She Is a Hostess--These Are Writ Bits (#1)

A Google exec said that electronic books and readers will place book pages so that they can "live in an even more exciting life." [Meaning ads and links] "It's hard to complain about such tools. They are useful. The original genius of the book, as a technology was its profound lack of excitement. On a printed page, there's nothing going on other than words, sentences and paragraphs. The excitement of reading a book lies in our own minds as we get lost in a moving story or wrapped up in a brilliant argument. As lives of books get more exciting, we might discover that our own intellectual lives get a little duller."
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"Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University and an expert on the neuroscience of reading, notes that learning to read deeply is a painstaking process, requiring changes deep in our brains. She worries that the shift from immersive page-based reading to distracted screen-based reading could impede the development of the specialized neural circuits that make richly interpretive reading possible."-compiled by Nicholas Carr in an article about Old Media vs. New Media, in the SF Chronicle Sun June 20, 2010
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"There exists a technology that allows me to explore alternate universes, tread gingerly into unknown, dark places in the forest where no one has stepped before and to return safely. This tool allows me to hear voices of others, not only in current time [?] but in ages past whether it be man or woman and also their dialects, with their deeply expressive tones and moods. It helps me to understand, when I thought myself incapable of understanding. It clears and sorts the path for me. This tool is always with me and sits atop my neck." -je

Greet The Silence

. Of the things we fashioned for them that they might be comforted, dawn is the one that works. When darkness sifts from the air like fine soft soot and light spreads slowly out of the east then all but the most wretched of humankind rally. It is a spectacle we immortals enjoy, this minor daily resurrection, often we will gather at the ramparts of the clouds and gaze down upon them, our little ones, as they bestir themselves to welcome the new day.
--from "The Infinities" a novel by John Banville, Alfred A. Knopf, Publisher

Friends From Earliest Days

This is a picture of myself at a very young age. The young lady on my right arm is my young cousin, Marlene. I visited recently with her and her brother and we confirmed that we remain very close after all these years. The photo was taken on Spencer Rd in Vernalis, Ca. circa 1951. I told Marlene that, even though my memory of that day is gone, the picture confirms to me that I have been her buddy and protector from the very beginning. She later goaded me and others into playful adventures during country visits with feats of daring and shrieking, gleeful stunts. Our common trait is the knack for inventing fun on the spur of the moment. My laughter likely comes from Marlene's easy laugh and sense of everything being fun. It's still that way for us.

Statue In Restoration

Rocco Landesman, in Philadelphia, with David Gleeson of Crane Arts, center, and John Carr of Milner & Carr Conservation, which is restoring this gilded Joan of Arc statue by
Emmanuel Fremier. [Photo and coverage originally published by the New York Times, Sunday]

An Anti-Victorian Woman Self-Photograph

What is un-Victorian about her? (Pubhished by Smithsonian Magazine)

Romanticism Corner: Song by Cole Porter

Ev'ry time we say goodbye I die a little.
Ev'ry time we say goodbye I wonder why a little.
Why the gods above me who must be in the know
Think so little of me they allow you to go.
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When you're near there's such an air of spring about it.
I can hear a lark somewhere waiting to sing about it.
There's no love song finer,
But how strange the change from major to minor.
Ev'ry time we say goodbye I die a little.

Tech Corner: Anyone Can Be a Hacker

. The image above is a screen seen by amateur hacker and cyber-thieves who use this easy-to-use kit to devise ways to create a bot-net. Their hacks attack thousands of personal computers in private homes. In creating malicious bot-nets designed to steal personal information, all they have to do to customize their attacks is to click on some check-boxes or radio buttons to "order" the type of computers they want to attack. For example, they can use the program's powerful search engine to browse through their victims' machines and find detailed information , such as which banks they use. The chart above shows that Internet Explorer is the most heavily attacked browser software of all.

. "You don't need to have knowledge of programming or networking protocol stacks. You just need to know who you want to target, click a couple of buttons and there you have it," said Christopher Elisan, senior researcher at botnet detection firm Damballa.

. As web-based tools and kits that can be obtained over the internet have improved, the drudgery associated with hacking has morphed into simple, convenient products that untrained people can use to get into the business of stealing from other people over the internet--both money AND information.

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From an article in the SF Chronicle Business section on Sunday March 14th.