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Samhain
THESE ARE THE WORDS OF THE DEAD


This is why we remember the dead: so we can bring to mind how important each moment of life is. We all walk around assuming we will live forever.


We will not.


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Open to love at every moment. True, pure love is always responded to in kind - to the degree and form possible in the recipient.

Current Location:
Between Worlds
Current Mood:
stunned
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Had enough
I got my electric bill in the mail last week. I do tend to give the thing a cursory glance, just so I have some idea how much cash will be auto-deducted from my bank account later in the month. What was most interesting was a little bar chart in the corner - which showed that my usage had declined to 12KWh from 16KWh in the similar period a year earlier. In other words, I'd cut my electricity usage by 25%.

How had I done this? I can trace it to two things: I stopped using the dryer. For some obscure reason, dryers in Australia are always electric. Which I can imagine my father rolling his eyes at - because it's just so hilariously inefficient. Also, I powered down my lovely dual-core server, choosing instead to create virtualized servers, which are running on my quad-core telly, which, because it's (sometimes) recording TV shows, is always turned on.

I reckon that these two simple changes cut my electricity usage by 25%. No big deal to stop using the dryer (except for the bedclothes). Things actually dry faster in Sydney sun than they do in the dryer. Of course, we've had two weeks of consistently cloudy, rainy, chilly weather here in Sydney, so I have been using the dryer a bit these days. But the sun will return - this is Australia, after all - and I can dry my clothes in the sun again. And that server is staying turned off.

So simple. But so profound. I reckon that if I really worked at it - replacing my refrigerator and washing machine with highly efficient models - I could get that number down to nearly 50% of my earlier usage. That's remarkable. But I reckon it possible.

Current Location:
Home
Current Mood:
satisfied satisfied
Current Music:
Koyaanisqatsi
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What Daddy Did In The War
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Scott

He was a complete, utter, unabashed freak. He stole pot from where I kept it stored in my freezer. And although he probably thinks I never knew, I did. I just never cared. He was a wonderful, bubbly, chaotic pain in the ass.


He was also the very first person to create a VRML world that anyone cared about, Daniel's Room, a scene from the Children's tour through the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. It was that model - and the response that it engendered in the SIGGRAPH 1994 audiences who experienced it - which got VRML going, got SGI on board, got the whole bloody thing up and running.


A bit later in the year, Scott whacked out the model for the Cybersamhain (and wrote some of the ritual, too -- check it out for his cheeky approach to things spiritual), which Erik Davis would go on to immortalize in the infamous Technopagans article in WIRED. That model has always been intended to sit at the absolute, universal {0,0,0} of the collective online virtual world, its axis mundi.


That was his work. That was his genius.


He left San Francisco around the same time I moved down to Los Angeles; he moved to Florida - which he never really liked - and lost a leg to the brittle diabetes which shaped his life, and which, in the end, killed him. That he lived into his mid-40s is shocking: he had to be revived on two separate occasions when I knew him (his tales of heading out on the astral currents as he passed over were both hilarious and petrifying). He wasn't long for the world, knew he wasn't long for the world, but still did the best he could with the kooky and rather mystical-psychic set of skills the universe had handed him.


I learned of his passing on Sunday morning, through an email. Later in the day - and on Monday - I smelled incense burning in the neighborhood. Memory and scent came together, and I realized that this was the incense that Scott and Four always kept burning at their flat on 15th Street. It's come back as a reminder of him, and of those wonderful terrible years when I was becoming something utterly different than what I had ever thought I would be. A transformation due, in no small part, to his work.

Vale, Scott. I know (heh) we'll be seeing each other again. (And yes, you can imagine his silly cackle of assent as I wrote those words.)

Current Location:
Home
Current Mood:
Reflective
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Someone comes to town, someone leaves town.
Three births and two deaths. Of the births little enough can be said beyond the complete miracle of incarnation. Of the deaths, one was (somewhat) expected, though still a shock. Of the second, the flaming wreckage of depression and suicide, I still haven't got the words, nor do I reckon I will find them soon.
Current Location:
Home
Current Mood:
Pensive
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Look, it means "fish" in Italian, OK???

Sigh.
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I couldn't have put it better myself...
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2020 Summit Supporting Statement
The years to 2020 will be principally concerned with a renegotiation of the social contract on all fronts, including government and its relation to the governed, educators and their students, and creative professionals and their audiences. Using IT to radically empower themselves and their peers, the people of Australia are putting power to work: we are already deep within a participatory era that is challenging all top-down institutional forms. How government and other institutions greet this challenge will shape public discourse and public policy for the next half century. My research will give the summit deep insight into these trends.
Current Location:
Home
Current Mood:
hopeful hopeful
Current Music:
Evita
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Go, O., Go!

It's beautiful. And it will sweep up all in its path.
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Sorry Day

Sorry Day
Originally uploaded by mpesce
They were stolen away from their parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters. It's almost inconceivably evil.

And for this I am very, very sorry.

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Whoops.

The futures prediction markets use the "wisdom of crowds" in order to ascertain the likelihood of some future event. In this case, who the Democratic Presidential nominee will be.

As you can see from the chart, at no point prior to this one, has Obama ever been more likely to win the nomination than Hillary Clinton. But now, the momentum - that began as a "whisper in Springfield" has become a roar like an oncoming F-5 tornado.

Whee!

Current Location:
Sydney
Current Mood:
gleeful
Current Music:
NPR
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By way of reminder...

Consider this my official endorsement. Now, GO VOTE!!
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Just sayin'....
Current Location:
Sydney
Current Mood:
bemused
Current Music:
The sound of wailing in the distance
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The Day the Sun Stood Still


Nanosolar's panels are cheaper than coal. That's right - $2/kw, versus $2.10/kw - and that's not even accounting for additional carbon credits which will inevitably need to be purchased.
Current Location:
Solar System
Current Mood:
hopeful hopeful
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Outraged, I tells ya!
I'm just outraged beyond belief that someone has taken my own work and posted it to YouTube!

Current Location:
Sydney
Current Mood:
bemused
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The epigraph of my next book
There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs.

- Luke 12:2-3

Current Location:
Home
Current Mood:
recovering
Current Music:
Sunday Night Silence in Sydney
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7.30 Report - Laptops in Schools

Can I just say that this is basically the top, the pinnacle, the peak? This is the best news program in Australia. And I'm on it!!!
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Game, Set...

Perhaps the greatest political advertisement in Australian history.
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Mob Rules


One of my best.
Current Location:
Sydney
Current Mood:
accomplished
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It exists!

Amazing what you can find on YouTube!
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