Farm News 05-13-07

Sunday morning, after chores


Grandson

Grandson Julian Alexander DeWolfe arrived Monday, quietly and purposefully, according to my daughter. She claims he's cute. He definitely looks like the sort of baby that will make women warble out, “Oooooohhh,” the universal call made by a human female when she sees a cute infant. Quite a few men will make a similar sound, but from males there is a briefer call with less warbling.

Julian was born with the ability to utter a call that attracts the attention of all adult females within hearing and leads them to display behaviors indicating anxiety if it continues for any length of time. Within twenty four hours of birth he will have trained an adult female to be completely devoted to his well-being and general happiness. That's a hell of a good trick that might help him get through life as an adult male.

I haven't met Julian, yet, but I'm sure he smells funny, all infants do. Women generally think that infants smell wonderful and are able to distinguish their own infants from others by smell alone. Men, if they have any sense, don't mention that the baby smells funny. Several times every day the baby will develop a very strong stench, meaning it is time for a diaper change. Women use the occasion to engage in even more cooing and warbling while they clean up the mess and put fresh diapers on the baby.

Sometime close to the end of this month I hope to travel to Boulder to inspect Julian and make certain he is suitable as a family member. Although my standards are less strict than those of Leviticus, still, a family needs some sort of standards. Generally, I like to check to see that he has hair instead of scales and that his pupils are round. My daughter has assured me that he meets these qualifications but I know better than to believe everything a new mother says about her baby.

Julian developed a slight jaundice shortly after birth, but he has recovered and is now ready to grow up. I'm looking forward to when he becomes a teenager.

Bostonians

A reader writes:

Hopefully I'm not jinxing anything by saying this early, but everything has gone so according to plan so far that I think (hope!) it's safe--huge congratulations on the impending arrival of your latest addition to the farm! (I know his parents will insist he really lives in Colorado, but that's just a technicality, really.)

Meanwhile, to distract you from the suspense of waiting, I will tell you of my observation of a few weeks ago. You have both been to Boston, so you know that Bostonians are very friendly people who will cheerfully help a complete stranger of questionable intelligence, say, load a free kitchen table into the back of a Toyota (not that I would know anything about this personally), or attempt to give you directions to wherever you are trying to go, even though the phrase "You can't get there from here" most likely originated here. (The original would have been something more along the lines of, "You really shouldn't try to get there from here, because if by some miracle you don't end up in Rhode Island, some piece of tunnel or overpass will probably fall on you on the way.")

Despite what I believe is genuine native good-heartedness, there are two instances where Bostonians cannot seem to help becoming homicidal, and those are: a) If you are wearing a Yankees hat or any other item of Yankees apparel, and b) When they are behind the wheel of a moving vehicle. One Friday afternoon a few weeks ago, I was on Memorial Drive, which as you may know runs along the river in Cambridge. Traffic there normally travels at least 20 mph over the speed limit, but in this instance it suddenly came to a screeching halt. I assumed there'd been an accident or perhaps a pothole had suddenly evolved into a sinkhole (quite possible, local road "maintenance" being what it is), since I couldn't think of anything else that would stop traffic so dramatically. What it turned out to be, though, was...a family of ducks. A whole group of Bostonians who would never stop for pedestrians to cross, not even if they were blind and in wheelchairs, waited patiently for the whole duck family to waddle across three lanes without even a tap on the horn from anyone. I remembered then that Boston is, of course, the town of Robert McCloskey's Make Way for Ducklings, and the man clearly knew his setting. In the book, a policeman stops traffic for the Mallard family, but I now know this was unnecessary--everyone would have stopped anyway.

What was especially strange about the whole experience is that I realized I have now been in Boston long enough for this to actually make sense to me, although I couldn't explain it to someone who doesn't live here--stopping for ducks when you would never pause for a pedestrian, I mean. I would like to think that I'd still stop for at least the folks in wheelchairs, but I also know I would definitely check my rearview mirror first to be sure that wouldn't get me killed.

Success, Finally

There are two computers in my office, a two year old Dell, running Windows XP, on which I do most of my work, and an old Micron, upgraded several times with new drives, memory, and, once, a motherboard and CPU, and now running Linux. The old Micron is becoming my server, and I will be moving both Geezernet.com and Geezernet.us to it.

Linux is the operating system which most servers use. Apache is a web server, a program that sends web pages out to people who want to look at them, and I now have it installed and working on the Micron. Last week, I finally successfully installed MYSQL server, a database program for servers. Next will be XOOPs, and then the web sites. Geezernet.com will by my personal web site and Geezernet.us will hold the web sites of the Neighborhood Network project.

It feels very gratifying to have learned so much that I didn't particularly care to know. Linux is a pain in the butt to install and configure but, once it is running properly, it is fast and flexible.


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Farm News 05-05-07

Sunday morning, after chores, raining

Ducks and Geese

Bebe goose, operating on alert condition RED, is following her two goslings around the yard, accompanied by Sarge and Beth, protecting them from all dangers, especially someone who might be bringing them food and water. Ducklings tend to follow their mothers, goslings tend to lead their mothers.

Old Beth had a nest of eggs, too, but, as she always does, she left the nest as soon as she heard little goslings calling and took up the duties of wise old auntie. I don't think I will leave eggs for Beth to hatch in the future, hers can go into the incubator.

None of the ducks have hatched anything. It looks like many of the mothers were snatched from their nests in the night by a predator, for the population seems to have declined. It's hard to tell for sure now that they are scattered around hidden in their nests. Runner type ducks have to be about the worst mothers in the world of poultry. At least a dozen ducks were sitting on nests and not a one has produced babies.

Book Report

Palestine: Peace, not Apartheid, by Jimmy Carter

This book was a bit disappointing. Carter accurately put forth the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, generally, but he completely ignored one factor: the support given to the Israeli settlers by American evangelicals. Pat Robertson and friends have made several trips to Palestine to express their support for the settlements. Carter, and anyone else with sense, knows that the settlements are the number one barrier to peace in Palestine. Carter gave no reasons for the US acceptance of increasing the number of settlements, though pressure from the religious right is an obvious part of it.

The evangelicals think that it is necessary for Israel to annex all of Palestine before Jesus can return. Being good believers, they are trying to help God accomplish this goal. Blessed are the peacemakers.

Why Open Source Software?

I have been claiming that open source software meets William Calvin's six requirements for a Darwin Machine. Why doesn't intellectual property software belong in that collection? I think I've finally figured it out.

When someone wants to adapt an open source program to a special problem, they often create a fork, they modify the program and give the modified product a new name, calling it a fork of the original, creating a new species, so to speak. Intellectual property software doesn't do that. Microsoft hasn't created a dozen different flavors of Word, they simply add features they think will improve its sales.

Intellectual property software cannot increase the number of programs specifically adapted to a certain environment, slowing the development of complexity in the overall collection of software. Searching SourceForge for 'word processor' give 1011 hits. Some of those hits are for add-on components to existing word processors, but many of them are for separate programs for word processing.

To subscribe, unsubscribe, contribute stories, complain or send a gift subscription, send an email to FarmNews@GeezerNet.com . The editor reserves the right to steal ideas submitted, rewrite submissions, and sign false names to them whenever it strikes his fancy to do so.