Super Video of Space Shuttle Launches

For those who are fans of our space program, and of the 30 years of the Shuttle’s trips into orbit, these videos are outstanding and well worth the 60 minutes it takes to view them.  So, click here, set the video to full screen mode and kick back to watch.

Time to Ban "Utilize" From the English Language

For years I've been seething about the incredibly common use of the awkward, flow-breaking, three-syllable word "utilize".  It pops up everywhere in conversation and on the written page.  I came across this linguistic black head five times in the New York Times Op-Ed section this morning and that prompts this post.

Why the hell is "u-til-ize" spoken and written so often when a simple, one-syllable, three letter word works so much better?  Is it bureaucratic or academic pretentiousness at fault?  A disdain for the simple?  I don't know, but I do know that substituting "use" in its place drops any hint of pretentiousness or complexity.

There is, properly, a use for "utilize".  That is when the speaker or writer intends to modify the word "use" with "profitably", or "constructively"; e.g., "I brought the wrong tools so I couldn't utilize my time."  But "utilize" is used wrongly so frequently that the proper distinction between the two words is now lost.  As a result I think it would be better to go with "I brought the wrong tools so I couldn't use my time effectively".

Come on folks, it's time to stop utilizing "utilize" when a simple "use" will do just fine.

Hummingbirds II

About a week ago "my" first flock of Canadian geese came honking over the house and splashed into my creek for an overnight stay on their way south -- a harbinger of the fall season.  The next morning I noticed that two or three of my hummingbirds had also disappeared -- presumably on their way south.  I've still got two hummingbirds hanging around, but the rambunctious, playful behavior that has characterized the birds for most of the summer is gone as well.  Perhaps the hummingbirds still here are the older, more staid birds, that came up from the south this spring and parented the several that hatched in the early summer, while the younger birds -- anxious for their first trip beyond Hollywood -- left a little early.  Or maybe the older birds are the ones that took off knowing the strenuous nature of their flight to Central or South America and the younger birds, motivated by instinct, have gotten serious about fattening up for the day their genes instruct them to get moving south and found that their playful "dog fights" and strafing displays consume too many calories.  I wish I had the knowledge and eye-sight to recognize individual hummingbirds, but I know that few people do.

Soft Landing

In any case, the two birds that are still using my feeders will be taking off any day now.  I wish my birds well as they begin their long flight.  I understand that their route south gets them to the Gulf Coast where they follow the coast line down through Texas and into Mexico.  Over the years they've learned that this is hurricane season and a straight flight over the Gulf is too dangerous to attempt.  In the spring, however, many do make non-stop flights over the Gulf coming north, instinctively, genetically knowing that the risk in the spring is considerably less.

I'll keep my hummingbird feeders up for another month or so in case birds starting their migration from more northern summer homes need them for some quick calories along their route south.  And I look forward to the day in the spring when my same birds return to pester and remind me to put the feeders back up.

Fly safe!

RIP, Dan Terry (Woodstock Class of 1965)

Dan Terry was a schoolmate of mine at Woodstock, a classmate of my sister Jessie (class of '65).  He and 9 other members of his group were lined up and executed 2 days ago by the Taliban while on a medical mission to a remote area of Afghanistan.  Dan devoted his professional life to the poor in Afghanistan and was one of their best friends.  He lived there with his family through the Russian occupation, civil war, the Taliban era of rule, and now the American led war against the Taliban.  The killing of Dan & his colleagues was senseless and stupid, and I hope that we, including the Taliban and those fighting them, will learn from their deaths.

I remember Dan from my Woodstock years, but I didn't know him well.  These quotes and links will describe him and his work much better than I could do:

First, today's Huffington Post story from AP:  click here and read down through the middle of the article where Dan is discussed.

Second, here's a quote from one of Dan's emails to the chair of this year's organizing committee for Woodstock's annual reunion.  We were hoping Dan could participate somehow in the reunion as a workshop leader discussing global citizenship and how Woodstock prepared him for the work he has been doing in Afghanistan.  His response tells us a lot about his remarkable qualities as a human being, the strategy that guided his work, and his love for the people he served:

"Eager to participate in any such related discussion.  I'm far from 'keynote' material but would readily participate in panel presentation and open floor discussion.  My schedule is uncertain but would likely necessarily override any commitment I could make.  So I could only be a raincheckee on this.  A Woodstock venue would be far easier for me than Wash DC.

It's urgent to appreciate and put to immediate use experience and insight found within and with context of the greater Woodstock community...in promoting 'doing as we talking'.  In Afghanistan I feel less intimidated, dispossessed,  the less I intimidate or hold in contempt.  More enfranchised the more I enfranchise.   Opposite numbers or catagorical enemies have rescued me and more than my marbles again and again.  There is new testimony to share to provide new context when so much of the time we disastrously just are not getting it out there!  Actually invest in the 'bad guys' and they tend to disappear (as such).  Allow us to re-invent ourselves.  Allow us to change the color and wrap of our lungi turbans...just let us get close!  In our heart of hearts its actually much more fun to just hang out with you than kosher your throat.  So count me in in theory and principle at least!   --Dan Terry"

Third, here's a quote from an email sent to friends of Dan's by a Woodstock alumnus on whom Dan had a great impact.  Gil Halsted, who authored this email, currently works for NPR in Wisconsin.

Dear Friends of Dan Terry,

I am still in shock, though truth be told since the war began almost nine years ago  now I expected this. Dan is the reason I came to Woodstock to spend my senior year of high school there. It was through his eyes and the eyes of Ruth and their parents that my view of the world changed radically in the summer of 1970 when I drove overland from Europe to India and back in a VW bus. With us on the trip over were Dan, George Taylor,  my father, and a classmate of Dan's from Baker  College whose name I've forgotten. I remember that drive across Afghanistan both ways as if it was yesterday. Pulling into Herat and seeing a parade of dusty and bedraggled hippies shuffling along through the bazaar, and mischievous young Afghan boys winking at  me as they offered to sell me hashish. On the way back with Dan's entire family, a Peace Corps volunteer and one of Ruth's classmates whose names I have forgotten, we went through Bamiyan getting there via roads some of which were half washed out or partially blocked by landslides. I climbed to the top of the huge, now non existent, Buddhas. Dan and that trip to India and back rocked my world. I have never been the same. I mourn with all of you for the loss of this shy, kind, adventurous and  gentle spirit. I searched the web yesterday to try to find out if Dan was among those killed and felt relieved when I couldn't find his name associated with any of the reports. It was a terrible blow to receive this note confirming his death.

Gil

Hummingbirds

Hummingbirds are a trip.  These days I've got 3-7 of them, at all times, buzzing around together at my two feeders, which are about 30 feet apart.  My normal roosting place on the deck, where I go to have my morning coffee and read the news, sits between the two.  I often feel the need to duck as they buzz by with incredible speed and dexterity.  During the spring there was only one of them (or perhaps it was several but always one at a time -- I can't distinguish any individual traits).  But this mini-explosion of their population over the past month got me curious, so I did some thinking and a little Googling about the possible causes of this.

One reason might be that I put ant guards between the feeders and the hooks they hang on, and they work very well.  Ants gone; hummingbirds happy.  The crowd showed up within days of the ants' disappearance.  Possible coincidence; the ants did not fully deter at least one of the birds from using the feeder to sip up.

There are fewer blooms around my neck of the woods this time of year, so maybe their feeding options are more limited.  The spring flowers have gone and my honeysuckle, which the hummingbirds love, should have some blossoms but seems to be choked by an overly zealous wild grape vine.

The most important reason is probably that the newly hatched are now flying and enjoying their new found freedom from their tiny nests.  Because hummingbirds only lay two eggs a season I figure that when three of them are frolicking and feeding it is the mother bird and her two kids.  Pop is off doing whatever hummingbird fathers do, which has nothing to do with parenting or guarding the nest.  They just show up for a quicky in the spring and fly off.  But if three are from one family, who are the others?  Hummingbirds can be very territorial, so is my core family of three allowing relatives into the mix?  Hmmm, don't have an answer to that one yet.

Here are some interesting facts about hummingbirds:

• In normal flight, they beat their wings between 10 and 80 times per second.  The smaller the bird the faster their wings flap (vibrate, really).  When they really get moving, like when the males are showing off to the females with some fancy moves, they can beat up to 200 times per minute.
• Normal flight speed is between 25 and 30 mph, but some have been clocked at 65!
• Hummingbirds can rotate their wings 180 degrees.  This, and other wing features, allow it to hover, fly backwards and forwards, straight up and straight down, and sideways.
• They eat nectar by licking and collecting the fluid into tubular structures on the tongue.  They "lick" at the rate of 13 times per second (try and do that with your tongue!).  A hummingbird can consume up to 8 grams of nectar at one time and consume 50% of their body weight in sugar per day.  And this is a bird who weighs perhaps 7 grams!
• Metabolic rates in hummingbirds are extremely high and during normal daytime activity heart beats are as high as 1,250 per minute.  At night, when they need to conserve energy, heart beats drop to as low as 50 per minute.  These guys should be teaching yoga!
• Young birds begin to fly within four weeks of being hatched and mothers may continue to feed and preen them for an additional three weeks or so. This seems about right for my hummingbirds; they arrive in April or so from somewhere in Central or South America, mate and lay two eggs, and two months later their kids are flying and eating on their own.

I was so lucky when I took these pictures in mid-May.  I've been trying to take more, but they bug off when they see my camera on its tripod (the shutter noise seems to scare them) and the lighting is bad on the deck in the summer so their iridescent colors don't show well.  Maybe by late summer before they decide to head back south the lighting will improve.

Gotta admire these little critters!

Reunions

There are two groups that I thoroughly enjoy "reunioning" with:  classmates and alumni of Woodstock School, located in Mussoorie, in the middle hills of the Indian Himalaya; and former Nepal Peace Corps volunteers.  Both carry strong bonds of long-term but intermittent friendship so easily rekindled, shared experiences of both the best and the gruesome of youth in relatively unique situations, and a strong dose of living together among some of the most awesome landscapes to be seen.  Sometimes I find it a bit odd that I have no such enthusiasm for reunions of the Connecticut high school class I actually graduated with, my Adrian College undergraduate class, or my Stanford MBA class.  Lots of shared experiences there during formative years, but...

Two weeks ago I hosted 11 classmates and two brave wives of the 1963 graduating class of Woodstock.  Almost guiltily I admit there were moments (when I was hosing out my bachelor-grungy frig or on the third day of power-washing my dock in 99 degree heat) when I wondered what possessed me to volunteer for such a thing.  But as my classmates arrived I knew immediately why; it became so obvious.  These were friends, good friends and we were immediately very comfortable with one another though I hadn't seen several since I left Woodstock after my sophomore year of high school .  We may not have been great friends back in the 4th grade or the 7th grade or the 9th; we may not have even liked each other very much, though some of us were best buddies.  But we're friends now, by golly, and it's a bit of nice wonder that in our older years we find such satisfaction and fulfillment in the years of our youth.

Immediately following our three days together here most of us went up the road to Leesburg, VA where the Woodstock Old Students Association (WOSA) sponsored a two-day school reunion at the National Conference Center.  More good stuff, with alumni ranging from the graduating classes of the 1930s on into this decade.  It was here that my mother, who graduated from Woodstock in 1935, and my aunt (class of 1942) were remembered along with 42 other alumni who passed away during the past 12 months since the last WOSA reunion.  It was here that 250 gathered for a delicious Indian meal, heard the Indian ambassador to the US address us, and sang -- from memory -- the Indian national anthem for her in return.  It was here that we participated in an interfaith celebration of life, watched outstanding Indian movies, heard fellow distinguished alumni speak to the conference theme of Global Citizenship and how Woodstock prepared them to be such.  It was here that we heard 40 of the group come together with 2 rehearsals as a marvelous choir conducted by Vance George (a former Woodstock music teacher and, for 23 years, the conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus) who most surely knows how to get golden vocals from the throats of largely very occasional singers.  And it was here that we closed the session with an hour of story telling -- war stories and jokes (most not very PC) and embarrassing moments and touching tales that changed a life or two.

Oh Woodstock, how special you are!

The Magic iPhone and a Very Defensive Steve Jobs

Everyone who reads this knows that I love gadgets, and that my relatively old iPhone 3G is with me at all times.  Even when I forget my wallet, my iPhone is in my pocket (and all my pocket T-shirt necks now droop permanently to the lower left).  But my 3G's battery was losing steam and my screen was cracked.  And I made the mistake of upgrading my 3G to iOS4.  Mind you, it has some nifty features, but it sure wasn't designed with the 3G in mind -- slow, slow, slow!  So, I just had to have my own iPhone 4 that was released yesterday.  My son Henry's phone was in about the same shape as mine, so family members all chipped in to buy him a new one for his birthday, and the release date is just close enough to that day to make it count as a birthday gift!

Getting our hands on two of these devices wasn't easy.  It took a day intermittently wasted trying to break through AT&T's and Apple's overwhelmed servers on the day they opened the product up for pre-order sales, to place an order for 2 (and no, you can't purchase 2 in one transaction -- you have to return for more torture).  Then there was the wait yesterday at the Pentagon City Mall's Apple Store (with Henry as great company) from 5:15 to 9:15.  We were 100th in the pre-ordered line and I would guess there were 400 or more behind us, and another 400 in the "hope they have some to sell off the shelf" line.  The wait actually wasn't so bad, in part because we were expecting the worst (and it moved quite well when the doors opened at 7:00).  It was also a fun, light-hearted and relaxed group, and Apple employees worked their way down the line with Starbucks coffee, donut holes, and water.  Everyone was excited.

So, was it worth it?  Yes!  The iPhone 4 is really an incredible little device.  It is fast.  It has two good cameras and takes real HD video that you can edit right there on the device.  Voice commands work great without a software training session.  The screen resolution is awesome, really awesome.  This is what iOS4 was designed for and it works great.  And the apps; tons of very useful (and not so useful, but fun) apps that run so much better on this model than my old one.  FaceTime, Apple's video conferencing feature works very well and is, ah, very very cool.  Here's hoping that Skype will add the video calling feature to its iPhone app so that calls are not limited to those with an iPhone 4.

But, there is one major problem that has me in a tither with Steve Jobs and Apple.  The damned cellular antennae, which is built into the steel band that wraps around the phone's edge and holds it together, does not work when you hold it in your hand like anyone holds a phone.  Your water-filled, and maybe sweaty, hand blocks the cell signal.  The only way I have found to use the phone in my house (that normally has 3-4 bars of signal strength with the help of a signal extender) is to lay it flat on a table and use the speaker phone.  This problem has gotten a lot of press between yesterday and today, and Steve Jobs finally responded to the problem by saying it is a "non-issue;"  just hold the phone differently, he says, or buy a rubber bumper to cover the band.  Well, his first suggestion is ridiculous -- iPhones will be falling to the floor ten times a day.  And if it needs a rubber bumper around the band to make the phone work, why wasn't it either built into the iPhone 4 to start with or at least -- realizing that they'd really screwed up this wonderful piece of technology -- hand out free bumpers with every sale until they get the problem fixed!  C'mon Jobs, get off your egotistical horse and do what's right for all those who have forked over a good bit of money, not to mention time, to get their sweaty palms on a magical device whose cell phone doesn't work right out of the box!