In the Coracle

Dan Savage, Catholicism, Grief and This American Life

May 14th, 2009, No Comments

Today, while walking to burn off some guacamole, I listened to the May 1 episode of the always-excellent This American Life radio show/podcast.
This American Life is a national treasure. For those that haven’t yet experienced it: each week, the show chooses a particular theme, then presents stories around that theme. This particular episode looks at [...]

Seth Godin on Why Tribes Will Change the World

May 13th, 2009, No Comments

Seth Godin argues the Internet has ended mass marketing and revived a human social unit from the distant past: tribes. Founded on shared ideas and values, tribes give ordinary people the power to lead and make big change. He urges us to do so.

Three Ongoing Points Against Amazon Kindle

January 17th, 2009, 3 Comments

Continuing with a topic I wrote about this past November, I still would like a Kindle, but here are three reasons it’s fine by me that the v2 isn’t yet available, forcing me into a decision:

Used book prices via Amazon often are way below Kindle’s prices

For the last three books I added to my wishlist [...]

Last Minute Gift Buying Guide: Help Start a Bicycle Repair Shop, or Buy a Taxi, or Breed Cows

December 22nd, 2008, 1 Comment

It’s now a few days before Christmas, and if you’ve been living under a rock for a while, you’re now in panic mode trying to finish up your gift purchasing and shipping.
Of course, when I say “You” I mean “I” or “me”.
I’ve got a few gifts to finish up with, and I’m taking a slightly [...]

Blogroll updated

November 20th, 2008, No Comments

I spent some time last night updating my links, or blogroll, to point you to many of the blogs that I read regularly and to some other very helpful organizations and networks.
If you read this blog directly in your browser, scroll down and look at the link categories in the right columns. If you read [...]

St. Patrick’s Breastplate Wordle

October 15th, 2008, 2 Comments

I’ve blogged before about the prayer known as St. Patrick’s Breastplate or Patrick’s Lorica. Here’s the text of this lovely piece of spirituality.
Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. The bigger a [...]

Fundamentally Wrong

October 14th, 2008, 2 Comments

In the past few days a pastor at a John McCain rally prayed that God would protect His name by causing McCain to defeat The Other Guy, since there were non-Christians praying for The Other Guy to win.  Here’s a clip:

Now, as this election is drawing near, we’re hearing more and more partisanship from two [...]

Rule of St. Benedict Wordle

October 8th, 2008, No Comments

I’m a big fan of Wordles, as you may be able to tell recently :-)  Any way to flip perspectives a bit and give us a way to see reality in a different way gets a thumbs-up in my book.
Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give [...]

Flying anytime soon?

October 4th, 2008, 1 Comment

You’ll be one of these green dots.
(Video simulation of global air traffic patterns over a 24-hour period)

200GB Free! (Or, How to Upgrade Your MacBook Pro’s Hard Drive)

October 2nd, 2008, No Comments

My Macbook Pro shipped with the large hard drive – the 120gb one. It’s pretty easy to fill that space up with photos and music and podcasts.
In order to free up space, I took the initial measure of moving my iTunes library to an external USB drive. That meant that I had to have my [...]