Another reason to love cats. Check out the full story at The Hamilton Spectator

Ferocious feline trees bear

The Associated Press
WEST MILFORD, N.J. (Jun 10, 2006)

A black bear picked the wrong New Jersey yard for a jaunt this week, running into a territorial tabby who ran the furry beast up a tree — twice.

I’ve been on a music kick lately, and thought I’d share some of what I’ve come across. Here’s the short version – check out Pandora if you’re interested in an exploratory musical journey.

When I got my Toshiba M400 tablet pc in April, I spent some time transferring applications and continue to do some minor tweaking. One of the apps that didn’t want to transfer properly without interfering with other programs was Musicmatch Jukebox. On my Portege 3500, I listened to Musicmatch radio most of the time I was online or occasionally listened to music I owned.

Though I did try to get Musicmatch working in the first week or two of setting up my new M400, I ultimately decided simply to work with Windows Media Player. I wasn’t able then and haven’t yet found an internet radio service for Windows Media Player comparable to the diversity offered by Musicmatch. However, with an internal CD player on my M400, I found it much more convenient to expand the music library on my computer. The processor and CD speed also made the process fast. I could listen to tracks on a CD even while saving the entire CD to my music library, and the process of saving tracks would typically take about five minutes. With the expansion of the music library on my computer, I could listen a lot longer without repeat tracks or getting bored with my music.

Still, after a month and a half, I found myself craving new and different music, so the search for online stations resumed. The first thing I found were some stations for relaxation music using a simple google search. This was largely for my massage practice so that I wouldn’t have to spend hours sorting through my expanded music library to customize a playlist. I settled on Ambient Meditation Audio Streams. It offers a variety of music in the audio stream, but unlike some other “relaxation” offerings I’ve heard, it doesn’t change pace or tone in jumping from classical relaxation, nature sounds, world music, or something else new age. In addition, in the course of listening to the music stream up to four hours at a time, I have never heard any kind of commercial.

Meditation music is not what I listen to when I’m studying or simply browsing the web. For that, I wanted to find something to fit a variety of tastes for alternative rock, classic rock, 80’s and 90’s hits, some pop rock, and perhaps a little swing, jazz, reggae and world music thrown in the mix. In this, Musicmatch excelled by offering a variety for free that was also easy to navigate. Yahoo Messenger offered a similar variety, which is unsurprising given Yahoo’s purchase of Musicmatch last year (if my memory is correct). While Yahoo offered the feature of being able to share what you might be listening to, the free service limited how often it could be restarted each month, and I’m not prepared to pay for it yet.

Though I’m still experimenting with it, I think I may have found my musical salvation. Pandora, created by the Music Genome Project, is an intriguing music sharing and recommendation service. I must say it wasn’t easy for me to find. It wasn’t in the top pages for my google searches. I think I ultimately found it on an ask.com search.

So what makes Pandora special? It let’s users build customized playlists by having them enter artists or songs they like. The service then will play artists and songs that it considers similar. As songs play, you may say that you like or dislike a song to refine your preferences for a given station, and you may also add songs to a favorites list. The thing I most like in my first impression of Pandora is that its original intent and primary function appears to be suggesting music that users may not have heard before. I can listen to my own music library when I want to be safe in listening to something familiar.

Another thing I like about Pandora is that it offers several ways to share music with friends. Users can search for shared station, email favorite stations to friends, and even have Pandora generate the code to paste into your blog so your favorite stations or songs are shown on your blog page. You can see it in action under the music tab at the right. Ty it out by entering a favorite song or artist in the create station box. Don’t want to experiment on your own yet? Feel free to strap on training wheels and sample my initial efforts. So far, “Swing, Jazz, & Reggae” and “Alternative Rock” have given me the best results. By the way. the initial station title is the name of the song or artist you entered. It is very easy to change the name either to what you hope for or what it turns out to be (if it’s different than you initially planned – which is part of the fun!).

Late last night watching PBS (KTEH, channel 10 on Comcast in the San Francisco Bay area), I came across Animusic. It was one of their fundraising drives featuring music set to computer animation. For now, I just want to say that it was fascinating and suggest that anyone who is a music fan should check it out.

According to Yahoo’s TV guide, it should be replaying tonight on KTEH at 8:30, or again on KTEH Jun 06 12:30am, KTEH Jun 06 01:00am, KTEH Jun 08 07:00pm, KRCB Jun 10 11:00pm, KTEH Jun 11 09:30pm, or KTEH Jun 11 11:30pm. I’m planning on recording the show myself. I may even see if I can splurge enough to invest in the DVD PBS is offering.

This question came up at a party I recently attended, and I found the response interesting.

If you could change genders for one week, what would be the first thing you would do?

One of the women attending asked it of one of the men, who was stumped. Not to be stopped by the silence, she said,” I know what I’d do. I’d masturbate.”

Following the pause for more suitably-stunned silence, the conversation picked up with a debate about whether sex with a partner, or solo masturbation would be the best way to go.

To be perfectly honest, I was a bystander to this conversation and didn’t offer an opinion. I’d like to make up for that now. Rather than just the first thing, I’ll talk about a few things I might like to do as a woman.

1. Stand naked in front of a full-length mirror and just study my body. Not as a sex object, but as me.

2. Go shopping. Not to buy anything, but just to try on clothes. Women’s fashion is infinitely more versatile than men’s, especially in American culture. For example or this. It would be interesting to see what would look good on my new body. Colors, styles…
Shoes and undergarments would have to be included.

What would turn out both fashionable and comfortable, and what would be gorgeous but torturous?

3. Sex would come in a bit after I’d become a little familiar with my body. Personally, I’d be most curious about sex with a partner. What really worked and what was ho-hum? I’m not decided about masturbation – whether for early in the process of getting to know my body or after sex with a partner. It would be there somewhere though, I’m sure. All purely in the name of increasing my physical awareness and understanding of women.

4 and 5. I would also have to experience menstruation and childbirth, two physically definitive experiences of being a woman. I’d be happy to forego morning sickness, though. Of course that would take longer than one week.

As for emotional understanding – nice goal, but I doubt I’d be any more or less successful there in a woman’s body than I would be as I currently am. Could be wrong though. Any women with suggestions about activities that would be most helpful in this respect?

What about you? How would you do things differently if you were the opposite gender?

P.S. Just wanted to add a few of links that don’t fit perfectly with the narrative, but I thought they were interesting anyway.

• http://www.dimaggio.org/Eye-Openers/sex.htm
• http://www.dimaggio.org/Eye-Openers/eye-openers.htm (source for previous link, with a number of other interesting articles)
• http://www.dimaggio.org/index.htm (Homepage for both links)

Discover your companion’s world. Two worlds are richer than one.

http://www.ucomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1995/04/08/

http://www.ucomics.com/nonsequitur/2006/04/10/

Not too long ago, a friend of mine held an un-tech party. She is in a business where her clients and associations are all tech related and she needed a break. She invited non-tech friends as much as possible, and a few tech friends who she thought were most likely to be able to set it aside for an evening.

What: This soiree is an unusual experiment, but a necessary one. It’s the first of the UN-TECH GATHERING, so you can say you attended the VERY FIRST ONE if this event goes down in history. (likely).

The rules: NO TECH TALK whatsoever. You can talk about ANYTHING under the sun other than tech. Who can make it to the end of the evening you ask? I wonder. Others wonder. Even a writer from USA Today wonders (no kidding actually).

The premise was interesting, and it was amusing to see some of the participants dance around computers and technology. “Oh was that tech related? Oh no, that was merely presentation!” right before launching into a conversation about the Poptech conference…

Because of the likelihood that some participants might have trouble avoiding technology-related discussion, non-tech questions were prepared ahead of time. They were distributed as a means to stimulate conversation for those who might be struggling.

Some of the questions:

If you could change genders for one week, what would be the first thing you would do? (future post – I promise)

If you could have lunch with anyone living or dead, male and female, who would it be and what would you ask?

• top two: Da Vinci , Joan of Arc (from group discussion)
• others I might choose: Socrates, Alexander the Great, Martin Luther King, Jr., Angelina Jolie (what can I say – I’m a guy), Halle Berry (another guy one), Nancy Pelosi, Mukhtar Mai, Nicholas Kristof (Read A Heroine Walking in the Shadow of Death. It’s well worth a free sample of Times Select if you’re not a regular subscriber)

If your could participate in any event in history, what would it be, and what role would you play?

• Renaissance Italy – male painter (someone else’s response, but I thought it was interesting)
• Ancient Greece in time of Socrates and Plato – student
• beginning of life in universe/ galaxy / solar system – recorder, scientist
• first contact with sentient, non-human species – sociological observer & translator
• ouster of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, et. al. – Senator exercising oversight responsibility of post (I mean as long as we’re dreaming…)

When you were young(er)/a kid, what did a parent or teacher say to you to change the course of your life? (future post)

One area of conversation that broke the boundary of the non-tech theme of the night challenged the premise in a positive way. What about the humanizing aspects of technology?

Some blogs, for example, are simply personal journals and serve to bring people together. In politics, Howard Dean, Moveon.org, DailyKos are all phenomena of our technological age, yet they bring real people together and give a stronger political voice to the individual citizen rather than monolithic and power-hungry political machines.

I’ve read and heard comments that email is de-personalizing, and computers are making us lose the art of the handwritten letter. Yet, when I’m working on my computer and am thinking creatively, I am much more inclined to use it in tablet mode. Putting my thoughts down in my own handwriting feels like it lowers the barrier a bit between the thought and the recording of the thought. Technology permits more of me to be present. Just a teeny, tiny, inconsequential aside: my new M400 has shipped… IT’S COMING!!!

One of the interesting debates taking place in our internet culture right now is the public vs the private in how we choose to express ourselves in our blogs and in places like MySpace. What opens us to the world more? What of the different masks we wear in our online personas? Where do we draw the lines of safety and how do we enforce them? (Through His Webcam, a Boy Joins a Sordid Online World, Child Sex as Internet Fare, Through Eyes of a Victim)

There will definitely be more to come…

This seems too much like the philosophy of the current administration, doesn’t it? Very scary…

Another Calvin & Hobbes from uComics.com.

If toast always lands butter-side down, and cats always land on their feet, what happens if you strap toast on the back of a cat and drop it? – Steven Wright

From uComics.com

Via Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly Via Talkleft.

And the original source: http://neuropolitics.org/.

BTW, just in case you haven’t noticed a couple of the links to the right, I’m definitely a cat person, and miss having a cat. Actually, I think I need more friends with cats who I can visit…