culture fix

The tablets will work on any Windows platform, although if you use Windows 2000 or XP, you'll need this driver. (The other drivers are on a disk that comes with the tablet.)

As of this writing, I still have some tablets left over, with one up for auction at E-Bay.

The following are good resources for users of drawing tablets interested in digital art:

Drawing Applications
• The Gimp: GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.
• Inkscape: Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, or Xara X
• Blender: Blender is the open source software for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback.

Tutorials
• Gimp Tutorials
• Inkscape Docs & Tutorials
• Blender Quickstart & Tutorials

Miscellaneous
• Open Clip Art: This project aims to create an archive of user contributed clip art that can be freely used.
• Deviant Art: A great place to showcase your art and see what\'s cutting edge.

• Drawing area: 7" x 5"
• Stylus: Corded, pressure sensitive pen
• Tracing Proximity: 0.4"
• Pressure sensitivity: 256 levels
• Platforms supported: Windows/USB Macs
• Power source: 5vdc, Internal (no adapter needed)
• Resolution: 1000 lines per inch
• Other: Side clip to store pen

so just what's going on? why should we be worried? sure, we might lose some coastal areas, but the netherlands was built from reclaimed sea, right? we can do the same with new orleans?

well, let's see. we've learned now that not only is new orleans sinking, it's literally sliding off the continental shelf, because of decades of drilling for oil. and by the end of the century, not only will all the beaches in the world erode by 600 feet, the u.s. will have lost the equivalent of massachussets in dry land.

storms. sure we'll have a few more hurricanes. but katrina aside, we can weather a few storms.

here's a problem in reporting i noticed last fall. on one report, they said it was a disappointment for hurricanes last year, with nothing like katrina to hit the newspapers. but on the eleven o'clock news, as a side note, they mentioned that a 'typhoon' in china created a million and a half evacuees. here's an issue with symantics: in the western hemisphere, we call it a hurricane, while if it happens in the pacific, we call it a typhoon. same difference, folks. 2006 was the strongest year for hurricanes ever. it just happened we didn't get anything noteworthy on our side of the ocean this year.

temperature rising? break out the lemonade!

living in sunny connecticut has been a trip these past few years. i come from the south, so i grumbled every winter as i broke out the snow shovel and had to learn new coping skills (such as using a broom to sweep off the snow from your windshield). this last winter, though? it was frickin' 70 in january. how creepy is that? a little piece on page 9 said that in 50 years (and god willing, i'll be around to see that), connecticut's climate will be like georgia. nice place to retire! but wait, what does that make georgia by 2057?

so apparently, last year was the hottest year in the history of the planet. and nine of the ten past years have been the hottest years on record. what's going on?

well, so here's the deal. we're pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere like nobody's business. bush's plan to cut carbon emissions by 20% in ten years? he's talking about cutting 20% off the projected growth. he's selling an increase in carbon production by telling us it's emissions reduction. huh? oh, that's right, i forgot, this is america. where we save more by buying more.

so what's the big deal about carbon dioxide? well, the deal is the sun. the sun is a big furnace, baking the planet. so what happens is that most of the sun rays bounce back into outer space, giving any alien tourists a nice view of the earth. carbon dioxide is a warm, cozy blanket, causing a few of those rays to stick around awhile. good for us, because otherwise it would be like pluto, and we would all be freezing our asses in aboslute zero.

problem is, the planet has evolved over the past three billion years to have a fairly steady temperature. people and cows breathe in oxygen, exhale carbon dioxide. trees breathe in carbon dioxide, exhale oxygen. a nice little stasis where all the plants and animals stay happy. but then we come along and cut down all the trees! pump up billions of tons of oil and burn it! we're sucking on this giant cigarette in a small closet and wondering why it's getting so smoky.

the thing is, carbon that we put into the atmosphere stays there. carbon dioxide has a half-life in the atmosphere of 200 years. that means that even if we stopped driving altogether this minute and turned off all our factories, all that co2 we just pumped into the sky over the past century is still going to be around for awhile. and that means we would still be facing the devastating effects of global warming. but wait, we're not going to slow down, we're still planning to increase the production of carbon dioxide? and that's not even taking china, the planned successor to the united states for the leadership of the planet, into account.

al gore has a nice little prop he uses in his slide show presentations. he has this graph going along the stage, showing carbon dioxide and global temperature increases over the past sixty million year. it's a stable little wavy line changing little across the fifty feet of the stage. then it gets to now, and the line is over his head, already warmer than ever in the history of life on the planet. so al wants to show us what's coming up next, and he can't reach it. so he gets this forklift. and reveals the rest of the rising line, and it's literally off the chart. (that's called the hockey stick graph, by the way. it's famous in the circles of global warming enthusiasts.) (and another tangent: ever hear about the global warming "debate"? a recent survey of over 900 scientific articles on global climate change published in the last ten years, discovered that every single article either supported the idea that global warming is human-caused, or didn't comment one way or another on the cause. there is no debate. that's a fiction perpetuated by the media for the benefit of bush and co.)

so if you live in southern california, i hope you don't mind retiring in 140 degree summers. and dc? sure, maybe you can tolerate the 110 degree summers. but when greenland slides into the north atlantic and shuts down the ocean's thermohaline circulation, i hope you're ready for -50 degree winters as well.

but folks, that's only in a hundred years. and that's if we stopped producing excess carbon dioxide this moment! carbon dioxide, let me repeat, has a half-life of two hundred years. and it's going to keep right on baking things. ever heard of venus? oh, sure, maybe the wealthy part of society can keep on living in climate-controlled bubbles while the rest of the peons get right toasty in the 400 degree shade. but wait a minute, we haven't even been able to make a probe that can land on venus without melting.

i don't know. one of my first lessons in life was to not play with the oven. the tough news is that while some of us might be waiting for our mothers to remind us not to play with fire, she's not coming. christian fundamentalists and their savior aside, we're on our own, folks. we get to make our own decisions, we get to suffer our own consequences, and no one's going to mourn us after we've turned the gas too high and stuck our heads in the oven.

European universities evolved from the guild system. The guild system co-evolved with systems of money and urbanization. As cities evolved and people moved from barter to coin, so did guilds, considered to be the juxtaposed precursor to both labor unions and capitalization. Indeed, universitas itself means corporation.

However, the University of Paris, founded in 1100, was founded by an entirely different guild than the guild of students who formed the cooperative learning institution in Bologna. Teachers at Paris were paid by the Church (followed soon by universities supported by the State), so their customers were not the students, but were instead the Pope. By the end of the twelfth century, there were nearly a hundred universities spread throughout Europe, chartered, funded, and overseen, of course, by higher powers than the students they claimed to serve. Aided by lawyers and kings in the service of the owning class, fearful of the up-and-coming merchant class, these higher institutes of learning became the gatekeepers of professionalism we know today. And of course, this spelled the doom of the guild of students.

'wheee!!!' said the penguin. 'this is fun!' the super princess thought it was fun too, but when she saw the robox's sad eyes, she and the penguin let go of the robox and flew into the bushes.

'this is more serious than i thought,' said super princess. as the robox continued spinning, shouting, 'whoa, whoa, whoa,' super princess sat down and thought about the problem. 'ahha!' she said, jumping up. 'i know just what we need to do.' she grabbed the penguin and they started pushing the robox.

'where are you taking me?' said the robox as they spun her towards the path.

'we have to find a place that will stick you tight so you stop spinning,' said the super princess.

'we'd better hurry then, because i'm getting really dizzy.'

the super princess and the penguin pushed the robox down the path and to the bog. the bog is a dark and creepy place, where the alligators and the bats live. 'i'm scared,' said the penguin, looking at the blinking eyes and slithering snakes in the trees.

'me too,' said the robox as she spun around.

'me too,' said the super princess, 'but we have to keep going if we want to stop you from spinning.' she pushed and pushed, and the penguin pushed and pushed, and the robox spun and spun, and finally, plop went the robox, as she fell in the mud.

'hey!' shouted a voice from the mud. 'snap, snap! watch where you're going!' an alligator jumped up out of the mud, snapping its jaws.

'eeek!' shouted the super princess, grabbing the penguin and stepping back.

'hey, i stopped spinning!' said the robox, oblivious to the snapping alligator. but then the alligator flicked the robox with its tail, and she flew up into the air and landed on a dry log next to the super princess.

'we're sorry,' said the super princess to the alligator. 'i didn't realize this was your home.'

'well, that's ok this time, but don't do it again,' said the alligator as it slithered back into the mud.

'we'd better get you clean and dry,' said the super princess to the robox, and she and penguin grabbed her arms and walked with her back down the path. on the way, they grabbed the basket she left on the path.

soon, the super princess, the penguin, and the robox all got to the castle. mommy was waiting there, and said, 'you guys are a mess! you'd better come in and wash up.' after they washed up the robox, mommy made some tea, and super princess laid out her apples and cookies, and they all sat down and had a snack.

as night fell, mommy said, 'it's time for bed.' so the super princess walked with her friends to the bedroom. she got inside and counted her mattresses: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. her bed went all the way up to the ceiling. she climbed up the ladder, followed by the penguin. then she waved to the robox. 'come on up!' so up, up, up climbed the robox, and they all snuggled under the big blankets, where they found babo waiting for them.

they wiggled to, and they wiggled fro. they wiggled this way, and they wiggled that way. they wiggled all around, and they wiggled all about. finally, they settled down and went to sleep.

the end.