Heartbreak

A dear friend, who’s three years my junior, learned yesterday that the breast cancer she’s fought fearlessly for a dozen years will soon have the last laugh. She sent a typically wry email around to announce this news to her “Best Beloveds.”

In it, she muses about how best to use her remaining time. “Does one keep moisturizing,” she wonders, “even if future wrinkles may no longer be an issue? Which books should I read: old favorites or nifty sounding new ones?”

I’m devastated.

The Known Universe, Scientifically Rendered For All to See | American Museum of Natural History News

A welcome, perhaps even necessary, bit of perspective as we ring in the New Year, this short film vividly depicts the Universe as scientists best know it. Produced by Michael Hofman and directed by Carter Emmart, it’s well worth six minutes of your time. Click left or below to view.

The Known Universe Scientifically Rendered For All to See | American Museum of Natural History News.

Photo Blog: Shelf Road Trail, Ojai

On the Sunday after Christmas, we (Tom, Steve, Sims and I, accompanied by Jefferson, S&S’s chocolate lab) hiked the lovely Shelf Road Trail in Ojai.  Below, some iPhone photos from our walk:

Topa Topa

Sundown, Christmas Day

Tits

Tits, by Seb Lester

You can purchase this, and similarly imaginative Seb Lester prints, here. You can also follow him on Twitter, where he’s @seblester.

Interesting Entrees?

For the past two months, I’ve been following a near-Vegan, near-gluten-free diet for two reasons: 1) to improve my general health and minimize chances of further disease and 2) to lose weight.

Only time will tell if I achieve goal number 1, although my already-low cholesterol had dropped another three points by my physical last month.

Goal number 2 is well under way, as I’ve lost 15 pounds. Still a ways to go before my driver’s license isn’t a lie, but I’ve no doubts I’ll be there within a few months.

My husband has been cheerfully supportive, as he was never a big meat-eater and his cholesterol runs on the high side.

Most breakfasts I have fruit, and most lunches I have soup and/or salad.

It’s dinner that’s the issue for me.

I’m bored to sobs with soups, stir-fries (using water!), steamed or roasted veggies, and the like. I miss the taste and texture of meat and dairy, even more than I miss bread. I want something gooey and chewy, like eggplant parm or cassoulet or lamb stew.

Before you ask: I never say never. I cooked a (delicious, IMHO) Heritage Farms turkey for Thanksgiving, and had a few ounces. My son made a glorious apple-almond torte, and I had a sliver. I’m perfectly willing to make occasional exceptions, and will continue to do so. Occasionally.

I’m talking about day-in, day-out dinner entrees. And rightly or wrongly, I would never mistake a grilled portobello mushroom for a hamburger .

Any thoughts, recommendations, or encouragement gratefully received!

Ethics is Not for Wimps

I’m a longtime fan of Michael Josephson. He’s the founder of the Josephson Institute of Ethics, and provides the  ”Character Counts” segments to which I listen on KNX radio here in Los Angeles. (He’s also the uncle of a close friend of mine, but I didn’t know that until long after I became a devoted listener.) As the parent of college-age child, I found today’s segment particularly timely and useful:

Let’s be honest. Ethics is not for wimps. It’s not easy being a good person.

It’s not easy to be honest when it might be costly, to play fair when others cheat, or to keep promises that are inconvenient.

It’s not easy to stand up for our beliefs and still respect differing viewpoints.

It’s not easy to control powerful impulses, to be accountable for our attitudes and actions, to tackle unpleasant tasks, or to sacrifice the now for later.

It’s not easy to bear criticism and learn from it without getting angry, to take advice, or to admit error.

It’s not easy to feel genuine remorse and apologize sincerely or to accept an apology graciously and truly forgive.

It’s not easy to stop feeling like a victim, to resist cynicism, or to make the best of every situation.

It’s not easy to be consistently kind, to think of others first, to judge generously, or to give the benefit of the doubt.

It’s not easy to be grateful or to give without concern for reward or gratitude.

It’s not easy to fail and still keep trying, to learn from failure, to risk failing again, to start over, to lose with grace, or to be glad of another’s success.

It’s not easy to look at ourselves honestly and be accountable, to avoid excuses and rationalizations, or to resist temptations.

No, being a person of character is not easy. That’s why it’s such a lofty goal and an admirable achievement.

To learn more about JII, and the various programs that have to instill ethics in both students and professionals, please visit their website at http://josephsoninstitute.org.

Twitter’s New RT Feature

As my mom likes to say, “there are pros and cons on both sides” to Twitter’s new RT function (at this writing, still being rolled out in Beta). Here are what I perceive them to be at this point.

First, the good.

• It makes the process of retweeting much easier. Just click a button. No need to copy/paste, no inadvertently omitting or misspelling the username of the person you’re RTing.
• It provides an easy way to evaluate the viral nature/popularity of a given tweet, by seeing how many times it’s been retweeted.
• It preserves the original author’s wording intact, mitigating against changed meanings, plagiarism and tweetjacking. (Although those inclined to do the latter probably won’t avail themselves of the RT function).
• It means you don’t have to truncate words or resort to netspeak abbreviations, since you don’t have to make room for the “RT @” bits.
• It restores some of the functionality we lost with the change to the @ mentions feature (see my post on this here). In other words, we used to be able to see all the tweets of anyone we followed in our stream, even if they were addressing or replying to someone we didn’t already follow. That was a useful way to find new people to follow, and a way to jump into conversations. Twitter changed that so we now only see a person’s replies if we also follow the person to whom they’re replying. With the new RT feature, we can now easily see tweets from the accounts that those people we follow find interesting. This re-opens the opportunity for us to enter conversations and discover new people to follow.

Now the not-so-good.

• It can be jarring to see posts from names we don’t follow in our tweet stream. Twitter would do well to make the name of the person doing the RTing more prominent.
• The RT function, as created organically by the Twitter population, provides for context. We can, given the available characters, add our own sentiment, or explain why we’re RTing. The new function removes that possibility.
• Not all 3rd-party apps can currently see RTs created using the RT button. Many of us use such apps, both on our desktops and mobiles, to access Twitter. That means we’re potentially missing out on important RTs, which are as likely to contain timely news and information as humor or shopping tips. It also means you can’t use the RT button while using those apps (although some, like TweetDeck and Tweetie, do provide easy ways to create RTs without having to copy/paste).

As with most things Twitter, the RT process will continue to evolve. It’s a function that was originated by the Twitter community itself, and it’s heartening to see the company respond by officially incporporating it to the service.

To List, or Not to List

Everyone’s all atwitter (forgive the pun) over the service’s new Lists feature.

It is, if you will, a glamorized, organized version of the site’s ubiquitous “Follow Friday” meme, in which users recommend people for other users to follow.

Some seem to regard the Lists function with a combination of fear and contempt: that it will turn into a popularity contest of sorts; that the number of Lists on which one appears will become the new success metric.

However, I’d urge a second thought about spurning the feature, for these reasons:

1) It’s a tremendous educational tool. Think of those you admire who you follow on Twitter: artists, authors, experts, executives, journalists. We’re all lucky that (as fans, students, colleagues, competitors, whatever) we can – with a click – have access to a curated group of people they think enough of to add to a List.

2) Leave aside the potential clique-ish-ness of Lists, and think big. Think about making more connections in your world. For whatever your hobby, cause, or career, wouldn’t it be nice to find a List – or multiple Lists – of people you can follow, with a click, who share that interest? And who, once you follow the List and interact with those on it, may choose to follow you back?

3) Conversely, think about advancing your own hobby, cause or career. Do YOU follow a group of Tweeps because of their  field or area of interest? It’s probably taken you some time to cultivate that list. Share your expertise with the rest of us. It’s a generous thing to do, and it makes you look good in the process.

4) It makes it super-easy to do Follow Friday. Want to recommend everyone you follow who has a food blog? Those tweeps who share your love of horror films? Your collection of food trucks operating in L.A.? Make a List of ‘em, and Follow Friday the list address. No more worrying about forgetting someone, or about not having room for all the names.

One thing I’d like to see added to the feature: a brief (140 character, if need be!) explanation field so that one can, beyond the name, add some context to one’s Lists.

Will Lists cause some social fallout? Inevitably. Maybe someone you follow, whose blog you DON’T admire, will be put out at being excluded from your List. You may have to choose between 100% integrity on your List, and keeping the social peace. But in this way, online social life simply mirrors offline social life. We don’t all get invited to the party. We don’t all get the gig. That’s how it goes.

However:

In the end, everyone should use Twitter the way that works best for themselves. You don’t have to create any Lists, and you don’t have to follow any, either. I just wanted to state some cases for why Lists aren’t necessarily evil.

Hiccup

This is my friend Cliff’s pug, Hiccup. I want to hug him.