In the Garden

Why does it take someone 50 years to get back to their roots? I mean really, literal roots. Actually, I guess it was more like 30 years ago, when I was growing up, we raised a mighty-big garden for a few years...then, ever-after, nothing but a house plant now and then.

Underneath it all, behind the suit, tie and designer glasses, I'm just a country boy at heart. My values are much more consistent with Mother Earth News than Mother Jones. I have deep respect for sustainability and independence and all-things-natural...so why have I been so dreadfully disconnected?

This summer will mark my return to the earth. I will plant my feet in the soil and see what sprouts (maybe more hair...someone told me mine's getting thin). I've been amassing gardening books and tools. I've been plotting and planning all over my acreage. Soon I will break ground, then all hell will break loose. I really look forward to getting back to the earth!

My wife is worried, I think...readers of this blog know this too: I tend to go too far with such enterprises. I may likely plow the whole property and get very ambitious, then wither on the vine, so to speak, burning out before I get too far. She's also likely worried on another count...she's been with me to 100's of garage and estate sales, marveled at "little old people's gardening obsessions" and now her ol' man's about to pick up his plow.

Surely it's a sign of old age if not maturity.

Blah Blog Frog

Just a thought: couldn't someone have come up with a more attractive name for blogs? I know it is a blend of "web log" but it is just ugly. I realize that lots of folks are already engaged in "blogging," but it just falls on the ear as crass, something like "nose picking." (In July 2006 the Pew Internet & American Life Project estimated that the US "blog population has grown to about 12 million American adults", some 8% of US adult internet users. The number of US blog readers was estimated as 57 million adults (39% of the US online population), although few of those people read widely or read often.)

In a world where new words are coined daily, see the Double-Tongued Dictionary, some very engaging words like spincerity and shack-wacky....couldn't we have come up with a better word than "blog?" It's handy as a single syllable, sure, and it can easily be converted into other forms due to its structure, but it's just so...blucky. Is there any word in English that starts with a "bl" that is a winner, outside of colors? Okay, and "blossom" ...and I guess "blink" is at least a palatable, if not a particularly colorful word.

Consider this list:
blimp, blight, blemish, blister, blood, blurry, blubber, bludgeon...and blog.

Unfortunately, there's likely no turning back time, no reinventing the image of blogging by changing its name, ephemizing it. I just don't particularly like saying, "I have a blog." It sounds like I'm admitting to some horrible disfigurement. "I read blogs," sounds like reading something into/from a belch.

I guess it could be worse. Check out what this very ugly word, "snog" means!

Snake Oil

Chalk it up to my spiritual unmoorings, general gullibility, or optimism...I am someone who's always hoping one of these miracle cures will be all-that. Thanks to the Internet and other research venues--and I guess I'd thank my dark side, that lingering doubt that leads me to do the research in the first place--for I can debunk humbug like a blonde cutting through bad pick up lines.

Swinging back the other way, however, it's hurtful to my spirit to always find the cure-alls do not perform. Newsflash, to my soft spirit: INFOMERCIALS LIE. Sometimes, even more painful to admit, gurus, shaman, ministers of all cloths, etc. are underneath it all (and ohhh I feel so jaded even writing this) hucksters.

"Oh, the pain! the pain!" As the good Dr. Smith so often cried, on "Lost in Space."

I've not invested my fortunes nor my life energy in too many shams, scams or thank-you-ma'ams. I've been bit by the bug more than once, however, and I am very susceptible. It's good to know you're gullible (isn't that a paradox?) and that you are just the type cult groups hunt for: one who dives deep. That is to say, whenever I am so moved, I throw off every reservation along with my towel, suit and common sense and run screaming mad off the high dive....and THAT is to say, I have a problem with wholeheartedness. It has happened to me in work, love, and religion, and I know I am not alone in this weakness.

But enough personal disclosure. This likely reads like reprehensible porn to anyone who balks at public reflection.

Here's my sieve for the snake oil:
Are they trying to sell me something? That is, somewhere in this journey, cleansing, life-altering yahoo they're promoting--is there a dollar sign? ...even as a footnote?

That is now my universal bullshit meter.
Thus, I can dismiss all infomercials, car dealers, etc. straight-away.

It is not so very effective with all-things-spiritual, and I am constantly refining it.

Pointers welcome.

Let's Go for a Power Walk, HAL...

Okay, so the story broke last June...I heard of this today on Paul Harvey (dating myself by listening interests)...

As early as 2008, Hybrid Assistive Limb, HAL 5, a robotic exoskeleton will be on the market, available to the consuming public.

According to Prof. Sankai, Univ. of Tsukuba: "HAL has the hybrid control systems which consist of the autonomous controller such as posture control and the comfortable power assist controller based on biological feedback and predictive feedforward."

Generally speaking, the Japanese are more forward thinking and concerned about the elderly, for Japan’s population is aging faster than any other developed country while its birthrate is decreasing.

HAL 5 will increase mobility for that aging population. Here, we have the Hoveround.

For my money (currently estimated to lease for $500 mo next year) I'd rather be hopping around wearing this snazzy 47lb exoskeleton. Like the advanced robotics currently used in industry, this little number can increase one's strength, too.

Looks amazingly like a Storm Trooper's outfit, doesn't it?

I can't help but consider the possibilities. It is being developed in Japan under altruistic rationale...it will mobilize the elderly. It will help caregivers better lift and manage the disabled they serve. I would like to think that as research continues, it might some day help those who have never walked to someday tapdance. (Presently, it is somewhat dependent on motor functions and electrical impulses that the paralyzed do not generate.)

Heck, I'd like to have one just to buck bales, chop down trees, even just to sport around in to flex my mechanical muscles. I'd like robotic assists to keep up with my children as they will surely outpace me, all-too-soon.

Of course, the technology is being similarly developed for frightening military applications...but I will leave that to the imagination.

Duz This Luk FuNE?

Spelling Reform

I have always been annoyed that it is so complicated to transcribe speech into text. Yes, "dictation" hardware is coming a long ways, but the problem is more in the symbol system than in the manual process of penning thoughts. The problem is we have 44 sounds and only 26 characters. In English there are over 14 sounds per symbol. The English writing system has 106 symbols (in combination) for 40 or so sounds.There needs to be a better way to represent sounds! Bernard Shaw, Ben Franklin, and Mark Twain were all proponents of a symbology that would capture the accurate relation of code and sound, phonemes. I found another, here, that does the job. I don't know if it will ever be universally accepted, but what a wonderful world it would be, if only it were.

In reviewing this, I learned there is a sanctioned phonemic alphabet, the International Phonemic Alphabet, which is used universally by linguists but is not so easy to learn/teach. UNIFON has been used in schools and with pre-school children with quick result.

This what follows is an approximation of representative symbology, but for the accurate version, you need characters Blogger can't support. Go to UNIFON to translate your own text accurately.

I hav xlwAz bin unQd Dat it iz sO komplukAtud tU transkrIb spEK intU tekst. yes, "diktASun" hordwer iz kumiN A lxN wAz, but Du problum iz mxr in Du simbul sistum Dan in Du manyUul proses uv peniN Txts. Du problum iz wE hav 44 sqndz and OnlE 26 kariktcz. Der nEdz tU bE A betc wA tU repruzent sqndz! gb Sx woz A prupOnunt uv A symbology Dat wCd kapKc Du akycut funetik rElASun uv kOd tU phonemes. I fqnd unuDc, hir, Dat duz Du job. I dOn't nO if it wil evc bE yUnuvcsulE akseptid, but wut A wundcful wcld it wCd bE, if OnlE it wc.