I think science is very, very cool and it was great to help people enjoy something so scientifically special in their own front yards. This is especially true for the kids. I loved that the first words out of their mouths — and most of the adults too — was COOL! Hopefully this will stick with them when they are older and wondering what science really has to offer them in life.

Here are few of the photos I tried to capture. It is very difficult to shoot an eclipse, even with the special filters provided by my eclipse-watching expert friend, Michael. I really don’t have a big enough telephoto lens to create a very large image of the eclipse, but what I caught I think came out very well.

Click for larger images

Science Sunday: Photos from Annular Solar Eclipse taken in Van Nuys todays is a post from My Word with Douglas E. Welch

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Related posts:

1. Event: Annular eclipse Sunday partial View in Los Angeles- just before sunset!
2. Event: Island Fox at Santa Barbara Zoo Science Day
3. Event: SCA Archery and Thrown Weapons Practice – Sunday, October 16, 2011

If you enjoy this recipe video, please click Like and/or subscribe on my YouTube channel.

Can’t see the video above? Watch “The Fine Art of Troubleshooting Anything” on YouTube.

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Subscribe to the My Word with Douglas E. Welch podcast using iTunes

Video: The Fine Art of Troubleshooting Anything from BarCampLA is a post from My Word with Douglas E. Welch

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1. Video: TechIQ What’s New? – Show 001 – Podcast
2. Video: My Word on Food: Making No-Fuss Focaccia
3. Video: Play Angry Birds on my friend’s Christmas Lights

Annular eclipse Sunday partial View in Los Angeles!   Just before Sunset!

View safely!!  Don’t look at it directly!  if you don’t have  Viewing glasses…

  

http://www.exploratorium.edu/eclipse/how.html

http://www.exploratorium.edu/eclipse/card.html

“Unsafe filters include color film, some non-silver black and white film, medical x-ray films with images on them, smoked glass, photographic neutral density filters and polarizing filters. Solar filters designed to thread into eyepieces which are often sold with inexpensive telescopes are also dangerous. They should not be used for viewing the Sun at any time since they often crack from overheating. Do not experiment with other filters unless you are certain that they are safe. Damage to the eyes comes predominantly from invisible infrared wavelengths. The fact that the Sun appears dark in a filter or that you feel no discomfort does not guarantee that your eyes are safe.”

http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEhelp/safety.html

Los Angeles will get a Partial View - 

 This is from The Griffith Observatory page...

Event: Annular eclipse Sunday partial View in Los Angeles- just before sunset! is a post from My Word with Douglas E. Welch

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Related posts:

1. Event: The Los Angeles Zoo Docents’ Garden Boutique and Bake Sale – Sunday, June 3rd, 2012
2. Event: SCA Archery and Thrown Weapons Practice – Sunday, October 16, 2011
3. Event: Reaching Across the Distance – Love Letters for Valentine’s Day 2012 – Sun, Feb 12

Jazz on a Sunday Afternoon

Here is the photo from a local paper of Joseph and I at the Lazz Concert I mentioned in my last post. 

For whatever reason, the photographer of The Acorn, a small, regional paper for the Thousand Oaks/Simi Valley area, finds Joseph quite photogenic. This is the second time we have appeared in the paper. By the way, I am not asleep in the picture, but concentrating on the sketch I was drawing. (SMILE) 

Click for a short story from the paper and links to a larger image! 

Just 8 years ago?!?! Joseph and Douglas at an outdoor concert is a post from My Word with Douglas E. Welch

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3. #Trust30 Day 8: 5 years forward or back

CareerCampLA is just 14 days away! – Helping to Build the Career You Deserve! is a post from My Word with Douglas E. Welch

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Related posts:

1. Event: Save the Date! – CareerCampLA-2 – March 18, 2011
2. Share CareerCampLA – Post a flyer!
3. CareerCampLA Registration is now open!

My fellow panelists were Heidi Kujawa (Founding Member of Kode Corporation – a company dedicated solely to intellectual property protection) and Nicole A. Ozer (Technology and Civil Liberties Policy Director of the ACLU of Northern California).

• Despite all the news about privacy breaches, selling of personal data, and GPS tracking, no one is ready to throw away their digital devices
• This is the present. This is where we live. We are never going back. We need to think about the benefits that all this technology gives us
• Was it better before the Internet? Hell, no! I lived there, it was not.
• Mainstream media is reporting on technology stories that, for the most part, they do not understand.
• We like to think that mainstream media is smarter than we are. We like to think they understand all this technology stuff. But they don’t.
• In a lot of cases, they understand it a lot less than you do
• Fear is control. If someone can make you fearful, they control you.
• The more you know, they better off you are going to be.
• Just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should i.e. digital voting
• The techies are telling everyone, “Are you out of your mind? It’s too easy to game it!”
• When the techies are screaming, “Don’t use a technology!” it is probably a good ideas to listen to them. They see the flaws the that average person might not understand.
• Start listening to those technological people out there. They can be a little geeky, but they actually know some of this stuff pretty well.
• I have made a pact with the devil. I give a little bit of my soul to get some sweet, sweet Gmail. Overall, I am Ok with that. I have made the personal decision that the type of data I throw around in Gmail is probably Ok.
• If that means that systems can deliver ads that actually mean something to me, I am all for it.
• One of our biggest problems today is government.
• If you see nearly any Congressional representative on the news try to talk about technology, there is not there, there.
• We have people legislating our lives — and their lives as well — and global rules, that they don’t understand.
• Worse, they don’t even know what they don’t know. If they did they would hire staffers to help them fill in this piece of knowledge. They would have a technology task force — a whole crew — that could help them understand the legislation that is coming across their desk.
• In the worst cases, you have some representatives who are willfully ignorant about technology. Who make jokes about it. Who laugh it off. “Well, I don’t understand it, but I’m going to vote for it anyway!” That drives me mad. You will catch me screaming at my television set when I see people like that and you should, too.
• If this technology “present” is going to work, government has to iterate as fast as technology.
• Government cannot keep up. You can practically hear the wheels of government creaking and groaning as it struggles to keep up with the speed of new technology.
• We seem to live in a world where technology is seen as something new and magical that has never been dreamed up before. So therefore, laws don’t cover. “Oh, the law doesn’t apply to VHS. The law doesn’t apply to email.” Why is that? Why don’t we flip that over. Why don’t we make laws apply to all new inventions. Then we can legislate the exceptions. “Email is protected, by default. Boom! You have to have a warrant to get to your email source.” Why wasn’t that the case?
• Why does adding the words “…on the Internet” change our laws. It doesn’t make any sense. Fraud is fraud, not matter where it is perpetrated. Theft is theft. Why don’t these laws apply?
• We ned to live in a world where applying these laws is the default, not the exception.
• We are going to have just as many technological advancements in the next 20-30 years as we have had in the past 20-30 years. How is government going to deal with that?
• We now have a 5th branch of government — the corporation. Corporations now have so much money they can do, pretty much, whatever they want — and we let them. Our same creaking government I mentioned above has passed laws that make it even easier for these corporations to do whatever they want. That, for me, is another target for our efforts on digital privacy, data retention, intellectual property, on everything. There is another “branch of government” that we need to address.
• A psychologist once pronounced that “All corporations are sociopathic.” If you think about it, they really are. They have one goal above all others — increase shareholder value. Imagine that you knew someone who used that same guideline for every decision — how much money it put in their pocket. Every transaction from whether taking you out for coffee, going to the grocery store, picking up the kids from school — everything had a monetary value. You would probably call them a sociopath. They would be unable to interact with the rest of the world.
• We have corporations out there that focus on “raise shareholder value” at whatever cost
• We need to address these corporations and we need to start working with corporations. There is one thing they understand. Money. There is an argument that can be made to corporations that it is in their best interest to protect our privacy.
• There will be points in the future where data breaches, over-gathering and over-use of our private data and other missteps that will lead them to the brink of disaster and failure. That is where we hit them — in the pocketbook. It is worth YOUR money, YOUR existence to have a decent privacy policy. It is worth your money to have a data retention and protection policy. I think that is where we are going to have the most effect.
• Corporations have much more power today than they have ever had in the past. Rivaling even that of the government. We need to turn our attentions there.
• Now, of course, if you are going to have a privacy policy, can we at least have something that is understandable? Very few people understand the language in a privacy policy or a license agreement. Lawyers understand them, but the rest of us don’t talk that way. all we do is click agree without any understanding of what it says. It could say anything.  That is a huge disconnect. Corporations need to make these agreements clearer to those clicking those Agree buttons.
• The only thing that can kill off this “Goose that lays the Golden Egg” we call the Internet, is bad legislation. As was seen with SOPA and PIPA, given enough money and enough connections, the unelected bodies of the MPAA and RIAA wrote a law, handed it to our representatives and said, “Pass this!” If that doesn’t scare you, I don’t know what else will. When I think about the Internet being turned down, if not completely off, on the whim of two corporations, that worries me more than anything.

Highlights from ACLU Digital Privacy Panel Discussion is a post from My Word with Douglas E. Welch

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Related posts:

1. Photos: ACLU Next Digital Privacy Panel Discussion
2. Tonight: Digital Privacy Panel Discussion – March 20, 2012 – UCLA School of Law
3. Digital Privacy Panel Discussion – March 20, 2012 – UCLA School of Law

I was part of an ACLU-sponsored panel discussion last night that the UCLA School of Law. Here are some photos from the evening.

My fellow panelists were:

• Heidi Kujawa (Founding Member of Kode Corporation – a company dedicated solely to intellectual property protection)
• Nicole A. Ozer (Technology and Civil Liberties Policy Director of the ACLU of Northern California)

If you can’t see the slide show, please view the ACLU Next Digital Privacy Panel Discussion slideshow on Flickr

Video and audio recordings of this panel should be coming soon.

Photos: ACLU Next Digital Privacy Panel Discussion is a post from My Word with Douglas E. Welch

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Related posts:

1. Tonight: Digital Privacy Panel Discussion – March 20, 2012 – UCLA School of Law
2. Digital Privacy Panel Discussion – March 20, 2012 – UCLA School of Law
3. Three different events this week — 2 career-oriented and one new media

PANEL DISCUSSION ON DIGITAL PRIVACY

“Party Like It’s 1986″(the last time electronic laws were updated)

Date: Tuesday, March 20thTime: 7p

Panelists:

• Douglas Welch (Independent Technology Consultant for New and Social Media Strategies)
• Heidi Kujawa (Founding Member of Kode Corporation – a company dedicated solely to intellectual property protection)
• Nicole A. Ozer (Technology and Civil Liberties Policy Director of the ACLU of Northern California)

Location:

UCLA School of Law (385 Charles E Young Dr. East, Room 1347 Los Angeles, CA 90095)

Parking: Lot 2 (attached is a UCLA Campus map)

Cost: FREE

Also, light hors d’oeuvres and wine will be served, along with a chance to network before and after the panel presentation.

Tonight: Digital Privacy Panel Discussion – March 20, 2012 – UCLA School of Law is a post from My Word with Douglas E. Welch

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Related posts:

1. Digital Privacy Panel Discussion – March 20, 2012 – UCLA School of Law
2. Voiceover class starts January 12, 2012 at UCLA Extension
3. Douglas at Dodger Stadium Job Fair this Saturday – March 10, 2012 – 10a-1pm

I will be doing career consulting for the people who stop by the booth as well as chatting up CareerCampLA which is only 6 weeks away. If you attend the event, stop by and say Hello!

(Watch for an announcement soon on some more career consulting work I will be doing for Sideskills.com, too)

Click picture for complete information on the job fair

Sideskills.com

“SideSkills is the one-stop-shop to find a full-time, part-time, or contract job, or make extra income. Market yourself, your services, or your products. Now over 1,000 skills to choose from.

Welcome to the easiest way to make extra money, received custom offers, and monetize your skills. No-fees for accepting payments through the site! It’s time to start making some extra income with your talents.”

Douglas at Dodger Stadium Job Fair this Saturday – March 10, 2012 – 10a-1pm is a post from My Word with Douglas E. Welch

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Related posts:

1. Digital Privacy Panel Discussion – March 20, 2012 – UCLA School of Law
2. Event: DelAir Rockhounds Annual Gem Show 2012 through Saturday, Feb 25
3. Douglas speaks on “A Year of Action at Tuesdays with Transitioners this week

WED 3/7 6pm

Rancho Sierra Vista/Satwiwa

Howl at the Moon

Join a ranger for a hike during the full moon to look and listen for nightlife in the park, including coyotes, owls, and scorpions! Bring a flashlight. Rain cancels. All ages welcome. Meet at parking lot. 2hrs NPS

THU 3/8 6pm

Charmlee Wilderness Park

Full Moon Hike

Enjoy the mountains, meadow, and an ocean overlook as the moon lights our way. Bring a flashlight and meet at upper parking lot. Rain cancels. Reservations required: 310-317-1364. $4 parking fee. 2hrs CMPR

FRI 3/9 6pm

Franklin Canyon - Sooky Goldman Nature Ctr

Nearly Full Moon Evening

Enjoy a moderately strenuous hike after the sun goes down. The moon, stars, and views add to the joy of being in nature under a full moon. 2hrs MRCA/SMM

Event: March Full Moon Hikes, Various Locations, Santa Monica Mountains NRA is a post from My Word with Douglas E. Welch

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1. Event: Livin’ in the Sticks at King Gillette Ranch, Santa Monica Mountains NRA
2. Event: Winter Sky at Circle X Ranch, Santa Monica Mountains NRA
3. Event: Island Fox at Santa Barbara Zoo Science Day