The Ebola Metaphor
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 01/23/2006 - 14:09It is a rainy Monday morning and I’m sitting in a high school classroom at the New Haven Academy. I look at the red folding chairs sitting on a blue carpet. I look up at the ceiling tiles, the kind I’ve counted too often in various waiting rooms. Why am I here?
On the simplest level, I am here to see a performance of the 9th Grade Literature classes based on the book, The Hot Zone by Richard Preston. Yet I don’t know any of the students in the performance. I don’t live in New Haven. What has really brought me here?
Civic Involvement
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 01/22/2006 - 23:17The following entry was written initially as a response to a comment on Connecticut Local Politics. It turned into a fairly long message, so I thought it would be best for it to stand on its own here.
Independent1, I do not think that the observation that ‘people are motivated for the most part by self-interest’ is particularly cynical or negative. If anything, I think there is great benefit in getting people to recognize that working together with ones neighbors, in helping the people around one is an act of self-interest. It is part of the reason I often refer back to John Donne,
Albright 08, Farrell 06
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 01/20/2006 - 10:52(Cross posted to My Left Nutmeg)
No, it’s not a sports score, it is a cutsey title to sum up my experiences last night.
Next Monday, the 23rd, marks the ninth anniversary of Madeleine Albright’s swearing in as the 64th Secretary of State to the United States. She has close ties to Connecticut, having gotten her BA from Wellesley College. Her daughter and son-in-law lived in Stamford when they gave birth to her first grandchild. She is an intelligent woman of great stature.
So, it is little surprise that she spent last night in Westport talking to a group of around 100 people about how we can address grave foreign policies issues that face our country. Her first recommendation was that we need to work together to elect Diane Farrell to be our next Congresswoman in the 4th CD.
Catching Up
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 01/19/2006 - 15:42Between travels, internet outages and so on, I’ve been way behind in my reading and writing, so let me take a few moments to catch up on interesting things going on online and provide additional commentary.
World Changing, a blog that I really enjoy, has a couple particularly interesting articles up right now. One is Turning Emissions Into Fuel With Algae. The idea is to harvest CO2 emissions and grow algae which could be used as a biofuel. Well worth the read.
Another interesting article they have is New Tool for Making Vaccines. The idea here is to use the Tobacco Mosaic Virus ‘to introduce new genes to tobacco plants without using transgenic modification’. The purpose would be to quickly to make large amounts of usable antigens for the creation of vaccines.
Searching Google
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 01/19/2006 - 10:25I’ve always been interested in Google searches. They can drive a lot of traffic to your site, and for unexpected reasons. My blog entry, ”I've always wanted a smoking jacket!” has brought over 5,000 people to my site. Toomre.com is getting a lot of hits on people searching for information about Anshul Rustagi, the CDO trader recently dismissed from Deutsche Bank.
So, the news that the Feds are after Google data as highlighted in Richard’s Notes caught me interest.
