Double Rainbow

this

and then this

a list of American heroes

Daniel Ellsberg, Joe Darby, Bradley Manning, and if it turns out not to be Manning, the person who turned over the Afghan War Diary to Wikileaks.

People like this make me proud to be an American. I hope that if the opportunity arises, I can emulate their courage.

Crown Casino Meblourne--worse blackjack ever?

I poked through Crown Casino Friday evening for a couple hours, and wonders if people in Melbourne are just far less informed than people in ... Vegas, for instance, or even Seattle. I counted 80 people playing blackjack at 6 to 5 tables, H17, dealt from a CSM, double hard 9, 10,11 only, when just downstairs and over that way there were open spots at 3 to 2, H17, double anything, dealt from a shoe with decent pen tables. I would be embarrassed to work as a dealer or floor at the former tables/pits.

From reading to watching to ....

I really enjoyed this article from Kevin Kelley in Smithsonian magazine about the past and the future of reading. He says:

In books we find a revealed truth; on the screen we assemble our own truth from pieces. On networked screens everything is linked to everything else. The status of a new creation is determined not by the rating given to it by critics but by the degree to which it is linked to the rest of the world.

Just as technology in some ways followed, and in some ways caused, the shift to modernism, so also technology both follows and causes the shift to post-modernism. Fascinating stuff. (H/T Daniel Martin)

Thoughts after seven months in Melbourne

We've been in Melbourne for 7 months now. I'm gradually getting a handle on what we gave up, and on what we are gaining.

I'm glad we moved. I believe it was exactly the perfect thing to do. And WOW there are some amazingly beautiful kind gracious fascinating glorious people in Seattle who loved us so very well from geographical closeness, and who still love us from geographical distance--the former a far more intensely delightful experience than the latter, in my opinion.

Yesterday for the first time I can remember I automatically looked right first rather than left first when I was about to walk across a street. Upon realizing what I'd done, I felt a certain sense of joy and loss.

My thoughts about the transition were, and continue to be, that it's a three year process to feel at home again. so we've accomplished one sixth of that, and one sixth of something huge and amazing is in itself huge and amazing.

Today a stranger was putting her metcard into ticketing machine on the tram the wrong way 'round, and getting a little frustrated, and I gently told her how to do it correctly. She then asked me how to get, via the tram system, to the a certain location in the city, and I was able to tell her quite easily. However, at least 2 or 3 times a week I still experience people mentioning suburbs in conversations and having no sense at all of the location--something that rarely happened to me in Seattle.

I LOVE knowing I can get out in the sun pretty much every day even though it's winter. Conversely, I never ever had to use chapstick during Seattle winters.

People I'm thankful for in Melbourne: John and Tami and Phoebe and Tom and Georgia and Avak and Anita and Mark and Melissa and Phil and Shelley and David and Kerry,and Nevilleand Toddy and Louise and Arlette and Javier and Becky and Phil, and Sal and David and Gretta and David Nicholas and Rachel and Seren and Tim and Emma and Ann and Kobe and Thomas and Nicholas and Campbell and Kevin and Kate and Gaby and Nyrie and Will and Aiden.

I've almost adjusted to having a limited quota of data associated with my DSL every month.

I can tell you 4 places to go in Melbourne for really yummy free lunches and dinners. But unlike Seattle, I know of exactly zero good dependable dumpsters in Melbourne.

29 months to go until I can expect to feel fully at home here. and 41 months to go until I can apply for Aussie citizenship.