Relevant History

Giving STS a good name...

Wonkette reports that a Dartmouth professor

is suing her class for discrimination, as she revealed in a series of regrettable and bizarre emails that promptly ended up all over Dartmouth blogs. Priya Venkatesan (Dartmouth '90, MS in Genetics, PhD in literature) emailed members of her Winter '08 Writing 5 class Saturday night to announce her intention to seek damages from them for their being mean to her.

Looking at that academic pedigree, I immediately started to worry. Sure enough, she was teaching STS. Her book, Molecular Biology in Narrative Form "is a groundbreaking, interdisciplinary study that shows a connection between molecular biology and French narrative theory."

With many new insights on the link between science (in the form of DNA, a set of codes) and literature (in the form of language, another set of codes), this book looks at modern experimental science within the framework of semiotics. Priya Venkatesan reveals the extraordinary parallel between the work of scientists and the work of narratologists who develop narrative paradigms and analyze literary texts. Molecular Biology in Narrative Form will be a useful resource for scientists and literary theorists interested in the epistemological workings of science, as well as, anyone that desires to explore the linkages between scientific theory and literary analysis.

Two things come to mind. First, didn't Lily Kay and Tim Lenoir do exactly this about 15 years ago? Or does the project just bear a strong resemblance to George Landow's Hypertext, with its argument for unexpected parallels between computer science and literary theory?

And... suing her students? Huh?

[To the tune of Times Online, "The Bugle - Episode 16 - Afghanistan in a zen state of chaos," from the album "The Bugle - Audio Newspaper For A Visual World".]

My new favorite writer

Tony Zirkle is a lawyer running for Congress in Indiana. He's got a rhetorical style that-- well, it's hard to describe. Imagine Hunter Thompson on meth, trying to simultaneously channel Buckminster Fuller, Huey Long, and Jerry Falwell, with a little Unity Mitford-level Nazi-loving crazy thrown in for good measure:

What goes around, sometimes comes around, and sometimes a Zulu massacre comes right back in a dot com a few generations later to taunt a people in a new, more efficient destroying form of the same song, different dance hate speech. If addiction prone blanches can’t get their act together, then all of us who have a shred of justice in our spine may one day have to debate the idea of giving them what their ancestors gave to the natives, the author or whom is still honored with placement on the $20 bill…

If history can not produce one mono-syllabic tax cut king to stick his fluking harpoon between the porn Tiamat's oeilles, then perhaps history will one day send a homeless vet to attempt a confoundation of those incognoscenti who think they're wise. I'm starting to feel very strongly that a lot of very bad events are going to happen to me in the very near future for writing this.

The man in running for Congress. Give that a minute to sink in.

Could he even see the keyboard when he wrote that? I wish I could write with that kind of zest.

He also recently gave a speech to the American National Socialist Workers Party. According to the AP, he said "he did not know much about the group [emphasis added] and that 'I'll speak before any group that invites me.'"

Perhaps the fact that it was Hitler's birthday, and that the stage was decorated with a Nazi flag, large portrait of Adolf Hitler, and sparkly cardboard "Happy Birthday" draped across the podium could have provided the smallest of clues? Unless it was also Zirkle's birthday, in which case the confusion is understandable.

Man, I hope he gets elected.

[via Sadly, No]

[To the tune of Led Zeppelin, "The Battle of Evermore," from the album "Led Zeppelin (Disc 2)".]

Technorati Tags: writing

My children are insane

Yes it is hot today, but the pool is 68 degrees!

The impact of the Hajj

In David Lodge's great novel Changing Places, Euphoric State University professor Morris Zapp declared that "travel narrows." He was a world-renowned Jane Austen scholar, he said, precisely because he had never been to England: his lack of interest in the real England let him focus more sharply on the novels, and made him a better critic.

This attitude may hold true for literature (or not), but Slate reports on an interesting recent study (available here) suggesting that Muslims who make the pilgrimage to Mecca "came back with more moderate views on a range of issues, both religious and nonreligious, suggesting that the Hajj may be helpful in curbing the spread of extremism in the Islamic world."

The study looks at a group of 1,600 Pakistanis who applied for visas to go on the Hajj. As Slate explains, Pakistani visa policy creates a group that's a social scientist's dream:

In 2006, nearly 140,000 applicants vied for 80,000 visas through the Pakistan government's Hajj program. In order to decide who gets to go, the government holds a lottery. As a result, among the visa applicants, there's a group of people randomly selected to participate in the Hajj and a comparison group of would-be pilgrims who applied but didn't get to go. The two groups look very similar—the only systematic difference is that applicants in one group won the lottery and those in the other group didn't. If the Hajjis come back from Mecca more tolerant than those who didn't get to go, therefore, we know it's the result of the Hajj, not something else.

So what did the researchers find? As they report,

[P]articipation in the Hajj increases observance of global Islamic practices such as prayer and fasting while decreasing participation in localized practices and beliefs such as the use of amulets and dowry. It increases belief in equality and harmony among ethnic groups and Islamic sects and leads to more favorable attitudes toward women, including greater acceptance of female education and employment. Increased unity within the Islamic world is not accompanied by antipathy toward non-Muslims. Instead, Hajjis show increased belief in peace, and in equality and harmony among adherents of different religions. The evidence suggests that these changes are more a result of exposure to and interaction with Hajjis from around the world, rather than religious instruction or a changed social role of pilgrims upon return....

Our results tend to support the idea that the Hajj helps to integrate the Muslim world, leading to a strengthening of global Islamic beliefs, a weakened attachment to localized religious customs, and a sense of unity and equality with others who are ordinarily separated in everyday life by sect, ethnicity, nationality, or gender, but who are brought together during the Hajj. While the Hajj may help forge a common Islamic identity, there is no evidence that this is defined in opposition to non-Muslims. On the contrary, the notions of equality and harmony tend to extend to adherents of other religions as well.

Why is this?

While it is difficult to isolate what drives the impact of the Hajj, the evidence suggests that exposure to Muslims from around the world during the Hajj is important. While we find that Hajjis do not acquire greater formal religious knowledge, they do gain experiential knowledge of the diversity of Islamic practices and beliefs, gender roles within Islam, and, more broadly, the world beyond Pakistan. The Hajj’s impact on such knowledge and on some of the tolerant attitudes toward other groups tends to be larger for those traveling in smaller groups, who are more likely to have a broad range of social interactions with people from different backgrounds during the Hajj. Hajjis also show the largest positive gain in their views of other nationalities for Indonesians, the group they are most likely to observe during the Hajj other than Saudis. Hajjis’ changed views toward women also reflect the exposure channel since the Hajj offers Pakistani pilgrims a novel opportunity to interact with members of the opposite gender in a religious setting, and to observe interactions across the sexes among Muslims from nations which are more accepting of such interactions.

As with computers, so with religion: user experience and interaction is everything.

Technorati Tags: religion, sociology

Workplace this morning

All I'll say is, Tom Friedman got a more polite reception at Castilleja

Two protesters threw pies at Tom Friedman during a speech at Brown University:

The incredible thing is, the guys missed. So much for smashing global capitalism, dudes. (The girls at Castillja would have nailed it. They would have practiced. Of course, they also would have been expelled in a nanosecond, but at least they wouldn't have the shame of being tossed out of school for attempted pie-throwing.)

The other thing is that this gesture, while perhaps entertaining, and enough to earn you honors marks if you're a performance art major at Yale, isn't nearly as powerful, as, say, Matt Taibbi's takedown of The Earth is Flat, the best piece of snarky criticism this side of Adam Gopnik's review of Matrix Reoladed. A sample:

It's not for nothing that Thomas Friedman is called "the most important columnist in America today."... Friedman is an important American. He is the perfect symbol of our culture of emboldened stupidity. Like George Bush, he's in the reality-making business. In the new flat world, argument is no longer a two-way street for people like the president and the country's most important columnist. You no longer have to worry about actually convincing anyone; the process ends when you make the case.

Unlike the pie guys, Taibbi hits his target.

[via Gawker]

[To the tune of Willie Nelson, "Always On My Mind," from the album "Always On My Mind".]

From My Life as a Quant

Whenever I have a new problem to work on-- in physics or options theory-- the first major struggle is to gain some intuition about how to proceed; the second struggle is to transform this intuition into something more formulaic, a set of rules anyone can follow, rules that no longer require the original insight itself. In this way, one person's breakthrough becomes everybody's possession. (Emanuel Derman, My Life as a Quant: Reflections on Physics and Finance, p. 48)

[To the tune of Grateful Dead, "The Mighty Quinn," from the album "1991-04-05 - The Omni".]

Technorati Tags: physics

On NPR

Cyrus Farivar quotes me at the end of his latest NPR Morning Edition piece, "High-Tech Pen Makes Note-Taking Easier."

In my sound bite, I reveal that I like paper because it's harder for me to break paper than the screen on my Nokia N95.

I played the piece for my kids this morning before I took them to school. At the end of it, my son came up to me and said, "You know, Dad, you really do drop your stuff a lot." Gee, thanks kid.

[To the tune of Handsome Boy Modeling School, "The Projects (PJays)," from the album "So...How's Your Girl?".]

Technorati Tags: end of cyberspace, media

I'm back

Made it home safely. I left Changi Airport at 6 pm Singapore time on Sunday, and arrived in SFO at 8 pm PST. So that's about 17 hours' travel time, I think.

Since everyone put their windowshade down right after takeoff, I was in darkness the whole flight. So in a sense I missed a day. Kind of strange, but probably not as dislocating as having seven hours of daylight.

Technorati Tags: Malaysia, SQ002, Singapore

Giant baby at Changi Airport

For some reason, this giant screen with an photo advertisement featuring a baby really captivated me.

The baby sees all!

Okay, they're calling my row. Gotta go!

Technorati Tags: airport, Changi, Singapore

The "free wireless" at Changi Airport

I finally got onto the free wireless here at the airport, though it's what you might think of as a typically Singaporean process. You have to create an account first, which involves (among other things) giving them your name, address, and passport number. Once you've done that, they send a text message to your cell phone-- forget giving you your account information on the computer, much less just letting you start using the network.

After you've got your username and password, you log in. What the instructions don't tell you is that your username isn't just whatever name you've got-- joebob123-- but it's joebob123@qmax.com.sg. If you don't include the @qmax.com.sg, it doesn't work. Obviously.

Also, they send you an e-mail with information about how to change your password to something you can remember-- but so far as I can tell, there's nothing on the Web site it self that tells you how to do that. No "My Account" button, no "Change password" link, nothing. You have to refer to the e-mail... if you've gotten online and been able to read it, that is.

So I figured this out just in time to pack up and go catch my flight. More from Hong Kong, perhaps.

[To the tune of The Blue Nile, "Let's Go Out Tonight," from the album "Hats".]

Technorati Tags: airport, Changi, Singapore, wireless

Quick note from Changi

I'm at Changi Airport, wandering around Terminal 3. My flight leaves in a couple hours, so I've got lots of time to do stuff-- mainly take pictures and draft e-mails to people.

This has been a very good trip, quite eye-opening.

Spent the morning at the Asian Civilizations Museum, which is a remarkable, jewel-like place. Really fantasic. And only $5 SG on Sundays.

Sunrise this morning

I woke up this morning just before 7, read a few pages of Accelerando (which is quite a good book), and soon will start getting organized to pack. I need to send a few more messages first, though: I find if I don't send out thank-you notes as soon as possible, they drift down to the bottom of my queue, and it's weeks-- or never-- before I get to them. And when this means when it looks like you're ignoring people who've put time and effort into helping you, it's a Bad Thing.

via flickr

My flight leaves this afternoon around 5:30 or 6, so I've got a full day to do things. I doubt I'm going to be very ambitious, though I do feel like I should get out somewhere new. I feel a bit like I've been spending all my time in malls and other air-conditioned spaces, like I was in a tropical version of New Jersey. Which might not be the worst comparison for Singapore, come to think of it.

[To the tune of The Eagles, "I Can't Tell You Why," from the album "Greatest Hits Volume 2".]

Technorati Tags: Singapore

This evening's walk

At about 7 I stopped working, and went out for my usual on-the-road evening walk.

via flickr

via flickr

Technorati Tags: Singapore, travel, Orchard Road, night

At Kinokuniya Bookstore this evening

Taken during my walk down Orchard Road, where I was joined by every other person in Singapore.

via flickr

[To the tune of Mono, "Lost Snow," from the album "Ex Plex, Los Angeles, September 24, 2005".]

Technorati Tags: books, Singapore

Living Karl Mannheim's dream, and waiting for the cleaning lady to leave

I'm at the Raffles City Starbucks, doing some work. The cleaning ladies basically threw me out of the room-- it was obviously very suspicious that I was still in there in the mid-afternoon, and I needed to get out and get a life. I was starting to run a caffeine deficit anyway, so I trooped down here.

via flickr

The scene is pretty crazy: there are tons of people here, and I had to wait a few minutes for a table.

I'm at that strange and not very pleasant part of the trip where I've met a LOT of interesting people, but am feeling the absence of that casually intimate contact that you have with friends and family, and which go a long way to reminding you of the fact that you're a human being. I think this is one of the toughest parts of traveling extensively: there's a huge gap between how much contact you have with people, and how much you can connect with them. It's probably the closest I ever come to being one of Karl Mannheim's "free-floating intellectuals," those minds whom Mannheim believed would, through their rootlessness lack of attachment to nation or social class, be able to see the world more clearly than others.

Given enough time, of course, you can close that gap; but on a short trip like this, where I'm spending a few hours at most with people under pretty structured circumstances, there's no way to do that. At the same time, I think that dislocation or psychological distance has a certain utilitarian value: it can heighten your capacity for observation, and for me, at least, force me to think more about things.

I'm impressed at how many Europeans there are here: not just tourists, but people who move with the knowing casualness-- or hurried single-mindedness-- that I associate with people who live in a place. It makes Singapore sort of a mirror-image San Francisco: on the other side of the world, repressed rather than radical, and mainly Asian with a substantial European minority.

All Starbucks really are the same. It's really astounding how much they've managed to create a unified corporate image, a set of spaces that, whether one is in the cafe in Dupont Circle or Raffles City or Harvard Square, are always identical in the essentials. There's actually an interesting, Freakonomics-like study to be done of the standardization of cultural spaces, but I think my room should be clean by now, so I'm going to leave that for later.

[To the tune of Gladys Knight & The Pips, "Midnight Train to Georgia," from the album "'The Motown Years".]

Technorati Tags: cafe, Singapore

After sleeping like a rock

I slept a solid nine hours or so, and am almost in danger of actually adjusting to the time zone-- just in time, as I go home tomorrow!

Last night there was an extraordinary thunderstorm. I don't know if the hotel was actually struck by lightning, but give that it's one of the tallest buildings in Singapore, and it was all REALLY LOUD, I wouldn't be at all surprised.

I've got a few hours' work I need to do, and a couple informal meetings today, but I'm going to head up to the Singapore Botanic Garden, then walk back down to the hotel via Orchard Road and Fort Canning Park.

Technorati Tags: Singapore, travel

One quick picture from Singapore

Okay, two of them. The first is the Suntec Convention Center.

The second is some kind of cultural center, I think.

And now I'm going out to get some food.

Technorati Tags: night, Singapore, travel

In KLIA

I'm in Kuala Lumpur International Airport, and I can't get online. There's supposed to be this cool wireless throughout the airport, but I can't get to it-- it requires a password.

Actually, it doesn't. But I was using DHCP to configure my IP address; I then changed it to BootP, and it got right on. (However, looking now at my network configuration, it claims to be using DHCP again.)

This is a very nice airport. No getting around it. Gigantic, spacious, and pretty pleasantly-designed.

It strikes me as odd that Malaysian Airlines ads feature stewardesses who look like carbon copies of the Singapore Air stewardesses, when this is a predominantly Muslim country. Actually it isn't odd at all, given that Singapore Air is probably what they aspire to be-- it's Sony to their Samsung. But it's an image that isn't very representative of the rest of the country.

Technorati Tags: airport, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

It's 6 a.m here--

--and I've been up for a couple hours working. I tend to run on nerves on business trips, and this one is no different; combine that with the time difference, and it means I'm falling asleep at what for me are radically early times, and getting up before the crack of dawn.

Time for a shower.

[To the tune of Alanis Morissette, "Uninvited," from the album "City of Angels".]

Technorati Tags: Malaysia, Shah Alam

In my hotel

I made it to the Concorde Hotel. I've got a surprisingly nice room-- it must be a slow day.

via flickr

I've also got a really terrific view of the Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Shah Mosque, also known as the Blue Mosque. It's one of the biggest in Southeast Asia.

via flickr

I think I'm in for the night. I had a pretty big lunch, so I'm not particularly hungry, but I am rather tired, so I think I'm going to have a shower, read over my plans for tomorrow's workshop, and then go to bed.

[To the tune of Peter Gabriel, "Red Rain," from the album "Shaking The Tree".]

Technorati Tags: architecture, Blue Mosque, Concorde Hotel, mosque, Shah Alam

Greetings from Kuala Lumpur

I'm in a taxi, going from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport to my hotel in Shah Alam, which is-- actually, I have no idea how far away it is, except measured in money. It's about 60 ringgit to the hotel, which is a lot less than I expected it to be. I read about how to take the train to KL and then a bus or taxi to Shah Alam, but I'm tired and it's raining, so I wimped out.

Global brands run amok? Suzie Ormond and other American business books for sale in the KLIA bookstore... via flickr

I'm glad I did, because the taxi service here is pretty civilized and non-treatening. (One would hope that those two things are pretty much synonymous.) There aren't meters in the taxis, but before you get in the queue, you buy a ticket at a counter serviced by very nice ladies in head scarves. (Nearly everybody I've interacted with speaks quite good English; the only odd thing is that the accent reminds me of, of all things, Italian.) They tell you how much it'll cost to go where you want to go. Once you've paid, they print you a ticket; and you give it to the driver. Easy.

via flickr

Before I got to the taxi reservations stand, I stopped at an ATM and got some cash. It's pretty amazing to me that I can just go to an ATM and get money. It may be the case that I can now dispense with the whole ritual of going to the American Express office in downtown Palo Alto, or my local Wells Fargo branch if I'm better-organized, to get money. We'll see what the service charges are-- but given that Amex and other foreign exchange offices tend to charge a pretty hefty fee, I'll bet it's pretty competitive.

Kuala Lumpur airport is very new, and is filled with flat screen displays, many of which are playing a video featuring the Japanese architect who designed it, talking in that poetic, nearly incomprehensible voice people adopt when discussing vast corporate projects. "It is an airport is the forest, and the forest is in the airport," he intones, as we see a fisheye lens-distorted view of forest canopies, water features inside the main terminal, and then a slow-motion shot of a hummingbird.

"It is synergistic." Sun going down.

"Synergy is to live with contradictions." Low shot of businessman with Blackberry framed by Petrona Towers. Fisherman. Pilot and stewardess walking in slow-mo. "This is an essential attitude for the 21st century." As the kids today say, WTF?

The highway we're on is like the M5 or some other major freeway in Britain, though it's in better condition-- it looks pretty new. I guess it reminds me of England because people drive on the left side of the street here.

We're going about 120 km/h. It feels like we're doing about 80. And still, people are passing us on both sides.

I may need to do some reworking of my plan tomorrow, since Malaysian Airlines seems to have lost the supplies I brought for my workshop. I've been working on a really cool new online mapping tool; I may end of getting to use it a lot earlier than I expected.... As we like to say in the craft, the future often happens in unexpected ways. This may be one of them. A nice object lesson.

There's a car brand here called Proton, which I 've never heard of. I wonder if it's a rebranded Hyundai, or something Chinese, or does Malaysia actually make its own cars? These feel like Korean or Japanese cars-- the detailing is pretty good, the materials are decent... I'll have to check that out.

Before I got on the plane in Penang, when my energy level and spirits were at their low ebb, I watched about 20 minutes of The Bourne Ultimatum. There's something about watching Matt Damon beat, blow up, and crash through stuff that's energizing and reassuring. Jason Bourne knows how to travel. In fact, he hardly does anything else in those movies.

[To the tune of The Doors, "The End," from the album "The Doors".]

Technorati Tags: airport, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, travel

In Penang International Airport

I'm at the airport, waiting for my flight to Kuala Lumpur. It's late afternoon here, but my body is divided: part of me agrees that the sun is headed toward sundown, and will get there in a few hours, while another part of me thinks it's really the middle of the night (as it is back in California).

It's one of those psychological times when you'd much rather be at home, rather than in an airport terminal-- a space that demonstrates the amazing uniformity of global commerce and the power of international transport conventions to shape the way places are organized, and yet for all its familiarity remains resolutely alien.

I've spent more time in airports than a lot of people, and I think as I travel more, I'm finding them less appealing: the uniform array of mass luxury goods (is there an airport that doesn't have a Mont Blanc shop?), the fact that I'm often tired and a bit stressed in them, and the knowledge that I'm only in them to be somewhere else, are all starting to generate an allergic reaction. Not that I'll quit flying; but maybe I'll get more thoughtful and selective about it.

[To the tune of Paul Simon, "Further To Fly," from the album "The Rhythm of the Saints".]

Technorati Tags: airport, Penang

People must really love "House" and "Heroes" here

One of the more popular items for sale in the open-air stalls in Batu Ferringhi are DVDs-- mainly of Japanese and American movies (Nim's Island and the new Horton are both available), but I was struck at how many TV shows are also available.

via flickr

While I was having dinner last night, this particular stall suddenly shut down, then reopened five minutes later. Apparently someone had spotted the cops.

[To the tune of Nuspirit Helsinki, "Verano Porteno," from the album "Astor Piazzolla Remixed".]

Technorati Tags: Malaysia, Penang

Back from breakfast

Pleasant breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Though oddly, they play Brazilian-inflected light jazz at breakfast: I ate my eggs and tandori sausage (really!) to the tune of "Corcovado," "Se Danco Samba," "The Girl from Ipanema," and the theme from "Sandpiper" for good measure.

What a world....

[To the tune of Céu, "Roda (Bombay Dub Orchestra's Grateful Dub Radio Mix)," from the album "Roda (Bombay Dub Orchestra's Grateful Dub Radio Mix)".]

Technorati Tags: Malaysia, Park Royal Hotel, Penang, travel

Day 3 in Malaysia

I'm up early, as I haven't really adjusted enough to the local time to replicate my usual slothful ways.

I had a workshop yesterday with scientists and other people from USM, one of Malaysia's big science-oriented universities. It was a pretty good time: it was an interesting cross-section of people and backgrounds, there were a few usefully orthogonal thinkers, and I learned a lot.

The obligatory group picture, via flickr

Today I'm spending the day at USM and its new science city, then will head on to Kuala Lumpur and thence to Shah Alam. Thursday I've got another workshop at UiTM, and Friday I'll be at Cyberjaya and Putrajaya.

The Park Royal Hotel is pretty good, even though the main building looks like it was designed in the 1950s by a delegation of architecture students from the Leningrad Institute of Dialectical Tourism Studies.

via flickr

However, the rooms are quite pleasant. (Notice the disc on the ceiling that points to Mecca.)

via flickr

The first night I was here, I wimped out and went to the hotel restaurant; last night, I ventured out and had some food from one of the twenty thousand food stalls that are all around Batu Ferringhi.

via flickr

I'll go down to breakfast in a little while. The breakfast buffet here is okay but not outstanding-- but when you get to eat with a view of the ocean, nothing's really too bad.

via flickr

[To the tune of Radiohead, "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi," from the album "In Rainbows".]

Technorati Tags: food, Malaysia, Park Royal Hotel, Penang, scienceX2, travel

Photo set on Flickr

Trip photoset now up!

Why are there great bakeries in Singapore?

Just wondering. There seem to be terrific baked goods everywhere, and it doesn't seem self-evident that this would be a legacy of British colonialism (though technically the Straits Settlement wasn't a colony, but some kind of protectorate, though the East India Company more or less owned Panang). I'll have to keep an eye on the bakery scene in Malaysia....

[To the tune of Amy Winehouse, "Do Me Good," from the album "Back to Black".]

Technorati Tags: food, Malaysia, Singapore, travel

In Changi airport

I'm at Changi airport, waiting for my flight to Penang. I love Changi: it's got to be the cleanest, most efficient gigantic airport I know. It's Frankfurt but friendly, Heathrow but better-run (my luggage wasn't lost).

I've been on the road just over 24 hours, though I did manage to get some awkward, not very deep sleep on the plane. And after several drinks and stops at water fountains to rehydrate (Singapore Airlines seems to think that its passengers will get too heavy if they get entire cans of soda), and a double espresso, I feel pretty good. I should crash later on this evening, and expect to sleep very well tonight; but otherwise I'm good.

I'm going to Malaysia to do a set of workshops on the future of science, technology and innovation as part of the X2 project. I'll first be at USM in Penang, then at UiTM in Shah Alah; I'll also swing by Cyberjaya and Biopolis, to continue my love affairs with science cities, and also visit informally with some people at National University of Singapore.

As I was at the Amex currency exchange getting some Malaysian money, I took up an offer to buy a Singaporean SIM card. I popped it in, fiddled with it for a bit, then called home. I don't know I'll really need to call the States very much from here, but it's nice to know that I'm reachable. And the calls seems to be pretty cheap.

After walking from Terminal 3 to Terminal 2, I realized I didn't have any Singaporean money, so I stopped by an ATM and got some. Having grown up in a travel world in which you had to stand in long lines to change money and international calls were scare and expensive, I'll never cease to be amazed when things like this are actually easy. This isn't the way it's supposed to be, I keep thinking.

The one thing I haven't been able to do is get online: they still charge for wifi here, and I haven't felt like paying for it. The existence of many free terminals also provides something of a disincentive-- I'd have already paid if I couldn't get online for 15 minutes for free.

[To the tune of Amy Winehouse, "You Know I'm No Good," from the album "Back to Black".]

Technorati Tags: Malaysia, Changi, airport, travel, Singapore, scienceX2

Greetings from Changi Airport

In Singapore, on my way to Penang. Will have been on the road 24 hours by the time I finally get to my hotel room.

So far things have been pretty uneventful, in the way you want travel to be. Let's hope when they get interesting, they're in the good way!

It's pretty tiring, but man, I love to travel. I'll never get tired of this stuff.

I love the Singapore Airlines' entertainment system

What Singapore Airlines lacks in public, stand up and work space it almost makes up for in the in-flight entertainment system. So far, I've watched There Will Be Blood (which is totally crazy and brilliant-- that Daniel-Day Lewis could really go places), I Am Legend, slept through National Treasure, and am now watching Chariots of Fire, one of my all-time favorite inspirational movies. Maybe it'll inspire me to work even harder.

Technorati Tags: Singapore, SQ001, travel

On SQ 001

We're about an hour or so outside Hong Kong, and have been flying for just over 13 hours.

I got a seat near the back of the plane, where the fuselage starts to taper and there's some room between the window seats and the window. It turns out to be like having your own personal aisle. This is an especially useful discovery, as Singapore Airlines lacks something that I really like in United and SAS (the main other airlines I've flown in the last couple years): they lay out the galleys and lavatories in a way that pretty much completely eliminates public space where you can stand and work.

Technorati Tags: Singapore, SQ001, travel

The traditional "Greetings from SFO" post

I'm in SFO's international terminal, waiting for my flight to Singapore, and thence to Penang, Malaysia. We board in about 20 minutes-- just enough time for me to try a few times to get onto the T-Mobile Wifi network here, fail, get frustrated, then possibly rush to the vending machine to get a Diet Coke before they call my row. However, it looks like whatever account I used to have with them is now dead, as the site doesn't recognize any of the various usernames I think I've used in the past.

So far things are going pretty well. I got to long-term parking without incident, caught a shuttle quickly. Just as quickly, I realized I'd left something in the car. Fortunately, the shuttle buses are quite prompt, so I was able to get back to my car pretty quickly, retrieve the object, and still get in line to check my bag within the recommended two hours.

Singapore Airlines' check-in is pretty efficient, so even though it's a full flight, I was able to get through it reasonably quickly, and have a little time to wander around the international terminal.

Technorati Tags: airport, San Francisco, SFO, Singapore, travel

Bird nest on a bike pump

One of the stranger things around the house these days.

The Bugle

I'm a big fan of John Oliver's work on The Daily Show. Recently I ran across a reference to a podcast he does for the Times of London, and I downloaded a couple to my iPod, and listened to one in the car this morning, as I was driving up to the city.

I put on an episode in which Oliver and Andy Zaltzman talk about a proposal for a pledge of allegiance in Britain, as a way to boost national pride. John Oliver's take on the idea:

John: There is no national pride in Britain any more, and with good reason. We've lost everything. We are the shell-shocked man walking away from the casino at five in the morning, rehearsing what he's going tell his wife. We collectively have lost our shirts; there's nothing left.

Andy: I'm sure this pledge of allegiance will achieve this far more effectively than such outdated and unproven methods as an all-around education, and specifically the proper teaching of history. Lord Goldsmith... said, "Yeah, I figure what this country's errant youth need is some half-assed ******** like this. That'll get them on the straight and narrow." So good work, everyone involved!

John suggested another idea: swearing at the Queen.

We'd be good at it; it would be fun; it would engender a sense of community; and it would be an energetic piece of punctuation to start the day. Besides, it's basically taking the Magna Carta to its natural conclusion. Turn to face the Queen, and say, "YOU %($*%^^) #*^!#@!!"

Apparently teachers have been among the most vocal critics of the proposal-- which only proves that it isn't necessary, because as John explains,

that is the last bastion of Britishness: sneering at things. That will be the last thing to go. The day that we can't scoff at other nations, we've arranged for France to put a pillow over our face, and hold it there until the twitching stops. If their wrists are strong enough, that is. It's like the fact that we mock Americans for whooping and cheering at things. We now ridicule the very concept of enthusiasm. That is how cynical we've become as a nation-- we find positivity laughable....

National pride in un-British. The only time we can collectively justify facing a flag and listening to the national anthem is when we've just won an Olympic bronze medal in the women's two-person dinghy....

Andy: I think the immigrants who are made to make these pledges might see the irony in pledging allegiance to a nation that was largely responsible for destabilizing the place they've just run away from.

After about ten minutes, I had to turn it off. I was laughing so hard, it was unsafe. I thought I was going to drive off the road.

[To the tune of Times Online, "The Bugle - Episode 21 - Swearing at the Queen," from the album "The Bugle - Audio Newspaper For A Visual World".]

Technorati Tags: humor, UK

Something always disappoints

"Wait... I only feel 10% taller."

[To the tune of Train, "Drops of Jupiter," from the album "Drops of Jupiter".]

Technorati Tags: humor

Single dad for the week

My wife left this evening on a school trip, so I'm playing single dad this week. Logistically, it's not going to be much fun: the Institute has a conference this week, and 24 hours after my wife returns I head off for a research trip to Malaysia and Singapore, which of course is going to absorb the rest of my mental energy this week. Plus I've got a project that's supposed to be finished this Friday.

However, the one thing I don't particularly worry about are the children. They're now pretty accustomed to having one or the other parent gone for a few days, and though they have to deal with me being gone more often, Heather's school trip is an annual thing, so they know about it months in advance. No, if I was going to worry about anyone, it would be myself. Fortunately, I'll be too busy to really think about such things.

[To the tune of Genesis, "Duke's Travels," from the album "Duke".]

Technorati Tags: children

Iconic photographs in Lego!

Check them out.

[To the tune of Bonobo, "Silver," from the album "Animal Magic".]

Technorati Tags: Lego

Son + flashlight + darkness = fun

At Peninsula School this evening; photo via flickr

[To the tune of Goran Ivanovic, "Macedonian Girl," from the album "2005-09-09".]

Technorati Tags: children, night, Peninsula School

Robot parade

Interesting article about how people come to develop emotional attachments to robots. I blogged about it on End of Cyberspace, if it's behind a subscription firewall.

Technorati Tags: end of cyberspace, robotics

The majesty of science

Not safe for work, but very amusing. The back story is here.

Technorati Tags: humor, science