BBDB: Big Brother Data Base

UPDATE:The information in this post can be summarized with two commands.  

• Emacs:  To download the emacs git repo:

•  # git clone https://github.com/mirrors/emacs.git

• BBDB: to download the BBDB up to date source:
•  # git clone git://git.savannah.nongnu.org/bbdb.git

I.  Some notes about BBDB

    I use bbdb with emacs, in a relatively mundane and non-interesting way: I use it as a basic addressbook.  When I need an address, I just fire up emacs and type M-x bbdb, then respond with a part of the name I am interested in.  Very nice.  From the record that is displayed, I can also write an email message directly, by typing "m".    (I have to have the necessary magic spells in my .emacs file, the configuration file that has followed me around for over 20 years, and grown and changed.)   Also, from the smtp mail composition facility of emacs, when I type a few characters from a required email address or name in the "To:" field, if it is in the bbdb database, it is inserted automagically.  I love thisd.

I have just wrestled with bbdb for an hour or two, and gotten to work on one machine, perfectly well.  I don't have all the bits of bbdb working.  The origin of the name "Big Brother Data Base" comes, I think, from the ability to scavenge all email addresses from all incoming mail.   I don't need that.  I don't want that. 




2.  Installing bbdb with self compiled emacs from git repo

 I have compiled emacs on each of my machines, for one reason so I can use the new eww browser that is included with Emacs 24.4.   Also, for other reasons.  I used this method, which worked on both Archlinux and Ubuntu systems:

      http://ergoemacs.org/emac/building_emacs_from_git_repository.html

And I have my work subdir under git control, so I can save changes to a flashdrive, and push them onto another machine.  Right now, I am doing this with only two machines.  But I need identical files, and identical configurations on these two machines, so I can work out there somewhere (I was looking for an address in my car!), and have the changes reflected in both machines pretty easily.  It's been worth it for years, and I just got ahold of a 64GB flash drive to keep a relatively large subdir with all my important work and etc at my fingertips.   I am writing a letter here, go out there, and can finish it.  (But print later, so far).  I don't need to get fancy with servers.

To get BBDB working right again, after a glitch, I searched and searched all day.  So here's my secret: use the method pointed to by this message:

      http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.bbdb.user/3178

I found this after trying several of the  seemingly dozens of installation instructions all over the Internet.  Only this one worked awesomely.    The new bbdb (3.1.2)  converted  my  old address database more or less automatically, with no problem.  I had to fiddle with it some, but not much. 

Discovery Museums

A few notes about discovery museums.

"Teaching is manipulation of the environment such that

learning happens."    --- Kangichy Welle

When we moved to the West Coast, I immediately joined up with the Exploratorium.  I had been teaching in Micronesia for some 25 years, had been aware of the Exploratorium, even seen many of the cool stuff on the web, but yearned to visit these places of learning.  We also joined up with the California Academy of Sciences.   Eventually, we visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and managed to get a membership there.   We have not yet visited Chabot.  We have visited the Lawrence Hall of Science, however, a number of times.  Many more I hope to visit this summer: one of them is the Intel Museum.  I was able to visit the San Franscisco Bay Model: Wow!  

Each of these sites is unique.   Incomparable.

I cannot believe, however, that NONE of these sites has a really nice magnifying glass---a simple loupe---of moderate price, for sale.  All manner of trinkets and scientific curiosities are on sale, some of them for exhorbitant prices, others more reasonable.   Someone is missing the point, here.  Everyone.   In Micronesia, we learned that a simple, high quality magnifying glass can provide hours of exploratory fun.   I have carried a reasonable one, most of the time, and used it for research and the equivalent of web surfing.

Nows the time to ponder: what has happened to these exploratory museums?  To our consciousness?  

Kids

Fe has had several opportunities to observe young children at the Exploratorium.  She has decided not to take them back for a while.  I wondered about her thoughts.   I have thoughts of my own.  I've observed, even for kids a few years older, that scientifically well-thought out demonstrations or exhibits are often lost in a hyperkinetic button pushing mode of exploration.   I'll be the first to admit that I have often sold kids short---I am amazed at how much they pick up along the way, when paying NO ATTENTION AT ALL (as far as I can tell).

Still, I wonder about the layout of the new Exploratorium.  I have been privy to conversations by Adults, in which the new layout is touted as really, really effective.  But how does it work for little ones?

Fe makes the point that the lives of these kids can be greatly enriched by the kinds of learning that is promised by these discovery museums.  But she waxed upon her sense, about the Exploratorium this morning.   Here are some notes:

• kids cannot focus amid the jostling.
• it's too crowded
• parents should be able to relax and watch as the kids explore: they cannot
• the layout is too confining [my word], encourages collisions and interference, and not focus and concentration
• as the kids start to focus, the barrage of other kids and the generally confining conditions turn it into playtime.
• kids are curious, but at young age their concentration is easily interrupted.
• It's like a buffet: all the food is there, but you don't have time to make your selection, or really taste the food.  

She felt the Academy of Sciences is (CAS) more open and welcoming.  The kids really like it.   For my part, I thought the level of many CAS activities is more mature, but there are lots of really amazing things to explore.

Moving on, we need to work on Nature Deficit Syndrome. 

This will do for today's manifesto: Walt Whitman

This was posted written in large letters on a poster in a classroom where recently I subbed.  It is from the Preface to Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman.  I blew off that lesson on High School, so now I have to do some makeup work.  (Words to live by.  "Manifesto" is a good word; just doesn't seem like the best one some days.)

 

This is what you shall do

by Walt Whitman

"This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."

Reading for Today: PCBS on Saipan

Oral history of the PCB pollution in Tanapag Village, Saipan::
http://www.pacificworlds.com/cnmi/memories/memory5.cfm

The Perfect Storm: Closed Sourced Testing for Profit

A blog pointing to an article. $Soft and Pear$son: what's wrong with this picture?

http://dianeravitch.net/2014/03/05/microsoft-and-pearson-join-forces-are-you-surprised/

Note to Management: Phycodnaviruses infect phytoplankton, potentially affect geochemical cycling and weather patterns.

Stumbling around this morning, ran across this article about newly discovered giant viruses, the Pandora Viruses. On Earthweek, 36 July 2013.

http://www.earthweek.com/2013/ew130726/ew130726a.html

Further browsing, and I ran across this paper (pdf) identifying Pandora Viruses as Phycodnaviruses that infect phytoplankton.

N. Yutin and E. V. Koonin. Pandoraviruses are highly derived phycodnaviruses. DNA,
516302773:6, 2013.

Another paper provides a glimpse into Phycodnaviruses as tiny giants that rule the world.  

The Phycodnaviridae: The Story of How Tiny Giants Rule the World
Authors: W. H. Wilson, James L. Van Etten, M. J. Allen

[published on the Plant Pathology Commons.]

Noticing Journal Clubs; Circuses; Carnivals; Science Blogs

I wonder what happened to the excellent idea of Blog Carnivals.   Maybe I just haven't been noticing?  (Like the Circus of the Spineless).  Tonight I finallhy noticed there is a phenom called "Journal Clubs).  A quick google says to me that they are common in medicine; that graduate courses are focused on them in Biological Sciences; that there are some more informal journal clubs.   A few links.

 Examples and other objects:

• The Phylo-Eco-Geo-Evo Journal Club: http://pegejournalclub.wordpress.com/

• http://scienceblogs.com/

• A good edition of ScienceBlogs: Mystery Bird: Magnificent Frigatebird, Fregata magnificens: http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2010/07/20/todays-mystery-bird-for-you-to-644/

• ScienceBlogs seems to have morphed (evolved) into: http://www.theguardian.com/science/grrlscientist
•  http://www.kindofcurious.com/

• Evolutionary Biology Online Journal Club: https://evobiojournalclub.wordpress.com/
• The Science Teaching Journal Club.  Note what follows: 
• The Science Teacher Journal Club is a place where we hope science teachers, and anyone else with an interest, will gather together to discuss ideas about science science education published in journals, articles, books and else where. The idea is borrowed from the original Twitter Journal Club for doctors started by @fidouglas and @silv24 and also owes a debt to @markgfh for suggesting that teach­ers might benefit from such a club.
•  Reef Aquarium Blog: http://reefkeeping.com/joomla/index.php/reefkeeping-blog

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