Wow, times have changed. This snapshot is from a 1970s children’s book. That surprises me, frankly. I would think more like a 1940s book. But anyway….
Click on the photo and take a look. It’ll enlarge, and with some minor squinting, you can read the print.
Hear the stories of real homeless people at InvisiblePeople.tv. (Thanks for the link, Tony.)
Pam and I use Facebook all the time, and the number of friends and family who use Facebook just keeps increasing. It’s a great way to keep in touch. I have a Myspace account, but don’t do anything with it. To an extent, I don’t even understand Myspace, with its chaotic displays and multitude of graphics.
The growth of Facebook is being fueled, in part, by people leaving Myspace. ReadWriteWeb wrote a piece about that: “Myspace is Dead – The Internet is Growing Up.”
Start your day on a happy note by watching this video. It was done in Central Station in Antwerp, Belgium. I previously saw another video along the same line. I really need to find the story behind this. But for now–enjoy.
Nearly every week, blogger Tony Morgan publishes a post called “Perryisms.” These are lines from that Sunday’s sermon by Perry Noble, pastor of Newspring church in South Carolina. Perry has a great way of putting things, and I always look forward to the latest “Perryisms.” Here are a few from today’s post:
The military is using iPods in variety of ways. For instance, snipers in Iraq and Afghanistan use them to calculate ballistics. At less than $300, it’s a good deal. You just know that if the military designed something for the same purpose, it would cost $150,000 each.
When I came to Huntington College in 1975, we had three students from Iran. This was four years before the Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah in February 1979 (the US embassy was seized in November 1979). I’ve wondered what happened to Parvis, Ramez, and Sammy.
Parvis is the one I remember most vividly. He had an exuberant personality–fun-loving, big laugh, big smile. And smart, evidently, since he graduated with a degree in Philosophy. Everyone liked him. Soon after my freshman year started, he pledged with the Alpha Sigma Eta fraternity. He was a great sport throughout the two weeks of initiation.
I remember hearing Parvis talk once about Iran. He was very proud of his country. He mentioned how progressive, how modern, it was amidst the other Middle-Eastern countries. And he emphasized that Iran was very pro-American. He felt Iran was an important, strategic friend of the United States.
Ramez, who graduated the same year with a Biology degree, was quiet and kept a low profile. My only real memory of him involves the freshman slave auction: he bought me, Steve Barber, and Brad Carpenter, and took us out to do yardwork at the home of Dr. Fred Morgan, a biology professor.
As for Sammy (left)–I have no memories of interactions with him. He didn’t return the next year.
So what happened to these guys? Were they back in Iran in 1979 in time for the revolution? If so, which side did they take? Did they endure hardship for having attended a Christian college in the United States? Or, having experienced some American idealism, did they sympathize with Khomeini against the repressive Shah of Iran (a fairly decent dictator, as dictators go, but still a dictator who committed human rights abuses as he silenced dissent).
It’s quite possible they stuck around in the States for graduate work. Maybe they’re still here. Or maybe they went back long ago, and now only have distant memories of Huntington University. Maybe they fought, perhaps died, in the lengthy war with Iraq. Or maybe they are living normal lives in Iran, and, having lived among Americans,get questions about Abu Ghraib and George Bush’s defense of torture, and why the US views them as such an evil country. If so, how do they respond?
I don’t know. I just have questions, and wonder.
Twitter has been getting lots of press lately.
I opened a Twitter account in October 2007, and put it on my blog, so that my tweets would appear in the sidebar, and so that I could feel with-it. It’s still there, and I am marginally with-it.
But I was rapidly losing interest in Twitter, with my tweets fewer and farther between. I used a widget to post, so I didn’t need to go to the actual Twitter site. But it still felt like too much effort.
Then, last December, I discovered Ping.fm, which enabled me to post directly from my iChat window, which is always open anyway. And not only post to Twitter, but to Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, and elsewhere at the same time. Very, very simple.
But even then, I felt alone. I wasn’t following anybody, like a real Twitterer should. It was just me, uttering 140-character proclamations into cyberspace. But during the past week, two things happened that rejuvenated my interest in Twitter.
Lounge is a great way to follow people. I keep the window open all the time, next to my iChat window, and new tweets appear as people submit them.
So now, I’m using Twitter the way it’s supposed to be used–as a highly efficient time-waster with a user-friendly interface perfectly designed to continually distract me from what I should be doing.
Microsoft confirms that it’s going to open retail stores. No doubt they want to mimic the success of Apple’s flashy stores (currently 251 and counting). When Apple launched stores, they brought in an exec from The Gap. Microsoft, in its effort to be trendy, will spearhead its stores with a former VP from…Wal-Mart? Yes, that’ll give them a cutting-edge look.
The article I read in Electronista had a lot of interesting comments. This is one of the great things about the current web:you read a story, and then comment on it, preferably in a snide tone. The comments can be great. Hare are some comments from this article (especially like the last one).
Spent a lot of time this weekend revising my Movable Type templates, having moved the whole blog to a new hosting company and seriously upgraded the version of Movable Type I was using.
If I can just think of something to say.
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