Metacentricities

Some of you know that I am most likely moving back to Western Massachusetts at the beginning of next year. I do like California, but W. Mass very much feels like my home, and I’d wanted to return. There is a way that the landscape enriches me, and enfolds me, that I haven’t found anywhere else. Thankfully, Ruth is willing, able, and interested to move. So that is the plan.

We just spent the last few days here in W. Mass house hunting. We spent two days driving around, looking at a lot of places, from New Salem to Chester, and almost every town in between. Some we just drove by, and could tell we wouldn’t want to live there. Others we got out of the car, walked around, and tried to feel how the setting and the house felt - to see whether it was possible to imagine living in that place.

Today, we went to four houses that were on the top of our list - to look at the inside, talk with the realtor (who has done a real yeoman’s job for us) get a better feeling for the houses, and what they are like. One was a sort-of in-town rather ordinary house, on a quiet street (next to a very un-ordinary contemporary house) that had a nice view. One was an apple farm with a completely stunning view in a far away town, that would be a huge project. One was probably one of the strangest houses that exist (the story behind the house was rather interesting.) And one was an unusual converted mill in a sweet setting next to a rushing stream.

One of the things we’ve been talking about is how this process is, at some level, not at all about any of the houses, or one particular house. It’s not about how many bedrooms they have, or how big or small they are, or what kind of heating system they have. Or, really, how much they cost. It’s about our own understandings about home, the things we attach to it (or have been attached to it by our pasts) our own graspings and aversions, our sets of motivations and reasonings and questions about the lives we want to lead.

I’m reminded of a friend of mine who moved to New Mexico, to work with some folks who see building houses as a spiritual practice, because of all of the things that get brought up in the process - things that, in the end, aren’t about the house at all. This is the same - finding a house has been, for us, a spiritual practice and teacher, because of all that it has brought to the forefront.

We both have the extraordinary gift of being able to live basically anywhere. It is both a gift, and a burden sometimes - it leads to so many possible options (except McMansions in housing developments.) But we also have ideas and dreams about community, and being of service, and those are very important to us. We haven’t made a final decision yet, and if we don’t, we’ll rent a house for a while. But the process has been illuminating, sometimes stressful, often enjoyable, always deep, and quite educational. And truly full and rich. I’ll keep you posted.

With just two weeks to go in this mid-term election season, and with things happening fast and furious, I figured it was a good time to catch people up on what’s being talked about, and where things might be going. It’s going to be an interesting couple of weeks, for sure.

• The Chicago voter database was hacked by a nonprofit that was trying to prove a point. And there are ongoing questions about electronic voting machines. Why haven’t they been eliminated yet?
• If you haven’t heard the whole brouhaha about David Kuo, the guy who used to work in Bush’s Faith-based initiatives office, here’s a good review of his book, and the issues surrounding it.
• Here’s how the elections stand right now. It’s looking good.
• Independent voters are going Democratic, big time.
• Looking to 2008, Barak Obama is thinking of running for Prez. He seems very thoughtful.

There is a great set of YouTube videos on Kos today, which are a takeoff of the Apple ads. They are cute, and fun. Just in time for the elections.

So, Scott has some good answers to the question I posted last. He then goes on to ask what kinds of laptops could possibly be used. This is my answer: it depends. Does the minister just want a way to write sermons on the beach? Then, a simple laptop, with a single USB port for a thumb drive that can then be plugged into an office PC for printing would be all that you’d need. An old one would work fine.

Also, one of the great things about Linux is that the older the equipment, the more likely it is to work. Not the reverse. The longer a piece of hardware has been in circulation, the more chance it is that some poor sod of a programmer decided to write a driver for it. And, even better - it’s possible to make Linux really, really light. Way lighter than any way you could make Windows.

So, I’d say, just try it. I bet it works. Fine.

Me, I’m getting on the Ubuntu laptop testing team. I have a vintage 2003 Apple powerbook I just installed Kubuntu on.

You know about Tamiflu, right? Tamiflu is the anti-viral drug that many people are stocking up on, in case of a flu pandemic. Never mind that it’s not at all clear that it will work.

Well, there is worse yet. A new study suggests that the use of Tamiflu for a pandemic will have potentially damaging effects on the environment, as well as create the conditions for new, resistant strains of flu virus. This is pretty familiar - the reason we have so many antibiotic resistant bacteria is because of the widespread use of antibiotics.

So, here it is - we are doing something that makes us feel safer, but getting ourselves into worse trouble. Sound familiar? I think a blog post about that phenomenon might be in order, at some point.

• There’s a new, very heavy, kid on the block. Element #118 was created by a team from Russia and California.
• Bring in the clones. Er, in your refridgerator, that is. Thankfully, some people find it troubling.
• I’d probably drink out of this bottle. Whose brilliant idea was that?
• I want one of these! Just what I’ll need to go bopping to the store in W.Mass.
• If you want a really detailed look at oil production numbers, and predictions and such, here’s the best place to find it. It’s a little eye-bending, though.
• This is sweet. New polling data suggesting strongly that Dems might retake the house.
• Olberman in his usual style, blasts the bill that eliminates Habeas Corpus. And now that it’s signed, he has a special comment. Makes me want to cry.
• Speaking of our rights - who is Michael Chertoff really talking about? Why did he say that, today?

Scott Wells and I are doing tag-team blogging this week, the topic: how well can a used laptop work to run an operating system like Ubuntu, or it’s lighter cousin, XUbuntu. Scott’s basic question (part 1) is posted on his blog today. Basically, the question is this - how do you provide a minister of a cash-strapped church (or, a seminarian) with a laptop that is affordable, and provides everything that’s necessary?

So this the beginnings of my answer. On the whole, Linux works really well with used hardware, whether laptop or desktop. It is much, much lighter than Windows XP, and has, however, everything you’d need - an office suite in Open Office, web browsers, email clients, etc.

Ubuntu 6’s release notes say the following:

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS supports four (4) major architectures: Intel x86,
AMD64, UltraSPARC T1 and PowerPC. Depending on your needs, you might
manage with less than some of the recommended hardware listed in the
table below. However, most users risk being frustrated if they ignore
these suggestions.

Table 1 Recommended Minimum Requirements

So, this is, well, pretty darned modest. Looking on ebay, you can get 1+GHz processors, 256MB ram, and 20+G hard drive laptops for $200-300. Some even have built in Wifi.

Now, of course, there is the next question: how do we get people comfortable with using Linux?

One of the things that I have always wondered about is what the effect of television would be on developing brains. I kinda thought that the rapid increase in the diagnosis of things like ADHD, for instance, might be related in some way. One of the hallmarks of TV is that no visual cut lasts for more than 30 seconds or so, which would seem, to me, to have a  potential effect on the developing brain.

The cause of Autism has been up in the air for a while. It is known that there are genetic factors at work, and some have suggested that vaccines might be a culprit. Now, three researchers are saying that early TV exposure in children might be a cause.

There are a couple of caviats here, right off the bat. None of the researchers seem to have medical, science, or public health backgrounds - they are economists. This raises a red flag for me. But, perhaps they are looking at it from a sufficiently fresh perspective. But it also has not gone through peer review, from what I can tell.

So, I’ve downloaded the article, and read it. Here is my analysis:

They state that the current view in the field is that Autism is caused by a genetic predisposition, and an environmental trigger. They are suggesting that the environmental trigger is television.

The way that they are getting to this is pretty indirect. They are looking at county-by-county rates of cable TV subscription, and, well, precipitation. Yes, precipitation. Apparently, according to some specific studies (American Time Use Survey) young children watch TV more when it rains.

They say that 40% of the autism cases are due to increased TV watching due to precipitation, and 17% of the growth in Autism cases in the states they studied are due to increases in cable TV subscriptions.

So problem #1: the data they use to correlate TV watching with precipitation is data that is self-reporting about how people spend their time, and who else in the household is present at the time. If they were people with public health backgrounds, they would know that self-reporting is problematic. They take the self-reports basically as gospel, and don’t really ask about how the self-reports might be biased.

Problem #2: They suggest that increases in use of cable TV in homes during the 1970s and 1980s would increase the amount of time that children watched TV. But there is no data to back this up. Since they are talking about children under 3, this seems a problematic assumption. Yes, rates of autism are correlated with increases in cable TV, but its pretty weak. So a weak correlation with something that isn’t backed up is, well, useless.

Bottom line: It’s a pretty flawed study, but I guess an argument can be made that it makes it worth looking into, at least. There needs to be a serious case-control study, etc. The public health mantra is: "correlation is not causation" (oh, right, they aren’t in public health) and this paper certainly only hints at a correlation. It’s not even a slam dunk for that.

So, I think I see why it hasn’t been peer reviewed.

I’ve already posted on Second Life, the newish virtual environment that allows you to walk around a virtual world, buy land, build, interact with people, etc. I registered my healthy skepticism already for SL as a tool for nonprofit organizations, and I decided that for me personally, although I might have been all over this 10 years ago, I think I’m getting to value my offline time way too much to decrease it for something like this.

The one thing I used to love about online role playing games like MUDs and MOOs in the past was that no one besides people who were really interested in the game play cared. Well, the same thing is certainly not true of Second Life. It turns out that commercial interests are starting to get gung ho on SL, and SL is going to start selling names to both individuals and corporations. According to O’Reilly Radar:

… this could be the next virtual land grab. … However, for people who want to build a business or make a living
around their name this will become a must have — assuming that they
find Second Life a worthwhile place to have a presence. Certainly
enough companies
and people are doing just that, but in many ways it’s still like 1996
on the internet and picking out a personal or corporate domain name;
they’re not aware that they will need to have a presence.

Oh, calloo, callay, I not only get to sit in a chair while my avatar carouses around and talks to people and builds a house, etc., but I get to do it, and see advertising, and run into "Joe Nike" along the way. Blech. I don’t think so.

It’s kinda funny that I was musing about this - I found out today that Bill Sinkford, President of the UUA, and John Thomas, president of the UCC are going to have a conversation that

will reflect on the historical affinities and divisions between their
denominations, and then go on to explore current realities and future
possibilities. This exchange is of interest to clergy and congregants
in both denominations because, despite theological differences and the
historical controversy that led to their split, in recent years there
has been a growing solidarity of the two groups. On a number of issues
of progressive religious conviction and social justice the two share
common perspectives, and in some communities there are some churches
that have become aligned with both denominations.

That sounds pretty interesting. I know someone here at PSR who is going, so I’m looking forward to hearing what happens. Maybe they’ll post the audio. There’s an interesting discussion over on Philocrite’s blog, and he doesn’t think that anything like a merger is going to be discussed.