I have no clue whether Unocal should be sold to CNOOC, the 70%-government-owned Chinese petroleum company.  As a good globalist I don’t see many reasons the sale shouldn’t go through.  Remember a couple of decades ago when we sold all those golf courses and hotels to the Japanese?  And then bought many of them back at a steep discount later?

But what makes me insane is China’s presentation of the deal as "normal commercial activity" that should not become politicized.  I even heard a Chinese on the radio saying "if America is our friend they should let the deal go through."  Huhhh?!!

First of all, a 70%-government owned company cannot reasonably be called "normal commercial activity."  Neither is forcing a fixed exchange rate in order to dump cheap goods on the greedy American marketplace.  Neither is lax enforcement of intellectual property rights.  And so on…  [Update 30 June: Put another way, 70% of the decision of CNOOC is driven by the Chinese government, why shouldn't our government also have 70% of the say in the deal?]

Second, hate to break it to you China, but America is not your friend!  We put up with a lot on the theory that economic modernization leads to political reforms and is necessary to having a friendship sometime in the future, but so far the repression of human rights and tampering in the free market, and even the possibility that you’ve got thousands of spies operating within our borders, make our relationship strictly business.

Well, not too many days after I wished for better editing tools on this service, they have quietly appeared!  The editing features not only allow font and size adjustments (which would have served to correct some of my copy-and-paste problems) but there is a direct HTML editing mode as well, so I can remove any copied attributes that are messing up the consistentent style.

Having access to the HTML also allows me to embed images in the text.  So I immediately went back and updated some of my previous entries, with some pretty good success I think!  Some of the entries relied heavily on the image to communicate the complete idea - now I’m in control of the relative size of text and images.

With these new tools at my disposal, I did have to make some design adjustments to the page.  As you can see, I’ve increased the size of the text relative to the photo album so that I can have wider pictures, and still wrap text around the photo.  I also went with a simpler template, one without transparency, in order to make the inlined pictures display better.  It was hard to see before, but the little thumbnails were 20% transparent in the old "Megan’s water" design.  It became much more obvious as the photo size grew.  I tried hacking some styles to restore just the images to full opacity, but gave up after only a few minutes…

Last weekend I had the pleasure of accompanying Julia Wade singing a Peter Link composition based on the 193rd Psalm.  What a song, and what a voice!  Too bad I was on pipe organ.  I list the reasons I feel pipe organ has a (well deserved) diminishing place in our churches.  I played pipe organ for years, so I’m well qualified to throw a few darts!

1. The majority of the organ repertoire is either ancient (Bach or Telemann for instance), rather intellectual (Messiaen, Langlais), or just plain corny (the vast majority of 20th century church music).  None of it packs a significant emotional punch for contemporary audiences (unless that audience has be subject to decades of Pavlovian associations).  There is lots of contemporary keyboard music (ECM, Narada, Windham Hill labels) that is emotionally accessible to a broad age range.
2. Rhythm is an important component of contemporary music, and the organ is simply not a percussion instrument like piano.  For instance, any attempts at syncopation on a pipe organ just sound like mistakes.
3. It’s hard to beat a full-throated pipe organ accompanying a hymn sung by a hundred or two, but how many churches have that size congregation any more?  Piano or keyboard is simply more intimate, an important quality in this age of individualism in the search for spirituality.
4. I really feel this instrument is an anachronism.  It was originally developed to replace an orchestra (the original synthesizer) and technology has moved on significantly since then, especially with digital sampling technology.  We can now get a greater diversity of sound from a keyboard.
5. If that all isn’t compelling enough, the purchase and maintenance costs of a pipe organ compared with a piano or keyboard are simply incomparable.  Surely those funds could be spent more directly fulfilling a church’s mission.

The problem with many of the pipe organs in churches I have played is that they are simply too entrenched - they represent a significant investment and as high quality instruments generate a certain amount of pride.  That makes them hard to replace, even when there are alternatives that better serve the goals of the church.

The extra daylight around the solstice made it possible to pick up a few easy geocaches before the W3C XML Schema User Experience Workshop, and between the workshop and dinner.  Even one during a lunchtime walk.  Good antidote to whiteboards and LCD glow…

The enclosed shots have nothing to do with the caches, I just snapped them on the way.

Uploaded some of the photos from Paul and my 3/4 mile walk around the confluence of the Middle and North Forks of the American River.  We crossed No Hands Bridge and rock-hopped back up to the car.  Amazing how much you can see in such a short time - it’s an amazing place.  Hope Paul agrees - he’s a little pink today ;-).  Track of our exploration attached.

[Update June 23: Added one final photo of the rapids.]

[Update 2005-12-14: Moved the photos to an American River Confluence set on flickr.]

Paul visited this weekend.  I had to produce a rattler for him, though this one wasn’t in the kitchen.

I found this article in the Christian Science Monitor on Nixon’s legacy quite interesting.  The Schlesinger poll on rating the greatness of presidents has a few surprises (FDR and Washington rated similarly great?  What’s-his-first-name Polk and Teddy Roosevelt rated the same?) but unsurprisingly puts Lincoln alone at the summit.

That reminds me of a "chapel" session from my daughter’s school (non-religious ethical education shared by parents at a monthly get-together).  One week the subject was "moral courage" and of course Lincoln was the primary example of doing something bold and "right" and putting everything on the line for his conviction - the lives of many thousands of citizens, the unity of the nation, and even, as it tragically turned out, his own life.  The definition of moral courage as standing firmly by your convictions in the face of unpleasant consequences leaves it open to an interesting twist.  Jefferson Davis probably put as much on the line for his convictions as Lincoln, but we don’t regularly hail him as a paragon of moral courage.  Lincoln ended up with one big advantage in the history books - his side won.  If the Civil War had gone the other way, it’s unclear that Lincoln would still be topping the presidential top ten.  History is written by the victors.

This also has relevance to our times.  I was excited when I first read Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584 to 2069 a decade ago with its predictions of momentous crises on the scale of World War II facing my children’s generation.  Not to say that there aren’t continual crises happening, just that once in a while the generational factors align to actually do something significant about those crises.  I was excited thinking of all the looming problems that are worthy of being recognized as crises (degradation of our planet, globalization of adequate living standards and human rights, etc.) and anticipated the consequent resolve to solve them.  Instead it appears that the crises of our time might turn out to be the clash of Western (I can’t bring myself to say Christian) and Islamic cultures, the "war on terror", and the globalization of extremism and exploitation by multinational corporations.

Until 9/11 I hadn’t considered that the momentous work predicted during our lifetime might be something less than inspiring to me.  But now I realize I’ve looked at the historical crises through the lens of history written by the victors, a lens that doesn’t apply to the present.  I hope I’m wrong and we unite to solve problems more worthy of history.

Tim Bray, for whom I generally have great respect, is pretty forceful in condemning MSN Spaces’ policy to conform to government censorship in China.  I think everyone (even the Chinese) recognize that limiting fr33dom of expression in this way stifles |)em0cracy.  Some people feel that neither the US, companies based here, nor any other multi-national corporation should be doing any business with China whatsoever until their record on human rights including fr3ed0m of expression matches or exceeds that of western democrassees.  Others think that active engagement is the best way to effect change.  China is not an easy problem, is all I’m saying.  Tim seems to imply it is.

It’s also not clear what Tim proposes as an alternative.  I assume the policy is not one of Microsoft’s own invention, but is driven by the Chinese government.  Should MSN pull out of the joint venture and cease supporting the creation of an active blogging culture in China?  I think that would have a much more chilling effect on fr_e_dom and demokrasi over the long term than restricting a few phrases.

If I were in China I would not be at all worried about carefully crafting my post to work around banned words (you can see I’ve tried it - doesn’t seem too hard), but very worried about the government’s reaction to the substance of my post regardless of how well I spell.  I don’t imagine bloggers will self-limit their expression solely because of MSN’s policy.  Spammers certainly have shown a limitless capacity to keep ahead of spam filters which trap mail containing certain unpleasant words.

It may be simpler to succumb to a knee-jerk predilection to use Microsoft as a whipping post for the Chinese government’s policies, but it clouds the true (and very challenging) questions about where the boundaries are between cultural biases (individualism vs. collectivism) and fundamental rights, and the optimum mechanisms and timetables for strengthening those rights.

Note: We should also be doing more to eliminate censorship (including intimidation resulting in self-censorship as in this story) in our own country.  Very few cultural questions there about what is right and what’s wrong, and as citizens we are empowered to do something about it!

My full-time digital photography expert (thanks Mom!) notes that DPReview has published a review of the Casio Exlim EX-750.  And that a similarly-featured 5Mpx model is now available that’s 40% thinner.  How do they do that?!  At this rate in a few years we’ll have cameras that are the thickness of a credit card with the whole back acting as a display.

Reminds me of SD cards which (though growing in capacity) are unlikely to get any smaller because of the limits of human fingers to manipulate anything tinier.

I took Chris Pratley’s suggestion and played with OneNote’s Publish features, using as a sample last Thursday evening’s fern discovery expedition.  Publish worked great, saving the page in MHTML (a multi-part HTML package with embedded images).  OneNote preserved the layout nicely, which is pretty impressive given HTML’s limitations as a document layout format.

However, MSN Groups serves up the resulting .mht poorly - IE doesn’t seem to recognize the format and display the results correctly.  (I have no idea if other browsers even support this format.)  You can right-click and download the file to your local machine and browse it just fine, but that’s rather inconvenient and raises security suspicions.

The MTHML can be converted to plain old HTML fairly easily in IE by selecting File/Save As…/Web Page Complete.  The resulting multiple files require a bit more work to upload to MSN Groups, but the results actually work (always a good thing.)  Would be nice to have a direct Save As…/Web Page Complete or equivalent in the next version of OneNote.

[Update 14 June: Well, that didn't work as well as I thought.  The simplest "My Documents" option on MSN Groups isn't publicly viewable.  Creating a new group with public permissions still required an MSN account to view - unacceptable for my purposes.  When I moved the files back to my own ISP account, and updated the links in my blogs, I found the Save as/Web Page Complete didn't preserve relative locations, and mangled the names to make direct access through a browser impossible.  Had to do some hand-editing.  Looks like I have to up the priority of my request that OneNote export clean HTML directly.]

Well, I’ve been hacking at this space for a month now (my first post was May 12), and I’m finding MSN Spaces to be an adequate tool.  It does have a few minor limitations though (modulo luser error):

1. Images aren’t in-line.  As often my text and images are co-dependent, it would be nice to have the ability to embed a full-size (within limits) image in-line with the text.  Thumbnails at the end of the article are just too limiting.  If I switch to a different blog tool, this missing feature will be the reason.
2. Upload sizes and types are limited.  You can’t upload a large image (like this OneNote screenshot from a previous blog entry).  You can only upload images - uploading a raw OneNote file or XML file needs a different tool.  I understand this is a photo-album tool but it would be convenient not to have to go completely out of MSN Spaces to provide non-image supporting data.  However, MSN provides an automatic "My Web Documents" on MSN Groups for just this purpose.
3. No direct HTML control.  I have had some problems cutting and pasting from other tools (Outlook email, OneNote) and retaining too much formatting information.  I understand the need to prohibit arbitrary HTML though - perhaps a "strip formatting" button would be sufficient (though I’d still love to sticking <IMG> tags to overcome the in-line image problem.)
4. No list of recent posts.  When I visit someone’s blog, it’s nice to see at a glance which recent posts I might be interested in, or haven’t read yet.  I guess I could try using a custom list for this, but the manual maintenance required for a feature that should be simply automatic is dampening my enthusiasm.  I thought I would miss not having a little calendar view as well showing which days have posts, but I’m starting to feel this is more useful for the blogger than for his readers.

I really like the photo transitions in the photo albums, the ability to pick a theme and have it enforced (I’m willing to give up some creative control for that simplicity), and the general high quality of the reader and blogger experience.

All in all I’m finding blogging a fun way to keep in contact with family and friends, to hone my writing skills, and to have a reason to take a random spark of an idea and fan it to a flame by thinking it through in writing.

I think Paul and I occupy similar social levels and political niches in our respective countries, which makes the difference in our results from the Political Gauge intriguing.  This brought to mind the differences between the European Dream and the American Dream Rifkin writes about.  Is government spending on social services a means toward greater personal freedom, or an indication of excessive government intrusion into peoples lives (and pocketbooks)?  Anyway, on to my results:

On Non-Fiscal Issues, you rank as a Strong Liberal (12).
On Fiscal Issues, you rank as a Centrist (41).

The fact that I’m regarded as a fiscal centrist yet a pretty staunch Democrat seemed to me to illustrate shifts in the traditional Republican/Democratic fiscal values equation.  Clearly the Republicans aren’t all about fiscal discipline as we were led to believe (Reagan was not just an outlier).  And the Democrats are surely concerned about inappropriate spending levels.  It will be interesting to see if Democrats can capitalize on the decades of Republican "fiscal responsibility" propaganda to gain a more level playing field with the Republicans on fiscal matters.

My daughter Laine and I went out on the lake tonight for a gentle paddle.  Partway through, as we were investigating what I think is a hawk’s nest, we found a type of fern I hadn’t seen in this area before.  I brought home a sample to determine it’s type, and was reminded of some nature walks we’d taken together earlier this year.

On those walks we looked for interesting flora, and collected data on our expedition.  We took a GPS, a couple of digital cameras, and mapped our journey and the results.  But how to organize and display this data once we’d collected it?  I’ve been using Microsoft’s OneNote extensively to manage my time and track the various projects I’m involved in - would it prove a convenient digital repository?

It did marvelously.  I based each page off of a map or photo of the samples, and surrounded it with small pictures and text augmenting and explaining the data there.  Add some hand-drawn lines over the top (wish I had a tablet for that) and I have a very nice record of our discoveries, in a fashion that highlights the most important data but also allows for supporting details.  Here are a couple of samples - a walk down our Secret Trail to where fungus abounded, and a hike with pony down to the local Waterfall, where we collected and identified several types of ferns.  (MSN spaces doesn’t seem to allow me to upload such wide and tall screenshots without shrinking them - bummer.  I’ve just included a teaser to encourage you to click the links for the full-size JPGs stored elsewhere.)

OneNote packages all the data (maps, images, text, spreadsheets and GPS files) in a single file, without losing resolution (I can size up the photos later to see more detail).  This makes it handy to archive, move to other computers, and so forth.  All in all, it’s hard to imagine a substantially better digital notebook.

[Updated 6/10: moved screenshots to MSN Groups.]

[Updated 6/14: moved screenshots away from MSN Groups due to access restrictions.]

I finally updated the Berlin photo album.  Check out Paul Downey’s too, same time same place - different eye.  I still have dozens of pictures of Berlin bears to sort through and do something creative with…

Many of these photos were taken in lower resolution mode (somehow I inadvertently changed the resolution I guess, bummer), which eliminated a lot of interesting candidates, but after downsizing for upload I’m not sure it matters too much.  I did a little cropping and some and exposure balancing on most in Picasa.  Panoramas were stitched in Microsoft Digital Image Pro.

Update 2005-12-14: Moved the Berlin photos to a new Berlin set on flickr. Added a representative photo here too.

I went further afield in Berlin today, looking for secret gems in the corners of Berlin mentioned briefly in the back pages (if at all) of the guidebooks.

I started with a walk along the river, where Berlin’s most prevalent art form abounds.  That is, graffiti.  Every surface imaginable is tagged - buildings, walls, sidewalks, trains, cars and even trees!  Some of it is pretty elaborate, none of it is any more legible than the American variety, but altogether it makes a pretty strong statement that some Berliners don’t care about their environment much.  One building especially thoroughly covered (several stories high) turned out to be an artistic co-op, and later on that day I found a makeshift graffiti sign touting Berlin as the "street art" capital.  Oh well, call it art then.  But I think the pride being shown by the numerous construction and renovation projects going on in Berlin contrasts harshly with the lack of pride shown by vandalistic graffiti.

After getting drenched (for the first but not last time today) in a sudden squall, I took the city’s extensive subway and train system to the Vitra Design Museum located in a residential neighborhood north of town, in an huge brick former power plant.  In the past the museum has hosted exhibitions of product design, furniture, fashion and so forth.  However, I was to be disappointed.  The entire space was taken by a large installation by a photographer to raise awareness about osteoporosis.  Hard to think of a less appealing subject!  Apparently the museum doesn’t have a permanent collection, so that was that.  I got soaked again before I reached the subway.

I was pretty disappointed with my run of luck, especially after my visit yesterday to the Bauhaus-Archiv, which has a collection from the Bauhaus school of art, including Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Lásló Moholy-Nagy.  The museum building itself was designed by Gropius and is pretty interesting - you enter on a walkway that takes you over the museum itself in a brief and forced-but-pleasant architectural tour before depositing you on the far side where the entrance is.  As I’d been forewarned, they are preparing for a new exhibit, and the reduced one euro entry fee only covered a single exhibit room (plus the gift shop which was virtually an exhibit too).  There were however a few treasures here.  One charcoal drawing (can’t remember by who any more) was pretty amazing - up close it was a series of crude vertical stripes made by the side of a charcoal stick, with occasional interruptions.  From a greater distance, it became an study in architectural forms as the marks read as stories of a building and the breaks as windows and corners.  Some of the architectural sketches were amazing too.  I could see the genesis of the style that now pervades many of the new buildings and virtually every furniture store.

With less than perfect luck on the design museum front, I moved on to something different.  In the southwest corner of the city, just up from the soon-to-be-replaced-by-a-brand-new-one-downtown American Embassy, a mile from the subway in a residential neighborhood (and guarded today by another violent squall) is tucked the Brücke Museum.  The museum has a collection of art by German expressionists known as the Die Brücke school from about 1905 till 1913.  Currently it has a pretty extensive show of block prints and lithographs, ranging from about 3 inches square up to 18 inches square.  Some of them were quite amazing!  My favorite pieces were those by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and (new to me) Fritz Bleyl.  Bleyl especially was able to capture the minimal essence of a landscape, a figure, or an object, yet made each of its constituent black and white shapes unique and individual but supportive of the whole.  Rarely does one find such a simple piece of art with such power in each component.  And the composition of each was masterful!

My advice to those visiting Berlin or any big city: sure, go see the Pergamonmuseum and the Neue Nationalgalerie or whatever the big showstoppers are, you’ll see the expected amazing treasures Picasso and Monet and ancient Egypt, but also set aside some time to seek out the small treasures.  In the long run, they are likely to be the ones you remember, and not just because everything dry looks better after you’ve gotten a good drenching.