Fish, Flash ... Blog in under a minute

Just a quick blog entry to mention happy things that are going on my life. (a friend calls this Flash blogging).

Cycorp has released a new version of OpenCyc (the first in two years or so).
The cool thing is that they have released a several times larger knowledgebase than before.
Other breaking news is that they are changing their release strategy which may increase participation outside of Cycorp dramatically. They have an open server if your firewall doesn't block port 3602.

WorldVistA just had a development meeting in Salt Lake City. Got a chance to see some folks I have known for a while, and get to know in more depth some people I didnt' know very well.
Generally, strategy about creating effective Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) for VistA.
Lots of ideas about visualization, effective strategies for presenting information to end-users,
and methods to implement, such as m2web. The conversations ranged from security authorizations for protected content, to development strategies to keep track of code versioning. Lots of good stuff. Our next general meeting is in April, corresponding to the $HOROLOG rollover to 60,000.

And finally: A link attempting to explain why so many cars have the icon of a fish on their bumper. (Disclaimer Note: I did a web search, found the page, generally it covers what I know. Further web search, especially on wikipedia seems to support the bit about the goddess Atargatis, tying her to Ashtorath (from the Old Testament) and Astarte (from which we get the word "Easter") and the Pythagoras, where it is tied to a mathematical/geometric object called the Vesica Piscis and the square root of 3. I assume the quote is accurately represented from Jung but I had never read it myself. I also had never heard of Vishnu being symbolized by a fish.

But hey, that is the fun thing about symbols. They are highly community and individual specific.
The same symbol to one person may be highly religious, expressing their heart succintly, and for another person may be blasphemous. Its a good thing that God doesn't look on the outside, but looks at our hearts.