Limiting Reading Material

One of the things I did in the last year was to limit my magazine subscriptions. I was finding that consistently I threw the new magazines on a pile and ignored them. It wasn’t that they weren’t worthy of being read – I just never found the time.
At the time I subscribed to Parents, Cat [...]

Read Full Post »

How I manage interruptions

Interruptions are everywhere: phones, email, beepers, alarms. I believe there is a definite toll to always being available and always being on, but that is where our culture is taking it.
I started thinking about this after reading an article (http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/2880232). I have put many things in place in my life over the last couple of [...]

Read Full Post »

Hot Times Strategies

We’re in the midst of a heat wave, as most of the USA is at this point. The heat is supposed to break 100 (F) today, and the heat indices will be up in the 110-115 range.
Even though I come from what is considered the “frozen north” here, I was raised in the midwest farm [...]

Read Full Post »

Scientific Independence

This morning on NPR (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4761864) I heard a story about how Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas conservative with ties to the oil industry, has demanded an investigation of three leading client scientists. He requested information on all their results and all funding sources.
The investigation was sparked by critiques from a Canadian economist and statistician, according [...]

Read Full Post »

Are Our Beliefs What We Are Paid To Do?

I am musing this evening on a comment I heard today on NPR – that John Roberts cannot be held to the views he was paid to defend as a lawyer.
Leaving the issue of the Supreme Court nominee aside, I began to think about what someone would think about my personal beliefs if they examined [...]

Read Full Post »

David Allen: Value of Goals

“The value of a future goal is the present change it fosters.”
–David Allen, Ready For Anything

Read Full Post »

Programming in the Zone

Somedays you have it, somedays you don’t.
Today I don’t. There are days when code flows effortlessly out of my fingertips, smooth and crisp and working with a minimum amount of bugs. Then there are days like today, where I find myself making stupid mistakes, unable to remember what thread I was going to follow next, [...]

Read Full Post »

Ode to Zucchini

I like gardening. I like zucchini (in reasonable amounts). But I never plant my own zucchini.
The reason is that all my neighbors and friends inevitably overplant, and I receive the bounty of their gardens. For some reason, the same method of planting for other plants (“I’ll plant one plus a spare”) is used with zucchini. [...]

Read Full Post »

Simple Living = Living Simply

I have been interested in the simplification movement for many years. I started with _Living the Simple Life : A Guide to Scaling Down and Enjoying More_ by Elaine St. James. The idea intrigued me, as part of me realized that I had too much stuff in my life – both physical and mental.
The book [...]

Read Full Post »

Mushrooms get rid of termites?

From the Sierra Club’s “Daily Ray of Hope”, 7/12/05:
“Mycologist Paul Stamets, who discovered that mushroom spores can be used to clean up toxic waste, has applied for a patent for a pesticide that can be used against termites and other social insects that is derived from mushrooms, costs $.25 an application and could put the [...]

Read Full Post »