Thought for the Day 4.0

Let the words of my mouth and

the meditation of my heart

Be acceptable in Your sight,

O LORD, my rock and my Redeemer.

(Psalm 19:14, NASB)

These are the words in my mouth;

these are what I chew on and pray.

Accept them when I place them

on the morning altar,

O God, my Altar-Rock,

God, Priest-of-My-Altar.

(Psalm 19:14, The Message)

Credit Where Credit Is Due

Three "service calls" in the last 24 hours, both of which were exemplary -- so hats off to . . .

AMAZON

Ordered a coffee/seed grinder recently -- stopped working on the second use. Amazon's return system is so easy. Printed out a mailing label last night, boxed it up, ready to leave for the mailman on Monday. Within a few minutes of setting up the return on their web site received a personal email from an agent explaining everything that would happen. This morning, before the mailman picked up the return package, I got an Amazon email saying my replacement item had been shipped. If Amazon can do this so efficiently, why can't everyone? Amazing. I remain an Amazon fan.

TIME WARNER CABLE

That's right -- Time Warner. It's rare that anyone has anything good to say about their cable company, including me. But my TV signal has been off-and-on fuzzy the last couple of weeks so I set up a service call. The TW technician arrived on time this morning, replaced a bunch of outdated wiring outside, fixed the problem inside, explained a bunch of stuff to me about my Internet service that was very helpful, checked my modem, download speeds, replaced an older cable connector going to my modem, was cheerful, polite, fast (but not rushed), considerate (shoe covers in the house) -- the whole deal. Time Warner got this one right. And "Billy," the technician deserves a promotion and a raise. There's still not much worth watching on TV, but at least the junk is nice and clear now.

WNCW Radio

WNCW is an NPR affiliate radio station on the campus of Isothermal Community College in Spindale, NC, that plays terrific rotations of mountain, indie, and roots music with live, knowledgeable DJs all day, with breaks for NPR news updates. A great radio station! They have a re-transmitter in north Charlotte but the signal is too weak for me to pick up in south Charlotte -- so I listen on the Internet. But their streaming Internet feed was missing Saturday so I sent an email asking "Whassup?" This morning got a nice email reply from Dave Kester, Director of Programming and Operations, explaining the outage over the weekend. Sure enough the signal is back on loud and clear this morning. Nice to get personal emails from folks in charge who have good answers. [FLASH: I just heard from Dave Kester again with news that WNCW has a new transmitter in Charlotte at 99.1 which I can pick up using an FM antenna I strung in my attic a few years ago. Woo-hoo! Thanks Dave!)

Spring Has Sprung

Signs of spring are everywhere in the yard.

Brussels sprouts budding:

New avocado tree leaves:

Baby blueberries:

Buckwheat flowers:

A friendly wasp:

Giving me the stink-eye:

New leaves warming in the sun:

Pretty holly:

Going-to-seed Swiss chard flowers trying to bloom:

Invasion of the Caterpillars

I've been on the watch for the white butterflies (moths?) that appear every summer to lay single white eggs on the underside (usually) of Brassica food plants (broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, etc.). Wikipedia calls them "Small White" butterflies -- though this picture isn't as bright white as the females I see here in North Carolina: (both the following pics from Wikimedia Commons)

This is the caterpillar that hatches from the egg -- up to an inch long. They can shred a plant:

Since I've been seeing the butterflies circling around my Brussels sprouts (and found the single white egg left where I saw one perched on the underside of a leaf), I've been watching for the caterpillars. This was the first one I found two days later:

So I immediately fired up the BioMister and soaked the six plants with BT (bacillus thuringiensis), an organic bacterium that the worms ingest from eating the plants. The bacterium shuts down their appetite (basically) and they expire in a couple days. BT is harmless to humans, animal life, and the environment.

Reading and Writing

Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing:

It is a general observation that people write as they read. As a
rule, careful writers are careful readers and vice versa. A careful
writer wants to be read carefully. He cannot know what it means to
be read carefully but by having done careful reading himself.
Reading precedes writing. We read before we write. We learn to
write by reading. A man learns to write well by reading well good
books, by reading most carefully books which are most carefully
written. (Quoted from Edwin Curley, Behind the Geometrical Method:
A Reading of Spinoza's Ethics, Princeton University Press, 1988,
p. ii.)

"We learn to write by reading." This is why reading good books is
essential to becoming a good writer.

Copied and posted from MaverickPhilosopher.com, a blog recommended by my son, Daniel.

Prepare to Be Moved

A few weeks ago I posted a video of a group of singers around the world performing Sophie Madeleine's song, "You Are My Favorite." It was cool -- but not as cool as what's below. Don't let the length of the videos dissuade you; this is well worth the time invested. If you haven't seen the "Sophie" video you might want to watch it first in order to appreciate the enormous scale you'll see in the second video below.

I realize this music may not appeal to everyone. Rather, I'm posting these videos as further examples of the never-ending expansion of creativity of which human beings are capable -- here related to the arts (music and visual) and technology. The TED conferences serve as amazing symposia in which talented, creative, and inquisitive people can sharpen and stimulate one another by sharing, affirmation, and enjoyment.

First, watch this for background (14+ minutes):

Then this (9+") (go to 720p and full screen if you can):

Longing to Be Ruled

Yes, I rose at 5:00 a.m. last Friday to watch the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge marry in Westminster Abbey. I admit to being a sucker for pageantry and nobody does it better than the British. Why did an estimated two billion people worldwide, including 23 million Americans, tune in to watch the ceremony and pageantry? It's an interesting question. In America, we call ourselves proud to have jettisoned the baggage of royalty in the 18th century, yet we are still fascinated by the "royals." For me, it may be the English genes my maternal grandfather passed down to me, but I think there's another reason why I -- and people in general -- are attracted to "kings and queens." It goes beyond the fairy tale bit, I think. Yes, they are beautiful (at least these two) and rich and live in castles and palaces. But I think there's something else happening besides envy.

I think human beings have a longing to be ruled. After all, the Bible says we were created as subjects of God -- a royal relationship that mankind threw off by choice. And perhaps we give our emotions to earthly kings in a misdirected attempt to find our created place as subjects of a true king. Again, in America we set aside royalty because the examples of the day -- the British kings -- were not good models. And yet, in establishing our tripartite government we reflected the three dimensions of God's kingly rule:

For the Lord is our judge (judicial branch),

the Lord is our lawgiver (legislative branch),

the Lord is our king (executive branch);

it is he who will save us.

(Isaiah 33:22)

Deep down, we know we need saving. And we know that is a king's business. So even though America is a republic and not a monarchy, we still long for a leader to save us. I remember the emotion I felt when watching the funeral of Ronald Reagan -- maybe the closest thing we've had to a "good king" in the modern American era (in spite of his imperfections).

So when Prince William and Princess Catherine open the balcony doors on the second floor of Buckingham Palace and appeared to the hundreds of thousands who stood below, looking up endearingly at them, cheering at the tops of their lungs, it was like a fresh opportunity for the British people, and many more around the world, to feel something that is likely undefinable to most: the longing to look up to someone who is bigger and better than we are.

Of course, that is an unreasonable expectation to project onto a couple of twenty-somethings who stand on the same clay feet as do the rest of us. Though they will likely sit on the thrones of England one day, their ceremonial-only positions will have little impact on the world. But when we see royalty taking their rightful place, it ought to remind us that we were created to be loyal subjects. The real question is, Subjects of whom? Certainly not of any earthly king. Palaces, royal colors and guards, and earthly wealth cannot fill the heart of commoners like us. They can only remind us that a true king is coming -- Jesus, the King of kings -- in whom our longings for submission will finally be realized; by whom we will ultimately be saved as we bow in submission to Him.

For now, royal reminders like the wedding of William and Catherine have their place -- earthly shadows of an eternal reality.

Brussels Sprouts

I planted six Brussels sprouts plants and five of the six have done beautifully. Isn't that interesting that one of the six has hardly budged?

These plants have grown remarkably. I hope they produce fruit in keeping with their foliage size:

I put a tray of wheatgrass in the dirt and it has begun to produce heads of berries:

These are two Swiss chard plants that were planted last summer. They survived through the winter but this spring promptly bolted and are going to seed. The one is nearly six feet tall. I decided to let them go to see what the flower/seed production looks like:

Spring Water

Went to Cold Spring outside Concord, NC, after church to fetch spring water. Was sad to see two gigantic trees that stood in back of the church now in pieces. I don't know if recent storms brought them down -- I didn't see evidence of them being uprooted or "broken." Looks like they were both just cut down. Would love to have the wood -- would love to have a wood-burning fireplace.

Lots of years represented by these rings:

I love the coolness and quiet of the little grotto where the spring is located. This is standing by the spring looking up:

Filling five-gallon bottles:

Water weighs eight pounds per gallon, so each five-gallon jug weighs 40 pounds, or two equals 80 pounds. Good resistance training for the bones. No wonder our ancestors rarely had osteoporosis:

What a treasure this spring is -- it's been running steady since the early 1800's (the earliest records) and I assume long before then.

Thought For the Day 3.0

“All that is thought should not be said, all that is said should not be written, all that is written should not be published, all that is published should not be read.”

- Rabbi Menachem Mendel Morgenstern of Tomashov (The Kotzker Rebbe)

See also 1 Corinthians 10:23: "'Everything is permissible'—but not everything is beneficial. 'Everything is permissible'—but not everything is constructive."

Diigolet

Because I do so much reading on the Internet, I have long wished there was a way to highlight paragraphs in long pieces on a web page -- like using a highlighter pen when reading a book or article in hard copy -- so I could come back and find them again . My wish was granted with Diigolet -- a simple browser extension that works beautifully. It does more than I need (like bookmarking, sticky notes added to the web page, etc.), but what I do need -- highlighting -- it does beautifully. It even holds the highlighting/sticky notes if you navigate away from the page, then return to the highlighted page. I think it even holds the highlighting if you quit the browser, then return to a highlighted page later and click on the Diggolet button in the browser tool bar. (Can't risk that at the moment -- I'll try it later!) For anyone who is tempted to pick up a felt-tip highlighter and draw pink or yellow lines across your computer screen, install Diigolet instead.

Here's a quick screen shot of highlighting in two colors and a sticky note:

Westminster Abbey

A few huge, beautiful pics of the interior of Westminster Abbey on the day of the royal wedding. What a gorgeous setting.

Thought for the Day 2.0

Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. "I write only when inspiration strikes," he replied. "Fortunately it strikes ever morning at nine o'clock sharp."

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle

Grief

Read the story here.

Thought for the Day 1.0

If tomorrow morning by some stroke of magic every dazed and benighted soul woke up with the power to take the first step toward pursuing his or her dreams, every shrink in the directory would be out of business. Prisons would stand empty. The alcohol and tobacco industries would collapse, along with the junk food, cosmetic surgery, and infotainment businesses, not to mention pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and the medical profession from top to bottom. Domestic abuse would become extinct. as would addiction, obesity, migraine headaches, road rage, and dandruff.

—Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle

BikeShare—Hopefully Coming to Every City

The largest metro BikeShare program is in Paris, but a similar program has been implemented successfully in Washington, D.C. Read the full article here.

He Is Risen!

How Great

Undoubtedly the highlight of the Academy of Country Music "Girls' Night Out" concert: Vince Gill and Carrie Underwood. Matching what may be the purest voice in country music with a guitar virtuoso and singer like Vince Gill is quite a combination.

(My old computer wouldn't have been able to keep up, but if you have one that can . . . choose 1080p in the resolution selector in the lower right, and full screen for a knock-out version of this song.)

And purely in the interest of passionate performing, I'm adding this duet by Ronnie Dunn and Jennifer Nettles—I don't think there are two singers anywhere that make you believe they are singing something that's painfully true more than these two. Until I checked, I didn't realize this song was written by the amazing Patty Griffin -- on her A Kiss in Time album.

Scary

Does this guy remind you of somebody you know? Not likely. He's (it's) a robot created at National Taiwan University. I wonder if, one day, it will be hard to tell the living from the non-living.

Uh, I Have to Be Going Now

Hmmm—Vine Ripe Tomatoes

I snagged this picture from an Atlantic article on migrant workers unions in Florida, etc. (Lost the link to the article and couldn't find it searching Atlantic's site.) I'm only posting it because it's a great illustration of modern commercial agriculture: picking tomatoes when they're green and rock hard, then gassing them, etc., to bring them to maturity when it's time to sell them. If you look on some of the leaves, you can see white residue from some sort of spray. Toxic? Non-toxic? I don't know. But the whole picture is very unappealing. Compare that picture with a bright red organic tomato at a farmer's market picked red off the vine the day before. Or better yet, one pulled five minutes before you slice it, picked from a tomato plant in your own yard.

How Is This Different from a Laptop?

I'm on record as saying that the laptop's days are numbered; that the "pad" computer will replace the ubiquitous lapper. (Not soon, obviously, but eventually.)

And maybe not as soon as anybody thinks given this iPad ad. It's for a device that does three things: provides a keyboard for the iPad; holds the iPad upright for typing; provides a protective cover for the iPad. Hey -- how is that different from a laptop?!

Okay -- I get how the iPad is different. I just found it amusing that folks are buying iPads and also devices that turn their iPads back into the laptop they used to use.

Meaning Through Music

Paul Simon's new album, So Beautiful or So What? received a 5-of-5 stars review from Christianity Today. In fact, there are so many references to God and spirituality in the songs that, in a video about the album, Simon says Paul McCartney came backstage after hearing the songs at a concert and asked Simon, "Aren't you Jewish?" There have always been a lot of references to God in Simon's songs, as well as Sting's. In neither case do I know what that means to them personally.

Moby has always been identified as a "Christian" of some sort, and this song ("The Day") from his new album (Destroyed) supports that contention—about the victory of good over evil.

The music video:

Moby explaining more about the making and meaning of the song:

The 12 Worst Cars on the Road

Forbes.com has a survey of the "12 worst cars on the road" drawn from a number of performance-reliability studies. Might'ave known -- the car I've been thinking about the last couple years -- the Jeep Wrangler Unlimited (pictured) -- is on the list. Oh well -- good reason not to spend money.

Related articles, courtesy of Zemanta:

• •2011 Jeep Wrangler
• •Project Kahn's silver Jeep Wrangler looks ready for urban assault, not much else
• •Report: China suspends Jeep Wrangler importation over safety concerns

Beauty and the Beast

Pros call the Paris-Roubaix six-hour bike race "The Hell of the North" because of its bone-rattling, filling-loosening ride over cobblestones. This gorgeous video was shot on a 4,000-frames-per-second camera allowing for high-def slow-motion that is starkly beautiful. If there's a way to find beauty in the belly of a beast, this is it: (read the full account of the video here)

Beautiful Signs of Spring

Gorgeous photos of spring unfolding all over the world. 

Saying the Same, Only Better

(Thanks to Robert in Atlanta for this link.)

Back Porch Groove Music

I don't know of these artists -- Raphael Saadiq (and here) and his ax-man, Rob "Fonksta" Bacon -- but I've rarely heard two guys produce this kind of groove with just two guitars. And it's mainly Rob Bacon -- the amount of music he produces from his Taylor guitar is astounding -- and so effortless. Shot at NPR headquarters, I take it -- cool setting for a concert. Gotta love the Blues Brothers look -- black suits, sunglasses. I also love that he had to ask the [I'm guessing mostly-white] NPR staff-audience to clap along. Just sayin' . . . :-) But thanks to NPR for making this available! (I would not have been able to watch this at 480p, full-screen on my old computer. But now that I can -- wow -- like watching a concert on DVD. NPR shot this beautifully.)

My Favorite Video

This is one of the coolest music videos I've seen: singer-songwriter-ukulelist (yay, ukes) Sophie Madeleine starts to sing one of her amazing songs and is "joined" by fans doing their own version of her song. Very cool -- and great song! Every time I watch this I see new things. People are so funny!

A Little Embarrassing

This is a great exercise in Middle East geo-politics. An interactive exercise in identifying the countries most in the news of late. There were quite a few (all the "-stans") I couldn't place.

Is This a Good Idea?

A new iPhone (and soon Android) app will soon allow hundreds of your "closest friends" (whether you know them or not) to see any photos and videos you take with your phone.

The app is called Color and works like this: As soon as you open the app, you'll start receiving on your phone photos and videos of other Color users within 150 feet of where you are -- in a crowded bar, for instance, where you're looking to meet people. You can annotate a comment to someone's photo and use it as an intro to a conversation, etc.

The app was created by a smart tech guy with a couple other very successful startups under his belt (one purchased by Apple, the music service LaLa), and he's received big-time venture capital support as if this is going to be the next new social networking phenom.

Of course, you don't have to turn Color on -- then no one can see your pics/videos and you can't see those of other Color uses. But how many people are going to resist? The same number who resist looking at train wrecks, is my guess.

Poor Old Dirt Farmer

Fans of The Band will recognize Levon Helm's name; others, his voice if not his name. He was the drummer for the group and sang the lead vocals on many of their best-known songs: "The Weight," "Up on Cripple Creek," and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." His voice has changed now due to age and a near-fatal bout with throat cancer. In 2007 he released a Grammy-winning solo album, Dirt Farmer, and the video below is from the title track. This video -- the life and the people and the musicians -- are what keeps the dream of rural living alive in my heart. Here's hoping Levon Helm keeps livin', drummin', and singin'.

Mac Mechanics

Our lives have become so entangled with computers -- in more ways than one:

My current Mac -- a G5 PowerPC tower -- has been pulling steadily for me since 2003 but has been showing its age the last year or two. Primarily, its chipset (PowerPC) won't run the latest version of the Mac OS (Snow Leopard), and its 1.8 ghz processor and eight-year-old graphics card (driving two 21" monitors) often labor to process the increasingly large (HD) streaming video off the web. So I decided it was time to upgrade. (Hey, it's a business deduction.)

After no small amount of research I opted for the latest Mac Mini. It's just the "computer" -- no monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc. -- which is all I need. It comes with a 2.66 ghz processor, a way faster graphics card, two gigs of RAM, and a 500 gig drive (5,400 rpm -- why doesn't Apple offer a 7,200 rpm drive?). To upgrade the Mini, I ordered eight gigs of RAM (4 gig chips x 2) and a faster (7,200 rpm) 500 gig drive to replace the drive that comes in the Mini. (I ordered these parts from Other World Computing from whom I've bought Mac stuff over the years -- highly recommended -- except for -- see below.)

Swapping out RAM (taking out the two one-gig chips and replacing them with the two 4-gig chips) is easy enough. But changing out the hard drive is probably above my pay grade. Fortunately, OWC has excellent step-by-step videos on their web site for how to do everything. The video for swapping out my hard drive said the job was "four out of four" on the difficulty scale -- rated "Challenging." But the video is really clear, so I decided to tackle it myself. (The video said "30 minutes," but I spent two hours. Story of my life.)

Macs seem to be as beautifully designed on the inside as on the outside. Amazing that just a few weeks ago the deft hands of several Chinese assemblymen/women put this little marvel together. (Wired magazine recently did an article on the massive Foxconn factory in China where Apple, and other, products are assembled. It's like a small city, complete with workers taking their own lives -- 17 of the one million workers last year. If folks spend all their waking hours doing what I did for two hours, one can see how the frustration could mount.)

With the bottom cover of the Mini removed. The hard drive sits under the grill in the top of the photo; the round black circle is the Wi-Fi antenna; I had already removed the two RAM chips from the rectangular slots on the right side. Not a centimeter of wasted space:

I would take pics along the way to make sure I remembered how things fit -- in this case, the antenna wire going underneath the cowling when reconnected and reinstalled:

After doing this for a while, I grabbed my box set of McGuffey's Readers to set the Mini on. The magnifiers I'm wearing have a focal length of about six inches, so you have to be right down on the subject. Raising the Mini up off the desk provided needed relief:

This is why I took pictures -- so I'd know where to reconnect these and other plugs:

I also wrote down the steps as they appeared on the video and taped the pieces and parts -- and the TINY screws -- next to each step -- then worked backward to reassemble everything (the video, of course, goes through reassembly as well):

The hard drive itself after being removed -- I remember when 20 megabyte drives looked like a brick. Now you get 500 gigabyte drives the size of an old 3.5" floppy:

With the new drive and new RAM installed, and no leftover parts, it was time to format the new drive and install the Mac OS. Then, connect to the router and download lots of software updates from Apple -- without a hitch. Amazing:

When I bought the faster hard drive from OWC, that meant I would have the original hard drive left over. So I bought a drive enclosure from them and turned the original Mini hard drive into a 500-gig external drive to use for backups, etc. Very nice -- draws power from the USB connection so it powers on and off with the computer. Is completely portable -- toss it in a briefcase and go:

The Mini and new external HD are now connected to one of my two monitors, with its own keyboard and mouse. The next challenge will be move all my existing files and apps from the old Mac to the Mini, done my connecting the two Macs with a Firewire 800 cable and using Apple's Migration Assistant utility program -- with fingers crossed:

Everything went slowly, but smoothly. My only complaint was the toolkit I bought from OWC with Torx screw drivers (five-pointed male and female instead of slots or Phillips), tweezers (invaluable, though the guy on the video didn't need them!), and nylon pry tools. The tips of the Torx drivers are too soft -- one didn't fit at all, another's points wore down quickly. I had a great set of mini-drivers, for fixing computers, etc., that I had bought from ifixit.com, a number of months ago, and that set contained all the right sizes of Torx drivers I needed -- hard tips, magnetized -- great tools. (ifixit.com is an amazing how-to site for fixing tech stuff.)

I have no idea where I would have had this work done. I figured if I was going to void the Apple warranty by replacing factory parts, I might as well void it myself instead of paying somebody else to do it. So far, so good.

And the new Mini, compared to the old G5, is WAY fast -- especially streaming off the web. Things will slow down after I move everything onto the new drive from the old computer. But right now, it's a poppin' machine.

"Diligent Efficiency"

The NBC Nightly News tonight had a brief report on a stretch of highway in Japan severely damaged in the earthquake:

The news said it was repaired in three days -- other news sources I read online said six days:

Note the power line tower and green sign in the before and after photos for verification. This is the same stretch of road. Whether it was three days or six days -- or 16 days -- can you believe the "diligent efficiency" that restored this road in such a short time? And can you imagine how long it might have taken in the U.S. to accomplish the same thing? Brian Williams on the NBC news show told New York City residents to take notice regarding the potholes that have been in their streets for ages: "It doesn't have to be that way."

Full disclosure: This stretch of highway in Japan is managed by a private company. Perhaps that's the reason it was repaired so quickly. If so, it's another argument for governments outsourcing these kinds of jobs to private enterprise. Governments have no incentive to hurry since they are paying themselves. Private companies, on the other hand, move quickly since they are there to make money. Why don't we do this?

On the other hand, I'm impressed with the efficiency and care displayed by the U.S. military folks who are doing so much to distribute relief supplies to Japanese villages cut off by the quake. On the same newscast there was a report on a military helicopter taking supplies to a village that had received very little support since the earthquake. In spite of their need and the freezing cold, the Japanese residents, instead of mobbing the helicopter like we see in so many other relief situations, formed an orderly line -- a "bucket brigade" -- to unload the supplies from the helicopter. Then a handshake and a bow from one of the Japanese men to the military officer as the chopper prepared to leave.

There's been much in the news about the lack of looting and the quiet dignity with which the Japanese have gone about responding to such a terrible tragedy. Such reports leave me impressed.

Creative Creatures

Quinoa Quandry

Great New York Times article on the surge in popularity of quinoa (keen-wah). Demand is helping raise living standards for Andean farmers in South America but it has put the lowly grain out of the reach of people for whom it has been a staple for centuries.

Possible ≠ Necessary

In this short video interview, novelist Jonathan Safron Foer, author of Eating Animals, talks about food choices while walking through a market in Israel. He is one of the few people I've ever heard raise the argument that just because something is likable or possible, that doesn't mean we should do it. That is, just because meat tastes good is not a reason to kill animals to get it. This is an argument food writer Michael Pollan needs to hear -- he says he eats meat because he likes it.

This argument for self-limiting was voiced in a different context 1,900+ years ago by the apostle Paul: "Everything is permissible—but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible—but not everything is constructive" (1 Corinthians 10:23).