Transparency and Fair Rights

Long time between posts...sorry. I am doing fine and feeling great for those who recall I had a stem cell transplant last year. Things are progressing nicely on all fronts right now, work is good and picking up and my energy levels are high so I am finally catching up on some writing.

The subject of ISPs selling my internet traffic along with all those companies that track it via cookies, etc came up today. I have some thoughts on this below.

Sounds to me as if two things need to happen

1) laws imposed to protect users by returning ownership to their information to them. Information about where they go and what they do should be held in trust by the ISP's and other entities

2) fair rights management should be put in place to digitally encode the fair rights policy each user establishes for their information use. This is the goal of the work Slawek has been doing here in eLearning. Not just digital rights around an object like a picture, but rather fair rights of any node on a network, including the person represented in a FOAF network.

Of course absolutely nothing will prevent governments from intercepting and spying on private communications when they deem it necessary or justifiable (in the broadest terms). The use of ultra-secure encryption by private citizens would, I am certain, be considered probable cause for a warrant compelling the user to unlock the encryption, so even that route is not going to be secure.

The best defense is probabilistic obscurity...the notion that there is so much traffic that no government can or will seek to intercept everything and as long as you are not engaged in illicit activities at the national security level, you will probably be ignored even if they do happen to intercept your communications. As an example, the TSA do not publish lists of what they find in travelers' luggage no matter how embarrassing or lucrative that might be. And agencies DO typically react when it is revealed their employees have done so, such as in the case of the contractor's looking at candidates passport info in the US.

For normal traffic, citizens demanding better protection of their data from ISPs and corporations will remain the only viable barrier...so there has to be speaking up and out.

David Brin wrote that the only secure policy is one of total transparency..If I can learn as much about a national leader as he or she can learn about me they will show a natural reticence to pry into my life.

Bill

Thanksgiving

Here we are back in the US for Thanksgiving.

I have had several questions from Irish friends and colleagues about Thanksgiving and it got me to thinking about this quintessentially American holiday.

Thanksgiving is becoming the most important US holiday because, i think, it addresses our need for a holiday that is all inclusive, non-religious, that celebrates family (whatever that means to you). We take a certain amount of flack about the amount of food we consume on this day since it is essentially a holiday for eating, but what other activity is so disctinctly human and sharing than food.

Few elements of the human condiiton are as universal as eating. Sitting down to a meal with friends and family is a key psychological bonding event. In many cultures, being invited to share a meal is an indication of acceptance and trust far exceeding any other.

We also take a lot of flack about the commercial aspects of our holidays, how the big sales start on the day after Thanksgiving and how much we spend on things at this time of year.

But to this i respond, "What should we do instead?" If we all stopped buying gifts to give then much of our workforce would be put out of jobs. retailers make it into the black each year because of the holiday season sales. without that, the economy of the US would literally be devastated.

But back to Thanksgiving. It is a holiday invented by the Lincoln administration, later coopted to spur sales, but uniquely egalitarian in its appeal. It celebrates in a sense the most common of human elements, the need for family and the need for sustenance.

We are long past the time when our thanks are for successful harvests. Sufficient food to feed ourselves for the next year is a givien in this day and age. We give thanks now for many things, family, health, propsperity, survival. But being thankful for culinary bounty is still a part of the holiday, still a comforting thought even in a day of always plentiful food.

Thanksgiving is a comfortable holiday (with its attendant family dramas and squabbles, of course) and I heartilly recommend it to anyone who has never tried it. At a time when we as a people are more and more divided by small things, this generic holiday of just being thankful for what you have, of seeing family and friends, of indulging in a good meal wth all its concomitant endorphins, this holiday is one the world can share. It is an intrinsically human holiday.

If you don't have a thanksgiving holiday in your part of the world, I strongly recommend you get one soon!

Bill

A New Thought on Time

I was contemplating the nature of time the other day and trying to turn relativity on its head. It occurred to me that it might be possible to restate the Lorentz transformation (the time dilation effect) in terms of quantum time and avoid the necessity of thinking of time as a fourth dimension.

Time does not seem to be a fourth dimension to me. We cannot move in it, cannot change pour position along the dimension and are much more aware of travelling along it than other dimensions While standing still on earth seems stationary, we are actually travelling in all three spatial dimensions relative to the sun and other stars but are unaware of it. Time passing, however, we are aware of as long as we are conscious (and actually even when we aren't) , But we cannot translate along the time line...neither forward nor back. It is much more as if time 'flows' under us rather than we travel along it.

If we want to discard this notion of time as a fourth dimension, we must still deal with the dilation effect...it is, after all, demonstrable and real. But the mathematics of dealing with it are just a theoretical representation. The interpretation is that time moves more slowly for a faster moving body.

If, however, we consider time as quantized into units (commonly called chronons) then we might take a different interpretation perhaps increased speed causes a body moving through space to skip chronons, literally jumping across moments in time. Since a body could age only during these chronons, these quantized intervals of time, the effect of skipping a few would be to delay aging, to slow down time with respect to the moving body.

I am not sure how to test this. It should be possible to determine if time dilation actually occurs in quantized steps, but measuring events in the 10E-35 seconds range is just a bit difficult. But I do believe that looking at time as a more fundamental quantity than the spatial dimensions makes sense. Time IS different and not just our perception of it. I suspect we will not make great strides in theoretical physics again until we change our point of view on this.

Of course all aspects of time-dependent effects we measure now must be accounted for in any new model that changes the interpretation of time. But understanding time as a substrate for existence (anything that exists must exists for some minimum amount of time) could significantly change our understanding of cosmological structure and events.

There are new theories of physics which are trying to go beyond the horizons that even string theory have painted. Loop quantum gravity treats time in a different fashion than traditional physics. While I have a certain appreciation for M-Theory and its associated Branes, LQG is the first theory I've seen that seems to truly try to interpret time as more fundamental than space.


Another, somewhat random, thought occurred to me in thinking about all this. Special Relativity and Quantum Mechanics have both proven very useful in the last century. but General Relativity has not proven very useful in the day to day world. QM gives us semiconductors, electronics, and lasers...soon quantum computing. special relativity gives us accurate GPS systems 9among other things). But GR has been less helpful. While quite beautiful and very well demonstrated, it just has not provided the real world benefits one would have expected of a theory of gravity (anti-gravity for example). And, cosmologically, it has become something of an embarrassment. Its irreconcilability with QM is becoming increasingly problematic. We need a new theory of gravity which delivers usable effects as well as explanations.

Thoughts?
Bill

Frightenly poor service from NTL

I just had my UPC DVR installed today and had to comment.

NTL's installer was 2 hours late and then disappeared for another hour because he showed up at my door and did not have the box. While he was gone (without telling us he was leaving) , NTL told me he was not qualified to do the install, the sales person had scheduled the wrong installer, and I would have to wait 24 hours more...

This was just before the installer showed up again and performed the install. Somebody had their head up a very dark place!

With regards to the box itself, this is, at best, a poorly designed, haphazard, crippled toy of a DVR. (The company should not even be allowed to use the term DVR for such a box)

The lack of recording a series is pitiful. This is a basic function of DVRs...to process and parse the schedule. My NTL installer told me it was because SKY owns the copyright for this feature..I presume he made that up.

The volume control on my remote does not function ... nor the mute ... this post implies it must know about the TV...but there is no manual with the device and I haen't found the user guide on the website that is mentioned.

The on/off button for on and the UPC button for on is STUPID...the symbol on the top button is the internationally recognized symbol for ON and OFF in a single button. The failure to put page up and down functions in other pieces of the navigation software is AMATEURISH, the use of the STOP button to unmark a show for recording is POOR DESIGN and the remote is UNCOMFORTABLE to hold, particularly if you have arthritis. The wasp shape of the TIVOs and the Logitech Harmony were chosen for a reason.

The Back button is OK, but why not make it sizable like the OK button?

The menu system seems to have been designed by a team of chimps...there is no logic to it, no usability and only one accessibility feature...sort of. The help button accesses one screen with a short description of four buttons.The preferences and settings could all be collected in a single screen. The three clicks to find your recorded progremmes.

Sorry for the harsh review, but I own 3 TIVOs in the US and they set a very high bar of quality. Any professional software development team could have done better than the mish mash of functions and features offered by this box.

NTL needs to be seriously educated in the meaning of quality and the customer support people need ot stop making up stories to cover for their installers. Actually, they probably just need to go out of business and be replaced entirely.

Bill

Stem Cell transplant

Well, I have had my stem cell transplant and lived to blog it.



I went in on tuesday evening and wednesday was taken into radiology for the insertion of my hickman line...this is the line that kinked the first time I came in and had to be removed. This time it went in very smoothly. It has stayed in operation and is unpainful...a bit itchy sometimes. It is a three lumen (exit) tube that allows for multiple draws and deliveries in and out of my major chest vein. It can be left in indefinitely (whenever asked how long the usual time is, the doctors and nurses get this gleam in their eye and reply, "it can be indefinite.") but is not a sexy borg silver color...pasty white with red, yellow, and blue colored taps.



Next day was chemo day. As such, the procedure is pretty easy...I took a recommendation from a US source and chewed ice chips during the actual high dose chemotherapy delivery. This, coupled with the mouthwashes they give you, has seemed to save me the agony of mouth ulcers and esophageal ulcers Mucositis they call it.



However nothing saved me from the nausea...the one thing i dreaded most was not having it under control and it has not been. I was ill twice the same evening as chemo, and we (doctors, nurses, and me) have been working the problem since. Finally, a motorized infusion pump of nasuon (sp) coupled with cyclizine twice a day seems to be working.

The good news came yesterday when i was told my counts were on their way up again. Then, this evening, I was told I can go home...my counts have returned to normal and the transplant has been a success...i don't need any antibiotics or significant aftercare...basically, it's over

I still have to get past the last of the nausea, but i seem to be ready to go home to recover.

hair has strarted to fall out this afternoon.. just the grey this time right now.

so, home in a day or so and then a couple weeks recovery then back to the office...looking forward to it.

oh yeah, somewhere in the process they have to pull the hickman out!

regards
bill

I've got Cancer...is it my fault?

So Next Wednesday I will check ino the hospital to have my cancer treated.

For those of you who do not know, I was disagnosed with Multiple Myeloma last year and have been undergoing drug and chemo therapy for it. i am now about to undergo a Stem Cell Transplant where blood stem cells harvested in January will be returned to me after I undergo a high dose of chemotherapy to kill off my entire immune system.

This has been a hell of a year, trying to move to Ireland, get settled into a new job, and get treatment for this silly disease for which I've been lucky enough to have no symptoms, dealing with an ongoing case of pneumonia that has made walking and stair climbing unpleasant...caused by the reduction of my immune system which is part of the treatment, not necessarily part of the illness. But, here we are and, with this SCT, I hope to be in complete remission.

But what I wanted to talk about in this posting was the reaction some people have given me. I was surprised and, to be honest, somewhat dismayed.

Some people have questioned whether my cancer is 'lifestyle related' ... the implicit assumption being that somehow I am responsible for the disease because i do not live a 'healthy enough' life.

Well, first, there is NO scientific evidence for lifestyle having ANYTHING to do with Multiple Myeloma. It appears to be either a disease genetically inherited or prompted by random events as one ages. I subscribe to the 'stray cosmic ray' theory, but my mother had a related disease, lymphoma, so who knows.?

Secondly, let's consider what constitutes a healthy lifestyle. I do not exercise much, I am a bit overweight (130 kg or 270 lbs at 187 cm or 6'2") but I do not smoke (and never have), seldom drink and typically no more than a single beer at a time, and, prior to becoming ill, I walked 3 mils a day for 2 years, I typically eat my 5-a-day fruit and veg (often more), drink about 2-3 liters of water, coffee, or tea a day, drink decaf tea with all those anti-oxidants every evening, and take a multi-vitamin each morning. Yes, I eat red meat, but intermix it with a lot of chicken and pork and fish. I prefer a variety of food and flavours which means i eat a wide variety of things over the course of the week.

I meditate regularly, but do not practice yoga or a martial arts form. I am happy to say that my health has recently returned to a point where I can start walking routinely again. Of course, Galway weather does not lend itself to vast amounts of enjoyable, dry walking. I work a lot, but read for hours each day (leisure reading) and watch a lot of TV. I enjoy relaxing weekends and two week vacations, but also try to relax when I travel as well. And I love to travel.

So, do I lead a healthy lifestyle or not? In the 18 months since I was diagnosed, I have NEVER been told by any of my multitudinous doctors to lose weight or change my lifestyle at all.

Many people I talk to tell me i should be eating organic foods and many have recommended odd lifestyle changes which seem ludicrous to me. They also recommend a bunch of self-help and self-health books but I find such books boring and contradictory.

BTW, what does 'organic food' really mean? All food is organic. The term seems to be reserved now for food that is grown without fetilizers other than 'natural' ones like manure. For me, I find 'organic' foods to be smaller, less tasty, and more expensive than 'non-organic' foods. Frankly, give me the fertilized food over the food grown in shit.

Also, those growth hormones in US beef? hey, worked for me...I'm 6 foot 2! Actually, those hormones and the antibiotices in our US meats are typically helping to cut down on food borne disease and many are also broken down by cooking processes. The incidence of stomach cancer has fallen dramatically since the inclusion of preservatives in food became common.

When was the last time you heard of a case of trichinosis from rare pork? WrongDiagnosis.com lists the annual incidence at

"approx 1 in 22,666,667 or 0.00% or 11 people in USA."

That is mostly due to the use of antibiotics in pork feed.

So, I am sorry, but I see virtually NO value in 'ORGANIC' foods over AgriBusiness foods. and I like BIG grapefruits, BIG Peaches, and cheap vegetables. particularly ones that don't I feel safe eating.

Another BTW, I, like most, eat a lot of potatoes, but i try to NOT make them my only veg. I enjoy spinach, green beans, asparagus, peas, black eyed peas, lima beans, corn, and manny other vegetables. Linda nad I were talking recently and realized that our variety of veg exceeds that of others we know by quite a lot.

So, I do not believe lifestyle has anything to do with my illness. For some, yes...lung cancer FROM smoking is an established fact...but don't suggest Dana Reeve should have changed HER lifestyle...she never smoked a day in her life. (http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/03/07/reeve.obit/index.html)


But what confuses me is the large number of people who WANT lifestyle to have something to do with it. Of course, that provides a thing to hang blame on...to point a finger at and say, "that's why"...but those are false hopes. there are often no reasons...just the randomness of a universe driven by chance.

45% of men and 39% of women in the world will develop cancer at sometime in their life...his means YOU. Of course, cancer is the thing that gets us now because we survive most everything else here in western society...and even cancer is becoming more and more curable or manageable daily. My own will be pushed into remission with a stem cell transplant next week, and then I will manage it as an occassionally annoying chronic disease...hopefully for many long years.

So, before you self righteously think, "oh, they lead an unhealthy lifestyle" when you hear of a person aflicted with cancer, heart disease, or many other ailments, remember that, for many, the problems are not in their lives, but in their genes. And maybe in yours.

Bill

The Value of Heroes

My nephew Steven was visiting us recently and we were watching some TV. The subject turned to heroes and whether there was something happening in TV, Film, and Comics. And, in an unrelated but perhaps synchronistic event, I exchanged some email with Jason Ohler http://www.jasonohler.com/ on the value of storytelling in learning. That set me to thinking about whether something MIGHT be happening.



Storytelling when I was a young adult was fairly simple stuff. The stories were, of course, in books, movies, and TV. That has not much changed. But, the depth and structure of those stories from the 1940's, -50's, and -60's, when you go back and look at it critically, were very shallow Despite some amazing work which pushed literature forward, even when I go back and look at some of the most important stories of those times, I find a simplicity of structure, a lack of depth, and even a naivete that went unnoticed and uncommented upon during that time.



TV and movies were in their infancy then and it is perhaps to be expected that their storytelling skills were not as evolved. Oh, I know, Citizen Kane is STILL considered the best movie ever made, but for heaven's sake, it was Welles ... what can you do? Heterosis had to occur in somebody...we were just lucky enough for it to be Orson.



But the run of the mill film, even those we consider classics now, are, under the electron microscope of 21st century expectations, rather anemic story and structure wise.



Fast forward to the nineties and some very interesting thngs are happening. first, WE WON! Those of us who fought teachers, parents, grandparents, scout masters, teacher, nun, and every other "authority figure" of the 50's and 60's who told us those horrible comic books would rot our brains and seduce the innocent. We won and the graphic novel has emerged as a legitimate literary form.

Found Picturetrail recently and it's great. It let's you build small display widgets with your own photos then embed them onto your own websites...very cool.

Other technology that's begining to shw up includes Microsoft's Surface, a computing table that is almost a one for one match to some of the ideas I wrote about here a couple years ago. It's good to see some of these things finally appearing but I still think the actual usage model is developing.

Microsoft wants to make $5k-$10k tables a standard sort of approach. Not a bad idea, but the price is too high. I think smaller form factors, simpler implementations and lower costs will be important to making surface computing more ubiquitous.

I've been asked to provide a keynote this week to a learning technolgy conference and I think this technology of touch and feel and manipulation is one of the key ones emerging right now. But it's not just a matter of lookig at your photos, or moving things around on a table with your fingers. it is about being able to manipulate a world that exists around you. it's about computing splashed on the walls.

For learning, this means access to information, knowledge, training, expertise, advice, and ideas all the time, spashed onthe walls and tables, on the surfaces that surround you.

I think that is the promise of so called surface computing (look back at my old entry on a new theory of surfaces), not these simple photo sharing apps we see in the MS Surface marketing vids.

But the technology is coming along nicely. Microsoft's is intriguing, but Apple's may be better. And we are experimenting with our own here at DERI.

Bill

The Darkling Plane

Much has happened this week. I feel I shoulld write about the events at Virginia Tech, should offer some thoughts and reactions.

But I find I have little to say. The events are, of course, horrific. The news coverage is, of course, pornographic. The "manifesto" is, of course, "rambling". The killer was, of course, a loner. Nothing is very different from previous massacres.

There are questions, of course. But I am constantly reminded of two songs: Jeremy by Pearl Jam, written about 16 year old Jeremy Delle, a student at a Richardson, TX high school who killed himself in class and I Don't Like Mondays by The Boomtown Rats about 16 year old Brenda Spencer who sat in her room across from a school and fired her new rifle at the playground.

Specifically, the lines "Jeremy spoke in class today" from Jeremy and "And he can see no reasons / 'Cos there are no reasons / What reason do you need to die, die?" from I Don't Like Mondays.

The events occurred 12 years apart, in 1991 and 1979 respectively.

There are no reasons behind such events. Indeed there is unreason, the absence of reason, the dark void of rationality, a darkling plane of anger, hurt, fear, emptiness.

The victims are tragic, the famlies left behind are deeply bereft and it is only natural to ask why. But there truly are no reasons. A young man descended into the darkness of madness and the word 'reason' does not apply.

At least this time there can be no claim of "we didn't know", "no one ever suspected", he was such a quiet boy", etc, etc. This man was known to be ill, he was known to be disturbed, and many people DID try to get him help and to protect the world from his growing anger. But in vain. The rules and the laws, and the circumstances worked against the possibility of stopping him. But at least some people in his life tried.

There are heroes in this story. The 72 year old professor who gave his life so 20 of his students could escape; a true hero of the people. The survivors who aided fallen friends. There will be more stories of heroes as we learn more. But these events show, once again, heroes are not special, they have no 'powers'. They are ordinary people who perform extraordinary feats in a crisis...and some pay the ultimate price.

And there was a villain as well. But we should also mourn him. His descent into madness must have been intensely painful and lonely. He is a victim as well; a victim of something in his brain that took him onto that darkling plane. No condoning here, no excuses. But a realization that this was an illness which, had it been recognized when the chance to do so presented itself, 33 people would still be alive.

But there are no reasons. What reason do you need?

Bill

Nerds and Visions

I was invited to deliver a lecture recently for the Arts Faculty here at NUIG and my title was Learning to be Human: Why Nerds Need the Humanities. I hope my audience enjoyed it. I made it informal but tried to get across the notion that we nerds (those of us who willingly devote our lives to the pursuit of technological knowledge and seek total enlightenment and fullfillment through the deeper undersanding of technical issues) need the study of art, history, philosophy and the other humanities because without those subjects, we have no context within which to place our tech.

The talk went well and I, at least, had fun. The subject is acctually vital because our universities around the world have begun allowing satudents to focus and concentrate so much in singel areas such as IT, medicine, engineering, etc, that the students thus turned out do not have to have a braoder cultural literacy within which to place their knowledge and emotions. i would say that they were, consequently, not fully human...they have not learned to BE human. And it is their loss as well as that of the world.

My talk went round to th esubject of how you teach art, history, etc to such nerds as we now sow among our classes and culture. Given that the world truly changed 25 years ago with the invention of the personal computer, that THIS device truly CHANGES how generations of future people will view the world, then we need different ways, i contend, to teach these same old stories from history and literature.

Jane Austen doesn't work anymore for a lot of students; her novels are timeless and pertinent but not contextual enough to resonate at first blush. the movie Clueless, however, might work better.

The other aspect of this, I believe, is that our stories, our literacy, our timeless learned messages are about heores. You can HAVE stories abotu other things, but the importnat stories, the ones that teach us to be human are, interestingly enough, about heroes.

Those who know me will, by now, have figured out that I then talked about today's mythiical heroes and of course that meant Buffy, Batman, Superman, Skywalker, and the others.

Out of all this, I think there is a message evolving that I want to discuss in more depth. That is the message of how we teach and how we help students learn these messages. Not just WHAT we teach (although this is vital) but HOW we teach an what we use to teach with.

Enter a new invitation. I have been invited to present a keynote to the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) June conference here at NUIG. I've been giving this one a lot of thought in the light of this mesaage that I am evolving. That talk, Visions of a Learning Future will focus on the idea tht learnign will be continuous, technolgical, and immersive and engaging.

The nature of learning is changing. It's easy to say that no, people are the same always, therefore learning will essentially remain the same for the rest of history. but I don't think that's so.

Technology changes us. While many of our aspirations, instincts, goals, and drives remain the same over the centuries, I think others truly do change. We are NOT the same as cro magnon was. Our different understanding of the universe literally makes us different at a very low level from medeival folk. And reading and writing on papyrus makes you a DIFFERENT kind of person than if you only use clay tablets.

Of course the differences may be small at first. They may be incremental based on how divergent technologies are, how divergent knowledge is. But that's the crux of the matter. The divergence rate is accelerating. The singularity is near and as we approach teh knee in the curve of technologicla change the difference of each generation's inhabitants from those before is greater than the generational differnece before.

The effects of accelerating change like this are hard to grasp, because we want the acceleartion to only apply to a few select things. But the acceleration of EVERYTHING is increasing...better, perhaps to think of our world as existing as an expanding universe of manifold dimensions. Everyting is expanding and rushing away from what came before. Think of those metadata browsers that cluster documents or files or other objects based on some notional idea of 'proximity' . Whichever idea you choose, each generation of objects is always further away, less proximal, to each other than the previous generation .

That's actually an interesting idea. the iplication is that, past the takeoff point, we will change so rapidly that successive generations may not recognize each other as being of the same species. Charles Stross plays with this idea a bit in Accelerando.

I'll write a bit more about learning technologies and how they affect this in anothe rpost, I think.
One place where it will begin to play in the near future, however, is the migration of education into the immersive virtual world of 3d games...we'll look at how those will emerge and blend for everyday learning next time.

Bill

The Illusionist -- a Study in Cinematic Language

Went to see the Illusionist today. Excellent film, a little slow starting, but the pace grew quickly. It was, of course, a bit predictable, but the story is probably a better one than The Prestige from a literary stance.

I won't give away any spoilers here, but the cinematic language used in The Illusionist is fascinating. The manner in which the plot is communicated visually, even down to some unusual costuming choices, telegraph the plot to you if you are prepared to receive it. There are, in fact, two scenes, with no dialogue, that disclose the entire plot. There are also a handful of scenes that provide more discernible clues, but the action and dialogue are very good at not giving away too much. At the same time, there is no cheesy use of cinematic special effects or illusions to hide or disguise the actual plot.

Cinematic language, from the interplay of characters in frame and out, to the precise angle of a mirror in a scene can be most telling if you learn to expect it, keep an eye out for it, and interpret it. In the Illusionist, I found the use of such language to be quite precise. it was very well done.

The hilarious bit is in one line where the lead character (Ed Norton) is taking to the Police Inspector (Paul Giamatti). Eisenheim asks, "Are you totally corrupt?" and Inspector Uhl replies, "Not totally, no". It was great.

Regards
Bill

Face of Fashion --- A Disaster in Photogrpahy

Went to London an dcaught the face of Fashion exhibit at the National Gallery. now, photography exhibits at musuems usually bore me because they are all war shots, suffering shots, screaming shots, or poor naked baby shots. And while I understand the importance and significance of such photographs, there is a limit to the amount of ugliness I will seek out in a museum.

But Face of Fashion sounded promising

God, was I wrong.

First, there were only 6 photographers represented
There weren't more than 50 photos, many very small
There were only 2 decent photos in the lot...one of Tilda Swinton and one of Angelina Jolie
And, Oh yes, THERE WAS NO FASHION

Most of the exhibit was centered around and obsessed with Kate Moss (maybe she funded it). Cocaine Kate is a very uninteresting face, has the anorexic body of a starved 12 year old boy and cannot emote to the camera worth a damn. Corrine Day should find something else to shoot...Kate is over.

Oh yeah...just an FYI ... Nude photos do not constitute FASHION photography. nothing wrong with nudes, but they are not Fashion ... unless the model is wearing a hat!

This was not a fashion photogrpahy exhibit...this was a celebrity photo exhibit. And let's catch them or pose them in unflattering poses, with images of agony on their faces...after all, this IS for a museum.

The exhibit might have been valid as art if it had been titled Celebrities in Bondage or Paqinful Poses or something...but these were not, many of them, fashion models, there was no fashion in the shoe, and the pictures just made the people look ugly, not sensitive, not metaphorical, not interesting...just ugly.

A photo of Justin Timberlake (fad maybe, fashion...NOT!) with a bloody nose and Kevin Federline with a gashed throat just do not cut it as fashion, and not even as the 'faces of fashion'. One might have expected portraits of designers from the title...maybe some beauty and style from such photogrpahers as Helmut Newton or Irving Penn but no, we got to see Kate Moss naked and Justin Timberlake bloody.

the best photos were by Paolo Roversi and his photo of Tilda Swinton was lovely...and fashion concious in that she was wearing a very interesting leather jacket. Unfortunately, he photographs small...his photos were not large enough to reveal interesting details.

So this was a fine way to waste £16 ... 8 each for me and Linda. I hope the National Gallery does something worthwhile with the money.

Bill

Parking as Self Organizing Behaviour

Well Christmas and New Year's are both done now. We had a very nice holiday season which included our son Ian coming to visit and day trips to both Dublin and Limerick.

While shopping around Galway I began to understand why some people complain about the traffic here. They don't REALLY have traffic jams that are much worse than anywhere else in terms of the time they tie you up, but as I mentioned in a previous post, parking can take a while.

However, lately I've begun to think that the populace of Galway have responded to the parking needs of the city in a very self-organized manner. Typically by large scale violations of the law. A few examples will illustrate what I mean.

First, there is Salthill, the suburb I live in. Salthill has a main street, a street lined with restaurants, bars, casinos, shops, banks, and a post office. And on this street, parking is allowed only on one side. The entire road is only wide enough for four vehicles side by side and parking is prohibited on one side via the double yellow line marking common in Europe.

However, this double yellow line is completely ignored. People park on both sides of this street, most often, it seems, to do business in the post office. I suspect the mental gymnastics that occur follow the lines of "I will only be in the post office a few minutes, so parking won't matter".

But another way of looking at this behaviour is from the standpoint of a system which is either random or self-organizing. My thinking goes like this:

The people of the town have to do business in person in the post office
The people no longer walk as much as they did when the PO was built and the road designed
People drive much more now
The PO needs to provide a parking lot
The PO has no parking lot
The road is therefore used as a parking lot to the degree it is required
Parking on both sides does not slow traffic too much
Most people actually ARE done in just a few minutes
So people automatically began to park on the double yellow line

The Garda is sometimes seen in Salthill
A Garda station is approximately 2 blocks from the main street
Sometimes they are seen walking up and down on main street
They are not seen clamping cars parked on the double yellow lines

There seems to be an acceptance of the violations. It is apparently recognized that there is a necessity for the parking but there is no place it can be done. There is a self organized behaviour that emerges and which COULD be resisted by the authorities, but doing so would be hopeless...the number of illegally parked cars probably exceeds the number of clamps available for use.

A second example I noticed this evening. We drove to a restaurant in a shopping centre. There was, by the time we got there, plenty of parking in the 'official' parking lot with its rows of orthogonal spaces across the two lanes of shopping centre traffic. But many parkers had opted to park closer to the restaurant by parking at an angle across a yellow box painted on the road on the side of the roadway next to the restaurant.

These cars were definitely parked illegally, but because of the time of day, they were not causing anyone any trouble. The yellow box was not supposed to be blocked, but at least 15 cars were doing exactly that. They had parked parallel to each other, but at an angle that was convenient, not orthogonal to the curb. These people had self organized to form a convenient and effective solution to parking...it just happened to be illegal.

Some might simply say that people here engage in these illegal, unsanctioned solutions because there is insufficient Garda presence to enforce the rules. but the Garda participate in that they do not clamp such parkers in Salthill (a reaction that would just tie traffic in knots anyway). while they do clamp other offenders in different places.

Rather, I submit, a consensus emerges from the group dynamic in response to the conditions. Consequently, parking patterns emerge as self organizing behaviour, arrived at individually and commonly, organized to accommodate the needs of the parkers and the drivers alike, representing a system that is adapting to the constraints it finds itself under.

Regards
Bill

The Pace of Life in Galway

Well, it's one of my insomnia nights and here I am blogging again. This is not good because I have to catch a train to Dublin in the morning...maybe i'll sleep on the train.

but what I've been thinking about, my brain all awhirl with sleeplessness, is what i am missing at this time of year as we prepare for christmas.

And what i am missing is the slow, langorous, leisurly pace of my life in Dallas at christmas time.

If I hear one more Galwegian decry the hectic pace of life in the US, I may explode. let me make this perfectly clear. You folks living here in Galway lead a tremendously hectic, fast paced, fast talking, confusing life. there is no leisurely pace here. i know...I've tried to do some christmas shopping the last two weeks and I am giving it up

first, let me explain my Christmas time rituals in Dallas. We take a weekend or two around Thanksgiving (this week of the November calendar) and begin to accumulate a few things for a Turkey dinner. We know who's comng to dinner by then, whos cooking, what we'll make, and we have all we need.

At Thanksgiving, contrary to the sitcoms you see, the turkey is perfect, the meal is grand, the relatives are loving and lovely, the friends stop by, and the weather is gorgeous. I cannot recall a bad thanksgiving dinner in the last 30 years...perhaps the dinner rolls were not QUITE DONE when everyone sat down to eat, but that is the most significant issue.

The quiet after dinner period, bellies full of turkey and bloodstreams full of triptophan, are times of speculation, conversation, football watching and football playing. Perhaps a movie in the evening and, of course, leftover turkey sandwiches for dinner.

The next day begins the official christmas shopping season. Which we partake of.

A quiet leisurely drive to the mall, valet parking to avoid the crush. Then the fun begins. A four, maybe six hour saunter around the four floors and four hundred stores available to us for shopping. Just walking the mall from end to end on a single floor can take 90 minutes of slow, contemplative browsing and talking. We solve the world's problems on the way.

We wander around slowly, no hurries. We watch the children's shows with the puppets, the carollers, the kiddie train, the SPCA with their pets. We glance at shop windows never intending to enter...not yet, that would break the spell.

We stop for hot chocolates or coffees (and a christmas cookie, of course). Perhaps we step into a fine italian restaurant and make a reservation for later in the evening. We ooh and ahh over some of the window displays; Victroria's Secret with lovely lingerie clad angels cleverly and oh so effectively mixing eroticism with religion. But we do not enter such a hallowed temple yet...that's for later.

Home theater stores and electronics stores beckon with gadgets and TVs showing sports on 30 channels it seems. The NASCAR store has a huge video wall of a race in Sao Paulo or perhaps Daytona. Maybe we even get to see our own Texas Motor Speedway. the 40,000 people at it might explain why the mall is not as crowded as the news people always predict.

We stop and look over the rail from the third floor at the ice rink on the basement level, nearly 50 feet below. The Zamboni finishes its magical smoothing circuit and the suddenly the children are swirling around the rink widershins, flying in laughing rings around the Christmas tree that rises from the rink to top out above our heads near the roof of the fourth floor. looking up at its apex, we see joggers through the barrel vaulted glass roof of the mall as they trot their way around the rim of the mall roof in the cool autumn air. One of them glances down through the glass and slows to watch the children far below; both parties wave at each other.

The music in the mall at this time of year is phenomenal and we take our time around the musical displays. A small chamber group is playing carols on woodwinds outside a bookstore. A little further down, an animatronic puppet theater is enthralling more children sitting in front of it as a musical version of Dicken's Christmas Carol is played out over an elaborate 45 minutes of story and song...children from 2 to 20 sit on th floor and watch, never moving.

At least three groups of carolers, dressed in Victorian costumes, of course, slowly make their way around the mall perimeters on each floor stopping to sing in rich, but quiet voices. Their timings are coordinated so they never overlap spatially and do not interfere with each other or other dipslays. Pink noise is wafting through the malls PA system, perpetually maintaining a softness and comfortable level to the ambient sound. The carpeted floors and soft uphosltery also serve to moderate the noise of 20,000 people passing through a shopping center larger than Shannon airport.

One whole end of the mall has been given way to a christmas train journey that takes up about 15000 square feet of storefront. The mall management company actually reserves this storefront all year so that it may be used for the ride. in other seasons it is an art gallery or rented to smaller merchants who agree to vacate for the christmas season in return for much lower rents during the year.

Santa, of course, is also near so wishes can be expressed and photographs can be taken. he's a pretty good looking one this year and the children love telling him what they want. he arrived by helicopter on Thankgiving day during the downtown parade, then this morning by helicopter just as the stores were opening.

for us (my wife and I) the bookstores beckon, of course, and we check out the displays in Rizzoli's (The place for photography books in particular) and Brentano's (art books, architecture, and perfect gift books) and Shakepeare Beethoven (they always have the most high brow). On later shopping excursions we will go to a different mall that has a 100,000 square foot Barnes and Noble store in one corner. most of our actual purchases will be made there. It is great for browsing, reading in the overstuffed chairs, and listening to book clubs and speakers or getting into conversations with friends you haven't seen in a year.

finally, after several hours of just looking about and listening and eating and drinking perhaps with a stop for something a bit stronger in the bar of the hotel attached to this mall, we decide to actually do a bit of purchasing. The recon pass is mostly over and we've seen several things we decide to get at the CD/DVD store, the bookstore, a craft shop, and the pen store (something for my business partner who collects pens). The goth clothing store for a gift for a musician friend and a golf present for my brother-in-law from one of the sporting memoribilia stores.

Then it's about dinner time. The sky has darkened over the glass roof, the mall lights are a bit dimmer for the evening, the soft blue lights in the glass rails and floating tree gardens creating a gentle wintry feel without the cold. The restaurant is italian and serves fantastic food on the terrace overlooking the ice rink. There is a great mexican restaurant and an american grill down at rink level, but we enjoy Nicola's best.

finally, we are ready to leave...we pick the car up from the valet (he's been holding it by the curb for us because we are regular customers and i tip well...these guys work hard and deserve it) then head for home. traffic is light on the freeway and we talk about catching a movie first as we pass the cinemas on the way toward the house. We have over 60 screens to choose from in about ten minues distance from the house.

Tomorrow we'll go look at christmas trees. Our favorite lot will be open and set up...they come down from Michigan. we'll wander around the garden center and the tree lot for an hour or so sipping the hot chocolate they give to customers. When we find a tree we'll arrange for them to deliver it on Sunday and set it up in the house. These are the greatest christmas tree sellers we've ever encountered. their trees smell fantastic, fragrances of cedar and pine and douglas fir. my favorite tree lately though is the noble fir and they always have wonderful ones with the soft silvery green needles and the splayed branches. I love the smell too...nobles have a tang most other evergreens don't.

After tree buying it's off to Cotton Patch restaurant for a bit of comfort food in the form of chicken fried steak, cream gravy, black eyed peas and green beans with soft wheat rolls drowned in hot butter and tupelo honey...and a chat with our favorite waiter Zak who in a fevered delirium recently shaved his head, but cannot explain exactly why. we spend about 2 hours enjoying lunch, then back home to knock around the house and get the living room ready for the tree.

Once the tree is up we'll take weeks to decorate it, a little at a time each evening. Linda always embroiders a few new ornaments each year using plastic canvas and sparkling yarn. She works on one for a couple of nights then pops it on the tree. After that it becomes one more in the collection. some of them go to family as gifts as well.

We'll string out what lights we have, then go buy several replacement strings because it makes no sense to spend our time trying to find the one burned out bulb when a new string of 100 or 200 costs $2.

I'll set up the lights in the yard (we drape lights over the waterfall at the end of our pool) as well and then we'll spend a few evenings driving around the neighborhoods and city centers looking at lights. The gated communities with their perfectly orderly identical and supremely manicured decorations...the middle class neighborhoods with much more variety like the korean christmas decorations next to the kwansa house, and the guy who puts out ten thousand more lights than anyone else, but is willing to climb on anyone's roof to help set up their lights just because he loves christmas.

The older neighborhoods go all out with an absolute riot of styles, colors ,ideas, and traditions...hispanic neighborhoods are the most beautiful in many ways. And the people who have done their houses up always sit on their porches long into the evening, chatting, sometimes singing carols and having big block parties with barbeques and huge meals.

Somewhere in december we take a few afternoons off to go out to malls separately and pick up items we have seen that we know each other will like. We take our time and accumulate our presents slowly under our tree, enjoying the experience of shopping, seeing store people we know, running into friends and chatting for a while over at starbucks or maybe hooking up for dinner. recently I have begun to have most off my presents wrapped by the charity tables in the malls. its a good way to contribute to their causes and I am a lousy wrapper. My packages look oh so much neater now. but I always wind up wrapping several items myself on Christmas eve.

Electronic shopping allows a lot of our gifts to be ordered and wrapped and shipped without having to travel to the post office, but there is always a day when we must go there and stand in line a while...usually chatting with strangers for 5 or 10 minutes until its our turn. The US post office always puts on extra staff and arranges to make it as easy as possible to get the mailings done quickly...although it pays to know WHICH of the five post offices nearby are the most efficient ones. i like to finish up those afternoons with a lunch of fried chicken gizzards...more comfort food and best when the air has finally chilled to about 6 degrees celcius a week before christmas. i get a mess of gizzards to go then take them over to starbucks at barnes and noble and eat them with double espressos or hot chocolate and several magazines or newspapers from around the world...pure heaven.

Of course there are the parties to go to , but we take those casually and most poeple try to meet up for small dinners rather than big parties.

so our pace of life in Dallas at christmas is slow and deliberate. we noticed that the same thing applied in San Jose although on a slightly smaller scale.

here though, I was astounded to get caught in terrible traffic trying to get into city center yesterday, then there is no place to park, i had to go all the way to the top deck of the MCP and walk back down a flight of metal steps in the biting wind ... valet parking would be a really good idea.

And we lost so much time getting there that we had only a couple of hours before things closed. Not much stays open to 11.30 around here as in Dallas at Christmas. the streets were filled with people rushing headlong up and down, the stores were frightfully crowded, very few sales people to help, and quite hot with all the bodies pressed in.

everyone was rushed and harried, you had to literally grab someone to get any attention (tried desperately to buy a new pair of shoes and wound up in some very strange discussion where this woman could only tell me that all shoes in ireland were smaller than US shoes...i still am not sure i know what she meant, but she was quite annoyed with me for asking for 48's.

What with having to go not only to shopping street, but to the Woodies DIY, the ARGOS (49 working days for delivery of some flatpack wardrobes seems outrageous) then to the Wellpark Centre to check out something at the Sony Centre, we spent a huge amount of our time burning petrol in long traffic jams.

My wife Linda sums it up about the roads here by saying that there is no excuse for a western civilized country to not have high speed limited access motorways between at least its three major cities. She is right...spend the few billion euro, hire the workers from anywhere you can find them, use the latest, fastest, most sophisticated technology, build the roads in 5 years, and just get it done...or the CELTIC TIGER will die of starvation, caught in a snare of its own making...GOVERNMENTS SHOULD BUILD ROADS...from the time of Rome this has been the key to prosperity. The US has the economy it has today because of the interstate highway system.

So don't talk to me about the pace of life in the US...we have a slow, quiet, peaceful pace of life in Dallas (and its even slower in Austin and San Antonio). The ludicrous situations you see in American TV shows and movies are crafted to counterpoint the reality, to make us laugh in relief because we know our lives are not so hectic and thereby we are made grateful for the calmness we have. Those idiots on TV, the overweight middle aged guys with imporbably beautiful wives struggling through ridiculous scenarios and situations are exactly NOT us. for which we give thanks at this time of year :)

But here I have to dodge people flying headlong on their errands because they have so much effort to expend to get from errand to errand and so little time left in each day to do them. Do you ever wonder how much time people in this town waste trying to park a car? Not only the slow creep LOOKING for the spot, but the in and out and in and out routine to get the car into the spot? It adds up to a significant portion of life that could be spent enjoying the flowers. First thing to do, ANGLE the parking spaces...you have a positive fetish about one way systems here anyway, so why not angle the spaces in the right direction. second thing...re-mark the spaces to match the emerging average car size...SUVs and Mercedes sedans do NOT fit the old spaces...the populace has voted with its euros...they LIKE bigger cars, they BUY bigger cars...make it easier for them to PARK bigger cars...it translates into more time they spend in the shops BUYING stuff than in the car park trying to park.

it is time to rebuild Galway to make it convenient for its citizens. A convenient city prospers because it provides more opportunity for commerce to flow, for services to emerge, and for efficiencies to appear...cities are machines and systems for maximizing the prosperity of residents; they should be lubricated with convenience.

So that is what I am missing here in Galway at Christmas...my peaceful leisurely pace of life in Dallas around this time of year. We're going to take a few days to go to London for some quiet shopping too...now that's a place where you can really relax and take your time about shopping.

regards
Bill

The Latest Bond

Went to see Casino Royale today

first -- VERY good movie
second -- VERY long movie -- 2:45 -- got my money's worth
third -- He still doesn't look like BOND! -- He's not suave enough, he's not sophisticated enough, he's got the wrong color hair, and his eyes are too close together. My wife says he's not pretty enough.

All that said, the story was pretty good, long enough to develop the primary tenets of the book, and gives insight into the origin of the bond character

Of course, the continuity is destroyed.
The movie is set in 2006 ... but James becomes a 00 at the begining of the film...and Judi Dench is already M.

The producers apparently plan on rebooting the franchise ... so maybe we will shortly see a new version of Dr. No or Thunderball (apparently already in planning).

Daniel Craig played Bond fairly well ... he is a good actor. However, he just does not look right...in the way that Roger Moore never looked right and even George Lazenby looked more Bondly (is that a word? ... it is, now.) connery remains the one closet to the look of richard Conte who inspired Casino Royale's cover.

We were missing a few characters that should be in every Bond film, but aside from that, it was a good serious adaptation of the book...modernized, of course, but not overly divergent from the novel.

Amazing to think the Bond franchise has gone on now for 53 years...and the stories can still be interesting and immensely enjoyable.

bill

LIFT Conference (2006) -- Bruce Sterling (2006)

Fascinating 30 minute speech by Bruce Sterling on a future about 30 years away where the world is filled with blogjects and things he calls spimes. I think it's closer than that.

Bruce Sterling is a writer and visionary. He speaks about "spimes and the future of artifacts".

Issues of assessment

I had a very interesting day today shopping around for some stuff and it suddenly made me think of a very serious research area we need to look into here at DERI.

Looking back over today's adventures I realized that about 85% of the time, when I asked a question of a sales or service person here in Galway, the first answer I was given was incorrect.

These questions ranged from "is the item I ordered from Argos ready for pickup?" to "Do you have that in stock?", to "How many potato skins come in a small order?"

These were completely mundane questions and the sort of questions you would expect clerks, waiters, and service persons to know. However, in virtually every case, the FIRST answer given was incorrect. Analysis later (and some careful questioning of these folks) revealed that, largely, this was because they wanted to impart information, they wanted to be helpful, and in most case honestly believed the first answer was correct and were surprised to discover they were wrong. In one case the clerk was quoting a computer generated report and IT was wrong.

As I thought about this I suddenly realized that, if this is a cutltural phenomenon, it could be very important for issues of elearning, particularly assessment. In any culture where accuracy is sacrificed to answers, assessment of the efficacy of an elearning regime may need to take that into account to be effective and to properly reflect the state of the student.

So one very interesting research project would be to ask and answer the question,"How often is the FIRST answer to factual questions correct in a given culture/country/region?" Does it vary significantly with culture? Does it vary enough that it needs to be adjusted for in eLearning assessment strategies? Is this one more area where systems need to be contextually aware and make semantically powered adaptations?

Thoughts on this?

Bill

Superman Returns

So here I am, hanging out in Galway

It's been a busy month here, but the new job is working out great and I have an apartment, (which overlooks Rusheen Bay, by the way and is exquisite) and I have settled in almost completely. Of course, I still have to go back to San Jose and finish crating and freighting.

But today I am insomiac, it's 3.30 am, and it's been a quiet, uncomplicated Sunday. So I'm writing this.

This afternoon I went out to see Superman Returns.

WOW. This is one of the best movies I have seen this year. The story is solid, the acting is excellent and Kevin Spacey makes a scary Lex Luthor.

But mostly I was impressed with the serious way the film dealt with what it means to be Superman. And the fact that the writers and director did not cop out and take the predictable characterizations and plot lines.

So, when characters act in unexpected ways and the plot develops along lines that are not as stagnantly predictable as most films these days, I am impressed.

I'm not sure I care for Routh in the part, however. His acting is fine but he looks odd for Superman...he has features that are too heavy and sharp. However, he is reminsicent of Chris Reeve and that seems to have been a plus for him.

So I definitely recommend seeing this film..it is solid and outstanding.

On other fronts, Galway is very beautiful. Recently the weather has been sunny and fair and warm. I'm learning where things are and what's available. Finally got the right bed in the apartment. I'm finding costs a bit higher than Dallas, but lower than San Jose.

Running the gauntlet of officaldom has been the biggest challenge...trying to get work permit, bank account, debit card, pin for debit card (was sent to california by mistake) and online access (pin also sent to california) has been the biggest frustration, but those are finally sorting themselves out. I await one more magic number from the formal officialdom of Ireland and then I think I am completely installed.

Even the Irish joke about how long things take in Ireland and how everything takes longer than you expect. The 4pm movie today didn't start the projector until 4.15. But all things come to those who wait.

From a standpoint of work, I am enjoying the challenge of setting up and growing our eLearnign Cluster. We have openings for several post and pre docs and we have some interesting labs being set up to facilitate research. These include a computer/human interface lab, a mobile and multi modal device lab and potentially a psychology lab to study why people do not jump at elearning opportunities. I already have an ePedagogy, Semantic infrastrucutres, development , and business analysis lab set up and staffed.

My goal is to really grow our cluster into one that suports a wide variety of elearning research initiatives which a robust de velopment group transforms into deliverable technologies. So far, I've met with nothing but support from everyone here.

Take care everyone...i'll writed later
bill

Designer Babies will be perfect...won't they?

Sorry for the month and a half delay...recovering from the pneumonia just left me with little energy until now

I'm at Heathrow waiting on a plane. Watching a SKY news report on whether we can expect designer babies soon.

My gut reaction is yes, of course we will have this ability soon. The next question is, of course, what would you design in?

The assumption is always that babies will be designed with perfect health, eyesite, hearing, optimal height for high powered careers, high intelligence, and a good football scholarship.

But wait...

Assume for a moment you are a soon to be pregnant couple. And either your country has been or will soon be at war for a long time...you assume 20 plus years...or you are afraid that in 10 years a new 10 year war will begin. Certainly in 1979 people legitimatley predicted we would be at war in the mid east within 2 decades and they were correct.

Perhaps your country has mandatory military service for healthy adults and that service is NOT a safe tour...very high casualty rates.

So you want to design in a few flaws:
poor enough eyesight to avoid the airforce
flat enough feet to avoid the infantry
a propensity for motion sickness that disqualifies your child for shipboard duty
Maybe not QUITE so tall and hefty and strong
A weak abdominal muscle which can herniate easily under extremes of stress
Mild chronic anemia to make them just a bit too weak for duty


Many such conditions are correctable, but correction requirements could disqualify your child from service...making them safer.

Would you spoof the system in such a way? Would your doctor?

is it ethical? more or less so than to order up a perfect child? Do you tell your child what you did? When?

Sometimes the obvious assumptions have unintended consequences and people in the real world make what seem to be unusual uses of technology...uses we technologists seldom see on the horizon.

Thoughts and comments?

Whoa Dude? How'd I wake in Hospital?

What a bizarre two weeeks

1. Went to Galway. Great meetings, great people. Felt great all dat friday as I wandered Galway looking at shops and such.
2. boarded for Dublin...no worries
3. Laid over in Dublin for a shot time, then boarded for the US
4. Laid over in CHicago for 5 hours. took shower,had dinner, felt great
5. boarded for SJC
6. 3/4 through the filght I start feeling like I'm being buzzed or something, then less and less well, then really sick
7. Land, stagger, barely able to breathe, off the plane and into car home
8. Chills, fever of 102.3 (44.7 to the world citizens aout there), nausea, the works!
9. Clears by the end of the firrst full 24 hours
10. Can't to sleep as hour after hour pain builds in right lobe of back
11. Spend all day Monday trying to get ready for AOL visit
12. Cancel visit at 10am...i am too sick
13. pain clears at 12noon...I have rescheduled for wed just in case however
14. Walk to McDonald's with my wife fir sime errands, exercise, and lunch
15. Start getting worse on way back
16. Can't breathe and am in intense pain by 5pm
17. Head for emergency roon at 5
18. Have prelim diagnosis of pneumonnia by 10pm and am admitted by 12
19. Have been here since May 1...feeling better

Two tired for rest of story right now...will blog more tomorrow

Bill