Anthony C. Maki

Spring semes­ter is now over at MCTC, giv­ing me time to focus on a num­ber of things:

• Beta-testing Word­Press 3.0
• Prepar­ing the frame­work for the revamp of City Col­lege News next year
• Clean­ing my liv­ing space
• Trav­el­ing to Europe for the sec­ond time
• Reg­is­ter­ing for fall semes­ter classes and tak­ing care of the req­ui­site paper­work
• Play­ing Steam-powered games on my Mac­Book Pro, finally

On the sub­ject of Word­Press 3.0, I have revised or cre­ated the pages: About, Résumé, Cur­ricu­lum vitæ, Colophon and Con­tact.

After a mete­oric rise to the top of inspi­ra­tional talk-givers, I had my first and sec­ond TED talks this week.

Here’s the first:

I would like to see more of them — and all other lead­ers — real­iz­ing that hap­pi­ness does not imply to con­stantly feel happy. How many of you would agree? I once had a patient where my per­for­mance was a dis­as­ter. (Laugh­ter.) Thank you very much. But I just thought of the French intel­lec­tu­als telling us what the world looks like. As an alter­na­tive, I’ll give you a sixth sense device, allow­ing the brain to weigh emo­tion and exper­i­men­tal evi­dence. You don’t have to like it, but a mir­ror will not get some­thing bad fixed et cetera, et cetera. It’s there­fore much bet­ter to cre­ate a choice — but of course we also need sur­prises. How many of you believe that I could use only data to show the dif­fer­ence only once you look at the details. Oth­er­wise it’s just chunky spaghetti sauce. You could go on with this meta­analy­sis for­ever. But I would like to show you that in the mid­dle of it all, you could see the sit­u­a­tion run­ning the same way that a down­ward spi­ral would. It makes you yearn for cof­fee spon­sored for by the admin­is­tra­tion of the United States.

The sec­ond, well, didn’t go over so well. I think I’m already past my prime.

I’m here to tell you it’s not a mat­ter of oxy­gen and other things. By now you’re even won­der­ing what this has to do with girls with dif­fer­ent names. I’m here to talk about what they have in com­mon, namely a prob­lem that occurs when you get too high. Then you’re going to have long-term effects on my project that I like very much. I don’t have to own a four-passenger air­craft can eas­ily fly upside down. Ear­lier, com­plet­ing my MBA in the United States required you to use your feet and all your trou­bles begin. I don’t under­stand why any­one would do that. So we needed more time to make sure that we get more atten­tion on the web. And we needed a design which is going to make sure that we suc­ceed. Fur­ther­more, we needed help in build­ing what I can’t have. This would nei­ther require an evo­lu­tion sci­en­tist nor a com­puter func­tion­ing in ways I don’t under­stand.

Please under­stand that I only fol­lowed the advice of this guy.

Tim Bur­ton was des­tined to direct a take on Lewis Carroll's story of “Alice's Adven­tures in Won­der­land”, and “Through the Look­ing Glass.” His mas­tery over creat– ing fan­tas­ti­cal envi­ron­ments has made him a great can­di­date for this under­tak­ing, and he deliv­ered in a phe­nom­e­nal way.

Biba, Erin. What Is Time? One Physi­cist Hunts for the Ulti­mate The­ory. Wired 2010-02-26 05:36.

Ghose, Tia. Mil­lions of Tons of Water Ice Found at Moon’s North Pole. Wired 2010-03-01 20:24.

Kravets, David. Law­mak­ers Punt Patriot Act to Obama. Wired 2010-02-26 15:52.

Madri­gal, Alexis. First Mir­rors Pol­ished for Next-Gen Space Tele­scope. Wired 2010-03-02 18:20.

Hey, y’all, this is very late as the cau­cuses are about to get under way in about an hour, but here are a few handy things to read and/or bring with you (this is some­what biased toward DFL caucus-goers):

Get famil­iar with the can­di­dates (Demo­c­ra­tic, Repub­li­can, and Inde­pen­dent) by check­ing out the Min­neapo­lis Star Tribune’s awe­some and inclu­sive can­di­dates’ pro­files.

The agenda for tonight‡. If you stay for the cau­cus meet­ing, you will (most likely) approve and fol­low this to-do list. A few things on it:

• Elect­ing precinct chair and asso­ciate chairs
• Elect­ing del­e­gates to the Sen­ate Dis­trict or County Unit con­ven­tion in a month or two
• Guber­na­to­r­ial straw poll!
• Res­o­lu­tions for the party plat­form — see link below for form

‡The file includes a res­o­lu­tion form filled out that sup­ports single-payer health care.

Par­lia­men­tary Pro­ce­dure Pocket Ref­er­ence (via UC Berke­ley). For all you nerds who want to say “I rise to a point of par­lia­men­tary inquiry”!

Min­nesota Sec­re­tary of State’s precinct cau­cus brochure.

DFL precinct cau­cus guide.

DFL Offi­cial Call — long expla­na­tion of rules and pro­ce­dures — and DFL 2008 – 2010 Party Plat­form — things they sup­port or oppose.

DFL res­o­lu­tion form.

Last week, my Android obses­sion led me to buy Google’s Nexus One, which meant that I had a G1 lying around. I didn’t really want to go through the process of sell­ing it myself, and I delayed any action until I became sure that my Nexus One wasn’t hav­ing the 3G con­nec­tiv­ity prob­lems with T-Mobile.

Alas, no issues in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul met­ro­pol­i­tan area, so I’m ready to part ways with my old Android friend.

I found an inter­est­ing and excit­ing place on the “series of tubes” called Gazelle. They’re a Boston-based con­sumer elec­tron­ics recy­cling and reselling com­pany.

If you want to get started now, head straight over to Gazelle!

The cat­a­log of tech­nol­ogy they will recy­cle and for which they will pay you is extremely exten­sive, and the process for doing so is very stream­lined.

1. Find the item(s) you want to recycle/sell.
2. Self-evaluate its/their con­di­tion and func­tion­al­ity.
3. Gazelle gives you a real-time esti­mate of what they’ll pay you for it/them (and also the pre­dicted value for it/them in the next few months).
4. Option­ally, Gazelle will send you a box for the item(s) if it qual­i­fies.
5. Oth­er­wise, they will email you a ship­ping label to print, which you bring, with the boxed item(s), to the near­est UPS.
6. They receive your item(s), eval­u­ate it them­selves, update you on any price change, and if you accept…
7. You receive your pay­ment via check, Pay­Pal, pre­paid Visa card, or a few other options.

Of course, you also feel good for not throw­ing out your old stuff! :)

Gazelle’s got a Twit­ter account.

If you click the link below and recy­cle your elec­tron­ics, I’ll get a $10 refer­ral, and you can in turn refer your friends and col­leagues! Enjoy!

Get Cash For Your Gad­gets at gazelle.com!

After hav­ing seen a truly scin­til­lat­ing and visu­ally orgas­mic (so much so, in fact, that I devel­oped a headache) IMAX 3D pre­sen­ta­tion of James Cameron’s Avatar, I began to put together a pat­tern emerg­ing, to me any­way, in works of pop­u­lar art and lit­er­a­ture. Avatar and another con­trib­u­tor to this pat­tern, Dis­ney-Pixar’s Wall·E, are gen­er­ally straight­for­ward in pack­ing their punch.

Humans are evil — regard­less of their inten­tions, malign or not — and more than likely will end up destroy­ing or deplet­ing them­selves and their resources.

I’m not really try­ing at ver­bose crit­i­cism, but why do we indulge in con­struct­ing mas­sive, ever-more-awesome nar­ra­tives to apol­o­gize for our­selves, our wars, our destruc­tion, our sad state of exis­tence? These and other sto­ries are chill­ingly beau­ti­ful and evoke strong emo­tions, so I under­stand the appeal. The apolo­get­ics are just stu­pe­fy­ingly idi­otic — that we might redeem our blight on the Earth through artis­tic acknowl­edg­ment. Let’s at least do some­thing about our innu­mer­able crises in addi­tion to nos­tal­gi­cally memo­ri­al­iz­ing them, please? Kthxbai.

Pic­tured left to right, Brit­tney (16), Kayt­lyn (6), and Aaron (5).

Cross-posted on my Pos­ter­ous.

Cross-posted on my Pos­ter­ous.

I’m on the route 23 bus right now, and I just passed by an anti-foreclosure protest. You go peo­ple!!!

(Apolo­gies for poor cam­era phone/low-light qual­ity.)

Cross-posted on my Pos­ter­ous.