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Showing posts from August, 2014

For A Friday

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From The Morning A day once dawned And it was beautiful A day once dawned from the ground Then the night she fell And the air was beautiful The night she fell all around So look see the days The endless colored ways And go play the game that you learnt From the morning And now we rise And we are everywhere And now we rise from the ground And see she flies And she is everywhere See she flies all around So look see the sights The endless summer nights And go play the game that you learnt From the morning                               Nick Drake (1948-1974) Nick Drake was a singer-songwriter from the late 60s and early 70s.   He was brilliant and transcendent as a poet balladeer, yet also deeply troubled.   His problem was depression, and neither marijuana or anti-depressants helped.   He recorded three albums in his brief career before he died at the young age of 26.   His death was ruled accidental, but also possibly suicide.   He took an overdose of Amitriptyline, one of the anti-dep

Summer Reading--Anam Cara

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There are books for students to read over the summer but Anam Cara:  A Book of Celtic Wisdom (Harper Perennial, 1997) by the late John O’Donohue is for teachers looking to rejuvenate themselves during those long days of heat and humidity. O’Donohue was a former priest and philosopher from Ireland who spent his life exploring the ways of silence and contemplation inherent in Celtic philosophy.   He died much too young, at the age of 52.   His life’s work includes such seminal works of poetry and wisdom as Echoes of Memory (Harper Perennial, 2000), Beauty:   The Invisible Embrace (Harper Perennial, 2005), and Eternal Echoes:   Celtic Reflections on Yearning to Belong (Harper Perennial, 2000).   These books are not fast reads but must be absorbed slowly in both mind and spirit. O’Donohue opens Anam Cara with a poem entitled, “Beannacht,” or blessing.   “When the canvas frays / in the curach of thought / and a stain of ocean / blackens beneath you, / may there come across the water

Trigger Warnings

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Stanley Forman ,  Boston Herald American Every time the 9-11 anniversary rolls around, we see clips of the media coverage of that day (sometimes, as in the case of MSNBC, they run their Today show coverage in real time).   I only need to watch a few minutes of those planes crashing into the towers to feel my blood pressure rise and my heart rate skyrocket.   Something about those people going to work in the morning, like any other day, only to become victims of a most horrendous act.   The falling people, followed by crumbling buildings, and then the pile of burning, ashy rubble.   The memories flood back.   The rage follows me throughout the day, and I wind up angry with myself for feeling the way I do.   It seems that if I am enlightened and balanced as a human being, I should not give into such primal instincts as hatred for another.   But in the same breath, I also feel that rage is wholly justified given the circumstances.   In short, I am again, as I was on that day, deeply con

Video: JavaScript coding tips

The following video is a recording of the talk “ JavaScript coding tips ”, which I held 2014-05-16 at the Sud Web Conference in Toulouse, France. Bonus: See how I feel about comma first style (I was much meaner than I remember). I don’t personally like it, but I respect how creatively it solves a problem. Hear me speak French after the talk. Material: Slides “ Popular Coding Conventions on Github ” by Outsider : what coding conventions do people use on GitHub and how frequently? “ A Meta Code Style Guide ”, chapter 26 of “ Speaking JavaScript ”, which covers some of the topics of this talk in more depth.

Summer Reading--The Alchemist

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Maybe I’ve reached The Age of Diminishing Memory.   I now find that when scanning the shelves that there are books I could swear I’ve read already, yet when I open them, there are no annotations.   The spine is solid with no creases or cracks.   The book is in pristine condition, and I am left to ponder, did I read it or was it a dream?   The Alchemist (HarperOne, 2006) by Paulo Coelho , a novel with a plot ironically supported by a dream, is just such a book. At its heart, the story is a simple one, an allegory that reads suspiciously like a number of other works only lighter and with less philosophical depth.   A poor shepherd goes in search of his destiny after experiencing a recurring dream where a child tells him to go to the pyramids in Egypt where he will find hidden treasure.   He seeks out a Gypsy fortune teller who assures him that “dreams are the language of God.”   Once she is assured of payment, she tells the boy to go to Egypt.   This, of course, he had already decided