October 22, 2002

Just read an enthusiastic review in strategy+business for The Merchant of Prato: Francesco di Marco Datini, 1335–1410, the complete memoirs of an early Renaissance businessman. According to the review, the book is fascinating partly because Francesco faced such similar worries in his day as we do today. I just ordered a used copy through Amazon.com, out of idle curiosity.

1:53 p.m.

Hmmm. Apparently AnimationStand provides a full-scale traditional animation suite, and it has a free download version that lets you do everything except export to resolutions larger than 256×192. Seems sensible to me. I’ve been wanting to try my hand at some real animation; this strikes me as a sensible way to try it.

My gosh. They want second-graders to pledge allegiance to dirt.

I agree with Lileks here. There’s a line between respecting “Mother Earth” and worshipping it, and this pledge crosses it. We can and should understand and attempt to work within the ecological balance of our planet, but this pledge elevates ecological concerns almost to a religious level. Lileks puts it best:

“When you set it up a pledge to the meter of the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, I’ll take you at your word. Either you regard this as more important or just as important, and on those points reasonable people can disagree.“
— James Lileks, Oct. 22, 2002 Bleat