Joshua Glenn is a Boston-based writer, editor, and multimedia
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May 18, 2007
A number of cities are in various stages of installing free wireless internet access for their residents, often much to the chagrin of cable and telephone companies that sell high-speed access to consumers. One of those cities, as you probably know is Boston. Another is San Francisco, where Google won the bidding by offering to supply WiFi at no cost to the city.
The small city of St. Louis Park, Minn., has a different idea. WiFi won't be free there, but it will be citywide and cheaper than anyone pays now.
And it will be solar-powered.
The added cost for the solar power technology is expected to pay for itself through decreased energy demands (i.e. approximately zero) in a few years. It's already operational in many areas of the city. The news this week is that the city is responding to complaints about the visual effect of the poles used to mount the solar panels by painting the polls brown and incorporating some of them into existing signposts.
Now maybe other cities will join St. Louis Park and stick it to the telecom and energy companies.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 06:57 PM
May 18, 2007
In view of Chris's post about an amazing idea for reorganizing our computer desktops so they act like our non-virtual desktops, I want to highlight again the amazing work that NYU computer scientist Jeff Han is doing. He's working on redesigning and rethinking the way we interact with our computers.
What if we could move around icons on our computer using a pen? That's what the techies in Chris's post are on to. But what if we could move around the icons on our computer using our fingers? Ok, cool, but not really revolutionary. But what if we could use both hands on a touch screen simultaneously? Getting warmer. And what if we could use those two hands to zoom in on anything we wanted? What if iPhoto or Picasa allowed you to shuffle around the photos and zoom in and out of any one of them all with your fingers? And to rotate and zoom and manipulate a 3D map like the ones in Google Earth?
In a presentation embedded in this post, Han demonstrates all these multi-point touch screen uses, and it's a wow of a presentation. Check out the 2:45 mark and the 6:45 mark in the video.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 03:17 PM
May 18, 2007
Does the desktop on your computer screen resemble, except in the most remote way, the human (all-too-human) physical space you make use of during your workday?
Bothered by what he saw as a serious discrepancy, Anand Agarawala, a former computer-science graduate student at the University of Toronto, decided to do something about it. "Abandoning folders within folders," Agarawala's redesigned computer desktop "uses paperlike icons that can be scattered, stacked, or stuck to virtual walls," explains MIT's Technology Review. (Free registration is required to read the article.)
The BumpTop PC Desktop
Is this progress? That question aside, Agarawala is exploring whether there's a market for the product. Video demos are viewable here.
Posted by Christopher Shea at 11:55 AM
May 18, 2007
In Josh's post below, he discussed the most popular searches among browsers to the online store for custom T-shirts called CafePress.
"Pirate" and "Autism" stuck out for me, sure. But kids are into pirates. And autism research is a popular political cause. But what about "Math"? That's a big hit for T-shirt graphics?
Well, it is on the site xkcd.com, "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language" that appears three times a week. Today's comic gives an indication that math and science are up there in the cartoonist's pantheon.
And so it is on the site's online store. Here are two t-shirts that can be had for $14.99 each.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 11:01 AM
May 17, 2007
Boston.com posted a very telling photo gallery yesterday, offering sobering proof -- record-breaking gas prices, unpopular wars, eavesdropping movies, coups in Thailand -- that, here in America, it's 1974 all over again.
Here's my favorite parallel: Liddy vs. Libby. In 1974, G. Gordon Liddy (left) was convicted of obstruction of justice (among other things) related to the Watergate break-in. And earlier this year, "Scooter" Libby was found guilty of obstruction of justice (among other things) in a case involving a classified CIA operative.
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 08:27 PM
May 17, 2007
The new issue of the Association for Psychological Science Observer takes up a question that has always dogged professional baseball. How on Earth do these guys do it?
University of Missouri professor Mike Stadler is quoted in the piece, written by Ian Herbert:
"Baseball turns out to be a good laboratory for studying psychological phenomena," Stadler says, "because you're pushing the human system to its limits. And that's a good way to see how the system works."
Herbert adds:
Psychologists have been studying baseball players almost as long as the Red Sox had been disappointing fans in Boston [hey, lay off already -Ed.], and much of the attention has naturally focused on the most heroic part of the game: hitting. Baseball’s great sluggers, such as Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, and Albert Pujols, make it seem so effortless, which makes it hard to accept the scientific consensus that hitting is basically impossible. That's right, impossible. Why? A ball thrown by a major league pitcher reaches speeds of 100 m.p.h. and an angular velocity (the speed in degrees at which the ball travels through your field of vision) of more than 500 degrees per second. A typical human can only track moving objects up to about 70 degrees per second.
We knew MLB hitters were outliers on the curve of human abilities, but 500 vs. 70? It's all about the vision.
This reminds me of a great remark by former New York Mets coach Bobby Valentine. Asked about Barry Bonds, he said he didn't buy the idea that steroids accounted for the slugger's success: "Does he shoot them in his eyes?"
Posted by Evan Hughes at 04:55 PM
May 17, 2007
In February I wrote on Brainiac about a very interesting piece in Psychology Today about new findings regarding the emotional and dispositional bases of political views.
In that piece, Jay Dixit wrote:
Among the most potent motivators, it turns out, is fear. How the United States should confront the threat of terrorism remains a subject of endless political debate. But Americans' response to threats of attack is now more clear-cut than ever. The fear of death alone is surprisingly effective in shaping our political decisions -- more powerful, often, than thought itself.
The article goes on to discuss one of the more interesting studies on the topic:
University of Arizona psychologist Jeff Greenberg argues that some ideological shifts can be explained by terror management theory (TMT), which holds that heightened fear of death motivates people to defend their world views. TMT predicts that images like the destruction of the World Trade Center should make liberals more liberal and conservatives more conservative.
These and other findings (and just plain facts) would appear to run counter to the mid- to late-20th century theory of "the end of ideology," made famous by Daniel Bell's book of that title.
Dixit discussed in several places the research of John T. Jost at New York University. At the 19th Annual Convention of the Association of Psychological Science, to be held in Washington, DC, May 24-27, Jost will present "new research [that] may have identified the characteristics that lead us to lean ideologically to the left or right." It will be interesting to see if Jost will be able to fill out the picture of what makes us lean one way without exactly thinking about it.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 01:55 PM
May 17, 2007
A few things.
* At the Fantagraphics blog, FLOG!, Jacob Covey claims that "I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets!" -- Paul Karasik's book about Fletcher Hanks, "possibly the single most earnestly bizarre early comic book originator" -- is one of the must-must-buy books of the year. It looks terrific! Buyers beware: "Civilized Planets" is a Fantagraphics title, and Covey is an employee of Fantagraphics -- he curated and designed the other must-must-buy book of the year, "Beasts," which I reviewed for Brainiac. Still, I'm inclined to take Covey at his word. The book includes a dozen hard-to-find Hanks stories; see sample panels:
* Also new from Fantagraphics: "Arf Forum," the third volume in Craig Yoe's series of books exploring the myriad ways in which comics have -- over the years -- influenced, and been influenced by, high culture. (I've written about Yoe's series for Ideas and Brainiac.) Here, Yoe continues to unearth rare cartoons and comics in which Surrealism and Dada are mocked and honored: In "Hot Dog," a short-lived 1950s comic about "the maddest mutt in the whole whacky world," for example, Harry Hotdog's girlfriend forces him to buy Dali-like paintings -- which he ends up hanging on the outside walls of his house. And, approaching this topic from the other direction, Yoe claims that "Une Semaine de Bonté," a 1934 volume of sequential surrealist collages by Max Ernst, is an early and experimental example of what we today know as the graphic novel. I hope the "Arf" series never ends -- it's absolutely fascinating stuff.
* From Drawn & Quarterly comes "Exit Wounds," the North American graphic novel debut from Rutu Modan. (She's supposedly one of Israel's best-known cartoonists.) I read it in one sitting -- I might describe it as Herge's "Tintin," set in modern-day Tel Aviv, unafraid of sex or political controversy, and featuring a female protagonist. Let's keep an eye on Rutu Modan!
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 11:29 AM
May 17, 2007
Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert has received Britain's Royal Society Prize for Science Books for "Stumbling on Happiness," the end result of years of research on people's expectations of happiness, and why they're usually wrong. Gilbert's book beat out "The Rough Guide to Climate Change," among other worthy candidates.
Globe photo of Gilbert
In a Globe profile by David Mehegan last May, Gilbert explained the genesis of his research project:
"A friend and I were exchanging stories about the ways life had surprised us, and it had surprised us in similar ways. When bad things happened, we were doing better than we had expected. And the good things that happened, accolades and achievements, were not as good as we expected."
That was in 1993. Gilbert looked for the scientific literature on this phenomenon but found there was none. Now we have his social-scientific explanation of the limitations of the human imagination and how that often leads us off the track to happiness. Plus others -- keep reading.
More on happiness: Ideas has been tracking Happiness Studies for quite a while. Here are a few items that leap to mind.
* Last summer, I wrote an Ideas essay about Yevgeny Zamyatin's dystopian novel "We" (w. 1921, p. 1988), in which a state of "mathematically infallible happiness" has been achieved -- and in which the One State's top mathematician realizes that, nevertheless, he is unhappy.
* Chris Shea wrote about the correlation of affluence and happiness (or lack thereof) in an Ideas essay, last October.
* That same month, Evan Hughes used Brainiac to point to a rave review of a happiness book published in late 2005, Darrin M. McMahon's "Happiness: A History." And following up on Chris's essay, in another Brainiac post that month, Evan made note of two recent books about our way of life and its effect on the emotions: Peter Whybrow's "American Mania," and Richard Layard's "Happiness: Lessons from a New Science."
* Two months later, David Lynch talked to Ideas about happiness. "Bliss is physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual happiness," the director of "Eraserhead" told Kate Bolick. "You can literally vibrate in happiness."
* In December, Evan reported for Brainiac on a claim made by Nancy Etcoff, a psychologist and a member of the faculty at Harvard Medical School, that happiness levels are durable, withstanding sweeping changes in health and wealth. Etcoff said:
Life changes, [my research] suggests, but you don't. It showed that there is a substantial genetic component to happiness. People have a personal baseline of happiness that is influenced by stable personality traits.
What's with all the happiness scholars at Harvard? Didn't this sort of research lead to Timothy Leary's expulsion from Harvard Yard?
Even more on this topic: I have been reading Jennifer Michael Hecht's fine new book "The Happiness Myth: Why What We Think is Right is Wrong" (HarperSanFrancisco). Hecht is a philosopher, a historian, and a poet (I've interviewed her twice for Ideas), and she brings the tools of all these disciplines to bear on: past and present cultural attitudes toward drugs, money, bodies, and celebration -- i.e., worldly techniques for making ourselves feel good. Hecht's point, in a nutshell: Historical perspective on these attitudes, combined with courageous (though not reckless) experiments on ourselves, plus a dash of wisdom from great minds of the past, should suffice to free us from the contemporary "trances of value" within which we stumble around. And that will make us happier. I buy it -- it's worked for me, so far.
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 10:10 AM
May 16, 2007
I was browsing CafePress -- the online marketplace that allows you to put a themed logo, message, or image onto t-shirts, mugs, thongs, you name it -- when I came across a list of the site's top searches. CafePress visitors most frequently search for apparel and other gear with the following themes:
Autism
Breast Cancer
Barrack Obama [sic]
Military
Peace
Wedding
Maternity
Math
80s
Pirate
Just in case you were wondering what's on America's collective mind.
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 09:27 PM
May 16, 2007
My Sunday column focusing on scholarship about "total war" generated a lot of email, largely, I now realize, because the Web site "Real Clear Politics" posted it at the top of their Monday roster of stories-to-read -- pairing it, coincidentally enough, with an opinion piece in the New York Post on the need to really, and finally, take the gloves off in Iraq. (Note, by the way, how the title of my column was changed, to raise the red-meat factor. They called it, "The Era of Total War is Over.")
The pairing made it easy for some readers to turn a fairly academic discussion of what total war is, and isn't, and the concept's usefulness when applied to the current conflict, into another round of bash-the-liberal-media, an unusually curious development in this particular instance.
Among commentators who did not use the descriptor "towelheads," however, or impugn my stomach for a good fight, two smart themes emerged. One is the usefulness of the term "total war" itself. Says reader JL:
I think the various Total War proponents [he means those who think the idea is clarifying] are focusing too narrowly on warfare since the invention of the gun or the airplane and are ignoring the complete annihilation of countless peoples throughout history. Beginning with the writings of the first historian, Herodotus, there [are] documented long records of peoples that have, one after the other, wiped out or absorbed their neighbors and competitors throughout history.
Similarly, writes JJV: "The Barbarian Hordes seem to me to [have bent] their entire societies around war and destroyed cities to the last man, woman, child, and livestock."
True enough. On the one hand, this line of argument reminds me of debates about the term "genocide." That is to say, genocide was coined to describe a particularly thorough, bureaucratically administered effort to wipe out an entire people, using modern technology, in the 1930s and '40s. Yet of course attempts to wipe out other "types" of people, in various locales, have occurred before. Cannot both things be true? Something horrible and modern happened in the 1940s -- or, in the case of total war, in 1914-18 -- yet striking, low-tech parallels can be found in earlier eras and epochs?
Then there's the question of whether total war could ever occur again. William Arkin, whom I quoted at the end of the column, said he thought it best to think in terms of the era of total war being over -- or at least to work as hard as possible toward ending it. I asked him about the proverbial nuclear-bomb-in-Manhattan scenario, and he said he expected American leaders would think long and hard before ordering any kind of total-war-style retaliation. After all, whom would we be going after? And couldn't we retaliate in a more effective, less randomly bloody way?
Should that bomb go off, however, let me assure you that interest in total war is alive and well in the land of the free. Writes reader KS, with brio:
When, not if, million of American civilians are slaughtered by Islamists, will you join me in howling for blood, or will you in your enlightenment take the side of those whose murdered our women and children?
Others do not see the need to wait for another attack on civilians, to shift our tactics closer to total war. JHC writes:
When we rouse ourselves ... and send our forces into Iraq to do the job with all the ruthlessness it entails, we will be back on the right -- the winning -- track.
Others are less sanguinary, yet still fatalistic: "I have a feeling that that the era of total war is only over until it begins again," suggests JJV, not unpersuasively.
Posted by Christopher Shea at 04:35 PM
May 16, 2007
The European Space Agency announced today that they have charted the origin and movement of the waves that devastated France's Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean on Saturday.
The agency first demonstrated the use of this technology just three weeks ago, at a symposium in Montreal. In that demo, swells were tracked the Pacific Ocean over a period of, yes, 12 days.
The waves that caused Saturday's disastrous flooding originated off the southern tip of South Africa -- not as notorious a source of heavy weather as Cape Horn, but notorious nonetheless. The swells traveled more than 4,000 kilometers over a period of three days.
A little late to speak now, you say? Scientists using the ESA's Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) technology are on the case for a kind of global warning system: "In the near future we anticipate using SAR wave data to predict [the] arrival time and intensity [of significant swells]."
Posted by Evan Hughes at 04:27 PM
May 16, 2007
The currently featured piece on the Web site of n+1, written by Meghan Falvey, is an extremely perceptive, sometimes excoriating critique of the recent spate of books and articles on the balance of work, love, and child-rearing in women's lives.
The writers under review are Maureen Dowd, Caitlin Flanagan, Linda R. Hirshman, and Laura Kipnis. They're all over the spectrum, these four. Hirshman's recent book is called "Get to Work," and Flanagan's might easily have been called "Get Back in the House." But Falvey argues that each of these authors share a tendency, hidden or not, to treat their own prosperity as universal.
Others have made this observation, but Falvey has a way of whittling it down to a sharper point. Addressing Dowd and Flanagan, she writes:
The absurdity of the debate is that it's basically about rich people. Perhaps the "opting-out" option says only this about our current moment of feminism: that a well off, professional woman (a product of earlier feminisms) possesses a culturally approved script for exiting work -- she can simply declare that she's dedicating her energies to an upscale, artisanal version of unpaid child rearing. Poorer women are far less likely to have this option -- and if they do, they can't tell their story in the same self-serving way.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 11:55 AM
May 15, 2007
The blogs are alive with word and debate of Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey's dramatic testimony [pdf] today before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the NSA's surveillance program.
At Balkinization, Marty Lederman gets exercised about it, though he missed the first half of the testimony because CSPAN didn't cover it. TPMMuckraker, an offshoot of Joshua Micah Marshall's Talking Points Memo, has a surprisingly even-handed summary of Comey's remarks that Lederman points out. And Orin Kerr at The Volokh Conspiracy captures some of the dramatic bits, involving a race to John Ashcroft's hospital bedside to sway his decision-making on approval of the program.
Having read the transcript, Lederman checked in with another post, and he's still worked up, but this time he has more of a sense of humor -- of the you-couldn't-make-this-stuff-up variety:
So the next evening, the White House -- probably the President himself, by Comey's account -- calls Mrs. Ashcroft, and implores her to allow Alberto Gonzales and Andy Card to come to GW Hospital to persuade John Ashcroft, in his weakened and drug-induced state, to sign off on the program, i.e., to overrule Comey even though Comey is the Acting AG. Mrs. Ashcroft tells Comey about the impending meeting at the hospital, and he (literally) runs down the stairs to a waiitng vehicle to get to the hospital -- using emergency equipment! -- before the White House Chief of Staff and Counsel get there! While Comey is waiting for them to arrive, he calls the Director of the FBI for support, and then the FBI Director speaks to the AG's security detail and -- this is the best part -- "instructed the FBI agents present not to allow me [Comey] to be removed from the room under any circumstances"!
But wait... thinking further on it, he adds, maybe you could make this stuff up:
Yes, if you think this sounds familiar, it is -- it eerily resembles the scene in which Michael Corrleone "protects" his father at the hospital in The Godfather. With Jack Goldsmith as Enzo the Baker, and Alberto Gonzales as McCluskey the crooked cop.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 04:35 PM
May 15, 2007
Toyota one of the industry leaders in hybrid technology. Probably the industry leader, given the wow factor provided by the sight of movie stars showing up at the Oscars in a not-even-new Prius.
But Japan trails the US and Europe in the use of "green fuels" in automobiles and has the added disadvantage of being entirely dependent on imported crude oil. They're headed for a problem meeting the guidelines of the environmental protocol developed on their own soil. And the White House is now taking some more aggressive steps to curb emissions.
Enter a pilot program at a mountain resort town in Japan described in an article in Scientific American. The government project "will produce cheap rice-origin ethanol brew with the help of local farmers who will donate farm waste such as rice hulls to be turned into ethanol."
In other words, the cars will essentially be running on sake. Like the rest of Japan. There's a price-point problem that has yet to be worked out, but perhaps the government would be willing to waive some gasoline tax if this heady technology catches hold.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 03:21 PM
May 15, 2007
Here are a couple of brand-new websites that Brainiac readers will doubtlessly appreciate.
***
Robots and Monsters: Described by its founder, the talented cartoonist Joe Alterio, as "a charitable effort that is one part fundraiser, one part lowbrow art gallery, and one part collective art experiment." In an effort to raise money for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, Alterio has offered to draw you a robot or a monster, as defined by three words or phrases you provide. He explains:
You get the original piece of art, 6" x 6", signed, of a robot or monster or both (your choice), as defined by three words you provide.... An image of one robot or monster is 25 bucks, a picture of 2 things, either robot or monster, is 40.
Other artists may join in the fun -- if so, Alterio says he will eventually publish a book of all the robots and monsters they create.
Examples of Alterio's robots and monsters
***
Reality Sandwich: A web magazine divided into sections with titles like PSYCHE, ECO, LIFE, TECH, and COMMONS. It has been described by one of its editors like so:
It brings together Burning Man, the radical edge of the environmental movement, the techno-utopians, the new commons movement, and the avant pop arts... in a single, colorful, unpredictable, and of course political package.
If the website sounds to you like the kind of New-New Age enterprise that Daniel Pinchbeck (described by James Parker as "a thirtysomething former journalist who has transformed himself -- with the help of mind-ripping pharmaceuticals and organic hallucinogens like iboga and ayahuasca -- into a multi-disciplinary critic of the "design problems" in Western civilization) might be into, pat yourself on the back! Pinchbeck is the editorial director of Reality Sandwich.
Here's where they got the name
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 02:11 PM
May 15, 2007
There is a new book out from Ivan R. Dee that marks the 25th birthday of The New Criterion by collecting some of the highlights of its coverage of culture and the arts. The New Criterion, co-edited by its founder, Hilton Kramer, and Roger Kimball, is devoted to an unabashed defense of high and unwavering standards that pits itself against cultural relativism. The magazine is a self-described "articulate scourge of artistic mediocrity and intellectual mendacity wherever they are found."
The journal's all-out broadsides are probably its best feature, as Thomas Meaney writes in a piece in the New York Sun. The New Criterion's often vicious brand of dissent -- John Simon and James Wolcott are two of the practitioners -- can be wildly funny, sometimes intentionally, other times not. In certain arenas the pieces don't necessarily hew to conservative dogma, and the magazine has been over the years an incubator for young talent.
Whether you're looking to get your fix of high-art appreciation or to have your hackles raised, you will probably be entertained by this book.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 12:57 PM
May 15, 2007
Two readers emailed yesterday, both taking issue with my assertion -- made in "Pulp affection," an Ideas essay that originally appeared as a Brainiac post -- that L. Ron Hubbard's novel "Battlefield Earth" has nothing to do with Scientology.
Here's what I wrote:
Unlike the symbolically loaded Narnia books of C.S. Lewis, for example, religious apologetics are nowhere in evidence in "Battlefield."
Bill S. writes:
I agree that the universal disdain for the book is unwarranted (and partly a result of the film adaptation's utter awfulness), but I disagree that the book has nothing to do with Scientology. In the last act of the book, as Johnny is meeting with the heads of all of the non-Psychlo species in the Universe, he learns the twisted history of the Psychlos, who were deceived by an evil overlord race called the "Catrists." Psychlo - Catrist... Psychiatrists?
Bill directs our attention to a Wikipedia entry on "Battlefield Earth," which argues that the battle between the noble Psychlos and the evil Catrists reflects Hubbard's -- and Scientology's -- animus towards psychology and psychiatry. (Think of Tom Cruise's crusade against anti-depressant meds, for example.)
Meanwhile, a much less sympathetic reader, Tim M., writes:
This is simply not true. In fact, the article on the novel "Battlefield Earth" at Wikipedia.org has a section that specifically deals with the Pro-Scientology themes in the novel. While it's perfectly understandable that casual readers of "Battlefield Earth" may not be aware of these themes and parallels, it is disingenuous to state they aren't in evidence.
It's amusing that Wikipedia is being cited, by Tim M., as an infallible source of proven fact. (If I claimed that Count Chocula was not a real person, would this Wikipedia entry prove me wrong?) Also, the Catrist/psychiatrist parallel seems like a bit of a stretch; I'm more convinced by Charles Manson's theory that "Revolution 9" parallels Chapter 9 of the Book of Revelation. (Those locusts with "hair as the hair of women" -- definitely the Beatles.) I've added a footnote to the Wikipedia entry pointing out that the Catrist=psychiatrist theory is just a theory.
However, since I'm one of those casual readers of "Battlefield," as opposed to a paranoid/vigilant reader, I'm willing to admit that I might be -- not disingenuous, but merely wrong.
Here's my retraction: It's remotely possible that "Battlefield" does obscurely reference one of Hubbard's/Scientology's hangups, in one short episode near the very end of the book, despite the fact that Hubbard claimed otherwise. If this is the case, however, it's unlikely that casual readers like Mitt Romney and myself could figure it out.
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 07:56 AM
May 14, 2007
A pair of new studies, one yet to be released, indicates the a little nip of Armagnac brandy every night could prevent heart disease and even obesity. The research was led by Nicholas Moore, a professor at a French institution (naturally): the University of Bordeaux (even better).
Feeding the French spirit to rats, he found that it stops clots from forming in much the same way that red wine does (and the drug Plavix, actually).
Moore suggests that human beings limit themselves to three-centiliter shots -- about two tablespoons. Follow that guideline and you might find yourself dropping some weight. The rats did, says Moore, because the brandy "reduced consumption and appeared to battle the food once it had been consumed," as This Is London reports. Fight on, brave Armagnac.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 03:11 PM
May 14, 2007
The condition of Iraq's universities and other scholarly institutions has not received very much attention, relative to health care problems and attacks on the general civilian population. A new article in the May 18 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education reports on the desperate state of higher learning in the country.
A political-science professor at the University of Baghdad tells the Chronicle he goes to the campus only once or twice a week, varying the days to throw off any would-be assassins. But he has been lucky compared to the 78 professors who have been killed at his university alone, according to the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics in London.
In the immediate aftermath of the Coalition takeover of Baghdad, American university delegations toured campuses in Iraq, giving rise to hope for improvements to conditions under Saddam Hussein's rule. Those improvements have not materialized, as the generally more secular and open-minded intellectual elite have become key targets of sectarian violence.
The Iraqi Ministry of Displacement and Migration estimates that at least 30 percent of all professors, doctors, pharmacists, and engineers in Iraq have fled since 2003. These trends make it difficult to cling to the prospect that educational and intellectual leaders in Iraq will pave the way to a stable society.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 01:14 PM
May 14, 2007
Josh wrote here on Brainiac 12 days ago about what he cleverly called the "May Day revolution," the widespread publication online of the "processing key" that can be used to crack the encryption on HD DVD discs. The consortium of corporate forces behind the creation of that encryption method were not pleased and sent cease-and-desist notices to a number of Web sites, which only fanned the flames. (He also mentioned the hubbub today.)
The New York Times reports today on a twist on another fight-the-power online phenomenon -- software that blocks Web advertisements from appearing in users' browsers. Instead of replacing the ads with blank space, AddArt, a program currently being developed by Steve Lambert, a conceptual artist, will replace display ads with selected artwork by contemporary artists.
Lambert thinks this will make for a more pleasing Web browsing experience -- no more flashing "click here to collect your winnings" banners, for example. And it will give artists some badly needed exposure, which blank space doesn't exactly need. I bet I'm not the only one awaiting the finished product.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 11:09 AM
May 14, 2007
* An expanded (and improved) version of my Brainiac post about Mitt Romney's favorite science-fiction novel ran in Ideas yesterday. James Henry M. writes:
As regards the debate over Gov. Willard Mitt Romney, I say that the issue is less what one thinks of "Battlefield Earth," but whether one cannot think of a better novel or one which you would sooner label as a (if not your most) favorite. Even as I probably like Sci-Fi enough to esteem mediocre examples more than the average person; and the subset which contain space aliens I would place above others, all else being equal; I don't think that it is a small matter that Mr. Romney would make the claim [I don't give to him the benefit of my doubt that that answer in any way represented an uncalculated or honest revelation] that a lesser example from this subset was most favored.
I don't agree that Romney was sending a coded message about Scientology, if that's what you're getting at, James. However, as I comment in the blog post and the Ideas essay, I do think it's too bad that (apparently) Romney isn't familiar with better-written examples of post-apocalyptic fiction. If he's elected president, let's start a campaign to send him one post-apocalyptic novel per month, starting with the excellent "A Canticle for Leibowitz."
* On 4/23, regarding my 4/23 Brainiac post about the watering of Mike Daisey, Sean F. wrote:
So, 87 people pay about $38 a piece to protest something a relative nobody says about Paris Hilton ---- and it just so happens that someone in the crowd was videotaping it --- and, conveniently, they were all Christians! Is this the dumbest and most expensive protest ever ($3306) or have you guys been pranked?
Sean, I'm going to have to go with: dumbest and most expensive protest ever. Read Geoff Edgers's blog and Globe story to get the full scoop.
* On 5/1, Greg R. wrote the following helpful note, in response to my 4/9 Brainiac post about the exact street address of Poe's Boston birthplace:
You mentioned a website called Historic Map Works up in Maine. You may be interested to know that there is a local Cambridge company, WardMaps.com, that offers many of the same maps through their website. The biggest difference is that WardMaps.com is free, and all the maps are zoomable! Here's 62 Carver St in 1883. And 62 Carver St in 1917.
Very cool, thanks!
* On 5/8, regarding a 5/6 Ideas item (that started as two 5/3 Brainiac posts) about steganography and a secret code, Penny A. wrote:
Interesting story, just a slight correction: You write "Steganography is derived from the Greek for "covered" and the Latin for "writing"; -graphy is actually Greek for writing, not Latin.
D'oh! I called it a Greek word in the Brainiac post, and a half-Greek, half-Latin word in the Ideas item. In fact, I was probably wrong both times. My OED suggests that steganographia is a modern Latin word, which is to say it was coined by 16th-century scholars -- who imported Greek words into the lingua franca. If you see what I mean.
Meanwhile, Donna D. writes about a secret code that she found inside a head of lettuce in Natick:
I sat down at the kitchen table, picked up my fork, stabbed the lettuce and put some in my mouth, all while reading the newspaper. I thought something wasn't quite right and pulled a piece of paper out of my mouth and tossed it in the sink. Something made me get up, pick up the small piece of white paper with blue lettering and examine it. Well, I was quite surprised that it had something written on it with some lucky numbers.... Thanks for the answer to this mystery.
Um, you're welcome?
A couple dozen readers asked -- in mostly paranoid ways -- what happened to the images I'd posted to illustrate the secret code item. Here's the answer: I was asked, in a very nice and reasonable manner, by Globe higher-ups, to remove them from the blog. However, once Ideas designer ad interim Mike Swartz had created blacked-out versions of the images to accompany the Ideas item, I was invited to post them. I never got around to it, but here's an example:
* Finally, I received many emails about my 5/3 Grimpoteuthis Brainiac post. Here are a few samples.
Gracelaw Simmons D. writes:
We know how to pronounce Pikachu, but could you please help us with the pronunciation of Grimpoteuthis? My son needs to mention it in an oral presentation, and we can't find it anywhere! We've guessed that it's grim-po-too'-this (with the th of thick). Are we close!?
I say: Yes.
Rob writes:
Although you say that Grimpoteuthis looks like Pikachu, I say it looks like the Neopet's website creature Meepit.
Meepit
I say: No.
Clive T. writes:
I AM SO ORDERING THAT GRIMPOTEUTHIS T-SHIRT. Beyond awesome.
I aim to please.
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 08:22 AM
May 13, 2007
Today's Word column deals with readers' eggcorn favorites, but the harvest was too abundant to be contained in that small space. Here are more contributions (some in edited form) from the current e-mail crop:
Margaret Menamin: "I have encountered the confusion of hearken and hark, gauntlet and gantlet. I once knew a judge who referred to bodyhouses instead of bawdyhouses, and that certainly made a great deal of sense."
Jim Sciulli: Prostrate for prostate, road to hoe, maddening crowd. "[Former Pittsburgh Pirates coach] Bill Cowher always said, 'Sorta speak.' Is it so to speak or sort of speak, or neither?"
Nancy May: "How about hone in on? I hear/see this one all the time."
Matt Seccombe: "My favorite eggcorn (in my editing work) is just desserts for just deserts. It has metaphorical possibilities, with the good boy receiving chocolate cake and ice cream while the naughty one gets stale biscuits and bruised apples."
John F. Guthrie, Jr.: "Chomping at the bit instead of champing at the bit."
Anabeth Dollins: "There's a Chinese food seller in the food court of a local [Pittsburgh] shopping mall that has been selling 'Fried Wanton' for years."
Anonymous:
I'll have to make due
Don't make a big tadoo about it
I chocked it up to experience
It was chalked full of apples
That is just not exceptable
It peaked my interest
It will cause a fervor for sure
I had to either wear sunglasses or glint (squint)
He thinks he has exulted status
He honed in on it like a laser
We went to a potlatch supper
Add some Cheyenne pepper
They use no mast-produced products
David Westlake: "I've always felt that the granddaddy eggcorn of them all is momento for memento. Our brains are too good at making associations with things we already know, such as, in this case, 'Un momento, senor.'"
Edith Maxwell: "My son, now 20, used to talk about furnichair for tables, chairs, couches. My younger son used to say we were going on daycation. My goddaughter used to say she wanted to go out and play in the back yarden. Maybe those are less eggcorns than sensible new formations."
Jennifer Cox: "In 1996, when our entire office was being laid off, my colleague Pierre did his best to convince me that it was a blessing in the skies. I've always loved his imagery and the reinforced idea of 'heavenly' intervention."
Joseph S. Lieber: I suspect I am somewhat less tolerant than you of eggcorns; I tend to view them as little more than mistaken usage. Have you heard for all intensive purposes?"
Nick Giarratani: "Supposively or supposebly in lieu of supposedly. I work at Salem State College and am always
calling my kids on their misuse of those words!"
Sally Harris: "I've talked with several people who insist on using wheelbarrel instead of wheelbarrow. I guess it
sounds like a barrel on wheels."
Ray Smith: "How about the perennial children's eggcorn: chicken pops for chicken pox."
Harold Hyman: "Chaise lounge for chaise longue."
Elliot Singer: "I enjoyed your heart-rendering article."
Greg Nash: "One of my children told his friend that his grandmother had old-timer's disease."
Chaz Scoggins: "Here's one that makes me cringe: safety deposit boxes for safe deposit boxes]."
Bob Vanasse: "I have long suspected that children's common vocalizing of flutter-by, instead of butterfly, might actually be closer to its original name. It is certainly more descriptive."
Joe Donohue: "Sparrowgrass = asparagus. When I was called up in the Berlin crisis of 1961, and assigned to a Kentucky national guard tank battalion, I was asked, 'Do you like sparrowgrass?' I have an image of a huge flock of sparrows, settling down in a field of asparagus and pecking away at it until there is nothing left."
Stan Fleischman: "Does the misuse of tow the line for toe the line qualify?"
Jay Gold, M.D.: "Don't forget medicine (stuff that patients say) as a fertile source: Blood clogs, hard attack, old-timer's disease, sick-as-hell anemia."
Sandra Sweeney: "I was in the airport on Friday and heard a man say: They were wrecking havoc with it."
Elaine Bakal: We humans are always trying to make sense out of things we don't understand. In a memoir writing class I was in a few years ago, one of the students referred to a female character in his story as a pre-Madonna instead of a prima donna."
Julian Smith: "I opened a screenplay from one of my former scriptwriting students and discovered a reference to an anxious character being on tender hooks. My old student clearly meant tenterhooks -- but tender hooks struck me as a very useful description of the way lovers 'hook' one another or hook up."
Linda M. Elsmore: "The Globe ran a TV commercial depicting people from different neighborhoods in Boston. One, reflecting the neighborhood of Cambridge, used the word vervacity in her description. Didn't she mean vivacity or verve?"
John Bonavia: "I wonder if you noticed this extraordinary expression attributed to a Boston police officer (Globe, April 8): 'Sometimes parents just defend their kid until they're blind in the teeth.' I've heard of lie in their teeth or in a blind rage, but blind in the teeth?"
Barb Crook: "Isn't heart-wrenching just a corruption of heart-rending (or as some few others prefer to say, heart-rendering)?"
Earle: "KFI, a talk radio station here in Los Angeles, has a reporter covering the Phil Spector murder trial. This morning he reported on a defense motion to exclude evidence that Spector referred to women with an obscenity. [The defense argued], according to the reporter, that potential women jurors would have a guttural reaction to hearing the word. I found this mixture of gut reaction and visceral reaction pleasant on many levels."
P.R.: "Bare with me, tow the line, tough road to hoe. And a co-worker once offered me a kitten she referred to as a ferro cat; I could not convince her that she meant feral."
Sheila Hallissy: "As a retired English teacher, I have heard a
lot of fractured English. My favorite eggcorn is a student's estimation of her self of steam."
Posted by Jan Freeman at 07:24 AM
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