Link: Slidell Hurricane Damage Blog.

Brian just started a blog about Slidell, Louisiana and the hurricane damage.  He'll be posting as much info as he can gather, which, at the moment, is pretty limited.

Cha-ra

1.    Noun. Means ‘shit’.
2.    Use in sentence: “Man, I feel like chara because I didn’t give Charlie a big good morning hello. I will try not to act like such a little chara in the future.”

Obviously, I called someone out on walking around the office with work blinders on...   :)

UPDATE: Before you embarrass yourself, I just found out that the "ch" sound in this is not like the "ch" in Charlie or cheer... its the flemy gurglely noise that you make when you want to hock something out.  I'm sure that's not a politically correct way of explaining that, but if you can come up with a better way to type out that noise, I'm all ears.

UPDATE: “The eight letter of the Hebrew alphabet is called “chet” (rhymes with mate) and has the (light scraping) sound ‘ch” as in “Bach”.   "Light scraping"...  ok, I guess that's a nicer way of putting it.   (From Hebrew4christians.com)

“The eight letter of the Hebrew alphabet is called “chet” (rhymes with mate) and has the (light scraping) sound ‘ch” as in “Bach”

When you work for an internet company that is mostly staffed with Israelis, you wind up with stuff like this in your inbox:


Hebrew Word of the Day - Mur'al

Mur·al (pronounced as written)

1. slang
2. deriving from the word “poison”
3. Used to describe someone who identifies with and who is deeply associated with a certain goal or mission; for example, many time used to describe a young soldier in the IDF J.
4. Use in sentence: “Wow, that Charlie sure is mur’al. He keeps coming to work with avatar t-shirts.”    

Sometimes, we feel like we have more control over the past than the future.

Weird, no?  Because its already happened.

But the past is somewhat maliable...   its all about perception.

"No, I didn't really mean it that way."

"That's not what I said."

"But you never saw the other thing that happened right before that..."

"You must be mistaken."

In a culture of stories--our own recollections of the past versus hardcoded truth, sweeping over tracks in the sand seems so easy.  Memories are so tenuous and open to interpretation, that we seem to spend more of our time trying to change the past or imagine what would happen if we did (because we know exactly what we things we need to change to make our lives better) than we actually spend trying to change our future.  And yet, the fact of the matter is that the future is unwritten--completely wide open--and the past can't changed.

We could all use a little more work on the future.  Where are you going versus where you think you could have been...   

From Jay Rand...

"When I'm playing on my own mental turf, my batting average at home is very high."

I guess you don't get booed at home, then, like the more neurotic among us do.

I'm working on a project that will enable internet users to explore, express, and aggregate their identity on the web, and have fun doing it.

On the other side of the world, people are working on a project to blow up people who are trying to blow them up, because of religious, cultural, and national identity.  It is not fun for anyone.   

I have a friend who is struggling right now with her identity in terms of how she relates to others.  Who does she want to be with?  Who can she be herself with?  You can't tell someone how to be themselves.  They need to figure it out on their own.  The only thing you can do is remind them that they shouldn't be anyone to anybody but who they want to be, and focus on people who accept them for who they are.  Oh, and then, don't forget to accept them for who they are.

At Union Square, they're trying to identify a candidate that will be a good fit for the team...  On one side they're trying to figure out what the profile of that person is, and on the other, there are some young people out there thinking about whether they would be a fit for that position. 

But really, what does it all matter, unless you have a Facebook account.  And, today, through the magic of being a faculty member, you can finally Facebook me!  Fordham doesn't have alumni e-mail addresses (why, I have no idea... its just a simple forwarding thing)... so getting an account has proven difficult.  However, now that I actually teach there, I legitimately got a profile.  What amazes me is that its really a lot like Friendster, but what keeps it strong and useful is the offline relevency.  When you can write what dorm and room you're in, you can know who's in your hallway before you even move in.  I don't think any social network will ever get more relevent than that, unless someone builds Apartmentster for NYC and people agree to list where they live.  I'm not sure I see that happening.

MySpace is experiencing some... well...  technical difficulties.  (Like total loss of power at their only datacenter.)  The site was almost unusable all weekend and completely down yesterday.  So what are all these kids doing to do in the meantime?

1. Like, um, shop.

2. Watch videos of live action recreations of Goldeneye for Playstation.

3. Make friends with someone from the Philippines.... check out Friendster.

4. Go outside and play...   hahahahahahahaha    j/k!  Outside...ha! 

5. Write a letter of appreciation to Tom...  but write it using cut out letters from all different magazines.  Oh.. and maybe make it about something besides appreciation, too... 

6. Stand in the place where you are.  Think about direction.  Wonder why you haven't before.

7. Go see Clerks II!!   Seriously, it might even be funnier than the first one.

8. Ask your parents a really uncomfortable question about sex.  This works even better the older you are.

9. Break out into total chaos.  Create false idols of MySpace on hilltops...   like a giant golden thong.  Loot.

10.  Write some really profound messages on the sidewalk in chalk...  like...   "This is written in chalk."   Makes you think, doesn't it?

There is ZERO chance it will not rain in NYC tonight.  It WILL happen.  Accuweather says there is 100% chance.

If I were the weathermen, given my track record, I think I'd couch that and just take it down to 90% just in case.  What do you gain by telling us its 100%?  Its just all downside.