I'm pretty unsettled about companies like Tyson entering the Organic foods market. They are marketing chicken under the brand Nature's Farm. Funny that there is no mention of their foray on their press releases. Perhaps people who buy organic food wouldn't be keen to read the "Tyson Foods, Inc. Reaches Agreement on Environmental Matter in Missouri". A small deal, what happend? Read The New Farm for Details

As a consumer, I'm probably just as much at fault. I grew up buying from a food coop and belonged to a subscription farm. I was happy when Whole Foods bought them out because they brought more selection and I haven't taken the time to find another subscription farm. I still believe that family farms are worth saving, and that trucking food in from Chile is a stupid waste of natural resources. I believe it but I'm not acting on it. I guess I'm not alone. Time to bookmark Organic farms in Rhode Island and find out if I can get back on a farm subscription.

Goals for the rest of the summer

1. Come up with a comic character
   1. Brush up on math programming and SVG
   2. Learn about porphyrins
2. Visit the Plum Island LTER site
3. Do a photo essay on roadside geology of New England
4. Train for triathalon
5. Move this entry to a goals page?

I contributed to the Howard Dean Campaign today. I really like his tech savvy and even though I don't agree with him on the Iraq issue, I believe that he is earnest in his criticism of Bush and is not trying to make political hay out of complex and difficult situation.

I get a thrill out of escaping from my grey, corporate cubicle and attending lectures on scientific topics given by experts in their field. It is such a joy to hear an expert give a talk to his colleagues at very technical level. Today went to a lecture by Benjamin Ehrenberg on porphyrins. The backdrop of the lecture was the use of porphyrins in treating cancer, but they are also useful for treating a variety of diseases.

In the movie Barcelona, there is a scene where the two main characters (Americans) are trying to explain American foreign policy to some anti-American europeans. One (Ted) is trying to explain our belief that we strive to protect the majority from a few thugs using red and black ants as a metaphor. The european says that his analogy is typical, that we think of the rest of the world as just a bunch of ants. The other American then says, "Where are the red ants?" and then proceeds to smash them. It was just a joke but the european hosts were totally offended.

Fortunately, not all of us believe in exterminating the red ants. Here is an interesting website devoted to the taxonomy of ants.

It looks like my blogger is mostly working. A few bugs in the comments, but they at least write out comments and so now all I need are some friends to blog back and forth with. :). Ooo, maybe I can write a regexp that changes that into a cute smiley.

I don't feel bad at all for writing my own blog because it was fun to dust off the old Perl. Also, since I'm remote hosted, my environment is limited to basic Perl and the bloggers that evaluated wouldn't run in a limited environment or didn't really do what I wanted in the way that I wanted.

Just as a philosophical point I believe in writing my own code if I have time and can. I learn a lot and it always comes back to help me in some way in my career. Even though I'm not doing Perl now, my plan is to begin a self-study of some scientific problem using BioPerl.

I'm not a Monsanto basher, but I read this article and got worried that someday I may not be able to buy organic corn, because all corn will be Bt Corn. We are reassured about strict government controls and safeguards on biotech crops, but it looks as though the regulations are routinely ignored and companies that sell them the products are content in denial. If a crop turns out to have serious long term environmental effects and gets embedded in the gene pool of corn, it won't be so damn trivial to get rid of it.

Now that I have my own blog, I'm interested in seeing how other online communities are working. I ran across wikipedia and science blog. The cool thing about the blog is that it has a syndication link that I should be able to include in the sidebar of this blog (I've just added to my todo list).

1. Finished my blog program well enough to post it :)
2. Added a final layer of paint to the baby's room
3. Cleaned the bathroom
4. Practiced "Alfie" on the piano
5. Went sailing in 15+ knot wind (YIKES, I'm a beginner and nearly went for a swim!!!*)
6. Drank ginger beer and rum while grilling hamburgers

Late Night Nostalgia

It's 45 minutes into the 12th of July and I'm so tired I can barely see the monitor. I tossed out XSLT entirely. Somehow in my excitement to write a blog I forgot about Keep it Simple Estupido! Now I'm just using perl templates and that is fine.

Also, I miss St. Louis. I miss all the development seminars and groups that revolved around the CAIT. These seminars had a big effect on the quality of my colleagues and never realized how important it is to have good resources for developing one's knowledge.

I miss friendly mid-western neighbors like my neighbor Mike who paddles a dugout canoe on the mighty rivers. I miss the Chocolate Bar in Lafayette Square. I miss how self-depricating St. Louisians were about their city and state, but it really is a very nice city. Missouri as a state has awesome canoeing, mountain biking, and fishing. Unlike the east coast you can actually eat the trout you catch.