That wave again...

And I thought I was the only one...

Amen to that.

"What it means to be Human"

Overheard on WNYC-FM today:

"What it means to be human is to walk down the street and worry about whether a crane will fall on your head or not."


So what does it mean to you to be "human?"

Ebb & Flow

I'm always amazed of the tangential aspects of Googling things. While searching for "Ebb and Flow," I came upon a site dedicated to the chronicles of the United States military activities in the Korean war—complete with relevant maps and charts.

If anyone is interesting here's the link info:
http://www.history.army.mil/books/korea/ebb/fm.htm

Today's Word of the Day, as told by M-W

opine • \oh-PYNE\ • verb

: to state as an opinion

Example Sentence:

In his review, Malcolm opined that it was good to see the band returning to the formula that had worked so well for their first album.

Did you know?

"Opine" has been around since the 15th century, and while it certainly is not a rare word today, not everyone is inclined to take it seriously. Commentators have described it as a stilted word, appropriate only in facetious use -- and it does have an undeniable tendency to turn up in humorous writing. Recent evidence, however, suggests that it is being used in perfectly respectable contexts more often. It typically serves to emphasize that the opinion being reported is just that -- an opinion. The etymology of "opine" is perfectly respectable, too. The term derives from the Middle French "opiner" ("to express one's opinion") and the Latin "opinari," meaning "to have an opinion" or "to think."

Get it together people

It is (and has been since the 1st) BIKE MONTH.

www.bikemonthnyc.org

In the beginning, no introduction

While searching for an address in my former home state of Texas via Google maps, I clicked the "satellite view" for a better perspective. I zoom as a close as possible to the address. It looks like a typical hot summer day in the south—with the splotchy sections of dead and alive grass. There's an occasional car here and there. I start to think about the people that might be in the cars, the time of day, the date, and so on. And then I realize to my satisfaction, I can follow the roads to my old house, my family member's homes, my old schools, and my grandfather's business. Judging by the cars parked in the lots, most of the employees must be out to lunch. Perhaps it's possible I could follow all the roads to the usual lunch spots and find my grandfather's car. Ah! Sure enough, there it is in the cafeteria parking lot. I travel to my uncle's home, where I find the green work truck and the Passat. Which it occurs to me that this mapped image must have been captured more than a year ago, when he was alive. So I travel—what is it, west?—to find the cemetery, but can't zoom close enough. Is it possible this was captured even further back, to when my grandmother was alive, 3 years ago? I get consumed with trying to find her truck, but something tells me it isn't quite that old. I then travel to another relative's home location, to realize it wasn't even built yet. Now this I found particularly curious. My friend articulated it well "A map is merely a diagrammatic representation of a place, and is therefore merely a concept of how a place can be rendered. But with satellite imaging, you're no longer dealing with concepts but with concrete reality." How interesting that a tool with purely objective intentions would inadvertently become so subjective.
I'm certain that I'm not the first to think of Google Maps as some sort of Visual History, nor am I the first to map out all of the places I've known. And surely someone else has considered the idea of the Google Map satellite view as a record of development and progress frozen in time. I immediately took a screen shot of each of my searches to save in my personal photo archives, along with my other random photos for 2008.