Musings

During our late afternoon walk, the sun began to fade and the breezes to pick up; rain’s predicted for tonight and we could feel the change coming. Still, we enjoyed our last look and sniff of blooms that will not survive rain-battering, and, with anticipation, checked out those still closed up in buds, like this dogwood.

Oh, and…sometime during the wee hours I dreamed that I cut my hair to just below the earlobes and above the shoulders, and dyed it deep, dark auburn, like my mom’s used to be….

Posted at 6:22 PM | Comments Off on Change coming

I can’t remember a day I wanted to use these words, but today they both come to mind. Breezes over the last few days have brought down some of the blooms from the ornamental fruit trees, and tangoed them into windrows along the curb. Still, the air is redolent with their rich perfume….

On another note, here’s a definition of pure laziness I observed on today’s walk. Fella pulls into his driveway in his fancy but not overlarge SUV. The driveway is about two car-lengths long. He stops at the mailbox, strategically located next to the sidewalk on the lot side (not the street side) and stops to open it and check for mail, reach, stretch, slams it closed and hits the gas to ease on into the garage complete with remote and electric opener, of course.

Any guesses on how much he pays a month for his gym membership?

BTW, John caught the action on a Ponce street corner the other day. And, yes, the tutu was really that pink! His shoes would have Cojo cringing, I’m sure….

Posted at 6:21 PM | 4 Comments »

Perfect sports weather today, and here’s our favorite soccer player in action. Even scored a goal! Rah!

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Another spring highlight in these parts is the Bradford pear, a lovely tree native to eastern Asia that, unfortunately, is very susceptible to having its major limbs split from the main trunk, especially during ice storms. This time of the year, however, they are just plain stunning.

Question of the day: will I sign up for Mandarin Chinese for Beginners this spring at Emory?

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Antidote to gloomy winter: revisit brilliant summer!—in this case, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on Lake Superior’s south shore in Michigan’s Eastern Upper Peninsula.

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Where there is access to or acquisition of biodiversity (and/or related traditional knowledge) without prior informed consent, including prior informed consent about benefit sharing, on the part(s) of those whose biodiversity (or traditional knowledge) has been “accessed” or “acquired”, there is biopiracy—i.e., theft.*

—defined by the Edmonds Institute and biopirate hunter Jay McGown.

Intellectual property rights, which include biopiracy, is in part culturally situational, and there are no clear blanket answers to how to respect and codify them. In general, however, the poor, at whatever scale (from individual to nations of the third world) tend to be preyed upon by the non-poor, as in this example from Africa. But there are plenty of examples of the haves feeling like they’ve been stolen from: think of the many music tracks distributed via Napster, plus the torrents of current shows and movies, etc. How much is this nabbing of intellectual property “just” human nature? How much is it a consequence of our pervasive economic system, Capitalism?

Certainly, the current buzz about Google and Yahoo and the rest doing business in China vs. the attitudes of the Chinese government suggests the latter reigns. But, what if it’s also human nature to take (“beg, borrow, and steal”?)? How do we deal with this on the international scale then?

Either way, stay tuned to your favorite RSS streams or other information sources and you will encounter the latest news stories regarding intellectual property rights.

* From Out of Africa: Mysteries of Access and Benefit of Sharing (2006, Edmonds Institute and African Centre for Biosafety), page i. Download it here. The Edmonds Institute is a 501(c)(3) organization “committed to the health and sustainability of ecosystems and their inhabitants.” BTW, pages 8 and 9 discuss Hoodia, an appetite suppressant from a cactus that grows in the Namibian desert; development of Hoodia was based on traditional knowledge of the !San (used to be called Bushmen), and they receive only minor royalties from one company that sells Hoodia products. In most cases cited in this document, local peoples receive no compensation whatsoever. However, in many examples the organism used for the patent (or pharmaceutical or enzyme or …) is not explicitly linked to indigenous knowledge, so it’s difficult to evaluate the intellectual property rights involved.

Posted at 8:00 PM | Comments Off on Biopiracy

Today’s one of those overcast, sharp-breezy winter days that make me crave summer sunsets—pink, warm, placid and pacific. Out of the frame is a perfect s’mores fire and a crowd of soft-talking, laughing friends.

Posted at 8:36 AM | Comments Off on Summer sunset

The Prime Meridian, the one through Greenwich, England, doesn’t line up in Google Earth. As you can see, the meridian in this projection is east of the observatory, by about 100 meters. The reason:

This is not a mistake on Google’s part. The developers of Google Earth (originally known as Keyhole) chose to support the same coordinate system as that used by GPS technology known as WGS-84 World Geodetic System.

Click here for a technical explanation of all this. Basically, the earth isn’t a smooth, regular sphere, and GPS is so accurate, something had to give. So they shifted the Prime Meridian. And there’s also the contribution of continental drift….

Google Earth (it’s FREE), if you haven’t yet explored it, is fascinating—searchable satellite photos of THE WORLD! Add places to your personal list, or send them out to the Google community.

Trivia: the GPS system uses 25 satellites, each with two atomic clocks. Bob Burns turns 80 today (Happy Birthday, Bob!). Jack Finlayson has come through his surgeries okay.

Posted at 10:37 AM | Comments Off on Prime Meridian

On today’s walk we once again looped around Piedmont Park’s Lake Clara Meer (John says the name is nobody’s, merely one that sounded good to the development types who planned it), and watched an unmoving Great Blue Heron, posed on the south shore of the lake amidst busy ducks. Sorry no picture….

Now, I smell the pizza dough’s ready to be kneaded—mmm, home-made tonight with goat cheese, mushrooms, and basil!

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Along with shelling out your hard-earned cash for the ticket, when you take a plane ride, you get the cheap thrill of seeing the earth from what might now be known as the Google Earth perspective. It’s a lesson in how to feel small—or perhaps the size we should be feeling all the time.

We left Seattle Sunday in a big splash of sunshine, and had this great view of Mount Rainier as we began the eastbound leg back to Atlanta. The rain we saw all week dumped deep white stuff on the ski slopes and high elevations, heightening avalance potential and reminding us that there’re no looming white peaks back in the Southeast.

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