Look what I found

I've been going through my bedroom drawers and came across this picture from the winter holidays of 2001. Cerys was 10, already greying around the muzzle, but I'd have six more wonderful years with her. Buns, the cat behind her, was starting to have some problems with his skin, due to a type of cancer that neither the vet or I recognised at the time. She thought it was just allergies.

But, oh, my Care Bear. That face just lit me up all over when I saw the picture. This month marks four years since her death, and I feel her absence still, although I've learned to sleep in the middle of the bed finally and remember to pick up dropped popcorn kernels. I can't believe it's been four years. I can't believe I was blessed with her for 16. She was such a wonderful dog.

Anyway, it really brightened my day to see this. :)

Curiosity...

Why Amazon's tablet will challenge Apple in a way that Google cannot: The key difference between Amazon and Google is that one of them holds millions of credit cards and is a famous name in retail

The rumours are unstoppable: Amazon is going to unveil a tablet in the next few weeks, and if the hands-on description of an internal prototype by MG Siegler over at Techcrunch are even vaguely correct, then it's going to be a 7in device with a colour touchscreen running a forked version of Android, at a price around $250. (UK price still unknown).

Note that "forked" bit, because it could be crucial.

The expectation around Amazon and its entry to the tablet market has been building, partly because it is the first – and possibly the only – company that people think could pose a serious threat to Apple in the tablet space.

If you're remotely interested in it, read this article, where the author purports to have held and used one of the preview devices, and also go to the Techcrunch link. It seems to have some advantages, but with some major pauses, too. I'm keeping an eye on it, though. One thing, though, if I got one, I'd definitely have to set up a wi-fi network, which I currently don't have, at home. But that's not too bad, just need a router.

Out of tragedy, transformation

'Dreaded area' transformed in 9/11 victim's memory: Once-notorious Manila slum is now an orderly village named after Marie Rose Abad

A street sign in Manila shows an American businesswoman and Sept. 11 victim smiling down on a community whose transformation would have warmed her heart: Children frolicking on tidy brick alleys near brightly colored houses.

Unlike many victims of the 2001 attacks who are remembered mostly by their family and friends, Marie Rose Abad's legacy lives on half-way around the world in a once-notorious Manila slum now turned into an orderly village that carries her name.

Her Philippine-born American husband had the community of about 50 one-story houses built in her memory in 2004 as a tribute to their 26 years of marriage and her unfulfilled desire to help the poor in the Philippines.

Lost after watching the tower in which his wife, who had been on the phone several times with him over the course of the emergency, collapsed, Rudy Abad turned to philanthropy to honour her memory in his native land, half a world away from where she died, making a difference in the lives of others.

Want to do a good deed?

Please consider helping out a little girl from Australia who desperately needs to come to the US for medical testing. Her name is Charlotte Reid, and she has Trichothiodystrophy. You can join or visit the Facebook group 'Charlotte Reid's Medical Web Appeal'--https://www.facebook.com/groups/240917565943397/ for more information on how you can help. For more about Trichothiodystrophy, check out the Genetics Home Reference page on the condition. It is extremely rare, with something like 100 known cases worldwide. Some of the leading experts on the disease are here in the United States, but Charlotte lives in Australia. For those of you not on Facebook, there is a charity organisation in Australia that deals with TTD, as it is also known, called Friends of Sammy-Joe. Donations tagged with Charlotte's name will go directly for her trip. Thank you.

Took a quiz for the first time in awhile

It was a 'Which Doctor's Companion Are You Quiz' (but not updated past Rose and Captain Jack). The ideal companion would probably be Sarah Jane Smith, but I came out as:

Your result for The Doctor Who Companion Test ... Romana I You are Romana I. Smart and feisty, you can take care of yourself in most dangerous situations, and perhaps provide some wit to boot. Yet you are not one to dote on the Doctor or hang on his every word, since you're smart enough to know that at least some of his words are wrong. You're also not fond of doing The Doctor's dirty work for him. Given time and patience, The Doctor may eventually grow to enjoy your company. In the meantime, however, he'll probably just be annoyed that you continually contradict him and refuse to do things his way.

I rather liked Romana. It didn't hurt that she was actually from Gallifrey and was also a Time Lord (Lady). And she was companion to the Fourth Doctor, who was the Doctor when I was growing up. :) Hmmm: 'The Doctor may eventually grow to enjoy your company. In the meantime, however, he'll probably just be annoyed that you continually contradict him and refuse to do things his way.' That sounds so familiar, somehow.....

Well, there's one inside joke shot to hell

Think You're An Auditory Or Visual Learner? Scientists Say It's Unlikely

We've all heard the theory that some students are visual learners, while others are auditory learners. And still other kids learn best when lessons involve movement.

But should teachers target instruction based on perceptions of students' strengths? Several psychologists say education could use some "evidence-based" teaching techniques, not unlike the way doctors try to use "evidence-based medicine."

Psychologist Dan Willingham at the University of Virginia, who studies how our brains learn, says teachers should not tailor instruction to different kinds of learners. He says we're on more equal footing than we may think when it comes to how our brains learn. And it's a mistake to assume students will respond and remember information better depending on how it's presented.

Thanks to PF Anderson, who retweeted a link from Ray Schroeder.

Interesting photo essay

Where Children Sleep

Recently, the charitable organization Save the Children asked documentary photographer James Mollison to come up with an idea to get people thinking about the rights of children around the world. What he came up with was an unusual, but powerful project: a photo essay of more than 200 children and their bedrooms, called "Where Children Sleep."

"I found myself thinking about my bedroom: how significant it was during my childhood, and how it reflected what I had and who I was," Mollison, who was born in Kenya, writes. "It occurred to me that a way to address some of the complex situations and social issues affecting children would be to look at the bedrooms of children in all kinds of different circumstances." The book has sold out since its initial printing last year, and Mollison says his publisher intends to reprint it later this year.

The link above shows a small sampling, including one girl from Harlan County, Kentucky. But to see more, go to the author's site. There are actually two from Kentucky. The second one, a boy's room, frightens me more than any other child's room in the essay, mainly due to the decorative use of guns and camouflage, although the room of the little girl from Japan whose mother spends $1000 on her wardrobe comes a close second.

Thanks to Sarah Glenn for the link.

:) Don't know the veracity, but it's a nice story

Man Carves Wife a 6,000 Stair Path in Mountain

A weird love story has come out of China recently and managed to touch the world. It is a story of a man and an older woman who ran off to live and love each other in peace for over half century.

Over 50 years ago, Liu, was a 19 years-old boy, fell in love with a 29 year-old widowed mother named Xu. At the time, it was unacceptable and immoral for a young man to love an older woman.

To avoid the market gossips, the couple decided to elope and lived in a cave in Jiangjin County in Southern ChongQing area.

Snopes lists its status as true or false as 'undetermined'--as of 2008. It's sweet, regardless of whether it is fiction or not, although I must admit, I'd like to know which it is. :)

I was reading Thoreau last night

I haven't gotten very far in Walden, just as far as him finishing the building of his house. But among the various passages that struck me was this:

I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground.

That passage says volumes about our need for useless things around us while our minds lie empty and dusty. I suspect it was these words and similar ones that caused a friend to give me the book. I tend to surround myself with things (not expensive things, but things most people would not find sentimentality in, that I invest emotion into and hoard), but I have a largely untrained mind. Oh, I went to college, had a classical education in the humanities, etc. But so much of my day is spent reacting to the things around me rather than in quiet contemplation. Like my house, my mind is organised in piles and shelves that lean, and compared to my friend, is most likely quite dim. I'm probably more self-aware than most, and maybe even think a little more than most, but I realise I could be more. And my memory, alas, my memory. It's like everything I knew--those useless facts, those overarching paradigms, are running like sand through an hourglass away from my thoughts. Maybe that's age, or the blood sugar's effect on my brain, etc. I don't know. I seem to be able to remember numbers best, but have no reason to.

Years ago I fell into a trap whereby I compared myself to someone who is extremely intelligent, beyond the chart, has an excellent memory, as well as a trained mind. I feel quite stupid in comparison, and that, coupled with the attempt to disabuse me of my need to feel special by latching onto the genius label I was given as a child, meant that after awhile I started feeling like I was, well, dumb.

Socrates said (or at least Plato told us so) that he was wise, as the Oracle of Delphi had pronounced, only because he recognised his own ignorance. He also said, 'The unexamined life is not worth living.' It is a mantra that has been repeated to me so often over the years by my mentor, who is also the one who gave me Walden and Other Writings by Henry David Thoreau.

It may have taken years for things to really settle in, years of examining my life and the world around me with training wheels and a steadying hand, but it's high time I started really thinking and analysing on my own. I've been very fortunate to have two very special educations, and it's time I started really exercising both mind and body. Now that I'm older, I'm a little wiser and more mature, and can appreciate all this better than when I was younger. So much of my time when I was younger was spent surmounting my baggage and my irrationality, my mental issues and psychology. Now I can concentrate on how I think about and interact with the world. And I need to do some housecleaning in my head first, dusting off and pitching a few things. :)

Using DNA to answer questions regarding historical archaeology

Hunting for a Mass Killer in Medieval Graveyards

The agent of the Black Death is assumed to be Yersinia pestis, the microbe that causes bubonic plague today. But the epidemiology was strikingly different from that of modern outbreaks. Modern plague is carried by fleas and spreads no faster than the rats that carry them can travel. The Black Death seems to have spread directly from one person to another.

Victims sometimes emitted a deathly stench, which is not true of plague victims today. And the Black Death felled at least 30 percent of those it inflicted, whereas a modern plague in India that struck Bombay in 1904, before the advent of antibiotics, killed only 3 percent of its victims.

These differences, as well as the fear that the Black Death might re-emerge, have prompted several attempts to retrieve DNA from Black Death cemeteries. The latest of these attempts is reported Tuesday in of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by a team led by Hendrik N. Poinar of McMaster University in Ontario and Johannes Krause of the University of Tübingen in Germany.

The scientists are looking for what aspects of the mediaeval strain of Yersinia pestis, confirmed to be the culprit, made it so deadly. Of course, in the first waves, there the lack of exposure, the lack of immunity. Plague has been implicated on the European continent in Roman times, but not later, until the 14th century outbreak, to my knowledge. Other news reports on this story ran headlines like, 'Bug that caused the Black Death extinct!', which is technically true--it is believed that that particular strain is, but of course Yersinia pestis and plague do persist, including in the American West, and by studying how the bacterium might have changed over history, then we might get a better understanding of how it, along with other bacteria, could evolve into more virulent strains. I'm interested in what further research will find.