Once upon a time, there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach before he began his work.
One day, as he was walking along the shore, he looked down the beach and saw a human figure moving like a dancer. He smiled to himself at the thought of someone who would dance to the day, and so, he walked faster to catch up.
As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a young man, and that what he was doing was not dancing at all. The young man was reaching down to the shore, picking up small objects, and throwing them into the ocean.
He came closer still and called out “Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?”
The young man paused, looked up, and replied “Throwing starfish into the ocean.”
“I must ask, then, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?” asked the somewhat startled wise man.
To this, the young man replied, “The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them in, they’ll die.”
Upon hearing this, the wise man commented, “But, young man, do you not realize that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can’t possibly make a difference!”
At this, the young man bent down, picked up yet another starfish, and threw it into the ocean. As it met the water, he said, “I made a difference to that one!”
Just a really good story that made my afternoon a little better. I hope others enjoy it.
When I started watching it I could only think that this is something Ben would do. Adam, don’t you agree?
Now that I think about it, this is a great way to build up a personal brand and do a little advertising. Original and certainly viral. I am sure this will help draw in clients and increase his influence.
Jeremy Krause put together some videos for his youth group and shared them with me (and the world). I just thought I would link to them since he is obviously the next Steven Spielberg or M. Night Shyamalan.
A tip of my hat to Todd Stewart for handling the prank well and putting up with Jeremy and his youth group.
I saw this today on YouTube and couldn’t stop laughing (thanks to Jamieson Cobleigh for pointing me to it). I am sure anyone who has ever done technical support of any kind, even just for family, will enjoy it.
I saw a blog entry during my daily blog-fest and thought I might share it. It really effected me. This is the explanation from the uploaded video …
This is a car advertisement from Great Britain. When they finished filming the ad, the film editor noticed something moving along the side of the car, like a ghostly white mist. They found out that a person had been killed a year earlier in that exact same spot. The ad was never put on TV because of the unexplained ghostly phenomenon.
Watch the front end of the car closely as it clears the trees in the middle of the screen and you’ll see the white mist crossing in front of the car then following it along the road….Spooky!
Is it a ghost, or is it simply mist? You decide. If you listen to the ad, you’ll even hear the cameraman whispering in the background about it near the end of the commercial. A little creepy but it seems to be authentic!
You might also have a better view of the ghost using Google video here (it is a bigger video screen so it has more detail).
I just got an email today from Dr. Nagib Callaos inviting me to participate in WMSCI 2006. At first I was flattered since it sounded like a personal invitiation (figuring someone read my first paper and liked it) and not auto-generated spam. So I took a look at the conference website and figured I would just delete the message and move on since it didn’t sound like an interesting conference (pretty vague descriptions of the type of work presented).
Now I won’t make any claims about the conference but it certainly seems like the conference has some questionable history.
I have included the text of the message here (for no particular reason):
Dear Todd Wallentine:
On behalf of the WMSCI 2006 Organizing Committee, I would like to invite
you to participate in the 10th World Multi-Conference on Systemics,
Cybernetics and Informatics (<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.iiisci.org/wmsci2006">http://www.iiisci.org/wmsci2006</a>), which will
take place in Orlando, Florida, USA, from July 16-19, 2006.
The best 10%-20% of the papers will be published in Volume 4 of JSCI
Journal (<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.iiisci.org/Journal/SCI/Home.asp">http://www.iiisci.org/Journal/SCI/Home.asp</a>). 12 issues of the
volumes 1 and 2 of the Journal have been sent to about 200 university and
research libraries, and 6 issues of Volume 3 (2005) will be sent to a
larger number of library. Promotional, free subscriptions, for 2 years, are
being considered for the organizations of the Journal's authors.
Also, we would like to invite you to organize an invited session related to
a topic of your research interest. If you are interested in organizing an
invited session, please, fill the respective form provided in the
conference web page, and we will send you a password, so you can include
and modify papers in your invited session.
Organizers of the invited sessions with the best performance will be
co-editors of the proceeding volume where their sessions' papers were
included and of the CD electronic proceedings. They will also be candidate
for invited editors, or co-editors of a possible JSCI Journal issue related
to their invited session papers.
You can find information about the suggested steps to organize an invited
session in the Call for Papers and in the conference web page.
If by any reason you are not able to access the page mentioned above,
please, try the following pages: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.iiis.org/wmsci2006">http://www.iiis.org/wmsci2006</a> .
If you need a detailed Call for Papers, don't hesitate in asking us for it.
You can also get it the conference's web site.
If the deadlines are tight and you need more time, let me know about a
suitable time for you and I will inform you if it is feasible for us.
Best regards,
Professor Nagib Callaos
WMSCI 2006 General Chair
If you wish to be removed from this mailing list, please send an email to
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:wmsci.remove@iiis-sci.org">wmsci.remove@iiis-sci.org</a> with REMOVE MLWMSCI in the subject line.
I just read an essay by Michael Crichton published in The New York Times talking about a patent case that went before the Supreme Court (or so I gather, hard to read the docket information). It is hard to believe that a company can patent the idea (or the biological process) involved. But hey, we are talking about the USPTO.
I came across the Retail Alphabet Game during my blog reading time today and figured I should share it. It was actually quite a lot of fun. But at the same time, kind of sad that I was able to perform at about 50%. I would like to claim that this shows how perceptive I am but more likely it means I am a cultural glutton (as opposed to a cultural anorexic).
I just read this article that explains what Continuous Partial Attention (CPA) is. This is a new term that describes what we are all seeing (and doing). Just thought I would share a link to it (not that most of the people that read it here won’t have read about it on /. already).
After my previous post about science careers I took a long, hard look at myself to figure out why I started my “Science Career”, in particular my career in computer science. The first reason is that I have some God-given talents in this area. In some ways, I “just get” technology so it makes sense to end up in computing. The second is that I tend to think in a way the lends itself to science. By this I mean that I think in a very structured, methodical fashion that, at least to me, is crucial to scientific exploration. Last, I have a deep desire to help others in a meaningful way. Or as some colleagues of mine once put it, “a desire to serve and not earn money … aka, be a sucker.”
So with a science career I can leverage my talents and abilities in a way that brings happiness into my life. So while I agree in many ways with Philip Greenspun, I don’t think it is completely accurate in my case. Besides, what else could I do with my life and still come home (for any of you that don’t know, I am in the family business).