Depot Park

Santa Cruz has a new park, Depot Park, where one of the train stations used to be. I found a few photographs of the train station on eBay a while back. More...

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New Mural at Shoppers'

There's a new mural being painted at Shoppers' Corner. I wonder what it will be? More pictures will follow. More...

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Cute Dog Picture

I just couldn't resist sharing this picture of one of our dogs: More...

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Cool Hobby

I forget how I learned about this, but I found this site all about the hobby of "letterboxing." More...

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Typewriter Forensics

I always liked studying the shapes of letters, and their variations among fonts. I always thought it was cool that there was an entire area of the Secret Service devoted to typewriter forensics: no typewriter strikes its letters exactly the same as another. Now someone has discovered the same uniqueness among computers. More...

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Birth of a Geek

I really enjoyed this essay, Meeting Merlin, by Jef Raskin, father of the Macintosh. It is the story of his first experience with a computer. The entire area of the digibarn site devoted to Raskin, who recently passed on, is excellent if you are interested in the history of the Macintosh and other cool things.

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Head Wizard

I'm interested in how religions were founded. I found a cool site about the man who sort of, kinda, founded, well... gave some form to, the neo-pagan religions in the United States: Gerald Gardner.

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Skype Me

I've started to try to use Skype, a free telephone-over-the-internet service. Today when I was on-line, there I was with more than a million other Skype users. Apparently, lots of people use a feature called "Skype me" which is in invitation for a stranger to call you and just talk. Like ham radio operators without the code words. For people to practice their English. To have a cultural exchange. Whatever. And this fellow suggests that we use Skype to record our conversations and publish them. He's right. There are lots of great conversations happening in the world and until now it was very hard to share them. And all too easy to share the cell phone conversations at the supermarket.

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Better Than Murder

While looking around for previews of the American version of The Office, I found an entire page of the attachments people are sending around at work: and it's at yahoo.uk, so it doesn't suck. There was one flash movie in particular that got me thinking. More...

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Fire and Mirrors

Like many others, the man who built the solar death ray was inspired by Rob Cockerham of cockeyed.com.

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I Want My Shred TV

...via Network Weekly, a magazine I read for work: a gallery of movies of stuff being shredded.

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How Marvelous Our World in its Infinite Diversity

...via mimi smartypants We learn about the [url=http://www.phorid.net/phoridae/ant_de_flies.html
]parasitic flies[/url] that eat the brains of living ants. More...

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The Next Big Fun Science Fiction Movie

They've gone and made a movie from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. There are three trailers at Apple.com. Trailer number 3 is my favorite, and I think it will be yours too. Arthur Dent is played by Martin Freeman, who we all loved as Tim Canterbury in "The Office." (What? You don't love Tim yet? Go rent The Office DVD right now. You can thank me later. There is a reason why this series has been released in 60 countries. If you can't understand the English, turn on subtitles. That's what they are for.)

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False Memories of Science Fiction

Andre Norton died last week at age 93. I remember reading her books. Maybe. I have an teen-years-era emotional memory of reading lots of books by Andre Norton. But when I read through lists of books online, I don't remember a single title. None of it. WitchWorld? A title that would have completey captured me. Never heard of it. Some people don't remember their teen years because they were stoned. I was having my mind expanded by people like Andre Norton. Maybe.

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Look Up

Last night, I finished "Evolutionary Mind: Trialogues at the Edge of the Unthinkable" and in the chapter called "The Heavens" Rubert Sheldrake commented that neither astronomers or astrologers actually look at the sky anymore. via Hardscrable Creek, we read that New Zealanders have built an Antipodean Stonehenge with the goal of encouraging people to watch heaven. More...

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"What Do You Believe Is True Even Though You Cannot Prove It?"

The Edge, January 2005: "Great minds can sometimes guess the truth before they have either the evidence or arguments for it (Diderot called it having the "esprit de divination"). What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?"

And in New Scientist, 13 Things That Do Not Make Sense, which I take to be a list of incidences of real science, where the unknown cannot be explained by ideology.

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John Gilmore Rides the Bus to Keep Us Free

I've written about John Gilmore's inability to fly on airplanes, because he refuses to show his I.D. There is no public law or airline policy that requires it. Recently his home-town paper ran a story that very skillfully describes his case, the government's position, and the man himself. What journalism should be.

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That Holiday on April 20th

I heard today that there might be a statewide action by university students next month. Then I heard that the date of the protest is to be April 20th. Huh. Isn't that a holiday? One of the people I was hadn't heard of it. We looked it up on th' innernet. Later I found this great definition which claims to explain it once and for all. Then there is the snopes.com entry which confirms everything in the Urban Dictionary definition, as well as this interesting "coincidence:" More...

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Why The Catholic Church is Different

I was noodling through the links on the "Online Confession" page I mentioned earlier and clicked on "The Holy See" and went to "http://www.vatican.va/" Do you know what this means? The Vatican has its own Top-Level Domain. Just like a country. No other church as a TLD. As far as I know.

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More Trialogues

Remember back in college, or maybe you still do this, you have a conversation with friends about things you're learning, about the big mysteries, about time, and why we are alive, and the nature of fire, and you have all sorts of interesting notions, and you all find connections between disparate things, and then you say goodnight, and all that conversation fades into the warmth of friendship and emotion. The trialogues of Rupert Sheldrake, Terence McKenna, and Ralph Abraham are transcriptions of that type of conversation. There are three books of trialologues, and I'm reading my second one. More...

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Sin: The Subjective and the Objective

I heard about two websites today. Online Confession accepts on-line confessions and dispenses penance. The other, Story of Sin, is a database of confessed sins.

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Out and About the Texas State Capitol Building

A few more snapshots from my trip to Austin. More...

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Keeping Weird is Hard to Do

"Keep Austin Weird": According to this story in the Austin American-Stateman, the slogan originated in Austin. The story also says disparaging things about Santa Cruz. But no mind that. More...

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This Is What Theocracy Looks Like

One of the many great things about Santa Cruz county is that there is little public Christianity, despite our very prominent Holy Cross Church on our skyline. For those who haven't seen it before, this is what a ten commandments monument looks like on government property: More...

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Girls in the Nose

When I was in Austin last week, my uncles invited some friends over for dinner, and one of them mentioned that she had been a "female impersonator and a dancer" for a band a long time ago. I asked the name of the band. "Girls in the Nose." I couldn't believe it. One of my favorite bands. More...

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Where Wizards Stay Up Late by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon

While I was on the plane to Austin, I took a break from the mind and spirit esoterica and read "Where Wizards Stay Up Late" by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon. This is the story of the creation, operation, and legacy of the network commissioned by the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency: Arpanet. More...

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Ice-Cold Liquid Pleasure

Several months ago, the Sentinal ran a story about a boutique gin, distilled in Santa Cruz. I bought a bottle as a gift to my uncles, who I am visiting in Austin. Bombay Sapphire is now my second favorite gin. Sarticious is a gin for people who don't like gin, and a sacrament for those who do.

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In Austin

I'm in Austin Texas, visiting my uncles. I didn't think I'd have access to the net all week, but I brought the computer so that I could download my photos. But thanks to an unauthenticated network called "headlink" here I am.

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