Son of Timatollah

We watched Borat tonight.

Yow!

Labels: borat

Johnny Rotten/Lydon and Grace Slick! Brought to you by DREMEL.

Labels: john johnny rotten lydon grace slick dremel tremelo

Among the joys of teaching at Embry-Riddle are e-mails like this:

Orbital Commerce Project is visiting our campus today with a rocket powered aircraft flight simulator. They are set-up by the Creekside Observatory (observation astronomy dome) on the back side of the Lehman building and invite all students, faculty, and staff to come out and test the simulator between 11:30 a.m. to 4:00 pm.

"Rocket powered aircraft flight simulator." Wow.

Labels: erau, flight, powered, rocket, simulator

Wayne Campbell: So, do you come to Milwaukee often?

Alice Cooper: Well, I'm a regular visitor here, but Milwaukee has certainly had its share of visitors. The French missionaries and explorers began visiting here in the late 16th century.

Pete: Hey, isn't "Milwaukee" an Indian name?

Alice Cooper: Yes, Pete, it is. In fact , it's pronounced "mill-e-wah-que" which is Algonquin for "the good land."

Wayne Campbell: I was not aware of that.

Back Saturday. Thanks to Mack for finding the lines above.

Tomorrow, 11 October, is National Coming Out Day. Twenty years ago, the 2nd March on Washington for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered rights took place. The year after that, NCOD was first celebrated.

Five years ago, I gave a speech at ERAU on NCOD. Tomorrow evening, Riddle is celebrating NCOD with a panel discussion, sponsored by the Office of Diversity Initiatives (thanks, Jo!), featuring a representative from the National Gay Pilots Association, someone who flies into hurricanes for a living, and a computer engineer. The last two are friends of mine. Sim Aberson, the award-winning hurricane scientist, is someone I've known for years now from my soc.motss days. And Tammie Truath was a computer engineering student of mine at ERAU who had done just fantastically since she graduated.

I'm just completely proud that they would both agree to participate, and that we were able, after several years, to restore the connection to the NGPA.

The down side is that I'm going to miss it. I have a meeting in Milwuakee to be at on Friday, so tomorrow I'm flying up there. I'll be having dinner in Madison with Jess Anderson, another old friend from soc.motss, tomorrow night about the time of the NCOD event.

Maybe we'll call in.

Mr. Fripp, on attention and its role in being:

We begin where we are.

So, where are we?

Better, before we move from A to B, to know that we are at A.

How do we know where we are?

By getting to know ourselves.

How do we get to know ourselves?

We put part of our attention on the outside, and part of our attention on the inside.

We divide our attention between what we are doing, and our internal responses to what we are doing.

We watch what we are doing, while simultaneously watching our responses:

sensing our physical relaxation;

our thinking;

our feeling.

So, how well we get to know ourselves is determined by our capacity to divide the attention.

That is, how well we get to know ourselves is determined by the quality of our attention.

We know ourselves to the degree that our attention is available to know ourselves.

The extent of our attention in time is called our Present Moment.

The spacial extent of our attention is reflected in how far, geographically, our interests & influence extend.

This is sometimes referred to as our level of Being.

So, how much attention do we have?

The quick answer, from someone who has been looking at this for a long time, is not very much.

Labels: attention, being, fripp

More information about raptors can be found on the Internet here and here and here and here.

Like the lady from Jamaica used to say: "Have a smashing day!"