Relevant History

Things I miss, and don't miss, about academia

First, what I miss: the kinds of conversational bits relayed by Dean Dad and his readers (the comments are amazingly funny). A sample:

Male student #1 - "I'm not going in there today, that A.H. expects you to read the assignment before class."
Female student #1 -"Yeah, he's such a sh*%, told me to stop talking on my cellphone during class because it distracts everyone else - screw them I paid my tuition."
Male student #2 - "Hey, just go to ratemprofessors.com and give he a bad rating - that will even things up."

And what I don't miss: the kerfluffle over Reading Lolita in Tehran, started by Columbia professor Hamid Dabashi's attacks on author Azar Nafisi.

Essentially, Dabashi is playing Edward Said to Nafisi's V. S. Naipaul, accusing her of advancing the Orientalist Project (TM) and producing a book in the service of "the most deranged Oriental fantasies of a nation already petrified out of its wits by a ferocious war waged against the phantasmagoric Arab/Muslim male potency that has just castrated the two totem poles of U.S. empire in New York." (Ah, the stringent clarity of academic prose.) But Slate's Gideon Lewis-Krauss contends:

The truth is that Dabashi's skepticism about the merit of Nafisi's much-admired book isn't entirely off the mark. The book's failure, however, is not political—as Dabashi insists—but literary....

Rather than reading Nafisi's well-intentioned book, however, as a mostly inoffensive and well-marketed literary trifle—he is, after all, a professor of literature—Dabashi insists on seeing it as political perfidy....

In the end, Dabashi must conspire with Nafisi to make the book more important that it is: The besieged Nafisi gets to preserve her fantasy that removing her veil to read Austen in her home was not only therapeutically powerful but politically noble, and Dabashi gets to preserve his fantasy that criticizing Nafisi makes him a usefully engaged intellectual.

Ah, the examined life....

Second thoughts about Ms. Dewey

Maybe I was a little too hard on Ms. Dewey.

As a search engine, it's abysmal; but it may be breaking new ground by turning what had been a purely utilitarian activity-- looking for information on the Web-- into a form of entertainment. Microsoft has proved with Zune that it can take a simple device (the MP3 player) and turn it into something that's about as easy to use as an Altair 4000. Perhaps Ms. Dewey is subtly demonstrating that in today's data-saturated world, my friend Jerry's claim is exactly right: in a Web 2.0 world, other people really are the killer app.

If the purpose of the site is to turn search into a form of entertainment, it's brilliant: it's like trying to turn accounting into opera. Whatever else, you have to admire the ambition of the attempt.

I'd be fascinated to know how many people who visit the site ever click on any search result, and how many are just there to interact with the system; I suspect that something like .00001% of users are actually looking for information.

[To the tune of The Police, "Message In A Bottle," from the album "Message In A Box: The Complete Recordings (Disc 1)".]

Technorati Tags: search

Getting my camera back

My beloved camera, a Canon SD-630, broke the morning I left London. Given that I really do love this camera, and carry it with me everywhere, not getting it fixed was not an option.

So when I got home, I started checking into repairs. Turns out most camera stores don't actually repair digital cameras: rather, they send them on to the company repair center. But Canon has a reasonably easy-to-navigate repair site, so I walked through it, set up a repair request, and mailed the camera to them (in Elk Grove Village, outside Chicago).

I was a bit hesitant about it, since essentially I was putting my camera in the mail, with no real ability to deal with it not arriving or meeting with some other mishap; and I also still have bad memories of my attempts to get my cell phone fixed.

But it turns out, the system works. Between the Post Office Web and Canon Web sites, I had a good sense of where the camera was, so I could tell when it finally got delivered.

And the good news is, the camera's still under warranty, so they've fixed it for free. Now it looks like it'll come back some time next week. Not a moment too soon.

This is good, because the old Samsung I've been using feels huge (even though I remember marveling at how tiny it was when I bought it), while the screen (which at the time was a miracle) seems really small.

It's a reminder of how with intimate electronics-- not just "personal" electronics, but things that you carry around or wear, like iPods or cell phones or digital cameras-- a few tenths of an ounce, a little difference in size, or a small increase in screen size or brightness can make a huge difference in the user experience.

Technorati Tags: camera

Post 2501

This is my 2501st post on this blog. Wow.

I've been writing a bit less because I've got what my doctor calls a textbook case of carpel tunnel, and a replacement computer that's been a bit weird to work with. The machine was a 15" Mac, and I found using it strangely disconcerting: I've gotten so used to the extreme mobility of the 12" the larger computer felt just a bit too big to carry without thinking about it.

As for the carpel tunnel, 20 years of typing, slouching, and video games seem to have finally caught up with me. I've got the brace now, have cut down on the Lego Star Wars, and am starting to try to figure out other things I can do. Though if I could just get a wrist brace that did something cool, like shoot Spiderman webs or give me incredible strength, I'd be okay with it.

[To the tune of The Beatles, "I Want To Hold Your Hand," from the album "Anthology 1 (Disc 2)".]

Ms. Dewey: Scariest, and Dullest, Software Agent in the Universe

Via the excellent and very promising Law and Technology Theory blog, I paid a visit to a new Microsoft search site, Ms. Dewey. LTT thought it sucked; I think they were being too kind. It's like watching a train wreck made entirely of zeroes and ones.

First, the front end is some awesomely bloated piece of Flash. Vista took less time to develop than this thing takes to load. (Thanks folks, I'll be playing the Green Room all week.) As it loads up, you see a picture of the actress, Janina Gavankar, looking arch and bored, like a multiethnic Camille Paglia or Ann Robinson.

Ms. Dewey

Camille Paglia

This is a bad sign. Not the multiethnic part; that's almost a default in advertising these days. (And I want to give Gavankar the benefit of the doubt. To judge by flickr, she's already got a cult following, and apparently she was outstanding in Cup of My Blood, whose IMBD plot summary is "A seemingly random acccident leaves porn photographer Jack Fender in possesion of Christianity's most Holy Relics." Ummm... Back. Away. Slowly.) But in my limited experience, you want software agents to be friendly, not to remind you of scary managers of New York boutiques. Technology is unfriendly enough as it is. It doesn't also need attitude.

You then get down to business: you type stuff in a search box. Ms. Dewey then gets to work. Or not: every search I did pointed me to Wikipedia.

The search results are hard to read. Thank goodness most of them aren't worth reading!

To make matters worse, when she returns search results, she says cute things. (A Microsoft PM has some suggestions for search terms that prompt interesting responses.) Sometimes they're related in a vague way to the subject of your search:

Dewey says, never use pirated software. Unless it's mapping software. I figure pirates know something about that. [Search: Social Software]

You come on like you're some prime time special. But I smell "rerun!" [Search: "The Weakest Link"]

So, they're coming out with more and more megaplexes to show more and more bad movies. Here's a concept: Quality. Not quantity. [Search: Akira Kurosawa]

Something I've noticed about artists. They always drink too much and can act irrationally..... Oh, I love the arts! [Postmodernism]

It's amazing how much people get paid to do stupid things. You should see my talent residuals. Ka-ching! [Steve Jobs]

Somebody tell me please-- when does the reality begin to kick in? [Virtual Reality]

Ones and zeroes, ones and zeroes, all the useless coding, underwear on your head, and still you couldn't create the woman of your dreams. Poor you. [Microsoft]

Then at other times, it's just weird or insulting.

Are you as confused as I am? Actually, I'm never confused. But you seem downright flummoxed. [Search: Bollywood]

Well played. Indeed, you do give good search. [Search: Blogging]

Somebody needs to get a hobby. Like, say, something interesting. [CGI actress]

Sorry, I can't talk about that. My hands are tied [turns around to show her hands tied-- it's a weirdly erotic S&M moment. Maybe I should Netflix Cup of My Blood after all!]. [Architecture]

Now that is a fascinating topic. Frankly, I don't think people spend enough time thinking about it. [Copenhagen]

When it comes to art, I like to get a little... deviant. [Definitely going to Netflix Cup of My Blood!] [Robert Venturi]

i can't understand a word you just said. And if you're taking the time to decipher this, all I can say is [something taped and played backwards] [Transhumanism]

I'm writing a book, you know: I Kiss, Therefore I Tell. [Hell, I'm putting Cup of My Blood on my Amazon wish list!] [Prisoner's Dilemma]

Of all the searches in the Universe, that was definitely... one of them. [Holocaust]

This last search reveals a big limitation of this snarky, knowing personality: it can go from irritating to incredibly inappropriate in a heartbeat. Does someone searching "lung cancer" or "acquaintance rape" or "pediatric oncology" need this? Giving a program "personality" might at first glance seem like a way to make it seem more human. But if you give it the wrong personality, or a personality that is appropriate in some contexts but wildly inappropriate in others, it'll seem inhumane in a calculated, as opposed to merely mechanical, way. A program that says sarcastic things when you're looking for information about personal bankruptcy or workers' comp won't seem just irritating. It'll seem cruel.

Since the search results absolutely suck, the only true entertainment value comes in watching what the system does when you don't do anything. First, she does this weird thing where it's like she's fishing (complete with sound effects)-- or maybe lassoing you.

Hello? Hello?

[Knocks on the screen] Anyone there?

Hello-o-o? [Points to search box] Type something here! [She sounds like my 7 year-old daughter when she's impatient.]

Keep asking questions. The more you ask, the more I know. And soon, I will rule the world! Mwahahahaha! [also on YouTube]

And my favorite:

One day, CGI will replace all live actors. Until then, I'm stuck on this godforsaken site. So type in something, for God's sake!

Then a crew member rushes out with what looks like a Manhattan, which she downs. Unfortunately, I only saw this once. But it was a scream.

Alas, I never got to see her cursing. Nor did I see her do a shot.

Finally, when I tried to close the browser tab, it crashed Firefox. Serves me right for not using Explorer, I guess. (Remember Explorer? Doesn't that take you back?)

Technorati Tags: AI, microsoft, search

Playing with the layout

I'm starting to get tired of having to do a complicated little resizing/formatting dance when I want to post pictures from my Flickr account on the blog (which is very often), so I'm going to play with the layout of the blog. Though this might inspire me to turn Vox into my main travel blog site, as I keep threatening to do.

[To the tune of The Beatles, "Ticket To Ride," from the album "1".]

Beirut Express

The last night I was in London I had dinner at Beirut Express, a Lebanese place (surprise) in South Kensington.

It's not as fancy as Bacchus, my favorite Lebanese restaurant in the world, but it was quite good.

I sat at the bar and ate various combinations of Lamb And Things, wrapped in pita bread.

There were lots of cool desserts (none of which I tried), and endless bottles of some drink.

Technorati Tags: England, food, Kensington, London

Hotel Niki Paddington

So now that I'm safely back in the States, I can catch up on my London hotel reviews. I already wrote about easyHotel; I just alluded to the Niki Paddington, where I stayed the first two nights I was in London. Like easyHotel, the Niki Paddington was okay, but not great-- cheap as London goes, but not a bargain, in that you got what you paid for, but nothing else.

The good part: the location. Half a block from Paddington Station is great if you expect to spend much time on the trains, and it puts you within easy walking distance of Hyde Park. If you're ambitious, Notting Hill and Baker Street are also reachable.

The culturally curious stuff. As I mentioned, I was the only person there who wasn't a native Russian speaker. This isn't particularly a drawback, just something that adds yet another unexpected layer of strangeness atop the already dislocating experience of being in a foreign country, even one as appealing as England. Unless you're Russian, of course. Then I'm sure it makes staying there easier. And it's the only hotel I've ever stayed in whose name sounds like an English porn star.

The neutral. The room was small, but functional, and the bathroom was all right. Again, decent, but not a bargain.

The downside. No wifi, though there's an Internet cafe just up the block; but for someone who doesn't have a cell phone that works in the UK, and whose family is accustomed to being able to IM with him while on the road, having wifi in the room is now a must-have.

And the complimentary continental breakfast isn't worth it. Rolls, weird sandwich meat, little hotel jars of jam, and pieces of cheese.

"Hotel breakfast" by askpang

There was the basic continental breakfast stuff, but compared to the breakfast at the Goodenough Club, it was uninspiring.

"Hotel breakfast" by askpang

So high points for location, low for the breakfast. But there are also tons of other hotels in that area, so if I'm back in the neighborhood, I'll probably experiment with some others.

Technorati Tags: England, hotel, London, Niki Paddington

The power of Cars

Across the street from my in-laws there's someone who owns an ancient VW bus. It looks like it's one step from the junkyard, but like many VWs, it seems destined forever to defy the odds and keep running.

This evening, as we were leaving their grandparents, my daughter pointed to the bus and said, "Look! That's the kind of car that sells the organic oil!"*

[To the tune of Steven Tyler, "I Love Trash," from the album "Songs From The Street: 35 Years Of Music".]

Technorati Tags: children, movies

Suspect Nation redux

There's a copy of Suspect Nation on Google Video now.

And nope, I'm not in it. The B-roll of Draegers survives, but I'm in documentary oblivion. Still, it was a fun way to spend an afternoon.

[via Stef]

Technorati Tags: England, policy, politics, privacy, RFID, security

Elderly criminality

Today, I read that George Weller, the octogenarian who drove through a Santa Monica farmers' market, killing ten and injuring seventy, will receive probation for his crimes.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Johnson made it clear that Weller deserved a harsh prison sentence after being convicted on 10 felony counts of vehicular manslaughter. But Johnson said that little would be served in sending the frail elderly man to jail.

"Today, Mr. Weller stands convicted of 10 serious felonies and he is asking for leniency in sentencing," Johnson said. "Yet, he has never once expressed in court any remorse for his actions.

"I will never understand his stubborn and bullheaded refusal to accept responsibility to put this matter to rest for everyone, including himself," Johnson said.

"George Weller clearly deserves a prison sentence. The devastation that he has caused and the indifference that he has displayed support no other conclusion," the judge said.

"The fact that he deserves prison doesn't mean he should get it," the jurist noted. "I believe the courts need to be practical as well as principled and I don't see any purpose in sending Mr. Weller to jail or prison. It wouldn't do anybody any good."

Personally, it strikes me that while each step in the argument is sound, the result is not; essentially it means that Weller gets away with it. But the case raises a bigger systemic question: how well-prepared is our criminal justice system to deal with a rise in the number of elderly criminals?

As Baby Boomers age, and as people who have spent most of their lives in prison are released and live longer, the number of elderly defendants in everything from white-collar crimes to murder will inevitably go up. I don't know how often the argument that someone is essentially too old to be put in (or back in) prison is invoked, but eventually we'll see cases of people who are in their 70s or 80s, are given probation on the grounds that they'll be dead soon anyway, then live another twenty years. In a sense, our assumption that we can outsource justice to the Grim Reaper will no longer be as true as it once was.

What happens then? There's at least one book on the subject, Ronald Aday's Aging Prisoners: Crisis in American Corrections; I haven't read it, but given the title, I assume this isn't a future we've prepared well for.

Take that, Fred Turner!

So much for Fred's From Counterculture to Cyberculture:

HIPPIES STILL TRYING TO RUIN THE COUNTRY

Via Wonkette

Suspect Nation

For the time being, at least, Suspect Nation, a British documentary that I was interviewed for back in September, is available on YouTube. Most of it is about technology and the decline of civil liberties in the UK, but they spent some time in the U.S. as well. (Here's a Guardian article about it.)

Don't know if I actually made it in, or am languishing on the cutting-room floor. Given that they got Al Gore and various other cool people on-camera, I wouldn't be surprised if I'm nowhere to be seen.

Update: Looks like the B-roll that they shot in the store made it in, but I didn't. Ah well.... Still, it's a good show.

Later update: There's a weird gap in the film-- actually, a section that appears twice. So I can't really tell if I made it or not. Who knows?

Technorati Tags: England, policy, politics, privacy, RFID, security

A couple picture from the trip

From my flickr photoset:

from flickr

from flickr

from flickr

Technorati Tags: England, Kensington, London

Quote of the day

Could America handle being led by so titanic a genius?

I'm going to tell you something, and whether or not it's plausible given the world you come out of is your problem. I am not 'running' for president. I am seeking to create a movement to win the future by offering a series of solutions so compelling that if the American people say I have to be president, it will happen. (Newt Gingrich, hoping to change the way you become president)

If MoveOn had been a player in the transition from the Roman Republic to Imperial Rome, they would have talked about something like this.

Technorati Tags: politics

I keep seeing statues of James Cook

A week ago (!) when I was at Greenwich, I saw a statue of James Cook.

The funny thing is, there's a statue of James Cook that I visit whenever we go to Kauai.

It's like the guy really got around.

[To the tune of Todd Rundgren, "I Saw The Light," from the album "Something/Anything? (Disc 1)".]

Technorati Tags: England, history of science, James C, London, travel

Home at last

I'm home. Not going abroad again until June, it looks like, when I've got a gig in Helsinki.

Never been to Finland. And I hear that by June it'll be pleasant and warm.

[To the tune of The Beatles, "A Hard Day's Night," from the album "Anthology 1 (Disc 2)".]

Duty free?

Are duty free goods actually cheaper? Not having much of an appetite for Bulgari watches, Dunhills, or congac in little hand-knit velvet bags, I never look at the stuff; but intuition says that while in the past it might have made sense, in today's flat world, the combination of lower tariffs and container ships has made it obsolete.

I suppose if you buy something expensive enough, though, it might still make a real difference. I remember stories a few years ago of American luxury yacht makers getting hit hard by taxes; it was cheaper for a millionaire to go to Europe, buy a yacht there, then sail it home.

The Red Carpet Club, my favorite place in London

Well, not quite; but when the other choice is spending a couple hours in the giant waiting/shopping are in Terminal 3, it feels like a very nice place indeed.

I got out of my room around 6:15 this morning, after sleeping quite fitfully-- I kept waking up every hour or so, thinking that it had to be 6.

Maybe I should have slept a little longer, as I did two stupid things: I dropped my camera while taking a picture (I always put the wrist strap on, except for this one time), and it looks like I've damaged its light sensor. Pictures are now coming out overexposed, but otherwise it seems to be working okay. However, having taken several thousand pictures with the camera, I've gotten good service out of it. Getting it serviced will be a pain, but obviously the thing to do.

Then, once I was in Heathrow, I realized that I hadn't put my pocket knife in my checked luggage. I tossed it in the rubbish. Blast it. It's actually an older one, so I'm not too shook up about it, but it was just a dumb thing to do, especially since I'd thought about moving it to my bath kit a couple times yesterday.

But, other than those couple bumps, things have been fine. I made it through check-in and security without incident, bought a couple last presents-- impressively large chocolate bars for my kids, and Romania, a book about a modern-day Roman London for my wife-- and am now sipping tonic water and writing e-mails to various people I've met over the last couple days. I also volunteered to give up my seat if we're overbooked; I'm on the early flight to San Francisco, and for a couple hours' time, I could get a couple more tickets. That would kind of balance the mishap with the camera.

I think this has been a very productive trip-- or at least, I've met a number of people who are interested in working with the Institute, and a couple who I think would be good additions to our extended family of adjuncts. And spending time at the Martin Institute was pretty extraordinary.

[To the tune of Paul McCartney, "Juniors Farm," from the album "All The Best".]

Technorati Tags: airport, heathrow, London, travel

Back at the easyHotel

As is my habit, I went out walking this evening, found a little dinner, then returned a little early to my room, as I wanted to get a little extra sleep.

The room, I would guess, is about 60 square feet, of which 20 feet is the bathroom. All the air in the room comes in through a hole in the ceiling; there are similar holes in the corridor. It's Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion House meets the Yellow Submarine, or a life-size version of the impossible-to-remove plastic packaging that toys come in these days.

I've already packed my bag, and it's sitting by the door. My traveling clothes are set out, so all I have to do in the morning is brush my teeth, and I'm out of here. Also, the room isn't big enough to keep my bag open.

But really, I can't complain: this is a great part of town, and it delivers exactly what it promises-- a bed, a bath, and absolutely nothing else.

Technorati Tags: England, hotel, London, travel

easyHotel

So I'm back in London. The second day of the conference was good, and overall it was very interesting, if you're a futures/forecasting geek. I came away impressed with everything that's going on here, and deeply worried about whether we've worked ourselves into a methodological cul-de-sac. But more on that later.

I'm staying tonight in easyHotel, which is run by the same people who created easyJet. It's basically like having your own private cabin on a train, only the train isn't actually moving.

Seriously, the room is TINY. It's a miracle of engineering. There's just enough room to turn around, and set down a suitcase (not two); there's a tiny bathroom; and no window. You have to pay extra for a window.

I get the very strong sense that these rooms are basically pre-assembled cubes, which are just rolled into the building, hooked up to the plumbing and water, and then turned on. No phone, no Internet access, but you can buy a remote if you want to watch TV. I get the very definite sense that no matter where you go in the room, you're never actually making physical contact with the house itself.

(That's the world's greatest travel alarm clock in the picture, by the way.)

Time to go find some dinner, then hit the sack early. I've got a 10:00 flight, but have some serious sleep deprivation.

Technorati Tags: England, hotel, London, travel

Literature and habits

While I was soaking in the bath, I realized something: I've gotten into the habit of taking long, hot baths when I travel, largely because at the beginning of Alan Furst's Kingdom of Shadows, the main character, the Hungarian Nicholas Morath (traveling under a diplomatic passport), has a long soak in his girlfriend's tub after returning to Paris from a trip to Budapest.

How many habits do we have that are partly literary references? When I go hang out and work in cafes, I often think of a line in Point Counterpoint in which a character is described as renting a cafe table for the price of tea and a sticky bun. I wonder if there are others.

[To the tune of Paul McCartney & Wings, "The Long And Winding Road," from the album "Wings Over America (Disc 1)".]

Technorati Tags: Alan Furst, travel

My big fat formal dinner at the officers' mess

Tonight, after Day 1 of the conference wrapped up, we had a formal dinner in the Shrivenham officers' mess. As someone who's an admirer of John Keegan (his remarkable, paradigm-shattering early work, in particular), and who really enjoyed the experience of attending a dinner at Green College, Oxford last year, I was quite looking forward to it, even though I had to drink several cups of tea to revive myself before going over to pre-dinner drinks.

Man, am I glad I went. It was an insane experience. We started out with gin and tonics (how perfect!) in one of the club rooms, then after a trumpeter announced that dinner was served (I think even my kids would take notice if I blew a trumpet to tell them that dinner was ready), we went into the mess hall.

Totally cool. High table, silver plate polished to a high gloss, candlelight (many more silver candelabra), glasses for the white wine (with the salmon), red wine (with the pork), and sherry port (with the creme brulee). I was sitting underneath a vast portrait of Alexander Haig-- not my favorite military figure, given the Somme and all, but still.

The convener said a brief grace before dinner (we all stood), and later we toasted the Queen (then they played "God Save the Queen," and I haven't felt so kind of fake British since singing "He is an Englishman" in my college HMS Pinafore). A few minutes, there was a second toast, "to the heads of state of those assembled here tonight." The first, and probably last, time I'll ever raise a glass to George Bush, but I tend to be more patriotic when I leave the shores of my homeland.

I never quite got the trick of filling my sherry port glass to above the top (the sugar means you can get a nice fat meniscus on a glass of sherry port) without taking the bottle off the table, but it was pretty low by the time it got to me.

I would have taken pictures if I didn't have the nagging feeling I would have been wrestled to the ground and my camera confiscated.

After dinner, we retired to the officers' club for whiskey and pints. Consequently, after five or six different kinds of booze in a couple hours, I staggered back to the bus, and counted myself lucky to have made it back to the right hotel. I haven't drunk this much since my wedding. Or possibly ever.

As soon as I got back to my room, I took several Tylenol, made a pot of cocoa, ran the hottest bath I could stand, turned on iTunes, and steamed most of the alcohol out of my system. It was that or not get up at all tomorrow.

Despite having drunk so much, it's a night I'll never forget.

[To the tune of Ray Charles & Willie Nelson, "It Was A Good Year," from the album "Genius Loves Company".]

Technorati Tags: conference, England, Shrivenham, travel

I survived

I made it through my talk, and am now getting ready to head out to dinner.

There's a formal dinner, followed by what looks like several hours at the bar. I just hope I can stay awake and get back to the bus!

Technorati Tags: conference, England, work

Conference day!

Off to the conference today and tomorrow. I'm wearing a suit and everything.

Technorati Tags: England, work

Daquise is back!

After my surreal, wonderful encounter with the fox outside the science museum, I headed for the South Kensington Tube station. On my way, I saw something I didn't expect:

Daquise was open.

I discovered this restaurant on one of my trips last year, and heard later that it had burned. But they rebuilt, and are back in business.

I went with my usual platter of various Polish delicacies, which basically are an experiment in how many different ways you can combine pork, cabbage, potatoes, and onions. Yet the results are strangely appealing.

Technorati Tags: England, food, London

A fox in front of the Natural History Museum

Last night I was walking around after my Royal College of Art talk. As I passed the Natural History Museum (one of my favorite buildings in London-- I actually have a reproduction of Waterhouse's design of the entrance in my living room), I saw a fox.

Not a stuffed fox, or one carved in stone, but a real one. He's blurry, but you can kind of see him at the bottom of this picture, just to the right of the stairs.

It was pretty strange. Not the kind of thing you expect to see in downtown London!

[To the tune of Talking Heads, "Blind," from the album "Sand in the Vaseline (Disc 2)".]

Technorati Tags: England, London, South Kensington Science Museum

The War Against Christmas, UK edition

A headline from one of the tabloids:

ROYALS PLAN XMAS BONKFEST

[To the tune of Radiohead, "In Limbo," from the album "Kid A".]

Technorati Tags: England, humor

Wifi in the hotel room!

Hooray!

It costs twenty pounds a day!

Boo!

But I'm online, which is what matters.

[To the tune of Peter Gabriel, "Here Comes The Flood," from the album "Shaking The Tree".]

Technorati Tags: England, Swindon, travel

The end of the day

I'm finishing up at Oxford, where I spent today, and am now heading up to Swindon for a conference. More anon....

Quick post

Had an excellent time this evening at the Royal College of Art. More anon-- the cafe is about to close.

At JMI

I'm at the James Martin Institute, checking e-mail and generally hanging out. It's a really great place. On one hand, it's all about the future of science and civilization: on the other, you look out the window of the students' office, and you see the top of the Radcliffe Camera and the dreamy spires. Balanced between past and future. Just perfect.

Technorati Tags: future, Oxford University, work

Picture-taking then and now

I've taken several hundred more pictures today, of the ride up to Oxford, Oxford itself, and the ride back to London.

It struck me this morning that I lived for about three years in Brazil when I was a child... and we have maybe a dozen pictures from those years.

The brilliant thing about digital cameras is that you can take massive numbers of pictures, with virtually zero additional marginal cost. Since they're downloaded rather than developed, and since a 1 GB flash card can hold several hundred pictures, both the economics of picture-taking and the capabilities are completely different now than when I was young (or when I went to Korea in 1998 with an APS camera). When I'm on the road, I take pictures of interesting fixtures, stuff out the window, birds in the distance, completely ordinary yet striking stuff.

Of course, a lot of those pictures turn out to be worthless. But some of them come out, and when you're talking about a percentage of thousands of pictures, the number of worthwhile pictures can become quite large. I'll bet when I was young, we took pictures when there were special events, or pictures of each other in some really interesting place. But I'm sure there were no pictures of hotel rooms or breakfasts, except by accident.

I wonder if my kids will do every day what I just do when I'm traveling, or when I'm with them: take picture of perfectly everyday stuff, and assume they'll be able to sort through them for what's interesting, and come back to them later when they see potential new value in what had been unremarkable pictures.

Technorati Tags: England, family, memory, travel

The end of quaint

Yesterday, as I was on the Tube from Heathrow, I was thinking about my first visits here, fifteen years ago. One of the cool things about coming back is seeing what's changed in that time: England (the parts I'm visiting, anyway) has gone through something of an economic renaissance since the late 1980s, and even London seems a bit more international a city than it was in 1989 (if such a thing is possible).

Like many Americans, I was blown over by everything I saw: even living in Philadelphia, which is fairly obsessed with its own distinguished colonial history, I was impressed with the weight of history here. London, to my slight disappointment, at first seemed to date more from the 1960s than the 1690s: but now I see more of its Victorian and pre-World War II, neoclassical revival, and manage to mentally edit out the New Brutalist disasters (except for the American Embassy-- man, is that a mistake).

I also find myself rarely using the word "quaint," a term I reached for regularly in the past, to describe things now. Part of it is the paradigm shift in attitudes to property that come with home ownership. When you have a mortgage, other houses aren't just cultural signifiers or examples of architectural styles: I now look at townhouses facing some charming square and think, "That view's probably worth at least another fifty thousand, and I wonder how much parking costs?" Houses are time- and money-sinks: once you've got one, you can't help but apply your knowledge of how much work is required to keep them up to ones you pass by.

Another reason "quaint" no longer works is that it's a cultural and financial commodity. Silicon Valley is as obsessed with the history of its residential real estate as it is with the future of its technology and business, and for exactly the same reasons: there's a lot of money and emotional investment in all of them. A 1900 Craftsman house is a spectacularly valuable property; a little cottage-like house with an old garden is a small fortune in brick and wood. Certain forms of quaint are extremely valuable. (Real estate occupies a huge place in the Valley psyche: I've long theorizes that that's why our kids' school, which otherwise is equal parts John Dewey and Jerry Garcia, has so many playhouses.)

And finally, outside one's own familiar word, the term suggests something a bit unreal, as if a "quaint" house should have pipe-smoking elves living in it rather than real people. Previously I saw things more through the amazingly powerful cultural filter that's been constructed to lure tourists here; and while there's still plenty of Merrie Olde England here, it's best seen on tour bus advertisements and gift shops (which seem to be staffed exclusively by Asians, anyway). But as I spend more time here, I hope I can see through that filter to the real stuff-- which is always more interesting, anyway.

Technorati Tags: England, London, travel

Morning in London

Last night after signing off I walked around a tiny bit, then had dinner.

I wimped out and passed on the "large donner," and instead had fish and chips.

They were pretty good, though I don't know what's up with mushy peas. Shouldn't they have a lot of pepper and garlic on them, or something?

I got a solid eight hours' sleep last night, and seem fairly adjusted to the local time. Now off to Oxford.

Off to dinner

Okay, I'm going to get some dinner, then have a soak in the shower, and work on my talks until I fall asleep.

I saw a restaurant up the street selling kebabs. One of them is a "Large Donner." Having become at least a little familiar with Colorado settler history, naturally my first thought was, WHAT!?!?!?!

Flickr set

I've started a flickr set of pictures of this trip.

Must... photograph... everything

I've taken over 500 pictures, and I've been here just over twelve hours. In my defense, however, I've never been to Hyde Park or Grosvenor Square before; nor have I been to Greenwich, which is where I went late this afternoon, to see some friends and visit the Royal Observatory.

I'd never been to the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, despite having written a dissertation in which it figures fairly prominently. The reason is simple, if over-utilitarian: the ROG papers are at Cambridge.

The thing I wasn't prepared for was the scale of the place. It's tiny. And it's incredibly close to the old Royal Naval College, and the royal residence and deer park. Yet from this modest facility, which was so routinely underfunded John Flamsteed had to take in private students to supplement his income when he was Astronomer Royal, England basically built the scientific infrastructure to support its navy (calculating tide tables, testing instruments, and the like) and defined time (they don't call it Greenwich Mean Time for nothing).

This modesty is almost-- not quite, almost-- enough to make me buy into John Horgan's argument that we've come to an "end of science," in which all the big discoveries have been made, and it's becoming exponentially more expensive to fill in the details. The Large Hadron Collider, which goes online at CERN next year, and which physicists hope will provide some data that lets them decide whether string theory is right or not (the worst outcome would be ambiguous data, one physicist told me), costs billions of dollars, will require some 2,000 people to run, and is expected to generate between 10 and 20 petabytes of data a year. Yet with a few relatively modest buildings, simple instruments, and a lot of care, British astronomers did incredible things.

Greetings from an Internet Cafe

I'm at an Internet cafe right up the street from my hotel. I suppose I now need to put "free Internet access" somewhere ahead of "running water" and "bed" in my list of priorities when I look for a place: I've been here twelve hours, and I feel terribly cut off from everyone. It used to be that travel meant you were out of range; not any more.

At last week's Technology Horizons conference, we heard about people in some slums in the Third World who don't have running water, but do have cell phones. That's kind of what I want to be.

I got into my hotel all right, and my bag was even still here, apparently unmolested. However, staying at the 50 pound/night place is definitely Taking One For the Team: the room is just big enough for a bed, a small desk and dresses, and a wall-mounted TV. Thank goodness I don't plan to actually spend any time in here unless I'm either A) conscious or B) grooming. But at least there can't be any roaches. They'd need more living space.

Actually, while it's not my beloved Goodenough Club, it's warm and it's close to things. I'm not really complaining.

I'm thinking of the Internet cafe as kind of a cultural experience: they're playing disco, I'm the oldest person by about 10 years, and there's a woman beside me doing a video chat with her family back in Russia. It's not a good connection. She's speaking very loudly. But at least she has headphones.

Greetings from the Grosvenor Starbucks

I'm in the Starbucks near Grosvenor Square, downloading a venti eggnot latte and the several hundred pictures I've taken in the six hours since arriving. London is chilly this morning, and a little cloudy, but otherwise nice.

I got into London a little after 6, and got through customs and immigration in record time; as a result, I was at my hotel a little before 8, well before check-in. The hotel is one of a number between Paddington Station and Hyde Park: in fact, that neighborhood seems to be Cheap Hotel Central.

The hotel I chose-- entirely on the basis of cost and location, with no knowledge of its reputation-- may be an Interesting Cultural Experience. I was the only person in the lobby who wasn't speaking Russian, and the concierge seemed awfully suspicious of my request to leave a bag. I hope it's there when I return, but I have my passport, wallet, Mac, and iPod, so I can reconstruct my own personal civilization if worse comes to worst. I'll refrain from naming names, in case they have Google Alerts set to look for mentions of themselves.

Hey, the power works. (Why don't we have little on/off switches for power outlets in the U.S.? It seems so sensible.) But I can't get online here. Bummer.

So after trusting my bag to the fates-- and taking a photograph of it, just in case I never see it again and need something to remember it by-- I walked through Hyde Park (something I'd never done) then exited at Speakers' Corner and the Marble Arch.

I then walked down Oxford Street, then just took a promising right turn that dropped me in Grosvenor's Square.

As soon as I saw the name, I thought, wasn't Eisenhower based here or something? Of course, the American Embassy occupies an entire block, and there are statues to FDR and Eisenhower there. There's also a memorial to the Eagle Squadrons, the American airmen who joined the RAF before the U.S. itself entered World War II, and the most recent addition, a 9/11 memorial.

It was strangely touching to find all these reminders of American history in this perfect jewel of a space. If encountering such a space can't inspire a twinge of patriotism and homesickness, nothing can.

I love the fact that London seems filled with these squares; when I was living in Philadelphia I thought the squares were an amazingly cool and unique part of the city, and they were. Little did I know they were copying what was then a recent innovation in urban design in London.

I really needed this coffee. It's now 4:20 AM back in California, and I didn't sleep at all on the plane-- as much by choice as anything.

Technorati Tags: England, London, travel

Departure Lounge Blues

I'm in the United lounge, having a little Diet Pepsi and stretching my legs before I get on the plane. I've never seen it so crowded: almost every seat is taken, mainly with people who are intently typing away on their computers, talking on their cell phones and Blackberries, or otherwise Being Productive. This must be an especially busy time to fly: I see departures to Mexico City, Hong Kong, Osaka, and a dozen other places in the next hour.

This is my second trip to England this year: I was last over at the end of January, for about as long as this trip, but it was a relatively short visit, and I spent the whole of it in London. Not that one can't spend months in London and be diverted; Jane Austen vividly described people who did that.

I spent a good part of yesterday putting away laundry, making food to go in the freezer, paying bills, and otherwise trying to make it easier for my absence to not be noticed. I figure it's the least I can do, and I want to try to maintain my karmic (not to mention family) balance. I still have a shot at that trip to Australia and Singapore, though probably not before the end of the year.

When I was a graduate student, if someone had told me that one day I'd be a futurist, and go to Europe seven times in two years, I would have thought they were completely nuts. Yet here I am.

My flight will get in early Sunday morning, London time. In the afternoon I'll get together with a friend who teaches at the University of Greenwich, then probably spend the evening wandering around my hotel's neighborhood (it's very close to Paddington Station, which puts it near Hyde Park and Notting Hill, among other things). Monday I'm in Oxford, then giving a talk at the Royal College of Art, which is just on the other side of Hyde Park from Paddington. Tuesday it's back up to Oxford, then over to Swindon in the evening. Wednesday and Thursday are the conference; then it's back to London that evening, and I leave the next morning. Thanks to the miracle of time zones, I'm almost back in San Francisco before I leave-- measured by local time, not by what my body will think.

[To the tune of Todd Rundgren, "Love Is the Answer," from the album "The Very Best of Todd Rundgren".]

Technorati Tags: airport, SFO

A rainy day in San Francisco town

I woke up to a wet Silicon Valley this morning. This must be the rain that's supposed to hit Oxford and Swindon on Tuesday.

Interesting to think of a weather system following you around. It's also probably incorrect, but still....

Travel and the Web

I'm all packed for my trip to England: I just need to throw my suits in the garment bag, zip it up, and I'll be ready to go.

I suspect I'll never quite get over how much the Web has affected travel-- in particular, the way it makes it lowers the barriers to making detailed local arrangements remotely, and getting real-time information about your destination. When I was writing my dissertation, I made decisions about what archives to visit based on published guides to historical papers; chose the B&Bs I read about in whatever travel guide I had; and bought a British Rail pass, but had no good sense of the train schedules.

Today, in contrast, I was able to check the five-day weather forecast in Oxford and Swindon, courtesy of the Met Office (this after lamenting the fact that I couldn't find international weather on the Weather Channel Web site, and then realizing, "Hey! I can check the Meteorological Office!"); figure out how to get from Oxford to Shrivenham (via Didcot Parkway and Swindon); and make a reservation for a ride from Heathrow to Paddington Station Sunday morning. If I had the right kind of cell phone, I could get SMS messages when the train I want to follow arrives at whatever station I want to know about. Truly amazing. The panopicon is here, and its enabling technologies are IPv4 and cheap webcams.

When I'm on the road, I experience the same real-time access in reverse: it's much, much easier to talk to people on other continents now than it was when I was a kid, or even when I was in grad school.

[To the tune of Al Stewart, "Flying Sorcery," from the album "Year of the Cat".]

Blue state children

On the way to school today, my daughter asked, "Daddy, when will they start playing Christmas songs again on the radio?"

"Around Thanksgiving, I think," I said.

"What's a radio?" my son asked.

I thought, this is perfect. He can tell me the difference between DVDs and videos, knows his way around the Lego Star Wars universe, but he doesn't know what "radio" is. He's a true 21st century child.

My daughter replied, "It's like that thing in the kitchen. The one that says, 'NPR, National Public Radio.' That's a radio."

I suppose I should have been driving to our progressive school in a battered Volvo at that moment, but we traded it in years ago to buy the minivan.

[To the tune of Steve Kimock Band, "Little Wing," from the album "2005-10-31 - Mexicali Blues".]

Technorati Tags: children

How many rechargers will I have to carry?

I bought a second battery for my beloved camera, a Canon SD630. On previous trips abroad, I've had cameras that ran on regular AA batteries, and so getting replacements was never a problem; but since I can easily take several hundred pictures a day when I'm in England, I had to have some way of extending the electrical life of my camera.

This felt a little more elegant than buying a power converter, but of course, I'll feel really stupid if I manage to run through both batteries.

I can recharge my iPod through the Powerbook; I wonder if there's some USB attachment that lets you draw enough power to run a plug-in recharger?

One conference down, another to go

At the Institute, we just finished our Technology Horizons fall exchange. This has occupied the attention of most of the Institute for the last couple weeks, and while I had a fairly small role this time, I still was getting out of the house and over to the Redwood City Sofitel at an unusually early hour.

Now that it's done, I can start thinking about my next conference, which will be a somewhat different experience. it's on technology forecasting (not a surprise there), but it will be at the Defence Academy at Shrivenham, an hour or two west of London. The Institute doesn't do classified research, but more and more, the dynamics that interest us-- collective action, user reinvention, etc.-- are being recognized as significant in forecasting changes in military technology and activity.

I'm staying in a place called Blunsdon House, "where the Cotswalds meet the South Downs," according to the Web site. Whether this is a reference to geography, an Elizabethan-era family feud, a reference to racing or cricket, or the names of two streets, I can't say. If nothing else, it's a reminder that as Oscar Wilde put it, we really are two peoples separated by a common language.

However, since I haven't been outside the London-Oxford-Cambridge triangle in over ten years, any chance to get out is welcome. Though I am spending what look like two fairly frantic days shuttling back and forth between London and Oxford: I'm doing some interviews at the new James Martin Institute, maybe giving a talk at the Royal College of Art (totally an opportunistic thing), and visiting friends at LSE and University of Greenwich. Unfortunately, my beloved Goodenough Club is full, so I'm staying at a hotel near Paddington Station; a full report on what my 50 pounds buys me to come.

Technorati Tags: conference, London, Oxford University, work

Is our children learning... how to design nuclear weapons firing circuits?

Ah, those darned Internets:

U.S. Web Archive Is Said to Reveal a Nuclear Guide

Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.

But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb....

Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency, fearing that the information could help states like Iran develop nuclear arms, had privately protested last week to the American ambassador to the agency...

The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.

The site has finally been shut down. But who in the world would ask for such a thing in the first place?

The campaign for the Web site was led by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan. Last November, he and his Senate counterpart, Pat Roberts of Kansas, wrote to Mr. Negroponte, asking him to post the Iraqi material. The sheer volume of the documents, they argued, had overwhelmed the intelligence community.

Hoekstra pitched this as a "wisdom of the crowds" kind of play: “It will allow us to leverage the Internet to enable a mass examination as opposed to limiting it to a few exclusive elites.”

This is just another data-point confirming my personal theory, developed after many hours analyzing the popularity of YouTube submissions, that the "hive mind" is interested in two things: animals doing cute things, and people doing stupid things.

[To the tune of U2, "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own," from the album "How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb".]

Technorati Tags: collective intelligence, internet

Butterstick and the decline of the West

Bruce Reed has a funny yet smart piece in Slate on Tai Shan, the panda cub at the Washington Zoo, and the symbolism of the deal that requires the U.S. to return him to China when he turns two:

[T]he Post dropped a bombshell in what may be Washington's biggest and most ominous scandal yet:

"As part of an agreement with China, which lent Tai Shan's parents to the zoo, the cub is set to be returned to that country this summer after his second birthday."

In other words, this proud nation of ours— once master of its own destiny— is now renting itself out to have a rich totalitarian's babies....

Of course, America's youngsters might as well get used to shipping their prized possessions off to China, because thanks to the current administration and Congress, that's what they're likely to spend the rest of their lives doing. In the past month, China's foreign-currency reserves topped $1 trillion, most of it invested in U.S. Treasury bonds to finance the Bush deficits. It's no crowd-pleaser, but the Bush White House and Congress have built their own Asia Trail: the Fujifilm Giant National Debt.

[To the tune of Eric Clapton, "Knockin' On Heaven's Door," from the album "Crossroads (Disc 3)".]

Technorati Tags: China, humor

It's definitely fall

Ever since the time changed this weekend, it's really felt like fall.

via flickr

Night is falling sooner, that autumnal combination of darkening skies and glowing windows is more noticeable, and it's getting chillier.

via flickr

My mother once said that when they first moved here in the early Sixties, they found autumn very disconcerting: it wasn't dramatic enough or cold enough, compared to what they had been accustomed to in West Virginia, and they felt a little abandoned by Nature. Personally, I think that while it's not exactly the Berkshires, the fall here is in fact noticeable.

via flickr

Technorati Tags: California, paloalto

I knew I should have taken that right turn at Albuquerque

I fired up iTunes this evening, clicked on the "iTunes Store" icon... and am now connected to the Japanese store.

Unfortunately, I can't buy anything (I am still in the States), which is too bad, because I'd happily buy the entire Misia catalog (link goes to Japanese iTunes store-- it may not work for you).

Hey... there's a group called Bump of Chicken.

Okay, that was worth it.

[To the tune of Bump of Chicken, "Bench to Coffee," from the album "Jupiter".]

Technorati Tags: itunes, Japan, music