Apple’s Human Family Ad

I understand that advertisements are brief, so the iPhone ad by Apple featuring Maya Angelou’s marvelous “Human Family” had to be limited to 60 sec. Ms. Angelou’s poem runs 105 sec. So, of course, some parts of the poem had to be cut. Well, here’s a link allowing you to hear Ms. Angelou reading the poem in it’s entirety. Sorry. No photos shot on an iPhone or anything else. Just the the elegant, excellent words in her beautiful, more-alike-than-different, human-family voice.

Most readers will see the Apple advertisement without my help.

XKCD survey

http://xkcd.com/1572/. Complete it yourself. Pass it along to others.

Can you believe it?

Those tree-hugging, Nobel Peace-Prize winning, one-world people are at it again. On 1 November 2014, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released another report—actually batch of reports—alerting us that climate change is real. There will be colder colds. Hotter hots. The oceans will be higher and more acidic. Our human activities are causing the changes and most of it has happened in my lifetime. It is the most extreme change in 800,000 years.

It is possible to mitigate the effects and we shall have to adapt to the changes, but we have to start doing things now. By the end of this century, or sooner, things are likely to be out of hand.

It’s as if they think we only have one Earth!

This link goes to the 40-page summary for policymakers, this link goes to the 116-page full report for those without time challenges, and this link goes to the IPCC Web site where one can find links not just to the summary but to the papers of the working groups and other materials generated by those lovers Polar Bears and other living things.

Update ye’ iPhones and iPads

If you haven’t already, now’s the time to do it. Run that update. It’s under “Settings:General” And, until Apple releases a patch for OS X, you shouldn’t use Safari to browse the Web when you’re connecting to the Internet via a public WiFi on your laptop, either.

For the geeks, Adam Langley explained over on Imperial Violet and John Gruber of Daring Fireball opined why he figures NSA conspiracy theories are a bit of a reach.

U.S. Election Mega-analysis

Political pundits are second in line after the politicians themselves in putting spin on political poll data to make those data sound as if they support a particular interpretation. But there is another class of analysts who do not prognisticate. Instead, they simply examine the data and tell what those data show at this time.

Nate Silver of the New York (NY) Times has gotten a lot of publicity recently for his versions of this sort of work, but there are several others who are doing similar work (and to me, some are maybe even better, but let’s not argue about that right now). These people aggregate data from the polls (and, in many cases, other sources of evidence) to arrive at statistically dispassionate estimates of the situation. They don’t use hunches about momentum, ad-buys, and so forth. They follow the data.

Technology in the wild

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have wasps nest in the headphone jack of your computer? How about border guards questioning why you’re transporting a computer with a dead battery? Dolly Joseph doesn’t question why these things occur. She’s lived them, and she connects them in an enlightening post about technology and the environment. Recommended.

Be smart about ocean debris

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has a blog about marine debris chocked full of interesting entries. As are many other agencies, NOAA is using social media extensively (e.g., see the Facebook page for its Office of Exploration and Research, the Vimeo shows for its Climate Program Office, and, of course, its own Twitter feed and weather information on its own YouTube channel), but the marine debris blog is a bit unique. It has a voice of its own. It’s focused, friendly, informative, and entertaining. It’s a good use of my tax dollars.

Players

Currently I’m reading The Big O and I recently I read West by West. Not long ago, I reported about reading The Rivalry and The Inside Game. So, to those who recognize the subjects of those books, it should come as no surprise that I enjoyed stumbling across this photo in Mr. Adbul-Jabars’ Twitter pix. These are four of the guys whom I’d want in my all-time seven- or eight-man rotation.

Talk about dying

Have you ever had someone close to you recognize that death is not just inevitable, but that it is likely to come in the nearer, rather than farther, future? I am close with some elderly people who have said to me “getting old is for the birds” and even “sometimes I wish I could just die.” We all know someone who’s a bit elderly. Perhaps it’s a parent or an uncle. Maybe it’s a neighbor who still lives alone independently, and you check on her.

I have several in my life (not counting myself). So, in July of 2011 I was quick to read a column by Steve Lopez of the Los Angeles Times entitled “Waiting in the dark with Dad.” In it he told about his elderly father taking a fall one night and his mother, unable to get the father up, waiting through the night with him until they could get to an emergency room.

For other folks, incurable and advancing disease rather than age may be the primary driver of impending death. Still, many of the end-of-life concerns are similar. What does one do to set things straight? How does one face the prospect of being a burden on others? Will there be pain and suffering? Which trip will be the last and how much fun can one wring out of it? Will that advance medical directive be honored? (My sister suggested she might have “Do Not Resuscitate” tattooed on her chest!)

After examining his own parents’ situation, Mr. Lopez has delved into the topic more broadly. The result has grown into a series of articles discussing divergent views of problems faced by elderly folks. Over the past few months I’ve passed along links to and discussed that first and several other columns by Mr. Lopez about his thoughts on his ailing father’s end-of-life situation. The Times has collected a dozen (as of today) of Mr. Lopez’s related columns and has them displayed together under the headline “Matters of life & death.”

Meanwhile, it’s great to have palliative care programs such as Hospice (ask your doctors and nurses) and support services via Family Caregiver Alliance (search “end-of-life care”; it’s a US org, but I imagine there are comparable or better orgs in other countries) and Compassion in Dying (also mentioned in one of Mr. Lopez’s columns). This dying stuff is worth discussing. Thanks to Mr. Lopez for talking about it.

I hope you read all the articles, but I recommend you start with the one about Mr. Lopez’s mother waiting in the dark with his father.

Hyperbolic simple dog

Allie Brosh’s simple dog recently went very far outside. Follow her. You’ll get a good look at an adventure, an investigation of a dog’s perspective about the world, and insights into lots of other things, too.

My simple-minded dog recently went on an unplanned adventure. Because the simple dog is so very simple, her adventure was alarming and horrible for everyone involved.

Even in her normal, familiar environment, the simple dog exists in a state of almost constant confusion.