I found this fascinating quote today:

Like most of us, she enrolled in college to earn a degree — and it certainly was not a degree in page formatting.faxnrelax.com, Fax and Relax

You should read the whole article.

I was playing around with Zemanta today. This is the result when I was viewing another of my blogs. That word, ’should’, has got to go because it is both irrational and irritating, but, like Photo Shop, the idea basically looks as if it might have legs: if I can learn how to use it before getting so irritated that I un-install it completely. And, while I’ve never deleted a copy of Photo Shop (probably because I’ve never owned one) I’ve certainly trashed a paid-for copy of Corel Draw.

Just a very brief post today.

Like I often do, I was using Wikipedia several times today to research a small point. Sometimes it is for a book I am working on, sometimes for “pay the rent” college papers, sometimes just to get my facts straight before writing an e-mail or, even more critically, before answering a question from my wife.

Married men: do not underestimate the value of Wikipedia!

The point is, I use Wikipedia a lot and I’m willing to guess that you do too.

Today, in the banner area, there was a request from Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, for financial support. You can probably guess where I am going with this, can’t you.

This won’t be the first time I have donated. I have a keen appreciation of the value of what amounts to an encyclopedia that is kept up to the minute. If things change … and I know of the change … I can even make the needed edit myself.

Yeah, just makes me feel warm all over.

That’s Jimmy below. Look at those sad little puppy dog eyes. He’s not getting rich off this; the poor man is going gray and can barely afford to shave. Open your wallet.

They are asking for a minimum contribution of $35 … so are the guys alongside the road with those cute signs about ninjas and kung fu lessons. When I get done paying this months bills, maybe this time I’ll pop ‘em $35-$50. Or, maybe I’ll just slide ‘em the same $20 I’ve been passing along all these lean years. They’ve never complained … and they’ve never shut my subscription off.

Here’s where to go when you leave this blog today. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Support_Wikipedia/en

Oh, and if you make a donation of at least $100, the founder of eBay will match it … turning your $100 into $200 with no pain to you (or him, either … the guy is loaded!) Moreover, this donation is tax deductible for you and for him).

I tutor a young man in the English language. I attempt to cover grammar, composition and so on. With his Dad absent, we talk about the ‘and so on’ fairly often*. We get along okay, even though I’m not always convinced that the time is well spent.

This past Wednesday, as part of an exercise demonstrating viewpoint, I asked him why he thought I tutored him.

Click here to read on, my friend.

As a gardener, I know that my wife and I are held ransom to water. Rain, dew, pipe, irrigation, drip, flood, spray, weep … if the water doesn’t reach our garden somehow – or if there is too much of it or it is timed poorly – our plantings are doomed. If we were counting on that food for our own survival, as much of the world does, things could be bleak indeed.

In many, many places, there is a thick layer of dust and doom spread over the landscape. What water is available is often polluted beyond use, too salty, a vector for horrible diseases or too deep underground to retrieve. Global climate trends have forced people off formerly arable land squarely into the lap of aid agencies. Even if the aid agencies operated in some sort of idealized state – and they do not – living from handout to handout is hardly humankind’s proper state of existence.

Enter, stage left, the incredible synergy of water projects and micro-finance loans.

Click here to read on, my friend.

Just a few weeks ago NASA smacked the moon with an old space ship they no longer wanted and declared that they saw water, 25 whole gallons of it, in the resulting plume of ejected material. Now

A website based in India has reported researchers with the Chandrayaan-1 mission may have found “signs of life in some form or the other on the Moon.” http://bit.ly/6veERB

I’ve just got to wonder how many times we can smack the moon with projectiles before they start shooting back?

(NB for the humor impaired: This is actually a gentle dig at the “we are not alone crowd”. Of course, we’re not alone you sillies … there’s over 7 billion of us happily reproducing on this increasingly crowded planet. Of these, it would appear that roughly every10th one is armed to the teeth and willing to shoot in whatever direction some politician tells them to. Oh, and there are a few million homosexuals who, thankfully, don’t reproduce; although some of them can shoot.

Not to mention God and his faithful created spirit creatures who are shortly going to put an end to all of this gunfire nonsense. Not that you believe that God exists … but that’s okay, it’s not a requirement.)

I believe that life came from a mind … that it is the result of conscious and deliberate cogitation followed by precise manipulation of available material; material that was, itself, the result of deliberate and conscious cogitation. It is thought that leads me to this faith and it is thought, not rhetoric, that could lead me away from it.

Yet, I’ve encountered no compelling arguments against it. Some earnest attempts, yes. Even a few which have moved me to recast my thoughts of creation. When I encounter new information, I reconsider the old. This is not apostasy, this is sanity. But I’ve never found anything sufficiently compelling so as to render the arguments in favor of creation empty.

At present, the online version of Scientific American is featuring an article about species differentiation in a variety of bird that seems to have recently occurred. I’m willing to agree that it likely has … and I’m just as willing to agree that a previously un-noticed species, closely related – but distinct, has just been discovered. The latter happens fairly frequently but, given the number of known species and thus the enormously large number of opportunities for such differentiation to occur, the former happens so seldom as to be statistically insignificant.

Just ONE gene separates the two species … but the birds themselves seem willing to acknowledge the difference.

The more complex the life, the greater the mind that created it. That seems to remain a constant.

http://www.wimp.com/coolsculpture/

Do a little research on this guy, Theo Jansen … this is not the only such “being” he’s created. What I find most fascinating about his work is the insight it gives us into the human ability to visualize and conceive; to realize the things which are not yet, but could be — with a little prodding.

And yet, this guy, for all his creative genius, did nothing more than reorganize previously existing materials. He has added to creation without actually creating anything at all. He does not make the plastic tubes that he uses. He did not create the chemicals and the processes used to make those tubes. The energy that he harnesses, the wind, is not of his own design and he could not protect a single one of his creatures from a rogue wave or an unfortunate gust of wind. A tsunami would drag both him and his creations to a watery demise, leaving behind only beach.

Nonetheless, he’s brilliant by our standards and I admire what he has accomplished, particularly in the realm of getting others to pay him to do what he so obviously loves to do and would / did do at his own expense in the absence of other funding. Like Thomas Edison, he may be one of the fortunate few who, nearing the grave, can say “I’ve never worked a day in my life.

I wish him many more years of such brilliance. I wish him many more years of life.

And I wish he were able to actually create something.

I just got back from my local IHOP and I am IHOPPING mad..

I considered letting the matter just ‘ride’ and being silent about it. But that’s what most other people would do and that’s what allows companies to leave matters messed up year after year … even if they might be inclined, with a little prodding showing that something is important to significant numbers of their customers, to fix them.

All too often we say “I’m only one person, what could I say that would possibly matter?” in a defeatist tone of voice and the little guy inside of us shrugs its shoulders, defeated again. But why is that? Because the voice inside sabotaged the meaning we could have brought to life, the person we could have been, our right to have and express a viewpoint.

Now try “I’m only one person, what could I say that would possibly matter?” again, with the focus merely on choosing your words well, for their effect. So that they WILL matter.

So here, without further ado, is a copy of the letter that IHOP is going to find in its fax machine in the morning.

IHOP Restaurant Support Center
450 N. Brand Blvd.
Glendale, CA 91203
P: 818-240-6055
F: 818-637-3131

Dear Overworked Support Center Staffer,

You have my sympathies. Do I have your attention?

Tonight I went to the IHOP on Middlebelt Rd. in Livonia, MI and, in the process of ordering, asked about the availability of dietary information. After consulting with the manager, the waitress told me that I could find the information on your website. But when I got home and online, I found this instead:

http://www.ihop.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=21&Itemid=5

» Is nutritional information available?
Currently we do not offer this information on our website.  IHOP offers a wide variety of food that should allow most people to choose a meal that suits their dietary needs. 

Oh, really? How? Psychic readings?

Without this information, THERE IS NO WAY to choose a meal that suits my dietary needs. I don’t know how much salt was in my dinner, how many calories, fiber, protein, carbohydrates … NOTHING! My nutrition books don’t list “little pieces of beef floating in some kind of brown liquid”. Do yours? Nor is there an entry for “some dry-looking mashed potatoes” or “a little corn”.

IHOP is not a small company … it has the resources to provide this information. And, for that reason alone, if for no other, there is no excuse for NOT making it available.

I have a couple blogs (readership ~30,000) that I will be posting this (and any response from you) on.

So, no, you probably don’t want to just crumple this letter up and pretend you never got it.

To paraphrase your website: “The Metropolitan Detroit area offers a wide variety of restaurants that should allow me to choose a meal that suits my dietary needs.”

Too bad that IHOP isn’t one of them.

You are the only restaurant I know of that seems to have too many customers.

Sincerely,

December 6, 2009

Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. If any of you want to write them a consoling letter or even mirror my sentiments, go right ahead … their contact information is at the top of the letter. I couldn’t find an email address on their web site, but I’m sure that at least some of the 30,000 readers who stop by here from time to time have fax machines.

– Bill

My wife and I are in the habit of celebrating our anniversary with a nice meal together. We have gone to Outback Steakhouse, Olive Garden, Big Fish (several times) and a couple buffet places. It’s hard to beat Big Fish – either location – but we’ve had a lot of fun … and good food … trying. If you are in the Detroit area, Big Fish should definitely be on your list of possible eateries.

We have gone solo and we have taken friends.

All good restaurants and all beloved friends.

We usually have dressed for the event but this year went very casually dressed. It all depends on the flow of our lives on that day.

Our anniversary is Dec. 1 and, if you must know, this year marked 9 complete years of marriage – some of the best years I can remember – certainly the best since my children left the nest. It took me four marriages, but I certainly have a good wife now.

This year, a day late due to unavoidable commitments, our observance took us to P. F. Chang’s, an upscale Asian bistro. For Avis, this was the third visit; for me, the first.

Marvelous!

Click here to read on, my friend.

As of yesterday, I have a membership in the Redford weight & fitness room. I am just getting over a torn muscle in my lower back (still sensitive, but LOADS better, thanks for asking) caused by picking up a tool box that I was able to handle without regret this past summer. In fact, I’ve taken some tools out of it since then. It was lighter a couple weeks ago than it was last summer.

Enough is enough … I’m overweight and under strong.

Click here to read on, my friend.