Monkey See, Monkey Do

i was in the reserves during the first iraq war, but i did not have to go there. i was in college at the time, and my group was not called up. i was fairly certain that we would have if iran had joined the fighting. but it was all over very quickly. now i’m fascinated with some of the reporting and writing coming out about the second iraq war, more critical and rich perhaps because this one is protracted and unpopular.

ashley gilbertson, an embedded reporter in iraq, is on a book tour with his newly published account of the war. he gave a talk at the santa barbara university of california campus, which is on youtube:

the war is so far away from me, it’s hard for me to stay connected to it. watching accounts like this occasionally, and generation kill which i’m following, is helping me stay in touch with it. maybe watching these accounts now is also a way for me to reconnect with that earlier experience in my life wondering if i would go to iraq, the fear i had and also the sense of duty that i had: the mixed emotions. it’s very hard for me to wrap my head around it even now.

samadhi cushions, the non-profit who made the very cushions i meditate upon, has a hip new ad posted on youtube. who knew a meditation store could be so… up to date?

and they have another short video just about the store.

san francisco hosted the imperial fleet this week:

i feel like we’re going to get more and more video ‘photoshopping’ in the future. here’s a recent paper from the university of washington and a video demonstrating what is possible with masking and replacement in video. fun stuff:

so when will we be able to insert ourselves into our favorite movies?

so my uncle went in for a stent or some such circulation upgrade a month ago and came out with a double bypass and nearly a week missing from his life. they even had to leave his chest open for a few days — who knew they did such things? — and so they put him in a coma for awhile. he’s doing well now but it’s going to be a long road of rehab.

then this last weekend his wife of fifty years, my aunt, had a heart attack and they also decided she needed a double bypass. i hear that went well.

but now both of them are recovering from open heart surgery at the same time!

please include them in your prayers or well wishes or tonglen practice. they could use the good thoughts right now.

today in the nytimes business section:

TOO ANIMATED? Edwin Catmull, who runs Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Animation Studios, just got back from his first meditation retreat, at the Shambhala Mountain Center in northern Colorado.

“I almost flunked meditation,” he said. “When things are intense and there’s a lot at stake, I have no trouble focusing. But when they’re not intense, my brain starts popping off in all sorts of places.”

Mr. Catmull is often painted as the left-brain businessman and technologist who runs Pixar’s nuts and bolts — and who helped develop RenderMan, the software behind Pixar’s animation, which has been commercially available for 20 years.

nice to see business leaders approaching meditation these days. but oh how often i hear the sentiment that one “almost flunked” meditation.

really it’s a training, like going to the gym. you can’t fail at going to the gym, it’s just great that you get there! nonetheless, we think we’re not “doing it right” unless we’re able to keep our focus in meditation. in my experience, you can train yourself to hold a laser like focus but that’s not necessary to get the benefit — which is seeing how your mind works from the inside out. all you need is to keep at it. especially when your mind is all over the place, when else would be a better time to learn how that monkey mind works?

this news program was quite inspiring. it is in honor of katherine dunham, a matriarch of dance and a student of anthropology. it is twenty six minutes long.

she passed away in 2006, at age 96. here is the current introduction to her wikipedia article:

Katherine Mary Dunham (June 22, 1909 – May 21, 2006) was an American dancer, choreographer, songwriter, author, educator and activist who was trained as an anthropologist. Dunham had one of the most successful dance careers in American and European theater of the 20th century and has been called the Matriarch and Queen Mother of Black Dance. During her heyday in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, she was renowned throughout Europe and Latin America as La Grande Katherine, and the Washington Post called her “Dance’s Katherine the Great.” For more than 30 years she maintained the Katherine Dunham Dance Company, the only permanent, self-subsidized American black dance troupe at that time, and over her long career she choreographed more than 90 individual dances. Dunham was an innovator in African-American modern dance as well as a leader in the field of Dance Anthropology, or Ethno choreology (see also Dance Studies). In 1992, at the age of 82, Katherine Dunham went on a highly publicized 47-day hunger strike to protest what she condemned as the discriminatory U.S. foreign policy against Haitian boat-people. She died in her sleep in New York City on 21 May 2006.

in the last few years, there are many examples of a dead person’s myspace page or blog becoming a memorial for them after an unexpected death. i’ve also seen examples where a criminal blogged his descent into madness just before a murder, or a murder victim blogged about the person they knew who had just entered into their apartment: right before being murdered.

…incredibly creepy.

today i learned that the microbiologist who recently committed suicide bruce ivins — who is accused of the anthrax attacks in 2001 — had a wikipedia account and had edited a number of pages in 2006. he mostly edited about the kappa kappa gamma sorority, with which yahoo news reports he had an ongoing obsession, along with an obsession for fellow microbiologist nancy haigwood.

ready for some creepiness? here he adds dr. haigwood to the list of notable kappa alumnae. he argues for her inclusion: e.g. [1] [2]. he was involved in an edit war over publishing that “Ai Korai Athenes” (maidens of athena) is the official, secret hail or call of the sorority, as well as other secrets. he repeatedly tried to have notorious Angela Atwood, member of the Symbionese Liberation Army that kidnapped Patty Hearst, included on the page as an alumna.

read this short page from december 2006 where he tries to convince another wikipedia editor that nancy haigwood is a notable kappa alumni and should be included in the article about the sorority.

The editor responds to him with, “Furthermore, I can’t understand the obsession. Why do you feel the need to add all this? Why Kappa?”

Read the rest of this entry »

this is in response to mccain’s ad using paris which characterized obama as more of a celebrity than a leader. i can’t believe i’m including paris hilton in my blog, but damn she’s funny in this rebut:

“see you at the debates, bitches.” <snort>

via funnyordie

every so often people imagine the technology future. i love the concept videos that are sometimes produced. my first experience of that was the knowledge navigator video from twenty years ago. this concept video by adaptive path is surprisingly similar, though much more achievable finally:

Aurora (Part 1) from Adaptive Path

notice the highlighting as objects are dragged across frames. that gave me a moment of nostalgia. this is the same feedback we developed at apple when expanding the drag and drop interface in the early 90’s. i’m on the patent for that but it’s just about to expire i think. yikes, have i really been doing this that long?

haven’t lost all my hair yet, but what i have is holding up ok.