BTQ: Get it Right

Now available in business card size...

Just a bit late for TLPD...

“We just saw a big ship,” the pirates’ spokesman, Sugule Ali, told The New York Times. “So we stopped it.”

Parallel Nerdom

A new game for the iphone (and phones running google android) will make use of cell phone's GPS to radically change player experience. The game designers have essentially made a parallel universe that maps on to reality (apparently making use of google maps)- where you are in real life coordinates with where your character is in the game. Since the game, Parallel Kingdom, is an rpg, this means that as you walk around your community (in real life) you fight with creatures and other players (in game life), collect items that you need (magic rings in game life and groceries in real life) until you accumulate a healthy reputation as the strongest nerd in your neighborhood (mostly just in real life).

Your morning commute is transformed into a perilous voyage into enemy territory. The necessity to walk your dog becomes a trading mission with your friendly neighbors. Basically, it allows you to convert all your daily tasks into opportunities to express your utter nerdiness. If WoW took some lives (in real life), just imagine what this could do...



If you're really excited about this, then you can get started with a simple game based on similar technology- you don't even need an iphone. Your mission: try to kill all those people with iphones by setting traps in a digital universe...

In Defense of Short Urinals...

I'm a pc...

but I use a mac.

Several digital images that Microsoft Corp. has posted on its Web site to trumpet its new "I'm a PC" advertising campaign were actually created on Macs, according to the files' originating-software stamp.

The problem with the apple ads:

The world identifies far more with John Hodgman than [what is that guy's name?]. I think this new ad from Microsoft does a good job of pointing that out...I like it.

Lutz doesn't believe in human caused global warming but...

he's still the one in charge of GM's electric car...cue Colbert:



Here's what Lutz has to say about the interview:

"I was warned not to try to counter his humor with offerings of my own: “He’ll inevitably win. You should just smile, and play it straight.”

I resolved to obey, but lost it as the “interview” began: if one has any sense of humor at all, it’s just impossible not to have it triggered when engaged by Colbert’s brilliant but outrageous persona. It turns out, unfortunately, that “outrageous” is the main bandwidth of my humor, so I found my responses coming reasonably fast and automatically. Although if you see the interview, you’ll notice some pauses on my part. Those pauses were not because I didn’t know what to say; they were time needed to index through and discard the truly dangerous answers!

Once we got going, I think we “connected,” and the time just flew. But “fun challenge” aside, the key facts on Volt came out: 40-mile electric range, great overall range, advanced lithium-ion battery technology and so on. Those facts are now known to the huge Colbert Nation, which consists primarily of millions of educated, successful young people, including many who are not generally predisposed to consider GM cars."

The Future...

Google co-founder, Sergey Brin, recently informed the world that he has a gene that increases his chances of developing Parkinsons.He responds:

This leaves me in a rather unique position. I know early in my life something I am substantially predisposed to. I now have the opportunity to adjust my life to reduce those odds (e.g. there is evidence that exercise may be protective against Parkinson’s). I also have the opportunity to perform and support research into this disease long before it may affect me.

Water Bears in Space

These little (I mean very little) guys can survive space conditions...neato.

Obama critiques Charles Murray...

a decade ago...Murray's work is as influential as it is sloppy...

"Now, it shouldn't take a genius to figure out that with early intervention such problems can be prevented. But Mr. Murray isn't interested in prevention. He's interested in pushing a very particular policy agenda, specifically, the elimination of affirmative action and welfare programs aimed at the poor. With one finger out to the political wind, Mr. Murray has apparently decided that white America is ready for a return to good old-fashioned racism so long as it's artfully packaged and can admit for exceptions like Colin Powell. It's easy to see the basis for Mr. Murray's calculations. After watching their income stagnate or decline over the past decade, the majority of Americans are in an ugly mood and deeply resent any advantages, realor perceived, that minorities may enjoy.

I happen to think Mr. Murray's wrong, not just in his estimation of black people, but in his estimation of the broader American public. But I do think Mr. Murray's right about the growing distance between the races. The violence and despair of the inner city are real. So's the problem of street crime. The longer we allow these problems to fester, the easier it becomes for white America to see all blacks as menacing and for black America to see all whites as racist. To close that gap, we're going to have to do more than denounce Mr. Murray's book. We're going to have to take concrete and deliberate action. For blacks, that means taking greater responsibility for the state of our own communities. Too many of us use white racism as an excuse for self-defeating behavior. Too many of our young people think education is a white thing and that the values of hard work and discipline and self-respect are somehow outdated."

Via Sullivan...

Resolved: Guess I'm not an elf...

It's important friends...

I Am A: Chaotic Good Human Wizard (3rd Level)


Ability Scores:

Strength-13

Dexterity-13

Constitution-15

Intelligence-16

Wisdom-12

Charisma-15


Alignment:
Chaotic Good A chaotic good character acts as his conscience directs him with little regard for what others expect of him. He makes his own way, but he's kind and benevolent. He believes in goodness and right but has little use for laws and regulations. He hates it when people try to intimidate others and tell them what to do. He follows his own moral compass, which, although good, may not agree with that of society. Chaotic good is the best alignment you can be because it combines a good heart with a free spirit. However, chaotic good can be a dangerous alignment because it disrupts the order of society and punishes those who do well for themselves.


Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.


Class:
Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.


Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

Can you fish

in a sustainable way?

My best was 16 fish for myself, 48 fish for the group, with 8 or 9 left in the pond...They suggest that you're suppose to be able to get to 18, but I'm not sure how. (I did get to 17 once, but my pond was tapped out, and my co-fishermen weren't doing so hot...)

Super Bugs and Drugs

Apparently THC can be used as an antibiotic (maybe).

But what this really means is that marijuana will be used to create monstrous superbugs that will probably kill us all.


Drug abuse friends, drug abuse...

Just a bit early...

but, just in case anyone is curious, so far it looks like Palin's effect on the race isn't amazing (when you get down to demographic polls). The McCain-Palin ticket manages a slight increase in Republican white women, but otherwise everything (including both independent men and women) is shifting toward Obama. Also, "...[o]ver half [of the women polled] (52%) say the Obama-Biden ticket has more experience, while only 37% say McCain-Palin is more experienced. Not only did the Palin pick negate McCain's experience "argument," as many commented, but it actually completely erased McCain's advantage, among women, in just a few short weeks."

I'm not quite sure what the author means by "a few short weeks," since Palin has obviously only been a factor for a matter of days, but still interesting stuff...

What to do with my 5 bucks...

The American Public Transportation Association has just released a study about how much money people are saving by taking public transportation. The average savings is about $9,500 per year per person. They also list the cities where people save the most by taking public transit. Boston comes out on top, with a savings of $1,124 a month (beating NYC by $5 per month.)

Sandpoint's little civil war

Ben Stein, sometimes resident of Sandpoint, ID, is pretty critical of Sandpoint native Sarah Palin:

"She should have Henry Kissinger babysitting her."

Alaska National Guard

Recently Republicans have tried to argue that Palin has some kind of experience on account of her being the commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard (I say "some kind" because it hasn't been clear whether that was suppose to be foreign experience, military experience, both, or something else entirely.)

As it turns out, Palin has never issued a single order to the Alaska National Guard. (Accept to delegate all such decisions to Maj. Gen Craig Campbell, the service commander of the ANG.) In Giuliani's words, she has "never led anything. Nothing. Nada" having to do with the Alaska National guard.

Another interesting tidbit: Her first trip overseas - not just as governor, but ever - was last year (she visited troops in Kuwait and Germany).

I've heard from a reliable person that it is very common for governors to meet with high level foreign officials - but I can't find any evidence that Palin has ever done that either. Can you? (Seriously, I'd like to hear about it...)

I'm perfectly average...

Ben has brought to my attention this color "IQ" test. I scored a 50, which is the average score for people in my age/gender group. Of course, the republican convention has taught me to be very proud to be exactly average, rather than one of those elitist colour snobs.

(And if I'm not quite proud, can I get away with blaming it on my screen?)

Proper Vetting

City Room has an interesting piece on Geraldine Ferraro's vetting (or lack there of).

Last night...

Watching Palin's speech confirms for me my initial reaction to the pick: probably the right person to give McCain a shot at the white house. I thought her delivery was surprisingly good (but that is partly because she had a ridiculous parade of speakers before her- Romney, Giuliani, and Huckabee).

The real question is whether the pick will continue to look like a highly political choice. If McCain and Co can keep attention away from the actual work Palin has done, then they have a good chance of making a very close election (I say close, because there's still a lot of work to be done). In that regard, I think all the personal stuff about Palin's daughter may turn out to be helpful. If the McCain camp can keep pointing out (quite correctly) that the pregnancy of her teen daughter is essentially a non-issue, then they may get away with ignoring other (legit) critiques. That is, whatever hit Palin takes for her pregnant daughter has already been inflicted- talking more about it isn't going to hurt the ticket.

Finally, I'm not familiar with Nate Silver, but Sullivan brings this summary to my attention:

You have Mitt Romney -- one of the wealthiest men ever to run for office -- critiquing east-coast elitism, and Mike Huckabee -- who is an economic populist in disguise -- critiquing big government, and Sarah Palin -- who voters don't know one iota about -- critiquing Barack Obama's biography.

Republicans on Palin

Josh Marshall just posted this conversation between Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy. I had heard some rumblings that there were a lot of political consultants and general insiders, who are more than a little annoyed about McCain's choice.

Of course, these "whispers" are probably not that big of a deal for the campaign (the spin is relatively easy- "of course 'insiders' will be pissed off that McCain is "bucking tradition.")

Still, I agree with them that it has got to be hard to be Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, or either of the senators from Maine (Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe). All have substantially more experience...but, they all also happen to be pro-choice. Rice was obviously out because he could never beat the "McSame" charges with her serving as vice-president...

Pale about Palin...

I think Palin was absolutely the perfect choice for McCain...but I'm going to ignore that for now, to bring you a symbolic representation of the 2000 presidential election...

I hope it won't track on to my emotional journey in 2008 so easily. ("What- it'll never happen; ah...it might; yes, yes, yes; Well, shit.")

Especially since there's such an easy fix...

Pretty funny...

This was a great idea... I'm still amazed that the WSJ bit though...

McCain slaps Bloomberg in the face...

If any of you thought that Bloomberg had a chance at McCain's veep...it's more of a backhand really...

"I think it's a fundamental tenet of our party to be pro-life but that does not mean we exclude people from our party that are pro-choice. We just have a -- albeit strong -- but just it's a disagreement. And I think [former PA governor Tom] Ridge is a great example of that. Far more so than [New York City Mayor Michael] Bloomberg, because Bloomberg is pro-gay rights, pro, you know, a number of other issues."

The quote comes in the context of a discussion about McCain's likely choice of a pro-choice (or formally pro-choice) veep. McCain's honorable position comes out of fairly natural logic: yeah, I know, killing babies is wrong- but it's better than giving them to gay couples. (Oh wait, what does he think about that?)

Nah- he's american, isn't he?

The authors of the Left Behind series are pretty confident that Obama is not, in fact, the antichrist (via Sullivan):

"I've gotten a lot of questions the last few weeks asking if Obama is the antichrist," says novelist Jenkins. "I tell everyone that I don't think the antichrist will come out of politics, especially American politics."

"I can see by the language he uses why people think he could be the antichrist," adds LaHaye, "but from my reading of scripture, he doesn't meet the criteria. There is no indication in the Bible that the antichrist will be an American."

High speed rail...

John's recent post over at City Desk got me thinking about transportation, and mostly why we don't have one of these. 100 miles in 30 minutes. Wow.

If we do get one, it will probably happen here first. But this would be good too...and this.

The g-phone

Google appears to be on track to release a phone in the fourth quarter of this year. Supposedly it will have both a touch screen and slide out physical keyboard. Youtube has video:

Elven Training...

I've recently been reading the Fellowship of the Ring, and I just ran into this passage:

'Celebrant is already a strong stream here, as you see,' said Haldir, 'and it runs both swift and deep, and is very cold. We do not set foot in it so far north, unless we must. But in these days of watchfulness we do not make bridges. This is how we cross! Follow me!' He made his end of the rope fast about another tree and then ran lightly along it, over the river and back again, as if he were on a road.

'I can walk this path,' said Legolas; 'but the others have not this skill. Must they swim?'

There was a time in my life when a group of people I'm close to thought that I should try to become an elf- they helped me on this path by holding me in the air by my ears. (I believe the line of thinking was, "Well, if you can't be a superhero, you might as well be an elf.")

Little did they know that I would pick up my elven skills later in life:


And yet, people still insist on calling me a hobbit...

Soldiers Abroad give their money to...

Obama. By a margin of 6 to 1.

Those elitist bastards clearly hate our country...and want to lose...and retreat...or something.

Go veg or die- immigrant!

PETA's latest attempt:

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals plans today to announce an unusual marketing pitch to the U.S. government: Rent us space on the fence for billboards warning illegal border crossers there is more to fear than the Border Patrol.

The billboards, in English and Spanish, would offer the caution: "If the Border Patrol Doesn't Get You, the Chicken and Burgers Will — Go Vegan."

"We think that Mexicans and other immigrants should be warned if they cross into the U.S. they are putting their health at risk by leaving behind a healthier, staple diet of corn tortillas, beans, rice, fruits and vegetables," said Lindsay Rajt, assistant manager of PETA's vegan campaigns.

Combining the current top 2 news stories...

Georgia's delegation to the 2004 olympics in Athens amounted to 372 athletes (4 medals). That's a pretty impressive number considering how tiny Georgia is (about 4 million people).

Interesting comparisons:
Ukraine: 239 athletes (population, about 46 mil)
Azerbaijan: 38 athletes (population almost 9 mil)
Kyrgyzstan: 11 athletes (population about 5 mil)
Russia: 456 athletes (population, about 142 mil)

Only the following countries sent more athletes than Georgia:
Australia (482), China (407), Greece(not too far to travel-441), Germany (479), Russia (456), and the US (536)...

Contracting in Iraq...100 billion!?

$100 billion dollars has been spent on private contractors in Iraq. A figure that amounts to 20% of the total cost of the war. That nytimes article considers how the privatization of a major US military project (uh, that is, a war) raises new and interesting questions:

Contractors in Iraq now employ at least 180,000 people in the country, forming what amounts to a second, private, army, larger than the United States military force, and one whose roles and missions and even casualties among its work force have largely been hidden from public view.

Unsurprisingly they also focus on how these contracts inevitably end up in the hands of people with strong ties to the administration:

In addition, the dependence on private companies to support the war effort has led to questions about whether political favoritism has played a role in the awarding of multibillion-dollar contracts. When the war began, for example, Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, the company run by Dick Cheney before he was vice president, became the largest Pentagon contractor in Iraq.

That's concerning...but, as I said, kind of inevitable. Government money will always (to a large degree) go to people with the most powerful lobbyists. VP usually does a pretty good job.

I think what is more disturbing about this "unprecedented" level of contractor involvement in a war effort (according to Charles Tiefer, professor of government contracting- there is a whole academic offshoot of law dedicated to this?)is its potential impact on troop morale. Contracted employees (who serve in all sorts of functions- the range of which we can't really know because...well, they're private contractors with records that can be a little spotty) make tons more money than their military counterparts. Not only is this wasteful (which the article focuses on), but it seems like a good way to gut our military. This kind of system (I would think) encourages people to get their training in the military, but to abandon that career as soon as possible in favor of contracting where they can make a lot more money (and, again, as the article suggests, avoid a good deal of "bureaucratic" crap that comes with working in a branch of the government). Smart people won't be career military men - they'll go over to contracting.

Quote of the day

Ben has brought this list of fictional ducks to my attention...

My favorite part is the outrage in the discussion page:

"Please find more adequate sources, or remove the duck from the list. · AndonicO Talk 21:11, 2 January 2008 (UTC)"

Online research tool

I just ran into this program, zotero, which is basically a bookmarking/bibliographic tool aimed at academics (it operates as a plug-in to firefox.)

I often find that I would like to take notes about the things that I run into online, and this tool lets me do that quickly and in a way that stays organized. So far it plays well with firefox 2.0, and seems pretty polished. I thought others might be interested...

They've got some videos about how the system works here.

Who is the drinking-est animal of them all?

That would be the Malaysian pentail tree shrew. According to scientists, these little guys drink the equivalent of nine glasses of wine a night (compared to their body weight).

My favorite part might be that the German scientist who is running this study is Dr. Weins. (German for fermented grape juice.....)

A little investigative reporting...

Most of you have probably seen the front page news about the hiring scandals in the justice department. (Pinned mostly on poor little Gonzalez aide Monica Goodling, who got her JD at Pat Robertson's school o' law...I'm actually not kidding- it was founded by the environmental savior himself.)

What you probably don't know is that a few months ago I applied for a paralegal position with the justice department in the civil rights division. Unsurprisingly, I never heard from them- until this week, when I got a letter from a Human Resources staff member informing me that "due to an unforseen [sic] complication" the job I applied for would be reposted, and anyone who wanted to get the job would need to resubmit their application.

What's interesting is how different the new application is. Last time I applied all I needed to submit was a resume, cover letter, and a writing sample- this time, they've got a whole ton of questions for me (over 80). You can see the whole list on the job posting.

I have no reason to think that this particular search was conducted in an illegal (or even questionable manner). And, of course, I have no reason to think that I was somehow gleaned because of my liberal tendencies, because a) they had no reason to think that I was liberal (unless a Haverford degree counts against someone) and b) who the hell cares about paralegals?

However, I do wonder if the change in application procedure is on account of some heat inside the department. As in, "We had darn better have enough information from all our applicants so that we can always demonstrate legitimate reasons why they were turned down..." That wouldn't be too surprising to me.

Ludacris endorses Obama...Obama says...

"...rap lyrics today too often perpetuate misogyny, materialism, and degrading images that he doesn’t want his daughters or any children exposed to...This song is not only outrageously offensive to Senator Clinton, Reverend Jackson, Senator McCain, and President Bush, it is offensive to all of us who are trying to raise our children with the values we hold dear. While Ludacris is a talented individual he should be ashamed of these lyrics."



As you may remember, Ludacris has a pretty long history with Obama- they even met together to have a little conversation (strategy meeting?) before Obama decided to run.

Boston gets a shout-out!

Barack Obama says (in Berlin):

The terrorists of September 11th plotted in Hamburg and trained in Kandahar and Karachi before killing thousands from all over the globe on American soil.

As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.

Hrm...ok...so we didn't make it into the happy uplifting part.

Mostly I draw attention to it because I thought the speech, as a whole, was a little...I don't know, boring? I agree with the sentiments, it's certainly pretty "safe," but I'm not really blown away. I guess I was hoping to see him do what he did (at least for me) with his race speech, which was not only a great piece of oratory but also was one of the most accurate diagnosis of race relations in America...in my opinion.

I'm curious about European and American (and Asian and African for that matter) reception to the speech.

Any thoughts? Anyone more impressed than me? Less impressed? Am I missing something?

Olivia Judson is Dr. Tatiana

Evolutionary biologist Olivia Judson has been running a blog (about Darwin/evolution studies) for the nytimes for several weeks. She's also the bestselling author of "Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex."

Here's a piece from her recent mini series, which is pretty entertaining:

PES

Rubik's Cubes remind me of Wall-E now.

Hrm...I wish would have found this for FISA

In Obama's store: "Change" is sold out



Unsurprisingly, "Progress" soon followed...

Update- McCain veep...nevermind

Novak thinks he's been used and that it's "pretty reprehensible." Apparently some senior aide told him that the selection would be coming down this week...but now it looks like just a leak to draw some attention toward McCain.

Seems like kind of a bad idea to yank around a prominent conservative journalist like that... hrm.

By the way, nytimes has this on the McCain-Romney candidacy...

Most importantly, Romney only got a handshake when he endorsed McCain- Guiliani got a hug.

Pollster gets a facelift...and woah

Pollster just updated their website, and the new version very clearly shows the uphill battle senator McCain is in for right now. If McCain took all the states that lean republican AND all the states currently classified as "toss ups" he would TIE with what Obama has in his "strong" category. If the states that "lean democrat" broke towards Obama (obviously something that seems likely) he would have no trouble winning.

Of course, November is a long way off...

SF mayor interview

TPM.tv brings an interesting interview with mayor Gavin Newsom (who was attending the "netroots nation" conference)...



Other interesting factoids:

• he has fairly serious dyslexia...
• he's the youngest SF mayor in 100 years (currently 40)
• he's marrying some republican this weekend (well that's in the interview, but I thought many of you wouldn't bother getting that far)
• you can buy some wine from him

Haverford Makes the Nytimes!

“You see some of these selective liberal arts colleges building new physical education facilities with these huge sheets of glass and these coffee and juice bars, and charging students $40,000 a year, and you have to ask, does this contribute to the public good, or is it just a way for the college to keep up with the Joneses?” Mr. Shinn said. “We are a tax-exempt institution, so I think the public has a right to demand that our educational mission be at the heart of all of our expenditures.”
-nytimes, July 21, 2008

Haverford's newest building: the Gardner Integrated Athletic Center...

Obama Too

Now there are rumblings that Obama will be naming his running mate soon. (Specifically, in the ten day window between his return from Europe and the olympics.)

I actually don't understand this timing particularly well, and agree with what Schieber has to say about it-

"Any PR bump will get stepped on by the games (unless they announce very soon after Obama gets back). Worse, the Olympic dark period will give enterprising reporters 2-3 uninterrupted weeks to look for skeletons in the veep nominee's closet, with which they'll pummel him/her at the convention."

I'm still hopin' and a wishin' that it'll be Sebelius though. Clinton supporters might get a little mad though...

McCain chooses Veep, this week?

Robert Novak is reporting that McCain will name his running mate (he thinks Romney) sometime this week. He suggests such timing will draw attention away from the headlines Obama is making on his trip overseas.

The timing thing makes some sense, but Romney, really? I feel like that would just be giving up the race now.

Anybody want to place bets? I still think Florida Governor Crist is probably the guy, but that's mostly because I can't see Huckabee, Guiliani, Romney, Sanford, or Lieberman on the ticket.

Dancing

One of my favorite videos available on youtube was just selected for APOD- I'm not sure what it has to do with Astronomy, but it made me really happy to see it there.

Just in case you haven't seen Matt Harding, check it out:




Yep, I find it more uplifting than Connie, more exciting than Feist on Sesame Street. (I'm pretty sure that will offend the aesthetic sensibilities of the range of people who read this blog.)

Then again, I thought Mad Hot Ballroom was great...

Distractions- yeah, I could blog about that

I just finished reading this article, which is mostly standard criticism about the oncoming death of the world on account of young people's inability to focus on a single task. The real important stuff (the stuff that's suppose to scare us into paying attention):

" The opposite of attention is distraction, an unnatural condition and one that, as Meyer discovered in 1995, kills. Now he is convinced that chronic, long-term distraction is as dangerous as cigarette smoking. In particular, there is the great myth of multitasking. No human being, he says, can effectively write an e-mail and speak on the telephone."

Good thing no one ever smokes as a distraction...now that combination will surely kill you...

And later:

" Chronic distraction, from which we all now suffer, kills you more slowly. Meyer says there is evidence that people in chronically distracted jobs are, in early middle age, appearing with the same symptoms of burn-out as air traffic controllers. They might have stress-related diseases, even irreversible brain damage. But the damage is not caused by overwork, it’s caused by multiple distracted work. One American study found that interruptions take up 2.1 hours of the average knowledge worker’s day. This, it was estimated, cost the US economy $588 billion a year. Yet the rabidly multitasking distractee is seen as some kind of social and economic ideal."

I heard about this study before (588 billion! woah), but here's where I got really interested:

"They [the writers and thinkers of the world] have all noted – either in themselves or in others – diminishing attention spans, inability to focus, a loss of the meditative mode. “I can’t read War and Peace any more,” confessed one of Carr’s friends. “I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.”

I'm a little skeptical. Certainly I find that I skim a lot of different things, and it might be that I acquired the ability through the pace of the digital age (IM, Television, cell phone, etc), but I don't think it has eroded my ability to focus on the issues that I'm interested in.

And that's really the key here- which I think these kinds of articles often ignore- the internet (or as this author says, "the digital age") has made it possible to find information (yes, extremely quickly in rapid succession) about almost anything that would ever come up in conversation. When we search for such information we tend to look for the 3 or 4 paragraph summary- but why? We do that because are interest in the subject is of a particular kind- namely, something we might call a "passing interest," or a temporary interest that has to do with whatever we are involved with this moment. These may be (and often are) related to the kinds of intense interests that some of us, as many of us as are lucky, will use as the basis for their careers, but they certainly are not the same. What "Carr's friend" really means, when he says he's lost some meditative focusing ability, is that he's bored by War and Peace.

And what I want to say, put simply, is it's perfectly natural for individuals to be bored by a variety of things. What I think Carr's friend is recognizing is that literature, like War and Peace anyway, were only a "passing" interest for him (perhaps as an English major, or a recent grad, or a strange teenager, whatever). This recognition might be a little difficult to take, as it could entail a fairly serious reflection on one's identity (oh, I'm not an english major, a recent grad, a strange teen ager, or a whatever anymore). This might scare us a bit, and one might write an article about it...

So what exactly has the advent of modern technology done by giving us incredible access to the breadth of human knowledge? Mostly, it's revealed to us the breadth of human knowledge in which any one individual doesn't have more than a passing interest.

Pat and Al on a couch at the beach...

It's kind of old, but I'm still confused...

Some Thoughts About this Blog

Hello friends, family, and those who stumble upon this blog:

I figured I would start out with a brief summary about, well, starting this blog. The biggest factor is that I'm really really bad at staying in touch with people. That inability may bring about a misconception: I neither think nor care about a variety of people . This is just untrue- I actually pretty regularly begin emails because I run across something that reminds me about someone that isn't geographically close to me. If you've managed to find this blog, chances are you've been the unknowing addressee (can you call someone an addressee if the email was never sent? Do people ever use the word addressee?) of several of these. Usually I get about halfway through the email before I decide that the person I'm writing (far less eloquent than "addressee") more than likely does not care at all about the thing that I've connected with them, and really it's pretty silly to contact them at all about it. (Of course saying "halfway" is entirely meaningless since I never finish these emails- let halfway mean to you what you will.) "Moreover," I think to myself, "maybe it wasn't (for example) Jim's Aunt who was named Alice at all, but Susie's." So now the article I was intending to send Jim - about how people named Alice are statistically more likely to be run over by stampeding flamingos - will be received with a good deal of confusion, particularly when I title it "Better warn auntie Alice." Now I have not only sent Jim, my dear dear friend, an article that he doesn't care about, I have also revealed my own ignorance about Jim's personal life, thereby confirming that I really don't know Jim at all and never considered him a close friend because I can't even remember that it was Susie's aunt Alice, who I've met 26 times.

Ok, so anyone would be pretty excited about the flamingo story, but you get the idea. I'm hoping the blog will help me nourish ongoing exciting relationships with the various people I've come to know and love. In that regard I strongly encourage comments.

Secondly, I give as a fair warning a summary of the material you will likely find here. I expect much will come from the outlets that I read most frequently; the somewhat liberally minded news blog TPM will be balanced by "Thatcherite" Andrew Sullivan, with healthy doses from the mainstream media (read as NPR and nytimes). I expect there will be occasional forays into philosophical and classical musings (old habits die hard), and maybe, if I do get a job, some thoughts on that. Perhaps the stray thought on Cambridge. Maybe some television (currently the wire) and book reviews. If none of these subjects entertain or interest you, you probably shouldn't waste your time checking this blog, unless, of course, you are simply interested in me. In that case, this is probably a good place to start to find out about what I'm thinking. If you happen to be interested in all these things, and read the above stuff as often as I do, my blog may be superfluous. I encourage you to read anyhow, so that I can feel like I have a community here...

I honestly had no idea that I was so long winded.

An Afterthought: It occurred to me that point number 1 may look like I'm just trying to get out of ever personally contacting friends while pretending to be close to all of them, which was not my intention at all. If I wanted to do that, I would just start using Facebook, ooooohhhh, burn...but seriously. Despite the existence of this blog, I will do my very best (which is frankly not all that good) to send email, make calls, etc.

Rangel Rankled

There's been quite a bit in the news recently about New York representative Rangel's rent controlled apartments. (The key there being, of course, that nasty little plural.) People are pretty annoyed at the fact that he's getting four apartments for about $3,200 a month (several of which are combined to make one big apartment, and another is used as a campaign office, which is probably the biggest no-no, and he's given that up), well below the market price.

I find the story to be a little bit lame, and I expect that it has only been front line news through a combination of Rangel's colorful responses (favorite excerpt: “Paying the legal rent is not a gift. Are you doing this deliberately, or are you just stupid?”) and the current mortgage/housing crisis (is a link necessary?). My lack of excitement is based in the fact that it seems likely to me that Rangel wasn't going out of his way to secure this, yes, probably illegal, deal. He claims to have never even met his landlord. This combined with the fact that I don't really have a problem with paying congressmen/"public servents" fairly well- and a deal or two doesn't hurt - pretty well stifles my interest. Especially if they're fairly active and clearly working hard to further their policies. (If their policies happen to be similar to what I agree with, all the better).

Anyhow, what I do find really fun about the story is how it has played out in the halls of congress, where people are pointing fingers all over the place. This ends up playing out as political posturing about who lives where, in what neighborhood, for how much. And what is so fascinating about all this is how (I'm at a loss for the right word) inbred (?) the whole system is. For example, take this npr story, where we find out that Minnesota senator Norm Coleman lives in the basement of a political operative, and Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin share a room with each other in the house of Representative (of california) George Miller.

I don't know why I find these living arrangements so interesting, but I'd guess it's a combination of a desire to live in an environment surrounded by smart people who are working on similar things, and horror at the fact that it sounds a lot like a college dorm. hrm

ps. Those who are similarly interested in this stuff should read long time reporter Meg Greenfield's book, Washington, whose central thesis is that Washington is basically exactly like High school (I think college is also like high school for her, then again she went to Smith...).