Where Things Disappear Into Pure Functionality

Lars Svendsen: “Anthropocentrism gave rise to boredom, and when anthropomorphism was replaced by technocentrism, boredom became even more profound. Technology involves the dematerialization of the world, where things disappear into pure functionality. We have long since passed a stage where we could keep track of technology.

Some Wins

Early last year, around the time of DrupalCon San Francisco, Packt Publishing approached me to serve as technical reviewer for a book. Several Microsoft Word documents and 7 months later, the dead trees edition of Drupal Theming Cookbook by Karthik Kumar, arrived at my doorstep, complete with an acknowledgement of my work inside the front cover.

Minor League Baseball: Investing in the Future
[M]ost players at the minor league level who haven’t reached minor league free agency are lucky to make $10,000 over the course of a season; a survey of players revealed that those in rookie ball make $1,250-1,300 a month while players in Triple-A, the highest level of the minors, can make roughly $1,000 more per month while under the contracted amount.
Illustrated Vancouver catalogs the city of Vancouver, British Columbia represented in art
A history of Vancouver’s love affair with baseball
It’s time we had an intervention with the game of baseball
On announcers: Watch a game for an inning with no volume. See if you miss anything.
Gary Wolf of The Quantified Self on the data-driven life
Self-tracking can sometimes appear narcissistic, but it also allows people to connect with one another in new ways.

Attending DrupalCon San Francisco April 19th to 21st

Starting with the community site Urban Vancouver, then as the support cowboy for Bryght and Raincity Studios and now with an independent practice, I've enjoyed all of my almost 6 years with the Drupal community. In a couple of weeks, I'll fly to San Francisco to attend my first DrupalCon. With my flight and hotel booked, conference ticket registered, and a ticket to a Major League Baseball ballgame ticket received in the mail, I look forward to the 3 full days of sightseeing in the Bay Area, including the plans to take a tour of North Beach and ride San Francisco's historic streetcars.

Stephen J. McNamee and Robert K. Miller, Jr. summarize their book The Meritocracy Myth
The generalist’s dilemma
Ed Smith asks "are we too professional?"
At the end of the 19th century, an amateur meant someone who was motivated by the sheer love of doing something; professional was a rare, pejorative term for grubby money-making.
"It is time to look at China, not for what it says, but for what it does, and to judge it accordingly."
Although the politics of China remains communist, the economics might be called Advanced Mercantilist.

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