random bits: links, work, new-to-me TV show

Hummingbirds from egg to flight, courtesy of otterblossom.

Scott Adams speaks sense about flag-burning.

Lesson learned: interns go where you point them. :-) They'll do exactly what you tell them to do, and they haven't been out in the world long enough to encounter nuance, so don't give vague directions. (In this case: swap in this new logger class, and while you're at it get rid of the direct calls to System.out.println(). Um, yeah -- I should have said explicitly to replace them with calls to the logger where it made sense to do so. I didn't mean wipe them out entirely. Fortunately, that's why we have change control.)

I recently picked up (at deep discount) the first season of a TV show called Jeremiah, pretty much entirely because J. Michael Straczynski wrote it. (Well, he wrote the episodes; the story is based on a comic book by someone else.) The show ran two seasons on Showtime c. 2002-2003. Only the first is available on DVD, so there is disappointment down the road for me, but so far I'm really enjoying what I've seen (six episodes). The premise is that 15 years ago some mega-virus wiped out everyone on earth past puberty; the kids who survived are now adults living in the aftermath. Jeremiah and his sidekick Kurdy are two of the guys in (figurative) white hats; my one-word characterization of Jeremiadh is "paladin". Jeremiah is trying to find a place his parents named before they died, though he's not sure why it's important, and the few people who've heard of it won't talk about it. We've seen glimpses of his back-story (particularly that he feels responsible for his brother's death) and I assume more will be forthcoming. So far the show seems to be episodic with a loose arc, but it's early yet. ( speculation -- not technically spoilers, I don't think, but cut anyway )

planning a Shabbat service

A few months ago my rabbi gave me a Friday-night service to lead, which will be next week (July 14). There have been some changes since I first wrote about my plans, so here's an update on my thinking. ( Read more... )