There are few enough cars that pass by my house that you can look into them and see what the drivers are doing.   No one looked at my yard.   Then I started working in it, some days more, some days less.   Last year I planted roses which bloomed in late summer, people started looking at them.   The irises in the new flowerbeds attracted attention in the spring.   Of the wildflowers I planted last fall, just a few poppies and coneflowers are up, people are looking.   In a room filled with artificial flowers, most people will instantly find the one real flower and it will hold their attention.   The question is; why?   What is it that makes us love flowers?   It must be more than simple beauty, or is our perception of beauty directly related to something hardwired into our brains?   In most cases where our behavior is passionate but not easily explained, there are significant ties to survival.

The survival instinct may be the key. Our survival and the plants’.

Our immediate response to flowers is that of unqualified pleasure.   The smile elicited by exposure to flowers is called “The Duchenne Smile”, the real smile, the one that ‘reaches the eyes’.   Several researchers have studied our responses to flowers and now believe that the presence of flowers to our hunter-gatherer forbears marked an area where they would find food in the future or a place that had food-bearing capability.   This fascinating study in Evolutionary Psychology is good reading;

An Environmental Approach to Positive Emotion

There have long been those who wondered why we cultivate and collect flowers, there’s also some evidence that they cultivate and collect us.   The evolution of flowers is dependent upon those who can help them to reproduce.   Plants are static, pollinators are mobile.   It is in their best interest to attract pollinators by being as attractive as possible.   In agricultural communities, the more decorative “weedy” plants were tolerated and seed actively sought and collected for no other purpose than that people liked them.   It’s a distinct possibility that plants, the original biological chemists, use us for survival.

There’s just one thing you have to remember when you sniff that rose.   You still have to tell her that you love her.

Lisa Miller

Well, I did it.   I accepted the WGA on my last Windows Update.   If I hadn’t I know what would have happened.   Very shortly Windows would have found that I am not running a legitimate copy of Windows XP.   I was informed that I had opted to ignore some important updates (yes, thank you, I did) that were important to the security of my computer.   Right, an update for Windows Memory Disk Creator and a couple more updates to programs that no longer reside on my computer.

Before the Update was completely installed Mike Lin’s StartUp Monitor had informed me that Windows had written to the registry to run the Windows.NET framework on startup.   ZoneAlarm said Windows was attempting to access the Internet and could they please do that?   Yes, just this once.   Upon installation I was thanked for validating my copy of Windows XP and informed that periodically I would be revalidated in order to take advantage of new information available from Microsoft that can help protect me against new forms of counterfeiting.   Protect who?

Installation of the updates has been taking a very long time.   I think I hear black helicopters…

Lisa Miller

The European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN), the world’s largest particle physics laboratory, will soon be conducting the most ambitious, and perhaps most important physics experiments of our age.   Certainly, at a cost of $8 billion, the Atlas Particle Detector will be the most costly.   Since the 1970’s when something called the Standard Model was developed, it seemed good enough for a very long time.   It simply worked, with a few significant contradictions and ambiguities.   It usually explained the behavior of the smallest and most basic of particles, thereby explaining the processes of energy, chemistry, and biology.   One might almost believe it explains everything, but it does not.

There are forces we do not understand.   Mass is not well understood, nor is the structure that holds it together.   A huge particle accelerator is being built which will stretch from Switzerland to France, three hundred feet underground, smashing particles together and examining what emerges from the detritus.   Some problems with the Standard Model could well be solved, as well as providing the information needed to produce a Unified Field Theory, the Holy Grail of physicists.

Albert Einstein, in his lifelong career, had no higher aim than to produce a Unified Theory, a theoretical framework that would explain, in essence, everything.   Many of his peers believed that he was wasting his time, that anything that worked fairly reliably was good enough.   In their opinions, such a goal was impossible, in his opinion it was essential.   The last 20 years of his life was devoted to this goal.   Perhaps, by finding the very building blocks of the universe, and observing how they work, today’s physicists will fill in the blanks.

Lisa Miller

A new gardening buddy can be lured into the world of computing.   Let me explain. I’ve long admired the yard and tidy little house of a neighbor down the street.   On a couple of occasions as I’ve passed by I stopped for a minute and asked her questions about the plants she had and she was kind enough to supply me with the answers.   Turns out she’s a two-house person and spends the weekends here and goes back “into town” during the work-week.   She’ll be spending more time in this house as time goes by.

Our friendship has developed slowly due to the time constraints each of us has but we were finally able to visit each other’s homes this weekend.   She’s an avid gardener and wonder-of-wonders, has no computer, because she hasn’t anyone to set it up and help her learn.   But she’d like to.   Lights and bells went off in my head.   What fun to lure another trusting soul into the addictive world of computers!

She came over to look at our computers, grabbed a mouse and with a minimum of fuss and bother, was using our Debian Linux box, Googling all sorts of subjects that interested her, changing wallpapers and copy/pasting from a web page to a text editor.   This was the first time she had used a computer.   We all laughed at her delight at changing the desktop to a beautiful picture of flowers that she had snagged from the web, saved, and framed with a gradient she made herself.   This is powerful stuff, y’all. It’s all about choices.

Don has been scrounging/refurbishing/building computers and loading them with whichever Linux distribution is most appropriate for the computer’s resources.   Most of the time this means Debian Stable.   It has everything a new or intermediate computer user could want, and since most people don’t get past that point, it’s all they’ll ever need.   He has given away five so far, to people who need them, for a variety of reasons.   We have both been learning as many Linux distributions as possible so that we can provide lessons and tech support.

This experience brings home an old adage: the best way to learn is to teach.   And this morning our new friend knocked at the door, with a gift of home made wild plum jelly.   This woman needs a computer.

Lisa Miller