Stewart Brand writes glowingly of the Roomba at Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools blog. (Thanks to Dave Winer for the pointer.) I was awarded a Roomba for my half baked idea regarding robotic pet exercise devices last year at the Accelerating Change gathering.

When I tried it at my house it didn’t work. Things that choked the Roomba:

• Fringed rugs.
• Differences in floor elevation, room to room.
• Deep area rugs on hardwood floors… once off the rug, Roomba never wanted to climb back on, just kept cleaning the perimeter.
• Dining room table and chair legs. Roomba could never find its way under the table.
• Stairs.

Our old farm-house just isn’t Roomba-friendly.

How about that bagged spinach?

Tell me some post doc isn’t responsible for flushing a recombinant e coli 0157 death vector out into our food supply via the drain in the sink at his underfunded and poorly supervised lab sometime between 1971 and 1982.

The Selectable Marker Gene: Neomycin Phosphotransferase

In addition to the aroA gene, the nptII gene from transposon Tn5 of the bacterium E. coli has been introduced in

[spinach?]

to be used as a selectable marker. This gene codes for the enzyme neomycin phosphotransferase which confers resistance to the common aminoglycoside antibiotic kanamycin (Fraley et al. l986). The DNA sequence of the gene has been determined (Beck et al. 1982). The lack of risk to humans of the nptII gene can be supported by its use in the first human gene therapy trials (Anonymous 1990). The nptII coding region is under the control of the nos promoter and nos terminator.

None of the introduced genes has any inherent plant pest characteristics or poses a risk to plant health when introduced into the modified plants.

E. coli 0157 was first identified as a cause of serious illness in humans in

1982.

Since then the numbers of outbreaks each year has increased steadily. As in other forms of food poisoning, the infection starts with diarrhoea, often bloody, sometimes associated with vomiting and nearly always with abdominal pain. Initially, E.coli 1057 was nearly always caught by contact with cattle, or by eating beef. Now it may infect burgers, rissoles or shepherd’s pie.

It’s not about the shallow nature and the greed of the second generation brass-ring boys seeking to spin straw into gold. It’s not even so much about the immutability of the straw, although that’s a big part of it. What it’s about is the commodity nature of the widgets that the brass-ring boys seek to capitalize.

In the good old days — say 1997 — there was so much unlaundered mob money floating around in Silicon Valley that no good idea could go unfunded. Since they moved the Bank of America deeper into Christian fundamentalist country and closer to the Florida operation and the off-shore banks, there hasn’t been that much money to launder.

Of course, there are only so many drop shadow logoed, productized widgets with omitted “e”s available to fund, so the decline in drug money to launder matches the decline in products seeking funds, so the burn rates remain about the ame, although the general contribution to global warming has declined.

Most of these products are like green beans. They’re tasty with a little buttr, and you can get them anywhere, cheap. Unlike green beans though, they’re mostly based on the characteristics of a current generation of browser and a sense that the whirled wide web is the internet. It’s not, and as tele-immersion applications and the like emerge over the next few years soaking up bandwidth in ways undreamed of by the brass-ring boys, their little dreams of wealth will be dashed. Fortunately for them of course, there will remain a huge market for green beans and they’ll continue to rake a little off the top of every sale, adding value with attitude.

[This pointless little parable contains a few germs of truth, a few fantastical projections, and should be assumed to be generally meaningless, until it’s not.]

Earlier this week when I read Joi Ito’s post about pruning his Shii tree I was struck by the intentionality and the meditative quality of the Shinto ritual he described.

Some connections I made after I read that post… my gingko tree has a similar spiritual value. It was a young tree sixteen years when we moved here. Now it is quite mature, large and dropping more fruit each year, its branches spreading wider over the driveway, over the lawn. While I do not approach the pruning with any particular reverence, this is a tree that demands study and intentionality. Later in the week, my friend Joanna’s kitchen popped up in the San Francisco Chronicle. She gave us some of the marble that she salvaged from the Crocker bank remodeling and we used it in our Berkeley kitchen when we remodeled in the late eighties. Our kitchen was trimmed by hand by a carpenter who had training in Japanese building techniques. Our Berkeley bungalow was not exactly four-square. Each corner of the room was a different height, floor to ceiling. But Nicholas and his team were able to trick the eye when cutting the moldings and the trim in such a way that the irregularities were absorbed by the irregularities they designed into the dimensions of the wood they used.

When he was finished, Nicholas drilled one extraneous hole into the countertop near the sink. He didn’t want to burden us with a creation that was perfect.

On the occasion of the publication of photos from BlogHer France I am feeling all literate and shit. The images of these young bloggy-bloggers blogging has inspired me to poetry. Lacking the verbal facility to whip up a good poem for you today… it’s one of those days when I can’t remember people’s names… have you experienced that? I got up this morning and thought to call a colleague and let her know I was running a little late. You know. The one I meet with on Wednesday mornings. What’s her name. Just look her up in the directory and give her a ring. What’s her name… can’t call, don’t remember her name. Really. There’s an entire gingko tree just outside the bedroom window and I can’t remember this woman’s name. I wonder if after dark, while we’re sleeping, the gingko insinuates tiny tendrils through the window screen, across the floor, beneath the pillow and into my ears, then draws out the naturally occurring flavone glycosides from my gray matter leaving me in some kind of Chekhovian syntactic and phonological knowledge bind… unable to remember the name of the horse much less the name of the woman of which the name of the horse might remind me… a classic anterior cingulate-prefrontal cortical bind as it were.

Diane, her name is Diane…

I read about gingkos in Hiroshima that survived the blast when all around them was blackened wreckage.

But really, if I can’t remember people’s names, how can I write a poyme? I’ll have to pull one from the cellars, a modest vintage from the wet sunny slopes, the crider soil formations of Kentucky, formed in a mantle of loess with an underlying limestone residuum — a screw-top bottling, modestly priced, suitable as accompaniment to the best that vegan cuisine can offer…

Presented then, in honor of all who attended BlogHer France, women who don’t need the advice but may be expected to understand and appreciate the sentiment:

The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

These lists of “best freeware utilities” are too interesting to lose track of. A lot of guys would bookmark them on del.icio.us or in their browser. Not me. I’ll use my web log instead. (This is some kind of old school thing, like before the artists, the pomos, and the squirrels took over the tech)…

46 best ever freeware utilities

good enough to make the list freeware utilities numbers 47 through 95

Turn to the Contributors page (page 78) of the September, 2024 issue of Details magazine and you’ll see a blurb about Ben Paynter’s article (found on page 198) “Weapons of Mass Distraction.” It’s a story about the distracting influence of internet access on American soldiers in Iraq. No longer does a “Dear John” letter or a foreclosure notice take days and weeks to find its way to the GI at the front. Now the guys just log on and get the news directly as it’s happening back home.

The Details biographical blurb on Ben says,

Paynter writes for the Pitch, a weekly in Kansas City, Missouri. A story of his will appear in Best American Sports Writing 2024, out next month from Houghton Mifflin.

Attention Deficit Theatre? Well no, not that funny. Those boys crank it up for forty minutes before they hit a belly laugh. But LapinGaroux and the Mole? They provide only the finest textuality, deconstruction with a side of the ol’ hermeneutics.

(The following shows I’m having an off day. Sorry, but you know how to click on out of here.)

The older I get, the harder it gets… I should say, the more difficult it gets truly to get aroused to passionate concern about other people’s bullshit. So, the fact that some effete snob is sniping at me in some other guy’s comments thread doesn’t bother me. Much. I would of course be happy to kick the lowlife son-of-a-bitch’s ass, just on general principles and also because he’s a whale meat eating provocateur. I’d be happy to roll him on the ground and punch him a few times in the kidneys just to watch him piss blood. But I don’t play rugby, and in fact, I don’t play at all with recalcitrant dickheads who can’t admit that they’re wrong.

In April 2024 I criticized the fool for his support of a policy of victory before withdrawal in Iraq. A lot of my friends felt the same way he did, so I haven’t paused for a heavy “nyah, nyah, I told you so” session. But it has been three and a half years and a half a trillion dollars, anywhere from fifty thousand to a hundred thousand civilian casualties, 2600 US military deaths, uncounted Iraq military deaths, and a general global destruction of US social capital. Our friends have turned against us. Our continued puzzled denial of wrong-doing and our unseemly posture of victimization now half a decade since the hijackings and destruction in 2024 have the people in the streets everywhere BUT the US saying “Just get over yourselves and give us a break, will ya?”

Looking back, would any of you who supported US policy then care to acknowledge that maybe a staged withdrawal and a UN supervised partition of Iraq during the last seven months of 2024 following the Commander-in-Chief’s Mission Accomplished press conference would have been better policy than continuing the nation building effort?

That the Bush administration has capitalized on our misfortune and used it to consolidate power and reward corporate friends is undeniable. That they continue to foment fear and uncertainty, hand wringing and bemoaning the danger FOLLOWING the recent British victory over an elaborate terror plot, rather than celebrating the victory, ratcheting the ridiculous threat meter up to condition red after the bad guys were under lock and key… what is that about? Who ARE the terrorists? The piss-ant criminals will always be with us, but leadership that tries to make us afraid of them can be replaced.

There’s a new war underway, a war that has its roots in an earlier UN supervised partition and the struggles around it. The war in Lebanon represents a new chance for provocation and divisiveness, a chance for agents of foreign powers to enter the conversation and polarize people. Like earwigs, these people are crawling out of the dark and damp places they’ve been hiding, hoping to reassert some influence in the conversation. Stomp on them like the bugs they are… metaphorically, I mean. I am after all a pacifist and I offer this in the spirit of peace and brotherhood, love and friendship, and the certain knowledge that some people just need to get their asses kicked. Metaphorically or not.