Relevant History

Gratuitous Peninsula School evening picture

Taken after last week's annual meeting.

via flickr

[To the tune of Led Zeppelin, "Achilles Last Stand," from the album "Box Set (Disc 3)".]

Technorati Tags: menlo park, night, Peninsula School

Listening bar

Tonight after dinner, we went to the Apple Store iPod Store, to pick up my wife's new computer.

While my wife was getting her machine, the kids (who love iPods) tried on every pair of headphones attached to every iPod (even the iPod Stuffies), to hear what was playing.

via flickr

[To the tune of Depeche Mode, "In Your Room (Jeep Rock Mix)," from the album "In Your Room".]

Technorati Tags: Apple Store, iPod, Palo Alto

Levenger Circa (Jeep Rock Mix)

I've been using Levenger Circa notebooks for a decade, and I've always loved them. However, today I saw something that I might try after I run through the last couple Circas in my desk: something called Disc Bound, which looks very similar, but is a bit cheaper and comes in hipper colors.

Though if I get them, my kids will probably just steal them.

[To the tune of Depeche Mode, "In Your Room (Jeep Rock Mix)," from the album "In Your Room".]

Technorati Tags: writing

Today is Towel Day

I didn't realize, but it's Towel Day:

Towel Day is a day when you carry around a towel all day to commemorate the late, great Douglas Adams, author of the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

[To the tune of Earth, Wind & Fire, "Can't Hide Love," from the album "Earth Wind & Fire: Greatest Hits".]

Technorati Tags: books, science_fiction

Quote of the day

I'm sitting in our very underused kitchen garden-- i.e., the little patch of dirt outside our kitchen, which is now pleasantly overgrowing with some hardy flowers-- reading about simulation. This bit by J. C. R. Licklider, written in 1967, caught my eye:

In their dynamic form, however, computer-program models appeal to the recipient’s understanding directly through his perception of dynamic behavior. That mode of appeal is beyond the reach of ordinary documents. When we have learned how to take good advantage of it, it may—indeed, I believe it will—be the greatest boon to scientific and technical communication, and to the teaching and learning of science and technology, since the invention of writing on a flat surface.

He really was one smart guy!

[To the tune of The Police, "Every Breath You Take," from the album "Message in a Box: The Complete Recordings (Disc 4)".]

Technorati Tags: computer, history of science

Different stars

Citylink, Singapore:

via flickr

Hilton Hotel, Austin:

via flickr

[To the tune of Pink Floyd, "Any Colour You Like," from the album "Pulse (Disc 2)".]

Technorati Tags: Austin, Singapore

Contrasting trips

Bottles of things on sale at the Hong Kong airport, last month...

via flickr

... and at the Austin airport, yesterday.

via flickr

[To the tune of Elvis Costello, "Everyday I Write the Book," from the album "The Very Best Of Elvis Costello And The Attractions".]

Technorati Tags: airport, Austin, Hong Kong

The road to AUS

In addition to the airport hotels, there are a couple trailer parks, a couple trailer sales lots, a variety of strip joints or bars, "Quality Repo" used cars, one or two pawn shops, and other curious stuff.

Maybe I didn't need to see Austin after all? Nah, there's gotta be more to it. But you could write a pretty good country song about these establishments.

Technorati Tags: airport, Austin, Texas, travel

To the airport

I'm in a cab, headed to the airport. I want to make sure to get there with plenty of time: I got to SFO later than I meant, too late to check my bag. Of course, the flight was delayed, which meant I got to rush through Denver's massive B Concourse to get to my connecting flight-- which also turned out to be late.

As is the way of such things, after sprinting through the airport, and discovering that they were not in fact pulling the jetway away from the plane as I got to the counter, I immediately moved past relief about not missing my plane to irritation at the delay.

Fortunately, Austin airport is amazingly close to downtown-- or at least it is if you're accustomed to driving half an hour to SFO. We seem to be almost there.

Technorati Tags: airport, Austin, Texas

Cute cats

Around the office, the phrase "I wonder if there are any new cat videos on YouTube" has come to serve as an expression of distraction, an inability to concentrate on what you really ought to be doing. In true futurists' fashion, it turns out that we've been on the cutting edge: cute cats are taking over the Web.

Technorati Tags: cat, internet

Tripping

I've finished my talk at the Council of Science Editors, and am spending a little time in another session before heading to the airport. I wish I'd had time to see some of Austin, but at this point, the most interesting "place" in my world is reading to my kids before bedtime.

Still, the last couple months have been an object lesson in my capacity to balance the demands of family life against travel. In April and May I went to Washington DC (twice), Irvine, Singapore, Davis, and Austin-- four of those were either one-night trips or red-eyes-- and am off to Europe in early June. This big stack of trips was completely accidental, but it's taught me a couple things.

For one, while I can do one of these quick trips a month, or two when I really stretch, four of them in six weeks is way over the top. It's important to balance work, event, and family obligations, and this level of travel makes it perilously difficult to do that. (I don't know if the kids are really aware of the difference between doing the red-eye thing, and my staying overnight for a couple days; maybe one day, when they're grown up, they'll look back and realize it.)

As a personal thing, I'm not so keen on parachuting into a conference, doing a keynote, handing out some business cards, then jetting off again. I know lots of people do it, but I no longer want to be one of them. Leaving aside the high environmental costs of flying for such brief exchanges, I always feel like there are a lot of interesting people I don't meet, and things I could learn but don't have time to. I still work hard to make those talks interesting, but I'd rather spend real time at a conference.

And it looks like the travel I need to do for clients and projects is building up, which decreases the amount of semi-discretionary time I have to accept conference gigs and the like. As I ramp up a big new project at work that's is going to require a pretty fair amount of (very cool) travel, this window is going to get even narrower.

So fewer, longer trips from now on. After June, I'm not due to go anywhere until September, when I'll be in Europe again, for what seems like an ever-expanding trip.

Gotta get to the airport soon....

Technorati Tags: Austin, Texas

Awake

I'm awake, a couple hours earlier than I usually get up, but I am in the Central time zone.

This morning I'm giving a talk at the Council of Science Editors annual meeting on the end of cyberspace and future of scientific journals. It seemed like a good chance to bring together my old and new lives of editor and futurist, and I said yes long before April and May became fairly choked with travel; coming near the tail end of all that (I've still got a trip to Finland in a couple weeks), I decided to just come down for one night, which is good for the kids, but it means I'll see nothing of the city. I have somewhat mixed feelings about that: on one hand, Austin looks nice; on the other hand, I'm in Performance Mode, and in that mode by geographical location is a bit incidental-- so long as I'm where the audience is.

I was up to about 3 local time, working on the talk, and will put in a couple more hours on it this morning, with a break to go out and grab some coffee. It's not my habit to write talks the night before I give them, but I do regularly rewrite them, and then rehearse the timing, check the transitions, etc. Then I leave my iTunes on, get into bed, and try not to get too comfortable, so I don't risk sleeping through the three or four alarms I set. I can always nap on the plane home, I figure.

[To the tune of Santana, "Europa (Earth's Cry, Heaven's Smile)," from the album "Viva Santana! (Disc 2)".]

Technorati Tags: Austin, Texas, work

Candyfab

This is awesome. 3D printing, using sugar as your medium.... Never has the future looked so tasty!

via flickr

[To the tune of The Moody Blues, "Nights In White Satin," from the album "Moody Blues Greatest Hits".]

Technorati Tags: manufacturing, printing

In Austin

I'm in the Austin, Texas airport, waiting for a shuttle to the hotel where I'll spend about 8 hours, if I'm lucky. (I have a theory that over-the-counter Provigil, or some other drug that lets you stay awake for a day or two, will seriously change the nature of business travel. When you don't need to sleep, you don't need a room. Expect 24-hour offices with hot and cold running coffee and showers, like what you aleady see in major airports.)

For some reason, in a moment of weakness I got in the line for Supershuttle, rather than catching a cab. I'm not sure why I did this, except to save a couple bucks. But it meant a 20-minute wait in the airport, and who knows how many stops before I reach the hotel. And I haven't had great experiences with Supershuttle. Well, if it takes me forever, the trip will only be uphill....

[To the tune of Grateful Dead, "Estimated Prophet," from the album "1977-05-08 - Barton Hall, Cornell University".]

Technorati Tags: Austin, Texas, travel

Cutty Sark

Last time I was in London, I had dinner at a pub with a view of the Cutty Sark, one of the greatest of the 19th-century clipper ships.

via flickr

Last night there was a fire that destroyed part of it:

Fire today ravaged the Cutty Sark, causing extensive damage to the world's last remaining tea clipper and one of Britain's most important maritime treasures.

Residents in Greenwich, south-east London, where the 19th century ship has been in dry dock since the 1950s, described hearing an explosion at around 4.45am.

Firefighters arrived to find a "substantial" blaze had engulfed the timber and iron hulled ship, which has been undergoing a £25m renovation.

Best Onion headline ever?

"Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Honors Tuskegee Air Guitarists." In this week's podcast.

Wintersmith

My daughter and I just started Terry Pratchett's Wintersmith, the third in his series of young adult novels featuring witch-in-training Tiffany Aching. We'd already read The Wee Free Men and A Hat Full of Sky, the first two books about Tiffany, and my daughter enjoyed them both.

At first, she mainly enjoyed the Nac Mac Feegle, creatures who are a cross between fairies and the Mark Wahlberg character in The Departed, with heavy Scottish accents thrown in for good measure. She still likes them, as do I; but I think she's also becoming much more interested in the character of Tiffany, and her development. I love the Feegle, but Tiffany is the most interesting character Pratchett has created since Sam Vimes, the policeman who figures prominently in a number of the Discworld books.

Doubtless there are groups who decry the books as Bad For Children, but in Pratchett's world, witchcraft is about 5% supernatural, and 95% work, responsibility and social networking. The witches who dress like Stevie Nicks ca. 1978 and spend lots of time on the occult are always bested by the witches who wear boots and listen carefully to village gossip. So in the long run, I think reading the books probably drives down the odds of girls eventually joining a coven or getting into wiccan.

And for me, reading these books is a pleasure because Pratchett is one of my favorite authors, and one of the few I'm likely to be able to share with my children. He's a real pleasure to read aloud, and it'll be years before my daughter is old enough to read Alan Furst or William Gibson (much less Neal Stephenson or Dan Simmons). For the forseeable future, Pratchett will be a common literary reference point for us, and a genuinely literary one: you don't read a Discworld novel with the movie adaptation superimposed on your imagination, as you do when you pick up a J. K Rowling book.

[To the tune of Elton John, "Crocodile Rock," from the album "Greatest Hits".]

Technorati Tags: Discworld, science_fiction, Terry Practchett

Forever stamps? Not so fast...

Slate argues that the forever stamp isn't worth buying in large quantities, because postal rates can't exceed inflation-- by law.

Since 1971, postal rates have increased more slowly than the actual inflation rate, as measured by the U.S. Consumer Price Index. So, despite the numerous rate hikes over the last 36 years, stamps have actually been getting cheaper. The 20-cent stamp from 1981, for instance, would be equivalent to 45 cents in today's dollars—which makes today's rate 10 percent cheaper than it was 26 years ago. Should this historical pattern hold, you'd be paying more for today's forever stamps than you would for any stamp in the future, no matter how high the rate goes.

In fact, this pattern must hold—as a matter of law. In December, President Bush signed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which ensures that future price increases will be kept below an inflation-based ceiling. In other words, postage hikes will never surpass inflation—and the forever stamp will never become a good investment.

Of course, this doesn't account for either the additional work required to supplement old stamps, or the money lost when you just give up on old stamps. For me, I suspect that the simplicity of being able to use the stamps without having to add more postage later on will be worth it.

[To the tune of 2 Souls & Bari Koral, "In the Beginning," from the album "In the Beginning (2 Souls Featuring Bari Koral) - EP".]

Looking at the teas

My son at the Peets in Town and Country.

via flickr

Technorati Tags: cafe, children

Yeek!

This is why I almost never go to New York.

The big city is scary....

The Victorians live on, it seems

In my previous incarnation as an historian of Victorian science, I was drawn to the people I wrote about for two reasons: the best of them were intellectual omnivores; and they had incredible work habits. Both of these are traits I admire and aspire to, but never quite make my own.

Recently, while reading an article by Nigel Thirft about the impact of information technologies on our perception of space and bodies (part of my slow but steady work on the end of cyberspace), I came across a very intriguing reference to Raymond Tallis' book The Hand: A Philosophical Inquiry into Human Being. Naturally, I looked him up, and found a Guardian profile from 2006:

If there were a statue of the Unknown Polymath it should look like Raymond Tallis: rangy, bearded, wide-eyed with disciplined wonder. For 30 years he has been rising at five in the morning to write for two hours before going off to work as a doctor. He has been a GP, a research scientist, and a professor of gerontology, one of Britain's leading experts, who has published more than 70 scientific papers and co-edited a 1,500-page standard textbook of gerontological medicine. But in the solitary hours of the early morning he has also been a distinguished literary critic, poet and philosopher who has written a radio play about the death of Wittgenstein.

Clearly, people who can get up very early in the morning have an advantage over the rest of us. Working at night, it seems, isn't the same. (Of course, most evenings I consider myself productive if I make the kids' lunches and do some e-mail.)

[To the tune of Plush, "No Education," from the album "Fed".]

Technorati Tags: academia, end of cyberspace, postacademic, reading

Contrasting hotel views

Singapore, April 26:

via flickr

Davis, May 8:

via flickr

And yet, if I had to choose, I'd live in Davis. No question.

This little contrast also reminds me that I've been traveling too much these last few weeks. While I've got a talk in Austin in a couple weeks, then a trip to Finland in early June... and a trip to England in mid-June... that's it for the summer, unless I take the kids somewhere while my wife is in Cambridge.

Technorati Tags: Davis, hotel, Singapore

Mishka's Cafe

I ended the evening by wandering over to Mishka's Cafe, and having some tea.

via flickr

I've got an article due today, so I actually needed to get some caffeine and concentrate.

via flickr

There are several tables in the front that have big signs warning people not to study at them, but given that almost everyone was sitting with empty cups and stacks of books from the library, I can understand it.

via flickr

Technorati Tags: cafe, Davis, travel

Visiting the library

This afternoon I stopped into Shields Library, where I spent a lot of my two years here.

via flickr

Near the entrance was this poster. I like the concept of "extreme research." It's what futurists do.

via flickr

I managed to find a couple books I'd meant to track down for a while. Mainly, though, it was good to be back among my people.

via flickr

Technorati Tags: Davis, library, UC Davis, university

Views of the Death Star

Where I had my office for two years.

via flickr

I actually liked it a lot, unlike some people. Yes, the metal cladding isn't, shall we say, entirely appropriate for summers in Davis. But I liked its scale, and the variety of the space.

via flickr

And I don't know if I was the very first person to call it "the Death Star," but I was certainly pretty early on that bus.

Technorati Tags: Davis, UC Davis, university

Counterfeit drugs and mass poisoning

There's a long, very scary, article in the New York Times about drug ingredient counterfeiting. It focuses on several mass poisonings in recent years that turn out to have been caused by the substitution of diethylene glycol-- an industrial solvent and ingredient in antifreeze-- for more expensive, but non-lethal, syrups in medicines.

Over the years, the poison has been loaded into all varieties of medicine — cough syrup, fever medication, injectable drugs — a result of counterfeiters who profit by substituting the sweet-tasting solvent for a safe, more expensive syrup, usually glycerin, commonly used in drugs, food, toothpaste and other products.

Toxic syrup has figured in at least eight mass poisonings around the world in the past two decades. Researchers estimate that thousands have died. In many cases, the precise origin of the poison has never been determined. But records and interviews show that in three of the last four cases it was made in China, a major source of counterfeit drugs.

An examination of the two poisoning cases last year — in Panama and earlier in China — shows how China’s safety regulations have lagged behind its growing role as low-cost supplier to the world. It also demonstrates how a poorly policed chain of traders in country after country allows counterfeit medicine to contaminate the global market.

And at the end of the article, there's this nice tidbit:

One lingering mystery involves the name of the product made by the Taixing Glycerine Factory. The factory had called its syrup “TD” glycerin. The letters TD were in virtually all the shipping documents. What did TD mean?...

Yuan Kailin, a former salesman for the factory , said he knew what the TD meant.... TD stood for the Chinese word “tidai” (pronounced tee-die), said Mr. Yuan, who left his job in 1998 and still lives about a mile from the factory.

In Chinese, tidai means substitute. A clue that might have revealed the poison, the counterfeit product, was hiding in plain sight.

It was in the product name.

Technorati Tags: globalization

Bereft of 6 megapixels

I left my digital camera at home this morning. Thanks to various classes and lessons scheduled on Saturday mornings, I have to be most prepared when I'm least capable of it. Leaving the camera made me aware of how often I carry it, and how unusual that would have been at one time.

When I was young, cameras were something you took on vacations, or to birthdays and graduations-- special occasions, in other words. Carrying a camera around every day was impractical, unless you were willing to spend a lot of money on bad pictures.

But with a small digital camera, you can offhandedly take excellent pictures-- or in my case, take lots of pictures, have a small number of them turn out well, and not worry about the rest. I take a few hundred pictures a week, of completely ordinary yet memorable stuff-- my children running to class, climbing trees, reading to each other, the cats doing cat stuff

Of course, I have a gigabyte card in my camera cell phone, so I can survive the next few hours. But I can't forget the camera tomorrow, when we go to the Peninsula Spring Fair.

[To the tune of Supertramp, "Fool's Overture," from the album "Paris (Disc 2)".]

Technorati Tags: memory, technology

Tacit knowledge and raincoats: A last note on Singapore

I took a raincoat with me to Singapore, as I'd heard that there are two seasons there, wet and wetter.

Turned out to be a mistake.

I didn't see a single raincoat the whole time I was there: not on a person, not in a store, none at all. Turns out they're too hot and stifling.

Instead, everyone carries an umbrella. Actually, everyone who wants to avoid getting wet, which is not the entire population: some large fraction seem to manage to get where they need to go by a combination of public transportation, underground mall and tunnel, or cutting through shopping malls or building lobbies.

In most of the world, the rules for safe jaywalking are a great example of local, tacit knowledge: I never try to cross against a light in London unless there are locals doing it. Why? Natives understand how drivers behave, how fast the cars go, how quickly they can stop, how likely it is that there will be cops around, and all the little variables that visitors don't; furthermore, they understand them well enough to be able to make correct judgments in fractions of seconds.

Since jaywalking is illegal, getting from Point A to Point B without having to get wet is the equivalent tacit knowledge for Singaporeans.

[To the tune of Eric Clapton, "Let it Rain," from the album "Crossroads (Disc 2)".]

Technorati Tags: Singapore, travel

Singapore posts on Future Now

Over on Future Now, I've posted about two of the science parks I visited in Singapore:

Biopolis

and

via Phase Z.Ro Technopreneur Park

I feel like I've been neglecting my work blogging. Which in fact I have.

Technorati Tags: science cities, Singapore, travel