Tuesday, December 23, 2008

More Musings

Although we did manage the trudge to Movie Madness again, snagging some provisions along our return, I'm mostly in my LCD-lit cave, glasses reflecting, storyboarding for 2009.

Dr. Bob Fuller is in town
, maybe we'll meet up again (talked to Frank). Getting around ain't that easy these days though. Portland sort of seizes up in these weather conditions.

Our DirecTV dish is too snow-caked to be receiving that CSPAN, HBO... they should make it all free while we're not getting any, as a good will gesture.

I've been yakking with Friends on Quaker-P about whether Jesus would be "freaking out" about our world today, me saying "no, too hippie-like, not his style". Hippies were not in control, blamed the Establishment, were closer to zealots in hating those fascist pig Romans, a lot of 'em.

Jesus was no hate-monger, but not a flower child either.

So many movies, so many renditions, each one with the stamp of some ambient culture, interpreting to its own. Speaking of which, I haven't seen Oliver Stone's W yet, will maybe get to it soon.

But then "hippie" is just a label, like Generation X, or now Y. Bio-regionally, we're also quite diverse. To excerpt from a recent Quaker-P posting:
Someone else: The celebration of Christmas started as a means to oppress pagan celebrations. Many enduring Christmas traditions, the Christmas tree, the yule log, mistletoe, holly and ivy, are pagan in origin, stolen, usurped, as a means of oppression.

Me: Today though, pagans feel back to running a railroad and can easily afford to break bread with their Christian brothers and sisters, the many saints. We're a big happy family these days, no one "oppressing" except maybe in their own minds. At least that's in our Pacific Northwest, YMMV.
I was partly thinking of our trip last year, through California, all the good people. Portland too, is a lovely place to have a truly white Christmas for a change.

OK, back to Django and JQuery. I'm only allowed so much R&R, then duty calls. I'm glad to see the ACM is adding its prestige to our call for more computer literacy in K-12. Here's a quote from the ACM web site:
ACM CEO John R. White welcomed the Obama team's efforts to increase the pool of students in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields and identified key recommendations to address the particular challenges at the K-12 level. "The new Administration can play an important role in strengthening middle school education, where action can really make a difference, to introduce these students to computer science. They can also expand efforts to increase the number of females and underrepresented minorities in this field and expand professional development opportunities for high school computer science teachers."
Yes we can!