Six-legged abundance, and how to discover it

Despite growing up in an entomological family, and I mean that literally, and later been surrounded by people that know and care about insects, insects, and insects, it is not until this spring and summer where I suddenly felt a real urge knowing the insects in my backyard.  I cared about the plants, the birds, the mammals, the clouds, the rocks... but the insects had just been there and been cool and fun, but I didn't bother so much with the science of them.

But, then I was part of a Bioblitz and everything counted.  I had to beat my sister in the species count on the long-term Bioblitz, so insects became important.  (She won.) A good digital camera made the observations permanent (thanks for the loan, PP).  But the most important help and driver was actually the internet.  The amazing and helpful people on Bugguide.net that help me identify everything (from a photo), be it a common stinkbug or a rare beetle.  My Dad, who sends encouraging, insightful notes full of anecdotes via e-mail.  My Mom and sister, keeping up with the butterflies on their end over on the other side of the ocean.  Suddenly, insects have become attainable.

Also, and I have to admit it, Facebook is a great resource for species expertise.  If you just stay away from the entertainment news and junk on Facebook, it can actually be a useful thing.  I have gotten so much help with strange insects from internet people, many of which I have never met, never talked to in person, and have no clue where they live or how they look like.  I reciprocate, of course, telling people on iNaturalist and plant ID groups on Facebook what their unknown plants are when I can.

This is true citizen science, the broadening of biodiversity knowledge to the backyards and driveways of our homes, to people that are just interested and not professionally involved in the science of bugs, plants, and so on.  And all this knowledge is freely shared, no money, no accounts, no subscriptions, and certainly no expectation of accounted returns.  We are just all in this biodiversity knowledge curiosity together...  like a kiddie pool!  Except the whole world's nature is our pool.

So, here are some recent finds from our garden, and some I figured out myself, and others I got a lot of help with. Click on the photos and you can see larger versions of the photos and what the species are on Flickr.  This is just a gallery of insect beauty and biological diversity in a regular backyard in New Jersey, USA.

What if.... Ponderings over technology

At work we have a copy machine that you have to sign out of when you are done, by clicking buttons on the Touch screen THREE (3) times.  First, click your name in the upper right corner, then select Log Out from the menu, then a new menu comes up asking: Are you sure you want to Log Out? and then you have to hit yes.   Isn't it amazing that something as simple as logging out is made so convoluted?  They can't blame it on safety. 
     When you drive a car and turn left, nobody stops you and wait for you to confirm once or twice that YES, INDEED, I want to turn left.  Imaging the number of accidents that would happen if you had to confirm every little action while driving a car... and response times would increase as would frustration and road rage.  What a waste of time in front of the printer.

At home we have a printer that stops working as soon as one of the colors is finished, even if there is black ink left and you only want to print in black and white.  It just won't print.  It is on strike until you have bought new, expensive color ink (or photo gloss, or whatever it might be), that you don't need for that particular print job. 
    When you drive a car, and the windshield washer fluid runs dry, the car just doesn't stop working and waiting for you to fill up more of it, regardless of where you are.  That would be inconceivable.

Sometimes when you surf the web and look at stuff, the network gets clogged, or the software slows down, and even sometimes, the program or even the computer just crashes, and you are forced to restart the computer.  
   When you drive a car, it suddenly just doesn't stop randomly or goes at tiny speed because of some outside force field or sluggish connection.  That would be pretty dangerous.

Many times you look around on the web and try to find a good restaurant so you browse their web pages, but when you go to their website you are met by 'the intro' - some awful music, slow things (usually photos) moving across the page, and you have to sit there and waste your time unless you can find the tiny semi-hidden text called 'Skip this intro'.  After that torture and time-waste is over, you can start to look for 1) opening hours, 2) address and directions, and 3) the menu.  You would think those three things are the most important information to get to your potential customers, and that at least 1 and 2 should be listed on the opening page of the home page. Oh no, you often have to guess where it is, maybe under 'Contact Us", or 'About Us', or some other non-direct heading.  And often you have to scroll down because the bottom of the page can't be seen at first sight.  For the menus, those are often under a tab, but many are hidden under headings that are tiny, and on extremely slow-loading pages (including the crashing pdf-format), or just small.
    If you drive a car, it doesn't play unwanted intro music when you start it.  It starts up, then it immediately shows you if anything is wrong with the car on the dashboard (any Check Engine light on? Doors open? No, good!).  All information is right there, ready to check out and react to.  Restaurant web pages are like Lego Men hidden in pizza dough, you can't find them or you find a little piece but you can't see the rest.

Who designs these things?  I thought designers' jobs were to make things that WORK WELL and LOOK GOOD.  The first of those things, i.e. practicality, user-friendliness, and usability is as important as that it looks great.  The funny thing is that often the companies insist that their way of doing things are for our convenience, when in reality these things cause us inconvenience, frustration, or just waste time.  Books never fail to open.  Compasses never run out of batteries. Simplicity and ease-of-use means just that, simplicity. 

Will it take 50-100 years to make the internet, printers, copiers, and computers as user-friendly and reliable as cars?  I hope not.  Of course cars break down at times, but they are far more reliable than most of our other home electronics.  I love things that work and that even if complicated, are easy to use. Don't get me started on the design of remote controls... you would think they get paid by the numbers of buttons they put on them.  How long did it take for cars to enter the phase of user-friendliness?  And maybe cars are now on their way to become less user-friendly again?  I haven't mastered the GPS in PP's car at all, because it is not at all intuitive. 

PS.  OK, you want examples of bad design offenders? Here is one...
Prune Restaurant, New York City   
You have to CLICK to enter their website.  What did they think, that you got to their website by accident and need to confirm with them that you actually want to be there?  And then click on Menu and see if you can see their partial tiny menu in a scrolling window... The prices on the lunch menu are about 4 mm tall on my screen.  That is about half as big as a black pepper corn.  Anybody that can read the ingredients on the Bloody Mary menu online ought to get a free drink, or two. Prune, shape up, and fix your website please...

I think Steve Jobs got it right in this quote:

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

Modern life, with a smartphone in hand...?

 " Everywhere I looked people were detached from everything around them.  From the beautiful produce, the delightful pastries, the never-before-in-the-history-of-man selections of great wines and cheeses.  The guys were not "checking out" the plethora of beautiful girls flowing like spring water thru the aisles.  The women weren't even noticing the displays of chocolate.  Instead, they did the "thorazine shuffle" with their carts aimlessly navigated with one hand and the rest of their being concentrated either on staring like zombies at the screens of their iPhones or Blackberries, or wandering without a compass while listening to something at the other end of their cell connection, eyes staring off into the middle distance.  "  [by Kirk Tuck]

From this fantastic blogpost, read the rest of it, it is worth at least 5 minutes of your time. The blog is called Visual Science Lab and is written by Kirk Tuck. Lots of great thoughts there! (and thanks PP for sending the link to me)

This is so true.  And as an owner of an iPhone, which can be incredibly useful at times, I am happy to admit that and I use it more often than necessary, I also see the horrible addiction possibilities.  I often think that it is the software opportunities, apps, and 'things' on the technologies that pull people in, more than the technology per se - things like texting (instant), Facebook (instant), twitter (instant), and the need to be connected, to whatever that might be - the instant feed of stuff you haven't asked for.  I am sure there are situations where these instant feeds can be a good thing, but if 95% of it isn't, then it is a problem. And it just pushes more people just to think about me-me-me or superficial snapshot moments, instead of less self-focused things with deeper reflections.

One of my students said 'I have to check Facebook all the time, I might miss out on something otherwise'.  What that something might be, was less important.  I think this me-me-me generation that is growing up now (and that includes people of my age too), are actually horribly afraid of being alone, being unimportant, or being self-sufficient without input from other people.  To lay in a sofa and read a book during a Saturday is considered weird.  Go for a walk?  Weird.  Try to produce something thoughtful or beautiful over a longer time, not an instant opinion or just reaction to something, is unusual. 

Life in the internet and wi-fi age has turned into fast, fragmented, and furious.  My best thinking time and planning time is the early morning walks, just me, a friend, and a quiet morning with hammering woodpeckers, sunrise in dewy grass, and right now, shining white flowering dogwoods in the forests.  No interruption, just one hour of walking and talking and thinking and figuring it all out.  Without any digital technology, but the iPhone is in the pocket if a photo is needed, but usually the photos turn out so bad on it, that it isn't worth taking one.  My old digital camera is a lot better, but heavier, so it stays home. 

IKEA's online robotic assistant need some help

From today's conversation at IKEA.com with their automatic help person (illustrated as a redhead named Anna):

You said: I need to find replacement wheels for an office chair.

Anna said: There are many options for chair available on our catalogue. In order to narrow your search select one specific category from the ones listed on the window below me.

          Product types

          Product names

          Item colors

          Item price ranges

          Was this answer helpful?

You said: NO

Anna said: Sorry. As an IKEA Online Assistant I don't know the meaning of 'no'.

Now,  how are you supposed to answer a question like "Was this answer helpful?" Yes or no would be the most basic answers, right?  And as a computerized robot, yes/no, 1/0, would be the most basic, logical thing, clear and concise.  But Anna, the robot, does not know the meaning of 'no'.  Hilarious. And totally unhelpful of course.

As new leader has been chosen...

For a long time, the blog post on this blog about the BIONICLE Mask of Life was the most popular post. 

But, a new top choice has been selected by the people that read this blog.  THIS is now the most visited post.  Who knew that fish evolution could be so interesting!? 

The Bionicle post is now second place, and in third place is Chinese Zodiak Animals.

I really don't get why these are so popular... maybe they have very popular words in them.  The internet and the Google is unpredictable sometimes :)

Bits and pieces on the internet: itchy edition

Fossil discovery: Giant fleas from the Jurassic, that might have sucked blooded from dinosaurs (NY Times). How about meeting some of these 2 cm long creatures on the inside of your wool sweater?

Some of the Republican presidential contenders appear to want to live in a different century.  Like the 1800's or something. This is both sad and upsetting. (NY Times opinion piece by Charles Blow)

Did you know cashmere comes from goats?  And angora from rabbits? So, why are people OK with wearing the hairs from goats and rabbits, but not eating them? Eating the meat, not the hairs, I mean.

Itchy poison ivy doesn't let a simple fence stop it.  In fact, it enforces it and makes it its own fence.

So, what are you readers itching about?

Pinterest = Internet Thievery, Unfairness, and Ugliness

(Long post but important)

Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do it.  Morals and ethics is all about this, making choices to do the right thing.  Humans are not just following insticts, we can think, decide, do or not do.  If you can steal something, should you?  If you can make money on someone else's efforts without giving them anything, should you?  If you can live without caring about others, should you?  Pinterest and many of its users do.

OK, I had not heard about Pinterest until a few days ago, and looked it up and fell in love.   Temporarily.  Very temporarily. So, I had a 20 hour love affair with Pinterest, and now we are partly separated (not totally, read on).  I know, this just happened AFTER I wrote that long thing about how we are too addicted to the internet, and I fell right into the addition to Pinterest trap. 

Pinterest is a great way to collect links and thumbnails to all the interesting things you find on the web so you can find them again, or to make pinboards of images for inspiration, education, or useful things. It is exploding on the internet right now.  So far so good, and that is what I loved about it.  So much interesting stuff!!!   

But then I clicked on an image to find out more and it linked back to Google Images, or I got a 404 error, or it linked me to Tumblr's home page, and something was obviously not right.  Where did the image come from?

When I signed up for Pinterest I read the rules for the site, and it says that you have to have the right to pin anything made by you or that you have the copyright for, so you can't pin things copyrighted by others.  But people do, 99% of people in Pinterest do, maybe more, and very few even give credit and source for each image.  A typical pinned image is a photo of a gorgeous room with the note "I love this". No facts on where that image came from.

That can't be right, I thought, obviously this image wasn't taken by whatever house wife in Florida that pinned and loved it.  Then I started googling "Pinterest copyright" and found a large set of recent articles about how Pinterest is avoiding by getting into trouble by making all its users, not themselves, legally liable for any copyright infringement.  (Their own blog shows how upset some people are by this. Other info here, good post here, more, )

Pinterest takes no responsibility at all, and in fact, by using it you agree to give all the images you have pinned (and thereby downloaded to Pinterest as high-resolution photos, mostly illegally in my opinion) to Pinterest for free. Pinterest then have the right to sell these photos and make money of them, even if they are copyrighted by someone that had no idea that you pinned their gorgeous photo or art or craft idea, etc.

So, say that I pin my photos which are under Creative Commons license on Flickr to my board on Pinterest, and as soon as I have done that, I have no longer any control over them.  Pinterest could sell them to Target to use in their advertising and I would get zero dollars, and I would not be asked for permission.  This is so wrong!!!

Similarly, if a user pins an image of a new Porsche, Pinterest now has the right to use that image, even if it is copyrighted by Porsche. Simply put, Pinterest is fooling everybody, and stealing from everybody. And they let their users get away with it, and the users let Pinterest get away with it.  Just like drug addiction... They need each other, the users and the company.

Pinterest's solution is that anybody that finds their copyrighted image pinned onto Pinterest by a user can contact them and have it removed from Pinterest's website.  So it is up to the owner of the image to search the internet and complain. (This is unimaginable hard...)  Imagine this happening with actual items.  Someone comes into your house, robs you, and goes away with some of your stuff.  Now you have to look for your things wide and far, and they are not marked with your name, address or anything.  And if you find your things, then you have to fill out an online form and eventually you can get the stuff back.  And in the end, the stealing doesn't get punished at all.

In fact, Pinterest doesn't care that its users pin lots of copyrighted things, and if there is a problem (say, they get sued by Modern Museum of Art for some art images a user has pinned), then the user will have to pay the legal bills for both herself AND for Pinterest's lawyers.  It is all in the user agreement, and very clear.  How can this be right?  How can this be ethical?  The user could be a company too, so if McDonalds pins a photo of a burger, they could get sued.... but Pinterest wouldn't.  How crazy.

 So, removed my pins and boards and now I am only 'liking' things I see on Pinterest, so I can use the links and cool ideas here on the blog, after getting proper permission and linking to the original source.  I am all for sharing, but it has to be FAIR with PROPER credit.  It is very well explained on the Link with Love website, who made a special pinnable image for Pinterest (see left).  So, this is what I believe and think we should do, all of us.  Link with love, be fair, don't steal, and read more here.

So, what should Pinterest do, to get it right?  Well, only store thumbnails, like Google.  Demand that all photos are tagged with source (url), and source information (name, company, etc.), and mark all photos with the proper copyright license [public work, creative commons, all rights reserved, etc.].  And Pinterest should not have the right to use any of the pinned images by anybody. 

I predict that Pinterest will be hit with a giant lawsuit by some media company like Martha Stewart Magazine, AP, or an art organization on behalf of their members soon, and then it will be in big trouble. The company is doing everything according to US law right now, but only by putting all responsibility and liability on the users, most of which probably have no idea that they are doing something illegal or deeply unethical. As one user said "it is just a picture, who cares?"  This is just seriously wrong. It reminds me of gun manufacturers or cigarette makers that provide deadly weapons and then take no responsibility at all, because 'who could have predicted that someone would shoot with it at another person?", etc. Sigh...

Under your control or not? Internet addictions are real...

Some new studies are out, pointing out the troublesome backside of our connectedness online via e-mail, Facebook, Twitter and texting (SMS in Swedish). A new study concludes that the internet is more addictive than alcohol and nicotine, and I am starting to believe that (I don't have the link to the study yet, will post it when I find it). I have worried about this a long time, and have made a conscious decision not to be active on Facebook, not to have a twitter account, and try to keep the flow of information into and out of my head under my own control.  But in today's world you can't do your job unless you are connected online, and without an e-mail account that you check everyday, your career and job availability would mostly be dead (well, maybe not if you are an artist living in New Hampshire, but I think you know what I mean... :).

I make it harder for me to be or get too addicted by not getting a smartphone, not having the laptop at the breakfast table, and consciously turning off e-mail and Skype during stretches of time at work, but the feeling is still there - "Oh, what is new? What is going on?  Who needs me now?  What cool things am I missing!?"  I believe that this deluge of wanted and unwanted information plays straight into our psychological triggers in our brain.  We get addicted, if we want it or not.  And the more we use it, the more addicted we get.

 (from Toothpaste for dinner, used with permission on this blog)

I teach at a university and cellphone and internet use is not allowed in my classroom.  But 30 seconds before class starts half the class is sitting with their cell phones and earpieces and hangs out online.  They are not present in the moment in the classroom.  After class starts, they put it away, because I do stop the lecture and ask students who text/surf/etc. on the internet if they want to leave the classroom.  So far, nobody has when I asked, everybody just apologies.

Some professors just give up and let the students do whatever they want, but I want to present a counterpoint to the deluge and addiction out there.  If you are in my class you should be focused on the class and the topic, nothing else.  I know this is hard, from my own experience, since I have been through many boring lectures, meetings and seminars in my day.  But if so, then doodle with a pen while listening, don't run to the internet and get totally off-track.

Meetings, which is a whole other subject.  I often sit in meeting at the big university with fancy professors, busy staff, or pompous administrators, and nearly half of them are playing around with their gadgets (mostly Blackberries, iPads or iPhones these days).  It is not only horribly rude to the persons that are trying to get things done, it is also inefficient and leads to longer, and more boring, meetings that take on the feeling that these meetings are unimportant.  If I lead a meeting from now on, I will ask everybody to refrain from any internet use, pay attention to the meeting and focus on solutions, instead of drifting off into unfocused realities.  Senior professors that just got an iPad or iPhone are the worst...

Remember when TV was all bad for you?  Carrying an iPhone with you is a lot worse than having a TV on at home (I do think TV on all the time is bad too).  But the iPhone is there, in your pocket, like a happy pill that you can take as often and as much as you can.  Who can say no?  And when there are free games that become truly addictive, a hundred contacts (that you really don't know), and everything is instant, forever, and shallow - it is not necessarily always a good thing.

The internet and social media could be used in a good way, and often is, but how do we make sure WE are in charge of our time and lives, and not someone else?   Gambling is considered an addition, but I think excessive internet use should be classified as one as well.  The problem is that internet use is EVERYWHERE, and includes kids from 2 years old and upwards. And here I am, blogging about the problems with the internet... :P

(from Toothpaste for dinner, used with permission on this blog)

So, here is my advice.  Turn off your cell phone sometimes.  Never check e-mail or your phone in bed. Read a book.  Insist on being unavailable at times.  Refuse to get addicted, use the internet on your terms.  Focus, focus, focus.  Laugh at funny YouTube videos, blog, and post photos and videos online, when you feel like it, not when you feel like you have to.  Let us enhance the good things about the internet, and not forget that the real things are things you can touch and think about without the help of a screen, like a deer vertebrae in a forest, a good book, making pasta primavera, and creating things that are possible to touch, view, smell.  In 3 months, nobody will care how many friends you have online, but you will care about how many friends you could have a good time with in person at your house.  And that is what really matters.

Don't get me wrong here, I think there are really creative and positive uses for internet resources, it is just the addiction and the lack of focus on real things that gets to me. It is all about the quality of the input to and output from of our brains. There isn't enough thinking in the world anymore. 

OK, enough ranting from me, and here are some articles about this for those of you that want to read even more:

Uppdaterade och sömnlösa (DN.se, in Swedish, "Updated and sleepless")

Why studios need to think about the ethics of social gaming (The Guardian, UK)

Internet addiction test 

Internet addiction disorder 

Attached to Technology and Paying a Price (NY Times article)

Really, really annoying spam commenters

So, you add bothersome things to your website so you are sure real people comment on our blog posts, and all of you that want to comment have to try to decipher strange letters and numbers to make a simple nice little comment.  You hope that it at least will keep out the spam-bots that are just out there to put in hidden links for companies to get them a better Google rating. But oh no, in the last week, the spamming has started again.  And, this time it is real people doing it.  They are faking nice comments and at the end of the comment they include a url to a link for a commercial company (or even worse, it could be a website with a virus on it).

I really, really don't like this kind of spam terror.  I don't care if there are poor people in some third-world country that get their living from this - it is plain time terrorism, and should be banned.  If I see any comment like that, it is gone immediately from here.  The text is often written in a way to make you think it is a real and positive comment, like this one, but when you start reading you realize that this is not what it is meant to be (I deleted the link to the commercial url):

"I would like to thank you for the efforts you've put in writing this website. I am hoping the same high-grade website post from you in the upcoming as well. Actually your creative writing skills has inspired me to get my own website now. Really the blogging is spreading its wings quickly. Your write up is a great example of it."

(I wonder if this was written up with Google Translator... and if so, from which language...)

Dear spammers, please just STOP.  Shame on you for doing this.  First it was telemarketers, now it is blogmarketers that are trying to sneak in and disturb our personal peace.  Go away!

Bacon bits and pieces on the internet

Do you need a new wallet?  Check this one out.

If you just want the flavor, pop a tablet. 

Just want the smell, hang this, or the taste, lick this.

And, if you need to cut some bacon, this would be perfect, right? I want one of these.

A new word learned: Linkrot

I just saw a new word, and one that makes immediate sense: LINKROT

This is when old web pages and other things online eventually have many non-working links because the pages it links to have changed through time.  The web is in flux, it is not a constant thing, like pages in a book.  So the links rot away, with time, like a dead tree in the forest. 

This is your computer when sick...

oh boy, defragmentation needed, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

No wonder this computer was underperforming.

Spots, threads and snippets from the internet and media

From my forays and wanderings around the internet the last couple of weeks (months, maybe...):

Newsweek has an article about rich people buying modern art, more to show how rich they are more than because they like it.  One of the artists they say is overvalued and will not last is Damien Hirsts with his paintings of colored spots. The same week (= today), New York Times has a long article about Damien Hirsts and his marketing scheme and moneymaking art.  I can definitely live without a spot painting in my house, but I think they are cool.  The kind of cool that would fit in a modernly designed library or hotel foyer. If I had something like that in my living room it would b dizzifying and disturbing, and probably reminding me of ads for M&M candy or something.

A famous needlework woman just died, Erica Wilson, and I unfortunately didn't know about her until now.  Being in a family filled with embroiderers, I immediately notified he other side of the Atlantic (Sweden). Here is an example of Erica's design.  I wonder if she is related to the incredibly talented Erin Wilson, who makes the most artistic and amazing art quilts I have ever seen.  We bought a tiny sample from Erin at our visit to the Philadelphia Crafts Show, which I will write about later.  But her quilts, oh wow! But Wilson is such a common name, so probably not a relation. Example of one of her quilts (my own photo, so not that great):

Some exoplanets might be made up of lots of diamonds.  You think they sparkle like diamonds then? It must be hard to dig there, the shovels loose their edge pretty fast.

For those of us that still write and draw by hand, think and take notes, there is Moleskine.  A company that is doing better and better.  It is the backlash against the techno-stupid, I am convinced of this.  While some people follow their GPS' directions literally and take a right turn straight into a church, others are contemplating life with carefully (or sloppy, it is OK) drawn lines generated by real thoughts. It is your choice: be real, or be a automaton, copycat, and online addict.

That's all for now.

Quote of the Day: autospeak from customer care agents

I called the Wells Fargo bank about our mortgage, and got to the wrong department.  The friendly, human but slightly automated person offered to transfer me to the mortgage department and I said 'of course, yes please'.  She then continued with this phrase:

"If I connect you, will that take care of the reason for your call?"

My mind did a double-take, went into reverse warp speed, hiccuped, and then I said "what?", since the logic didn't work in my brain.  She repeated her question, exactly like before. By then I had figured out what the sentence meant and how stupid it was, so I just answered:

"I don't know yet."

Whoever is writing these scripts for customer 'care' people who are answering the phones for companies really need to think a bit more human and logical.  How in the melting snow of Antarctica am I supposed to know if a transfer will take care of my problem?  How many stressed out people don't even bother to think and just automatically answer 'yes', when confronted with this an unanswerable question?  It seems like that the question is there just to provide some positive feedback to the customer 'care' agent.

A while ago I had to call the internet company and was on the phone with someone in the Philippines for half an hour.  When the call ended, he entered into the auto-stupid-written-down-speak and said 'thanks for calling Comcast, we are happy we could help you today..', whereby I interrupted and said 'actually, you didn't, the problem is still here and you couldn't solve it'.  He then admitted to that at least.

Vote for the most bizarre comment from a service tech....

This is from an online chat today that I had with a service tech for an online course system.  After this morning, it was no longer possible for me to upload any files to the course website, and the error message was "the files do not exist or are empty".  They were there and they were certainly not empty. The problem - their system does not support Firefox 7 and now they want everybody to go back to Firefox 3.6.  Ha. Firefox 4, 5, and 6 worked fine, and suddenly Firefox 7 doesn't work, and then they want me to take 3.4 steps back in versions?

So, here are selected quotes from the chat:

1. Abel: I can only tell you what we know.

2. Abel: The decision is yours.

3. Abel: It is a decision above my pay grade. 

So, which one do you vote for in as the most bizarre or weird? I won't tell you my favorite, not yet.

Ponderings about now and the future

Here are some thoughts I wrote down while flying on a plane recently just after reading about the last ever NASA shuttle mission taking off...  (Update and clarification - the quoted text is what I wrote myself that day on a scrap of paper, so I am quoting myself.)

"Nobody dares to think big anymore, to dream about the future of mankind.  There is no more manned space exploration, no more belief in world peace and prosperity.

Instead we hunker down, focus on our families and homes, and we distrust politicians, government, and the future.  We can pickles, grow vegetables, save money, are happy to have any kind of job at all, and become more and more disillusioned with how the world works.

We mentally run away from the scary reality of joblessness, climate and weather disasters, the latest reports of food-borne illnesses or worldly disasters by focusing on the small and the personal - update Facebook, take a photo and post it on Flickr, and write about our kids on our blogs.  Or follow 'reality' shows on TV as entertainment, shows that are as far removed from reality as you can get.  

You want a reality show?  Follow a newly graduated PhD trying to get a job.  Or a person trying to communicate with a mortgage broker or customer service rep from GE. Or survive a several day blackout during an ice storm in New Jersey, without electricity, internet, or cell phones.  Most people would despair.   

People use their iphones and other smart internet-connected toys as teddy bears and security blankets to feel relevant, safe and comfortable, but this is so far from the real truth as you can get. This need for false connectedness is like a drug that make you waste your time and not be part of the real reality.

People are desperate, disillusioned, depressed, degraded and (sometimes) deranged. Nobody, except the fools and the overoptimistic, believes that the future is better than now.  And now is not really good in the world."

So, what do we do about this?  How do we make the world a better place?  I hear people all the time say: "There is nothing we can do", "The politicians will never change anything".   But we have to do something or we are just giving up, right?  But what?  The first step is to recognize problems and then to talk about them and then do something about them.  But do what?  I don't know.  I live in a country where the common sense doesn't seem welcome among politicians anymore.

Note - the text above are about general people, not about any particular persons or families.   I am describing the realities I see, not criticizing anybody for feeling a certain way. Believe me, I understand the despairs. But maybe our motto should be "Get real" or "Be real".  That would be a good thing.

In honor of the father of genetics

Today's Google logo is so smart, and scientific, and funny, showing the parents, and F1 (=children) and F2 (=grandchildren) generations and their different colors in a genetic context.  A recessive gene will show up in 25% of grandchildren, so one 1 of 4 (yellow beans). Statistically speaking that is.  This was all figured out by the father of genetics, Gregor Mendel, and it is his birthday today.  This monk spent his life breeding peas and trying to understand genes and their variations, except of course he never knew there is such a thing as DNA and genes.

Share and Like - maybe a profound thought or maybe just a rant....

We live in times where we can share more personal things with each other than ever before because of all online tools. We can tell the world what we like and dislike, favor and unfavor, and give thumbs up and thumbs down.  We can rate movies, books, give mojo (= good) on comments on Daily Kos, and have thousands of favorites of photos on Flickr.
 
Some of us (not me) have many, many friends on Facebook, and maybe even more followers on Twitter.  We send out messages via e-mail with links and attachments to great articles we find, funny cat pictures, and YouTube videos.  We skype each other while doing other things, chopping up time and conversations into small, disjointed pieces. We get the same from others, click on links, laugh and send things on.  We blog, put up pictures online, and hope to be found by whoever in the internet noise.  I am all involved in this, and I think it is a great example of the me, me, me-culture that UTNE Reader highlighted a while back. It is all about us, or is it really?


Media, social and traditional, online and in print, and on FM radio are all part of this.  It is not only chopped up time and factoids, and not only distraction and lack of attention, but really, the problem is bigger.  People don't think and do not really communicate much anymore in a way that is really true to who they are.  At least I believe so, because I do not think we all only care about Youtube videos, a LOLcat or something that just went viral.  I think we care about more things, and have our own thoughts.  The problem is that those own thoughtful thoughts are never really developed in this deluge of other stuff.

And isn't the problem here that for so many of these things, most of us don't really say what we think and feel about things anymore?  It has become too easy to send and share your Likes, that nobody really know what it means to really LIKE and LOVE something, because that is never written down.  When do people have time or take the effort to send long heartfelt e-mails or letters?  When do people talk on the phone about deep things?  When do we really share the real profound thoughts we might have, and if we do, how?

I think today's communication is rather shallow, except the ones we have with close friends. Most interaction and chatter online is rather meaningless, especially when all you do is to click Like/Dislike and Rating buttons.  If you write a short review, then you tell people what you really think.... not when you give a book a 4 out of a 5. But who has time with things like that?  So much easier just to click.

For all of you who have sent me videos, links, and photos, please keep sending them.  I love it, and I don't mean to criticize you.  I am just the same, I do all of these things.  I just got thinking about this and wanted to share it with you, readers of this blog.  And yes, there are some of you readers that send me wonderful, long letters, but I think you are a rarity. I like to write letters too, both by hand and on the computer.  The problem is lack of time. At dinnertime we have the most wonderful in-depth and convoluted conversations here at home.  But I see in society (American and Swedish) a tendency to become less and less personal, less focused on "who I am", and more about being one tiny fish going in the same direction as everybody else in the big general Gulf stream traffic on the internet.
(link to a great letter here)

The me-me-me-society is really not about ourselves, it is about trying to share something and be liked by many many people (who know very little about you) at once, so who dares to express something in a complete sentence with complete words that might be personal or honest? It could be used against you, in many different ways. Better to play it safe by just clicking on a Like button, right? But it that really fun?  Is that really that important?  Is that really liking something, for real?  I think we should all be more real. For real.

PS.  Of course this all applies to texting (SMS) too.

Bits and pieces from the internet: senseless and sense edition

The blog This is NOT Junk and Michael Eisen have a great post about senseless, automatic prizing of books on Amazon, leading to the advertised price of over $23 million for a book on Drosophila (fruitflies / bananflugor). Worth reading and pondering. [thanks to OK for finding it]

Your brain morphology might influence if you are conservative or liberal, reports a new study in Current Biology.   (Easy read version here: Science Daily)

Take a look at this map of internet use connections (full article here).  Why are some topics 'dead-ends', such as hydrology, physiology, and social works?  I would think those are strongly linked to other fields.  But remember, this is from how scientists click on links, so maybe these three fields largely keep to themselves?  Biodiversity and philosophy seems to be right in the middle of things, with many connections in different directions. Fascinating, like a starmap, but based on virtual internet data use from real people.  However, this is a 3-D map that has been flattened, so it is a bit hard to interpret. Imagine this as a cloud of dots you could twist and turn, then it might make more sense.


Sensible or senseless?  Felix Gonzalez-Torres' art installation "Untitled" of a heap of candy in a corner at the Art Institute of Chicago. The date of this art piece is 1991, so the candy is 20 years old right now.  What do you think about this?

Birds on Google

Today Google celebrates the 226-year birthday of John James Audubon, a famous painter of birds and other wildlife and wild plants in the USA.  I love the random 226 - not just the expected 100, 200, 250...   Here is today's Google logo if you missed it. It is kind of hard to see the letters for all the birds.

I really like that Google spreads knowledge around the world in ways like this. My favorite Audubon painting is the one of mockingbirds defending their nest in a yellow jessamine plant against a rattlesnake.  (Click on link to see image). I love that particular plant (Gelsemium sempervirens), and mockingbirds are fascinating even if sometimes annoying, and I am scared and fascinated by rattlesnakes.  The Gelsemium plant is very, very toxic as well.