Metacentricities

I spent a wonderful day in the city (San Francisco) yesterday. I hung out with a new friend, we had brunch (which is, apparently, a city thing,) went shopping for leather jackets in very interesting places, and just wandered around.

I remembered how I’d been talking with friends back home (Western Massachusetts) about how I didn’t like the city aspect of the Bay Area - that was my one complaint. I’ve gotten very used to the semi-rural life of Western Mass. Watching the corn grow, week after week, driving by cows, parking a block or two away from a destination when things are very busy, running into people I knew everywhere, "rush minute" on the bridge. It all seems so mild now.

I’ve been stuck in traffic for 30 minutes plus at least twice (and I don’t drive much,) parking is a pain (like Cambridge.) I haven’t seen a corn field at all, and the last time I saw a cow, I was in Marin county. I have to lock everything, all the time. Almost everywhere is crowded. It’s a city.

But, yesterday I realized that I am in the Bay Area. I have three years to enjoy the mecca that this area is. I get to experience the plethora of good places to eat, tons of theatres that show independent movies, eclectic lesbian culture, fascinating people, and lots of interesting events.

And I’m also remembering how different urban culture is, particularly queer urban culture. I got a taste of that yesterday, and I’m not sure exactly what I think of it, but I feel like exploring it is a good thing. We’ll see how much I like it after a while.

So I’m setting aside my urban dislike for a while, and try to just enjoy being here.

technorati tags: city, sanfrancisco

I’ve been doing a little bit of playing with cool Web 2.0 tools. What is Web 2.0? That link goes to Wikipedia, which has a nice, informative entry on Web 2.0 (Wikipedia is itself an example of Web 2.0, really). Web 1.0 was static HTML pages, in the control of one person or organization, that didn’t change much. A lot of the web (and a lot of the nonprofit web) is still at 1.0. Websites that could be called a part of Web 2.0 are sites that include dynamic updating (like blogs), syndication feeds, networks and collaboration. These are the hallmarks of Web 2.0.

One of the great things about Web 2.0 is that it is finally capitalizing on web standards, particularly, RSS/Atom - the syndication standards. This allows any new content from any source to be grabbed and agregated by other sources.

So there are a bunch of tools I’ve been trying out and using, and I’m liking a lot. First, is most people are pretty familiar with, called del.icio.us. It’s a collaborative bookmarking site, and was just bought by Yahoo. If you look at my del.icio.us links, you can get an idea of why this is cool. (By the way, lately, there have been some glitches, so if it doesn’t work, check back in a bit.)

The second tool is bloglines. Bloglines is a "Feed" reader - it grabs RSS/Atom streams from blogs and other sites, and aggregates them for you. Again, if you have a look at my public bloglines, you can get the idea - it helps me keep up to date. Google has it’s own feed reader, called Google Reader. I spent a fair bit of time playing with it, and it has a nice Google look and feel (kinda like GMail) but it isn’t as good as bloglines. The interface needs some help to be as easy to use as bloglines.

The third tool is called Digg. Digg is really, really cool. Basically, someone (even you) posts a story (a link to a website, basically). Then, people read the story, and ‘digg’ it. When it reaches a certain number of diggs (mysterious #) it gets promoted to the main page. It’s a very cool way to get news and information. Primarily, this is in the realm of the technical. Another hallmark of Web 2.0 is the public sharing of what you have done, so you can see the stories I ‘dugg’.

Another tool, focused around blogs and blogging, is called Technorati. Technorati is basically a tool for finding blogs and blog entries based on particular tags.

The next tool is called Flickr. It’s a photo sharing site, where people upload photos, tag them, and share them with friends, family, or publicly. I haven’t used this tool a lot, because this blog (another Web 2.0 example) has a photo album. What I like about Flickr though, that many online albums don’t have is that you can tag photos, and also determine for each photo who can see what photos. Some of my few uploaded photos to flickr can be seen by just my family, and some by everyone. One of the hallmarks of Web 2.0 is that the more people that are involved, the better. The way flickr figures out whether or not someone is family or friend, is whether they are on my contact list. The only way to get on my contact list is to also sign up for a flickr account. This might be a hurdle not everyone is willing to jump.

Then, some newer tools are coming about to help you put all of this together. And example of this is the new SuprGlue, which I like quite a lot. There are probably other examples. Take a look at my SuprGlue page, and it will give you an idea of how it works.

It’s a nice thing that web standards are really coming of age, and allowing us to create amazing tools. I can literally feel how I’m migrating information off of my desktop, and onto the web (bookmarks, feeds, photos) so that I have access to everything, anywhere.

Things to think about: reliability (what happens if Yahoo decides, without warning, to pull the plug on del.icio.us, for example,)  security (making sure only the information I want is publicly accessible,) and necessity (does this really make my life easier, or are they just fun toys for a geek to play with?)

An old colleague who’s left the nonprofit space, but unlike me is still doing technology stuff, Andrew Gianni, has some interesting things to say about Web 2.0. I’d keep my eye on him.

technorati tags: web2.0, blogging, technology, tags, tagging, collaborative, networks

I’m back from finals craziness, and traveling east. I’m back in California, with some time on my hands, which is very nice. I’ve got a bunch of things to blog, both here, and on my ministry blog in the next few days. I’ll start with some interesting science tidbits:

• It turns out that it is possible that humans didn’t start in Africa after all. It seems that there is some evidence that humans might have started in Asia first. Looks like it will take a lot of research to figure this out.
• 2005 will last one second longer than 2004. This is because atomic clocks and the rotation of the Sun are not exactly in sync. So wait one more second before shouting Happy New Year.
• Vitamin D seems to dramatically decrease risk of some forms of cancer. Go get some.
• Europe launched Galileo, set to be a competitor to the US Military controlled GPS system. Go Europe!

As we come to the close of 2005, and reflect on what has been, at least in terms of world events, a pretty horrific year, Arianna Huffington has done us the great service of coming up with a long list of things she’d like to forget.

I’d agree completely.

Personally, it’s been an amazing year for me, and sometimes it’s hard to hold both the personal and the larger picture at the same time.

technorati tags: politics, washington, world, blogs

As you probably heard, teaching Intelligent Design in the science classroom as an alternative to evolution has been deemed unconstitutional by a US district court. The emmenently rational judge said:

Jones condemned the "breathtaking inanity" of the policy of the board, all but one of whom have now been ousted by local voters. "Any asserted secular purposes by the Board are a sham and are merely secondary to a religious objective," he said.

I hope this is going to be the end of this, but somehow, I don’t think it will be; there is something brewing in Michigan.

Until yesterday, I’d been quite taken with my newly adopted state of California. The Bay Area seems to be a fun place to live. On my trip down to Santa Barbara for Thanksgiving, I had a real appreciation for the beauty and landscape of California.

But I was surprised to learn how different it is to live in a state that executes people. When you live in Massachusetts, that’s always happening elsewhere (like Texas, for instance.) You can feel superior, talk about how your state is more enlightened. You can be engaged in the national dialogue about it, go to protests, be involved in activism, but there’s still a distance, it still happens somewhere else, not here.

Living in California is different. Tookie Willams was executed 15 miles from where I live now.

There were all sorts of things that were complex in this case, but the truth is, I don’t care. I don’t care whether he was innocent or guilty, I don’t care whether or not he has been redeemed. I think we use those arguments to try and convince people that a particular person should be given clemency. I think we let those things get in the way of the real truth: we don’t have the right to kill someone, no matter what they have done, or how they have behaved. That’s what abolition means. Whether its the severely unequal way the death penalty is given, whether it’s that sometimes innocent people will die, whether it’s the hope of rehabilitation, whatever it is, those are important arguments, I guess, but they are, in some ways, beside the point. What matters is that the death penalty is wrong, period. Even if it could be guaranteed that no innocent person was ever executed. Even if we could be completely sure it was fairly given out by race and class. Even if we would make sure not to execute people who had become model prisoners. It still would be wrong. We used to know that, a while back, but we lost our way. It’s time to find our way back.

I got this from Digg - there is a Google earth beta for OS X floating around the net. It was a pain to download, so I decided to upload it to my server, for the few of you that might actually want it. It is a very cool app, glad it’s available for OS X now!

Here’s a shot of where I’m sitting now…

And yes, I’m supposed to be studying, in case you are wondering.

technorati tags: google, web, technology, mac, osx

Finals

First, you might have noticed the blog entries have gotten a bit less frequent lately. That’s because I’m in the throes of finals. Next week is the last week of classes, and I’m completely swamped. Don’t be surprised not to see a blog entry until break.

Speaking of finals, my final project for the Art & Religion course, which has continued to be, er, a challenge for me, is up on the web. Enjoy.

Mysticism

I took a rare break last night, and went to an event at a place called Chochmat HaLev. It was a really interesting talk by a Sufi Imam and a Rabbi, about mysticism, and mystical traditions in Judaism and Islam. There was lots of food for thought, especially for me, given that I consider myself a mystic. One of the most interesting things was that they both said that mystics never stop asking the big questions.

They also talked about exoteric vs. esoteric experience, and how mystics not only must ground themselves in the exoteric experiences of their traditions (religious practice) but also find unity across traditions linking the esoteric experiences. This need to unify based on the esoteric is because we will never agree on the exoteric, which makes sense.

An interesting twist was that the Imam was a white American guy, and not born into Islamic tradition, whereas the Rabbi had been born Jewish. I wondered how that made a difference in their experience. I was reminded of Thomas Merton, who, apparently, when he was in Asia (where he died,) he wrote a letter to someone indicating that he had never really needed to leave. As someone who has chosen to return to the tradition of my birth, rather than stay in an adopted tradition, it was something I would have liked to ask. I’ve found that in some ways, I’m in the same exact place, asking lots of questions, and focusing on waking up. But in other ways, I’m in a very different place, because the exoteric has had profound influence on my esoteric experience.

I’ve talked about the idiotic antics of record companies before. There is the Sony DRM fiasco, the censoring of mashup albums, and now, they are stifling innovation by scaring software developers. The latest case is PearLyrics, that would do a web search for the currently running song in iTunes, then search the web for the lyrics, and then save the lyrics to the mp3 file. Warner music, for some really odd reason, thinks that this is a violation of copyright, and shut them down. I mean really! This is a tool that fans would use. That’s right fans. The people who buy the music in the first place.

This is all completely silly. This is a great way to get people to 1) stop buying music, and 2) make artists realize that the record companies really don’t care about them, and then start new enterprises on their own, to distribute music. In fact, some famous artists are making their own music stores, others are directly connecting with Apple to get their music on the iTunes music store, and independent online music distributors are popping up all over the place.

If record companies want to actually make it into the next decade, they’d better stop this nonsense.

As some of you might know, Firefox 1.5 is out. I love Firefox, although I have been using a browser based on firefox, called Flock, which is also pretty cool.

I found this gem on the web, care of Deb Richardson, which is one entry in a daily(!) vlog, that asks people whether they prefer IE or Firefox. It is, of course, a pretty skewed sample (she’s in a park near NYU), but still, most people she asks prefer Firefox. If you’re reading this on IE on Windows - just go get Firefox. You’ll be happier. I promise.

By the way, if you’re not sure what a vlog is (vlog is short for video weblog), my buddy Beth has been blogging about it for a while. I decided that I’m probably going to just jump right over podcasting, and go for vlogging, if I ever get beyond just being a blogger.

technorati tags: firefox, browsers, technology, vlog