onfocus

The world—
Like an elephant's tail
Not passing through the window,
Although no one is there
Holding it back.

- Dogen

Magazine ranks Corvallis in top 10

"Using 34 variables from cancer rates and cholesterol levels to air and water quality to access to major airports and major cities, Men's Journal magazine in its May edition listed Corvallis as one of The 50 Best Places to Live among U.S. cities with populations between 50,000 and 500,000."

My research ranked Corvallis at the top too. That's why I moved here. Go Corvallis!

The Emerging Technology conference is coming up this month. They have a 30% discount going on right now for friends and family. You are friends and family!


Here are some notes I jotted down after eTech 2002. I was wishing for a ping service to track weblog posts last year, and this year it exists in the form of trackbacks for every session. Sometimes wishes come true. With trackbacks, a centralized note-swapping place might not even be necessary if everyone attending the conference has a blog (and they're willing to post their notes there).

Who else is talking about the conference?

Some photos I've taken in Mariposa Grove.

Two Giant Sequoias Fall in Yosemite



YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, CA, 2-APR-2003: Park ranger Deb Schweizer discusses two fallen giant sequoia trees, Wednesday, March 5, 2003 in the Mariposa Grove in Yosemite National Park, Calif. For more than 1,000 years, the two giant sequoia trees thrived in the Mariposa Grove, eventually towering 30 stories into the sky. When they fell, a hole the size of a jetliner opened in the forest canopy.
[Photo by Gary Kazanjian, copyright 2003 by AP and ClariNet]

can't blog. busy.

but want to point to self evident by ani difranco anyway. she rocks.

Instead of the government spending hundreds of millions of dollars on creating an Arabic al-Jazeera competitor, they should just let News Corporation (Fox) buy them. Their programming would change dramatically. In fact, maybe Fox will be able to soon—the FCC is about to give even more ownership latitude to the big ten. It reminds me of the immortal words of Princess Leia, "The more you tighten your grip [Big 10], the more star systems will slip through your fingers." (Though I'm pretty sure News Corporation owns that quote.) [first link via rc3.org]

André Breton objects for sale. It's sad to see his life's private minutia and collected objects cataloged and auctioned off. But at the same time it's fascinating to go through. Maybe Breton wouldn't mind. As he once said (in translation), "The legs beneath the fruit-bearing cloud travel all along the greenhouse."

And I now know that Duchamp had hair well ahead of its time. And that's worth something.

I love this photo of a sunflower by Man Ray. And this painting by Marie Toyen. So much to see there.

What is the meaning of the phrase The Second Superpower? [via Scripting] An interesting look at language on the Web, and the heavy influence certain weblogs have on Google.

The phrase (in its early meaning) was altered slightly (The Other Superpower) and used on the cover of The Nation recently.

Keep an eye on googlewashed. (Sure to be googlewashed?)

The NewsHour on PBS continues to have the best television war coverage and analysis I've seen. To get a sense of the current rift between the military and politicians, check out this segment from last night's show. (or realaudio.)

Remember Usenet? clari.news.photos has quite a few AFP photographs of current events. They're bigger than the versions you find at Yahoo! news.

Matt has mophos. Here's how he does it with 3 servers, 7 clicks, a secret email account, a weblog CMS, and a script that checks the email account every 10 minutes. My setup for mophos is pretty much the same sort of rube-goldberg scriptery. Someday this will all be easier. (I'd like to see a "publish" option on my phone.)