text:
Chief Customer Officer of Catalytic - an AI and Automation company providing Fortune 500 companies with the ability to rapidly reduce the cost of every day business activities while simultaneously increasing quality, employee satisfaction, and customer loyalty.
Monday, December 18, 2006
Pumpkin Launching: Time's Person of the Year
Yes, that is a trebuchet - we built it the weekend before the party. It is designed to have as much as a 1000 lb counterweight, able to hurl small pumpkins 700 feet! We never achieved the optimal configuration (couldn't get enough weight) but still were hurling pumpkins between 500 and 600 feet...
Saturday, November 04, 2006
Monday, October 23, 2006
Google Enters Another Market (Custom Search)
Matthew Ingram carries the photo of a shark on his post about this development. Ingram points out that when Google entered the calendar market, competitor Kiko gave up and sold themselves. He asks whether or not this was the right decision -- pointing to Paul Graham's post at the time "Google Does Not Render Resistance Futile."
I find myself agreeing with Paul and Rex Hammock puts his finger on it when he writes:
There's a social networking aspect of Rollyo that probably won't be a part of the Google product, however the Google product will likely offer publishers, including bloggers, an instant way to monetize narrow search in the Adsense program they're already participating in.For all of the things that Google has done right in technology, they have done very little well in the category of social. It isn't too late for them to learn but if history is any guide, they will miss the importance of the social network in search as well.
And frankly having a strong competitor forces you to do the two things which you most need to do in any case when you are a small business -- innovate constantly and be 500% better than your larger competition. Then Google can educate the market about why the market needs your product and then you can deliver on the market's expectations. That is what YouTube did.
Friday, October 13, 2006
Please help with your critique
Click on this link to the Personal Bee home page:
Then email or comment on this message with your thoughts about what we are doing right and wrong. Tell me, from looking at the home page, what business you think we are in. Tell me how you would use this and how you would get others to use it...
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Diebold Delivers Georgia for Republicans
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Thailand Coup Special Report
Thailand Special Report
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Shake Rattle And Roll!
You Can Be A Media Mogul
The idea is simple. Anyone one the world can create their own news site. You choose the topic. You choose the content sources. You brand your site. You decide which stories are important and which to remove... You are the master of your topic domain and can build a base of subscribers into a media empire.
Enjoy the Bee. Send your comments and suggestions!
Ted Shelton, CEO
The Personal Bee, Inc.
tshelton @ personalbee.com
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Bush Administration Immune from Whistleblowers...
On Labor Day, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) issued a press release whose title summarizes its contents all too neatly: Bush Declares Eco-Whistleblower Law Void for EPA Employees. Here's some of it:
Washington, DC - The Bush administration has declared itself immune from whistleblower protections for federal workers under the Clean Water Act, according to legal documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). As a result of an opinion issued by a unit within the Office of the Attorney General, federal workers will have little protection from official retaliation for reporting water pollution enforcement breakdowns, manipulations of science or cleanup failures.
The rest of the post on the terrific blog Effect Measure
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Got Voice?
The idea is simple (too simple, you'd think). How can I have access to my home and cell voice mail from the web and through email? If we had telephone companies that knew how to build services that customers wanted, this wouldn't even be a question. But there is NO innovation going on at the phone company (fill in your favorite one, or AT&T if you are reading this after they have bought everyone else). Thus companies like GotVoice can come along and fill in the niche.
Here's how it works -- You sign up for an account with GotVoice (basic service is free, but added features are available at $4.95 and $9.95 a month) and give them your phone company, phone number, and voicemail "PIN" -- they will then place a call on a regular basis to your voice mail box, record your messages, and send you an email letting you know you have a message (or email you the message as an MP3 with a premium plan).
But this is absurd! Why can't the phone company simply email me the message? Why do I need a third party to glue voice mail and email together? Perhaps someone in the finance department of AT&T found a study conducted in the early 1990s which said that none of their customers wanted voice mails in their email... or maybe they have a trial of voicemail to email right now but they are only rolling it out in 3 small test markets over the next two years... or maybe they don't actually care at all about their customers and never think about introducing new products that we actually want!
In the meantime, Got Voice?
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Future of Warfare
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
How Republicans Plan to Steal 2006
Opinion polls show that a majority of the public wants a Democratic Congress, but whether potential voters -- black and Latino voters in particular -- will be able to make their voices heard on Election Day is not assured. Across the country, they will have to contend with Republican-sponsored schemes to limit voting. In a series of laws passed since the 2004 elections, Republican legislators and officials have come up with measures to suppress the turnout of traditional Democratic voting blocs. This fall the favored GOP techniques are new photo I.D. laws, the criminalizing of voter registration drives, and database purges that have disqualified up to 40 percent of newly registered voters from voting in such jurisdictions as Los Angeles County.Here are the six states that Salon calls on the carpet: Arizona, California, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, and Ohio. What are people doing about it?
DNC Announces Expanded National Voter Protection Effort
Brennan Center Election Reform Resources
Common Cause Election Reform Agenda
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Shameful Behavior (Your Tax Dollars At Work)
The local incident featured in the report was an April 2005 demonstration at UC Berkeley, sponsored by Berkeley Stop the War Coalition, aimed at military recruitment on campus.The full ACLU report can be found here: http://aclunc.org/surveillance_report/
The incident was described in an April 21, 2005, Department of Defense Threat and Local Observation Notice (TALON) report released to the ACLU by the Department of Defense following a freedom of information request and subsequent lawsuit.
The information released describes the demonstration—the "incident type"—as "specific threats," and describes the subject as "direct action planned against recruiters at University of California at Berkeley."
The source, whose name has been redacted from the released report, is described as "a special agent of the Federal Protective Service, U.S. Department of Homeland Security."
I hope you will join me in supporting Jerry Brown as the next Attorney General for the state of California. Given the folks that currently control our national government, a strong liberal California AG may turn out to be suprisingly important for the future of Democracy in this country.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Participatory Consumption
Thursday, July 06, 2006
The Evidence for Global Warming
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
SD Forum Visionary Awards
98 degrees in Heidi Roizen's backyard but no one is complaining (we had
to wear sweaters last year). And the winners of this year's awards:
Vinton G. Cerf
Louis V. Gerstner
John L. Hennessy
Terry Semel
Quite a line-up this evening. Should be a lot of fun...
Monday, June 19, 2006
My Father's World, My World
In 1938, the year my father was born, Hitler marched into Austria and declared that it was now part of the German Reich. Great Britian and France ceded Czechoslovakia to the Germans in a short-sighted attempt to avoid war. And on November 9th, in an event to be remembered as Kristallnacht, Nazis burned synagogues, destroyed Jewish shops, and killed Jews at random. 1938 was a dark year for the world.
The earliest years of my father's childhood were spent in an America fighting world war against governments unafraid of using their power to evil ends. In 1939 Hitler invaded both Czechoslavakia and Poland and entered into the axis agreement with Italy's Mussolini. In 1940 Paris falls and France surrenders to the Nazis. And in 1941, when my father was the age my daughter is today, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, bringing the United States into the war.
My father was almost the age my step daughter is now when, in 1945, Germany officially surrendered and the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshimi and Nagasaki, accelerating Japan's surrender. At the age of 7, my father had lived his entire life in a world at war. Of course the coming years were dark as well, with the constant cloud of conflict with Stalin's Soviet Union hanging over the head's of his generation as they came into adulthood.
By 1966 when I was born, the pattern of proxy wars between the West and the Soviet Union had been established with a war in Korea mostly behind the US (well... it still isn't entirely behind us) but with war in Vietnam escalating. Despite continued hostility between the world powers, a half century of American dominance in business and technical innovation was well underway by then, making my childhood much different from my father's. Where America had been a relatively weak player in an enormously fragmented and dangerous world, my father came of age in a world where America became a world power.
After first getting a law degree from Boalt Hall at UC Berkeley, my father entered the business world with an inheritence wrested away from his wealthy uncles and grandmother. His father had passed away while he was still a child and he had grown increasingly concerned that his grandmother and uncles would spend all of the money before he received any of it... so he spent it himself instead.
He created a company called Shopper's Plan - one of the first credit card companies in the country. Before we had Visa and Mastercard, stores had "charge plates" that were specific to a particular store or sometimes (rarely) a chain of stores. The 1960s idea of the credit card was a store-independent charge plate. Shopper's Plan could offer this innovation because of the power of this new-fangled invention, the computer.
It was an audacious business idea and it would have required incredible execution to succeed with the (relatively) limited financial resources my father had at his disposal - just a few million dollars (although that was 1960s dollars...). Unfortunately my father was not a terrific business person and the business was soon on the rocks. Complicating things my father got his secretary (my mother) pregnant.
He was already married, with two daughters. Yet he left his wife and began over again with my mother. Within four years he had left my mother and moved on to a string of girlfriends before settling down with his last partner, whom he stayed with until his death (almost 30 years).
to be continued...
Friday, June 16, 2006
World as Symbolic System
Monday, June 12, 2006
My Father with My Daughter April 2005
Charles Edward Shelton, RIP
He has been dying for 10 years of cancer - prostate cancer that was diagnosed too late to cure. The cancer spread throughout his body and fortunately for him, medical advances allowed him to live a good life over those 10 years. Only in the last 6 months or so had the disease progressed to far that his quality of life was diminished to the point where living was an enormous burden for him.
So it is with sadness, but also long expectation and relief that the living go on without him. He is survived by his long-time partner, his three daughters and me.
Memory Machine
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Jerry brown on election night
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Jerry is in the building...
Currently giving interviews but is modestkly repeating that while he
currently has 66% of the vote, only 2% has been counted so far....
The venue
In the shadow of the 880 freeway, 555 5th avenue is home to the Oakland
Police Officers Association. Police organizations throughout the state
have come out in favor of Brown for attorney general...
Yes, we are killing time while awaiting Jerry Brown's arrival...
News crews awaiting Jerry Brown
National and state news organizations gather to hear Jerry Brown accept
the nomination from the CA Democratic party to run in his first
statewide election since stepping down as governor...
Jerry Brown Election Night Campaign HQ
Blogging live from 555 5th avenue in Oakland where Jerry Brown will be
accepting the democratic nomination to Attorney General for
Congrats to ORB
"AMD LIVE! On Demand, powered by Orb extends your entertainment experience to anywhere you are, at home or on the go! Access and control your live or prerecorded TV, music, pictures, videos and more from virtually any web-connected device."
Another huge win is the distribution deal with Hauppauge which has over 8 million tuner cards in the market...
And my friends tell me that more announcements are coming! Congrats guys!
Thursday, June 01, 2006
The Stolen 2004 Election
"Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House."
The editors of Rolling Stone:
"Enough. Only a complete investigation by federal authorities can determine the full extent of any bribery and vote rigging that has taken place. The public must be assured that the power to count the votes -- and to recount them, if necessary -- will not be ceded to for-profit corporations with a vested interest in superseding the will of the people. America's elections are the most fundamental element of our democracy -- not a market to be privatized by companies like Diebold."
Let's hope this gets the ball rolling with the electorate (since the politicians have been too afraid of the issue) to find out what really is happening to our democracy. Before it is too late.
URL: http://www.personalbee.com/bee_article.php?grpno=1211&artno=2591867
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Transportation Metaphor for Media
Summary: From the perspective of mobility, the automobile is the mass-customization post-industrial technology. Railroads are industrial transportation -- they follow specific fixed paths and travel on time s...
URL: http://www.personalbee.com/bee_article.php?grpno=1211&artno=2526386
Monday, May 29, 2006
Google Building AI
"When our machines overtook us, too complex and efficient for us to control, they did it so fast and so smoothly and so usefully, only a fool or a prophet would have dared complain."
The development of strong artificial intelligence by anyone - country or company - will be a worldchanging event. It seems that Google really is hard at work on this task. Assuming that such an effort succeeds in developing a system which works for the betterment of its creators, one can appreciate why Google doesn't worry much about competition from Microsoft or Yahoo. Google is playing an entirely different game.
Where everyone else in the tech industry is pursuing linear technical development strategies, Google is pursuing a corner-cutting strategy of building a better tool -- a tool that (if successful) will change the entire basis for competition. How can any group of engineers at Microsoft hope to compete against the development resources of a world-wide artificial intelligence?
Time to buy Google stock?
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Watch Newsom Run
Newsom was articulate, knowledgable, and (for me) struck the right balance between progressive social consciousness and grounded pro-business realism. It was hard not to be impressed. In fact, the question I most wanted to ask Gavin (but respectfully did not) was "are you going to make a stop at the state house or head straight to Washington?"
When Senator Feinstein is ready to step aside, I hope our state gives Gavin a chance to represent our views, and a progressive option for our nation. I know I will be campaigning for him.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Peak Oil will change our lives
Dozens of leading petroleum geologists as well others in the oil industry and in government have agreed that we are nearing the twilight of cheap oil. Chevron has launched a campaign to inform the public that oil is depleting. The U.S. Army is planning for permanent oil shortages. Even the U.S. Department of Energy put out a 91-page report on the subject in February 2005.Read the whole article. And also check out the "Peak Oil Primer" that the folks at the Energy Bulletin have put together.
"As (oil) peaking is approached," the report said, "liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social and political costs will be unprecedented. Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking."
Thursday, May 04, 2006
A Modest Proposal - Gasoline Taxes
But lets take a quick look at the numbers. We are spending $10 billion per month fighting George's war in Iraq. According to the US Government Energy Information Administration we consume roughly 20 million barrels per day. A barrel is about 42 gallons of gas. So that 840 million gallons of gas per day. Or 25 billion gallons per month. So a $0.50 per gallon fuel tax would pay for the Iraq war and have money left over to rebuild New Orleans.
Friday, April 21, 2006
Question for Runners
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Personal Bee Beta Launched
The biggest thing missing from this release, which I hope to rectify by the first week of May, is the ability to create new Bee editions -- this is still in a private beta. There are two primary reasons for this -- (1) the wizards we have under development which will make it easy to create a new Bee aren't ready yet and (2) we want to get a new phrase parser into production to handle significant increases in the number of bees that we will be handling...
So what IS in this release?
A beautiful new look and feel, access to 40+ public Bees, the ability to discover articles within those topic areas that are interesting and then tag, comment, and email those articles. Also, the ability to export a "reading list" to another website or blog...
Discover, Share, Build -- these are the three legs of our stool. We have more work to do to lengthen those legs and make this a platform for all kinds of news aggregation and distribution, but we have the core of the idea in place. Enjoy.
Monday, March 20, 2006
Save the Mercury News?
As anyone who knows me will tell you, I am a strong supporter of a free and independent media. I am in the camp that believes that democracy is only possible when the society supports and protects a free flow of information and ideas. I am strongly influenced by thinkers such as Richard Rorty ("Take care of freedom and truth will take care of itself").
But I am troubled by the notion that the Mercury News needs to be "saved." What exactly does this mean? A review of the "save the merc" website does not clarify the situation. On this site I read:
"We are apprehensive that a buyer who does not understand our community and value the journalism that we provide will adopt what one Wall Street analyst termed a "scorched earth" policy. Under this scenario, substantial cost-cutting and smaller staffs would follow a sale. The impact on our community of readers and advertisers would be severe."If the impact on the "community of readers and advertisers" was severe, then this business strategy of destroying the value inherent in the community coverage would be counter-productive to the goal of running a profitable business. Why would a buyer destroy the asset that he or she purchased?
In the "State of the Media 2006" - a report out from The Project for Excellence in Journalism (stateofthemedia.org) we learn that newspapers are reducing local coverage all over the country. Philadelphia, offered as emblematic, has half as many reporters (24) covering the local community than they had in 1980 (46). Some of this attrition might be attributed to increasing productivity, but clearly some of it is due to a reduced editorial budget which comes as a direct result of dropping readership and advertising.
So it is not unreasonable for the Mercury News staff to worry that their paper may get leaner in the years to come. Especially if the current trends continue and readership of print continues to decline. And especially if the print mode is the primary focus of their enterprise.
But as Silicon Beat itself has shown, there is a vibrant community of interest online for the kinds of local coverage (tech industry in this case) that journalists at what we have come to call big city newspapers can offer. So perhaps the real challenge for "saving" the San Jose Mercury News and other daily papers is to learn how the new online media can prove to be a generator of readership and advertising as the old media of print declines into our memories.
Change is hard. People have a lot of trouble with change. But somehow we live in a world of flush toilets, jet airplanes, and the Internet anyway.
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Stanley - DARPA Grand Challenge
technorati tags: MediaX, DARPAGrandChallenge
Harvesting Implicit Knowledge
Bernardo Huberman, Consulting Professor, Applied Physics is speaking here at MediaX on "Harvesting Implicit Knowledge" -- he proposes that a key differentiator of great organizations is their ability to extract, aggregate analyze and properly act on information quickly.
Today we need to discover communities of interest. We can do this by looking at the electronic communications that we use - tools like email and even powerpoint. People that communicate often tend to establish links that persist. Thus using the connections implicit in email communications it is possible to surface the connections between individuals in a company, uncovering implicit organizational structures.
One of the reasons we are talking about this at MediaX is that this effort is an example of how there can be cross-fertilization from adjacent fields. The way in which this group is developing the notion of implicit communities is by applying a concept from mathematics -- "betweenness centrality" -- in which a graph has community structure if it consists of groups of nodes with many more links within each group than between different groups.
technorati tags: MediaX
Hooray I am a Gen-Xer
MediaX Conference At Stanford
Enormous congratulations to Ellen Levy, Director of Industry Research and Collaboration for MediaX at Stanford University. I am sitting in the audience now, listening to the opening comments from John Hennessey, President of the University. The fact that John is here, giving these opening remarks, is in itself an enormous endorsement for the incredible work that Ellen and her organization are doing to connect industry with research. And the program over the next day and a half speaks to the enormous breadth of the collaboration that is being nurtured by this organization.
John notes that "..increasingly Universities will be the place that basic research and core technologies are developed." He is laying out an ambition program for evolving the educational initiatives as well as the research agendas that Stanford is undertaking. Examples that John offers for questions a University is uniquely suited to asking:
"How would you design the Internet today, if you could start with a clean state."
"What are the implications when people live not 10 years past their retirement age, but 20, 30, even 40?"
He closes with a quotation: "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used to create those problems" - Albert Einstein
technorati tags: MediaX, Stanford, EllenLevy, JohnHennessy
Monday, March 13, 2006
Oakland Fuel Cell Busses
Integrating the UTC Power fuel cell with a hybrid-electric drive system has enabled us to achieve twice the fuel efficiency of diesel.For the planet's sake, lets hope this trial is successful and brings more fuel cells to market quickly.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Yellow Machine Rocks
I rarely endorse products, but once in awhile I am blown away by how great a company, service, or product is -- so I want to tell everyone I know. Such is the case with Anthology Solutions which makes a terrific networked storage solution called Yellow Machine. I bought one for my home network, but they are focused on the small business market right now. For less than $2 per gigabyte I got a 680 gigabyte networked home storage solution that worked right out of the box with minimal setup (and nothing very technical). I bought their 1 terabyte version which, running RAID 5, comes out to the 680 gb of usable space. Now everyone in the family can safely back up files. More importantly, we are now running iTunes (which drives our stereo 90% of the time) from any computer in the house, accessing a shared iTunes music directory on the Yellow Machine.
A few other notable features -- the Yellow Machine ships with a VPN router with double firewall and an 8-port LAN switch and WAN gateway. So not only is this a RAID 5 storage solution, but it is also your network hub and firewall to the outside world. All for $1,299!
The company has 1.6 and 2 terabyte models planned as well.
The coolest thing? 1 terabyte tucked under my arm when I left work on Friday to go home and set it up. Geesh, I remember when the first commercial 1 terabyte data storage facility was turned on (to much fanfare)... oh well, I guess I am getting old!
Saturday, February 25, 2006
Mighty Tots
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Transparency in Engineering
Talking to Larry Lessig at Mashup Camp
Monday, February 20, 2006
Larry Lessig at Mashup Camp
A long time ago (and I'll go and dig up the blog post link later) I had an extended debate with Larry Lessig about software copyright. It was great to hear him speak today at Mashup Camp and to hear how his thinking has evolved. Or maybe I just misunderstood him... The core of the debate was about whether when someone asserts a copyright claim over software, whether there should be a published human readable form of that software provided to the marketplace. I pointed out that if software companies were compelled to do so, it would gut the value that copyright might offer in the first place.
Today, Lessig offered a similar point, but with the clarity that such human readable form could be provided in a "time-encrypted" format, such that it could only be readable at the point that the copyright had expired. Now that idea makes sense.
technorati tags: mashupcamp
"Type O" - Mashup
technorati tags: mashupcamp
Bee About Mashup Camp
technorati tags: mashupcamp
More on the idea of Mashup Camp
technorati tags: mashupcamp
Mashup Camp
At best we might say that it is "self-organizing" which might work... In the great Heideggerian tradition (thesis, antithesis, synthesis) I think the style is more of a reaction to standard conference style. So maybe this is an anti-conference rather than an unconference... But this is another way to say that I think we are on our way to another kind of conference but that we aren't there yet.
Right now there are a line of "technology providers" introducing themselves... at 30 seconds each none of this information is going to stick. So I guess this part of the morning is to give us a chance to wake up... Next up we are supposed to propose conference sessions and build our own conference organically -- hey, I'm game... just skeptical ;-)
technorati tags: mashupcamp
Saturday, February 18, 2006
This can't be good news department
You have to get a little bit worried with information like this --
twice as much ice is going into the sea as it was five years ago.
And anyone who went to this party is now a believer (if they weren't already) -- the Internet craze is officially back on...
Actuarial Tables ARE Interesting
Most people when they hear the words "actuarial tables" think of statistical analysis and insurance and other boring subjects... But after reading a recent article about US biologist Shripad Tuljapurkar of Stanford University and his presentation at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in St. Louis, I began to wonder if the way we create actuarial tables is all wrong. And if so, there will be enormous implications far beyond the insurance industry since we base many of our business decisions, political decisions, and personal life decisions on how long we think we will live.
According to the US Government, if you are born today you are likely to live to be about 74 years old as a male or about 80 as a female. Here is the statistical table from the social security website. What this means is that the average age at death for all people born today is 74 (I'll use the male statistics throughout this, but you can go look up the female statistics on the table if you are interested). This means that every infant that dies brings down the "average" life expectancy. Thus, as you would expect, as you grow older your "life expectancy" increases. At 20 years of age, the average life expectancy has increased to over 75 years. That is, of all the people still alive at 20, they will on average live another 55 years.
This method of calculating life expectancy assumes that relative lifespans are constant. Or, to quote the SSA website,
"The period life expectancy at a given age for 2001 represents the average number of years of life remaining if a group of persons at that age were to experience the mortality rates for 2001 over the course of their remaining life."
But this last point is precisely the one that Dr. Tuljapurkar brings into question in his report. He claims that at the current pace of medical advancement that we are adding one year of life expectancy each five years of medical research. Thus the life expectancy for someone born today should be 20 years longer than the "...mortality rates for 2001..." -- and this is just the average...
In his report he suggests that by 2050, we should be thinking that a retirement age of 85 is normal. Based on 2001 mortality rates, only the top quartile will live to be more than 85 years old. Even assuming that over the 50 years, we have added an average of 10 years of life (or, made 85 year olds as healthy as 75 year olds are today) only about half of all citizens live to be over 75 today. So these raises an interesting question about "retirement" age -- how should we think about these "golden years?" Who gets to participate? Only 50% of the population?
One of the interesting aspects of the actuarial table is looking for the "knee" in the graph. If you think about the primary causes of death you can group them largely into 3 categories -- accidents, self-inflicted, and disease. Most of the medical research that Dr. Tuljapurkar is talking about addresses disease, and in particular disease afflicting us in our old age. Thus even if the ultimate age at which we leave does not grow substantially, the "knee" in the curve could move dramatically.
91% of all US males make it past their 50th birthday. 85% are still alive at 60. At 65, when our parents think they should retire, 78% of american males are still alive. The die-off acclerates into the next few decades. 10 years later, at 75, only 58% are still alive, a 20% loss in 10 years. By comparison, between 50 and 60 only 6% die.
It seems reasonable to assume that a lot of these people are dying from preventable diseases. Even that changes in social behavior (the reduction of smoking, for example) already is going to have a big impact on this "knee" in the graph. Thus it may be reasonable to think that, rather than assuming an 85 year old in 2050 will be as healthy as a 75 year old is today, that as many as 78% of all Americans in that cohort are still alive at 85. This is a lot different than thinking that they are as healthy as 65 year olds. In fact, we may be a nation of hospital bound, breathing tube linked, living dead in 2050. The fact that medicine can keep us alive does not address the question of our quality of life at that age.
There is one male in the US out of every 100,000 born in 1906 that is alive today. The real question for the medical profession is not whether 100 years old will become, for our children, the average life expectancy. But rather, whether or not we will be living happy and healthy lives into our second centuries.
Friday, February 10, 2006
Evolutionary Morality
I thought about this and came up with an example to help her understand -- I said, sometimes when everyone around us is doing something, we think it is the right thing to do. In fact, we don't know any better. Huck is actually very brave and very thoughtful to be questioning slavery. After all, everyone around him assume that slavery is the normal course of events -- even Jim! (and here comes the example) Its like today where we all drive around in cars without worrying about whether it is right or wrong. Your children might say to you, your parents really drove around in gasoline burning private vehicles!? Didn't they know it was wrong? But what choice do we have? Look around you and everyone does it and thinks it is normal...
To which she replied, "well THAT I know is wrong. We should ride our bicycles to school..."
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Taking Flight
Even so, I think if you take the time to look around you'll find that we have done some very interesting things. Part of our focus is on how people can use the Bee to discover news, and then share that news with colleagues and friends. So we have built something that we call a "Personal Bee Reading List." As you read articles and see ones that you'd like to recommend you can tag the article, write a comment, and click a radio button and we'll export the article to your blog or website using a short piece of javascript. We call this a widget and there are a couple of them, detailed here:
In this first version you can create a Bee account and subscribe to a small collection of public bees (created and managed by a volunteer group of beekeepers). The next step will be to add the ability for you as a reader to have your own RSS feeds included... over time we'll keep building on this structure and will eventually allow anyone to create a private or public bee edition. And you'll be able to construct your own personal newspaper...
So remember, when you go and take a look, this is NOT a beta... we are far from being ready for a beta! This is an experimental aircraft that we offer to those of you with a sense of adventure, interested in seeing some new ideas and sharing your thoughts with us.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Take Care of Freedom And Truth Will Take Care of Itself
To illustrate his point, Rorty pointed to the past 200 years of western civilization as being a period of enormous moral progress. The freedom of speech that the US constitution and the French Revolution promoted provided for a series of events unparalleled in human history -- the elimination of slavery, universal male suffrage followed by female suffrage, anti-rascist organizations, pro-equality movements, anti-homophobic movements...
It was interesting to hear Rorty refer to this as a series of objective moral triumphs. While it is a position I feel comfortable agreeing with, it is one that would not resonate with religious fundamentalists - here or abroad.
The day before, I was listening to an NPR report on the Hamas victory in Palestinian elections. A senior Hamas politician was being interviewed and was asked about the need for economic connections to the west. The politician spoke of his ambitions to restore tourism to the Gaza strip but said it would not be the "debased tourism of the west." He spoke of a trip to the US in the early 1990s in which he saw "men and women together on the beaches, which is simply not allowed." And he described what he had witnessed as "the behavior of animals."
It was interesting to hear in this man's words and in his tone of voice the clear sense of cultural superiority that he feels his fundamentalist Muslim views provides him over what he seems to feel is a debased and morally bankrupt West. Of course he is not a product of a free and open society, nor are the conditions of Gaza and the West Bank ones which would foster a helpful and pluralistic attutude toward one's fellow man (toward, for example, the Israeli's).
But this makes it even more confusing when we look at our own brand of religious fundamentalists here in the United States. Presumably the evangelical Christians have grown up in the same environment that I have -- one which has provided for free speech and freedom of the press. And one in which their choices for how and where to live have not brought persection. And yet in many ways, these individuals express the same tone of cultural superiority that Hamas expresses. And the same desire to reform secular society to match their non-secular beliefs.
Rorty was asked in the interview about the rise of fundamentalists in the US and gave an honest answer -- "It is something I don't understand." He said, "sociologists will tell you that the evolution of urbanized human societies in the west ought to proceed in a fairly parallel manner." But in Europe there is no such religious revival, so why do we have it here in America? Rorty continued, "in Europe, since the enlightenment, there has been broad agreement that religious tolerance is a critical part of being able to live together in our urban environment. And a general dispostion to keep religious matters and civil affairs entirely separate."
But here in the US some now openly refer to our country as a "Christian Nation" which immediately suggests a prejudice against other religions. Rorty points out that 30 years ago, this wouldn't have been possible.
In thinking about this, I wonder if an answer can be found in the unintended consequences of the race wars and forced desegregation that our nation's urban centers experienced in the 1960s. The re-segregation of America through white suburbs, ringing the old urban centers, un-did generations of urban evolution. The fact that we have so much open space in our country and our love of the automobile simply made this re-segregation that much easier. And what happens in these suburbs? It is much easier for a group of like minded people to close themselves off from the marketplace of ideas, and live entirely within a world of their own closed ideas and information. Living in the city, riding public transportation, eating and shopping in diverse social environments it becomes impossible to close out competing ideas and information. But in the suburbs, you can isolate yourself (and your children) from differences, and the need to be tolerant of these differences.
So perhaps Rorty and the sociologists are right -- that the evolution of urbanized societies in the west IS parallel. After all, the "blue" states are the ones that are the most urbanized. But the difference in the US is that we continue to have a large non-urbanized population and thus a population that has no need for or interest in the enlightenment and its separation of religious belief from a tolerant secular civil society.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Nick Douglas on Silicon Valley Gossip
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Kevin Kelly on the WWW
Ultimately, as the Web becomes more brain-like, it will be a near-literal extension of our own minds. "What will most surprise us is how dependent we will be on what the Machine knows - about us and about what we want to know," writes Kelly. "We already find it easier to Google something a second or third time rather than remember it ourselves. The more we teach this megacomputer, the more it will assume responsibility for our knowing. It will become our memory. Then it will become our identity. In 2015 many people, when divorced from the Machine, won't feel like themselves - as if they'd had a lobotomy."To which I reacted - gee, I already do feel like I had a lobotomy when disconnected from the web. I have already given up so many parts of my memory to the idea that "oh, I can just find it again when I need it" that when I can't get online, I feel claustrophobic, irritated, dull-witted... OK, maybe I feel those things at other times too :-) But seriously, the trends that Kelly talks about are already at work...
Here is the Sentient Develoment post
And the original Kevin Kelly article
Monday, January 23, 2006
A risk of total collapse
Both articles are worth reading...
In one respect, though, I have already left the company of the "intelligent and credible", since I don't think civilizational collapse is possible — I say it is happening now. Even as we read each other's e-mail, and drink to the New Year. That deadly duo of monsters — resource depletion and overpopulation -- are killing off vast areas of biosphere.
Friday, January 20, 2006
The Personal Bee
Many of you reading this know that I have been hard at work on a new project, The Personal Bee. While we are far from ready to open our doors for visits, I thought I'd start writing a bit about the ideas that are driving this new business. We have also created a blog specifically about all things Personal Bee-related which you can find at http://personalbee.blogs.com and I have my own work related blog over there at http://personalbee.blogs.com/ted.
So what is the Bee? It is an attempt to rethink the traditional relationship between the people and processes involved in the production and consumption of news and information.
Maybe the best starting point is a little of the history of how I got here...
The Internet has had this amazing capacity to transform the way we think about media. From my earliest interactions with the Internet (in the late 1980's at the University of Chicago) I have been thinking about how this technology is transforming communications and society.
While working for a first wave Internet startup, WhoWhere, in the mid-1990s I had my first opportunity to really participate in this tranformation. The mission of WhoWhere was to build a suite of Internet based tools to allow people to find, connect, and communicate with each other. At the time our "communicate" tool was a personal home pages portal that we acquired (Angelfire). We had a lot of ideas about how we wanted to evolve this technology but (sadly) most of these ideas were never implemented by our acquirer, Lycos.
Some years later, after I had joined the executive team at Borland, I encountered the idea of blogging. I wrote my first Blogger post on August 8, 2000. I called my first blog "My life, as bizarre as that may seem." While I have removed the blog from public access, it still exists in the limbo of the Google/Blogger database. Here is my first post:
This is a first entry in my personal "diary" - I am trying out a new web site called blogger which is supposed to give me the ability to create a running log of comments to my site. We'll see how well that works!
I remember my feeling of excitement as I started to play with the rudimentary blogging tools. I thought to myself, this is the first truly new thing I have seen on the Internet for a long time! It also seemed like an interesting continuation of the kinds of things we had been doing with personal home pages through WhoWhere. Blogging was the next logical step in creating a medium for people to get news and information out into the world without the filter of publishers.
But the strength of blogging is also its weakness in that it only addresses one part of the dynamic -- it fractalized the writing component of the news production process, but did little to update the editorial and publishing sides of the media business. In addition, the ability to comment on blog posts (and more recently, trackback) has started to change the dynamic between readers and writers, but there is still much to be done here as well.
In 2004 I was introduced to a very interesting print publication called "The Week" which summarizes the top news from around the world and, in a thoughtful and useful format, presents this summary in a weekly magazine. This model seemed to me to be applicable to narrower topic domains and as a test of this idea I created a technology blog called IP Inferno in May of 2004. Here is a link to the first month of my posts to this blog.
As an explanation of the site's mission I wrote that IP Inferno would be,
The news, what the pundits said, and selections from bloggers... A complete roundup of news and current events on VoIP, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, mobile telephony and computing, and advanced IP applications.
I originally thought that I would create this type of vertically focused news portal for a number of different topics and I went so far as to create a Typepad account and sites on gadgets and investing. But the work of collecting the news, organizing it for presentation, and commenting on it in interesting ways proved to be too burdensome (if I was also going to have a day job). While I have kept up with IP Inferno off and on over the past two years, it has more often been as a writer contributing new material to the world of VoIP then as a news summarizer a la "The Week."
Nicholas Chim, then an associate with MDV in Menlo Park, started work on what we now call "The Personal Bee" early in 2005. His goal was to create a tool for himself, to help him sort through vast quantities of information that MDV partners wanted him to track on a wide variety of technology topics. He set up an account for me in May of 2005, but I didn't do much with the Bee at that time as I was busy with my job at Orb. But when that came to an end in August of last year, I stopped by to see Nick and chat about his idea.
I immediately saw something quite a bit different in Nick's product from his original vision of a reader's tool for aggregating and sorting through news. While the Bee could serve that need as well, I saw a set of tools that would automate the hardest part of the tasks that I had encountered in creating IP Inferno and a platform that would allow anyone to painlessly publish a vertical news portal on a narrow topic of their choosing. I saw the beginning of an ecosystem between readers, editors, and writers...
This has been a lot of background on how I came to be involved with The Personal Bee. For more on what it is today, and where it is headed, go over to my blog on the Bee site...
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Kurzweil Interviews Himself
Read this fascinating "self-interview" of Ray Kurzweil author of "The Singularity is Near." From the interview, what is the Singularity?
"We'll get to a point where technical progress will be so fast that unenhanced human intelligence will be unable to follow it. That will mark the Singularity."
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Nanobot Knees
I have finished reading, but not digesting, Ray Kurzweil's book The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. The most startling part of the book for me actually comes in the exploration of metaphysical questions, not the issue of our transcending biology.
As a student at the University of Chicago I took a graduate course in Aristotle's Metaphysics, one of his least read and least understood books. I remember the course only vaguely but one of the things that stands out is the instructor's consisent counseling to us about how we needed to read this text very differently from Aristotle's other works. While couched in the same kind of what we might now call "scientific" language that Aristotle's other works are known for, the Metaphysics nonetheless has a very different subject matter. In the Metaphysics, Aristotle is trying to explore why the universe is the way we find it to be... one might even call Aristotle's work in this area a kind of religious text because it ultimately must rely on unknowable conjectures.
Similarly Kurzweil goes out on a limb of his own in speculating about where the universe has come from and where it may be headed. While thought provoking, what is strange to me is that Kurzweil would find it necessary to explore these issues in this manner, as the answers to the questions he poses are not essential to the fundamental argument he is making about the coming "singularity."
To illustrate this other point he is making, which is about how humans are evolving now into something radically different, I have invented something I call Nanobot Knees. I thought of this example while running this morning...
Runners know that their knees are one of the fragile links between their bodies capability and their chosen form of exercise. As we grow older, our knees are one of the first parts of our biological system that causes problems. Thus a wide variety of shoes have been developed to help runners improve the likelihood that they will still be running in the future, by reducing the strain on our knees. This is the first step in "transcending our biology" - the use of prosthesis to extend our bodiy's natural capability. We can also see that this is what defines us as tool makers - the ability to extend our natural abilities through tools. Swords extend the reach of our arms, cars extend our feet, phones our voice...
But at some point our knees give out anyway and we have the option of quitting the daily run (and suffering the health consequences of reduced activity). We then have the option of surgical processes which can "repair" the damage done by time and stress. This is a much newer expression of our tool making behavior -- and has snuck up on us so we don't think of it as making us different from our forefathers. Prosthesis was the first phase of humans impacting their own evolution -- this has been going on for 100,000 years (or whenever the first club was lifted from the ground) while this second phase of medical operations have really only been around (in any form) for a few thousand (from the first attempts to remedy injuries through drugs or procedures).
What Kurzweil is proposing is a third phase which accelerates us beyond prosthesis and medicine and into something entirely new. To stick with the knee example, Kurzweil is suggesting that in the next few decades we will have the technical ability to augment our knees using nanotechnology -- manufactured miniature machines - tools - which we use like medicine to correct (and enhance) our bodies. Imagine that the very molecular structure of the knee could be replaced with a material that was stronger and more durable. What runner wouldn't jump at the opportunity to eliminate the possibility of knee injuries?
What sounds entirely reasonable and acceptable when applied to a runner's knee, might sound very different when you apply this same logical progression to the brain. But this is the heart of Kurzweil's surprising prediction -- that we will be augmenting our brains (and our bodies for that matter) in the next few decades. Using nanotechnology on our bodies, people alive today, in their 40s and 50s, will have the ability to extend their lifetimes first, through biotechnology and then through nanotechnology. The key, Kurzweil points out, is to live long enough to take advantage of the technologies currently in development. Using nanotechnology to extend our brains, however, does more than just extend our lifetimes. It fundamentelly shifts what we are as human beings.
Reasonable people can differ with Kurzweil on the rate at which these technologies will be made available at all, if not just to the super-weathly. And the ability to modify our brains certainly seems further out than modifying our bodies. But just the prospect of using technology (even without nanotechnology) to extend our lives brings up an important question for those of us young enough to benefit -- what should we be doing today to remain as healthy as possible, and to amass as much wealth as possible (in case these therapies are still expensive when we need them) in order to radically extend our lifetimes? If you throw out the idea that we will die "of natural causes" at 80-100, and suddenly suggest that there are things that we can do today which will double that lifespan (or more), shouldn't we be doing these things?Kurzweil goes on to suggest that it is possible to "live long enough" that you can "live forever..." and if you go to that radical extreme and question the entire process of human ageing and death, you really have thrown yourself back into a whole set of metaphysical questions. So perhaps it isn't so strange for Kurzweil to a bit like Aristotle grasping at unknowable conjectures.
Thursday, January 05, 2006
Sad but True Department
It appears that social conservatives (who unfortunately seem to be running our country) would rather have our children get cancer than have sex... or maybe they actually think that kids who have sex should get cancer... What the heck am I talking about? The fight in Washington is over whether or not a new vaccine against the virus that is the leading cause of cervical cancer should be broadly available to our children. As father to three children, all girls I WOULD PREFER THEM TO HAVE SEX. It might be a mistake, and they might regret it later, but at least they won't DIE! It isn't enough to just vaccinate my own children, although clearly we will do this. Anyone they might make the mistake of having sex with should be vaccinated as well! We can eliminate the virus if vaccination is mandatory. Polio is a useful case study...
Excerpt from the article:
Because the vaccine protects against a sexually transmitted virus, many
conservatives oppose making it mandatory, citing fears that it could send a
subtle message condoning sexual activity before marriage. Several leading
groups that promote abstinence are meeting this week to formulate official
policies on the vaccine.
Debate rages on use of cervical cancer vaccine / While almost 100% effective, some contend use condones teen sex


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Via Fat-Pie Channel
*Thanks to Jaremy Ediger of "Behind the Beat" for showing this to me!
A return to the stop-motion here with Crooked (Orcus) Rot. This started off as an experiment to see if stop-frame would be any better using an SLR camera. The result would certainly suggest so visually, but it was a hell of a lot harder. This project really began when I discovered a treasure cave of strange items in my own back yard including mannequin heads and rubber hands. It inspired me so much that every time I returned I gathered more inspiration. Originally I focused on capturing light which is why the SLR was so important, but eventually it almost became a sequel to Hell with all the blood flying about . Composer Marcus Fjellström who donated some of his music for Men From Up The Stairs became interested in the project when I posted a few screen shots on Newgrounds and went on to compose the entire musical score. This is interesting because it's the first time that I have made a video first and then sent it to someone else to do the music.
This video is 100% stop-frame. There is no CGI, after effects or computer filters used to create any of the effects.
Remember to watch this in high quality to enjoy it more and please subscribe.
http://www.kafkagarden.com (Marcus Fjellström)

subset: commoncrawl


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Polyprint at FESPA Berlin | Make Smart DTG Choices
Polyprint will be present at FESPA 2018 for the 13th consecutive year. FESPA is the largest event for print professionals that takes place in Berlin, May 15-18 and we are looking forward to presenting you our new smart direct to garment printing products & services for small and medium sized printing businesses.
Mutoh releases Rotary Print System for ValueJet 626UF Flatbed UV LED Printer
Mutoh Europe today announced commercial availability of its rotary printing system for the ValueJet 626UF UV LED A2-size flatbed printer.
Quality meets beauty - self-adhesive transparent Squid textile elevates interior design applications at FESPA 2018
Interior designers and architects all over the world are raving about the Squid® textile window decoration offering clients a printable privacy solution. After last year's successful participation in FESPA 2017, the Belgian company returns to FESPA Global Print Expo 2018 in Berlin to expand its distributor range and feel the market for some novelty textile teasers. Squid will be in Hall 3.2 at stand C30.
OKI Europe to highlight unique specialist colour printing at FESPA 2018
OKI Europe Ltd announced that it will be placing a key focus on the benefits of Speciality Colour printing at FESPA 2018 where it will be participating as a Gold Level sponsor for the major industry event.
Sawgrass brings complete solution for sublimating outdoor products to FESPA Global Print Expo 2018
Sawgrass will be breaking industry barriers once again at FESPA's annual global print expo, as it presents a total solution to create sublimated products for outdoor applications, May 15 – 18 at Hall 4.1, Stand D75.
EMEA Premiere of Mutoh wide format flatbed printer at Fespa 2018
Mutoh Europe today announced that at Fespa Berlin (May 15-18), it will present Mutoh's first ever true wide format flatbed printer, called PerformanceJet 2508UF (PJ-2508UF).
ILFORD offers Discovery Packs for EIZO´s Quick Color Match
Ilford offers discovery packs of their finest papers for Eizo´s color management software Quick Color Match. The packs include five sheets of Ilford´s six grades of paper: Gold Fibre Silk, Gold Fibre Gloss, Smooth Cotton Rag, Textured Cotton Rag, Smooth Pearl and Smooth Gloss.


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Don't you love it when a fellow fiber enthusiast brings you yarn from faraway places? A skein of lovely chunky handspun made its way to me from Ireland this summer. When my traveling friend gave it to me, she remarked that the colors had just seemed to suggest it was for me - and then we had a good laugh, because the outfit I happened to be wearing that day encompassed every one of the fall palette of colors spun into this yarn.
Sometimes I take such gifts into my stash and meditate on them so long I forget their provenance. This one I wound into a ball and cast on immediately, and at the end of the week had mitts and a matching headband that I knew I wouldn't be able to wear for months, but which please me no end.
Yarn: handspun wool from Ireland
Pattern: Sherwood Mitts, cuff pattern used to make headband


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We have many wonderful ministries for children at FUMC. We believe in helping our little ones grow in God's love and grace. To grow as a community of faith connecting them to God, to each other, and to the world. We strive to offer ample opportunities for our children to learn the importance of God's word through small groups, enrichment programs, mission projects and more...We are committed to providing a strong foundation for them to become disciples of Jesus Christ. Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." Matthew 19:14
For more information about any of our children's programs, "LIKE" our Facebook page: FUMC Hot Springs Kidz.
Contact our Director of Children's Ministries, Michelle Wilkins, at firstname.lastname@example.com with any questions.


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This simple no-cook dessert is great served hot or cold
In 4 small dessert bowls or glasses, layer the rice pudding, apple sauce and blackberries, finishing with a few blackberries on top. Scatter with the brown sugar and leave in the fridge for 10 mins until the sugar has melted. You can also make up to 2 hrs ahead and keep covered in the fridge.


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Beautiful views……………….
Beautiful views……………….
This is another mail by Anish… The mail contains offensive language. I have filtered some.. but still viewer discretion advised 🙂
Hello, my name is Anish and I suffer from guilt for not forwarding 50
billion f@#king chain letters sent to me by people who actually
believe if you send them on, a poor six year old girl in Scotland with
a breast on her forehead will be able to raise enough money to have
it removed before her redneck parents sell her to a travelling freak
And, do you honestly believe that Bill Gates is going to give you,
and everyone to whom you send "his" email, $1000?
How stupid are we?
Ooooh, looky here! If I scroll down this page and make a wish, I'll
get laid by a model I just happen to run into the next day!
What a bunch of bullshit.
F@#k 'em!!
If you're going to forward something, at least send me something
mildly amusing.
I've seen all the "send this to 10 of your closest friends, and this
poor, wretched excuse for a human being will somehow receive a
nickel from some omniscient being" forwards about 90 times.
I don't f@#king care.
Show a little intelligence and think about what you're actually
contributing to by sending out these forwards. Chances are, it's our
own unpopularity.
The point being?
If you get some chain letter that's threatening to leave you shagless
or luckless for the rest of your life, delete it.
If it's funny, send it on.
Don't piss people off by making them feel guilty about a leper in
Botswana with no teeth who has been tied to the arse of a dead
elephant for 27 years and whose only salvation is the 5 cents per
letter he'll receive if you forward this email.
Now forward this to everyone you know. Otherwise, tomorrow
morning your underwear will turn carnivorous and will consume
your genitals.
Have a nice day.
Anish Dhume…
Send me 15 bucks and then fuck off
If you find this to be an act of plagiarism,then again F@#K OFF!
The shortest chain letter i have received, even then does the sender think we believe this crap…
A big hello to you guys, forward this to at least 11 people and see what happens on your screen. You will laugh your head off!!!!!!!!!!!
If you forward it to 11 people a video comes on your screen. this works. I don't know how…but it works.
Somehow, from the return path generated, you'll receive something, and IT IS FUNNY!!!
This is The coolest thing I have ever gotten. All you have to do is send it to 11 people and watch your screen.
It is the funniest clip. almost fell off my chair!!! So, send it to those 11 people and watch.
ps: it is really true. Pass it around.
If Ne one of you trried this please let us know…
I want to thank all my friends and other unknown people who have forwarded chain letters to me in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 & 2007.
Because of your kindness:
I stopped drinking Coca-Cola after I found out that it's good only for removing toilet stains.
I stopped going to the movies for fear of sitting on a needle infected with AIDS
I smell like a wet dog since I stopped using deodorants because they cause cancer.
I also stopped answering the phone for fear that they may ask me to dial a stupid number and then I get a phone bill from hell with calls to Uganda , Singapore and Tokyo.
I also stopped drinking water outside for fear that I will get sick from the rat shit and urine.
When I go to parties, I don't look at any girl, no matter how hot she is, for fear that she will take me to a hotel, drug me, then take my kidneys and leave me taking a nap in a bathtub full of ice.
I also donated all my savings to the Amy Bruce account. A sick girl that was about to die in the hospital about 7,000 times. (Poor girl! she's been 7 since 1993…)
My free Nokia phone never arrived and neither did the free passes for a paid vacation to Disneyland.
Made some Hundred wishes before forwarding those Dalai Lama, Ganesh Vandana, Tirupathi Balaji pics etc..
Now most of those "Wishes" are already married (to someone else)!
If ORKUT deletes my account, it doesn't matter BUT PLEASE DON'T SEND me
"Orkut is deleting accounts: Due to sudden rush…" Otherwise I'll delete my E-Mail account!


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Personal injury cases caused by negligence can be stressful causing the injured party to wonder how to pay for representation for the injuries sustained. At Burnetti, P.A., personal injury victims do not have to worry about coming up with the finances for representation. Burnetti, P.A.'s Tampa personal injury attorneys take injury cases on a contingency fee basis, which means that if the client does not receive any compensation, the client does not owe the firm anything.
What Does a Contingency Fee Cover?
Contingency fees cover the upfront and incurred expenses it takes to purse a personal injury settlement or personal injury lawsuit. Costs can include money that is expended by Burnetti, P.A. to cover medical record fees, radiographic film fees, accident report fees, investigator fees, copy fees and other fees associated with pursing a case.
If a lawsuit is filed and a personal injury case goes to court, the contingency fee can cover deposition fees, expert fees, process server fees, trial exhibit fees, video services fees, and any other fees that may be required to help win a client's case in court.
Burnetti, P.A. Covers the Upfront Costs
Instead of billing the client the upfront costs that are required to pursue a case, Burnetti, P.A. is honored to have the financial strength to cover all the upfront costs so the client can focus on healing from the injuries caused by negligence. The client will not have to cover any upfront costs, instead at the end of the case; the costs associated with furthering the case will be taken out of the client's settlement or compensation for the injuries. If Burnetti, P.A. does not get compensation for a client, the client will not owe the firm anything.
Contingency Fee Percentage
Burnetti, P.A. follows the guidelines for fees and costs as set forth by the Florida Bar Association. However, percentages can vary based on many factors, such as the types of cases filed and other factors.
Tampa Contingency Fee Lawyers Offer a Free Case Review
Call Burnetti, P.A. and get back on the road to recovery. If you are thinking about talking with a law firm about your injury, call 1-888-BURNETTI today. There is no obligation, and the phone call is free.


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Toilets are one of the most used fixtures in the bathroom, and a well-made one can last you for many, many years. Because they are such an important part of any bathroom, taking your time in choosing the right one is key. You have many choices when it comes to picking out a toilet; there are many manufacturers, sizes, styles, heights, colors, and even efficiency toilets for the conservative-minded. The best toilet fixtures will depend on what you want personally and what will fit into your home. Fixtures generally include the toilet itself, pipes, and the seat. You can choose toilets in various shapes, sizes, and colors to accent your other bathroom fixtures. One thing to consider when choosing the best toilet fixtures is how large your bathroom is. While most toilets are approximately the same size, some are shaped or sized slightly differently than others. If you will have a tight squeeze, you will need to bring measurements of the space where your toilet will be located when you begin shopping. This will allow you to find an option that will fit perfectly.
There are also toilet fixtures in several shapes. Round, oval, and oblong are the most common shapes for a toilet bowl. Which one you choose is mostly a matter of personal preference, so long as any of these shapes will fit into your bathroom. You may also want to consider how easy it will be to find new or replacement seats for each shape.


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Adorable Small Accessories To Your Winter Wedding Table Decorations With Beautiful White Handmade Doilies
Endearing little round doilies in white tones would be such a lovely idea for pursuing and complementing your winter wedding table decorations. These sorts of decorative table linens are going to embellish you table settings in a truly nice way. A lot of doily choices are available which can satisfy any personal concept or preference for this wedding dining gala. One of wonderful ideas for having nice looking handcrafted accessories to your winter wedding table decorations can be seen in applying petite round white doilies. According to your wedding theme, you may choose among fabric-based handmade creations like intricate knitted crochet doilies or sleek and sheer lace doilies in various sizes, shapes, and patterns. These doilies are usually made of 100% mercerized cotton threads and 1005 polyester viscose compositions. Highly perfect for white-themed winter wedding table decorations, you may add these small round doilies as placemats or additional ornaments for your serving trays, as well as other wonderful ideas.


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Michigan/Delaware's native Kastro Of RegulatorMusic Mixtape entitled "Dream" sets the mood and life of the average dreamers attempting to make the impossible, possible.Dreamers with a mentality to make it out poverty and corruption with the power of music. Destined to be more than products of their environment. Kastro, Tecc, Smoke Loc, LoveGoddess, J. Lux and Knight formed RegulatorMusic Group . follow and support Kas along with the enitre RegulatorMusic Crew at http://regulatormusic.com/ http://kasloony23rd.wix.com/regulatornation https://www.facebook.com/pages/RegulatorMusic/278413415508158 https://soundcloud.com/kas-regulatormusic-xavier
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If you are asked to write a research paper, you must find valid sources and use appropriate formatting. In this podcast, we explain the whole process.
As you are writing your novel, it is helpful to keep some tips in mind that will help strengthen your overall storytelling. One way to improve your writing is to use the active rather than the passive voice. If you are interested in learning more about active and passive voice, listen to this podcast!
If you have to write an expository essay, but don't know how, then this podcast is the perfect tool to help you learn. After becoming informed about the characteristics of an expository piece, how they are formatted, what should be included and methods to writing them, you will be ready to begin!
Writing your dissertation or thesis is a detailed process that will run smoothly if you keep organized. If you are looking for help on how to write the first draft of your dissertation or thesis, this podcast is perfect for you!
Scribendi.com's editors explain the difference between a and an.
Using semicolons and colons in your writing allows you to include more information; however, the proper use of these valuable punctuation tools can also be confusing. This podcast will help you understand how to use semicolons and colons appropriately.
An incorrect preposition can drastically change your intended meaning. Although little words such as at and on can seem insignificant, believe us when we say that they are quite important. Using them appropriately will make your writing clear and easy to understand, but this can be difficult if you are inexperienced with writing English. If you are interested in better understanding what prepositions are, how to use them properly, and how to avoid confusion, we hope this podcast will prove helpful.
If you need some clarification on whether to use single or double quotation marks, this podcast is for you. Knowing the appropriate way to use these quotation marks is critical for clearly articulating what you want to say.
Scribendi.com's editors explain the difference between good and well.
A curriculum vitae is a good way to give a positive first impression. This podcast will outline the differences between a CV and a resume, when a CV should be used, and how to make your CV detailed, yet focused.


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Monday, August 24, 2015
The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round
19 comments:
And parents everywhere rejoiced!ReplyDeleteReplies
They are lying if they don't.Delete
lol poor kids look very unimpressed there. Can you jump like that?ReplyDeleteReplies
I would pull a groin muscle if I tried.Delete
Hahahaha! And we shall all rejoice. Coming soon to this neighbourhood, as well :)ReplyDeleteReplies
I thought we were the last ones to go back to school.Delete
All the kids in Dallas started back today. My nieces in Oklahoma started last week. Our kids live with their mom so it didn't impact us much.ReplyDelete
Ohhh that song. It's former embedded into my brain. My toddler lovvveess that song. HahaReplyDelete
I think all the kids went back here two weeks agoReplyDelete
- AnonymousAugust 24, 2015 at 10:24 AM
Have one for me!!!ReplyDelete
Go back here next week. Finally!ReplyDelete
I like the one with his head low.ReplyDelete
Woohoo! Congratulations to all the good parents in the world!ReplyDelete
still a whole more week to go here :)ReplyDelete
You had me at "The Wheels," Yes, school is finally back in session. I was excited for all of about two days, until I realized how much carpooling I will be doing for soccer, track, cheer, football. It almost made me long for summer vacation. Almost, but not enough. I like your blog. I will be back to read more.ReplyDelete
LOL and I thought it was just me. ;))ReplyDelete
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Important Current Affairs 17th June 2017 with PDF
1 year ago .
Here is an update containing all the important current affairs for 17th June 2017. You can download the Important Current Affairs 17th June 2017 with pdf capsule too.
Aadhaar must for bank accounts
- Govt has made Aadhaar card mandatory for opening bank accounts and conducting financial transactions of Rs 50,000 and above.
- Those with existing accounts will also have to submit their unique identification number by December end.
- For companies opening bank accounts, Aadhaar number of managers or employees holding an attorney to transact on the company's behalf will have to be provided.
India's Current Account Deficit narrowed
- India's current account deficit has narrowed during 2016-17 due to a contraction in country's trade deficit.
- According RBI, CAD for last fiscal narrowed to 0.7% of the GDP from 1.1% in 2015-16.
- India's trade deficit during the fiscal narrowed to $112.4 billion in 2016-17 from $130.1 billion in 2015-16.
- While FDI inflows in 2016-17 marginally declined to $35.6 billion from $36 billion.
Switzerland to share bank account info
- Switzerland has ratified automatic exchange of financial account information with India and 40 other jurisdictions to facilitate immediate sharing of details about suspected black money.
- Implementation is planned for 2018 and first set of data should be exchanged in 2019.
- Joint Declaration for implementation of AEOI was signed between India and Switzerland in 2016.
Amazon to acquire Whole Foods
- Online retail giant Amazon announced that it is buying organic grocery chain Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in cash.
- Whole Foods stores will continue to operate under the same name but as a separate unit of Amazon.
- Amazon has its own delivery service, AmazonFresh, and is experimenting with a "click and collect" model, offering customers to buy groceries online, then pick them up in person.
Haryana offers Insurance cover for crops
- Haryana govt has announced immediate implementation of Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana.
- It is aimed to help farmers avail of insurance cover against crop loss due to natural calamities for 2017-18.
- Under this scheme, paddy, bajra, maize and cotton crops would be covered during the Kharif season while wheat, gram, barley and mustard would be covered during the Rabi season.
John Avildsen passes away
- John Avildsen who won an Oscar for directing Rocky has passed away.
- He also won Directors Guild of America Award for directing Rocky, which won Oscars for Best Picture, Film Editing & was nominated in multiple categories.
- His other most memorable works include first three original Karate Kid movies.
- He had developed a reputation for making movies about underdogs who somehow become winners.
DCB launches Iris scan verification
- DCB bank has launched new services – India's first Aadhaar based iris eye scan customer verification and fingerprint operated ATM in Telangana.
- These services will include a customer's Aadhaar number, eye scan and fingerprint impression.
- The ATM also can be used with the usual ATM/ Debit Card.
- This launch coincides with inauguration of 3 new branches in Mancherial, Mothe and Narsapur.
Katy Perry hits 100 million followers
- American singer Katy Perry has become the first ever person to hit 100 million followers on Twitter.
- She joined Twitter back in 2009 since then, she's been an active user, sending out over 8,500 tweets.
- Justin Bieber and Barack Obama are not far behind with 97 million and 91 million followers respectively.
Sushma Swaraj inaugurates KIP
- Sushma Swaraj inaugurated Know India Programme, for young overseas Indians in New Delhi.
- It is aimed at promoting awareness on different facets of life in India and progress made by India in various fields such as economic and education.
- It provides a unique forum for students and young professionals of Indian origin to visit India and develop closer bonds with contemporary India.
India re-elected to ECOSOC
- India has been re-elected to the UN's principal organ on economic, social and environmental issues for another three-year term.
- India was among 18 nations to win election to the Economic and Social Council.
- India received 183 of the 188 votes, the second highest after Japan who received 185 vote in the Asia Pacific category.
- Pakistan received just a single vote for the ECOSOC.
Kerala's first metro in Kochi
- Kerala's first metro line was flagged off in Kochi by PM Modi.
- Kochi Metro is the first in India to use Communication Based Train Control technology to maximise frequencies and minimise errors.
- Each station on Kochi Metro will have solar panels, which will focus on producing 35% of the total power usage.
- It is the first public transport system to reserve jobs for members of the third sex.
Indian firms in Asia300 ranking
- 20 Indian firms have been named in top 100 of Nikkei Asian Review's Asia300 companies list.
- HCL Technologies stood at 2nd place, followed by Zee Entertainment Enterprises and Tata Consultancy Services at 3rd and 4th place respectively.
- Indian players held 10 of the top 30 spots, outperforming their Chinese and Southeast Asian counterparts.
- The list was topped by Taiwan's Largan Precision.
Serbia Appoints First Gay and Female PM
- Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić has nominated Ana Brnabić to become the country's first female and first openly gay Prime Minister.
- She is the youngest minister in the government, serving currently as the minister of public administration and local government.
- She is a marketing expert and has worked for U.S. companies before she assumed her Serbian government job.
India to host AIIB's 3rd annual meeting
- India will host the third annual meeting of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in 2018.
- The third annual meeting of the AIIB's board of governors will be held in Mumbai in June 2018.
- The first annual meeting was held in Beijing last year.
- AIIB is a multilateral development bank initiated by China which aims to provide financing for infrastructure improvement in Asia.
ClearTax launches GST ready Billbook
- India's largest Income Tax returns e-filing and enterprise compliance service provider ClearTax has announced the launch of Bill book software for SMEs.
- It is a ready-to-use software platform that works both online and offline.
- Some of its key features include creating a sales invoice, recording of discount and insurance.
- ClearTax plans to reach out to 10 lakh SMEs across the country.
Indian wrestlers bag five medals
- India bagged five medals,including a gold in the 2017 Asian Junior Wrestling Championships in Taiwan.
- India's female wrestlers pocketed three medals while two came in the male Greco-Roman division.
- India's gold came in the women's 51kg freestyle category through Puja.
- Sonu clinched a silver medal in the 44kg category while Manu claimed a bronze in the 59kg division.
Second-hottest month in 137 years
- According to a monthly analysis of global temperatures by NASA scientists May 2017 was the second hottest month in a span of 137 years.
- May 2016 was the hottest on record, this year's May temperature was 0.05 degrees Celsius cooler than last year.
- The analysis was conducted by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies which assembled data from 6300 meteorological stations around the world.
Helmut Kohl passes away
- Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl passed away.
- He was Germany's longest-serving post-war chancellor and the architect of Germany's reunification.
- In 1998 he became the 2nd person to be named Honorary Citizen of Europe by the European heads of state or government.
- Former US President George Bush once described him as the most important European leader of the late 20th century.
Environmental Impact Survey
- Mozambique, rated as one of the poorest country has topped a survey of nations with the lowest global environmental impact.
- It topped the list as all its energy use comes from green sources.
- India was placed 75th with renewable energy making up only 15.2 per cent of all energy used.
- Africa as a continent topped the charts while Trinidad and Tobago stood at the bottom.
Punjab govt inks MoU with Centre, AAI
- Punjab government has signed a tripartite agreement with the Centre and Airports Authority of India under UDAN scheme.
- The four airports of Bathinda, Ludhiana, Pathankot and Adampur have been connected under the scheme through five proposals.
- Approximately one lakh seats will be made available to passengers under the scheme, wherein 50 per cent – 50,000 seats will be under fare cap.
Attempt Current Affair Quiz for 17th June 2017


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What is your hobby? Are you already a gardener, a knitter, or a chef? Alternatively, is model building or tinkering with a vehicle right up your alley? Regardless of your particular hobbies now, this article is going to maximize your enjoyment of them. Read on to discover their secrets.
Fishing is a truly great hobby. It is a hobby you can enjoy for a lifetime. It lives on as a tradition for millions. You need patience, but you'll jump for joy when you catch a giant fish. You can eat what you've caught, or just let it go.
Music makes for an outstanding hobby. All you have to do is decide on an instrument to play. Then, you just need to get some training. Begin slowly and build up to the level you wish to attain.
If you are considering using a hobby to earn some spending money with, but aren't sure where to start, focus on what is unique to your talents. Do you have a skill that others lack? Look for things that you enjoy but that others do not want to do. This can be an excellent starting point.
Fishing is a great, relaxing hobby. Find a spot to fish and get some fishing supplies. Then you're going to have to figure out where you can fish and if there are any permits you need. Fishing is a great way to wind down from everyday life.
Sculpting can be a relaxing hobby. Molding clay with your hands is a wonderful feeling, especially when you learn to produce extraordinary pieces. Don't try to sculpt alone! Sign up for a group class to teach you the basics, and if you have a friend to take with you, do so.
Hiking can be a great way to get some exercise and get outside. Look for a few hiking paths near your home and discover the beauty that Mother Nature offers. Take a friend along and have a nice, long picnic lunch.
Go outside for a bike ride. Hobbyist cyclists often explore new trails. With the right clothing, you can ride your bike all year round. This can be a great hobby and a way to transform your health and body.
Photography is not nearly as expensive a hobby as it used to be. If you already have a digital camera and perhaps a tripod, you can get started already. Just read about some techniques and give it a try!
Photography is a very rewarding hobby. Photography is easy, and it can bring out your creative side and also bring your family together. Buy a digital camera, then allow the kids to get wild. Sometimes they will surprise you with their talent. Everyone can have their own turn at using the camera. Later, while you all relax, you will enjoy looking at all the pictures.
Fishing is a good hobby to pursue. Fishing is sure to always be around as a hobby. It has stood up to the test of time. It takes patience but it can be a lot of excitement when you catch the big one! You have a choice to catch and release or keep the fish for consumption.
Star gazing is a terrific hobby. Star gazing allows you to see our universe in a new light. You start to appreciate the universe in a different way. All you need is a telescope and dark surroundings so that you'll be able to see everything.
You can enjoy surfing if you like to swim and love the ocean. A used board is cheap, as are most lessons. Surfing has the benefits of being fun and exciting, and it will also help to work out your entire body.
Be sure to have a garbage bin near if you are doing crafts. You will be able to be much more productive if your work area is organized. Additionally, your work area will be safer if it is clean. A cluttered work area can lead to accidents.
Go for a bike ride! Those who love bike rides can find trails to ride. You can ride bikes all year long if you dress right. This is a hobby that can also benefit your health.
Before trying something new, do the right research. Not all hobbies are the same. Some are perfect for creative types, others require lots of physical activity and others take lots of time. Be certain you do the research so you know what you should expect, whether there are risks, and whether it is a good activity for your life.
You can enjoy a hobby with your mom too. A cooking class is a great way to learn a new skill. Neither one of you need to be a great cook to gain benefits from learning about cooking. Use this class to grow closer together. Look for local cooking classes online.
Keep your hobby area well supplied. Without them, you won't accomplish what you want, you may make mistakes, or you could even be in danger. Research the items you will need and begin purchasing the necessary supplies.
Fitness is an excellent hobby. There are many physical hobbies that can be combined together. You can do different sports, and you can go to a gym. Maybe you will start swimming. Fitness is an integral part of overall health.
How about you start blogging? There are many people who utilize blogs for different reasons. You can use them to share your hobby or skills or just to express yourself as a writer. This is a great tool to help you relax after a long day, and you might even build a following. This can help you get friends or extra money just by learning simple SEO information.
If your hobby is cooking, be careful. Be cautious about the clothing you choose to wear while you cook, as some materials are quite flammable. Instead, tie your hair back, wear tighter clothes, and don't forget to don an apron. When it comes to the kitchen, safety must be first.
A lot of hobbies start with some sort of natural talent that takes years to develop. This natural artistic ability can help them branch out into different niches of their original hobby. You could make gifts for friends and relatives or make some money.
Consider your interests when beginning a hobby. Consider the topics that interest you when seeking out a new hobby. Film buffs may want to start up a film club.
A fun hobby for the entire family is baking. You can choose so many different baking items such as muffins, breads, cupcakes and cakes. Turn your creations into a meal to make your hobby a nutritious one.
Make sure to collect everything you need for your hobby. Otherwise, your projects may be stymied or delayed. Research what you'll need and invest in the supplies your hobby requires.
Make sure you vary your hobbies on occasion. Sometimes people need breaks, and this applies to hobbies as well. If you are losing excitement about the hobby you have been doing, consider setting it aside while you take up a new one. That could be just what you need.
Many hobbies start with someone who has a natural ability and cultivates it over time. This natural artistic ability can help them branch out into different niches of their original hobby. This is a fun way to make gifts or some extra pocket change.
To make sure your house is safe, even if you are a hunter, think about buying a gun safe. Thus, you can make sure that your kids or intruders will never get hold of your rifles. Having guns at home is perfectly acceptable, however it best that they are properly secured.
Puzzles can be a great hobby as well. There are puzzles of all difficulty levels available. You can also laminate or frame them, hanging them up as your art. Keep doing harder puzzles as time goes on.
If you have a hobby you truly love, think about making a career of it. If you are an expert guitar player, give lessons. Or if you make things, then you could sell them to others around your community.
Parents sometimes pass their love of hobbies to their children, and this creates a beautiful bonding experience. Find ways that you can have your child participate in your hobby if they are at all interested. The majority of hobbies allow participation from all sorts of folks, and it is possible to find some that suit even children.
Get some pencils and a pad and you're set! If you really want to develop your skills, consider taking classes. With more practice, you could become an incredible artist. It can reduce stress and facilitate artistic expression. You can do this almost anywhere you go.
Watch your money when spending on your hobby. Spending too much on a hobby can be easy. Set a budget for your hobby so you do not spend too much money. You should do what you enjoy, but keep in mind you will need money for bills too.
Incorporate the people you care about into the hobby of photography. With the right knowledge, a good eye, and some equipment you'll be able to take pictures of a variety of subjects that can impress others. Becoming a talented photographer can also bring in some extra money for you.
Consider hanging a hook in your garage for each family member's bicycle in order to save space. Position the hooks so the bikes can hang upside down from the tires. This way your whole family is going to be able to enjoy their bikes without adding to your garages clutter.
Getting out on a boat is a very fun hobby. It allows you to enjoy the outdoors, go fishing and relax. Buying a boat is an option, and there are also many available for rent if you are not ready to make the investment.
Do not allow things to stop you from taking part in your hobbies. You can easily cancel fishing trips or miss yoga classes. Having said that, you don't want to go overboard and spend too much time with your hobby. Be sure to engage in hobbies whenever possible.
If you have a hobby that you want to turn into a business, it is important to do market research in order to be successful. Be certain that a market exists for what you want to sell. You also need to know the market price for such items.
Growing Flowers
Would you like a hobby you can have fun with? If you have a small budget, you need to find a hobby that costs very little. One such hobby is cooking. You must buy food for cooking, so this isn't a new expense added to the budget. Try learning new culinary skills such as baking bread or making candy. You could bring in some money with your new hobby.
Growing flowers inside the house and out is a wonderful hobby that will make your home beautiful. There is a lot of knowledge you can learn and use about growing flowers specifically, but you can also learn about what plants are able to be grown inside in the cold season. Flowers not only make your home look beautiful, but the oxygen content in the air will increase as well.
Try making exercising a hobby. You might join a health club, or you might get some home equipment. Not only is this a healthy hobby, it is one that will lead to happiness. It can also give you confidence about your appearance.
You can enjoy being outdoors and get some exercise with a nature walk or hike. Snap some photos of the local flora and fauna with your camera. Typically this hobby won't cost you anything; also, you can go solo or hike with friends and family. You can find many safe nature trails in nearly every community.
Reading is awesome as a hobby, which means children need to learn it as early as possible. If you would like your children to enjoy the benefits of reading you should read to them everyday when they are pretty young. People who are avid readers are able to advance further in their education than those who find reading difficult.
Solid hobbies can salvage the times when you don't quite know how to spend your free time. However, getting the most from your hobbies is not always as easy as you might think. You need to apply the great advice from this article to ensure you get the most of your time spent on your hobby.
Consider learning how to play an instrument. Don't let age be a factor. Start by learning some basic songs, and then get more advanced over time. Or, you could just play what you love for your friends and family.


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An Alaskan husky is being hailed as a hero for helping an injured hiker find her way out of the Alaskan wilderness.
On Monday, Amelia Milling, a college student originally from Tennessee, set out on a three-day hike in Chugach State Park in southern Alaska. It was smooth sailing until she came across a pass with more snow than she anticipated.
"I'm a southerner," Milling, who is deaf, said through an interpreter. "So I wasn't thinking about snow."
While trying to descend the side of a mountain, she lost her trekking poles and slid down over 200 feet. She was hurt and in shock when an Alaskan husky named Nanook seemingly appeared out of nowhere.
Milling checked out the dog's tag and realized he was a guide dog for hikers. She was able to follow Nanook back to the trail and get her bearings.
After spending the second night of her hike camping out alongside Nanook, Milling tried to ford a river. However, the river was too deep where she tried to cross. She lost her footing, prompting Nanook to jump in the freezing water and pull her to shore.
The dog comforted Milling as she wrapped herself in her sleeping bag to warm up. She realized she was going to struggle to get out of the wilderness on her own, so Milling used her emergency locator and waited for Alaska State Troopers to find her.
When troopers found her, they assumed that Nanook belonged to Milling. However, he actually belongs to Scott Swift, who says Nanook has no search and rescue training but will often venture into the wilderness and then accompany hikers while they return to Chugach's nature center.
"He's Alaska's version of Lassie," said Alaska State Trooper Eric Olsen.
Other than some bumps and bruises, Milling is in good health after her ordeal. She says she's not sure if she would have made it out alive if Nanook hadn't shown up.
"I believe the dog is a guardian angel," said Milling. "I told him several times that I love him and I'll never forget him."