The Spring Framework offers many ways to ease application development and maintenance, but one that gets my interest really going is its dynamic language support.
codehaus: Dynamic language beans in Spring
codehaus: Groovy and JMX
raible designs: Using Dynamic Languages with Spring with Rod Johnson and Guillaume LaForge
organic thoughts: Spring Meets Groovy!
You can’t help but be inspired by how Randy Pausch is facing his oncoming death – by celebrating his life and sharing it with others.
NYTimes: Keeping Priorities Straight, Even at the End:
The real wisdom of Dr. Pausch is that he tries to enjoy every day he has left with his family, while at the same time trying to prepare them for life without him. To that end, he is videotaping himself spending time with Dylan, Logan and Chloe so they can look back and see how he felt about them.
“I’ve always said I only care about the first three copies of the book,” Dr. Pausch said. “The lessons learned are the lessons I’ve learned and what worked for me. But so many people wrote to me and said, ‘This was a jumping-off point to have conversations with my kids we haven’t had.’ “
Congratulations to Mike and Cindy on your beautiful baby boy 🙂
I’ll post an update about the latest injection’s progress (not good), but while researching my condition using Powerset I found out that NBA MVB, the Suns’s Steve Nash, and tennis star Andre Agassi, have my condition, spondylolisthesis.
Sports Illustrated: Point Guard from Another Planet
NBA.com: Steve Nash’s MVP Workout
Charlie Rose Show: A conversation with basketball professional Steve Nash
Tennis Warehouse: Interview with Andre Agassi
theage.com.au: Pain is Agassi’s main foe
webmd.com: Andre Agassi’s Battle With Back Pain
cnn.com: Interview With Andre Agassi
To all the moms out there, especially to Richelle and all those out there that are mine (and yes I mean that plural) – Happy Mother’s Day!
I had a follow up at the University of Pennsylvania last Friday to discuss my progress.
My lower back pain symptoms has been unchanged, I still get a very hot pain while sitting, either happening immediately in unergonomic settings, or after an hour or so in ergonomic-correct settings.
My leg pain (only my left leg) begins after walking 3 or more blocks and progresses to a level 2 after five blocks, requiring me to stop walking and take a break for it to settle down. If I don’t the pain rapidly grows into something that incapacitates me.
The leg pain starts in me left hip, left knee, left shin almost simultaneously (I think the hip just slightly before the rest). Along with that is a growing tingle in my left big toe and a pressure on the top of my left ankle. Sometimes the tingle remains in the toe whether sitting, standing or walking. Most times all of these will subside when sitting down or leaning against a wall.
Unfortunately, the level 2 pain is a step back from the level 1 pain I felt earlier in the week (which was a level 5-8 pain before the first shot in this series), when I sounded so optimistic. I’m doing everything ‘right’ as far as I know. Eating well. Exercising. Watching posture and my body mechanics.
The doctor was encouraged by my progress. The leg pain/tingling used to come on earlier and far more strong. So he’s scheduled me for two more Selective Nerve Root Block injections.
I don’t mind the back pain. Don’t care that much about it at all. Getting up every hour to relieve it is good for for me. But the leg pain continues to be a drag on so much.
Gotta keep on trucking. Things could be far worst.
David Foster Wallace’s Commencement Speech at Kenyon University:
There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: “Look, it’s not like I don’t have actual reasons for not believing in God. It’s not like I haven’t ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn’t see a thing, and it was fifty below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out ‘Oh, God, if there is a God, I’m lost in this blizzard, and I’m gonna die if you don’t help me.'” And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. “Well then you must believe now,” he says, “After all, here you are, alive.” The atheist just rolls his eyes. “No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp.”
It’s easy to run this story through kind of a standard liberal arts analysis: the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people’s two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience. Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy’s interpretation is true and the other guy’s is false or bad. Which is fine, except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person’s most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice. Plus, there’s the whole matter of arrogance. The nonreligious guy is so totally certain in his dismissal of the possibility that the passing Eskimos had anything to do with his prayer for help. True, there are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too. They’re probably even more repulsive than atheists, at least to most of us. But religious dogmatists’ problem is exactly the same as the story’s unbeliever: blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn’t even know he’s locked up.
The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.
Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realist, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it’s so socially repulsive. But it’s pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.
Please don’t worry that I’m getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It’s a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being “well-adjusted”, which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.
Deep thought for today.
Make sure to read the whole thing, via Dave Rogers
This is weird. I am almost never at a loss for words, but this time I’ve been for over a week now.
Antonella Pavese tagged me to share my favorite historical figure and five random/weird things about him or her.
That’s a hard one! While I’ve read few biographies, I do consider myself a bit of a history buff.
Anyways, as soon as I figure out my favorite, I’m in. Coming soon…
Many folks who suffer from lower back pain are told – “buy New Balance sneakers”.
The mistake comes in where folks follow the hype and buy what is a terrific running sneaker – New Balance’s 992s.
I can understand why. I’ve seen Steve Jobs wearing them for goodness sakes.
And yeah, I actually bought a pair.
But here’s the thing, that particular sneaker does not help back pain sufferers. In fact, I believe can trigger low back pain when they are mis-worn. Which is wearing them for a purpose other than running. 992s are running sneakers with additional cushioning in the heal for the hammering they take during jogging or running. This additional cushioning elevates your heal, adding pressure to your legs and encouraging your back into a posture that isn’t helpful while walking.
And if you are suffering low back pain, like me, you’re not running all that much.
After following some advice found in this message forum I went out and bought some Clarks and Pumas. There is a notable difference when standing or walking. Richelle’s mom has sung the praises of Clarks for her knee pain for a while.
So it was great to read in New York Magazine that this approach made sense.
Related: Boing Boing thread on the previously mentioned article and subject.
These three articles explain a lot about folks who refuse to hear any feedback/advice/criticism given in good will.
It’s true it turns out – they are, most likely, dealing with a self esteem issue. But not the kind you think. In fact, they just may be looking down on you.
ScienceDaily: High Self-esteem Is Not Always What It’s Cracked Up To Be:
…Increasingly, psychologists are looking at such behavior and saying out loud what may go against the grain of how many people act: high self-esteem is not the same thing as healthy self-esteem. And new research by a psychology professor from the University of Georgia is adding another twist: those with “secure” high self-esteem are less likely to be verbally defensive than those who have “fragile” high self-esteem.
“There are many kinds of high self-esteem, and in this study we found that for those in which it is fragile and shallow it’s no better than having low self-esteem,” said Michael Kernis of University of Georgia. “People with fragile high self-esteem compensate for their self-doubts by engaging in exaggerated tendencies to defend, protect and enhance their feelings of self-worth.”
ScienceDaily: Studies Find Narcissists Most Aggressive When Criticized:
…researchers assert that people with high self-esteem are a heterogeneous group that may be more different than alike since high self-esteem can be an accurate appreciation of one’s good traits, or it may be a highly doubtful sense of personal superiority that is not reality-based. While some individuals with high self-esteem are largely unaffected by feedback, others may require frequent confirmation and validation of their favorable self-image by others. Thus the psychologists assert that differences in the validity of individuals’ self-esteem undermines its usefulness as a predictor of aggression.
The authors suggest that aggression by narcissists is an interpersonally meaningful and specific response to an ego threat. “Narcissists mainly want to punish or defeat someone who has threatened their highly favorable views of themselves,” the authors note. “People who are preoccupied with validating a grandiose self-image apparently find criticism highly upsetting and lash out against the source of it.”
New York Magazine: How Not to Talk to Your Kids:
Why does this child, who is measurably at the very top of the charts, lack confidence about his ability to tackle routine school challenges?
…For a few decades, it’s been noted that a large percentage of all gifted students (those who score in the top 10 percent on aptitude tests) severely underestimate their own abilities. Those afflicted with this lack of perceived competence adopt lower standards for success and expect less of themselves. They underrate the importance of effort, and they overrate how much help they need from a parent.