Whan That Aprill
Personally, I longen to read this in April.
Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.
Common Grace and Natural Law
While the ideas of Thomas and Calvin overlap a great deal (more than is often admitted), their agreement does not always seem obvious at the surface level. Certain key words differ in ways that create the appearance of a chasm between the scholastic and the reformer where such does not necessarily exist. Paul Helm has a nice essay that looks at one of those areas: common grace and natural law.
To say that a human ability or activity is the effect of common grace or that it is the working of nature, human nature, are thus two ways of saying the same thing, or almost the same thing. What the phrase 'common grace' brings out is that these abilities and activities, as found in fallen and unregenerate human nature, are the result of undeserved, divine goodness. The effects of the Fall on human nature could have been worse than they are, and why they are not worse than they are is due to God's undeserved goodness. 'Nature' looks at the same phenomenon from another angle, focusing on the persisting structures of human nature.
Power Efficient Web Browsers
Microsoft ran browser benchmarks with a very interesting idea: testing the impact on battery life:
Browsers play a significant and important role in overall power consumption. The more efficiently a browser uses power the longer the battery will last in a mobile device, the lower the electricity costs, and the smaller the environment impact.
No doubt the fact that IE does so well is unsurprising given that Microsoft ran the tests, but the post is still worth taking note of for its insights into the other major browsers and for introducing the concept itself, which seems like a reasonable test in an increasingly mobile computing world.
The Times' Spring Cleaning: Books Stay, What of Papers?
The Times reviews those potentially outdated “gadgets” one may be able to do away with, finishing with a well argued point about books:
Keep them (with one exception). Yes, e-readers are amazing, and yes, they will probably become a more dominant reading platform over time, but consider this about a book: It has a terrific, high-resolution display. It is pretty durable; you could get it a little wet and all would not be lost. It has tremendous battery life. It is often inexpensive enough that, if you misplaced it, you would not be too upset. You can even borrow them free at sites called libraries.
Well said. Too bad the Times fails to include newspapers in the list of technologies that can be increasingly replaced by superior electronic alternatives. Maybe that's because their own electronic alternative is absurdly priced.
A Glimpse Inside Fukushima Daiichi
National Geographic has posted a really eerie set of photos showing the “Fukushima 50” doing their unenviable work trying to save Japan from a complete meltdown. Amazing.
Firefox 4
Somehow the Firefox 4 launch feels less significant than the Firefox 3 one. Not only have fewer people downloaded it so far (by about half — four million so far), but WebKit browsers have managed to wrest away much of Firefox's mindshare. If I want an innovative browser today, I look to the latest Safari and Chrome, not to Firefox.
Nevertheless, while Safari is my browser of choice, Firefox remains my personal recommendation for a browser for Windows users. I have not yet been sold on Safari for Windows and I think Chrome's user interface is still less than ideal. What I like about Firefox 4 is that it gives me something to recommend to my clients that keeps that familiar, friendly user interface without compromise.
That's a good thing.
Last Year's Asisaid Stock Tip
I wrote on March 12, 2010:
With that in mind, and with full disclosure that I am an AAPL shareholder, let me suggest that I think $250/share is not an unrealistic price target within the next three to six months.
Apple closed today 345.43, down 8.13.
U-verse Issues
Andrew Robinson on the “plus sides” of AT&T U-verse:
On the plus side, I watch a lot less TV, spend less time on the phone and am forced to take breaks from my various online duties from time to time, so it's not all bad I suppose. Maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way, maybe it's not that AT&T U-verse is the entertainment equivalent of swine flu; maybe it's that AT&T wants to make sure its customers have time for their other hobbies like reading or enjoying a real sunset instead of watching one on Sunrise Earth on Discovery HD.
I missed this review when it was published last year and it has a few technical errors in it, but it gets to my long time thesis: cable is not worse than the alternatives. Cable just has worse PR.
Xoom, Xoom, Xoom
Verizon has loaned me a Motorola Xoom to review. So far, Honeycomb is a massive improvement over Samsung's tweaked Android 2.x that is used on the Galaxy Tab. As I work through testing, the big question will be this: does the Xoom offer anything compelling that is not offered on the iPad?
The jury is still out.
Romeo and Juliet in a Nutshell
Andy Griffith explains the plot of Romeo and Juliet to a young Ron Howard in this clip from the Andy Griffith Show:
You can change the name of a rose but you can't do nuthin 'bout the smell.
