phyllostachys 65: Minute Tech 50 Show Transcript

50 - Mourning - What are Burial Customs?

Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 50 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Friday, December 14th, 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- Mars Rovers and Orbiters find white;
- Mourning - What are Burial Customs?
- and, the Mac Blogs, & how do you brand a podcast?

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Taiji - learning tai chi and qi gong 9:30 am every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA. "Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.

And: Ravelings, by Carol. Pittsburgh-region classes in needle-craft - encompassing crochet, embroidery, knitting, & tatting, as well as an associated lace collection. For more information, contact Carol at carolb207-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

A note for today - you may have noticed that there was no podcast yesterday, Thursday the 13th. My morning routine was altered somewhat, which jiggered my routine for the day. How do you build flexibility into your schedule, when everything must be done? :-) The delay allowed our writers to happily flesh out the notes for this mornings show.

Tech News:

Yesterday, Jeremiah Owyang, Social Computing analyst at Forrester Research, attended a breakfast roundtable at Oracle's headquarters in Silicon Valley focusing on China and Social Media. One of Jeremiah's many Twitter postings mentioned that the " Population of [the] US is 303,585,850 (census.gov)[whereas]Tencent's registered members are 715,300,000". Tencent is an internet services provider in China.

In Offplanet news, the automatons exploring Mars on behalf of mankind have unearthed (...er...unmars'd?) traces of white on the surface. Spirit and it's twin rover Opportunity have both found significant traces of a mineral called silica, which is a primary ingredient in the terrestrial production of window glass. In natural environments, silica is a distillate that comes from minerals through which water has run or steamed. Running water could be due to melting ice or precipitating moisture; steamed water could be due to volcanic activity. Either type points to the presence of once-abundant sources of water on mars. The Rover Spirit found water inadvertently by dragging a defective wheel through the soil...and then turning to inspected the upturned soil...and it saw the white silica.

Separately, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has brought out more information, through photography, about spidery veins of white that appears during Martian summer at the both poles - scientists reviewing the MRO's findings have speculated that the white is from frosty carbon dioxide snow falling from geysers of carbon dioxide jetting up from fissures in frozen CO2, activated by sun-induced melting of winter CO2 ice.


Tech Question:

Mourning - What are Burial Customs?

The most prevalent example of burial customs in the modern world are the extensive artistic and scientific reviews of the ancient Egyptian burial customs. The pyramids on the Giza plateau and other areas of the middle east are remnants of tombs built by ancient peoples in observance of their various beliefs about death and new life after death. We've seen the mummified remains of monarchical rulers, priests, and cats; we've seen buried ships, furniture and clothing sealed in vaults, either to commemorate the passing of the deceased or to provide tools to the deceased to use on whatever journey they'd embarked upon.

In modern times, we similarly entomb our dead, though perhaps not to the same extent. We have embalming and multilayer caskets; we have subterranean vaults and above-ground mausoleums; we have urns for ashes and stele, or tombstones with writing on them, for marking the place of burial. Wikipedia suggests that burial customs have been part of our society for some 200,000 years, from the time of the human diaspora from Africa, when our ancestors spread out from Africa to other parts of the world. Now, tombs and graves can be found in all inhabited parts of the world.

Qui Gon Jin and Darth Vader were both cremated, echoing traditions in India and Japan, as well as a growing trend in the west for cremation. After cremation, a small jar is all that remains, which is far smaller & easier to store than a heavy, large casket. I think we're beginning to see that the vessel in which our loved ones lived and died is merely a vessel, that their spirit lives on in our memories, in our lives, in our actions and in our hearts.


Podcasting - Blogging News:

The Mac blogs.
After hearing countless references to Daring Fireball and the Macalope, I finally decided to link over to those blogs. Now, awhile back Jeff Pulver twittered a question as to who preferred push and who preferred pull....meaning, do you prefer to go get your news, or do you want it to come to you, aggregated in a news reader? I prefer to go get it...which is why I mentioned myself as "roadkill" per John Wall's explanation of the three levels of news reader users. I like to surf news.google.com and finance.yahoo.com to find my news, and stumbling across blog posts is just part of that scenery.

So, its interesting now to see that the Macalope writes just like the way he talks on MacBreak Weekly and to see the interesting way that John Gruber's Daring Fireball breaks up each post into little snippets of links and commentary. I'm going to borrow the list of blog links from Tom Krazit's "One More Thing" blog page - see if there are Mac blogs you haven't seen yet.

What's in a name?
I'm currently using the title "Minute Tech podcast" for this daily creation about the broader meanings of technology; John Wall uses "the M Show" for his weekly ramble through news and marketing tidbits; Adam Wolf uses BizTech podcast for his short 3-minute review of various technologies and methods for small businesses; John Foster appropriately uses "Beer School" for his period show about types and methods of beer-making.

Is Minute Tech a good name? I modified the name of a previous podcast performed by me and Dawn Papuga call Minute Lit...and while that could easily have been call Hour Lit, we liked the name because of the way it sounded. I similarly like Minute Tech. Granted it's not a minute in duration, and it may not cover what the general populace considers technology...but I reserve the right to describe a broader definition. An appropriate logo and branding strategy would be good, too.

But, more to the point, a suggestion has been made that perhaps another name would be more appropriate. How about Minute Ramble? You might think that I ramble a bit, moving fluidly, or abruptly, from topic to topic. How about "Daily Digest"? One of my favorite podcast jingles is from Greg Demetrick's 365tao.net, where he intones "Digital Dharma Delivered Daily". What do you think?

Drop me a line - I need mail! :-)

Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com

"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"

- Mars Rovers and Orbiters find white;
- Mourning - What are Burial Customs?
- and, how do you brand a podcast?

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

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