Relevant History

She-blogger

Great.

[via Susan Mernit]

I'm baaack

I'm now back. Tomorrow I go down to the OAH conference for a talk, or discussion, or something, on postacademic careers. Then it's back to my regular life in the afternoon, which is going to get rather busier than normal these next couple weeks.

Greetings from UAL 955

We're now somewhere over Canada-- the little displays shows just where, but it doesn't give the name of the province.

This flight, not surprisingly, has been a lot more pleasant than the one over. Not to crow about it, but the difference between economy and business class is pretty serious. You get space, the flight attendant-to-passenger ratio is slow enough so they can notice whether you're working and remember how you take your coffee, and the seats are a lot better.

By some unspoken agreement, not long after the plane took off, everyone in business class lowered their window shades, essentially turning the section into a large mobile nap room. Since we're flying with the sun, we don't have that experience of having a super-accelerated sundown, compressed night, and sudden sunrise; it's more like being over the Arctic Circle in summertime. But it meant that I was able to get more sleep on the plane than I did in my hotel room last night.

Plane drinks

For some reason, when I'm flying, I like to drink tonic water and tomato juice (not together).

I never drink them otherwise.

I wonder why I do this.

Actually, I don't wonder too much. I just do it.

Thoughts about the Crowne Plaza St James

Good:

The location is pretty outstanding-- 1/2 block from Buckingham Palace, easy access to the Underground, near lots of other major sights. (Though I prefer to be closer to Piccadilly. I just can't help myself.)

The rooms were pretty good, showers were excellent (no stereotypical bad English plumbing).

The restaurants were great. The first night there, I had this amazing sea bass on vanilla-scented risotto; last night I went to the Indian restaurant (named after a small town and railway trans-shipment center in Kerala), which was just outstanding.

Bad:

The wifi is virtually nonexistent in the rooms.

The Internet access is scandalously expensive. Just incredible. I need to find where the Internet cafes are (assuming I come back before we all have wifi brain implants).

The business center sucks. Old PCs, no free USB outlets that you can use to bring down presentations or documents and print them out (in fact, the keyboard and mouse was connected to serial ports with serial-to-USB connectors). I've stayed at Holiday Inns in Cincinnati that had better computer facilities.

I had no trouble with scheduling wake-up calls; my colleague complained that she had trouble with hers.

So good for staying in, not so good for actually supporting work.

Small world

When checking in and getting my boarding pass, I was struck at the incredible variety of airlines that fly through Heathrow: Air Malaysia right beside BWIA, SAS just a little ways down, PIA (the Pakistani airline) within sight, Varig just down the hall.

It's a very vivid, compressed lesson in how amazingly diverse the world is, and yet how connected it's become.

Last little expedition

I picked up a couple books, including a kids' book about visiting London (which if I have to come back will be useful to read, I figure), and paperback versions of the first two volumes in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle-- books that I've read in hardcover, but which I figure are still worth having in paperback, especially if the paperback has a tiny bit of novelty to it.

Wandering around the international terminal, I'm struck at how many women there are here who are veiled. Of course such sights aren't strange in the Bay Area, and my sense is that London is a major terminus for many Middle and Near Eastern carriers; but I still find it striking.

Greetings from Heathrow

I'm in the airport, and my flight leaves in about 90 minutes. My colleague and I are going to go do a little ethnography (read: people-watching and seeing if we can spend the last of our pounds) before getting on the plane.

I arrive back in San Francisco on Thursday afternoon; will drop into the office; then go pick up my children, who rumor has it have finally noticed that I've been gone.

Friday (ack!) I'm supposed to be on an OAH panel, talking about nonacademic careers for history Ph.D.s. I say "supposed," though there's nothing conditional about it: I have every intention of going to it, and doing my bit to raise graduate students' awareness (and arguably sights) regarding the skills they'll acquire in the course of their training, and the ways to which they can be put to use.

But I think I'll mainly talk about how jet-lagged I am, thanks to having to fly to London on short notice; and that it would have been even worse, if I hadn't gotten an upgrade to business class, which allowed to me to relax and get some rest on the plane.

Given that business class advance tickets for this flight were going for $10,000 when I booked my flight, and that I have to essentially step off the plane and right back into my life, my boss (i.e. the other person on this trip) didn't hesitate when they told me about the option at check-it: she fairly shouted, "Get it!"

And I'll be able to make good use of the reclining seat, given that I slept about an hour last night. Weirdly, the combination of the release of pressure after the presentation, my body's continued confusion about what time it really is (which was only made worse by the fact that my computer still shows San Francisco time, so I'm constantly reminded of what time it "really" is), and a bit too much caffeine, conspired to make me more, not less, energetic last night-- and this morning, and later this morning, and then it was time to wake up and take a shower.

But at least I managed to get plenty of work done, which will leave me relatively free on the plane to work on my "death of cyberspace" article.

I can't get away!

As if I didn't see enough of Finding Nemo at home... this is what I saw in the storefont of an electronics store here in London yesterday.

Curse you, Pixar!

A cool thing in the bus stalls

How many cities have bus systems this accurate, I wonder?

City of signs

Ain't that the truth....

"Loathsome London: It's History With the Nasty Bits Left In"

Glo global food

Phone booth, center of communication

A phone booth on the Strand demonstrates that, as someone once said, you can't not communicate.

Technorati Tags: London, travel

There's just no escaping it

Think different, indeed

Mind the traffic

I was very interested at this kind of crosswalk.

The way it works is that you cross to the island in the middle, then have to walk down the island a little ways to cross to the other side of the street.

The first time I saw this, I thought, how weird. But if your objective is to make it possible for large numbers of people to cross the street, it makes sense-- and it creates a sort of safe zone in the middle of the street.

We are the world. No wait, we own the world

While walking around this afternoon, I was struck by the number of buildings I saw that bore the names of former colonies-- or members of the Commonwealth now.

India to the left, Montreal to the right

Back to the hotel

From Burlington House I walked up to the slightly rendundantly-named, but pleasant, Green Park.

On the other side, what did I come to?

Hey! It's Buckingham Palace!

Burlington House

From Piccadilly, it was but a short walk to Burlington House, where I spent several weeks doing dissertation research.

The facade of Burlington House

See? It really is!

My walk

After the presentation, I went out walking. The first thing I came across: a cool old church. I got closer. Oh. Westminster Abbey.

Just across the street: Big Ben and Parliament.

You know in principle that these things are close, but to see them is something else again.

Free man

Well, the presentation is over. We wrapped up in the early afternoon, and got back to the hotel around 3:30. I spent the next couple hours walking around-- down Victoria to Big Ben, along the Embankment, over to the Strand, up Kingsway, over to Bloomsbury and the British Museum, down to Picadilly, then through Green Park to Buckingham Palace, thence back to the hotel.

Going for dinner in a bit. Pictures later.

Talk day

Got a reasonably good night's sleep, figured out how to use the in-room iron, and now it's off to give talks. Fortunately we're about a ten-minute walk from the venue, so we can rehearse here, and not spend a lot of time on the road.

View from the hotel room

There's another hotel across the square.

Because London is full of people like me

Little reminder for those of us who nearly get run over whenever we visit....

Mirror world

This evening I went to a nearby convenience store and laid in some supplies-- tea biscuits, Diet Coke, that sort of thing. I got change.

It reminded me of William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, where Cayce Pollard reflects on how England is a mirror world of the U.S.: the money looks similar but different, the electric plugs are a different size, the phones ring differently.

What struck me all of a sudden, though, was how I don't actually have to calculate change in American currency: I know that 47 cents in a quarter, two dimes and two pennies without thinking, 1 quarter = 25 cents, 1 dime = 10 cents so you need two of those, etc.. With pence, though, I've really got to think it through. It's like speaking from a dictionary.

Ah, services....

Mixed in with the cookies, chocolates, and soda in the minibar:

intimacy kit

two condoms, two obstetrical towelettes (apparently to deliver a baby should the condoms fail), one package lubricating jelly
distributed by In-Room Plus, Inc., Buffalo, NY

Because when I think "intimacy," I think, Buffalo.

TV

When I came into my room, the TV was on, blaring about the hotel's services. I flipped through channels, and it's a real mix: Al Jazeerz, A Russian channel (running an ad for a dubbed version of Denzel Washington's Devil in a Blue Dress), a couple channels that might be Italian or Spanish or Portuguese, MTV, the Discovery Channel.

One channel is showing Arthur, the kids' show that my daughter is probably watching this minute.

Sky News is covering the Michael Jackson trial. They're reenacting the George Lopez testimony now-- this has got to be strangest thing I've never seen. I thought that British journalism was so highbrow and tony? Oh wait, the reporter is topless.

Hey! They've got The Office, too!

I think I'm going to go out for a quick walk. I doubt I'll get any valuable sleep between now and dinner, and better to just see a bit of the neighborhood.

At the hotel

We made it, and I'm now checked into the Crowne Plaza St James. Amazing.

Over Birmingham

Had a look out the window. It's a lovely bright blue sky, though at 30,000 feet that's probably always true. Below us, clouds as far as they eye can see. Which means that the weather forecasts for London-- rain until the weekend-- look pretty accurate. Well, it's been raining pretty constantly in the Bay Area, so I can't complain.

Greetings from UAL 954

We're over Scotland now, less than an hour from touching down in Heathrow.

I haven't been to England since 1989, when I was writing my dissertation. That trip took me to Oxford and Cambridge, too; the next year I returned, but spent it all in Exeter and Edinburgh (where the Norman Lockyer and Royal Observatory papers are).

Those trips were about as improvised as an opera: I didn't have the time, or the money, to do anything but work in the archives. I stayed in the cheapest bed and breakfasts I could find, and other than walking around and foraging for fish and chips, did no sightseeing. I'd go into the archives in the morning, read like a madman-- this was before laptops computers were cheap enough for graduate students, so I was taking notes by hand-- and emerge bleary-eyed and stiff into the dusk. Whatever sights I saw were purely by chance.

And I had a fabulous time on both trips.

This trip won't be a whole lot more leisurely, but I will have one afternoon and evening free, and we're staying in a hotel near Hyde Park and Victoria Station, so I'll be within easy distance of lots of stuff.

T minus 6

My plane leaves in 6 hours. I'm packed, but for a 72-hour trip, where you're staying in a decent hotel, what is there to pack? A couple shirts, shorts, a sweater, your passport, and you're done.

Oh, and the Powerbook, iSight, headphones, extra Memory Stick for the camera, couple blank CDs, Firewire drive for the iPod, Ethernet cable just in case the hotel turns out not to actually have wifi, jump drive, extra jump drive.

A good example of the dematerialization of knowledge work... except for all that hardware.

[To the tune of Pat Metheny Group, "Goin' Ahead/ As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls," from the album "Travels (Disc 2)".]

Unwired at home!

I now have a wifi network in my home. It's not terribly fast-- SBC tells me that it takes a few days for the DSL modem and the network to optimize-- but I can now wander about the house, and do this. Or e-mail.

I'm never getting offline again.

Great literary traditions continue

Thank goodness....

The Onion | National Gonzo Press Club Vows To Carry On Thompson's Work.

During a Tuesday press conference at the National Gonzo Press Club, members of the nation's foremost organization of gonzo journalists vowed to carry on the mission of its founder Hunter S. Thompson, who took his life last month....

During the past four decades, gonzo journalists have encountered their share of critical backlash, with college journalism departments around the nation reducing funding for gonzo-journalism programs and local editors questioning the wisdom of covering school-board meetings and slow-pitch softball matches on amyl nitrate.

"The gonzo philosophy is not always an effective or practical way to convey fact," Tulsa Daily Courier managing editor Patrick Jacobs said. "Average newspaper readers want to turn to the weather page and see the next day's forecast. They don't really have much use for a map captioned, 'Leeches are sucking my spinal fluid!' And when the sports page contains an unintelligible 3,000-word screed about ballpark hot-dog buns in place of the major-league scores, I get mail."

Gonzo entertainment writer Gail Nucci said 14 publications dropped her syndicated gossip column "Vacuous Sluts And Perfidious Dandies" over the course of the past year.

Thanks, MAD!

I'm sure there's a logical explanation for it

This article on Aljazeera, discussion three resolutions on Sudan under discussion in the UN Security Council, has the obligatory shot of the Security Council debating who knows what-- and one of the members clearly has a picture of a topless woman on his laptop. It may be the wallpaper on his desktop (which when you think about it is a strangely mixed metaphor-- how many desks have you covered with wallpaper?).

It makes you wonder what they're listening to on those headsets (which still look like transistor radios from the late 1960s).

[via Wonkette]

[To the tune of Robert Palmer, "I Didn't Mean to Turn You On (LP Version)," from the album "20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection: The Best of Robert Palmer".]

London calling

I'm go to London next week, in pursuit of a big project. This morning I was just minding my own business, quietly doing my own work; by afternoon I was comparing flight prices and trying to figure out how to spend as few evenings away from the kids as possible.

So next week I've got two days in the air for one day of meetings. There and back in less than 72 hours.

I hope I get real stamps in my passport this time.

So, a question to anyone who knows London well: I've got an afternoon and evening free. If you had lived in London for a long time, had an intimate knowledge of and affection for the city, and were back for a visit, where would you go / eat / hear / etc.? What cafe or bookstore can I absolutely not miss? Where's the most interesting view of the city?

[To the tune of The Blue Nile, "Over The Hillside," from the album "Hats".]

Travel books

Any good histories of contemporary travel books? I was in the bookstore this evening, picking up a couple books on London, and was fairly dazzled at some of the cool book / information design in the travel section now.

We've come a long way from the days of the red Baedekers.

I suspect that travel books will among the first to use things like electronic paper, foldable LCDs, and other technologies that blur the boundaries between print and computing. Travel books are more like luggage or computer hardware: there's lots of practical stuff, but a certain segment of the market is really into stuff that seems to be both intensely functional and incredibly cool.

[To the tune of Various Artists, "A Whole New World," from the album "Disney's Princess Collection".]

Brave moments from the classroom

Via Gawker:

Schoolhouse Crock

A Bronx teacher who repeatedly flunked his state certification exam paid a formerly homeless man with a developmental disorder $2 to take the test for him, authorities said yesterday.

The illegal stand-in - who looks nothing like [38 year-old] teacher Wayne Brightly - not only passed the high-stakes test, he scored so much better than the teacher had previously that the state knew something was wrong, officials said....

[At] Brightly's Mount Vernon home yesterday, a man who strongly resembled him insisted [formerly homeless man Rubin] Leitner took the test on his own. The man, who appeared to be in his late 30s, denied being Brightly - saying he was the teacher's son.

[To the tune of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, "Teach Your Children," from the album "So Far".]

Another actor turned politician?

Angelina Jolie outpolled Elizabeth Dole in a "Who would you most like to see someday as the first woman American president?" survey. But she still trails Condi Rice and Hillary Clinton-- both of whom, it strikes me, would make great Laura Croft arch-nemeses in Tomb Raider 3.

[via Wonkette]

[To the tune of Peter Gabriel, "Games Without Frontiers," from the album "Shaking The Tree".]

Firefox security patch

From CNET News:

The Mozilla Foundation issued a patch for a major security flaw in its Firefox browser on Wednesday and advised people to update their software.

The problem is caused by a buffer overflow in legacy Netscape code still included in the browser for animating GIF images, Chris Hofmann, director of engineering for Mozilla, said. Similar memory problems have affected Mozilla's browsers and Microsoft's Internet Explorer in the past. A malicious attacker could exploit them by creating carefully crafted image files that, when viewed by a victim in a browser, execute a program and compromise the system.

Get the patch here.

[To the tune of The Beatles, "Fixing A Hole," from the album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band".]

Home broadband... so close and yet so far

Our neighborhood finally got DSL service. (I live in an unincorporated part of San Mateo County, which means that we get hooked up to stuff later than people within the city limits of Menlo Park and Atherton. Don't ask me why.)

This is extremely exciting, because I more or less live online, and have never had anything but a dialup line at home. When I was a postdoc at Stanford and Berkeley (more than ten years ago, mind you), it could take hours to get a connection. (There was almost something peaceful and Zen-like about hitting the "redial" button 5000 times before finally hearing that blissful whine of the modem.) Since then, connections have become more plentiful, but I've still never gotten beyond 48.8 kbs at home.

But now, I've got a cool little DSL box sitting beside the telephone. it looks surprisingly like an old external modem, one of those kind that had eight different lights on the front, each marked with an inscrutable TLA*. The "power" and "Ethernet" lights are glowing a reassuring green; the "DSL" light is blinking red; and the "Internet" light is... not on. The hardware arrived before my phone company had time to switch on the service, apparently.

So, I've got DSL hardware, but no service. A great example of how services trump stuff in today's postmodern economy. I'm back to the modem for at least another night.

But once it comes on, boy, watch out.

* Two-letter acronym.

Milestones in the history of science

From the New York Times:

A New Screen Test for Imax: It's the Bible vs. the Volcano

Several Imax theaters, including some in science museums, are refusing to show movies that mention the subject - or the Big Bang or the geology of the earth - fearing protests from people who object to films that contradict biblical descriptions of the origin of Earth and its creatures....

"We have definitely a lot more creation public than evolution public," said Lisa Buzzelli, who directs the Charleston Imax Theater in South Carolina, a commercial theater next to the Charleston Aquarium. Her theater had not ruled out ever showing "Volcanoes," Ms. Buzzelli said, "but being in the Bible Belt, the movie does have a lot to do with evolution, and we weigh that carefully."

Pietro Serapiglia, who handles distribution for the producer Stephen Low of Montreal, whose company made the film, said officials at other theaters told him they could not book the movie "for religious reasons," because it had "evolutionary overtones" or "would not go well with the Christian community" or because "the evolution stuff is a problem."

As Thomas Huxley, Darwin's bulldog and defender of science would have put it, oy vey.

[via Alex Halavais]

[To the tune of Grateful Dead, "In the Midnight Hour," from the album "1971-04-29 - Fillmore East".]

Isak Dinesen quote

Somewhere in one of Isak Dinesesn's writings-- not Out of Africa, I think, but one of her other stories-- she has a line about the morning dew revealing nocturnal animals' tracks, and the ground serving as a manuscript upon which the previous evening's drama is written (or something to that effect). For the life of me, I can no longer find it, and I want to use it in a column. Grrr.

Weird TV tricks

While flipping through the 500 channels that we don't watch, Heather and I stumbled upon ESPN Classic's "Cheap Seats," a show featuring old footage from various sports events and two comedians who say snarky things about the competitors. It combines the format of Mystery Science Theatre 3000, the sarcasm of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and the "let's play with the internal reality of film" quality of What's New Pussycat? Very strange. Or maybe just another example of remix culture.

My colleague who went to Penn State will like this

Years ago, when I was spending a summer in Japan, someone asked me where I went to college. "University of Pennsylvania," I said.

"Ah yes!" they replied. "Nittany Lions! Excellent football team!"

This stuck in my mind only because this confusion regularly took place in the U.S.-- indeed, one could find t-shirts that said "Not Penn State" over the Penn logo-- but I didn't expect to encounter it in another country, much less one that doesn't play football.

I was reminded of it when I saw this correction on Slate's fairly smary, occasionally funny roundup of NCAA tournament schools to hate:

Correction, March 16, 2005: This piece originally and incorrectly included the logo of the Penn State Nittany Lions, not the Pennsylvania Quakers.

[To the tune of Yes, "Awaken," from the album "Keys To Ascension (Disc 1)".]

Search results to be proud of

One of my posts is third in a Google search of "crack for 5 year olds." Terrific.

[To the tune of Mike Ladd, "Field Work (The Ethnographer's Daughter)," from the album "Negrophilia (The Album)".]

How to blog at work

Excellent suggestions from Kuro5hin.

[To the tune of Michael Masley, "Survival in a house darkening," from the album "Cymbalom Solos".]

Work stuff

The air conditioning in our building is working somewhat like the HVAC equivalent of the creature in Alien: efficient, but ruthless, unpredictable, and deadly. Today it's freezing. Two more degrees and I'll be able to see my breath. Thank goodness I wore a sweater today, and keep a jacket at work.

Ironically, I spent much of the morning reading up blogging and business-- and in particular, on people getting fired for blogging. After finding 50,000 of the latter, I agree with Anil Dash and Danah Boyd that this particular meme will only hurt blogging's public image.

And del.icio.us is having server trouble today. What's the point of being online if I can't del.icio.us stuff?

[To the tune of Barbie, "Written In Your Heart," from the album "Barbie Princess & The Pauper". There's just no escaping it.]

Wonkette, political philosopher

From today's Wonkette:

John Gibson Hates Children

Fox News's John Gibson has an awesome column on gay marriage today. His basic argument:

"Gays can't have kids — other than going to the abandoned kids store and getting one or two, or borrowing sperm from someone with more sperm than brains — so by definition they're out of the marriage game."

Wait, there's an "abandoned kids store"? We love how that makes adoption sound like you're buying things that fell off the back of a truck. Only losers get abandoned kids. They're gross. What you want are the fresh, free-range kids they sell at Whole Foods.

That reminds me-- I've gotta go to Whole Foods today. For lunch stuff, not kids.

[To the tune of New Riders of the Purple Sage, "Six Days on the Road," from the album "1970-05-15 - Fillmore East (Early Show)".]

Pay Verizon for the privilege of adverising Verizon!

In the category of Stupid Mobile Phone Company Tricks:

I use my camera cell phone a lot. I send pictures of my kids to my kids' blog, pictures of stuff I see to Flickr, and I enjoy doing it. I have family all over the country, and being able to e-mail pictures of my children to their blog makes it possible for my parents to have a near real-time view of their grandchildren. I even write about the future of mobile services. So I'm the perfect mobile phone camera services user.

About a week ago, I noticed that Verizon started attaching this text message to every picture:

This message was sent using PIX-FLIX Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!..

To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime 6.5 or higher is required. Visit www.apple.com/quicktime/download to download the free player or upgrade your existing QuickTime Player. Note: During the download process when asked to choose an installation type (Minimum, Recommended or Custom), select Minimum for faster download.

Now when I send a picture to the kids' blog, that message becomes part of the body of the blog entry.

Essentially, I'm now paying Verizon $3 a month for the chance to put Verizon advertising on my blog. I. Am. Not. Happy.

I called customer support to see if it's possible to disable this "feature," and it isn't. It's part of the autostamp of every message-- the software that adds the date, time, etc..

I know, as these kinds of things go, the message is reasonably innocuous, and in fact most if it is about QuickTime. But on a blog post, it gets your attention.

Imagine if Verizon extended this to voice. Imagine placing a call, and having to listen to a short advertisement before the other party picked up (there's all that dead time when you're waiting for a call to connect-- or, to call it by its real name, unused advertising space), or having to listen to an ad before you could talk to the person you're trying to call. This wouldn't be a service; it would be something getting in your way.

It's possible that if I were using the service to send pictures to friends' cell phones, or just e-mail pictures to other individuals, I wouldn't even have noticed. But I'm not using the service that way. I'm using it with my blog, and so every picture I send to the blog becomes a little billboard for Verizon, and gets between me and my readers.

I'm probably going to turn the service off, and just carry my digital camera around all the time. Too bad for them.

[To the tune of Bebel Gilberto, "O Caminho," from the album "Bebel Gilberto".]

Back to the Seventies

Lava lamps
via Flickr

From the recent Peninsula School auction-- where I got my Rolling Stones briefcase.

Technorati Tags: culture, menlo park, Peninsula School

One of the stranger messages I've ever seen

via Flickr

Something we saw at the Oakland Zoo this weekend. If you can't read it, it says, "Please put goat and sheep hair in here for carivore enrichment. Thanks, the keepers."

Which makes it sound like the lions are going to make projects with the hair-- spin it into wool, knit little sweaters, something.

Science policy

I missed this the first time around. Thank goodness for this crazy Internet thing, and the miracle of "Save As...."

[To the tune of The Beatles, "Something," from the album "Abbey Road".]