Sophocles’s drama Philoktetes, which I saw enacted some time ago at the Getty Center, finally clarified for me some of the moral lessons of the Trojan war epic cycle, and why this narrative was so central in shaping the classical athenian concepts of virtue and justice. Since this is blog entry and not a term paper I don’t have time to go into what the literature teaches about those moral lessons and about justice and virtue. And I haven’t studied the literature well enough to know his flaws - and we can’t know much since we are missing the majority of…
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Philoktetes, Pagan Virtue, and Poetic Justice
posted Apr. 10th, '08 by 
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BarcampLA-5 :: Technology, Politics, and Society
Last week’s BarcampLA went swimmingly, there were great sessions, and it was an honor to meet so many smart, competent, and conscientious people; to learn from eachother and break bread together.
The highlight for myself was an after hours conversations over dinner and spilling on through the powerpoint karaoke session in which Pete, Jonathan, Lucas, Rachel, Uri and myself put our heads together and ’solved’ some of the worlds ‘big’ problems. Such as Los Angles transit - solution: dedicated freeway bus lanes with park and ride lots instead of rail; PRC Information censorship policies - solution:…
posted Mar. 7th, '08 by »
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Ishmael and Isaac
Its the time of year for Ramadan, and you don’t have to read the news for very long to remember that the ancient bitterness and rivalry between Hagar and Sarah and their sons Ishmael and Isaac is still with us. I took some time to research what the Hebrew scriptures have to say about the matter, beyond the story told in Genesis. One thing I discovered was that, like Jacob, Ishmael also had 12 sons.
“…These are their generations: the firstborn of Ishmael, Nebaioth; then Kedar, and Adbeel, and Mibsam, Mishma, and Dumah, Massa, Hadad, and Tema,
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posted Oct. 13th, '07 by »
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Saint John’s Bible
A Benectine Abbey in Minnesota is nearing completion of an illuminated manuscript of the Bible, composed entirely by hand on sheets of calf-skin vellum by the master calligrapher Donald Jackson. I’ve alway liked picture books, and this one, of course raises the interesting theological and artistic question of how to represent the Lord God in light of the second commandment of monotheism - ‘Thou shalt make no graven image’.
The answer, of course, is Gold, which is used as a symbol throughout the Hebrew Tanakh and the Greek New Testament to represent the character and…
posted Oct. 2nd, '07 by »
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Grid Theory
Being that my background is mainly in development, I thought I’d learn a little about design before launching a project to design and develop a web presence for my freelance business. One that’s a little more inspiring than this half-baked myspace hack job, at least. A quick web search turned this up. Khoi Vinh is the design director for the NYTimes.com, and he gives a great tutorial while leading us through a redesign of, erm, Yeaahhhhh.com. Enjoy.
I’ve also found mioplanet’s pixelruler to be pretty handy, as well as IrfanView, a…
posted Jul. 30th, '07 by »
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Lifehacks
All about filing
I’ve found that an alphabetical system works better than a categorical system. Invariably, you’ll have difficulty remembering which category you put something in if you file that way. Some items, such as ‘Manuals’ or ‘Banking’, I label by category, rather than name, and then file the category name under the alphabetical system in M or B, respectively. Once I expand to more than two filing drawers, I imagine that I’ll have to put together some sort of index.
There are several other indispensable tools, the first I suggest to you are two-ply manila folders. The tabs won’t get…
posted Oct. 15th, '07 by »
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GTD: Inbox to zero in 15 min
‘Getting Things Done’, epitomized by the eponymous volume which Time magazine has recently called the self-help business book of its time and thereby elevated it from cult status among knowledge workers and into the mainstream. Rather than starting with priorities, goals, and mission statements, the purpose of David Allens method is to gain control and perspective. Do a mind sweep, gather everything into an inbox, could be an email inbox, voicemail, or a physical one. Then process it according to a workflow. Here’s a more advanced workflow diagram.
If you can’t do…