Mein Fliegenpilz

This is one of my favorite Christmas ornaments. I brought a couple dozen of them back from Germany in the early seventies. I know the Germans consider them a sign of good luck. Why? Not sure. My daughter commented with this information and I found some additional information at Der Fliegenpilz.

Searching the internet is one of my pastimes or waste-times as the case may be.

I was reading this paper today which discussed search technologies based on statistical algorithm (Google) versus semantic technology (Haika, Cognition, Lexxe) - interesting, of course, and I was most intrigued by the idea of "building an ontology encapsulating the world's knowledge..." I love the word "ontology" - the study of what might exist (makes me a little giddy!)

PopSiren gives a review of cognition technologies here.

It may not look like it but I'm counting this as creative work! I can't help it, I do think the internet is cool and the prospect of an intelligent web - oh, be still my heart...

Off to see a play this evening - The Retreat from Moscow by William Nicholson. I'm a little concerned... a dreary domestic drama, best described as "succinct"... but I'm keeping an open mind (brrr, as the storm begins to descend on the valley and the temperature is dropping to freezing.)


Living consciously...

For practice: Make a study today of the things that upset you, rile you up, and scare you.

This doesn't seem like a good thing to do today. I think I'd rather wait until I'm in one of those moods to work on the list/study. Truth is that most things "shouldn't" upset, rile or scare me... yep, back to managing that gap between stimulus and response.