Scans From The Tech

As part of my trip to San Jose, CA, I had the pleasure of visiting The Tech Museum there. Arriving at the museum, you are given a "TechTag" which you can then use at the various exhibits inside. Some of the exhibits provide some sort of output or digital souvenir about your experience with the exhibit. The TechTag is just a piece of paper with a scannable code on it which can be used at the museum's website where you can view your digital souvenirs.

Two of the exhibits that had especially interesting souvenirs were the 3D Head Scan and a Thermal Image Scan. The 3D Head Scan exhibit scans your head with a laser and gives you a pretty good, well at least interesting, 3D rendering of your own head, kind of like Max Headroom. The Thermal Scan takes a thermal image of your body.

After visiting the museum I got online with my TechTag, looked up my digital souvenirs and created a web photo album from some of the images from these exhibits. The album contains several images for the 3D Head Scan one one image from the thermal scan. I got the 3D Head Scan images from screen shots of the 3D rendering client you have to use to see your 3D head. The 3D client software allows you to pan, scan, turn and zoom your 3D head around to view it. Doing this was actually pretty freaky, given the imperfections in the scan. Take a look at the some of the screen shots to see for yourself.

Another Letter to Superdelegates

I believe in Barack Obama. He represents what this country so desperately needs: the audacity to force a new political paradigm, the desire and vision to finally make honest, positive change in our country and the hope to make it all reality.

I did not know much of Barack Obama 18 months ago. My wife and I started discussing him as the buzz about his presidential bid was becoming louder. I checked him out, tried to see what he was all about. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that he was not the typical Washington politician I was used to. He was sincere; he was real, more so than any politician I has seen or heard in my 35 years.

We read his book, The Audacity of Hope, last summer. Reading it I got real feel for his integrity, honesty and leadership. I learned that he is well versed in the political system and that he has the wherewithal and persistence to make good things happen. He is not selfish. He is not greedy. He does not do what he does for himself; Barack Obama truly serves his country and the people he represents in every sense of the word.

Superdelegates, consider Barack Obama. Be diligent in getting to know him, what he can do and what he stands for. Understand that he is the only one on the playing field that does not closely represent the establishment that has steered our country away from hope and prosperity. Vote for Barack Obama, he is right choice for the right future of America.

Letter to Superdelegates

Barack Obama is the only candidate that cannot be bought by lobbyists. Because politicans have sold our fragile democracy away to the highest bidder, the Founding Fathers' immense sacrifice and legacy to us, the common people, has been trampled and defiled. Democracy itself is undermined and the power of the people is marginalized when corporations, through their lobbyists, in effect buy laws.

The triangle of corruption turns to iron (the iron triangle) when, in wartime, defense contractors buy laws that subsidize their own private businesses. Perpetual war, waged on the blood of our underpriveleged, undereducated young people, is not a moral choice for the engine of our economy.

Barack Obama does not oppose all war. He knows (like all sane Americans) that Islamic extremists and more want to kill us as much as possible. But Obama opposes a rash war. He opposed this dumb war, when the rest of America was duped into thinking Osama and Sadam are the same person.

Hillary Clinton was duped and takes lobbyists' money. John McCain is still duped into continuing a perpetual war. Only Obama talks about how his campaign is not his, it is instead a social movement of Americans standing together to voice the changes they want to see: world reconciliation, a retraction of imperialism, and kicking the lobbyists' influence right out of Washington entirely.

This is why I got "hooked on hope" and now, I see that once again only Obama has provided the judgment and vision out of our economic slump towards a future spurned on for generations by growing a green energy sector. Superdelegates, Mama says, "Vote for Obama!"

False Pretenses

I came across this the other day. Someone analyzed all of the Bush administration's references to Iraq's WMDs, Iraq's links to Al Qaeda or both over time up to a shortly after starting the war with Iraq in 2003; it even shows a bar graph shedding light on an organized PR campaign to fool the Americans and everyone else into going to war with Iraq.

It's an interesting read. It kind of makes them all murderers in a sense, IMO.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/

Why US students are 29th in the world...

The "crazy Christians" are after us!!!

Re: Origin Theories Clash: Pinellas School Board would teach Intelligent Design...

The reason the US is 29th in the world in science instead of 1st is because our leaders and educators are being duped by the "Wedge Document" campaigns. These school board leaders need to go back to school, as they have not had a proper science education: These leaders are apparently easily duped by a PR campaign promoting an idea that in no way reflects critical thinking skills, the scientific method, or qualifies as a scientific theory. This ignorance would be laughable if it weren't so pathetically damaging to America's future.

The Wedge Document represents the strategy of the Discovery Institute, a think tank that advocates intelligent design and its "Teach the Controversy" campaign, which aims to teach creationist beliefs in public high school science courses. The Discovery Institute put forth its planned public relations, public opinion, media, and political lobbying campaigns in the Wedge Document, which states that the aim of this creationist campaign is to drive a "wedge" into popular discussions about the origin of life by manufacturing a false controversy that does not actually exist within the scientific community. The Wedge Document states the Institute's manifesto is to "defeat evolution" and "replace it with Christian and theistic convictions" to "affirm the reality of God."

In a public school, to have any patience at all with creationist/intelligent design notions is to do a severe disservice to your students. Those ideas in no way qualify as a theory, in any science, by any scientist anywhere. I hope various leaders on the School Board will thank the private company, the Discovery Institute, for doing such a good job in their advertising campaign! Their duping campaign has worked on them!

Nel mezzo del cammin

Part 1

I've had this dream
a million nights
and now I'm living.
Living the running free down the street
out, away, flying away.
Breathing cool, stretching
as wide as the earth.
Fancy footing over pavement, over grass.
Away and away - all flowy-haired and shining.
And in this moment,
I'm me
and it's about me.
There's so much time.
Like the earth is holding it's breath until I step.
Like balancing on a barrel sticky and hot.

How did I get out here?
Days and weeks and years of counting to 10 and then 100
and swallowing tears and fears...


Part 2

"Mother" I branded into my skin myself.
Now I know why all mothers are a little bit crazy.

Thought when we met and kissed I'd never be alone.
Now, I'm more alone than ever.
"It's all on you, babe."
My shoulders broke from the weight of my babies
and the story of all my days is a child's story.
My 10-year plan is a kid's paradise.

Did I lose my mind, my soul
or do I not have a right to one?
Do the rich keep theirs?

Do I look without longing for relief? Can I glance without resentment?

It's all on me: This is my blessed trap. My job.

I am woman:
hear me in the wind a butterfly's wing makes.
It is the wind that turns the world.

Poem: GodStuff

In the Multiverse
in the humming strings
is the being
of you and me.