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by Newtown grafitti

This is an age, in America, when to see people teaming across an open space that is not a ball field, is to see protest — most likely on the news, in a far away place. New York, Oakland; Cairo, Tunis; Barcelona, Athens; Delhi. Or perhaps it is the bustling crowd under the sodium light of a parking lot, in the wee hours after Thanksgiving dinner has been packed into the refrigerator. Waiting for this year’s must-have bargain.

Winter was once a midly depressing time for me, as it is for most: short, cool days, brown grass, bear branches. Obviously this is Texas not Minnesota, otherwise: shorter, super-cold days, car stuck in snow or sliding on ice (but the grass was still green - under the snow - and the branches would often have a delicate coating of the white stuff). Fractals and birds started changing me some years ago. This winter has only confirmed that.

Talks by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Spirit of Christ is a new arrangement of public and private talks, all previously published in Paris Talks and Promulgation of Universal Peace. Each talk mentions Christ; some are directly about Christ’s teachings and disciples, while others are more generally about religion and the Prophets or “Manifestations” of God. Like a good mix tape (playlist), the arrangement here creates a beautiful and new experience: the reader gains a clearer and more coherent view of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s theology from these pages. This of course is an elucidation of Bahá‘u’lláh’s theology; as such, this new volume would make an excellent compliment to the study of the Kitáb-i-íqan.

This past week’s terrible storm out East provides a reminder of the importance of our ecological infrastructure; in particular, wetlands. The lessons that we did not heed from Hurricane Katrina will perhaps take hold with Hurricane Sandy impacting the nation’s commercial heart: in addition to supporting relief efforts now, it is important for us to consider long-term mitigation against the impact of future large storms, which are likely to be more powerful and more frequent than in centuries past. Instead of, or in addition to, relying on massive levies, seawalls, and the like, we need to support public and private endeavors to restore vital natural systems.

We build a lot of console applications, and Windows services, that process inbound and outbound files in one way or another. Most depend on configuration data and some load (or unload) business data from a database, in addition to accessing the files. Testing these has always been a chore, to say the least: configurations change, data are deleted, and there’s never enough time. After building a few rudimentary tools that have helped, necessity, and Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams, has convinced me that it is time to get serious about system/integration test automation, just as I did about unit test automation a few years ago. This is the first of a n-part series of posts on this process

Dallas Interfaith Power & Light will be hosting a screening and round-table discussion of the Nova Documentary Power Surge, on Monday, September 24, 7:00 PM. This film looks at the state of “green energy” in the United States and the potential impact of technology on softening the blow of global climate change. The event will be held at the Dallas Baha’i Center, 9400 Plano Rd, Dallas, TX (south of Walnut Hill, north of E Northwest Hwy).