise, but much of it isn’t appropriate for the blog. Keep watching.

tagged with: commentary
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…Wherein the Blogger Blogs about His Blog

Posted on November 3rd, 2006 — Filed under Personal

Thanks to the inspiration of a long-time and highly-productive friend, I’m returning to daily blogging. It’s really nothing more than a simple matter of priorities. In the past, it simply wasn’t worth investing the time to pump out random blatherings that no one would likely read except for me.

With a new mindset, I’m back for three useful reasons: 1) it will force me to fully flesh out new thoughts and ideas on a daily basis, 2) it will keep me writing, and 3) I welcome the inherent catharsis of putting pen to paper, fingers to keys, pixels to screen.

As I was driving to a client site today, I began to think about some of the practical realities of blogging. Do I use my public persona or go incognito? In some sense, I’m intrinsically a private person, so most of my online writings tend to have an anonymous quality to them. In many ways, I’ve compartmentalized public and private. In other ways, not so much.

I suppose a more salient question would be, “does it make a difference?” And I don’t mean that in an apathetic manner. I’m referring to this whole “web of connectedness.” Someday, Google HAL (still in beta) will know every single thing about everyone based on the ethereal connections between websites, like some massively global game of sudoku. Post a comment about the OSU Buckeyes on your stamp-collecting friend’s MySpace page and instantly it’s linked with that metal detector you bought on eBay last year. Now Google knows that you’re that guy who made the Usenet posting back in 1992 about an old pine-tree penny you found in the Maumee River, happily reporting your find to the State Archeology Bureau. Yes, yes, data mining is our friend. Now go back to sleep.

Joking aside, I really believe that one day, our net trails will be scattered all over places like Google’s cache, the Internet Wayback Machine, and the insidious Carnivore (your file soon available as a FOIA request!) for future historians and curious genealogically-oriented progeny to see what we did in our spare time. Now that should give you pause next time you visit YouTube to watch Weird Al videos (the latest of which hits a little too close to home).

But all of this raises interesting questions about the social implications of context.

Am I going to say anything that I wouldn’t want traced back to me? Yep.
My online friends almost certainly see me differently than the people I know offline. The context of our internet experience puts us in interesting social boxes in which others will recognize us instantly, but we may be only dimly aware of this ourselves. It makes for an interesting disconnect between two realities… like seeing your priest in a speedo at the YMCA. Some people know the swimmer, some people know the holy man. When the two collide, someone goes blind.
Will my musings be fodder to exclude me from some important societal role in the future? Think jobs, public office, lovely young lassies, etc.
Am I revealing myself to potential stalkers/crazy people? (And yes, I have experienced it before. Do you know what it’s like to have to leave your instant messenger in invisible mode for two years?)

Am I really all that anonymous on the internet? Not really. Google will point to my many photography books, small-scale railroading books, my recent work as a grad student at the University of Arizona, and my past work as a pastor of a church. Oh wait. Those are my nom de doppelgangers. (And with just that bit of information, Google HAL will one day be able to spit out my real name.)

I’m evaluating two different builds of WordPress (standard and MU). Once I’ve settled on one, here’s what you should expect in the next few weeks: A new design for my blog (actually, I should say, a design for my blog). RSS. Tags. Photos. Cool stuff.

What you won’t see: my very most favoritest song playing all midi-style, volume 10 the moment you arrive here. Pictures of Pomeranians. Animated images.

The real challenge? Keeping it interesting. But more importantly, if I write, will they come? I don’t really think so, but that’s not the point. It’s a private journal, left daily on a bus stop bench for passers-by to peruse if they care to.

tagged with: commentary, writing
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Vitamin C: Cancer cure?

Posted on June 19th, 2006 — Filed under News and Science

New evidence that suggests vitamin C can work like chemotherapy – only better.

Now why would anyone ignore a cancer cure that’s inexpensive, painless, readily available?

tagged with: medicine
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The Be Good Tanyas

Posted on November 20th, 2005 — Filed under Personal

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From: Peter Barney (pbarney@norden1.com)
To: The Be Good Tanyas
Subject: BGT’s newest fan
Date: Sun, 25 May 2003 03:27:01 -0400

To the Be Good Tanyas,

You must hear this a thousand times a day, but *I* need to say it: wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!

I discovered your music maybe 14 hours ago, and it has enchanted me completely. Somewhere deep in the wells of my thought, yours is the music that I had hoped for for most of my life, but didn’t quite realize that I did so. And now, when I listen, it feels that I’m visiting some distant familiar dream where music flows like rivers, and the jarring world slips away into a forgotten fog. I’m bathing in music that takes me to a place where I’ve never been, but feels so familiar that it seems I’ve been here forever, lying on a hammock under a blue sky amid knee-high golden grass.

And before I go, I must tell you this… any band that you admire and reckon to be greater than you, I’ve probably heard. But no other band that you might adore has done to me what you have done, and I thank you for it. If I should ever have children, you can be sure that their children will know your music. Thank you, and please keep it coming!

Peter
in Columbus, Ohio

From: The Be Good Tanyas
To: Peter
Subject: Re: BGT’s newest fan
Date: Sun, 25 May 2003 03:27:01 -0400

peter,
that is hands down the nicest letter we have ever received. thank you for your words and the love you send. it makes everything worthwhile to hear these things. you keep dreaming and loving. hopefully we’ll get to columbus one day.
xo
the bgts

tagged with: writing
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Electical man leaves trail of destruction

Posted on September 20th, 2005 — Filed under News and Science

Wool shirt + nylon jacket = the destructive power of Zeus.

This man built up a 40,000 volt static charge and was probably moments from exploding as he burned the floors he walked upon. Sounds like a super-villain in the making.

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Nanotube Sheets

Posted on August 19th, 2005 — Filed under News and Science

Nanotech researchers are reporting a big breakthrough. From USA Today, “Nanotube sheets” could apparently be the next “plastic.”

Able to convert electricity to light and light to electricity
Weighing only 170 pounds per square mile
Transparent and stronger than steel, yet flexible
Can be produced quickly

Is this akin to Scotty’s fictionally-famous “transparent aluminum?”

This is truly a breakthrough. I always wondered what life was like before plastics. I think we’re standing at a threshold here.

tagged with: science
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Best Quote of the Week

Posted on June 20th, 2005 — Filed under News and Science

Wildlife Crowds Around Arctic Telescope

“The secret of our universe’s beginnings was being protected by caribou and polar bears.”

As it turned out, scientists needed a rifle to coax the information from the animals.

tagged with: global warming
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Global COOLING threatens Ozone

Posted on February 3rd, 2005 — Filed under News and Science

You can’t win for losing. Get this, the record lows in the North Pole are thinning the Ozone hole. So it looks like if we stop global warming, we may all die of radiation poisoning.

CNN.com – Ozone layer over Arctic ‘thinning’ – Jan 31, 2005