The Factotum’s Rostrum

Giving new meaning to knowledge worker

2012-02-02T16:16:00.000-05:00

Photo by Akash Khairate — sxc.hu

How many so-called knowledge workers in today’s office environment know the first thing about computers? Sure, they can save a Word document. But can they do simple chores such as type in the IP address of a network, plug in the Ethernet cable and get connected without help?

Computers are tools and most users today have given up on learning the fundamentals of the machines that dominate their workdays. I’m not saying that every knowledge worker should be a full-blown geek … I’m talking about the basic computer skills…

John C. Dvorak wrote “Know-Nothing Knowledge Workers Must Go!” ten years ago. Yet nothing has changed. If anything, things are worse. Now, we regularly deal with people who not only can’t plug in their own computer, they are proud of it. I’ve known people younger than I am to gleefully declare themselves “Luddites” with no interest in learning any of that geeky stuff. Their usual stance?

“I’ll leave that to you.”

Gee, thanks. But what if I have work of my own to do?

Although it may seem that technophiles and technophobes often break along generational lines, it’s not a clear-cut generational divide. Plenty of Boomers and their elders have made it their business to know this stuff. Heck, some of them invented this stuff. Ethernet was developed in the 1970s.

Educators use the terms “digital natives” and “digital immigrants” to separate those who grew up with technology from those who didn’t. Those Luddite juniors of mine? It’s not that they didn’t have access to technology. It’s just that they didn’t take advantage of the access they had. I, however, learned to program in BASIC in high school. Because I’m just that nerdy.

But that’s why I, though I’m in a generation that’s just a bit too old to be truly native, am still a high-functioning, fluent immigrant. Not quite as fluent as my twenty-ish colleagues who grew up with computers in their homes, but I guess you could say I’ve “gone native.”

One of the main things that will hamper the professional advancement of Luddite immigrants from any generation will be the ability of digital natives and fluent digital immigrants to kick tail in the IT area. Tech-savvy workers will make themselves more valuable, while Luddites will weigh down their workgroups.

It may have been an overstatement for Dvorak to say the Luddites “must go.” They can stay where they are. But they need to do so with the knowledge that they are likely to be left behind.

Just another job search manual

2012-01-17T05:46:00.003-05:00

48 Days to the Work You Love by Dan Miller

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book will help you if you're looking for a traditional job. It contains advice on resume writing and job search tactics, and a thorough section on interviewing skills.

But if "the work you love" is nontraditional -- freelance work or self-employment -- look elsewhere. Despite the author's admission that "the new normal" includes more such work, the job-hunting sections assume that "work" means a place on a corporate payroll. There are only two chapters about self-employment. The first spends a lot of time convincing you it can be done--but doesn't give details about how. The other offers a bunch of anecdotes, but no tactics for starting a business or advice for freelancers.

The sections on self-discovery -- figuring out who you are and what kind of work might be "the work you love" -- are also pretty flimsy. So look elsewhere if you're trying to discover what work is a good fit for you.

Some parts of this book are quite inspirational, but ultimately I can't recommend it. In addition to scattered typos ("tot" instead of "to" -- in all-caps, no less; an R missing from "unfotunately"), there's a clear lack of proofreading and fact-checking. The name of the famous missionary David Livingstone is misspelled, omitting the final E. The average time Americans spend in a job is variously given as 2.2 years and 3.2 years. One of them may be right, but which?

Most troubling to me is the repetition of the Shackleton advert myth. It only takes a Google to learn that this anecdote remains unsubstantiated despite the best efforts the Antarctic Circle organization to prove it. Miller's inclusion of this misinformation leads me to wonder what else in the book may be incorrect.

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Put it in your own words

2012-01-13T05:59:00.001-05:00

Dictionaries, and dictionary apps,
are useful. But don't use them as crutches.

I recently read a book in which the author repeatedly employed what I call the "Webster cliche." This is the bit where the author brings up an element of his topic, and then, assuming the element is unfamiliar to the reader, writes something like this:

Webster's defines "element" as "one of the simple substances air, water, fire, and earth of which according to early natural philosophers the physical universe was composed."

Several problems can arise here, and I'm not talking about the fact that I picked a different definition of "element" than one would expect from the context of the first paragraph.

For starters, "Webster's" is an incomplete citation. The complete citation for the definition above would be: Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com (10 Jan. 2012).

Yeah. We all know you meant that. But the idea is to not get a cease-and-desist letter from Merriam-Webster's copyright attorneys.

Difficulties protecting the Webster trademark led to a proliferation of dictionaries with the name "Webster" on them, to the point that by the middle of the twentieth century almost any dictionary might be labeled "Webster's," regardless of the thoroughness of its lexicography or its actual connection to the work of Noah Webster. Because of the diligence of the aforementioned attorneys, this problem has largely been cleared up.

I don't mean to imply that you can't use Willy Webster's Upteenth Unabridged if you want to. Just get the citation right. Or you could get two letters.

But citations lead to another problem. In the book I mentioned, the author employed the Webster cliche eleven times, all within in the first few chapters. It became repetitive and annoying.

But, you argue, one must ensure the reader understands what one means when one says "element."

True. Do that by telling the reader what you mean. Do it on your own authority. If you are writing a book, you are establishing yourself as an expert in the field. Be the expert. You don't need ol' Noah Webster or either of the Merriam brothers to do it for you. Just say it.

An element is any part that contributes to the whole.

Delightful adventure

2012-01-09T18:46:00.000-05:00

The Windrider I: Divine Summons by Rebecca P. Minor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This adventure story is centered around a couple of charming characters who are just annoying enough to be realistic, without being so annoying you don't want to spend time with them.

The funny thing is, as Vinyanel and Veranna annoy the blazes out of each other, they don't seem to realize that they're both annoying for the same reason: arrogance. Fortunately they have the level-headed Majestrin, whose gravitas anchors them. And since Vinyanel and Veranna both excel in their own ways -- he as a warrior and she as a prophetess -- we enjoy their company and forgive their flaws.

Minor has created a rich fantasy world and pulls off that trick that so many of us find so hard -- she's implied a long history of conflict between two races by letting us experience the results of the history through the lives of the characters. No long, boring expository passages here. The story moves along at a quick clip.

The prose is occasionally lofty and a bit stilted; this may be a feature some fans of High Fantasy will see as a plus. I found it a bit off-putting. But then, I feel the same way when Tolkien does it.

There are several plot elements to keep track of: an enemy invasion, the quest for a sacred chalice, the appointment of the king's new champion and the formation of a new band of dragon-riders. The connections between all things things are barely hinted at, yet the subtext tells me the connections must exist. I look forward to seeing how things come together in part two.

I also look forward to spending more time with my new friends.

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Our traditional view of the nativity is wrong

2011-12-24T15:06:00.001-05:00


Photo by Kristen Stieffel. Yeah, I put this up every year, despite the inaccuracies.

Most of our nativity scenes, depicting the holy family in awooden shed with some animals, a shepherd or two, and three kings, are—how canI put this gently—wrong. I wrote earlier about the visit of the unknown number of non-royal persons. But the whole picture, especially the lonely couplerelegated to a lean-to, doesn’t match what scholars know of that time andplace.

In teaching our advent study this year, based on AdamHamilton’s excellent book and video The Journey: Walking the Road to Bethlehem,I added a new word to my Greek vocabulary: καταλυμα, or kataluma.

It appears here:

And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him inbands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for themin the inn. (NRSV)

The same word is used in Luke 22:11 to identify the upper roomwhere Jesus observed Passover with his disciples.

A kataluma is a guest room. So why does almost every Englishtranslation have “inn” at 2:7 but “guest room” at 22:11? Much as I’d like tolay all the blame on King James’s translators, William Tyndale did the samething.

Dr. Kenneth E. Bailey wrote, in the Theological Review ofthe Near East School of Theology, “the Arabic and Syriac versions have never,in 1900 years, translated kataluma with the word ‘inn.’ Thistranslation is a product of our Western heritage.”

Bailey goes into great detail about first-century life inthe holy land and Middle Eastern culture. It comes down to this: A room on the groundfloor would be used by the family during the day, but the animals would bebrought into it at night for safety. So it would have feeding troughs in it.The family and guests slept on an upper level.

Hamilton points out that since Bethlehem was Joseph’shometown, they probably stayed with family. Instead of a wooden shed, Mary andJoseph were likely in what Bailey calls “the family room.”

So although some newer versions, like Today's NewInternational Version, put “there was no guest room available for them,” manytranslators stuck with “no room in the inn” for no better reason than: That’swhat we’re all used to.

Mind you, it doesn't really matter whether it was a barn or a four-star resort. The apostle John reminds us of the important thing: God put on flesh to dwell with us. Praise be to God.

A lovely place to visit

2011-12-20T01:32:00.004-05:00

Smitten by Colleen Coble
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The town of Smitten, Vermont, is as much a character in this book as the four women who make up its core. This is not a novel, but a tetralogy of novellas, each with a different heroine. Disclosure: I was given an advance reader copy of this book at a conference.

The authors do a great job of intertwining their characters’ lives, and their voices are similar enough that the stories flow into one another without clashing. The overall story arc, of the character’s efforts to transform Smitten from mill town to vacation destination, runs as a thread through all four stories, binding them together. Together, the authors create an appealing place we would like to go visit.

The characters are well-rounded, and although some of them have superficial quirks, those add to, rather than substitute for, some very realistic, deep-rooted traits that make the characters believable.

The quality of the writing is very high, although there are a few continuity problems. A character suddenly has an object in her hands that we never saw her pick up -- where did that come from? One character is introduced as a good friend -- halfway through the book. Another, who appears early in a minor role, is described as one woman's "best friend." If he's her best friend, how come she doesn't talk to him until we're three-quarters of the way through the book?

But these are quibbles. Overall, this is a charming set of stories that make for a delightful getaway.

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Sorting out "less than" and "fewer" isn't difficult

2011-12-15T15:17:00.000-05:00

Writers are notoriously bad at math, but that doesn’t explain the prejudice against “less than” in expressions with countable items.

Photo by Zsuzsanna Kilian — sxc.hu

The sticklers are correct when they say “fewer” can be used only with countable items, not masses. If your hen laid six eggs yesterday and only four today, then today she laid fewer eggs. But when you crack eggs into a bowl and whisk them together, they cease to be eggs and become “egg.” So there’s less egg in the bowl today than there was yesterday. But you wouldn’t say there’s fewer egg in the bowl. Even without a grammarian’s advice, you wouldn’t say that, because it feels wrong.

Fewer eggs but less egg. Fine. The problem comes when people assert that since “less” goes with egg, it can only go with egg and may not go with eggs. These are the sort who call the grocery store sign “ten items or less” grammatically incorrect and claim “ten items or fewer” is the only correct form.

Fewer than ten, less than ten, ten or fewer, ten or less — all perfectly valid constructions. If you have nine items in your cart, you have less than the guy with eleven items. Or, as a mathematician might say, 9 < 11.

In the absence of a number, “than” is an important part of the construction. “Today the hen laid fewer (or less) eggs” begs for the completion of the comparison. Fewer (or less) than…what? Yesterday? Six? Her sister?

People don’t get quite as hung up on “greater” and “more than,” but the same principles apply. Except that if your hen laid four eggs yesterday and six today, you wouldn’t say today she laid greater eggs. You’d say she laid a greater number of eggs today than yesterday. Actually, you’d be likely to say she laid more eggs today. And you’d be correct.

Learning about practices that edify the church

2011-11-30T16:55:00.001-05:00

Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations by Robert C. Schnase
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I taught this as a small-group study at church, and the class loved it. You know the book is good when your students tell the preacher he should read it.

Schnase's book is full of thought-provoking ideas. I was pleased to say that a lot of suggestions we could check off as "got it," but there were still plenty of creative ideas to implement.

The author is Methodist and most of his examples come from that tradition, but I am sure any Protestant church -- any church, probably -- can glean information from this book to use in its own congregational life.

I found the author's Biblical examples to be a little thin, but then he wasn't writing a Bible study. I was teaching one, though, so I found a parable to illustrate each practice.

I especially appreciated the way Schnase shows how each practice provides a foundation for those that come after it.

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Myth: Don’t end a sentence with a preposition

2011-10-22T14:35:00.003-04:00

Sir Winston Churchill supposedly* said this was “the kind oferrant pedantry up with which I will not put.”

Now I ask you, does that really sound more natural than “That’sthe kind of errant pedantry I will not put up with?”

No, obviously not.

Scholars are mainly the ones who fall for this baloney, butsometimes people who were traumatized by a misguided English compositionteacher early in life will cling to it also.

Truth: There is no grammaticalrule forbidding the ending of sentences with prepositions. But rhetoriciansdislike such constructions because they make the end of the sentence feel weak. If I were inclinedto edit the version attributed to Sir Winston, I would put “I will not put up with that kind of errantpedantry.” See? Ending with “errant pedantry” is strong.

But I’m not inclined to edit it, because it is funny.

*—There's no evidence to back up that story, but it does provide a useful example.

Every manager should read this book

2011-10-14T15:49:00.001-04:00

How Full Is Your Bucket? Positive Strategies for Work and Life by Tom Rath

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Like parents who focus on the F's on a report card rather than the A's, many managers focus on critiquing weaknesses rather than developing strengths. But as "How Full is Your Bucket?" points out, our emotional buckets are filled by positive encounters and drained by negative ones.

Among the authors' key points:

* The Number One reason people leave their jobs is they don't feel appreciated.
* Praise must be meaningful and specific.
* Recognition is most appreciated and effective when it is individualized, specific, and deserved.
* Every interaction is an opportunity to fill someone's bucket -- or drain it.
* We are at our best when our buckets are full, and at our worst when they are empty.
* When we fill other people's buckets, we simultaneously fill our own.

Mind you, it's not possible to simply offer groundless praise. Every worker has room for improvement. But constructive feedback about what needs fixing is more effective when it's bracketed by genuine compliments and praise for strong points. Employees, like students and writers, need to build on their strengths in addition to improving their weaknesses.

Individualization is important, because while one worker may appreciate a plaque to hang on the wall, another might prefer some extra time off to spend with family. To aid in this, the book includes a "Bucket Filling Interview," which can help managers learn about what really motivates each employee.

The only drawback to this book -- although some might call it a strength -- is its brevity. I suspect there is much more to say on the subject of positive reinforcement in the workplace.

How Full is Your Bucket? will not only help managers encourage employees, it will help anyone see where they've been missing opportunities to fill other people's buckets.

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The wedding garment parable? It’s not about clothes.

2011-10-07T17:01:00.000-04:00

David Stuart | iStockphoto

Matthew’s parable of the wedding feast contains an odd aside about an improperly attired guest. The king’s invited guests have failed to show up, so to fill the house and consume all that food, the king sends his servants out to find all and sundry and invite them to the party. So one fellow shows up in his workaday clothes, and the king says, “‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’” (Matt. 22: 11-13)

This seems harsh. I mean, this improperly robed fellow could hardly be blamed for not dressing up when he didn’t get the invitation until long after the last minute.

Some commentaries say the guest is in trouble because the king would have supplied a robe, so the guest’s refusal to wear it was rude. But others say there’s no evidence to support this idea that hosts supplied clothes for guests -- especially a bunch of hastily rounded-up substitutes.

The Interpreter's One-Volume Commentary on the Bible said, as I suspected, that this passage isn’t about a literal garment. It’s about righteousness.

I pulled out William Barclay’s And Jesus Said, which examines the parables. Barclay’s theory is that Matthew recorded this as a warning against the sort of misconception Paul later addressed in his letter to the Romans. Some people apparently thought forgiveness means we can continue in sin so grace can abound. To which Paul replied: “By no means!” Barclay puts it this way:

It may well be, then, that Matthew is saying, “It is true that there is a free invitation from God to the most unlikely people; but that does not absolve them from the duty of trying to fit themselves to be His guests.” (And Jesus Said, page 159)

The ejected guest lacked three things: propriety, understanding, and reverence. He didn’t know what was appropriate, he didn’t know why the occasion was important, and he didn’t respect his host, the king.

How does this relate to our Christian walk?

We practice propriety in church buildings but forget that God is everywhere. Barclay writes: “It is not only in churches but in all the world that life must be fit for God to see.”

We forget what worship really is. We go through motions and recite creeds without understanding why it’s important to praise the One who made us.

We worship irreverently. Barclay notes that people will stand at attention for the national anthem, but slouch through a hymn; “and yet the hymn is sung to the King of Kings who is present at the service.”

Reverence is remembering that you are in the presence of the Lord Almighty, and behaving accordingly. The lesson of this odd little parable is that we ought to prepare ourselves for worship. Yes, we may approach the throne of grace with confidence. But we ought not do it five minutes late, disheveled, and preoccupied with worldly minutiae. We ought to do it with mindful care, clothed with “the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.”

A fabulous fantasy adventure

2011-10-01T11:34:00.001-04:00

By Darkness Hid by Jill Williamson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Jill Williamson has crafted a deeply interesting storyworld with a rich culture. The kingdom of Er'Rets is fraught with internal conflicts, as nobles jockey for positions of power. Achan, a mistreated slave, is drawn into the country's power struggles when he's enlisted as a squire. Meanwhile, Vrell, the daughter of a duchess, masquerades as a slave to evade an unwelcome royal suitor.

The characters in this story are engaging and well-drawn. Williamson understands young people, and wonderfully captures the fickleness of young attractions, as Achan's heart wavers between his childhood sweetheart and a lovely young noblewoman. I found myself rooting for them in their struggles as the fabric of their culture shifts around them.

I'm sorry I didn't read this book sooner. But at least I was able to get Books 2 and 3 of this series even while I was still working on Book 1. I finished Book 1 while sitting in the Memphis airport waiting for my connecting flight home from the ACFW conference. I wrote this review. Then I started Book 2, which the author kindly signed for me during the conference. I love this story, and look forward to spending more time with Achan and Vrell and their knightly comrades.

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Trade Center cross is not about religion

2011-09-11T14:53:00.001-04:00

Photo by Samuel Li

When this story first appeared on Facebook, my debunker's alarm went off. The story is so outrageous, it defies belief. Atheists had sued to prevent an I-beam cross from the World Trade Center site from being displayed at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum.

Outrageous, but true.

An ABC news story quotes Dave Silverman, president of American Atheists. as saying: "It just so happens that the WTC was made out of T-joints and they found a T-joint. They put it in the church, kept in the church for years, prayed over it, blessed it. You don't get to do that just in the coincidence that your icon looks like a T-joint."

Why not?

Silverman described what actually happened. The cross was found at the site on Sept. 13 by Frank Silecchia, a New York City Fire Department worker. He found comfort in the sight of that T-joint, as did many others.

Silverman and his comrades seem to believe that freedom of religion, which includes the freedom to abstain from religion, requires the removal of all signs of religion from public life. This is patently foolish. In a country where we are guaranteed not only the freedom of religion but also the freedom of expression, those who find comfort in the shape of a T-joint have the right to express their faith and the right to have the evidence of that expression entered in the nations' historical record.

Ultimately, then, the fight over this T-joint isn't about freedom of religion, or even freedom of speech. It's about history.

Jan Ramirez is the museum's chief curator. It is her responsibility -- and no one else's -- to decide which artifacts belong there and which don't. Silverman has no business telling her how to do her job. Ramirez must make her decisions based on the historical record.

A museum's purpose is to preserve memories and tell stories. Ramirez and her staff are tasked with ensuring that the museum records what happened on Sept. 11 and in the days that followed. That Silecchia found a T-joint, and that he and others found it meaningful, is part of the World Trade Center story and deserves to be told.

Print to PDF provides Instapaper to GoodReader link

2011-08-27T19:58:00.000-04:00

Instapaper's clean display

I love Instapaper. It's a simple service that makes reading websites much easier.

You know how junky some websites are -- I'm sorry to say my employer's is among them -- with multiple columns and ads and gadgets blinking for your attention. Add the propensity of web designers to use gray text, and it means a lot of web pages are hard to read.

Instapaper solves this problem, along with that of "this looks like a great article, but I don't have time to read it right now." Install the Instapaper bookmarklet on your browser's toolbar, and you can send those articles to your Instapaper account for reading later. You get just the article, in an easy-to read font with no surrounding distractions. I use the iPad app to read articles on my lunch break.

It's hard to complain about a simple service that does one thing really well. But the feature I long for in Instapaper is the ability to annotate. I like to highlight articles and write marginal notes.

Print to PDF is prepared
to export to other apps;
even its competition.

Figuring I couldn't be the only one who felt this way, I searched for an Instapaper annotation solution. I was 2.5 hours on the hunt before I found this thread, which offered two solutions. Then I had to pick.

Unfortunately, the only way to try most apps is to buy them. So, given the multiple accolades for Save2PDF for iPad, I bought that one. It's got more features, and got a good review from MacWorld.

I was disappointed. The PDFs it rendered were not attractive. For example, an article that appeared in Arial rendered in Courier once Save2PDF was done with it. Its user interface is nonintuitive, with inscrutable icons. And getting the PDFs out of the app and into GoodReader so I could annotate them? I can't figure out how to do that, other than e-mailing them to my desktop Mac and then syncing to GoodReader. Not an elegant solution.

So then I bought the newer, cheaper app that had fewer referrals. It does what I need it to much better. Print to PDF is a simple app that that does one thing really well. And it has a "Share" button that includes an "Open in…" command, and GoodReader appears in that list, along with iBooks, Dropbox, and Evernote. Perfect.

In GoodReader, I can
highlight all I want.

You might well ask why I don't just send the articles from Instapaper to Evernote and mark them up there. Well, sometimes I do. But Evernote, so far, lacks a highlight feature. So I use Evernote when I'm adding a lot of notes, and the PDF method when I'm making a lot of highlights.

The Internet offers a flood of information, and an increasing number of ways to manage the flood. How do you manage your flood?

US debt to income ratio is 667%

2011-08-10T09:03:00.002-04:00

Freeze Frame Studio, Inc. — iStockphoto

I've seen this quote, supposedly from Dave Ramsey, making the rounds on Facebook:

If the US Government was a family, they would be making $58,000 a year. They spend $75,000 a year, and are $327,000 in credit card debt. They are currently proposing "big" spending cuts to reduce their spending to "only" $72,000 a year. These are the actual proportions of the federal budget & debt, reduced to a level that we can understand. What I want to know is how they are somehow still AA+.

I've been unable to verify whether Ramsey actually said this: I looked on his website and could not find it. All the references I find online are out-of-context quotes. So the claxon on the the File 13-O-Meter sounded, and I started checking the numbers. Here's what I found:

The 2012 budget forecasts federal receipts of $2.174 trillion and outlays of $3.729 trillion. This is the proposed budget: The bipartisan commission formed as a result of last week's debt ceiling deal will presumably figure out how to close the $1.101 trillion deficit.

The national debt, meanwhile, is $14.5 trillion. But there's a number left out of the "Ramsey" equation: the gross domestic product, which is $15.81.

By comparison, in 2009, the most recent year for which I could find complete statistics, the U.S. median household income before taxes was $62,857, and average annual expenditures were $49,067.

An Associated Press analysis of a Federal Reserve report from about the same period shows average household debt of $114,434 and average household net worth of $455,173.

So let's see how this stacks up:

	Federal Government	"Ramsey" example	Average US Household
Income	$2.17 trillion	$58,000	$62,857
Expenses	$3.73 trillion	$75,000	$49,067
Expense/ Income ratio	171.5%	129.3%	78.1%
Debt	$14.5 trillion	$327,000	$114,434
Debt/Income ratio	667%	564%	182%
Net worth	$15.81 trillion	--	$455,173
Debt/Worth ratio	91.7%	--	25.1%

What surprised me about these numbers is that the average household net worth was as high as that. Remember these numbers are from 2009: Two years into the recession, after the housing market collapse destroyed a lot of value by pushing home prices down.

So yes, American families are doing a better job of managing our money than the federal government is. But remember this is a democracy, and the people in Washington are only there because enough citizens voted for them. The only way to see real change is to contact your senators and representatives and tell them what you expect from them. And then, when they are up for re-election, hold them accountable for the job they have done. Or failed to do.

2011-08-05T21:48:00.002-04:00

As Silver Refined: Learning to Embrace Life's Disappointments by Kay Arthur
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is one of those books I filled with Post-It notes and highlight marks. I filled a legal pad with notes. The insightful wisdom in this book helped me through a difficult time by getting my eyes off of me and my petty problems and onto God. Kay Arthur's teaching is firmly based in scripture and has been a major contributor to my maturity as a Christian.

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Letting the Spirit foster change

2011-07-25T20:44:00.002-04:00

Paola Murias — stock.xchng

How many Presbyterians does it take to change a light bulb?
What do you mean, change? We’ve always had those lightbulbs!

Despite our willingness to joke about being the “FrozenChosen,” we Presbyterians are stuck in our ways, and we don’t like change. Butwhen you look back at the 2,000-year history of the church, it has been nothingbut change.

The first Christians were Jews who followed Jesus’ way. Thenthe church changed as more Gentiles joined, and you can read in the NewTestament how Peter and Paul led the church through those changes.

In the first century, women were leaders in the church:Priscilla, Junia, Phoebe. Then that changed, and it was a millennia and a halfbefore we had female church leaders again.

The Gospel is given to us as an inheritance, and as such, itmust be passed on. But not in a dead, petrified way. The word of the lord isliving and active, as is the Holy Spirit.

In the parable of the talents, the one who buries histalent, preserving it but not investing or earning interest on it, is scornedby his master.

In the same way, to pass down the faith unaltered andstagnant dishonors it. Faith directed by the Spirit should be re-thought,re-minted in each generation. The church reformed, always reforming.

Just don’t put in those spiral-ly fluorescent bulbs, and we’llbe fine.

SunRail off the shelf and on the way

2011-07-02T07:40:00.008-04:00

After being shelved for a time while the governor decided whether it was worthy of his blessing, our local commuter train, SunRail, has finally been given permission to proceed. It was a bit iffy for a while there, despite lots of local support, because of course the governor already axed one local rail project. I was surprised to see a story about our little commuter train in the New York Times.

Comments on the article, though, reveal a common misconception about Orlando. Even the author of the article notes about SunRail, "It will not link to the Orlando airport or Disney World, among the region’s biggest traffic generators." A number of commenters (from everywhere, it seems, but Orlando) proclaim their shock that SunRail doesn't connect to the airport or Disney, and declare it therefore useless. Such comments reveal a lack of understanding of our geography and of the purpose of SunRail.

Tourists visit "Orlando" by flying into the airport (which is as far south and east as you can go and still be in the city limits) and then leaving the city limits and going waaaaaay south and west to WDW. They rarely come downtown. SunRail was never meant to serve them. A rail line serving tourists would run from the airport to International Drive, the convention center, Universal Studios, and then waaaaaay the heck down to WDW. And it would be of little use to most people who live here.

Most locals seldom visit WDW. But we commute to work five times a week. Many are stuck on the Interstate 4 parking lot at the beginning and end of every workday. They are the people SunRail is meant to serve. SunRail is meant to alleviate that I-4 traffic, most of which is caused by people driving from the suburbs in the north (Winter Park, Seminole and Volusia counties) to downtown. That's why plans call for building the northern part of the line first -- that's where most of the bedroom communities are.

One local commenter notes that right now, Central Floridians can't leave their cars home. There are no other options. It's true. I once looked into talking the bus to work, and found multiple problems:

Inconvenience: The bus route in my neighborhood was eliminated because of budget cuts, so I'd have to walk 1.8 miles to the closest stop, take the bus downtown, and walk 0.3 miles from the bus stop to the office. Walking more than 2 miles? In Florida? In the summer? By the time I got to work, I'd need a shower.

Cost: Bus fare is $2, one way. I drive an economical car and get about 29 miles to the gallon in the city. The trip from home to office is 9 miles. So even if gas were $6 a gallon, I'd still save money driving.

Time: This was the deal-killer for me. The walk to the bus stop would take about forty minutes. I'd spend half an hour on the bus. Then it's about a five-minute walk to the office. An hour and fifteen minutes for a commute that usually takes me 20-25 minutes by car.

I will ride SunRail, since it won't waste as much of my time as the bus. A station is planned for five minutes from my house, and another a short walk from my office.

Low projected ridership is a problem for SunRail. I don't know what the solution to the ridership problem is. But adding more lanes to I-4 -- on the false supposition that Central Floridians won't ever use a train -- is not a viable solution to the traffic problem.

Pay attention to God

2011-06-27T11:15:00.001-04:00

“Can one reach God by toil? He gives himself to the pure in heart. He asks nothing but attention.”—W.B. Yeats, Autobiographies

Billy Alexander—sxc.hu

I resisted for many years the advice to take time in the morning to meet with God, even though I heard it repeatedly from multiple ecumenical sources. Chief among those was Chip Ingram, whose podcast I listen to regularly. He returns to this topic often. In his book Good to Great in God's Eyes, he identifies this as a habit of great Christians. Good Christians, he says, can meet with God anytime. But the point of the book is that we don't want to be mediocre Christians or even good Christians, we want to be great Christians. And great Christians, Ingram writes, "give their first and best time to meet with God before anything else."

Pride is among the worst sins, and there is nothing more arrogant than believing we can handle everything this fallen world will do to us without help from above. We may think we can manage our lives, but how much better could we manage if we took time to consult the King of the Universe before we begin?

“The only way to receive the Spirit is silently and prayerfully to wait upon the Spirit.…For [one] whose every waking moment is occupied, and who even steals time for work from the hours of sleep, there may be necessary a complete reorganization of life if [one] is to find time for this silent waiting on the Spirit.”—William Barclay, The Promise of the Spirit

As one who has indeed stolen time for work from sleep, I can attest that a reorganization need not be complete -- sometimes a minor adjustment is enough. Setting the clock five minutes earlier each week worked for me, along with increased diligence about not staying up half the night.

We make time to watch our favorite TV shows, yet we resist making time to meet with the One who made us. Maybe that's because a morning devotional requires not only stillness and quiet, but concentration. But it can be done.

"All my life I have risen regularly at four o’clock and have gone into the woods and talked to God. There He gives me my orders for the day."—George Washington Carver, quoted in The Man Who Talks with the Flowers by Glenn Clark

A morning devotional, what some call "quiet time," ideally includes reading the Bible, meditating on its message, and prayer. It can also include devotional reading and journaling. I also use this time for reviewing three-by-five cards of scriptures and inspirational quotes I'm using to train my brain.

Jesus modeled the practice of communing with God early in the day: “In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.” (Mark 1:35)

It is appropriate for us to do likewise.

Cloud hopping

2011-05-31T11:09:00.001-04:00

Billy Alexander - stock.xchng

I finally understand the cloud thing.

For years, the cloud made me nervous, and not just because of the spectacular failure of Apple's Mobile Me debut.

Amazon's recent server crash didn't help.

But since I bought my gorgeous iPad, the cloud is starting to make sense. One of the major points on which my other half likes to chide me about this gadget is its lack of a USB port. But it doesn't really need one. There are other ways to put data on an iPad.

There's the proprietary dock cable, which is just like those for iPods. I mean exactly. I plugged the iPad into the iPod cable that was already attached to my Mac. Worked perfectly.

You can also download apps, e-books, music, and other stuff from the cloud by Wi-Fi or 3G (cellphone signal). I use 3G a lot because at the office, there's no open Wi-Fi network on our floor. You have to go downstairs to Starbucks for that.

Evernote is the app that made me love the cloud. Now, if I get a file by e-mail, or find something on the Web, and want to access it later on my MacBook or iPad, I just save it to Evernote. It lives in the cloud, and I can get to it from anywhere. I don't have to fiddle about with USB flash drives, although I'll still used them for files that are really large, or important, or both, because, well, see the Amazon story.

Breaking through writer's block

2011-05-28T13:33:00.001-04:00

A correspondent recently asked whether I ever get writer's block.

"Hammer Fist" by Gerville Hall
iStockphoto

Not as such, I told him. There are times I don't feel like writing, or when I don't feel like writing what I've been assigned to write. I usually just muscle through it, especially in the latter case. That's one good thing I learned in the news business. If it's your job to write about GDP growth, you write about GDP growth, even if you'd much rather be shopping.

The hardest time I ever had breaking through was writing the fight scene in Alara's Call, when Alara is captured by enemy soldiers. In the original version, It went something like: They fought for a few minutes, and then she was knocked unconscious.

An editor firmly informed me that was not acceptable. I had fallen into one of the classic blunders (see No. 24).

I needed to describe the whole thing, blow by blow. I didn't want to.

It took a whole afternoon, and a couple pots of tea, but I did it. I would write a sentence, get up, pace around, try to visualize the fight, go back write another sentence, repeat...and periodically realize half of what I had done was crap. Rewrite. Repeat. Wore me out.

And the story is much better for it.

When is it OK to spell it OK?

2011-05-20T11:01:00.001-04:00

Poynter is holding a poll about the punctuation with quote marks issue (periods inside or outside?), putting the question this way:

"How outraged are you by the idea that it might be OK to put commas and periods *outside* quotation marks?"

One commenter proved McKean's Law (that when you correct someone else's speech or writing, you're likely to commit an error in the process). The poster wrote, "It's okay, not OK."

Erm, how can I put this nicely...no.

Poynter, as an organization serving what's left of the newspaper business, almost certainly follows AP style, which calls for using first-listed spellings whenever a word has two allowable spellings.

You'll find the spelling "OK" listed first in all the major dictionaries. The alternative spelling, "okay," is given equal weight in most, but not all. The Compact Oxford gives the OK spelling more weight.

When a dictionary lists two spellings separated by "also," as Compact Oxford does with OK, then the first is preferred, but the second is acceptable. When two spellings are separated by "or," both are equally correct. Which to use is a style choice. All that matters is that one be consistent, at least within each work, if not across all works from a given publisher. Many book publishers prefer "okay" because it behaves like a word, forming other words such as okayed and okaying. And it looks like a word, instead of looking like a cheerleader jumping up in the middle of your book yelling O-K!

I've heard a couple of writers say "okay" is Chicago style. It's not. I asked. Here's what the staff at Chicago Manual of Style had to say:

CMOS doesn't specify, but as it happens, the manual uses "OK" twice (at 2.66 and 2.113) and does not use "okay." … We follow Webster's 11th Collegiate, which puts OK as the first spelling, but lists "okay" as an equal variant (also standard).

So you oughtn't say with certainty, as the Poynter commenter did, that one way or the other is right or wrong. It depends on the publication. When I edit for Orlando Business Journal, it's OK. When I edit for Splashdown Darkwater, it's okay. Each is right in its own way.

For more about "The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word," including its incredible origin, see the book by Allan Metcalf, which, I must point out, is titled OK.

The Shackelton advert myth

2011-04-21T02:07:00.012-04:00

Endurance sinking in Antarctica, November 1915
Royal Geographic Society

Among the lore of businesspeople is the story of the ad Ernest Shackleton reputedly placed in a London newspaper to recruit a crew for the Endurance expedition:

Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in event of success.

The ad is generally said to have resulted in thousands of applications being sent to Shackelton. It’s usually cited to illustrate the idea that rewards are more important to workers than money.

The premise has some truth to it. For example, a group of teachers once toured the newsroom, and one of them asked about the cow on my desk. Betsy -- a 12-inch-high wooden figure of a Holstein -- was, I explained, a traveling trophy, passed from each employee of the month to the next.

The teacher noted how important such rewards are. “No one works for money.”

“Yes,” I said, “if everyone only worked for money, there would be no teachers and no one in the newsroom.”

They all found this rather funny.

But I’m not sure people work for “honor and recognition,” either.

During a June 4, 2010 public forum held in Orlando by the Task Force on Space Industry Workforce and Economic Development, NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said of the thousands of shuttle program workers who are being laid off, “they are not looking for a job. They are looking for something that will help them make a difference.”

That’s really why dedicated workers do whatever they do. That’s also why people leave jobs others think of as good ones: they’re not being given an opportunity to make a difference.

And that’s why five thousand people, by some accounts, applied to accompany Shackelton to the South Pole. But -- and you know I had to do some mythbusting here -- they were not replying to the above ad. So far, no one has proved that ad ever appeared.

Shackelton recruited by letter, in geography journals and in The Times (London), but his letters are very pragmatic and contain no dire predictions or promises of honor.

The folks over at The Antarctic Circle have been working for over ten years to find the original ad. Despite a $100 prize and many people combing through microfilm of London newspapers, no one has found it.

Since a Google search on the phrase “Shackelton ad” turns up The Antarctic Circle’s well-documented debunking, there is really no excuse for quoting the bogus ad.

Winter preview

2011-04-15T20:28:00.001-04:00

This is the promotional trailer for Winter by Keven Newsome. I had the privilege of editing this phenomenal book. It's a supernatural thriller with a powerful story of redemption.

Survey of…Alara’s Call

2011-03-21T07:02:00.008-04:00

This “survey of your novel” form has been making the rounds online. For example, Robynn Tolbert surveyed her book Elementals over at New Author Fellowship a while back. I’ve been sitting on a survey of my novel ever since, because at 1,167 words, it was a bit too long for a blog post. Here's a short version.

Kriss Szkurlatowski

How long did it take you to finish the book? More years than I care to admit. Mind you, it spent many of those years in a drawer.

Did you outline? Not when I started. I did before I finished the present draft.

What’s your novel’s theme song? “Lionheart” by Angels of Venice

Who is your favorite character in your novel? General Rariden. In the movie, his part will be played by Harrison Ford.

What’s the best line? Many of my critique partners loved the first line: “You realize we could all be tried for treason.”

Have your characters ever done something completely unexpected? Often. Some days, I just take dictation.

Is any of your novel based directly on personal experience? Yes. In an early draft, the hero fell, hit his head, and was knocked unconscious. Then I fell and hit my head and was NOT knocked unconscious. This version is so much more interesting, it’s worth losing 20 minutes of memory.

Has your novel provided insight about your life? More than I care to admit.

Has your novel inspired anyone? My pastor said, “I am in awe of what you have done.” Does that count?

What advice would you give to a fellow writer? Outline!

Hiking up recovery mountain

2011-02-25T11:30:00.002-05:00

If you, like so many others, are still hurting financially, you may wonder what the economists are thinking when they talk about our economy being in recovery.

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the recession ran from December 2007 to June 2009. If we've been in recovery for a year and a half, why does it still feel like a "recession" to so many?

It's important to understand what economists mean when they speak of "recession." If you graph them, periods of growth, or expansion, are rising lines leading to peaks. Periods of contraction, or recession, are descending lines that lead to troughs.

The GDP, one of the main factors in measuring economic growth, has been rising since June 2009. Though that growth was sometimes small, the numbers were positive, as opposed to the negative numbers seen during the recession.

Photo by Christophe Libert
stock.xchng

So why does recovery seem so crummy?

Imagine you're climbing a mountain. When you reach the peak, you stand in the bright sunshine and can see for miles.

Then you fall. You roll down that steep slope for a year and a half. You land in a valley. Bruised, but not broken, you stand up. That mountain behind you now blocks the sun. You're in shadow.

You can't go back the way you came. Ahead of you is another mountain -- maybe not as tall as the one you fell from. It has a shallower slope. You begin climbing. Slowly, surely, you ascend. You leave the valley floor behind. But the next peak is still far away, and you are still in shadow.

In The Great Reset, Richard Florida compares the 2007-2009 recession to earlier ones. "Recovery from both the Long Depression of the 1870s and the Great Depression of the 1930s -- the First and Second Resets -- took the better part of two or three decades."

He says forecasting where we'll be once the present crisis is history would be like predicting "the full flower of postwar suburbanization from the vantage point of Franklin Roosevelt's inauguration day in 1932."

As we climb, remember we have a mighty counselor who climbs with us out of the valley. "The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned." — Isaiah 9:2

A slightly different version of this essay originally appeared at the Central Florida Christian Chamber of Commerce blog.

For sincerity, try a dictionary

2011-02-05T09:23:00.000-05:00

Simon Cataudo | stock.xchng

I've heard the one about "sincere" meaning "without wax" several times now, but I ran it through Google anyway, just to see what happened.

Oddly enough, it turns up in Dan Brown's novel Digital Fortress, which was published in 2008. Now I'm striving to remember whether I heard the "without wax" story before then. I don't think I did.

It has that pseudo-real factoid feeling Brown so well known for. He puts his version in a paragraph of pure exposition that any sensible editor would have struck and labeled "telling." He also sets his version in Spain, while the usual setting is ancient Rome. The standard version (and there are many) goes something like this:

Marble merchants used to disguise flaws in the marble by filling them with wax. So honest marble merchants would advertise their wares as being "sine cera" -- without wax.

However, as even an Elementary Latin Dictionary can tell you, "sincere" is itself a Latin word meaning -- brace yourselves -- "honesty." It's probably related to "sincerus," which means "pure" or "entire."

Any good dictionary will give you the proper history of a word, so consider looking things up before including spurious folk etymologies in your article, speech, or novel.

Nasdaq value more than double '09 market low

2011-01-26T20:55:00.003-05:00

Red=Nasdaq, Blue-Dow, Yellow=S&P 500

A lot of headlines today focused on the Dow Jones Industrial Average moving above 12,000. But the other major indexes also reached major milestones.

The S&P 500 is tantalizingly close to 1,300, but even at its close of 1,297, it has reached a level not seen since August 2008.

And the Nasdaq Composite, bless its techy heart, closed at 2,740, reaching a point it hasn’t seen since December 2007.

Alas, they are all still off their record highs:

Dow: 14,163 Oct. 9, 2007
S&P 500: 1,565 Oct. 9, 2007
Nasdaq: 5,048 Mar. 10, 2000

OK, this last one may not be fair, since that was the height of the tech bubble.

The recession started in December 2007. Compared with Dec. 3, 2007, The Dow is down 10 percent and the S&P 500 is down 12 percent, but the Nasdaq is up almost 4 percent.

From Dec. 3, 2007 to March 9, 2009 (when the indexes hit their lowest point of the recession), the Dow lost 50.8 percent, the S&P 500 51.1 percent and the Nasdaq 51.8 percent.

From March 9, 2009, to today, the Dow is up 83 percent, the S&P 500 80 percent, and the Nasdaq is up 116 percent. That deserves a headline, I think.

Brick House waitresses let it all hang out

2011-01-24T07:16:00.001-05:00

One interesting thing about living in Orlando is that you're likely to have at least a second-degree connection to someone in the hospitality business, and sooner or later, that results in an invitation to a restaurant's pre-opening, when the staff are being trained. Because the staff are practicing, the food is free. You pay only for drinks.

Interesting, but not always beneficial. Because the staff are practicing, pre-openings sometimes have poor service and improperly filled orders. But one forgives, because they are practicing, and it is free.

But the very newness of the restaurant means you don't always know what you are getting into. For example, through a friend-of-a-friend, we got invited to the pre-opening of Brick House Tavern on International Drive. We had no information going in except the name and address.

The restaurant's theme turned out to be "man cave."

Brick walls. Couches instead of booths. Industrial-style exposed ductwork. TVs everywhere. Astonishingly loud music.

And the waitresses -- no waiters here -- are trying to outdo Hooters for scantily-cladness. Tight, low-cut black tops and low-riding pants are the uniform, along with, it seems, big belts and navel piercings.

The waitresses are far too chatty for my introverted taste, but I suspect they are told to be so. One told us she preferred working for Brick House over other restaurants, where wait staff are expected to be more formal. She said, "here, we can just let it all hang out." Yes, she actually said that. Maybe it's part of the training, along with the instruction to sit on the arms of couches next to male patrons, regardless of whether the gentlemen are accompanied by ladies.

Fish and chips, hold the chips. Photo by Rachel Pereira

The food was delicious, although when I ordered a side salad with my fish and chips, I expected to get the fish and chips plus a side salad. Instead I got fish and salad. This was some of the best fried fish I've ever had. the mac and cheese was yummy, too. Great food, but my doctor will probably put me on statins now.

But even though the food was excellent, I will never go there again. The loudness of the music would be enough to keep me away. The prurient overtones just seal the deal.

Otronicon: The coolness continues

2011-01-18T21:53:00.000-05:00

Jeff Stanford, the Orlando Science Center’s vice president of communications, admitted that performance anxiety is a real threat to the staff when they’re planning Otronicon. There’s a need to each year top what was done before.

So far, they’ve managed to do it.

This year, one of the founding sponsors, Full Sail University, ended its five-year run so its staff could focus on other objectives. That could have been a real setback. But it opened the door for the University of Central Florida and its Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy to come in with new workshops and ideas. And the arrival of EA Sports, Stanford told me, made Otronicon “like a new show.”

Even so, Otronicon has continued to focus on career opportunities. Many exhibits, especially the medical and flight simulators, clearly highlight career paths. Posters throughout the center are designed to help kids match their interests and skills to jobs in the gaming and simulation businesses.

It’s this ability to connect the fun to the fundamental that makes OSC an important part of the community. And when I say “community,” I don’t mean just Orlando. OSC’s reputation drew school groups from as far away as Rhode Island.

"Psst…let the bounty hunter win."
Orlando Science Center photo

At this point, there’s no telling what the OSC team will come up with for the 2012 show. But at Otronicon, OSC announced it will host the Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination exhibit starting in the fall of 2012. It will run through the subsequent Otronicon, so for 2013, at least, the crew will get some anxiety relief.

Embracing the old games while showcasing the new

2011-01-17T21:43:00.000-05:00

I asked the Otronicon volunteer coordinator please not to put me in the Rock Band theater because it’s just too darned loud. So she put me downstairs in the Classic Arcade Lounge. That’s more my speed. Or, as one fellow remarked when he walked in and saw the vintage Donkey Kong cabinet, “that’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

Another guest said he felt like Marty McFly when he went to the future and found his favorite arcade game at “The 80s Cafe.”

All the old favorites are there: Ms. Pac Man, Galaga, Asteroids. Alas, I am not the asteroid blaster I used to be.

Orlando Science Center photo

It’s not just my age cohort that enjoys these games. Even those who postdate these games by decades enjoy the challenge of figuring them out.

For example, one of my contemporaries called SiniStar “one of the best games ever.” He played it for a few minutes. Later, my son played long enough to enter the four top scores of the day.

Louis, a member of OSC’s education team, entertained us with tales from the history of video games. There’s enough information in his head to teach a graduate course on the subject. But he was the first to admit he got it from the Play Value video podcast.

One of those stories was about how Dance Dance Revolution revived the arcade business. Once home game consoles became common, there was little incentive for people to go out and plug quarters in machines. But DDR is a social activity, and fun to watch, so many arcades put it near the entrance to draw people in.

The c.1999 DDR looked a bit out of place in the back corner of the Classic Arcade. Back at Otronicon v.1, DDR was a featured element, alongside Guitar Hero. Now they've yielded that position, as Rock Band takes center stage in the Darden Theatre.

Orlando Science Center photo

Rock Band is more popular not only because it’s a multiplayer game and has music from great bands like The Beatles. At OSC, Rock Band is a centerpiece due to Buzz Dawson’s* drums. He replaced the drum controller pads that come with the game by wiring a real drum kit into the software. It rocks.

If DDR was a fun-to-watch social activity a decade ago, Rock Band is even more so now. Some people go to the Darden Theatre just to watch the players and listen to the music. If, unlike me, you enjoy loud music, that's gotta be way more fun than watching people play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

* Mom brag: If you go to Buzz’s page, near the bottom, as of this writing, he shows a snapshot of an Orlando Sentinel article about the robotics class he taught at OSC a few years ago. My son, one of the students, is in the lower right-hand corner of that image.

Simulators are designed for failure

2011-01-16T19:25:00.002-05:00

A more steady-handed person than me, practicing brain surgery
Orlando Science Center photo

As I said last year, I have a long history of crashing flight simulators. Which, if you think about it, is what simulators are for.

The simulation industry is big in Central Florida, and the two simulation halls -- Military Tech and Medical Sim City -- take up more floor space than any other part of Otronicon.

I got to try out a simulated brain tumor operation. Using a tool rather like a Wii controller with a knitting needle on the end, I went through the patient’s nose while a computer monitor showed three views of the inside of the head based on the patient’s MRI. I had to find a brain tumor by coordinating the three images simultaneously. Good thing it was a simulator. I am not steady-handed in the best circumstances. The way I stabbed and wiggled, I would have turned a real brain into cervelle de veau.

In the Military Tech hall, I did a better job. An indulgent Lockheed Martin tech gave me some extra time in the multiform simulator, a three-screened, force-feedback behemoth that can be configured to train pilots for many different aircraft. On this occasion, it was an Osprey, that weird hybrid of plane and helicopter.

It was hard to fly, but after a while I got the hang of it. I only crashed three or four times.

Note: if you ever find yourselves at the controls of an Osprey, do not look away for more than a second, no matter how interesting the information is that your trainer is telling you. The Osprey can get away from you quickly, especially if the engines are at an angle.

I had better luck at the ol’ Cessna. Ron, with whom I worked last year, said he wanted a nice, smooth landing.

I did land the Cessna. In the dirt. It wasn’t smooth, but at least it wasn’t a crash.

Rolled by the Virtusphere

2011-01-15T07:50:00.001-05:00

The virtusphere proved to be quite the challenge, and the trickiest part of the operation was getting in and out of the thing.

The hatch is about three feet across. To get in, you stick your head in, and the sphere operator rolls the sphere around until the hatch is around your middle. Then you step up – a big, knee-high step – and in.

Mayor Buddy Dyer in the Virtusphere
Orlando Science Center photo

You stand in a bowl that shifts with your every move. It’s disorienting to have the ground move with your foot, instead of being firm. And no matter which way you move, the ground is always sloping upward away from you.

I think my tai chi classes helped me a little; I remembered soft knees and feel the ground with your feet. But I could not see much, as I had to take off my specs to put on the virtual reality goggles. The landscape was a high-tech fortress that had been invaded by aliens. Blurry aliens.

I managed to keep my feet, kill some aliens, and not die.

Several who tried the sphere before me got disoriented and fell. I did not, until I got cocky at the end of the ride and took a giant step toward the hatch. I think I’m the only one who fell after taking the goggles off.

To get out, you step down, turn around, and back out as the operator rotates the hatch upward.

This sphere has a diameter of 10 feet – almost double my height – and it was hard for me. It requires small steps. I think a taller person would have a much harder time. For this to be practical for military simulation, it’ll have to be much larger.

That’ll be cool.

Virtual reality on display at science center

2011-01-13T09:43:00.002-05:00

EA Sports/ESPN

Although Orlando Science Center has put on the Otronicon video game and simulation show for six years, this year is the first time the region’s largest video game producer, EA Sports, has joined the team as a sponsor. EA will give the first public demonstration of its Virtual Playbook software, which is used by ESPN sports analysts.

Otronicon’s EA Sports Arena will feature EA Sports video games. EA also contributed video game concept art for a gallery show titled “The Emotion of Sport.” Although this is the first time EA has participated as a sponsor, another local division of the company, EA Tiburon, contributed artwork to Otronicon in 2007.

What I'm most looking forward to is the Virtusphere, a 10-foot hollow sphere on a platform that allows it to rotate freely in any direction as the user moves. With wireless virtual reality goggles, the user can walk or run through a virtual environment.

Virtusphere Inc. developed this “locomotion simulation” for military and emergency responder training. But it obviously has gaming and fitness applications also.

It's a human-size hamster ball! How cool is that?

Guests at Otronicon can try out the Virtusphere this weekend, as it's one of the public exhibits during Otronicon, Jan. 14-17, at the Orlando Science Center.  See the Virtusphere video on the Otronicon website. I'll be trying it out once my volunteer shift is over.

Stock picking requires analysis -- and really good timing

2011-01-07T06:00:00.001-05:00

Is this a good investment?

Or is it not?

Delivering the "OBJ Market Wrap" stock report on WLOQ-FM every afternoon is my favorite part of my job. I love researching the stock market. I'm just geeky that way.

One day, a co-worker noticed it was almost time for me to call the report in to the radio station, and she said something like, "The markets spiralled downward today after some guy said some stupid thing..." I gather that's how she sees the market.

It's true that I often say things like "activity spiked after the Fed announced…" because honestly, sometimes after a Bernanke announcement the stock charts look like those of a patient in V-fib. James Paulsen, chief investment strategist for Wells Capital Management, gave the best description of the market when he told an Associated Press reporter, “There’s nothing down there to move it except rumor and innuendo.”

Over at The Wall Street Journal, Brett Arends offers an analysis of just how wrong stock pickers can be, and he also wrote a clever and contrarian view of "market timing" -- pointing out that "even though Wall Street overall ended the decade pretty much level (when you include dividends), average investors lost a bundle."

We do seem to have lost a decade. A broad index like the S&P 500 shows gains made in 2002-2007 have been wiped out. The S&P 500 is down 4.7 percent from January 2001. But for that same period, just to give one example, Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE: LMT)* is up 105.9 percent. And remember to include those dividends. LockMart shareholders have been paid consistently all that time, despite the recession. In fact, LockMart recently raised its quarterly dividend for the eighth year in a row.

Still, analyst evaluations of LockMart are mixed right now. Ned Davis Research has it at "buy," while MarketEdge says "hold," and Credit Suisse is "neutral." LockMart made SmarTrend's list of "Top 5 Companies in the Aerospace & Defense Industry With the Best Relative Performance," second only to Orbital Sciences, yet the group is still "bearish" on LockMart. A more recent item from Zacks notes concern about defense budget cuts.

I do understand where the criticism comes from. If you look at performance since the start of the recession, The S&P 500 is down 14.3 percent and LMT down 36.7 percent. But when you look at LMT's long-term performance -- including those dividends -- it seems like a convincing case for buying and holding. But the difference between those who "lost a bundle" on LMT and those who made a bundle is the difference between those who bought three years ago and those who bought ten years ago. The hardest part of investing -- other than picking what to buy -- is picking when to buy.

* I picked LMT because I follow it for the OBJ Market Wrap. LMT has a large facility here in Orlando, and is also a major player in the space program.

Tone deaf to poetry

2010-12-30T07:11:00.000-05:00

I'm clearly an idiot.

I tried reading some of the poems and literary fiction in the Florida Review's Native Issue, but I just…don't…get it.

Reading literary journals feels, at times, like listening to the atonal or dissonant symphonic music of the early-to-mid 20th century. I feel as if I ought to do it, because it's Art. But I don't really enjoy it.

Story becomes subordinate to words that seem strung together not to evoke emotion or meaning, but just because no one ever put them in that order before. As if one took a bunch of vocabulary cards, threw them in the air, and wrote them down without concern for which words are which part of speech.

I started to put an excerpt for you, but I have two concerns. First, and foremost, excerpting a poem runs the risk of violating copyright because even a few lines is a large percentage of the whole.

Second, I'm not sure what this poem is actually about. It might be naughty. Or maybe it's just about yoga. I can't be sure. Clearly, I am an idiot.

But then, I'm not real fond of Stravinsky, either.

Candy confusion

2010-12-23T09:19:00.000-05:00

I once received an e-mail message that went something like this:

Photo by Gary Scott | www.garyslens.ca
“A candymaker in Indiana wanted to make a candy that would be a witness, so he made the Christmas candy cane. He incorporated several symbols from the birth, ministry and death of Jesus Christ.
“ … a stick of pure white, hard candy. White to symbolize the virgin birth and the sinless nature of Jesus, and hard to symbolize the solid rock, the foundation of the church …
“The candymaker made the candy in the form of a ‘J’ to represent the precious name of Jesus … it could also represent the staff of the ‘Good Shepherd’ …
“The candymaker stained it with red stripes … three small stripes to show the stripes of the scourging Jesus received … the large red stripe was for the blood shed by Christ on the cross.
“Unfortunately, the candy became known as a candy cane — a meaningless decoration … but the meaning is still there for those who ‘have eyes to see and ears to hear.’ ”

There are even several children’s books that tell something like this story, calling it the “true” origin of the candy cane. The problem is, the “true” story changes with each retelling.

In some versions, the candy cane is said to have been a secret sign among persecuted Christians — although the persecution of Christians in Europe ended long before the invention of stick candy.

Straight white candy sticks have been around for centuries. According to the National Confectioners Association, the first cane-shaped candies in America appeared in Ohio, where, in 1847, a German-Swedish immigrant named August Imgard decorated his tree with them. The shape is meant to evoke not the letter J, but the shepherd's crook -- still religiously symbolic, if you think about it. Besides, you can hang a crook on a branch. Doesn't work so well in the "J" orientation.

The truth may seem boring in comparison to a fanciful story. Gracious, I'm in the business of telling fanciful stories. But we must be clear when we are using fairy tales to share our witness, and not pretend that fables are fact.

Yes, I love Jesus. Now can I get back to work?

2010-12-17T06:00:00.001-05:00

I suppose they mean well, the people who craft those e-mails that go on for pages and amount to, "If you love Jesus you'll send this to X more people." I suppose the people who forward them mean well, as do the ones who forward the forward.

By Carl Dwyer | stock.xchng

But I doubt this is how God keeps score. When Paul said we'd be held to account, I don't think he meant God will scold us at the end of days for not forwarding e-mails.

I think He'll ask whether we made good use of our time and talents or wasted them on trifles. I think He'll ask whether we shared knowledge or kept it to ourselves. Did we nourish His sheep or stuff them with junk food?

One such message challenged whether we make time for God at work. Why yes, I do, thanks for asking. Here are my tips for staying close to God while you work:

Keep a stack of 3 x 5 cards printed with Bible verses on your desk. Pick verses you've been meaning to memorize, or ones that help you deal with office stress.
Subscribe to a daily devotional e-mail.
Add "Verse of the Day" to your webfeed reader.
Use an inspirational desk calendar.

All of these help keep my mind on things that are above. Or at least help me re-focus when I drift.

I know senders mean well, but messages that imply we're unfaithful if we don't forward them just create false guilt, which can be a stumbling block. Perhaps, instead of forwarding messages that demand "proof" actions from recipients, we should just give words of encouragement and expect nothing in return. We might be surprised by the response.

Mad Cow conquers a classic

2010-12-09T20:20:00.001-05:00

When I asked my patient other half, "If I buy tickets to this play, will you come with me?" his only question was "when?"

It seems to me that few modern men are interested in classical theater, and the audience at the theater reinforced the idea. I believe the women outnumbered the men two to one. Almost as bad a ratio as at a figure skating show.

Well, the absent fellas don't know what they're missing. The Mad Cow Theatre Company's production of She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith is brilliant.

Mad Cow Theater Company photo of
Elizabeth Takacs as Constance Neville
and Melanie Whipple as Kate Hardcastle

Mad Cow Theatre is tucked into the ground floor of a downtown office building. The cast and crew make excellent use of a quirky space: The theater is L-shaped, with the stage in the corner and the seats in each branch. It's a cozy house -- seating about 220-250 people, I guesstimate -- so the performance really is intimate. When characters break into soliloquy, they really are talking to you.

The cast is fabulous. Brian Brightman as Marlow and Melanie Whipple as Kate are especially charming in their repartee. Engaging, star-quality performances.

In an article about Oliver Goldsmith published in 1935, Alice B. Fort & Herbert S. Kates wrote: "this play sounded the keynote of Goldsmith's 'mission' . . . to render more natural the comedy of his time and to strike a decisive blow at the 'genteel' or 'sentimental' comedy of his contemporaries." She Stoops to Conquer may not be considered natural by modern standards, but it is nevertheless fresh and delightful.

It's a shame that such a small house was not sold out on a Saturday night. It was nearly full, but still, I had thought a play this clever and funny, performed by such outstanding actors, could fill even a large auditorium.

Perhaps it's because not many people have other halves who enjoy theater as much as mine does. Or maybe it's that not many people offer to buy the tickets.

She Stoops to Conquer is playing at the Mad Cow Theatre through Dec. 19. If you enjoy comedy, buy the tickets. You'll love it.

Inspirational anecdotes don't need to be faked

2010-12-03T17:51:00.000-05:00

Motivational speakers often use true-life anecdotes to illustrate a topic, and this is a great tool. But of course it’s better if the true-life anecdotes really are true. Too often, speakers (and, dare I say it, writers) don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.

One plum people pull out to show you shouldn’t be discouraged by failure is the one about how the inventors of the Post-it Note were supposedly trying to make a super-strong glue but failed—the glue turned out weak. They then converted their biggest failure into their biggest success.

Silver and Fry are featured on the Post-it anniversary page

A good story, but not true. The truth is less dramatic, but no less inspirational: Spencer Silver, a chemist at 3M, discovered a low-tack glue in 1968, but because he and his colleagues couldn’t come up with any marketable applications, it was shelved. A few years later, one of those colleagues—Art Fry—realized Silver’s temporary adhesive would hold bookmarks in place. After some brainstorming, the company came up with Post-it notes and other products using the glue.

Silver’s original project was only a “failure” in that initially they couldn’t think of a market for it. Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras include the story in Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. They emphasize that Silver wasn’t looking for anything in particular. He was “following the principle of ‘experimental doodling,’” something 3M encourages. He was playing around to see what he could find.

The Post-it story is a good one. But, as Collins and Porras make clear, what it illustrates is the need for companies to foster creativity and allow risk-taking.

The “super-strong glue” story isn’t the only falsehood I’ve heard propagated by people seeking to inspire. In the future, I’ll tackle some of the others, and any more you care to bring to my attention. Because I believe if you're going to use a true-life anecdote to make your point, it really should be true.

Why we would rather drive

2010-11-08T06:34:00.042-05:00

High-speed rail is slow in coming
to Central Florida. © Bombardier

Americans have been accused of loving their cars too much. But that affection is just the result of having passenger trains that are almost useless.

Central Florida has two rail projects on the horizon: SunRail, a commuter line I could take to work, and high-speed rail, which would connect Orlando and Tampa with stops at Disney World and Lakeland. This will be very helpful for people going from Lakeland to the Orlando or Tampa metro areas for major sporting events, concerts, airports, etc. It would also keep folks going from Orlando to Tampa off Interstate 4, theoretically. Of course, then you're reliant on rental cars or the quality of mass transit at your destination.

This difficulty in getting from one place to another led Busch Entertainment to run a charter bus from Orlando to Busch Gardens Tampa. Very clever, and quite handy. The only drawback was when I wound up with a tired child at Busch Gardens at four o'clock in the afternoon, and the bus not scheduled to leave until five. Ah well. We sat in a cafe and ate ice cream.

All this came to mind because I had to go to a meeting in Boca Raton this week, and a friend offered to drive. I was tempted to drive myself so I could leave as soon as the business part of the meeting was over, and skip the dinner and socializing. But it would be irresponsible to drive two cars if we could both go in one. Besides, I need to practice being sociable.

Then I thought -- maybe I could take a train. Yeah, right. No, go on, look. Just to see. Sure.

The meeting was to start at 1 p.m. The morning train leaves Orlando at 10:30 a.m. and takes four hours and fifteen minutes to get to Delray Beach (the train doesn't stop in Boca -- it's Delray or Deerfield Beach). That would mean traveling the day before and staying overnight. Told ya. Plus, I'd need a bus or a taxi from Delray to Boca, unless I could find an indulgent South Florida friend.

Interstate 95, on the other hand, got us from Orlando to Boca Raton in three hours. More importantly, an Amtrak ticket -- one way -- costs more than a tank of gas, and my friend made this trip -- round trip -- on one tank.

For completeness' sake, I looked at air travel, though of course a plane ticket would cost about five times as much as a tank of gas. But the airlines can only fly me into Fort Lauderdale. Boca's airport is a small general aviation facility without scheduled flights by major airlines. To fly into Boca, we'd have to charter a flight.

Candidates oughtn't leave the electorate guessing

2010-11-01T20:07:00.000-04:00

FFPC: One of the only sources for help with those Judge elections

As I finish up my candidate research for tomorrow's election, I'm struck by two things.

First, I see that both at CF News 13 and at Florida Family Policy Council, many candidates neglected to answer surveys. This not only makes voters' research more difficult. It also sends a signal that the candidate is either not dedicated enough or not organized enough to place his information into important forums.

Second, I'm really disappointed that once again I'm left having to choose between Republicans and Democrats. With few exceptions, all the others are just flakes.

Perhaps I'm being harsh. They may not all be flakes. Some of them may only be undedicated or disorganized.

Plunkin' down dollars for pumpkins and more

2010-10-30T01:32:00.000-04:00

I had a choice between an elaborate brown hoop-skirted costume and a simpler one. I picked the simpler one not only because it's purple, but because it's cheaper.

Many of us are still economizing, although the National Retail Federation says Halloween spending this year is expected to bounce back to 2008 levels after a big drop last year. This year's total is estimated at $5.8 billion. Yeah. With a B.

I sometimes wonder whether neo-pagans are as annoyed by the commercialization of Halloween as Christians are about Christmas.

The old holiday, Samhain (pronounced SOW-ahn, which means, roughly, "summer's end"), marked the final harvest of the year, after which the earth became "dead," entering a winter dormancy. European Pagans had a variety of ways to celebrate this holiday. Would it surprise you to know none of them involved orange and black taffy? More than you probably care to know is here. The festival began at sundown Oct. 31 and continued through Nov. 1.

As with Easter and Christmas, the early church took an adoptive approach with this holiday. In 835, at about the time there came to be more Saints than there were days in the year to have feasts for them, Pope Gregory III initiated "All Saint's Day," and put it on Nov. 1. So the day before became All Hallow's Eve, presumably because "Salloween" didn't have quite the same ring to it.

Pumpkins, which are indigenous to the Americas, didn't come into the picture until after Irish immigrants got here. In Ireland, jack o'lanterns were made with turnips. But in America, the Irish began using pumpkins instead, not only because they are bigger, but because their abundance made them cheaper. See, I'm not the only one cutting costs around this holiday.

In the mid-19th century, Halloween was basically just an excuse for trickery and vandalism, sometimes involving outhouses. In later Victorian days, celebrations mellowed into tame harvest festivals. It wasn't until around 1920 that people began sending their kids door-to-door like so many beggars.

Now, parents tend to keep their kids off the street, seeking more sanitized venues like shopping malls. Even churches have begun holding Halloween parties, which strikes me as odd. It must strike the pagans as even odder.

Big free music hides behind little asterisk

2010-10-23T12:15:00.007-04:00

When I bought a new flash drive, it came with an eMusic "50 FREE* songs" coupon. I visited eMusic.com to see what's behind the asterisk.

First, you have to enter a credit card or PayPal account so eMusic can automatically roll you into one of its subscription plans when your 14-day trial runs out. To get the 50 songs truly free, you must download them within 14 days and then cancel.

My trial included one audiobook, so I started there. But downloading books (or albums) requires installing eMusic's proprietary software. This rankled, though it's similar to installing iTunes to shop in the iTunes store. Except iTunes doesn't let you shop for half an hour and click a big button labeled "Download" before telling you the software needs installing.

The "Browse" feature at eMusic is pretty good. You can filter by genre, subgenre, editor's picks, user ratings and release date.


eMusic's interface is clean and easy to read.

But to listen to audio samples, you need to install an Adobe Flash Player upgrade, if you haven’t already. Which I hadn’t. I dislike Flash. One of my favorite Firefox add-ons is Flashblock. I had to add emusic.com to the Flashblock whitelist.

Then I spent the evening listening to music samples and downloading free tunes. As I got closer to having zero credits left, I started getting interesting messages. If I downloaded one song from a seven-credit album, eMusic offered me 6 free credits to complete the album -- and start my paid subscription.

The eMusic catalog is impressive. And in November, they’ll add another 250,000 tracks from Universal Music Group. I considered signing up for a subscription, but then I would be obligated to pay $12 a month for 24 tracks. (If you pay yearly, you get a discount.) I don’t want to be obligated to shop for $12 worth of music every month, since I currently average only about $7 a month for music. Those who know me well will not be surprised to know that I keep records this minutely.

So after I got my one e-book and 50 songs, I went to cancel the account. Would it surprise you to learn there’s a “just one more thing before you go” offer? An otherwise unpublicized “eMusic Mini” account -- $6 a month for 12 tracks. Even though this is below my monthly average, I gave it a miss. The cancellation process was painless. I took the exit survey so I could specify (and they anticipated this answer, because it was one of the multiple-choice options) that I prefer a la carte pricing.

Just to ensure there were no more asterisks, I logged back in and verified my account was canceled. It is, but my login remains in their system, and my account has a big button to click if I ever change my mind. Which, if eMusic switches from the subscription model, I might do.

A Crown Of Splendor

2010-10-15T08:57:00.002-04:00

As we were led to our table at the restaurant, we passed a long table where a family was celebrating a birthday. By the markings on the cake, it was the gentleman's 86th birthday. He was thin, maybe a bit frail, but in good spirits and, as far as I could tell, able to get around without help.

"Uch," my friend said, "I'd hate to live that long."

"If you had your health, why not?" my husband asked.

She shook her head. And her husband agreed with her.

I couldn't find words. My grandfather died before I was born. How I wish he had lived to be 86. My cousin died when she was only 36. How might another fifty years added to her life have changed the lives of her daughters?

I don't decide who lives how long. God does, and I don't question His wisdom. But sometimes I wonder...

And I pity my friends. Where they see wrinkles, I see wisdom.

When Grandma was 86, she wrote this essay. I had the privilege of reading it at her memorial service last year. Today would be Grandma's 90th birthday. She died last year, just before Independence Day.

Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained by a righteous life. -- Proverbs 16:31

Old Age
By Phyllis Kirkpatrick

I believe old age is a gift from God. Now that I am 86, I can be the person I have always wanted to be. I don't mean my physical body! I despair the bags under my eyes and the wrinkles on my face -- to say nothing of the sagging underarms! But I no longer agonize over those things.

I would never trade my wonderful life now for my former black hair and thinner figure. I have my wonderful, loving family, and many good and faithful friends.

As I have aged, I have become more kind to myself and less critical of my faults. I no longer blame myself for taking that cookie or buying that silly knickknack. I feel entitled to overeat once in a while, and to be extravagant occasionally.

I've seen too many dear friends leave this world too soon, before they understood the great freedom that comes with old age. Whose business is it but my own if I read a book I am wrapped up in until 4 a.m. and then sleep until noon? Or if I listen to favorite golden oldies from the 50's instead of the latest so-called music?

I go to the pool in my old-fashioned one-piece bathing suit, stretched over my bulges, and ignore the pitying glances of the bikini set.

I know l am forgetful sometimes, but some things are better forgotten anyway, and I can remember the important things when I need to.

Sure, over the past 50 years my heart has been broken. How can a heart not break when it loses a beloved husband of 34 years at the too-early age of 57? Or even when a loved dog gets killed by a car. Or a beloved granddaughter who dies so suddenly much before her time. Of course hearts will break, but that is what gives us compassion. A sterile heart, never broken, cannot know the joy that having loved and lost can bring.

So I feel blessed to have lived long enough to have my hair turn white and to have laugh wrinkles on my face, and I can say yes to getting old and staying positive and optimistic.

You care less what other people think, and you have earned the right to be wrong sometimes. I know I am not going to live a lot longer, but while I am still alive, I will not waste time lamenting what might have been, or worrying about what will be. My motto now is: Life is short, so eat dessert first!

The cost of being unreachable

2010-10-10T16:03:00.040-04:00

Some people complain about other people’s apparent addiction to connectivity. Blackberrys, iPhones, and other such gadgets are seen as signs of misplaced priorities or rudeness. Why, they ask, would anyone call or text people who are elsewhere instead of talking to the people who are with them?

Of course, the gadgeteers don’t see it this way. They see their world as a relational network, and sharing what’s happening with those not present is a way of fostering relationships.

Although I understand this view, I believe we all need to unplug once in a while. In his book Good to Great in God’s Eyes, Chip Ingram advises us to “develop great habits.” One of those is, as part of Sabbath-keeping, to “turn it off:”

“Close the calendar, turn off the phones and pagers, shut the computers down, and look back on your week in gratitude.”

Today, after worship and Sunday school, I drove 20 minutes to another church for a class. I found the classroom empty. Shortly, the teacher’s husband arrived to tell me she was sick and class was canceled. She had tried to call me but got no answer.

That’s because my phone was turned off.

He apologized for my driving that distance for nothing, and I apologized for being unreachable. Then I headed home.

As I drove, I thought about the cost of being unreachable. About 45 minutes of driving time and, since I get great mileage, less than a gallon of gas. Not too high a price, I think, for developing this particular habit.

But next week, I’ll probably check for messages.

Despite its false provenance, this personality test is intriguing

2010-09-29T19:42:00.021-04:00

By Fotocromo | stock.xchng

I recently received in my e-mail a copy of "Dr. Phil's test." I usually view with suspicion anything that shows signs, as this did, of having been forwarded more than once, but this time I played along. The message said, "Dr. Phil scored 55. He did this on Oprah and she got 38. Some people pay a lot of money to find this out!"

There followed a multiple-choice quiz that is said to be used by human resources departments as part of a hiring process. A sample question:

1. When do you feel your best?
In the morning
During the afternoon and early evening
Late at night

I scored 38, which means people see me as "sensible, cautious, careful and practical...clever, gifted, or talented, but modest.... Not a person who makes friends too quickly or easily, but someone who's extremely loyal to friends you do make..."

The correspondent who sent the test told me he scored 48, which means people see him as "fresh, lively, charming, amusing, practical, and always interesting...kind, considerate, and understanding, someone who'll always cheer them up and help them out." All of which is certainly true.

But of course the skeptic in me wondered whether HR departments really make decisions based on a ten-question test. Top Google result? Snopes, as you may have guessed.

No, the test isn't from Dr. Phil. Yes, it is more accurate than random chance would suggest. But there's no indication it's used in HR circles, and surely no one is paying "a lot of money" for a thing freely available on the Internet. The folks at Snopes call it a "parlor trick." Which doesn't make it a bad thing. It's actually kind of an amusing thing. It just happens to be wrapped in some false advertising.

I've been compared with worse

2010-09-09T20:43:00.001-04:00

My critique partner Robynn wrote a blog post in which she compares me to the queen bug from the Alien movies. I consider it a lovely tribute.

Thanks, Robynn.

More Spam than you ever Spam wanted to know about Spam

2010-08-30T18:46:00.000-04:00

While clearing out my files in preparation for a new Sunday School year, I came across my Spam notes. A couple of years ago, I taught a lesson about prayer in which one of the talking points was that insincere prayer is like sending spam to God. So along with the lesson handouts, just for fun, I included one with the same title as this post. Just for fun, here it is:

Hormel Foods is not fond of the fact that people call electronic junk mail “spam.”

The term, of course, is not meant to disparage the famous tinned meat.

Spam (the meat product) was one of the few meats excluded from British food rationing during World War II. As a result, many Britons grew heartily sick of it.

This disaffection with Spam led to a 1970 sketch on Monty Python’s Flying Circus, in which a couple dine at a restaurant at which every dish contains Spam. When a patron asks for something without Spam, the waitress recommends “Spam egg sausage and Spam, that's not got much Spam in it.”

Near the end of the sketch, a group of characters start singing the praises of Spam — “Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam — lovely spam, wonderful spam —” ad nauseum. They soon drown out the dialog between the diners and the waitress.

In olden days, before the World Wide Web, geeks used an Internet predecessor, Usenet, to communicate. Messages were sent to a central address and distributed to all participants.

Sometimes, topic threads would be drowned out by marketers sending advertising messages to the Usenet server and, therefore, to each individual participant.

The geeks naturally termed this noise, which drowned out the topic of discussion, “spam.”

Obviously, a disproportionate number of geeks are Monty Python fans.

My research about Spam at the Hormel Foods Web site uncovered a recipe for Spam Cupcakes, along with many other dishes that might have been served at that Pythonesque restaurant.

Hormel Foods loves the Monty Python sketch, probably because Eric Idle's character says “I love Spam!” Video screeens showing the sketch in a mock cafe are a key feature of the Spam Museum.

You can find photos and a descriptive walkthru of the museum here. An exhibit professional reviews the Spam museum here, and over here, on a site that features tourist reviews of roadside attractions, one woman calls the Spam Museum "...fabulous! It's like a really great children's museum, except with potted meat products."

The museum gift shop sells the Spamalot commemorative tin of Spam. And Hormel's website includes a link to a Spamalot game. Catapults and cows. Just for fun.

The accidental rhythm section

2010-08-19T11:31:00.011-04:00

I have previously mentioned Perri Klass's "Knitting Fantasies" column, which originally appeared in the Winter 2003 issue of Knitter's Magazine. An excerpt:

Duane Ellison Photography | iStockphoto

I have felt for years that classical music would be enhanced by knitting. I know, I know, the needles might click, even the whisper of yarn against yarn would be enough to upset some music lovers. I have no intention of pulling out my knitting at the symphony. I just know that if only I could, I might have a chance of reliably achieving that state of mixed concentration and relaxation which so often eludes me…"

I was not bold enough to attempt this stunt at the symphony, either. But when our church hosted a free piano concert by Sergei Kossenko, I figured it was worth a try.
It was nearly a successful attempt. No one complained. In fact, one of the ladies, a new knitter, changed seats to sit next to me so she could watch how I do it.
I had already pulled out my knitting when Mr. Kossenko made his introductory remarks, and when I spoke to him for a few minutes after the concert, he said nothing about the knitting.*
But the clicking of the needles did indeed prove too distracting -- for me. I found myself alternately trying to knit in time with the music or to knit quietly. Both were difficult, so I wound up hardly knitting at all. Although this was an interesting exercise, it's one I won't repeat. Except maybe, as Klass suggested, at an outdoor concert, where airplanes and sirens provide a greater source of distraction.

* He generously spent some time explaining to me the meaning of "Navazhdeniye," the title of a piece by Prokofiev. Mr. Kossenko listed it in the program this way, although English sources usually use the French title "Suggestion Diabolique," which is not accurate. He said diabolical is the wrong word, because it implies evil intent. Based on the conversation I had with Mr. Kossenko, I would describe "navazhdeniye" as a surreal delusion with overtones of doom, but free of malicious intent. I think he's right to give the title in Russian. It's good to learn new words.

2010 FWA conference fast approaching

2010-07-23T11:49:00.001-04:00

Here's me and Chris Coward
at the 2009 RPLA banquet

Photo by Karen Lieb

The Florida Writers Association conference will be held Oct. 22-24 at the Lake Mary Marriott, which is a lovely facility. The association is expecting about 350 people to attend. Most of these will be aspiring writers who are developing their writing skills or who are promoting their work for publication. Many FWA members are published writers like me, working to take their writing to another level.

Agents and publishers also attend, and faculty members are accessible through much of the conference. And of course the Royal Palm Literary Awards are presented Saturday evening. My science fiction Christmas comedy “The Feast of Stevens” is in the running this year in the published short story category.

Through July 31, the full conference fee is only $289. On Aug. 1 the fee goes up to $309, and on Sept. 22 it goes up to $329. Daily rates are available, as are tickets to the awards banquet only, for people like my patient husband, who yearly sits through lots of writerly talk to see whether I go home with a plastic plaque.

Building your business -- whatever business you're in -- is all about building relationships. The FWA conference is a great place to establish relationships that will build a writing business. For more about the faculty, workshops, and opportunities for manuscript critiques, see www.floridawriters.net.

Imparting wisdom, or something like it

2010-07-16T18:41:00.002-04:00

Mark Victor Hansen’s seminars for writers are usually pricy, so I readily accepted a colleague’s invitation to attend a three-hour session free. The seminar was held in a hotel dining room packed with a diverse crowd, all ready to take visions from thought to print.

Some of them seemed like Hansen groupies. They laughed excessively at every stale joke (e.g, “I slept like a baby…woke up every two hours crying.”) and recited statements along with him. I felt a little creepy, like an investigative journalist infiltrating a cult of personality.

Free seminars usually conclude with sales pitches. I was prepared to consider buying a book, but I expected to pick up a few how-to pointers from the free part first. I was disappointed.

The best part of Hansen’s talk concerned the future of publishing: audiobooks, e-books, vooks, and mobile distribution, for starters. His proposition that the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen (pictured), which was developed as a note-taking device, could be a medium for interactive audiovisual books is fabulous. Hansen admits to being an investor in Livescribe.

Halfway through the session, I was still waiting for some how-tos.

Hansen offered inspirational aphorisms (“When you are your authentic self you are unstoppable”) and loads of anecdotes about traveling to exotic locales with his high-powered buddies.

He started to lose me early on by dragging out that moldy old legend about Walt Disney being cryogenically frozen, a doozy debunked by the best.

That he got the story about the Princess of Wales being assassinated by the land-mine cartel straight from Mohamed Al-Fayed did not diminish my skepticism.

And his offhand remark that one of his pals “owns the Yankees,” coming so soon after George Steinbrenner’s death, was shocking. (The buddy’s name was not Steinbrenner.) Perhaps he meant his friend was part of the group that bought the Yankees back in the ’70s. But the late Mr. Steinbrenner bought out the other investors years ago.

As the misstatements mounted, my confidence eroded. By the time the sales pitch came, there was little left. That the pitch was high-priced and “one-time only” made it easy to pass.

One of my notes says, “If you know the ‘why,’ the ‘how’ will come.” As Hansen said that, its seemed to make sense, or I wouldn’t have written it down. But now it seems inaccurate. I know why I want the lawn to look nice: so the homeowners’ association will stop leaving those notes on my door. But the hows of lawn-growing have yet to come.

That’s what teachers are for: imparting the how. But Hansen’s free speeches, it seems, contain only motivation. To get instruction, you must buy his products. But here’s the problem: If I can’t trust what he says, and his free talk doesn’t demonstrate an ability to instruct me in my weak areas, why should I buy the product? Maybe there are better ways to invest that money in my business.

As I walked to my car, I recalled a comment Hope Clark recently made in Total Funds for Writers: “…many people who take time away from the day job and family to attend a conference, won’t necessarily invest that same time in the writing itself.”

Those three hours would probably have been better invested in my writing. Ah, well, at least I got a blog post out of it.

The Pursuit of Happiness

2010-07-04T00:59:00.001-04:00

Photo by Gayle Lindgren | stock.xchng

This Independence Day, I’m thinking about those who preceded us. The founders who forged a nation of laws, not men. The indigenous peoples who chose to fight no more forever. And the immigrants who came -- and still come -- yearning to breathe free.

My great-grandfather Harry came from England in 1922 and settled in Detroit. Being an auto worker in Detroit was better than being unemployed in Cornwall.

As much as I’d like to believe every immigrant longs to come to America because of the democratic foundation of our great republic, the simple truth is, many come because in their homelands, they were unemployed.

Amnesty is the flashpoint at the center of the immigration reform. Are we willing to forgive those who don’t have proper documentation? For years, I’ve resisted this idea. If Grandpa Harry could go through proper channels, so can others.

Arizona has drawn a lot of fire for its immigration law, even though it mirrors federal law. Kirk Adams of the Arizona House of Representatives answered concerns that "law enforcement can simply walk up to a person and say, "'Can I see your papers?'" in this article. An excerpt:

…officers can only attempt to determine a person's immigration status during "lawful contact," which is defined as a lawful stop, detention or arrest. Any "reasonable suspicion" can be derived only through the investigation of another violation or crime.

I cannot blame the huddled masses for pursuing happiness here, though I do wish they’d go about it properly. And if a person is suspected of one crime, surely it makes sense for the police to see whether he committed any prior crime -- including that of entering the country illegally.

But many illegal immigrants have been living and working here for years, with no other criminal charges against them. The Apostle Paul instructs us to forgive as we have been forgiven. Although complete amnesty seems excessive, I’m inclined to allow a path to citizenship for those without proper papers, if they’ll admit their wrongdoing and pay their back taxes.

The more I think about it, the more I become convinced that the problem isn’t the undocumented workers. The problem is the employers. Which is why I was pleased to see the Arizona law also targets those who do the hiring. If no one were giving undocumented workers jobs, they wouldn't be here.

We are a nation of laws, and the laws we have deserve enforcing. But the sentence need not be deportation for those who scrub our floors and pick our vegetables, even if they did jump our sea-washed, sunset gates.

Breaking out and splashing down

2010-06-14T21:29:00.004-04:00

I want to give a Blatant Plug to P.A. Baines, the first member of the New Authors Fellowship to land a book contract. His Alpha, renamed Alpha Redemption, will be published this fall by Splashdown Books. At left is the cover art by Zoë Demaré, also of the NAF.

The fellowship grew out of the critique-partner atmosphere of last year's Marcher Lord Select contest. I post about once a month on the Fellowship blog.

Speaking of contests, my poorly named A Gift With Which To Serve was a runner up in the Novel Journey contest, apparently getting no help from a name change to The Prophet's Chronicle. The judges wrote, "Very good story. Initial set of characters needs work--tripped from the beginning, not realizing there were three different people on stage. A little smoothing out and this piece could be awesome!"

Slightly discouraging, because I thought I'd smoothed this opening out already. Ah well. The folks at my new, live-in-person critique group, Word Weavers, can have at it next month.

All about the money

2010-06-04T13:36:00.004-04:00

Once again, the key theme coming out of a space industry discussion -- today it's a task force meeting in Orlando -- is funding.

Funding - or the lack thereof -- is the reason for the spaceflight gap. The shuttle and its replacement can't both be fully funded at the same time.

Several participants at today's meeting -- including self-professed geek MJ Soileau from the University of Central Florida -- said what we really need to keep our high-tech workforce employed is money. Soileau said UCF is submitting a grant proposal to fund work at the fabrication facility that was donated this week. He urged the cabinet members at the meeting to "grab it out of the stack and fund this sucker" so UCF can put people to work.

Whether you talk to people in workforce development, economic development, or high-tech startups, it all comes back to funding. The only way to retain Florida's position in the aerospace industry is to feed it money. That also happens to be the only way to maintain America's position in human spaceflight.

The NASA Railroad carried the last space shuttle solid rocket booster segments across the Indian River Kennedy Space Center. Six cars transported the segments to Titusville from the ATK solid rocket booster plant in Promontory, Utah. The booster segments would be used for shuttle Atlantis on the "launch on need," or potential rescue mission, for the final scheduled shuttle flight, Endeavour's STS-134 mission.

Image Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

Your tax dollars at work

2010-05-19T22:01:00.000-04:00

We learned from the Florida Keys tourism council that tar found on beaches in the Florida Keys beaches "do not match the type of oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill."

To determine where the tar in question came from, the council tells us, "tar balls discovered on beaches at Fort Zachary Taylor State Park, Smathers Beach in Key West, Big Pine Key, Fla., and Loggerhead Key in the Dry Tortugas National Park, Fla. were flown by a Coast Guard HU-25 Falcon jet based in Miami to New London, Conn., Tuesday for testing and analysis."

Using a military jet to deliver tar to a lab? Have they never heard of FedEx? Did they absolutely, positively, need those results at the speed of sound?

It seems that ships passing through the busy shipping lanes near the Keys often shed oil. Still not a pleasant thought. But where the tar came from is secondary. Clean the beach first, then figure out who gets the bill.

About the Photo: U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Patrick Kelley. The mobile offshore drilling unit Q4000 (near) holds position directly over the damaged Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer, May 18, 2010, as the drillship Discoverer Enterprise burns gas from a tube in the ruptured drill pipe.

Putting on the brakes

2010-05-10T20:49:00.000-04:00

The guys at Planet Money interviewed a college professor who goes into detail about how automated market orders led to a self-feeding frenzy. Part of the problem is that when the New York Stock Exchange paused to see what was happening, trades moved to other exchanges where bids were lower.

After meeting with the exchange executives today, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairwoman Mary L. Schapiro is scheduled to testify at a House subcommittee hearing tomorrow about what the industry will do to stop this happening in the future.

SkyNet storms Wall Street

2010-05-07T20:14:00.001-04:00

Yesterday's wild market ride -- in which stock prices fell into a "black hole" for a few heart-stopping minutes -- appears to have been caused by "black boxes."

Unlike an aviator's black box, which records what has happened, an investor's black box decides what's going to happen. Algos, or trading algorithms, allow investors to program computers to buy and sell when certain conditions are met. For more on algos, see here and here.

For example, if your box was programmed to sell Proctor & Gamble at $58, that would have been triggered yesterday at about 2:45 p.m. Off go however many shares of P&G you held.

Now imagine that happening across whole mutual funds, many of which are index funds that track the whole Dow Jones or S&P 500 indexes. That's how the whole market moved so fast in the same direction.

Thursday's dive seems to have been triggered by an error, but that error led to a series of computer-generated trades that fed into each other until they reached critical mass. The New York Stock Exchange -- which is responsible for less than a third of stock trades in the country -- halted trading briefly, and that seems to have been enough to stop the collapse before it could devour the entire S&P 500.

Buy orders may also have stopped the free-fall, and I would not be surprised if some of the same boxes that had sell orders at one price also had buy orders at a lower price.

Anyone whose black box sold P&G at $58 at 2:45 p.m. only to buy it back five minutes later at $54 made $6 a share today, when P&G closed at $60.

That math has some conspiracy theorists accusing traders of rigging the market. But I agree with Barry Ritzholtz here: There is no need for panic.

But we do need to keep an eye on those black hole boxes.

How to spot a spoof

2010-04-18T21:27:00.000-04:00

"Spoofing" is a trick used by spammers, scammers, and hackers to make an e-mail that came from them look as if it came from somewhere else. We saw this before with the messages purporting to be about a package delivery.

Today I got one purporting to be from Hallmark. There are several red flags:

It says I received a card, but it doesn't say from whom.
The subject line starting with "Hey..." is not Hallmark's usual style.
The "To" line says "undisclosed recipients."
The subject line is missing a comma after that inappropriate "Hey."

OK, this last one is a copy editor's nitpick. The real clincher is that if you mouse over the "here" link without clicking, a popup shows the link actually directs to a server that's identified only by its IP address and not hallmark.com. It's also set to download a .exe, or executable file.
Since the file is called "Hallmark.exe," the unsuspecting might go so far as to launch it, and install a virus on their computers.
Hallmark offers a few other things to watch for, including these:

The e-mail will come from the sender's e-mail address, not Hallmark.com
Hallmark cards are displayed on their Web site, not downloaded.

Spread the word. Hackers will continue to send this garbage as long as there are uninformed people opening it.

Rethinking how we will work in and on space

2010-04-16T18:36:00.001-04:00

Wow. The space forum wound up being one of the most engaging such events I think I've ever been to. It's hard to know where to start. Here are some random thoughts:

• As soon as I walked in the room, I spotted Pat Duggins, whom I promptly accosted with a request for him to sign my copy of his book Final Countdown. He's very nice, and has a wealth of knowledge about the space program. I'll give his book a Blatant Plug: It not only gives a detailed overview of the history of the shuttle program, it ties in NASA history at each stage and includes many personal anecdotes to keep things interesting. My favorite is the recollection of adults who were kids on a school field trip to see a shuttle launch on the day Challenger blew up.

• Duggins says the proposed new use of Orion is as "a lifeboat for the Titanic."

• Duggins reminded us of something I had forgotten. In the movie 2001:A Space Odyssey, the space shuttle is operated by PanAm and the space station by Hilton. That's Arthur Clarke anticipating reality for you.

• I overheard someone say Bill Nye was among those at the KSC conference. ~~Nye hasn't updated his blog, so this is unconfirmed.~~ [Update: Nye participated in the human spaceflight breakout session. Sesson leader John Holdren said Nye did such a "fabulous job" describing how the space program can inspire kids, "we're going to enlist him full-time."

• Florida Rep. Ritch Workman believes there is no reason the shuttle cannot be used to close the gap between its current manifest and ... whatever the next new vehicle is. He urges people to contact their representatives in Washington to support this idea.

• The kind of personalities that were appropriate for Mercury ... Apollo ... Shuttle ... are different from the kind of personality that will be suitable for long-range missions. A psychologist interviewed by Duggins for his next book (Trailblazing Mars) said NASA currently looks for Type-A Superman types, but on long-range trips, Clark Kent may be more appropriate.

• The participants agreed on two things. First, what happens in the future will depend on whether or not Congress actually approves the budget. Second, whatever happens, Florida's space industry needs to diversify from launch operations into research, development, and manufacturing.

• When you take notes in Word while recording audio, the keyboard sounds really loud on the playback.

Privatizing the space program

2010-04-15T19:21:00.003-04:00

The president didn't say much in his televised remarks that wasn't in the documents released earlier. He did give credit to Rep. Suzanne Kosmas for supporting her constituency, but he pronounced her name "cosmos." Twice.

Once the president had gone and the conference got under way, Norm Augustine gave an overview of his commission's report for those who haven't read it in its 150-page entirety. I have to admit to being among those. I've read parts, but admittedly not all of it. If you want to take a stab at it, you can download a copy here.

Augustine identified the president's plan as the "flexible plan" outlined in his commission's report in Chapter Six, Section Five, Variant 5B. This plan will delegate routine jobs like delivering materials to the space station to commercial carriers while NASA does fun stuff like exploring the asteroid belt. To those who express concern over turning this job over to private industry, he asks whether we prefer to trust the Russians with it, or American companies. It's a valid question.

My major concern with turning spaceflight -- especially manned spaceflight -- over to private industry is the profit motive. Mind you, I'm as big a fan of the free market as anyone, but what we have seen is that the profit motive can lead companies to do crazy things like growing too big too fast and cutting corners on quality and then you're making headlines for all the wrong reasons.

I understand that this plan, by reducing NASA's role in servicing the space station, will have lower operating costs. But NASA must maintain quality oversight, lest we put our crews on rockets with runaway accelerators.

Charles Bolden, at the podium, opened the Conference on the American Space Program for the 21st Century by asking the participants to "go and do good stuff." Behind him is U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson. Photo credit: NASA/Jim Grossmann.

An em-Bolden-ed conference

2010-04-14T20:18:00.000-04:00

The concurrent breakout sessions at KSC tomorrow are being described by NASA as a "conference" hosted by Administrator Charles Bolden.

Conference Session Topics:
* Increasing Access to and Utilization of the International Space Station
* Jumpstarting the New Technologies to Take Us Beyond
* Expanding our Reach into the Solar System
* Harnessing Space to Expand Economic Opportunity

The conference will be streamed live at NASA's Web site. Since I can't be on the coast tomorrow, I'll be watching online or looking for a transcript later.

While combing through the Augustine Commission report today, I noticed that the NASA budget got a huge boost, more than 5 percent, for fiscal year 2010. Overall, budget increases for the last 10 years have risen pretty much in line with inflation, 1-3 percent per year. But the FY 2011 is pretty puny by comparison, just a little over one percent. So although the increases sound big when you express them in billions of dollars, NASA's budget is not really getting a huge raise this year. Just a cost of living increase.

Orion spared the mothball treatment

2010-04-14T11:52:00.005-04:00

The Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle.
Rendering by Lockheed Martin Corp.

Air Force One will land at Kennedy Space Center tomorrow. The bad news is Harrison Ford won't be on it. The good news is the White House released more information about the president's new plan for the space program. Information about the program's goals and funding are here, and information about what help the administration will give Florida’s aerospace workers is here.

Among the notable pieces of information is news that the Orion capsule, part of the shelved Constellation program, will be repurposed as an escape vehicle for the International Space Station. This calls for scaling back the design of the capsule. Since Orion was already described as cramped compared to the shuttle, it will be interesting to hear how astronauts evaluate the final product.

Some summit

2010-04-13T21:46:00.002-04:00

I've been watching both NASA and White House press office Web feeds, hoping to get the agenda for the president's April 15 "Space Summit" at Kennedy Space Center. Today, it came across the NASA news feed. You can see it here.

In short, the agenda is this:

Air Force One Scheduled Arrival: 1:30 PM
Air Force One Scheduled Departure: 3:45 PM

So this "summit" will cover two hours and fifteen minutes, during which there will be an opening session (the president will give a speech at the Operations and Checkout Building), breakout sessions, and a closing session. That's not considering the time it will take to drive the 8.5 miles from the landing facility to the O&C building.

I'm not sure how much work can really be accomplished in such a short time, especially since many local players~~, including the U.S. Representative for the district that includes the space center,~~* have not been invited.

Maybe the White House has a different definition of "summit" than I do. I would expect a summit to involve all the major players and take long enough to both air concerns and come to consensus on future goals.

I don't suppose it matters what the president's definition is, as long as the event produces some real, achievable spaceflight goals instead of being an expensive photo op.

*Correction: Rep. Suzanne Kosmas did attend, flying in on AF1 with the president. And the conference took place after the president left.

Programming space

2010-04-08T21:04:00.003-04:00

This came in too late to make OBJ’s April 9 issue, but the University of Central Florida’s Metropolitan Center for Regional Studies will host The Future: Florida, NASA, and the Space Industry April 16, 8-10 a.m., at the University of Central Florida Executive Development Center in downtown Orlando.

The featured speaker is Pat Duggins, National Public Radio's NASA correspondent. Duggins also wrote Final Countdown: NASA and the End of the Space Shuttle Program. Orlandoans will remember Duggins from his days covering the space program from WMFE. He is now news director for Alabama Public Radio, which covers the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.

At the forum, a panel discussion will be moderated by Ray Gilley, president of the Metro Orlando EDC. The following panelists are scheduled to participate: Frank DiBello, president of Space Florida; Florida Sen. Mike Haridopolos; U.S. Rep. Suzanne Kosmas; M.J. Soileau, vice president of UCF’s Office of Research and Commercialization; and Lynda Weatherman, president of SpaceCoast EDC.

I plan to be there. If you wish to attend, admission is free, but reservations are required. Make reservations by phone, (407) 235-3934 or e-mail, metro@mail.ucf.edu.

This event takes place the day after the president’s “summit” at Kennedy Space Center, so it will be interesting to hear the reactions of these leaders to whatever comes out of that meeting.

We got one piece of good news today. Details from NASA's 2011 budget request show allocations of over $1 billion for programs and facility improvements at Kennedy Space Center. You can read more about that here.

This photo, taken at at Kennedy Space Center in January, shows the construction of a new mobile launcher that would be used in the Constellation Program. Photo credit: NASA/Jim Grossman.

They're certifiable

2010-03-30T22:55:00.000-04:00

This just in, from the American Patriot Foundation:

"I am today compelled to make the distasteful choice to invite my own court-martial, in pursuit of the truth about the president's eligibility under the constitution to hold office," said active duty Army Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin. The American Patriot Foundation, a nonprofit group, set up a legal defense fund and will provide Lt. Col. Lakin with a defense team.

The foundation says the president's continuing refusal to release his original 1961 birth certificate brought Lt. Col. Lakin to the point where he feels the commander-in-chief's orders are unlawful, and thus must be disobeyed.

If Lt. Col. Lakin wishes to sacrifice his career on the altar of obstinacy, that's his prerogative, but it seems foolish to make such a great sacrifice for such a pointless purpose. I wonder whether this is just another attempt to get the birth certificate matter before a court. Any court.

The "birthers," as those obsessed with the president's origin are pejoratively called by those of us with more important things to worry about, keep trying to file suit over the authenticity of the president's birth record. Their suits keep getting thrown out.

Birthers have made such a nuisance of themselves in Hawaii that legislators there are now considering a bill that would let state recordkeepers classify "vexatious" requests as an "abuse of process" and ignore them. Since Hawaii reportedly gets 10 to 20 birther requests each week, one can hardly blame them.

As this Associated Press article points out, Hawaii's health director and state registrar of vital statistics have verified that the health department has the original birth certificate. The department won't release it to birthers because state law restricts the release of such records.

There are heaps and heaps of evidence that the president was born where Hawaii's state officials say he was, and none that he was born anywhere else. What bothers me most isn't the time wasted on this nonsense. What bothers me most is that a barrel of crackpots are -- without any evidence -- accusing public servants of fraud.

Maybe Hawaii should sue the birthers for slander. That would be a trial worth watching.

Orion's hope

2010-03-21T20:44:00.003-04:00

You can imagine my amusement, or bemusement, when the press release came over from Associated General Contractors telling me that the Orlando office of Hensel Phelps Construction Co. won an Aon Build America Award in the "Best Renovation of a Federal & Heavy Project" category for its conversion of a a 40-year old building at Kennedy Space Center into the new assembly facility for the Orion Capsule.

Yeah.

That's the same Orion Capsule that's part of the Constellation Program, which got its funding cut from NASA's 2011 budget.

J. Doug Pruitt, the president of AGC, said, “These are the projects that redefine communities, reinvent neighborhoods and remind us that anything is possible given the right mix of craft, skill and commitment.”

Pruitt said Hensel Phelps's Orion project was completed within 18 months, despite the need to abate more than 320 tons of hazardous materials, respect astronaut "quiet hours," and halt construction during launches.  

Kirk Hazen, vice president and Southeast district manager at Hensel Phelps, said the company worked in partnership with Lockheed Martin to deliver the taxpayers "a unique project known as the 'Factory of the Future' that exceeded all safety, quality, budgetary, schedule, and environmental goals.”

Good job, guys. Now, if the taxpayers can bug their senators and representatives to pass the Human Space Flight Capability Assurance & Enhancement Act of 2010 (HR 4804), said taxpayers might actually get their money's worth out of this award-winning "Factory of the Future."

I would be remiss if I didn't point out that you can read about the bill at OBJ. And if you forget which persons in Congress are supposed to be representing you, check here.

Go, Canada!

2010-02-13T10:17:00.001-05:00

During the Opening Ceremonies of the Winter Olympic Games last night, I was impressed by the amount of time and the degree of prominence given to the First Nations: the indigenous people of Canada. The leaders of the four nations whose territories encompass the Olympic venues were seated with the national and international leaders.

Tribal representatives offered greetings in their native languages, as did the Utes at the Salt Lake Games. But then native people from across Canada performed their traditional dances in traditional attire throughout the parade of nations. I was struck by the similarity between the dances and costumes of the Prairie tribes, as they were called, to those of the Great Plains in the U.S.

But I was most sharply struck by the notion that no games in the U.S. has ever given so much time and prominence to native peoples. For all our similarities, there are great differences between Americans and Canadians, and this is one of them. Here, we frequently forget our native peoples. And when we remember, it often seems an afterthought. ("Hey, since we're in Utah, we should invite the Osmonds. Oh yeah, and maybe the Utes, too.")

But another segment of the show was very -- how shall I put it -- North American. When the tartan-and-leather-clad tap dancers and fiddlers took the stage, in what I can only describe as a Punk Rock Riverdance, it demonstrated the individuality and inventiveness that characterizes both of our pioneer nations. The fiddling and clogging, which the producers encountered on Canada's east coast, is similar to that seen in Appalachia. I'd say it was the same, but I've never seen tattooed Appalachian dancers in black studded leather and chains. (Which isn't to say they don't exist. Only that I've never seen them.)

At the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, a thousand men, all of similar height and build and ethnicity, dressed the same way, doing the same thing, expressed the conformity of the Chinese Communist state. Contrast that with the Canadian people, a variety of colors and sizes and ethnicities, each dressed differently, dancing together but not in unison.

We Americans may admire the Chinese precision and unity, but individuality and innovation -- those are things we can relate to. Our normally unassuming Northern cousins have set themselves the audacious goal to own the podium at their games. I wish them well.

How many times do I have to tell you…

2010-02-12T11:27:00.001-05:00

So often, I tell my teenager “we need to leave at X o’clock,” and he’s not ready to leave until X-plus-ten … or plus-15 … or plus-20 …

You would think I’d have learned by now to give him an earlier deadline, like editors sometimes do with recalcitrant freelancers. But no, even after years of arriving late at school, or dentist appointments, or worship, I told him the truth: We need to leave by seven-thirty.

Then I waited with gnashing teeth while he took uncommonly long in the shower, ignored my instruction to wear a sweater and a jacket because it would be cold, and roamed about the house searching for a misplaced wallet.

I looked at my watch. We were told to be at the school at seven-forty-five so he could take the state’s standardized test. It was now seven-forty, and the school is fifteen minutes away. Meanwhile, he looked for a book to read during the bus ride home.

My fury swelled. His insubordination showed disrespect for me and for his own education. I poured out my wrath by punching the wall, scraping the skin off my knuckles.

Once he was in the car, I sped to the school, praying we would be in time. We got to the school office five minutes after eight. Two other homeschoolers waited in the lobby. The secretary reassured me that the testing coordinator had not yet started. Thank you, God. I apologized to my son for losing my temper and wished him well. The coordinator came to admit the homeschoolers into the testing room.

I headed out, still angry. In the car, I prayed aloud, something I don’t often do in solitude. “Jesus Christ Lord God Almighty in Heaven, help me. Why is he so disrespectful? Why does he do the opposite of what I tell him? I give clear instructions, and he doesn’t follow them.”

I imagined God folding his arms and frowning. “Now you know how I feel.”

I would rather punch a wall and hurt myself than hurt my child. In the same way, the Creator poured out his wrath on the Redeemer, shedding his blood rather than ours. And despite our faults, He gives us enough grace that even though we fall short of the goal, we are still admitted into His presence.

Cancel this "special order"

2010-02-05T16:19:00.000-05:00

This just in, from one of our faithful correspondents:

I have received an e-mail that looks like it is from Amazon.com but is not. I am sure it is a phishing scam.

The mail is very well done in that it has the Amazon logo and claims to be from "order-update@amazon.com.
It tells you to click on the attached link for an update on your order status.

The tip-off for me was: 1. I have no current order with Amazon, and 2. rather than a hot link to UPS as I would expect from Amazon, the mail had an attachment that was a .zip file with the instruction to open the zip file for order update information.… This one is pretty sneaky in that is does not try to scare you, e.g. "your credit card data is wrong," or sell you something. But I'm positive the zip file would unload some nasty bit of malware that would either steal my data or just trash the hard drive.

Malware, indeed. Akin to the "special delivery" e-mail noted earlier, this type of scam often involves software that logs your keystrokes, giving a hacker access to the things you use your computer for, like shopping and banking, either of which can get the hacker your credit card number. Alternatively, if you are using a Windoze computer, malware can turn your PC into a "zombie," generating even more spam to the unsuspecting masses.

For more information, visit Symantec's Web site.

It must take a rocket scientist to figure this out

2010-01-29T15:34:00.004-05:00

I find it absurd that today, NASA's remembrance day for those who gave their lives to further the cause of space exploration, the Interwebs are buzzing with speculation about the president pulling the plug on the Constellation Program.

He claims it will be better to turn rocket-building over to private companies.

Whom does he think built the Ares-1X? The SeaBees?

NASA directs the program, but the heavy lifting is -- and always has been -- done by private companies.

The Saturn V rockets were built by Rocketdyne. The lunar landers were built by Grumman.

Orbiters for the space shuttle program were built by Rockwell International with parts by Grumman and General Dynamics. The shuttle's external tank is made by Lockheed Martin. The solid rocket boosters have motor segments made by ATK, with avionics and final assembly by United Space Alliance, which is a partnership between Lockheed Martin and The Boeing Co.

This New York Times story says NASA is getting a budget increase over five years. But if Constellation is scrapped, it seems much of that budget increase must go to a whole new round of requests for proposals, design review meetings, and test flights.

Ares already had a successful test flight. So why are we starting over? And why does the president who came closer to nationalizing our banks than anyone since FDR want to privatize the space program? Does he not realize that the Ares was built by private companies? From NASA:

ATK Space Systems of Promontory, Utah, is the prime contractor for the first stage reusable solid rocket boosters. Jacobs Engineering in Tullahoma, Tenn., is the prime contractor for Ares I-X avionics, with Lockheed Martin of Denver, Colo., as subcontractor. Teledyne Brown Engineering of Huntsville, Ala., is the prime contractor for developing the roll control system. United Space Alliance of Houston, Texas, is the prime contractor supporting launch operations at Kennedy Space Center.

Mr. Change wants to discard the work already done by these private companies so astronauts can fly on rockets built by ... private companies. But there are only so many companies capable of building a rocket that big. Apparently it escapes him that the companies most likely to bid on a "commercial rocket" will be those already named.

That's not change. It's just a waste.

You can do without this "special" delivery

2010-01-21T17:56:00.000-05:00

This just landed in my inbox:

The courier company was not able to deliver your parcel by your address.

Cause: Error in shipping address.
You may pickup the parcel at our post office personaly!
...The shipping label is attached to this e-mail.
Please print this label to get this package at our post office....

The message purports to be from DHL and sports a convincingly spoofed "dhl.com" e-mail address.

The attachment is called "DHL_Label_NR34791.zip," and that's the real tip-off.

Well, that and the fact that I'm not expecting anything to be delivered by anyone.

Even if I were, why would a simple shipping label be in a zip file?

It wouldn't. It would be a pdf, surely. Or I'd be instructed to log into dhl.com with my tracking number.

This attachment and others like it -- the numbers appear to be randomly generated (yes, I got 2 of them with different numbers) -- contains a Trojan that will install malware on your Windows computer. But even if you have a Mac, you should not open unexpected attachments from unverifiable sources.

For more on Bredolab, see Hoax-Slayer and Symantec.

Oh, and another tip-off? The poor grammar. "deliver your parcel by your address" should be "to your address," and there are two Ls in "personally."

Those who can't, kibitz

2010-01-17T00:08:00.001-05:00

I had a great time Saturday working with the guys from the Phenix Design Group, who provided driving and flight simulators for Otronicon.

You may recall that last year I wrote about my pretty dismal flight record. So I found it amusing when Lynn, an Orlando Science Center staff member, asked me to work at the Cessna Skyhawk flight simulator.

She asked whether I minded doing something kind of technical. Then she laughed and said, "Well, it's all technology, so I guess you wouldn't be here if you did mind it." Which is true.

Lynn introduced me to Ron, of the Phenix Design Group, who asked whether I'm familiar with flight simulators.

"Yes," I said, "I've crashed several of them."

He was fine with that, and proceeded to show me how the HotSeat Flight Sim works. A few menus and key commands later, and I was running the show.

The HotSeat is a lightweight bucket seat mounted, as one guest discovered by laying on the floor and looking underneath, on "big gimbals." (Yes, that's the kind of guest we get at the science center, and we like it that way. Actually, I saw two people do this.) As you steer left or right, up or down, the chair tilts accordingly. The simulation is driven by a PC, with the video displayed on a large LCD TV.

Usually I gave the guests a quick overview of the controls--which button or lever does what--but only the ones they needed. So several buttons, levers and pedals went unused. To keep things simple and the line moving, Ron was running a limited simulation of an approach and landing at Orlando International Airport.

So yeah, there's me, telling other people how to land a plane.

After I'd been doing this for an hour and a half or so, I noticed that some guests would only touch the buttons I pointed out to them, while others would, at some point in their roughly two-minute approach, push every button and flip every switch to see what each one would do. I also noticed that there was a greater proportion of young people (which is to say, people younger than me) in the latter group, and a greater proportion of people older than me in the former.

First I must point out that my OSC sample is disproportionately skewed to the youth. Nevertheless, this observation is in line with one I've made at the office, where people younger than me, when trying to accomplish something new with a computer, usually start clicking through menus and dialog boxes until they get what they need. People older than me usually call me for help. It's as if they're afraid they'll break it if they push the wrong button. Although there are times, in a production environment, when a computer error could bungle things up rather badly, generally speaking, clicking the wrong button isn't a disaster.

So I began wondering whether this willingness to experiment with the controls at hand is more prevalent in those who've grown up with high-tech gadgetry. Familiarity breeding confidence. I asked my teenager, and he concurs. Young people use trial-and-error, he says, because it's often the faster way to learn something than reading the manuals.

Perhaps the techno-timid of all ages should spend more time in environments like the science center, where trial-and-error learning can be practiced without danger to life, limb, or data.

And for the record, after my volunteer shift was over and I was able to try the HotSeat for my self, I had a lovely approach but pranged on touchdown.

Throwing learning a curve

2010-01-14T21:24:00.001-05:00

Often, when I run into an old friend, they ask how my son is, and when I tell them he’s sixteen and taller than me they gasp and recall some thing he did when he was eleven. “Can you believe it’s been that long?”

Those of us who were around when Otronicon was a new idea are having much the same reaction. The baby is growing up and into a respectable citizen.

I first wrote about Otronicon in the Jan. 27, 2006 issue of Orlando Business Journal. Dr. Brian Tonner, then president of Orlando Science Center, told me, "The purpose of Otronicon is to examine the impact of digital electronics on culture."

But even then, Otronicon was about more than video games. Orlando has long been a center for military simulation, and the Army and Marine Corps have been participants in Otronicon from the start, along with Lockheed Martin’s simulation and training division.

This year, I told OSC President JoAnn Newman, in all sincerity, that the show keeps getting better every year. It’s true.

This year, one of the new additions is medical simulation. Otronicon has touched on this topic in the past, but this year Florida Hospital for Children has put together a roomful of displays, including a trainer for the da Vinci robotic surgery system.

I was able to try out the da Vinci Surgical System this evening at the Otronicon preview event. The robot is a massive thing with multiple arms -- a mechanical Shiva. The control mechanism is a massive thing with rounded edges, gaping eye sockets and a cavern containing the joystick-like controls.

The controls are a little touchy at first, but once you get the hang of it, it’s very nimble. A tray of tiny modeling-clay cones and plastic rings sat on a table under the robotic arms. After only a minute or two -- once the company sales rep who was manning the display showed me the correct way to get my fingers into the grips -- I was able to move rings from one cone to another.

The company representative and a couple of doctors from the hospital explained that this kind of equipment allows for minimally invasive surgery, cutting recovery times by weeks and reducing or eliminating post-surgery problems.

A lady who came along after I finished wasn’t sure guests were allowed to use the machine. But I showed her how, and she gave it a go. But she accidentally pinched off the top of one of the clay cones. Her friend teased her -- “that would hurt” -- but I said, “That was an appendectomy. She meant to do that.”

Preview night is always fun. This year, more than ever. Because now, in addition to enjoying all the new things Otronicon has to offer, I can reminisce with others who’ve been around since back in the day about how far we’ve come.

Otronicon isn’t just about examining culture anymore. As Newman told the attendees tonight, at this event kids don’t just play games, they learn how games are made. “It’s not just about how we play,” she said, “it’s about how we learn.”

Blog hijack

2009-12-30T15:18:00.000-05:00

Language Log is a terrific blog with a long list of prolific contributors. It can be a little unwieldy to follow, not only because of the number of posts but because each post is usually an in-depth article and is followed by many insightful comments.

Not so one Dec. 25 entry, in which Arnold Zwicky traces the divergent sources of a clever line by Paul Krugman (writing on politics: "No, Virginia, at this point there is no sanity clause.").

The entry itself is brief, and the comments section is abruptly truncated by Zwicky after a commenter went off-topic, attempting to move the discussion from language to politics.

Zwicky writes, in his terminal comment, writes:

I've had it repeatedly explained to me that when you open a posting to comments, the comments section then "belongs to" the commenters (who are free to take up any topic they want), not to you. I reject this idea, but hardly anyone seems to agree with me.

Well, I certainly agree with him, as do many other bloggers who moderate the comments on their sites. Unfortunately, Zwicky has decided that to obviate such a hijacking in the future, he simply won't allow any comments at all.

I do hope Zwicky reconsiders this drastic measure. It's a shame the rest of us should miss the lively discussions Language Log usually inspires just because one crank realized there's a bigger audience for his political views there than at his own blog.

An urban legend in a pear tree

2009-12-26T14:50:00.000-05:00

A co-worker recently brought up that modern myth about the origins of the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” and asked whether it was for real. This is the story that says the song is a coded reference to scripture. "Five golden rings" stands for the Pentateuch, "Four calling birds" equals four gospels, and so on.

Some claim the song originated in the 16th or 17th century, during the period when English Protestants were persecuting Catholics. “Twelve Days” is said to be a sort of catechism song for teaching the tenets of the faith to children, with the premise that Catholics couldn’t put anything in writing for fear of imprisonment, torture or hanging.

This origin story, as I told my colleague, is nonsense. It apparently was made up by someone who either couldn’t be bothered to look up the truth, or didn’t care. Like the bogus story about candy canes being the letter J for Jesus, the “scripture code” story about the “Twelve Days” song is an attempt to cram religious symbolism into a folk custom.

There are several problems with the “scripture code” story. Chief among them is that there would be no reason to “encode” such information, because the items cited are common to both Catholic and Protestant Bibles.

Also, the things that the items in the song symbolize change from one version of the story to another. For instance, the three French hens are alternately said to represent the Trinity; the virtues of faith, hope and charity; or the gifts of the magi.

And what good is a catechism song only sung one month out of the year?

Actually, the song most likely originated as a “memory and forfeits” game for Twelfth Night (the Epiphany, Jan. 6). The “first day of Christmas” is Dec. 26.

In a memory and forfeits game, the leader sings the first line, and the players follow along. With each round, the leader adds a new phrase, and as people mess up, as we so often to once you get into the double-digits of this song, they are “out,” until only one player remains. It is in this context that the song was first published, in the book Mirth Without Mischief, in 1780. Similar songs are recorded earlier in French.

Whether by translation or through the passage of time, some errors appear to have crept in. The “calling birds” were originally “colly birds,” colly (or coal-y) meaning black, therefore “blackbirds.” And “five golden rings” may originally have meant ring-necked pheasants, making the first seven gifts all birds.

What one’s true love was supposed to have done with 28 birds, not to mention all those people, is not known. And it’s OK to not know. Not knowing is preferable to inventing falsehoods.

I bring you good tidings...really.

2009-12-25T00:49:00.000-05:00

The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks about earthly things. The one who comes from heaven is above all. He testifies to what he has seen and heard, yet no one accepts his testimony. Whoever has accepted his testimony has certified this, that God is true. He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has placed all things in his hands. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but must endure God's wrath.

—John 3:31-36

That's neither holly nor jolly, is it? Yet this is today's gospel reading from the Presbyterian Church USA's daily lectionary.

Many people are taking today as a vacation day. But is is a holy day? Are we stopping to consider what it meant for God to put on flesh and dwell with us? Are we accepting his testimony? Or are we performing some cultural norms out of habit, or because everyone else does?

I skipped decorating this year. Not so much as a wreath on the door. And for half a minute, I worried that my neighbors might think I'm not a Christian because there's nothing on the outside of my house to show it.

Meanwhile, around the corner, our neighbors have a yard full of inflatable decorations and more lights than Vegas. I would live in fear of such an electric bill.

What, I ask you, does an electrically lighted inflated Santa have to do with the immanence of God?

By contrast, I attended my first Christmas Eve worship service at my new church last night. I had the pleasure of sitting in front of the most tone-deaf person I have ever heard. I soon got over the little thrill of not being the worst singer in the room for once. As the saint behind me offered up "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing" with all the gusto she could muster, I thought of this Psalm, which also happens to be on the lectionary for today:

Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth;
break forth into joyous song and sing praises.…
With trumpets and the sound of the horn
make a joyful noise before the King, the LORD.

Sing praises to the King of Kings. Accept His testimony. It's not holly. It's not jolly. It's holy.

We Wish You A Merry Christmas

2009-12-23T16:53:00.003-05:00

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is caroling. Even though we closed John Calvin P.C. at the end of October, some of us gathered recently to go caroling at the homes of our former members, many of them homebound. I've always been touched by how moved people are when we perform this simple service for them.

The custom of caroling goes back a long time. The first known collection of carols was published in 1521. But the trouble is, so many Christmas carols are so old the words are baffling to modern folk.

How about that line in “Deck the Halls” — “don we now our gay apparel?” Yeah, the teenagers get a giggle out of that one.

And what about “Here we come a-wassailing?” Does anyone go wassailing anymore? Or even know what wassail is?

Wassail was brought to English by Viking invaders. The Norse phrase “ves heill” is a toast: “to your health.” To go wassailing involves drinking toasts to the health of your friends. The custom of caroling originated with wassailing. The word “wassail” also came to describe the drink itself, usually mulled cider, sometimes spiked. I suppose if you were going around drinking at all of your friend’s houses, you might start singing, too.

Good King Wenceslas, who “looked out on the Feast of Stephen,” was a real person. He wasn’t a king, though. He was the Duke of Bohemia, in what is now the Czech Republic. He was born c. 907 in the castle of Stochov, near Prague. Although the castle is gone, the church he attended still stands.
Christianity was a fledgling religion then, and there was much conflict between Christians and Pagans in Bohemia. Wenceslas’ mother, in fact, was Pagan, and opposed his support of Christianity. But he was raised by his grandmother, who was Christian.

Wenceslas’s support of the church and his charity to the poor led to his being honored with a song, but not in his lifetime. He died in 929. The words to his carol were not written until 1853, which may be why confusion as to his title crept in.

The music is an old tune (though not as old as Wenceslas), Tempus Adest Floridum, which dates from the 13th century. The same tune is used in the carol “Gentle Mary Laid Her Child.”

As for the feast of Stephen (whose martyrdom is described in the book of Acts, Chapter 7), it takes place on Dec. 26.

And a Happy New Year

We all sing “Auld Lang Syne” on New Year’s Eve, even though few people outside of Scotland know what it means. “Auld lang syne” translates, literally, as “old long ago,” and means, more or less, “the good ol’ days.” So “we’ll drink a cup of kindness yet for auld lang syne” means, roughly, “we’ll toast the good old days.”

Whether you drink your toast with spiked wassail is up to you.

As the risk of sounding like your mom -- look it up

2009-12-19T23:00:00.002-05:00

Any time an e-mail starts with something like "IT IS FOR REAL..." you can be pretty sure it's not. The capital letters are the major tip-off.

Someone actually sent me this oldie that's not a goodie recently:

"...I do not usually forward messages, But this is from my friend ... and she really is an attorney. If she says that this will work - It will work. After all, what have you got to lose?"

"I'm an attorney, And I know the law. This thing is for real. … Bill Gates sharing his fortune. … Microsoft and AOL are running an e-mail beta test When you forward this e-mail to friends, Microsoft can and will track it..."

And make you a billionaire without your having to spend years building a business that produces software used by millions of people every day.

Bill Gates is sharing his fortune, all right, but he's sharing it with genuinely needy people who don't have, like, a roof over their head and food to eat, OK? Not lazy Americans who haven't figured out that if you Google "Microsoft and AOL are running an e-mail beta test," you'll find a bunch of pages telling you it's a hoax.

I wrote about this in OBJ back in 2003, and bunches of people wrote about it before me, including the venerable Snopes.com, under the brilliant heading of "Thousand Dollar Bill."

So here we go again, kids. Do us all a favor: When you get one of these e-mails, visit Snopes.com and look for it. You will be amazed at how many of these things are complete fabrications.

I should say you may be amazed. If you're a jaded journalist, you won't be amazed at all, just sad. Not only sad that so many people pull these hoaxes, but that so many people fall for them.

The most fun I ever had losing

2009-12-03T18:51:00.002-05:00

Over at The Anomaly, the online forum where the Marcher Lord Select contest is being conducted, matters have taken an interesting turn.

Remember when I said there was no Simon Cowell in this contest?

As I quickly discovered, the participants are keen and well able to offer insightful commentary. Some of it may be a tad snarky, but none is cruel or rude. They are always helpful and constructive. One author even re-wrote her pitch right there in the forum based on reader input.

Many of us have formed extraforum partnerships to continue appraising one another's work. I e-mailed my first three chapters to Robynn, for example. After giving me her excellent critique she wrote, "This is fun! I hope you're enjoying it, too."

I am having a blast.

A couple of days ago, Publisher Jeff Gerke posted this thought:

I love that you guys are forming your own crit group partnerships. I didn't realize that one of my secondary goals in all this should've been to bring you folks together for an amazing meeting of the minds. I'm glad you're way ahead of me.

This is the beauty of networking, whether it happens online or off. Connections are made, and new projects develop therefrom. I doubt anyone could have planned it this way.

I would go so far as to say those of us who've been "voted off" are now having a better time than those who are entering Phase 3, for the pressure must be increasing as the competition gets tighter. The rest of us are free to critique and encourage one another. It's like a support group.

I call it "Writers Anomalous."

Christmas in Space

2009-11-30T22:10:00.004-05:00

My science fiction Christmas comedy, "The Feast of Stevens" got an honorable mention in the 2009 Not So Cynical Christmas Writing Contest. The winning stories and runners-up will be published at The Cynic Online Magazine starting Dec. 1.

I suspect "Stevens," while lighthearted, was not as warm and fuzzy as the editors were looking for. If you get over there to read it, please come back and tell me what you think of it.

A simile a day keeps the editor at bay

2009-11-18T19:13:00.002-05:00

If I had a simile-of-the-day award, it would go to Clay Shirky for this gem:

"...the spread of electronic commerce for everything from music to groceries is part of the increase in empty store fronts on shopping streets, leaving a series of Citi branches, ATT outlets, and Starbucks that repeat at regular intervals, like scenery in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon."

Shirky also has some thought-provoking things to say about the future of independent bookstores.

Voted off the island

2009-11-16T19:41:00.003-05:00

Well, my book did not advance to the next round of the Marcher Lord Select contest. I hope to get feedback on why that is.

In the meantime, though, this contest has been -- and continues to be -- terrific exercise for understanding why so many good writers collect so many rejections. Marcher Lord Press publishes three books each spring. But they already had two books lined up that are sequels to previousl MLP titles. That left one slot open, with 36 viable entries to choose from.

One can hardly blame Publisher Jeff Gerke for crowdsourcing that decision. It's a tough one.

Of the eighteen books advancing to round two, only one will be published by MLP in the spring. Which means there will be several -- I can't call them losers -- several non-winners that I would love to read, but will be unable to read because they won't be published.

I can only hope they'll find a home elsewhere, later.

Just don't throw down your gimlet

2009-11-02T21:25:00.001-05:00

In the Middle Ages, one ran a gantlet (an ordeal) and threw down a gauntlet (an armored glove). No one does either of these things literally anymore, except, perhaps, in the SCA.

These expressions persist in modern English as idioms, but because we are so disconnected from their chivalric origins, people tend to get them wrong. They speak of “running a gauntlet,” although “throwing down a gantlet” is rarely heard.

I consulted with Prof. McIntyre over at You Don't Say, and he informed me that Bryan Garner, author of Garner's Modern American Usage, "is still holding the line on gantlet/gauntlet."

The new edition of Garner's includes a Language-Change Index, which ranges from Stage 1, rejected, to Stage 5, fully accepted. Prof. McIntyre informed me -- because I have not yet read the latest edition of Modern American Usage -- that Garner puts "run the gauntlet" at Stage 4. And, Prof. McIntyre added, "My own view is that it's a battle not worth fighting."

I'm inclined to agree. Moreover, I'm beginning to wonder if these phrases have passed from idiom to cliche. Surely it's better to endure an ordeal or issue a challenge while expressing your meaning in a clear, modern way. Unless you’re writing a historical novel set in the Middle Ages.

Like American Idol -- without Simon Cowell

2009-10-31T16:55:00.005-04:00

Marcher Lord Press, which publishes Christian speculative fiction, is putting a new spin on publishing.

"Marcher Lord Select is American Idol meets book acquisitions," says publisher Jeff Gerke. About 40 completed manuscripts will be presented, and readers will decide which one should be published.

The contest will proceed in phases. In each subsequent round, voters will get larger glimpses of the competing manuscripts.

The first phase will consist only of the book's title, genre, length, a 20-word premise, and a 100-word back cover copy teaser blurb. Voters will cut the entries from 40 to 20 based on these items alone.

Following rounds will provide voters with a 1-page synopsis, the first 500 words of the book, the first 30 pages of the book, and, in the final round, the first 60 pages of the book.

The winner of the final round will be published by Marcher Lord Press in Spring 2010.

Marcher Lord Select begins Nov. 1, 2009 and runs until January or February 2010. All voting, discussions and other Marcher Lord Select activities will take place at The Anomaly forums in the Marcher Lord Select subforum. Free registration is required.

Contestants are admitted by invitation only, but anyone may register to vote for the winner.

"In order for this to work as we're envisioning," Gerke says, "we need lots and lots of voters. So even if you're not a fan of Christian science fiction or fantasy, I'm sure you love letting your voice be heard about what constitutes good Christian fiction. So come on out and join the fun!"

Fair disclosure: My book is entered in this contest. Gerke encourages authors to direct as many people as they like to the contest, as long as they don't campaign for their books in the forums.

Gone Phishing

2009-10-16T20:55:00.002-04:00

Recieved at my company e-mail account, no less:

"This e-mail was sent by America Online Billing to notify you that we have temporarily prevented access to your account."

Well, thank goodness. Because if there was an AOL account in my name, I'd want it disabled.

"Your account may have been accessed by someone else. Please verify your details by following the link below:"

A classic phishing ruse. Does anyone still fall for this bunk anymore? They must do, or spammers would stop sending it.

I don't don't like to encourage pessimism, but I will prescribe a healthy dose of skepticism for all netizens, especially the newbies, who always seem to have it least and need it most.

Old, moldy, beautiful books

2009-10-10T18:49:00.005-04:00

How appropriate that I found Awful Library Books just one day before we had to go clean out the church library.

ALB is a librarians' blog that partly mocks out-of-date books but mostly chides the librarians who keep them hanging around long past their usefulness. In fact, the hosts frequently point out cases in which out-of-date books have not only been kept, they've been re-bound.

Every bibliophile knows the agony of throwing away a book. Even a bad book is hard to throw away, as a co-worker and I discovered one day upon receiving in the mail an unasked-for review copy of a self-published book that was, ostensibly, about global economics but in reality was unintelligible. Not only did it not have any readily apparent structure, it was written by someone who did not have a firm grasp upon English grammar or syntax.

There should have been no qualms about tossing this incoherent screed into the garbage, but we hesitated because … it was a book. Someone wrote it, printed it, bound it. And the binding, at least, was neatly done. But, yes, into the trash it went. (Note to self-published authors: Before you send a review copy to a newspaper, make sure it's a newspaper that actually publishes reviews.)

I felt similar pangs clearing out the John Calvin Presbyterian Church library in preparation for the church's closure Oct. 25. As we pulled books from the shelves and spread them out on tables so the congregation could take their pick, we not only found the laughable sort of examples that provide fodder for ALB, we found curiosities, gems and battered treasures.

Between reading ALB and gutting the JCPC library, I've concluded that books come in a variety of types, none of which is readily discardable:

Not old, and still good looking

I have yet to find a volume from the JCPC library that has seen a lot of circulation. In fact, most of the books, once cataloged, never left the property. So even the ones that are ten to fifteen years old are in great shape. Well, except for the card pockets glued in the back and the "John Calvin Presbyterian Church" stamps in them. Even trade paperbacks are pretty when new. I love the way the trim creates a tidy rectangular polyhedron. The older ones have glossy covers, which is a bit garish. I prefer the newer ones that have a matte finish.

Just old enough to be mockable

Quite a few of the ALB entries fit this category. A recent example was a hair stylist's guide from the 80's that included some gag-inducing mullets. We didn't find many in the church's collection that fit this category, other than the Time-Life cookbooks. Yeah. I don't know why the church library had cookbooks either. These are the easiest type to discard, unless you anticipate their growing up into the next category.

Old enough to be cool, in a kitschy sort of way

One of my fellow congregants took home a temperance-era volume of family devotionals. This thing was huge -- the size of an unabridged dictionary. What convinced her to keep it was a doggerel poem about the evils of drink. She found it amusing.

Of ALB's entries in this category, my favorite is a home economics textbook from 1959.

Old, shabby, and priceless

I haven't seen any of this variety on ALB yet. Presumably by the time a book reaches this stage, a library will already have withdrawn it, or moved it to a special collection. I now have in my possession several of these, in varying stages of shabbiness, and am looking for a book conservator. There is an 1868 Bible with its covers off. An 1869 copy of An Illustrated History of the Holy Bible also has a broken binding. It is outdated, as it can't contain anything about the Dead Sea Scrolls. But it has beautiful colored endpapers, with the edges of the book painted to match. Only handcrafters make books this way anymore. These books are foxed (which is to say, moldy) and worm-eaten, and they're treasures.

One of them is a Hebrew Old Testament. If there's a date in it, I can't read it, as it's not in numerals. In the back cover (what would be the front cover if it were an English book) is a rubber-stamped "Property of John Calvin Presbyterian Church…Donated by ___" and in the blank is handwritten "R.L. Hall."

Ridgely L. Hall was the founding pastor of JCPC, and though he died before I was born, I've come to respect and admire him. Those who knew him hold him in high esteem -- I would go so far as to say awe. Handwritten on the endpaper, with pencil, in what I can only assume is Pastor Hall's handwriting, is this quotation:

"Whence but from Heaven could men unskilled in arts, in several ages born, in several parts, weave such agreeing truths? Or how or why would all conspire to cheat us with a lie? Unasked their pains, ungrateful their advice, starving their gain and martyrdom their price."

…with the attribution "John Dryden(?)"

Yes, Ridge, that was Dryden. And I promise, when I hand this worm-eaten, rubber-stamped, Dewey-decimaled treasure to the conservator, it will be with strict instructions NOT to erase the note on the endpapers.

'Fun' with M$ Office.2

2009-09-26T22:32:00.002-04:00

For ages, I have wrestled with Entourage, which I love. I really do. But, like the people I love, it sometimes does things in a way that's not the way I would have done it if I were them.

Entourage's Tasks list, for example, can be sorted by due date, or priority, or alphabetically. But, given three items of equal importance with the same due date, it won't let you manually move one to the top because it's a prerequisite for another. Or move one to the bottom because it can't be done because some prerequisite piece of the project yet to be recieved from another person or department.

And there's no obvious way to export the Task list as an editable text file.

Well, I finally discovered this article which describes how to get Tasks out of Entourage using BBEdit. Why I never found it before, I can't imagine. Perhaps it's Google page rank wasn't high enough before. I don't know. I'm just glad to finally be able to get my Tasks out of Entourage and into something editable.

The article was written in 2005, but I tried the technique using BBEdit's sibling, TextWrangler, and it worked just as well. Dragging into Word, however, copies only the first item in a group. So you have to drag each task individually. That means if you have 12 tasks, it will take you 12 times as long to copy them into Word as into TextWrangler.

Oddly, while Word only picks up the first item in a grouped list of tasks, Apple's TextEdit only picks up the last. So TextWrangler rules.

Once you get the tasks out of Entourage and into TextWrangler or BBEdit, they can then be imported into OmniOutliner for even more control. Love it.

This simple drag-and-drop export method also works with Notes and Calendar items.

If only the things ON my to-do list could be handled so easily.

Google's caboodle of books

2009-09-11T12:21:00.005-04:00

Authors and publishers are trying to put a stop to Google's digital library project, which would digitize millions of books now sitting unread on library shelves.

Their complaint is that Google is not first seeking permission from the authors or publishers of those works, which are out of print but still under copyright. Google's proposed settlement, which comes up for judicial review October 7, would pay damages to any author whose rights are shown to be violated by the project. Opponents say Google should get permission to digitize first, not offer apologies after the fact. Google argues that in many cases, the copyright holders cannot be found to give permission.

Either way, I believe authors have more to gain from the project than they have to lose.

Sales driver: While researching journaling as a spiritual practice for my Sunday school students, I found at Google books Ron Klug's How to Keep a Spiritual Journal. This proved so helpful, I went to Amazon and bought a copy. So the searchability of a digital library can direct readers to books they might otherwise never discover. The proposed settlement would allow out-of-print books to be printed and sold by Google, Amazon and others. This could be a great benefit for authors not inclined to self-publish their out-of-print books.

Research tool: I'm developing a character whose mother is Welsh. I perused a map of Wales to pick a euphonious hometown for my fictional Welshwoman. I found Llanavan, a town named for St. Avan, of whom I have never heard. Well -- here is the dark side of reasearch, which leads down trails of cross-references far away from one's point. But I didn't wish to pick this town without learning about its namesake, so of course I turned to Google, which helpfully found Our Sunday Visitor's Encyclopedia of Saints by Matthew Bunson and Margaret Bunson, and even dumped me onto the relevant page, which tells me Avan was a sixth-century Welsh bishop and that all that is known of him comes from an inscription in the Llanavan churchyard where he was buried. Ah, well. It would have been much more interesting if he had turned out to be the patron saint of accountants, or something. (Remind me to someday tell you the story of St. Chad, the "patron saint of disputed elections".) Still, in less than five minutes I learned all I needed to know about the origin of Llanavan's name. I couldn't drive to the library in that time, and even if I had, the county library system doesn't have this book anywhere in its collection.

The digital library will bring to light millions of pieces of information just like this. Those who moan about the impropriety of Google having a monopoly are missing a crucial point: Google has a monopoly only because they thought of it first. Rather like Microsoft or the old AT&T. It certainly needn't remain a monopoly. Just as there are multiple physical libraries, there could be multiple digital libraries.

This is fundamentally a debate about adapting existing copyright laws to new technologies. Terence Ross, a copyright lawyer not invoved in the matter, is quoted in a Bloomberg article, saying, "Innovation often poses problems for the law and established bureaucracy.”

That's an understatement. I'm reminded of Peggy Lee and others who provided voices for Disney films, whose contracts with the studio didn't cover royalties to be paid when films were re-released on VHS and DVD, because of course neither medium had been invented at the time.

As a writer, I wish to be paid for my work, so I understand the complaints of those who fear the digital library will prevent their earning proper royalties. But I think those fears are unfounded. An author earns only one royalty payment for a volume sold to a library, no matter how many people subsequently read that copy. Does that mean we don't want our books in libraries at all? I should think not.

Google's plan may not be perfect. The court may call for changes to it. I agree the court needs to ensure that copyrights are honored. But Google's project is at its heart a good one. I find it hard to classify as evil something that brings old or obscure books out of the dark stacks and into the light.

Depends on how you define "original"

2009-09-07T20:18:00.002-04:00

When I saw Hope Clark's post about the Harlequin Presents writing contest, I almost gave it a miss right off, based on Harlequin's reputation. But Hope noted that with no entry fee, and the prize of editorial services for a year, it was right for "closet romantics."

Since a couple of my back-burner items might be called "romantic," if not capital-R "Romance," I gave it a look.

The publisher claims to want "unique perspectives and ... originality," but:

"At the heart of your novel must be ... the hero ... a powerful, ruthless man ..." and a heroine who is "shy and vulnerable ... also plucky and determined to challenge his arrogant pursuit."

So they want originality, as long as your original story isn't about a vulnerable hero and a ruthless heroine.

It rather takes the joy out of writing to have not only the characters delineated beforehand, but the course of the romantic subplot as well. The publisher only wants stories in which he's pursuing and she's resisting. This leaves out any story about mutual attraction opposed by outside forces. Romeo and Juliet would not be welcome here.

What I find most appalling is that these are not just the guidelines for this contest. They're the guidelines for Harlequin's entire "Mills & Boon Modern Romance" imprint. Harlequin is devoting an entire division to the publication of books in which the type of characters and the course of their relationship is the same in every book. That's not what I call original.

Putting a republic to the test

2009-09-03T19:57:00.006-04:00

I just finished Michael Lind's book What Lincoln Believed. It's not a biography, it's a philosophical examination. It covers Lincoln's religious, economic, and racial views. For most of his life, he was a deist. He was a Hamiltonian, while most of his Southern opponents were Jeffersonians. And while he belived "all men are created equal," he believed human rights didn't necessarily equate with civil rights.

What stunned me most about this book was how it changed my view of the American Civil War. Common wisdom says the war was about slavery. Confederate sympathizers have said it was about state's rights, but none could pretend that the primary right being argued about was anything other than the right to buy and sell human beings.

Lincoln did not run for office on an abolitionist platform. Like the country's founders, he was willing to allow slavery to remain where it already existed. The point of contention was whether Southern slaveholders would be allowed to export slaves to the new territories in the West.

When, after Lincoln's election, Southerners demanded concessions on threat of secession, Lincoln refused to be blackmailed. In a letter rejecting one compromise proposal, he wrote, "We have just carried an election on principles fairly stated to the people. Now we are told … the government shall be broken up, unless we surrender to those we have beaten…"

The "beaten" pro-slavery minority, tried, as Lincoln put it, "to break up the government." When Lincoln said, in his address at Gettysburg, that the war was testing whether the republic "can long endure," he was not talking about slavery. He was talking about the ability of a democratically elected government to quell an internal rebellion by an angry minority.

In an address to Congress in 1861, Lincoln summed up the matter this way: "When ballots have fairly, and constitutionally, decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets…there can be no successful appeal, except to ballots themselves…whatever they cannot take by an election, neither can they take it by a war…"

I have sometimes wondered why the union bothered to fight. If Southern states no longer wished to be part of the Union, why force them to stay in it? Here's why: The Constitution contains no mechanism for a state, once admitted to the union, to later separate from it. That means the Southern states' secession was unconstitutional. Lincoln's duly elected administration was opposed by insurgents who flouted the country's founding principles. As Lind puts it, "The Civil War was about law and order in the service of democracy."

Lind's text is a bit dense at times, but it is worth working through to get at these gems of insight about one of our nation's finest presidents and darkest times.

Photo courtesy of the National Archives.

Rejection is not always about you

2009-08-26T21:58:00.004-04:00

Hope Clark had a great post yesterday on writers, editors and rejection. An excerpt:

Writers have good days and bad days. … Editors have good days and bad days. They accept and decline submissions for a wide variety of reasons, most of which a writer will never know and the editor will easily forget.

As I wrote in the comments at Hope's blog, the calls I most dread are from the public relations people who want to know why we didn't use the item they sent. Because usually, there's no easy answer, and even when there is, the truth isn't pretty.

One reason we might skip a story is that one of our competitors has already done it.

Other times, it's just not the kind of thing we ever publish. For example, I had a call from FOCUS about getting coverage for their Interfaith Prayer Action for Health Care Reform. I'm a supporter of FOCUS and have many friends who are actively involved there. But I had to tell the caller it's not something I could cover because it's national and nonprofit and we're local and business.

But most of the time, at least with the "People in the News" and "Biz Digest" columns, it's simply because we have a limited number of pages, and when they are full, we stop. A good news item might get moved to the queue for next week, but if something bigger comes along, that will move to the front of the line. A $5 million deal is a bigger story than a $500,000 deal. If enough million-dollar deals come along, the $500,000 deal may become old news before it ever sees ink.

Here's a scary statistic that I share liberally: We get five hundred press releases a week just for these two columns. There's room in the paper for about fifty. That doesn't mean the other 90 percent are no good; it just means there wasn't room for them.

As much as an editor may strive for objectivity, not every editor has the ability to set dollar-amount cutoffs to determine which submissions make the cut and which go to the bitbucket. It must be especially difficult for fiction editors, as fiction is so difficult to quantify.

Sturgeon's Law surely applies at every periodical and book publishing house. No one has the resources to publish everything they get. There are too many writers -- and PR people -- out there.

Sturgeon's Law -- named for Theodore Sturgeon, a writer and magazine editor -- says 90 percent of everything is crap. But crap is relative. The 11th percentile may not be crappy at all. It's just slightly less good than the 10th percentile. And when you're making decisions about how to spend your publisher's money and your reader's time, that 1 percent difference is enough, even if the reasons for the difference aren't quantifiable.

That's why targeting your market is crucial. You must know what the publisher or editor needs in order to increase your chances of landing in the top 10 percent.

But none are named Quatro

2009-08-21T20:07:00.001-04:00

Watching the Little League Baseball World Series today, we couldn't help but notice the disproportionate number of players in the game named Trey.

Georgia has a player named Trey Maddox, and Iowa has Trey Creighton and Trae Cropp.

Yes, Cropp, a pitcher, spells his name differently. But the presence of several boys whose names are all prounounced the same, all in a single ball game, got us wondering whether, ten years from now, we'll be watching Major League Baseball games populated by vast numbers of Treys with increasingly ingenious (or is that ingenuous) spellings: Tres, Tray, Treigh...

And of course I find it amusing that, in this game, there were three.

Milking it for all it’s worth

2009-08-15T21:53:00.002-04:00

I'm alternately entertained and consternated by lists of things I’m supposed to eat – or not. For example, one article advises me to drink milk for calcium to prevent osteoporosis. But another tells me to avoid dairy products to reduce my risk of heart disease.

That, along with a visit to a restaurant where every other thing on the menu had goat cheese in it, got me wondering: Why do humans consume products made from the milk of ruminants?

Or, as Calvin once said to Hobbes, “Why do we drink cow milk?? Who was the guy who first looked at a cow and said, ‘I think I’ll drink whatever comes out of these things when I squeeze ’em!’?”

Cattle have been domesticated for thousands of years, but even before then sheep, goats and other ruminants were domesticated and provided dairy products like cheese, which was developed about 10,000 years ago in the Middle East.

Legend tells of a trader carrying milk in a pouch made from a sheep’s stomach. After being jostled by the movement of the trader’s horse all day, the milk separated into curds and whey. Hungry, he ate/drank it anyway, and the rest is history.

Curds are solidified bits of milk, mostly protein and fat. Whey is the liquid that’s left over, mostly water, lactose (milk sugar), and some proteins and minerals. Yum.

Strain the whey from the curds and you have, basically, cottage cheese. Adding various bacterial cultures and leaving the results to harden produces different types of “aged” cheese. Soft cheeses, such as Camembert, are aged for a short time. Hard cheeses such as Roquefort are aged longer. Both Camembert and Roquefort are made using molds related to penicillin.

Dairy consumption is an almost entirely European idea, although it did also crop up in the Middle East and parts of Africa. Since Europeans spent the 15th through the 19th centuries colonizing other parts of the world, dairy products have become more widespread.

But many segments of the world’s populations do not — or cannot — consume dairy foods. The late, great Bob Mervine, one of Orlando’s most famous foodies, once told me the use of milk and cheese is unheard of in traditional Asian cuisine. Almost 100 percent of Asians are lactose intolerant.

Dairy consumption, evolutionarily speaking, is a recent mutation. The ability to digest lactose is present in infants, because they subsist almost entirely on milk. But the production of lactase (the enzyme that digests lactose) slows after infancy and stops at about age four. Or would, if we didn’t keep consuming milk from other animals.

Lactose tolerance is found only in cultures that have a long history of dairy consumption, such as northern Europe, where only 4 percent of Swedes are lactose intolerant.

In Africa, the population of southern Sudan, where people have long been cattle herders, is only 17 percent lactose intolerant. But in Nigeria, where the climate is not conducive to raising cattle, the lactose intolerance rate is 99 percent.

Native Americans also have a high rate of lactose intolerance — 95 percent — presumably because it is so hard to milk a wild buffalo.

Many nutritionists and physicians now question the health benefits of humans consuming milk from other mammals. Especially when cow’s milk is what allows a calf to double its body weight in only 47 days.

A woman after my own heart

2009-07-27T21:14:00.003-04:00

Harriett Lake is a lovely woman who has had a tremendous effect on the arts community in Central Florida through her philanthropic contributions.

Not only is Lake the namesake of the Harriett Lake Festival of Plays, but Harriett's Bar at the Lowndes Shakespeare Center is named for her. I especially enjoyed hearing of her latest contribution to the community.

For her $1 million donation to the Dr. P. Phillips Orlando Performing Arts Center, Lake was offered her choice of naming opportunities. She picked the first floor ladies room, which will henceforth be known as "Harriett’s Ladies Lounge."

Board chairman Jim Pugh would win my quote of the week award, if I had one. He said, "She obviously has a clear sense of the priorities of the patrons who will utilize the facility."

For a mere million, you, too, could get a piece of the center in your name. But these bits are already taken:

The Bill and Mary Darden Box Office (Darden Restaurants)

The Richard Kessler Hospitality Suite (Richard Kessler, a local hotelier)

The Peter Family Stage (Annette Neel, the Peters’ daughter)

The Lynn and Chuck Steinmetz Stage (the Steinmetzes)

Although Jesus said we should give without regard for recognition, I must say these people-centered labels are, at least, better than giant corporations slapping their logos on major landmarks. I still staunchly refuse to call the sports arena in downtown Orlando by its proper name. It will always be the O-rena to me. But Harriett’s Ladies Lounge is a naming right I’m glad to honor.

I just hope Avodart doesn’t sponsor the men’s room.

Power junkies

2009-07-22T13:22:00.003-04:00

I used to chide my son for scouting public places for the nearest power outlet. He, of course, was looking for a place to charge up his handheld video game devices.

Now I've taken to scouting public places for power outlets. Of course, I'm looking to charge a laptop computer. Much more important.

The other day I wound up sitting on the floor in a major airport, using the only power outlet I could find that hadn't already been claimed by other laptop jockeys. Clever airport designers of the future will put outlets near seats. Or the other way round.

Unfortunately, despite finding power, I was unable to complete the important work of posting this note on that day, because the aforementioned airport, unlike Orlando International, does not provide free public wi-fi.

With the Kindle growing in popularity, I expect power outlets will be even harder to come by in the future. But at least Kindle users don't have to worry about finding free public wi-fi.

Connections are good

2009-07-10T14:51:00.001-04:00

After gathering dust for many years, my short story The Last Buffalo has been cleaned up and given its debut. It appears in the 2009 Coffee House Fiction anthology.

I was directed to Coffee House Fiction by an entry in Hope Clark's "Funds for Writers" newsletter. I met Hope at last year's Florida Writers' Association conference. And I joined the association on the recommendation of Jim Lussier, whom I met in connection with an arts project for OBJ.

So this post is just a big thank you to everyone in the chain.

Take the [hey...] train

2009-07-01T19:52:00.001-04:00

The other day, I cracked Tribune for its use of standardized features. Since the Sam Zell takover, Tribune has increased the number of features produced in Chicago and shipped nationwide to be printed wholesale in sundry locations. Not just the stories. Art and page layout packages are routinely pre-fabricated for use by all Tribune papers.

I must admit, this isn't entirely a bad thing. Any national news organization does this to some extent. If the same story needs to be told in 40 cities, there's no reason to send 40 reporters to do the same thing 40 times. (Before 2012, someone please explain this to the local TV stations, or they will once again each send a reporter to cover the Olympics. Which, last time I checked, Bob Costas et al did quite competently.)

So packaged national content isn't wholly objectionable. But some effort must be made to make it locally relevant. Or at least, not locally irrelevant. But our local daily ran one such feature on the topic of incorporating more physical activity into your daily routine. One suggestion was to use the stairs instead of the escalator at the station when taking the commuter train to work.

Orlando, as you may know, has no commuter train.

Attack on your wallet

2009-06-29T21:07:00.005-04:00

With the news dominated by Wacko Jacko and Bernie Made-off-with-your-money, I was pleased to have a lead story for today's OBJ Market Wrap radio report -- thanks to my colleague Steven E.F. Brown in San Francisco -- that hadn't already reached the saturation point: Oil over $71 a barrel after Nigerian attacks.

But then I started to wonder: Why, with the SEC filing charges against even more Ponzi scheme operators and troop movements in Iraq and Nigerians blowing up oil rigs, did our local daily devote a large portion of page A1 to a story about a woman whose car has 600,000 miles on it?

I'll admit this is mildly interesting. And it is local. And an attempt was made to make it relevant to the reader by including a list of tips on how to keep a car running for a long time. It surely would have made a better inside feature than another of the one-size-fits-all Tribune features packaged in Chicago for distrubution to every market in the country. (You can spot these because the writers are identified as being with "Tribune Media Services" instead of as staff writers for the local paper.) But local or not, a person driving the same gas-guzzler since the Johnson administration is not A1 news.

The destruction of oil rigs in Nigeria is. Need I explain why?

I don't know at what hour the local daily is printed, but Bloomberg had the Nigerian oil story at 3 a.m. EDT. At that time, it said "Crude oil for August delivery rose … to $69.41 a barrel."

By the time I did the OBJ Market Wrap for WLOQ-FM this afternoon, crude was up to $71.50, a 3 percent increase from yesterday's close. In after-hours trading, it's up further still, at $71.87. This means all of us will be paying more for gas, no matter how old our cars are.

Taking stock of the market

2009-06-13T14:39:00.005-04:00

My friends no doubt think I'm crazy, reading Peter Lynch's 15-year-old investment book Beating the Street. Anything about the stock market that's printed on dead trees must be outdated, right?

Not entirely.

Certainly many of the individual stock recommendations are no longer applicable, because companies, industries, and most importantly, regulations have changed. This book predates Sarbanes-Oxley.

Nevertheless, the book is informative on two counts. First, as a sort of professional biography, in which Lynch recounts his experiences as a stockpicker. And second, as a manual describing how to research public companies.

One can always learn from history, and Lynch's observations about what he calls "The Great Correction of ’87" are instructive for those wondering how to invest in the current climate. Chapter nine is called "Prospecting in Bad News."

People, companies, and stock portfolios grow by learning from mistakes. But it's equally important to learn from other people's successes. The Great Correction of ’87 did not herald the end of civilization, nor did any of the 33 recessions identified by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The lessons on how Lynch and others prospected their way to success through the recessions of the ’80s and ’90s are still instructive to us today, even though we are no longer able to follow his suggestion to buy Chrysler. Even if we wanted to.