Notebook entry, July 31, 2005

I made a quick trip out to California to visit the kids. It appears very likely that their business will go belly up. I'm very sad and depressed over this; they worked so hard and deserve to have it succeeded. If they have to declare bankruptcy, they will lose the house and most likely be forced to move out of California. In a way, I glad that they will be released from all that stress and there is a strong possibility that they will move into our house in Colorado while they get back on their feet. On the other hand that makes me happy that I will see my granddaughter for an extended period of time.

The podcasting learning has taken a major hit because of the new development with the kids. All my focus is now centered on their well-being, as it should. But it has taken a serious toll on any studies of the new technology.

I also seem to have lost the desire to get involved in local politics. Since no one returned my call after the promise from State Senator Keller, it also put a stop to creating any new ideas for State House Representative, Ms. Green. "Why should I," I ask myself -- How many times to I have to strike out at bat before I realize that no one cares about what I think.

I now believe that my ideas, theories, and essays are not for this generation, but for some distant time way in the future.

In any case, the "fire in my belly" to make any changes in my world seems to have almost gone out. I need another sign from God to reignite the blaze like the 1993 incident.

Notebook entry, July 18, 2005

More technical problems: My SONY Viao notebook computer has a CD-DVD hardware issue....like it no longer works. After two sessions on the phone with SONY reps over a two week period -- including one session that involved a "System's Recovery" -- in other words -- restoring the notebook to the software condition received from the factory -- it was determined that I had a "hardware issue" and was given a work order number and an address where to send the device. Since the book is out of warranty, it will cost about $276 to repair.

That's not the problem....the machine is not important....it's the software and ideas, and film clips that had to be moved over to my desktop's monster drive. It took me several days with my schedule, but it's all done.

The podcasting is coming along with the usual speed bumps -- all of them technical -- which involves wrapping my 59 year-old brain around the technology. I purchased SONY Sound Forge Audio Studio. I purchased the software from an email promotion claiming "Voice Package Software" -- After I loaded the software, I found that the program had a fundamental flaw of the instruction manuel not matching the software that was sent ---THAT'S THE FINAL STRAW!!!....NO MORE SONY PRODUCTS for this guy...fini..nine..nada..no more..

But, with my basic knowledge of SONY Movie Studio, which has a similar format, I can navigate and produce voice files rather easily. I'll start making essay voice files next week. I think the hard part will be converting the files into a particular format to upload to various podcasting services.

I've purchased an inexpensive MP3 reader and have been searching for other podcasts to listen to....some are great, others not so great....

Notebook entry, July 5th, 2005

A mildly interesting piece in The New York Times today titled: How Quantum Physics Can Teach Biologists About Evolution, by Conella Dean. Basically it touches on Max Planck's 1900 discovery that matter can exist as both particle and wave. This upset the apple cart of Newtonian physics where the physically world was measurable, and therefore predictable.

The article continues by telling us that science survive when the facts were brought forward. In fact, Max Planck discoveries led to such inventions as computer chips, lasers, and CAT scans. In a great two lines, Dean writes:

It is a lesson that creationism can not, nor, will not accept. It is blind to reason and discovery. What was written long ago must be accepted and not challenged. They view it as a father who must be obeyed or else the father will 'punish' you for misbehaving. So, in its miserable attempt at survival, and deflecting evolution's powerful reason and logic, creationism has created a new smokescreen to obscure the facts called "intelligent design."

I strongly believe that the political capture of America's White House and both house of Congress are creating the downfall of America's science preeminence as we speak. The rest of the world no longer trusts our words on foreign policy, so why should it trust our science? I believe that the Bible as Truth crowd is taking us away from God and not toward's wisdom and truth.

I can only assume that God wants the ant hill of stupidity to collapse on itself so that the process can start over again -- reborn -- like it does in nature.

Notebook entry, July 3rd. 2005

I've been working in the background again, and this time I really screwed up big time. I was informed by my copyright lawyer that since I did not renew my register service mark that I would have to remove the character from the entire web site. No problem there, but since I have not written in quite a while, and for some reason, while I was attempting to attach another article from The New York Times onto the "What is Evolutionary Feminism" web page, I inadvertently zapped the entire web section into the vast internet unknown.

Heavens. Mercy. Shoot me now.

Only 500 hours of works down the drain I had thought. But, your action hero here was smart enough to have a back up file placed on Word Document. But the web section was really zapped, and now I have to restore all the links on the page. That is still quite a project, but not nearly any where close to 500 hours that I thought I might have to go through to replace the work. I would calculate perhaps 7 to 10 hours to reestablish the links.

On another note, I am having a very hard time putting myself in front of the camera. Somewhat, because of my poor self-image, but mostly because the film editing is really a big time drag -- it drains precious time from my studies. It's fun, because I'm working on creating a visual DVDs of my granddaughter and our household, but I'm still hesitant to put this all together onto the web site. Instead, I have decided to back up a bit and put all of my energies into "Podcasting" --- Many of my lady friends tell me that my voice is excellent and that I should do voice-over's.

So your action hero, once again, will step out into the unknown and try the "radio broadcasting" side of evolutionary psychology for the moment. I always thought that I was way to ahead of myself ....perhaps, this is the path I should have taken in the first place, but just needed the technology to be invented. Right Bill. Dream on.

Don't get me wrong. I haven't abandoned putting my lectures on DVD and putting them on the web site, it's just that I believe that this is an important step that I should also follow.