Relevant History

More rain

More rain today, and heavy winds, that knocked over our arch in the front yard and destroyed a glass patio table in the backyard (the wind caught the umbrella). Nothing as bad as what's going on around the Russian River, but the last few days have been a little reminder that while we've become very good at insulating ourselves from Mother Nature's inconveniences, we're still pretty helpless in the face of her more determined action.

Getting the garage ready for 2006

Amid the flurry of activity with the water heater, the dangerous heating exhaust, and the roofing extravaganza, one other activity has really stood out, and been a nice counterpart to all those repairs: getting the garage in shape to use as a home office.

Technorati Tags: STS

Quote of the day

"[H]e was becoming one of those clerics who studied the liberal arts in Paris, or jurisprudence in Bologna, or medicine in Salerno, or sorcery in Toledo, but in no place learned good behavior." (Umberto Eco, Baudolino)

A good friend of mine gave me Baudolino for Christmas last year, and I started it, but stalled out after a while. After a year, I picked it up again, and decided to give it another try. It's quite good.

[To the tune of Giovanni Da Palestrina, "Missa Papae Marcelli: Kyrie," from the album "Palestrina: Missa Papae Marcelli, Missa Aeterna".]

Technorati Tags: reading, university

The roof, the roof, the roof is (almost) on fire

Pictures from our Great Roof Adventure. Not exactly scintillating news, but at least this blog won't leave any cookies or bugs on your computer....

This is what the exhaust pipe from the heater did to the roof. Notice how some of the wood looks like it's been through a charcoal grill? That's not a feature, it's a bug.

Here's a picture of the living room, with two fairly decent holes caused by water soaking through the attic floor and loosening the paint on the ceiling.

Yesterday we had the roofing guys out to put in a new ceiling-- or more specifically, to replace the plywood where it had been damaged. Here, they've taken off the old plywood and put on the new, but you can still see some of the old wood.

A close-up of the oriented strand board. It's not supposed to have that charred look.

The old roofing paper, arranged around the pipe. Notice the blackened edges where they had been closest to the pipe.

The Responsible Roofing guys lay down new sheets of paper while I walk around gingerly (in my sandals, no less) and for the thousandth time think about how incapable I would be of doing a job like this.

[To the tune of Talking Heads, "Burning Down The House," from the album "Popular Favorites 1976-1992/Sand In the Vaseline".]

Technorati Tags: house

Serious rain

It's really raining tonight. Heavy-duty, all-out, Charlotte Bronte-on-the-moors, Bulwer-Lytton level rain. Thank heavens the roof is fixed.

More roofing adventures

The roofing guys returned at 8 this morning, laden down with plywood, shingles, and other roof stuff. The house now sounds like it's having a dentist's appointment.

The latest from Sears can be bolied down to: if your insurance company wants to send its lawyer after us to recover the cost of negilent workmanship, we'll talk. Until then, go away.

My wife spent some of yesterday-- while on hold with various Sears people-- reading message board posts about bad Sears service experiences. From what we can tell, the company has now become so big, different parts of it no longer know anything about what the other parts do and don't do.

Technorati Tags: business, menlo park

Come see the softer, pyromaniac side of Sears

So the roofing guys showed up this morning, bright and early. I was lying on the couch, trying (not very hard) to wake up, while my son sat on my chest watching Clifford the Big Red Dog, when the doorbell rang. A few minutes later, they were up on the roof, looking around; a few minutes later, I started hearing various hammering noises, so I figured things were moving in a positive direction.

The roofing guys we have (Responsible Roofing) are very good, and they soon figured out where the leak was coming from. Not the solar attic fan, which I had suspected. Not some other random place. No, the water was leaking in through the plywood that had burned away because the heater exhaust had been improperly installed.

Technorati Tags: business, menlo park

Take your daughter to work day

Don't know when it ran, but my wife pointed this out from The Onion:

NFL Discontinues Take Your Daughter to Work Day

Technorati Tags: humor

Merry *!@#$() Christmas

In McSweeney's, "The Christmas Message from Alec Baldwin's Character in Glengarry Glen Ross." Almost as funny as the great "Glengarry Glen Plaid," "Excerpts from the new Land Ho! catalogue, as it would be written by David Mamet."

Technorati Tags: humor

As they said in Cheers, "Gorm!"

To get away from the many things breaking in our house, yesterday we retreated to the garage, and spent the afternoon building storage units that we bought at Ikea recently. My son was especially into it.

We're going to send them to child care tomorrow, and my wife and I are going to finish the project. Then I'm going to throw out about 80% of what I own that isn't books. Who should need so much storage space?

Too funny

Pimp My Nutcracker.

[via GMSV]

[To the tune of Zero, "Like A Rolling Stone," from the album "1996-06-09 - Fairfax Outdoor Festival". Another Internet Archive live music find. Aside from some mono sound at the beginning, this is a terrific cover.]

Technorati Tags: humor

America the... oh, never mind

Observed by my colleague Paul Saffo:

[To the tune of Zero, "Like A Rolling Stone," from the album "1997-10-18 - Black Mountain Music Festival".]

Technorati Tags: travel

Taking the phrase "Christmas break" too literally

The Christmas season has been even busier than usual this year. Not just with the normal craziness of last-minute shopping, though that's always crazy for me: I do over 90% of my shopping in the last three days before Christmas, and swear every year that I'm going to do better next year. And not just with the work of removing toys from their packaging, though that's a job that gets harder every year; not only is there some new tear-resistant plastic out on the market, but this year one toy was actually screwed down onto the box. And while wrapping presents is a challenge for the gift-challenged like myself, that's a perennial issue.

No. This is the year the house decided to put the "break" back in "Christmas break."

The problems started a couple days before Christmas, during the torrential downpours the Bay Area was getting. We noticed that one spot on the ceiling in the living room, which had been damp enough a couple years ago to make a bit of the paint cave in, seemed wet again. Intrepid Male that I was, I got the ladder and went up to have a look.

I have to confess that it's things like this that make me glad that I'm a knowledge worker. Crawling around in the unfinished attic, putting my hands on the fiberglass insulation, trying to stay on the beams so I wouldn't put a leg through the ceiling, trying to find where the water was coming in-- ohmygodisthatarat?!?!-- then throwing a few things at the rat to encourage it to stay in its corner of the attic, confirmed two things.

First, there is indeed a leak. Water is coming in from the roof.

Second, that it made perfect sense to spend a significant portion of my life in graduate school, eat popcorn for dinner for five years, try to work in clever references to Bruno Latour and actor-network theory in casual conversation, and put up being yelled at by English archivists for bringing mechanical pencils into the archives, since it meant I've spent the years since NOT working in attics, throwing things at rats.

So we had a twofer: call the roof guy, and call an exterminator.

Then, the day after Christmas, the water heater died. Our house. The gift that keeps on giving.

Fortunately, since my wife's extremely well-organized and handy family lives less that two miles away, we're plugged into both good help when we need it, and good recommendations for carpenters, plumbers, et al.

As a result, this morning, while I took the kids to the park to get them away from all the excitement, we had a plumber installing a new water heater, and the exterminators here, laying bait for the rats. A thousand dollars later, we can shower again. This new water heater is supposed to last for at least ten years, and unlike its predecessor, doesn't consist of at least 50% rust. So that's a good thing.

The roofers are coming tomorrow. We still have to get the plumbers back to clean the pipes from the master bath. And eventually remodel the hallway bathroom.

I'd better find some more freelance writing.

Top guns

Last weekend, we had the Institute office party at the Hiller Air Museum. I'd been by there a thousand times, but never visited. It was fun.

My kids also had fun-- hardly a surprise, given that it was 1) the Land of Planes, and 2) the Place With Lots of Buttons to Push.

Technorati Tags: airport

Death Star Pez!

No commentary necessary....

Technorati Tags: games

Cool present

This year's sleeper present: a joystick containing five classic Namco games (well, four classic and one I'd never heard of).

The scary thing is, my daughter is now playing Xevious, which I spent endless hours on when I was a kid-- and she's not bad at it.

Technorati Tags: games

I always knew there was something about those gladiator movies

...that went beyond the famous Lawrence Olivier-Tony Curtis bathing scene in Spartacus. From the front lines (or bottom rivers) of British science, via the Discovery Channel:

G-String-Clad Gladiator Found

Divers exploring a river near a former Roman Empire fort and settlement in Britain have found a piece of pottery that depicts the backside of a rather buff gladiator wielding a whip and wearing nothing but a G-string, according to British researchers.

The image represents the first known depiction of a gladiator in such revealing attire. It adds to the evidence that ancient Romans viewed gladiators not only as fearless warriors, but also as sex symbols.

[To the tune of Bill Evans Trio, "Nardis," from the album "At The Montreux Jazz Festival".]

Technorati Tags: archaeology

Get hard to find 800 numbers

This time of year, there's always a spike in the number of visitors who come to the blog looking for the Amazon 800 customer service number. Now there's a Web site devoted to finding hard-to-find 800 numbers. (1-800-201-7575, by the way.) What's its name? Hard to Find 800 Numbers.

Pure genius.

[via Lifehacker]

[To the tune of Fleetwood Mac, "I'm So Afraid (Live '97)," from the album "The Very Best of Fleetwood Mac".]

Technorati Tags: business

Darren Rowse on blogging

I started blogging in late 2002, right around the time that Darren Rowse discovered the medium. Given that we've both gone from being enthusiastic amateurs to pros, I was interested to discover his "18 Lessons I’ve Learnt about Blogging:"

In November 2002 I first heard the word blog after a mate e-mailed me a link and said I should consider starting one. Within 24 hours I’d created my first blog (a blogspot blog that doesn’t exist today). Since that time I’ve run 20+ blogs (most have survived, some have not) and I’ve also transitioned from hobby blogger to part time blogger to full time blogger.

P.S. And when will we stop calling it blogging, and just use the term "writing?" An increasing amount of the content on my blog isn't written, but is automatically generated by Plazes, Last.fm, flickr, del.icio.us, etc.; yet when we talk about "blogging," what we mean is the content that we create consciously, not the content that we generate in the course of living our lives online (or increasingly, living our lives within reach and view of some app that talks to a server somewhere).

Technorati Tags: blogging, work

Rob Dougan

Just discovered Rob Dougan, even though I've been listening to his "Clubbed to Death" from the Matrix soundtrack for ages. His work-- the songs I bought off iTunes, anyway-- remind me of Gary Numan's late work: a kind of brooding, heavy electronica that I find good background music when I'm editing.

[To the tune of Rob Dougan, "Born Yesterday," from the album "Furious Angels".]

Wait a minute...

There was an Internet Explorer for the Mac? Who knew?

I'm sure it was great....

[To the tune of Rob Dougan, "I'm Not Driving Anymore," from the album "Furious Angels".]

Technorati Tags: internet

The new Pride and Prejudice

We went to see the new Pride and Prejudice yesterday. I'm a big fan of the Jennifer Ehle-Colin Firth miniseries version, and have been impressed at how well most recent adaptations of Jane Austen have turned out, but this one really blew me away. I wasn't that crazy about the choice of Matthew MacFadyen as Mr. Darcy, but Keira Knightley was a much better Elizabeth Bennet than I expected (from Pirates of the Caribbean to Jane Austen-- is there nothing she can't do?), Rosamund Pike was great as Jane, and Simon Woods was a terrific, gawky, lovestruck Bingley.

I also kept noticing two minor characters: Talulah Riley's Mary Bennet, who normally is a total nonentity and comic relief but who gets unexpected depth, and Claudie Blakley's Charlotte Lucas, whose combination of goodness and desperation makes her marriage to Mr. Collins more comprehensible. There's a brilliant two seconds where Collins is in the Bennet house, and storms out after Elizabeth rejects her: everyone's in an uproar except for Mary, who watches him leave with this semi-mystified look of longing. You get the sense that Charlotte knew she was settling, but that Mary would have worshipped him. I don't think that's in the book, but it's a great addition to Mary's character.

And the cinematography and staging were marvelous. You get a much better sense of the impoverished gentility of the Bennet household this time than in some earlier versions of the story, and the contrast between Elizabeth's house, Netherfield, Pemberley, and Lady Catherine's estate are much starker (as are the differences between those three places). The contrast between Mr. Bennet's study and the rest of the house is also clearer; but at the same time, you also get a sense of how him limitations-- his unwillingness to control his family, his avoidance of conflict-- shape the entire house.

And while the New Yorker critic was right that this is a Bronte-d Jane Austen-- lots of windswept landscapes and people having passionate arguments in the rain-- it works. If you're going to give up dialogue for landscape and cinematography, this is the landscape and cinematography to give it up for.

There's a brilliant tracking shot in Bingley's ball, where you move from the ballroom, through various other rooms, hallways, past nooks and crannies, and finally to Elizabeth on a balcony: every major character moves in and out of the camera's crowded view, and you hear only a few words of dialogue, or see them for a couple seconds, but each appearance is revealing. It reminded me of how Kurosawa handled the backstories in Seven Samurai.

And yes, things got changed around, there's an additional scene at the end, minor characters were eliminated, and dialogue was changed. But you want fidelity to the book? Read the book.

[To the tune of Johann Sebastian Bach, "Concerto for Oboe d'amore in A Major, BWV 1055: 1: Allegro," from the album "Oboe Concertos".]

Technorati Tags: Janu, movies

Better check your syllabi

I have a copy of the Little Red Book that a friend brought back from China a couple years ago.... My impression was that these former tools for smashing U.S. imperialism were being melted down into tourist tschockes (watch for them to start coming out in designer colors, or with pirated version of Andy Warhol's famous Mao painting), but apparently not so:

Agents' visit chills UMass Dartmouth senior

A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's tome on Communism called "The Little Red Book."

Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the book through the UMass Dartmouth library's interlibrary loan program.

The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism [ed: irony, anyone?], filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents' home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said.

The professors said the student was told by the agents that the book is on a "watch list," and that his background, which included significant time abroad, triggered them to investigate the student further....

Dr. Williams said in his research, he regularly contacts people in Afghanistan, Chechnya and other Muslim hot spots....[H]e had been planning to offer a course on terrorism next semester, but is reconsidering, because it might put his students at risk.

What's on your reading list that might raise suspicions?

Maybe I should have taken that e-mail from the CIA more seriously....

[via Daily Kos]

[To the tune of The Blue Nile, "Tinseltown In The Rain," from the album "A Walk Across the Rooftops".]

Technorati Tags: politics, terrorism, university

Ah, great

From the AP, via Yahoo News:

Iraq Freed Al-Zarqawi Last Year

By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer Fri Dec 16, 3:30 PM ET

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi security forces caught terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the Fallujah area last year but released him because they didn't realize who he was, the deputy interior minister said in an interview broadcast Friday.

The deputy minister, Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal, told the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp., that Iraqi police "suspected this man" and detained him "along with other members" of his group.

"Afterward, he was released because we did not know the identity of this criminal," Kamal told LBC.... "He was like any other citizen who was suspected. There was a simple interrogation with him and he was released."

[To the tune of Al Stewart, "Delia's Gone," from the album "The Best Of Al Stewart". (And incredibly, that's just a coincidence.)]

So much for the end of cyberspace?

The Air Force's new mission statement was announced today to great fanfare (that was that strange noise you heard earlier this morning):

The mission of the United States Air Force is to deliver sovereign options for the defense of the United States of America and its global interests -- to fly and fight in Air, Space, and Cyberspace.

And maybe it's just me, but wouldn't "sovereign options" be an excellent name for a band, or perhaps a high-end line of men's accessories?

[To the tune of Marvin Gaye, "God is love," from the album "What's going on". Wasn't Marvin a genius?]

Technorati Tags: cyberspace, military

I haven't finished my Christmas shopping, anyway

From The Onion:

Activist Judge Cancels Christmas

WASHINGTON, DC—In a sudden and unexpected blow to the Americans working to protect the holiday, liberal U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt ruled the private celebration of Christmas unconstitutional Monday.

"In accordance with my activist agenda to secularize the nation, this court finds Christmas to be unlawful," Judge Reinhardt said.

Of course, if any court were to do it, it would be the 9th.

And how long before this gets into the right-wing mediasphere, and is treated as serious news?

[To the tune of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, "Tarkus," from the album "Welcome back my friends...".]

Technorati Tags: humor

Wired on Firefox hacks

A pretty good Wired News piece on Firefox extensions. I especially like Tab X-- simple but useful.

[To the tune of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, "Toccata," from the album "Welcome back my friends...".]

Yes, information is currency

A fact nicely reflected in the LaCie Data Bank, designed by F. A. Porsche.

I really dig the silver ingot look. Though the Lego look of their Brick Mobile Hard Drive is pretty cool, too.

[Somewhat via Gear Factor]

[To the tune of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, "From The Beginning," from the album "The Atlantic Years (Disc 2)".]

If only the kids were old enough...

...but I have to get a Flypen for myself. Paul Boutin has a great piece on it in Slate:

Fly comes with a beginner's pack of simple, fun games like a calculator, a draw-it-yourself music keyboard and drum machine, and a goofy DJ contest where you scratch on paper. There are also Fly stickers you can slap anywhere. Tap the pen on the sticker of a guy with a wide-open mouth and the pen belches. If you're 9 years old, I'm sure it's hilarious....

The weird thing is that the games would be mind-numbingly stupid on a computer screen. Oooh, a calculator! But using pen and paper woke up a different part of my brain. The key seems to be the Seven-Second Rule: Keep the user engaged but not overwhelmed....

This last strikes me as a really interesting observation. In a lighter vein, Boutin continues:

Even though I think this is a spectacular gadget, I'm not sure the Fly will spawn a vibrant new genre the way Palm's Pilot 1000 did 10 years ago.... The Fly is fun to play with, but I can only think of one killer app for a pen-and-paper computer that meticulously records every stroke, prompts you when you don't follow instructions, and leaves you with a paper copy in your own handwriting: LeapFrog should definitely consider making voting machines....

The presumed wisdom in Silicon Valley is that you give any new tech to a samurai class of early adopters who figure out the bugs, use it to look at porn, and help you prepare it for the mass market. Instead of presuming all new technologies should begin their life as $300 status gadgets, how about turning them over to the kids? Fly's smart-paper technology has been around for years with limited success. But by February LeapFrog will have logged millions of hours of real-world testing by rugrats who'll literally draw outside the box with it.

[To the tune of Steely Dan, "FM," from the album "Citizen".]

Technorati Tags: children, computer, games

For next year's Christmas list

Not yet available in stores, it seems, but I like the idea of a computer case with a Kimono in its family tree:

Designer Katja Hettler and architect Jula Tüllmann... [went] to Japan to collaborate with Mizuta, a manufacturer of traditional Kimono fabric. The upshot was their first folding laptop case made from Kimono material. The duo since founded Berlin-based Maloo with the mission of creating well-designed, ecologically sustainable products. Their first product descends from the Kimono laptop case, but replaces the material with 100% wool felt (pictured above). Called m-1, they're like security blankets, using velcro to snugly envelop either Macs or 15" Vaios. Unfolded, the m-1 makes a protective mat and a convenient mousepad, which (as nomadic computer-users know) beats awkwardly balancing on other sleeve-type cases.

Technorati Tags: computer, travel

Waking up is already hard to do....

As if the alarm clock than rolled under the bed wasn't bad enough, now there's this: the Blowfly alarm clock.

Set the time on its base and leave the Blowfly there. When the alarm activates, it spins a propeller and flies up above you making ridiculous noises. The only way to stop it is to wake up, grab it, and set it back down in its docking station.

Unclear why it's called "Blowfly."

There actually are some interesting questions that you could ask here, a la Myth of the Paperless Office, about the unrecognized affordances of more traditional alarm clocks. But it's Saturday night....

Technorati Tags: design

I may have to stop calling him Butterstick

A quick look on Flickr reveals that there are many, many more pictures tagged "Tai Shan" than "Butterstick"-- 700 versus 17 as of tonight.

The folksonomic will of the people in action....

No wait, a lot of them are of some place called "Taishan."

Technorati Tags: folksonomy

Makes sense to me...

From the frontiers of science, an alternative to intelligent design: incompetent design.

The Other I.D.

Don Wise, professor emeritus of geosciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is the nation's foremost proponent of ID. No, Wise isn't getting ready to testify on behalf of the school board in Dover, PA. Rather, he advocates for a different version of the acronym: "incompetent design."

Wise cites serious flaws in the systems of the human body as evidence that design in the universe exhibits not an obvious source of, but a sore lack of, intelligence....

And while Wise, um, wisely doesn't get into the question of just who such a creator is, his theory inspires two questions.

First, if you accept intelligent design, how do you know that there was a single creator, rather than many? Insects and whales are pretty different; and just as no one would confuse a Louis Kahn building for a Louis XIV chair, might we reasonably conclude that cats, cockroaches, and cetaceans had different designers?

Second, can we know whether the creator(s) was/were benign? What can we deduce about the intelligence, or psychology, of the creator of the dust mite, or of malaria, or the avian flu virus? Could God have created humans in his own image, and the Devil created epidemic diseases in his? If there was an intelligence and purpose behind, say, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, I'm hard-pressed to believe that it was benign.

[via Daily Kos]

Technorati Tags: biology, science

Pure genius!

This is a brilliant commentary on the ephemerality of most reading-- and the way that texts permeate our lives: the "RSStroom reader personal news delivery system."

Here's the full-sized picture. Well worth a click.

[Thanks to the ever-watchful Nicolas Nova.]

Technorati Tags: blogging, design, reading

And we weren't even going to get a bouncy house this year

My son's birthday in next month. We weren't going to do anything really complicated, but this makes me think twice:

For his daughter's coming-of-age celebration last weekend, multimillionaire Long Island defense contractor David H. Brooks booked two floors of the Rainbow Room, hauled in concert-ready equipment, built a stage, installed special carpeting, outfitted the space with Jumbotrons and arranged command performances by everyone from 50 Cent to Tom Petty to Aerosmith....

The party cost an estimated $10 million, including the price of corporate jets to ferry the performers to and from. Also on the bill were The Eagles' Don Henley and Joe Walsh performing with Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks; DJ AM (Nicole Richie's fiance); rap diva Ciara and, sadly perhaps (except that he received an estimated $250,000 for the job), Kenny G blowing on his soprano sax as more than 300 guests strolled and chatted into their pre-dinner cocktails.

"Hey, that guy looks like Kenny G," a disbelieving grownup was overheard remarking - though the 150 kids in attendance seemed more impressed by their $1,000 gift bags, complete with digital cameras and the latest video iPod.

As Superficial put it, "Nothing says hardcore gangster rapper like a teenie-bop white girl dancing to your music with two hundred of her closest white teenie-bop friends."

The very, very best part of the story? One of the guests put pictures of it up on Kodakgallery.com.

Of course, I'm not a defense contractor, and my son's only four. Maybe we'll go back to the Batman theme. But I wonder Adam West's doing these days?

Technorati Tags: culture

This would completely flip out my cats

Via Gizmodo:

Scientists embrace plan for cyberhugs

Singapore scientists looking for ways to transmit the sense of touch over the Internet have devised a vibration jacket for chickens and are thinking about electronic children's pyjamas for cyberspace hugs.

A wireless jacket for chickens or other pets can be controlled with a computer and gives the animal the feeling of being touched by its owner, researchers at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) told Monday's edition of The Straits Times.

The next step would be to use the same concept to transmit hugs over the Internet, it said.

The article doesn't answer one important question, though: WHY WERE ADULTS WITH PH.D.S BUILDING VIBRATION JACKETS FOR CHICKENS?

Technorati Tags: cyborg, internet

Lost in translation

Playboy in Braille? As Jacques Derrida said, every decoding is another encoding.

Technorati Tags: books, reading

Myth of the Paperless Office

I'm rereading Myth of the Paperless Office, as part of my new high-fiber regimen, and because I read it in a hurry last time and felt like I didn't get quite as much out of it as I should. I picked it up after reading Malcolm Gladwell's review of it in The New Yorker, and my impressions of the book were pretty strongly shaped by that review: I was reading it looking for what Gladwell saw it in.

The myth of the paperless office, indeed!

For a university press book about the automation (or non-automation) of office work, it got a surprisingly large amount of play in the general press. Though the Guardian's review had the great damning-with-faint-praise line (and this isn't an exact quote), if you must read one book about office automation, read this one. (Ow.)

What strikes me most about the book this time around is how obvious a lot of the stuff in the early chapters is-- which is not to say it's not useful. There are some books whose arguments or findings seem completely and utterly sensible, which only makes you wonder why they're not already common knowledge.

Take, for example, their observations about the complexity of reading. They make two big arguments. First, there are actually many different kinds of reading: an English professor reading a manuscript in an archive, a pilot going over flight plans and safety checklists, and a law clerk reading a draft of a ruling, are all reading-- but they're all doing it in different ways. Handwritten manuscripts, manifests and checklists, and typescripts of legal opinions all look different, contain different kinds of information, and are read with different purposes in mind. (I think this is a point that even many historians of reading don't give quite enough attention to.)

Second, reading is rarely the solitary, linear activity posited by literary theorists. Most reading that's done in the workplace is embedded in other activities: people read across multiple documents (to compare arguments or facts, say), take notes while reading, read documents with other people in meetings, or move between printed documents and word processor files open on a computer. The classical model of reading so beloved by defenders of the book-- someone sitting with a book, oblivious to the world-- is beloved because it's a luxury.

Paper also turns out to have other functionalities that are easy to overlook, but which are important to pay attention to in the workplace. One of the best sections of the book is its discussion of the role that paper plays in air traffic control centers. Air traffic control centers are filled with little slips of paper with information about every plane that controllers are watching. As planes moves through their territory, controllers may make notes on the slips, then pass them on to other controllers. You'd think that if there was any kind of document that would benefit from computerization, this would be it.

But it turns out that those slips aren't just inefficient legacies of an older system. One of the most important things an air traffic controller has to know is which planes he or she is responsible for. Those slips of paper offer a very efficient way to gather that information; as the developers of the Ambient Orb would put it, they make the information a "glanceable thing." When a plane passes from one controller's screen to another, the paper is handed off-- an act that reinforces the transfer of responsibility. And the paper also makes it easier for supervisors to see if someone is overloaded, and to transfer some of their planes to someone else-- by taking a few slips of paper and moving them to someone else's desk.

The point that Myth of the Paperless Office makes is, if you were to create a truly paperless office, you have to create a paperless system that can handle all these different kinds of reading. Assuming that the printed page is just an extremely clumsy storage device for words and numbers misses the affordances that readers exploit in paper, the varied natures of reading, and the roles paper documents play in the workplace.

Technorati Tags: books, epaper, reading, work

BuzzMachine

Jeff Jarvis has an interesting idea on BuzzMachine:

If I were a reference publisher, a library association, a university, a media company, or a foundation, I’d take Wikipedia as raw material and vet entries, perhaps even charging for the service: On demand or on the basis of traffic and links, I’d go in and vet already-written pieces and bless that version of it. Then maybe I’d publish a book from it....

Now that I think of it, this might have been a nice business model for the shrinking Britannica. It might still be.

Certainly Britannica had (and maybe still has, despite pressures to the contrary) one of the most elaborate, nay detail-obsessed, fact-checking processes I've ever seen in my life. Of course, to some degree the Britannica Internet Guide was supposed to provide a degree of certification-- though there seems to nothing left of that project but some aging awards badges on various sites....

Technorati Tags: encyclopedia

Active learning at Peninsula

The school that my children attend, and where I spend a disproportionate amount of what would otherwise be my free time (or, more realistically, time I would be spending in church or doing other volunteer stuff), has a reputation for being unstructured and, among certain circles, unchallenging. By most measures, the reputation is richly undeserved: Peninsula School kids are a diverse bunch, are well-liked by high school teachers, get into good colleges (with a disproportionate number going to Santa Cruz, Reed, or other slightly unconventional places), and do in fact know how to read and count.

I went to very conventional schools, but aside from a couple years in a school in Nashville that was a feeder for Vanderbilt faculty kids (which I was at the time), didn't like them very much. (Of course, to a Korean parent, academic underachievement is only slightly less unacceptable than brigandage and grave-robbing.) So for me, one of the pleasures of Peninsula is that the kids really enjoy it there: it's hard to get them out of there at the end of the day, and they think nothing of going there to play on weekends.

Another pleasure is hearing them translate progressive pedagogical philosophy into terms comprehensible to the under-7 set. Last night, on the drive home from Melville, we were listening to Princess and the Pauper in the car. For those of you who haven't already memorized it, the CD opens with the Princess (played by Barbie) being fitted for a new dress, and the chamberlain fretting over how she's late for her next appointment, and how her schedule that day is a train wreck.

He's going through the list of what she has to do today, including a "speech at the Historical Society" and "the Horticultural Society tea" (a combination that warms the heart of this history of science). Then he rattles off the classes (or more likely tutors) she has today: "Then there's your math lesson... your science lesson... your geography lesson..."

My daughter, who's heard this CD a minimum of ten thousand times, says, "Her science lesson!? She can't go to her science lesson-- she'll get her dress soaking wet!"

That tells you something about what her science classes are like.

Come to think of it, science at Peninsula must be the very model of Baconian empiricism. Last year, the day after her class took a field trip to the wetlands, I asked my daughter, "So, what did your science teachers teach you on your field trip yesterday?"

She sighed, exasperated. "Daddy," she said, "she doesn't teach us anything. We figure stuff out."

Even by my standards-- I take for granted that my daughter is a genius-- I was stunned by the subtlety of that answer. If there's ever been a better description of progressive school philosophy, I have yet to hear it. After we got to school, I asked her teachers if they had been talking to the kids about education, and how you learn. No, they insisted, they hadn't; she had, as she would say, figured that out.

So on one hand, Peninsula has a bit of a reputation as a place where kids don't learn anything; on the other, it's a place where they come up with descriptions of educational philosophy. I know which data-point I trust. I'm an empiricist, too.

Technorati Tags: children, education, menlo park

Cool treehouse

Via Treehugger, an article about a really cool, ecologically smart treehouse in Australia. Not quite as amazingly stunning as the Mushroom House, but it's also more sensible.

Technorati Tags: architecture, environment

Next time I'm in Denmark

A couple months ago we got some hand-cranked LED flashlights. They're great. Ever since, I've wondered why no one has made a hand-cranked LED bike light. Normally I need my bike lights for, maybe 20-30 minutes, which is just as long as a hand-cranked flashlight will hold a charge. I also bike infrequently at night, and sometimes leave my lights on; so the odds are good that when I next need my bike lights, they won't work.

I was planning to visit a bike shop during my next trip to Denmark. I'll have to look for the Goodbye Batteries Bike Lights:

Bike lights that connect to the axle and are charged by magnets connected to the spokes. How elegant and simple.

As the Goodbye Batteries site explains:

The lights flash powerfully with twin LED’s using the power generated by magnets attached to the spokes of your bicycle. Why was it not invented before?

There is no need for batteries or dangling wires – never, ever!... And just as important, there are no batteries to buy or to throw away when used.

Technorati Tags: bicycles, denmark, design

The future draws just a bit closer

if memory serves, in Idoru (one of the later Gibsons, anyway) there are laptop computers made with composite wood cases and keypads made from shells or other natural materials. Now Treehugger reports:

Custom Wooden iPod Case by Peter Kinne:

Here's a creative, unique way to keep your iPod from getting scratched, scraped and otherwise defaced that doesn't involve the usual ubiquitous, unsightly leather cases. Designer Peter Kinne has developed a handy wooden case that keeps your baby safe and looks good, too.

Technorati Tags: Apple, design, ipod

Face Time

Even today, in the brave world of telecommuting, virtual work, WiFi/CDMA/BlackBerry (while it lasts), still nothing beats face time.

It's the primary unspoken rule: Don't ever let a partner see you leave the building. Sneak out the back stairs, head four flights down and catch an elevator rather than risk standing in the lobby of your floor clutching a purse and coat like a wandering woodland creature during hunting season. If leaving is necessary, be sure to march confidently through the halls exclaiming loudly that you're "just running out for coffee, does anyone else want?" Bluffs such as this, however, are thwarted if a naive counterpart actually takes you up on the sham offer.

WIth necessity inevitably breeding invention, the associate ranks go to inordinate lengths to create the appearance of omnipresence at their desks. There are the basic moves - computers and office lights left on, screen savers removed to create the illusion that you unglued your face from the laptop only moment earlier, decoy purses and coats left in conveniently prominent locations around the office, emails routed from your Blackberry through the firm system at midnight. B, an associate friend, recently informed me of his plan to leave the overhead lights on, shut his office door and play sufficiently loud recordings of his "phone voice" so passing partners would think he was speaking to another partner, or perhaps opposing counsel.

Opinionista's discussion of the lengths that associates will go to create the appearance that they're at their desks 24/7 reminds me a bit of Po Bronson's discussion of how R. R. Donnelly Financial survived electronic filing of SEC documents:

To the employees of R. R. Donnelley Financial in Palo Alto, the imminent entrée of Edgar was Major League Baseball realignment, NAFTA, and a Martian invasion all rolled into one... Edgar was the Securities and Exchange Commission's Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval filing system, which went online two years ago. Before that time, Silicon Valley lawyers and underwriters and issuers met at the plush offices of R. R. Donnelley, where they could make last-minute changes in their S1s and 10Qs before they were printed out and bound up in black tape and thrown on the red-eye flight to New York for a filing the next morning at the offices of the SEC. With Edgar up and running, anyone with a computer could file. The issuers had no reason to keep coming to the R. R. Donnelley office.

But they kept coming anyway.

"They needed neutral turf for their negotiations," explains Reggie Ammons, the man who holds their hands through the process.... As Reg tells it, the lawyers want the prospectus to be a very conservative document to avoid unfulfilled expectations, while the underwriters want the prospectus to market the shares. With the liability for a mistake enormous, their arguments over the precise language gets quite intense. Neither side wants to meet at the other's offices - that would give the host an upper hand (this is probably something they've read in The Art of War). So every day they fill the drafting rooms and telephone rooms in this single-story, mock-Spanish building on California Avenue, where Reg takes care of them. They pace the hallways, chewing the ends of pens. There is a billiards table and a big-screen television and showers, and for those too weak or too frazzled to pull the customary all-nighter in what is normally a two-day process, there is a foldout bed.

Being in the office-- or in any work space-- isn't just about getting a specific task done. It's about being accessible to colleagues, being visible to superiors, and lots of other things.

Technorati Tags: place/space, work

Virtuality, reality, and air guitar

This is a philosophy dissertation waiting to be written: what is real, and what is virtual, about the virtual air guitar?

[To the tune of Bread, "Guitar Man," from the album "Anthology".]

Technorati Tags: digital culture, digital/physical

Perfect for those office parties!

Unfortunately, this USB fondue set is not real. But office parties are so artificial anyway, it all still matches up in some cosmic sense:

Looking for a way to introduce food into the workplace in a more sophisticated manner? Look no further than the Fundue, a desktop USB fondue set.... The set includes a pot and base, an LCD display that shows temperature of oil, a heater that glows blue with an LED and of course, FireGlow USB cables. Add to that the 3 Fundue forks with monitor attachments and of course, software to show you how it's all done, and you'll be the most popular chap in cubicle town.

Technorati Tags: humor

As if the whole DRM fiasco wasn't bad enough...

...Sony's PlayStation division, not wanting to be left out, is now accused of spreading graffiti:

Sony PSP Corporate Graffiti

Residents of Lincoln Heights Los Angeles are pissed about what they suspect is a corporate graffiti campaign sponsored by Sony to promote the PSP. Other flickr users claim to have spotted the same PSP-centric stencils in Silver Lake (LA) and San Francisco.

Interesting appearance of flickr in this story, suggesting that the same tools that give viral marketing can taketh viral marketing away.

Technorati Tags: games

Firefox 1.5

Downloaded the latest version of Firefox today. Some of my extensions no longer work, but I hear it takes them a bit to catch up.

There are various improvements to 1.5, but the one that really matters to me is that you can now reorder the tabs. For those who hate tabs, this probably won't make you a convert; for those who love tabs, it's a nice additional feature.

[To the tune of Alanis Morissette, "Uninvited," from the album "City Of Angels: Music From The Motion Picture".]

Technorati Tags: internet

Wouldn't a Wintel box be better for this?

Via GMSV, again:

Give an old Mac new life by turning it into an iWipe

One of co-workers was giving away and old Atari 800XL and Macintosh SE case. He had been planning to do a mini-ITX project, but had never gotten around to it. Always wanting an excuse to tinker with something, I decided to take them off of his hands.

Well, as soon as I saw the Mac SE case, I realized that this one had the most potential. So this weekend, I bought a few things at Home Depot and got started making my Apple-powered, wireless, portable toilet paper dispenser -- the iWipe.

The whole project took a couple of hours and cost about $15.

[To the tune of Keith Jarrett, "Vienna, Pt. 1," from the album "Vienna Concert".]

Technorati Tags: computer, humor

The perfect stocking stuffer

I want one! (via GMSV)

The iPod Zepto

[To the tune of Michael McDonald, "I Keep Forgettin'," from the album "If That's What It Takes".]

Technorati Tags: humor