Wild Clutter

Stephen King Meets Star Trek - and Other Thoughts

Just finished Stephen King's new book - 11/22/63. Not the typical Stephen King book. A guy discovers a door into time travel, and at the urging of a dying friend, goes back in time to try and prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Very long book. Not as much gore as the usual King novel. Drags in a few spots, but not a bad book. Never got much of an explanation about why the door-to-time exists.

One moral of the story: Like the United Federation of Planets says in Star Trek, don't mess with the historical timeline. You'll have to read the book to learn more.

Anyway. Some offbeat pics from the pages of a really old Star Trek picture novel.

One of the great things about Star Trek is that much of it is based on science. The creators studied scientific trends, and tried to figure out what the scientific future would be like. Take a look at the communicators on the Starship Enterprise. Compare them to a modern cell phone.

Now all we need is to invent a travel transporter that would dematerialize and rematerialize human beings.

And speaking of space, yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the Challenger disaster. Hard to believe - 25 years have past.

And Newt Gingrich is stirring up controversy about his idea of putting a human base on the moon. I'm not a Newt fan, and a lot of his ideas are fanciful - but humanity needs to stretch itself into space, needs to push beyond the barriers of Earth. Exploration and discovery rocks. And it may hold the future of humanity.

That's it for now.

Global Warming Close to Home

Big news out of the U.S. Department of Agriculture a few days ago. 

The USDA issued a new plant hardiness zone map. For non-garden people reading this, it's the map that seed distributors and nurseries use to guide gardeners about what they can plant in their areas and when they can plant it. The USA is divided into eleven major zones and each zone has a bunch of sub zones. The zone and planting info is usually printed on seed packets and planting instructions. 

The new map is startling - it shows that places are getting warmer, right up to Alaska. And a USDA spokesperson said they're predicting warmer temps throughout the 21st century. 

People who plant gardens sort of know this already. Around here, it used to be you wouldn't plant most things until around Memorial Day. Killing frost sometimes came as early as late September. Now, people are planting things around Mother's Day or even earlier. And this year, frost came many weeks later than usual. People around here are even experimenting with plant varieties from the south. 

Plant zones are only a guide to planting. Typography, like hills and mountains and valleys, can produce micro-climates. But at the end of the day, things are heating up. 

Growing things outside for longer periods, nice. But the global warming flip side is here and I think it's going to cause big problems in the decades ahead.

In Praise of Real Praise

I just heard a new term - "praise junkies."

Praise junkies are kids who get complimented and praised for everything, no matter what they do or how well they do it.

And they can't live without praise.

Praise junkie environments are where every child gets a trophy for team performance, or some form of an "A" in school, or some kind of reward for being exceptional. Praise junkie environments don't contain any form of failure. Some parents reinforce this.

So what's happening to competition in our world? Competition helps kids (and adults) assess and confront shortcomings. Competition against goals, against oneself, and against others leads to learning and growth.

Don't get me wrong. IMO, kids should be raised and educated in positive environments. But when we don't differentiate among levels of skills and performance, mediocrity results. Kids who grow up without clear standards of performance, and without an understanding of their own strengths and weaknesses, will end up with problems. The praise junkie scene is a bad scene IMO.

My thought for this morning.

Photo Class

A buddy of mine and I were having a couple of drinks and talking, and the conversation turned to photography.

And the conversation turned into a photo expedition - grab the camera, look at the patterns and juxtapositions in the house, and turn them into photographs.

Some of the shots were crap. And some were interesting.

 

Light

Rivalry

Power

Movement

Good reminder that the seemingly ordinary objects and observations of daily life aren't always so ordinary.

Kodak

So Kodak has filed for bankruptcy.

Hard to believe.

Years ago, Kodak was far and away the biggest employer around here. And so prosperous it could provide everything to employees and their families, cradle to grave - from top salaries to fully paid health to sports teams to free movies to next-to-nothing meals in the company cafeterias. And the company made great products.

My first cheapo camera was a Kodak and back in the film days, I would never buy anything except Kodak film.

I still have that camera around somewhere. I was going to shoot a pic of the camera, but I couldn't find it. So I posted a generic Instamatic camera shot instead.

But Kodak got big and fat and sassy and bureaucratic. I've heard the first-hand stories of the three-hour lunches and managers watching soap operas half the afternoon in the old days.

And the company never saw the digital revolution coming.

Now it's trying to catch up. The Kodak brand will stay around, and the company will probably emerge from the bankruptcy leaner and meaner.

Good lesson, though. Businesses have to be nimble and responsive to change in order to survive and thrive. Just like people.

January 16

"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter."

"Life's most urgent question is - what are you doing for others?"

-Martin Luther King, 1929-1968

Today is MLK Day in the U.S., a day to honor great ideals. We need more inspiration and more great ideals IMO.

Switching gears, winter is here. Hit 40 or so today, and it was sunny but that was just an interlude between the really cold weather and snowfall of a few days ago and what it is to come in the next few days. And yet in 65 days spring will be here and we'll be seeing the first spring flowers. I planted about 50 crocus bulbs in the rock garden last fall, and if the woodchucks and rabbits don't get them, the rock garden will look great at the end of March. Also planted 50 more grape hyacinths, which will form a brilliant blue field in the rock garden in April.

Read a story in the paper this morning about firewalking sessions down around Ithaca. Firewalking is an ancient tradition with spiritual roots. Something I might try this year.

Switching gears again, I was reading about pasta. I always knew that different shapes of pasta were good for different kinds of sauces, but I never knew how all this worked. Until now. The pasta architects say that angel hair is ideal for thin and delicate sauces. Traditional spaghetti, on the other hand, is good for thicker sauces. Fusilli (twisty stuff) can work with many different kinds of sauce and the ridges can catch bits of meat and veggie. Cavatelli is great with chunky sauces.

And switching gears finally, the U.S. presidential campaign is getting into full swing. I was reading that when the U.S. Constitution was drafted, the original proposal was for the U.S. president to serve a seven-year term. Hmmmm. And not only that, an early draft of early-USA legislation called for the president to be referred to as "His Highness the President of the United States of America and Protector of Their Liberties." Cooler heads prevailed, I guess.

Bankruptcy News from Hostess Ho-Hos

Just heard that Hostess Brands has filed for bankruptcy protection. Actually it's the second time around in the bankruptcy world for that purveyor of snacks and weight. 

Turns out that Hostess is groaning under its own weight - almost $900 million of debt. 

 

Hostess wants the bankruptcy court to give it time to reorganize, so it can figure out how to cut costs and sell more ho-hos, Twinkies, and Wonder Bread to the starving masses.

Old Things and Life

"Old things are always in good repute, present things in disfavor."

-Tacitus

"The future is a convenient place for dreams.

-Anatole France 

 

Today is National Trivia Day

Today is National Trivia Day in the USA (and it's celebrated in some other nations as well).

Some offbeat trivia I recently discovered:

The Chinese invented sauerkraut.

Chess was the second sport to have a world championship.

Ben Franklin was the oldest delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention (he was 81).

In the 17th century, Great Britain's Parliament outlawed fruitcake ("too sinful"). BTW, there's an organization called The Society for the Protection and Preservation of Fruitcake.

South Korea has the fastest internet connections in the world (average 2.2MBPS). Compare that to the U.S. We average about 616KBPS).

In the USA, most people add milk to their cereal. But not everybody.

• 8% add juice
• 4% add ice cream
• 3% add melted chocolate
• 2% mix in another cereal

It takes 72 different muscles for a person to speak.

A strawberry is a member of the rose family. Each strawberry contains about 200 seeds.

A guy by the name of Guy Beringer invented "brunch," mostly as a service to people who had hangovers and couldn't get a lot of food in their stomach early in the day.

The telephone prefixes 555-0100 to 555-0199 are set aside for use on TV shows and in movies.

A great trivia magazine if you're interested: MENTAL FLOSS. 

Anyway. It's Trivia Day.

In non-trivial business, the U.S. presidential campaign season officially kicked off last night. Just saw on TV that, according to preliminary returns, Romney won the Iowa caucuses by a landslide 8 votes.

2012 Underway

I was reading about what some pollsters say are the top five new year's resolutions in the USA: lose weight, get organized, spend less, get fit, and quit smoking.

Me, my weight is OK, I'm reasonably well-organized, I live simply and don't spend huge $$$, I think I'm healthy and fit, and I don't smoke. So none of the big-time resolutions fit me.

Not that I'm into resolutions anymore. I'm more into general directions. I'm thinking this year I need to take more risks, get out of my comfort zones. That's where my head is at for 2012.

So January 1, 2012 dawned bright and without snow.

The early morning light cast shadows on the landscape, like this field 10 miles north of here.

Been a mild season so far.

But that may change in the next 24 hours. The prediction is brutal cold, with 15-20 inches of snow. The shovel is ready.

Switching gears, today (January 2) would have been Isaac Asimov's 92nd birthday. Amazing author and thinker. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time. The guy wrote or edited more than 500 books. Not just sci-fi, for which he's really well-known (I always liked his sci-fi books), but philosophy, history, science, and a lot more.

Two pieces of Asimov trivia I learned not long ago. There's a crater named on Mars in his honor. And he was a claustrophile - meaning he totally liked small and enclosed spaces.

Anyway, the new year is underway.