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How I came to read The Stranger - or - Manuscript Day, 1992
Jim Colondo was an excellent fellow who seemed to genuinely like his creative writing students, in spite of the fact that I think he disliked his job. Photography was his passion, not bureaucracy, not discipline, not politicking--but at the time I don't think any of us really saw that because he was too busy doing a fine job. He was a thoughtful person. When I was hospitalized after my ski accident, I received Valentine's Day cards from the entire class, thanks to Mr. Colondo. That's right: I even have a Valentine's Day card from Jomo Grady. That speaks to the power of Mr. Colondo's good-nature.

At the high school level, creative writing is not about details, it's just about getting people to write, to express themselves, to be inspired, to find a voice. Mr. Colondo introduced us to photographs, songs, sculptures, and poems, and asked us to be inspired. He introduced us to pantoums and villanelles and asked us to be inspired by the constraints. And, poor man! he had to read the results and dole out checks, check-plusses, and check-minuses.

It must have been he that nominated at least two dozen students at East Lansing High School to participate in Manuscript Day 1992 at Western Michigan University. On the merits of a particularly ridiculous piece of prose, I got to head down to Kalamazoo one fine spring evening, and spend the next day workshopping our writings with some poor MFA student-instructors who were stuck with us. I imagine they must have thought, "I came to Western because of Stuart Dybek, and now I am babysitting angsty teens? I feel like a schmuck!"

I can't remember if we drove, or were ferried there in a school bus. It hardly matters, but I recall that I was hanging out with my friend James Wilson, who in creative writing went by the more creative name, Jim "Driftwood" Wilson. We had a dormitory room on campus, so the college semester must have been over already, and according to the event schedule there was a dance/mixer for Manuscript Day attendees. It was probably stupid, but we thought we'd go check it out anyway.

I don't recall how I met Melissa. I think she was outside the dance with her friends. Did she smoke? Maybe she was outside smoking. Smoking was a very adult thing to do, and a little rebellious. If you ever want to keep a teen from smoking, the best thing to do is to make the teen's 12-year-old sibling start smoking. That ought to kill the cool. But maybe I am giving her bad habits she didn't have.

Melissa was wearing a long red velvet dress, appropriate for a more formal dance that this. She had long wavy dark brown hair, and she had an aquiline nose that I thought, for some reason, made her look a little witchy--in a good way. We all agreed that the dance was very stupid, but she asked me if I wanted to dance anyway. It would be ironic--we would be dancing and it would seem like we were enjoying ourselves, but of course we would be mocking it at the same time. It was a plan that couldn't fail.

We danced, or rather swayed or whatever passed for dancing, with my arms around her waist and hers around my neck and she was warm and her dress was soft and she was very close and everything was very confusing. We went back outside and talked under the moonlight, near the parking lot and the bike racks and the tall brick institutional buildings. She met up with her friends again and we said goodnight, and everything was very chaste but flirtatious: not a kiss was exchanged, but the thought was clearly in the air. Later I ran into James and we went up to the dorm room and hung out with some other people for a while until we all got tired and went to sleep.

The next day we received purple t-shirts with a drawing of a cat and an excerpt of William Blake printed on them in pale green: "What immortal hand or eye dare frame thy fearful symmetry?" We went to our workshops and read the pieces for which we'd been deemed worthy of attending the event. We talked about them and tried to give each other suggestions and ideas without really being very negative, mostly out of respect for our own delicate egos and what would come to us in our turns in the hot seat.

Around lunch I ran into Melissa and her friends again, and she said they were going to look at some student artwork, did I want to join them? Of course I did. While we walked along, studiously considering each charcoal sketch and conté crayon drawing, someone mentioned The Cure's song, "Killing an Arab." Did you know, she said, that it is based on a novel?

1992 was a very politically correct time, particularly if you were a high school student, and particularly if you were hoping to come across as cool. It was an important question: how could one of the coolest bands--the other being The Smiths--possibly sing "standing on the beach/with a gun in my hand/staring at the sea/staring at the sand/I'm a stranger/killing an Arab"? How could they create such a violent, callous, senseless, and racist song? We looked for explanations. In some ways, perhaps those were better days than these.

Somehow, I knew that it was based on a book. I must have picked up this knowledge from someone far, far cooler than myself. Had Scott Flaster or Matt Collar mentioned it? Could I have overheard Jen Burigana talking about it at school? Or was it something that Stacy Walker or Melanie Furchner had mentioned in a letter? I even knew which book it was.

"Yes," I said, "it is based on Albert Camus' The Stranger."

A letter seems likely--I had read about it somewhere. Like so many other things I had read about but had never heard spoken. It probably didn't help that I was studying not French, but Spanish, where no letters are ignored. Spanish is a more transparent language, and I appreciate that now.

I didn't really say, "Yes, it is based on Albert Camus' The Stranger."

Instead, I said, "Yes, it is based on AL-bert KAY-mussus The Stranger."

Melissa laughed. "You mean al-BEHR ca-MOO?" The witchiness that I found charming the night before seemed much less pleasant now.

Any coolness I may have established the evening before vanished. "So that's how you say it," I fumbled. I explained that I needed to meet my friend James before the keynote speech that afternoon, and I excused myself.

I did not see Melissa again.

A few weeks after school was out, I bought a copy of The Stranger. That was my revenge: maybe Melissa and her friends knew how to pronounce Camus, but damn it--I was going to read the book!

I read it, but I still didn't feel cool.

[Edit: James Wilson tells me that I have it all wrong! Manuscript Day was a separate event, and that the young lady with her fancy French pronunciation was at a different event, a weekend arts conference, where they gave us different purple t-shirts. This makes more sense, now that I think of it, as the charcoal sketches would be out-of-place at Manuscript Day.]

I'm a bricklayer, I kill what I eat
The new Jonathan Safran Foer book, Eating Animals, has been getting a lot of press lately. I probably won't read it. I read Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma several years ago, and since that time there have been myriad books about ethical eating. However, I feel like my eating habits are usually in line with my beliefs, so I am going to spend my leisure time reading about something else. If I were to bend on this, I think the original--Upton Sinclair's The Jungle--would be my choice.

NPR posted a link about the book to Facebook, which filled up with comments (183 and counting), including one from Denise Beno:
"I believe that if you cannot look an animal in the eye, kill it and eat it at least once in your life, then you have no business eating meat."

I'm not here to argue for or against omnivorism or herbivorism. But I've heard this argument before, and I would like to say: hogwash!

Although I believe that I could kill & butcher an animal, I have quite a few good reasons not to. For one thing, I have no training or experience, and would therefore probably make a lot of mistakes. Also, I don't have the proper facilities to do so in a humane and food-safe manner. Not to mention the resulting mess! Additionally, aside from very small animals like rabbits and chickens, I would probably end up with more meat than I could reasonably use or store, given my additional lack of training and experience in meat-curing.

This argument basically says that we should eliminate division of labor and we should all become amateurish woodsy DIY survivalists. At least once, that is--which I suppose we do, if campfire s'mores on Labor Day Weekend counts as survivalism. I say to those same people: if you have never designed and constructed a combustion engine, if you have never built your own rack-and-pinion steering system, if you have never refined gasoline from crude oil, then you have no business driving a car!

It's absurd. Obviously, society works best when people do what they know and do well, and what they enjoy doing. If people do not have a knack for butchering, it makes perfect sense to leave that work up to someone who does.

The argument is poorly-phrased. The argument isn't really about learning to become a butcher. It's not about your knowledge and ability: it's about your conscience. We could all, with relatively clear conscience, build a yodeling pickle if we had the knowledge. But when faced with actually killing another living creature for the purposes of eating it, many people may opt for the eggplant parmigiana.

Perhaps the argument should be posed a different way: if you cannot look an animal in the eye, and give instructions to an expert butcher to slaughter it, then you should reconsider your stance on the omnivorous diet. This version still has a problem, though: it doesn't separate squeamishness from conscience. I don't think the argument is about squeamishness. After all, I would probably pass out watching a surgery, but that doesn't mean I object to modern medical care. There are many people who would prefer not to witness the bloodletting for reasons that have nothing to do with conscience.

Is there a way to separate sqeamishness from conscience in a question like this? I suppose you could give a lethal injection to an animal so it would die painlessly, and then have it carted out of sight for the butchering. But you couldn't eat it, because the chemicals would taint the meat.

The best way is probably through your actions in the marketplace, but unfortunately this has issues too. If a guilty conscience is the problem, who feels guilty for buying a shrink-wrapped pound of hamburger? Do you feel one-tenth of one percent of the guilt of killing an animal? Hamburger is to cow as CDO is to mortgage loan, and we've seen how that sort of tenuous-at-best connection can lead to all sorts of problems.

Now it's become a problem of connecting what's inside the Styrafoam-and-cellophane to the death of an actual animal. Butcher shops like the ones in the Italian Market in Philadelphia might also do the trick: if you see the animals hanging upside-down in the window, with the neck slit but the head still attached, perhaps the human brain can make that connection. And if people aren't comfortable buying meat in such a shop, then perhaps those people should reconsider where they stand on the issue of eating meat.

Bacon Vending Machine
The old-fashioned butcher shop is an antiquated solution. I don't see Kroger redesigning its stores to mimic the Italian Market anytime soon. I propose a high-tech solution: a meat vending machine. You press "Bacon" and a photorealistic hog appears on the screen. Then you have to put your finger on the hog on the touchscreen and watch as life fades away, in a painless manner, but by your design. Then you have to select the "Yes, I am responsible for the death of this pig" option to retrieve the bacon. Ah, modernity! Finally, a way to help reconcile my conscience with my consumption!

There are many excellent reasons for making ethical food choices (as well as many less-than-excellent reasons). Vegetarianism is among the wide range of ethical food choices. But the "if-you-won't-kill-it-yourself-don't-eat-it" logic doesn't work for me. The question of conscience cannot be reduced to a quick quip, a rule-of-thumb. The real answer is, of course: think about it, and decide for yourself.

I have only now realized my two great errors:

I pick up a topic many writers and philosophers have already covered, with more thought and research than I have done
How could a Facebook comment amount to much more that a hollow phrase?

Transliterations and Pronunciations
On the reality television show Top Chef, there is an annoying fellow who frequently sits in as judge. He's short, balding, myopic, and acerbic. I call him Bratty Brit. He makes for good television, because you always need someone to despise, and who better than a judge, who delivers harsh criticism while putting forth no effort? And on American television, who better to fill that role than someone with a highfalutin accent?

On an episode a few weeks ago, he was criticizing one contestant's take on the Catalan dish, paella. He pronounced it pa-EL-ah. The other judges pronounced it pa-AY-ah. One judge pointed out the difference and said, "How can we discuss how a traditional paella should be prepared if we can't even agree on how it is pronounced?"

Bratty Brit said that, in English, it is pronounced pa-EL-ah, and that in America they don't go around saying MEH-ee-co for Mexico, now do they?

This is an interesting observation. Although I do wonder how Bratty Brit pronounces words like brioche, croissant, and jalapeño, and how the other judges, for example, pronounce guacamole -- perhaps the most curious case of all, since we keep some of parts of the original pronunciation and ignore others.

I was reminded of this because an acquaintance of mine who speaks Greek gently corrected my pronunciation of moussaka: MOO-sa-ka he told me. When I attempted this at a Greek restaurant a few days ago, the waiter looked at me and said moo-SA-ka? Back to the drawing board for me! At least I did not inquire, as did one of the other guests, about the be-CAM-el sauce (béchamel).

Words borrowed from languages that use a script other than Roman are usually transliterated as best as possible to match the pronunciation. I know nothing of Hangul, the Korean script alphabet, but there must be a letter that is not quite a B and not quite a P, and so we see bi-bim-bop and bi-bim-bab and a variety of other transliterations on menus for Korean restuarants. Likewise, G and K and bulgogi and bulgoki.

Likewise, in recent years Calcutta, India, has become Kolkata. And it was years ago that Peking became Beijing, presumably for similar reasons. (The change from Bombay to Mumbai, on the other hand, is a different pot of dal entirely.)

In the cases of transliterations, we adjust our spellings to fit the pronunciation. But when a borrowed word already uses the Roman script alphabet, we tend not to change it. Otherwise, we would probably write Meheeco for Mexico.

Although country names are a strange case. Why Spain, and not Espanya? Why Germany instead of Deutschlant?

What is behind our tendencies to preserve or ignore foreign pronunciations and/or spellings? It's intriguing. I suspect that Bratty Brit pronounces paella the way he does because he perceives paella to be an English word, borrowed from Catalan. But I think the Americans pronounce it differently because they perceive paella to be a foreign word. However, I suspect that the explanation is more complex and inconsistent than that.

Most of my examples seem to come from food. I certainly wish that we had done a better job of anglicizing more Italian words. Mostaccioli and gnocchi, really?

In any event, I still don't know how to properly pronounce pho, but have noticed that no one seems to mind if I just ask for foh. And I still get my delicious Vietnamese noodle soup.

The Diag King plucked his throne from a tree
In September of 1993, Sunil and I were returning from visiting Shannon and Tina on South Forest in Ann Arbor when we spotted something curious: there was a white plastic chair in the branches of a tree, slightly out-of-reach. It had probably been launched there by a roving pack of frat boys, which were native to that region. Sunil and I were both 6-footers, but I was built more like a twig, whereas he was more solid, so he boosted me up and we retrieved the chair.

We carried the chair down along East University, where we paused so that Sunil could talk to a young woman sitting outside Rendezvous Cafe. She probably had on an attractive pair of boots. We met a lot of young women thanks to Sunil's appreciation of exotic footwear (including, if I am not mistaken, Mary Biddinger and Mrrranda). We chatted for a few minutes, probably lamenting the dearth of interesting people like ourselves (a common topic in our conversations), and then left.

Sunil was never shy about complimenting a lady. Perhaps he wasn't shy about anything. Come to think of it, we were both pretty cocksure and full of ourselves.

We were 19 years old. We were, looking back, probably incredibly annoying. Cut us some slack already.

At this point, an employee from the store ran out and yelled at us to return his chair.

"This isn't your chair," we told him. "We found this chair in a tree."

This was unconvincing, we realized, not only because of how ridiculous it sounded on the face of it, but also because it made the cafe employee more angry than before.

"Look, this white plastic chair is a different model than your white plastic chairs." We walked back so the chairs could be compared side-by-side. The differences were subtle, but apparent. The young woman we had been talking to also chimed in: "They were carrying that chair from down the block when I first saw them."

OK, OK, fine, it isn't our chair, the cafe employee agreed. We didn't get an apology, but at least a begrudging admission of innocence.

We carried the chair to the Diag, where Sunil set the chair on top of a concrete bench--the westernmost bench on the north side of the Diag. He sat in the chair like it was a throne, his long shaggy hair and his long ratty black cloak. I stood below, a court jester in a black felt mad-hatter hat, a secondhand black blazer from The Cat's Meow, and ratty patched blue jeans. We looked like extras from a Terry Gilliam film, only taller. We gave out dire warnings about what would happen if passersby stepped on the M. We booed and cursed if our warnings were not heeded, and cheered when people took our wise advice.

We were 19 years old. We were, looking back, probably incredibly annoying. Cut us some slack already.

This became somewhat of a habit--for an hour or so on most weeknights, we would drag the chair out to the Diag and regale people with the tales of woe that would befall them if they did not veer to the sides of the M. Many people ignored us, a few people laughed, and every so often someone would stop to chat. We saw people we knew, who would ask us what the heck we were doing.

I don't recall why this stopped. Sunil often ran the soundboard for bands at Rick's, so perhaps he needed to work. Or perhaps when I started dating Tina, I suddenly had better things to do than warn random strangers about the dangers of the M. I do recall that the chair stayed--I think was often piled high with clothes and a backpack in Sunil's room. I'm not positive, but I think that chair stuck as a fixture in Sunil's room for the next 3 years.

A new web site about job hunting: Foxsuit.com
I started a new web site/blog about job hunting called Foxsuit.com. Currently I am reading various articles about job searching, unemployment, resume and interview tips, etc., and letting those be inspiration for more-or-less daily posts.

(Speaking of, if you have any favorite career and/or job search related web sites and blogs, let me know. I tend to favor heavily the Wall Street Journal, and I'd like to mix it up a bit.)

Am I qualified to offer job search and career advice? Well, I have had several jobs. I have been in several line management positions before, I have seen a ton of resumes, I have made hire-and-fire decisions, and I have taken business and management classes. Am I overwhelmingly qualified? Maybe not--but who is? As far as I can tell, the only qualifications demonstrated by the pros are the fact that they write about it. I'm expert enough, as long as I keep writing.

I hope to offer more than just my personal insight: I am working on setting up a password-protected members area that creates a supportive community for job-seekers, and provides a basic daily or weekly checklist to help keep job searches on track, and possibly resume and cover letter reviews.

This idea was inspired by a site that

well_lahdidah has used, Academic Ladder's Academic Writing Club. Writing a dissertation is an enormously intimidating task, so it's important to make steady progress & have a little support and feedback. I think that looking for a new job is much the same way--although there's no page count, it's huge, it's intimidating, and it can easily lead to despair. I've read about other job search groups--Foxsuit.com may not be a particularly unique idea--but given the current climate, I think there is room for one more.

Why Foxsuit.com? It was the first domain name I tried that was actually available. I certainly had some better ideas, but I thought Foxsuit.com could fly. Eventually I will try to spruce up the site design, logo, etc., but I read some advice recently that said with a new blog you shouldn't make any changes for 60 days. I assume the reason is two-fold: first, 60 days gives you time to figure out which changes are most important, and second, you might give up before 60 days is out.

The members area will be coming along in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, feel free to take a look at the site and agree with me, argue with me, or insult my typographical errors: Foxsuit.com

Fantasy Whaling Team
This morning on NPR's Marketplace, I heard them talking about buying insurance for your fantasy football players. My half-asleep, half-awake brain started working on a fantasy whaling team:

Keep the Pequod, a good ship
Ditch Ahab, replace him with Tom Izzo
Starbuck was good, but Jack Chase from Whitejacket was even better
Keep Queequeg, of course, but maybe replace Tashtego with Andreas Thorkildsen, who won the gold for javelin in 2008

Oy. My brain.

From a Cowboy to a Golden Bear
My brother Ben has certainly paid his dues in Laramie, Wyoming. Although I know he enjoyed the mountains, the scenery, and the outdoors there, 5 years is a long time to spend in the country's least populated state, in a place where it can snow even in August and water boils at 199 degrees Fahrenheit. (I'm pretty sure his wife Holly agrees.) He certainly deserves his forward step as the new diving coach for UC Berkeley.

Congratulations, Ben! We look forward to visiting.

Let us take a moment, however brief, to admire our laurel crowns
We were in Birmingham, Alabama, over the weekend to look at apartments. (We filled out an application for one, pending approval and the landlord's repair of improperly grounded electrical outlets.)

We stayed in the Sheraton by the convention center, a huge hotel (770 rooms) that ranks as one of the nicest hotels I've stayed in (although it's trumped by the historic Palmer House in Chicago and the Bonaventure in Los Angeles). Maybe I'm just saying that because the bar on the 2nd floor let me wander back up to my room on the 16th floor carrying my pint of beer.

On Saturday morning, there was a graduation ceremony for Lawson State Community College at the convention center across the street. We watched from above as the graduates, many of them well into adulthood, some alone, some accompanied by family, entered the convention center.

Not too many months ago I finished up with the classes I had been taking. It was a lot of effort just to make it through one 3-credit hour class per semester, and near insanity to take two, while working full-time. And I don't even have any children to vie for my time and attention. I can barely conceive of completing a 2-or-4-year degree while working and taking care of a family. The graduates that morning had much to be proud of: their accomplishments arguably outshine those of the 22-year-olds who, like myself 13 years ago, pursued the path of least resistance to its logical conclusion.

On the way down the elevator, we stopped at the 10th floor and a young man hesitantly stepped in. His hair was just shy of shoulder length, in small braids. He was wearing baggy black jeans, a Kelly green polo shirt with horizontal stripes, and a matching Kelly green baseball cap with a pristine brim so flat he probably starched and ironed it minutes before. In short, he was trying very hard to look cool.

He was also carrying two purses and a basket of flowers.

We politely ignored his sheepish glance on the ride down. I do not know if it was his mother, his sister, or his aunt that was graduating, or whose purses he carried, but there he was, at 9:30 A.M., swallowing his pride, to show his family how proud he was of them.

It was a touching sight I will not soon forget.

Personalization on the Web: Ads and Content
This is a story about how much the Internet knows about you.

Tuesday, on GMail, I saw a sponsor message for "Burning Man Boots." Clearly, GMail has identified conversations in which I discuss Burning Man with my friends. I clicked on the link because I wanted to see what kind of trashy crap someone wanted to sell to the Burners, who sure do spend a lot of money to attend an anti-commercial event.

It took me to ShoeBuy.com, which wasn't selling fuzzy pink tranny platforms but more sedate boots like cowboy boots, hiking boots, and even a nice pair of ankle-high black Rockport dress boots.

Hmm, I kind of like Rockports. My grandfather wears ankle-high black boots. I clicked on those puppies to find out more. Turns out, they only sold them in one size (and it wasn't 13AA), so I closed it.

The next day, I visit NYTimes.com. I get a ShoeBuy.com ad.

That company, I think, sounds familiar.

Then I notice that the shoe featured in the ad is the black Rockport boot I'd looked at the day before. The text on the ad says, "Shop our selection of men's Rockport shoes."

(I got the same ad, with the same boot, today on both NYTimes.com and Slate.com. Not very subtle.)

Also on the NYTimes.com, on the sidebar I get a text box with the heading "News for Education Professionals" with a list of links. There's also a link that says "What's This?" and "Powered by LinkedIn." It turns out, they can serve up a list of personalized articles based on my current employment as listed on my LinkedIn profile.

As a former Internet advertising professional, I think this is awesome. We have gobs and gobs of data, and we're finally using it to target ads--and even content--properly. (Never mind that ShoeBuy.com keeps showing me a shoe that I know they don't have in my size.)

As a human being who draws the shades at night, I also find it slightly disturbing. (You can opt-out of the NYTimes/LinkedIn personalized content.)

As a ponderer of idle questions, I wonder what it means that we, as a community, will see fewer and fewer of the same ads and articles, and more personalized content. People pay for clipping services (or at least used to), to see specific content tailored to their interests, so I suppose all such free services are really a boon to us all.

(In case you are wondering how the NYTimes.com knows what kind of shoes I look at on ShoeBuy.com, or what kind of job I have listed on LinkedIn.com, they answer is: they don't. The case of LinkedIn.com is easiest to explain: a small part of the code on NYTimes.com tells my browser to call a script on LinkedIn.com. If LinkedIn knows who I am (because I have a LinkedIn browser cookie), it returns a list of NYTimes.com articles tailored to my industry. The case of ShoeBuy.com is a little more interesting, as I doubt that people that have not visited ShoeBuy.com are seeing many ShoeBuy.com ads. This is most likely due to a 3rd-party server: on my visit to ShoeBuy.com, they tell my browser to request a file from, say, CleverAdTargeting.com. I end up getting a cookie from their site. On NYTimes.com, my browser is directed to pick up an ad from CleverAdTargeting.com. My browser sends them the cookie, and they say, "Hey, we know this guy. He wears shoes. Let's send him a shoe ad." Voila.)

The moral of this story:
You can't delete your cookies and shop for shoes
OR
You can't always read what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find, they feed what you read
OR
I don't know. Being clever is harder than it looks. Maybe Dave and HAL are having an argument again?

Selling Nostalgia, or why I didn't go into sales
I am auctioning off some old CD longboxes on Ebay. I hope you find the item description at least vaguely amusing.

Green Onion Gel

well_lahdidah found some clear gel inside a green onion (AKA a spring onion or a scallion) this morning, and was rather disturbed by it. I was confused. "You mean you've never noticed the goop inside a green onion before?" Apparently she hadn't, and her next question was, what is it and is it safe to eat?

I'm pretty sure it is safe to eat, as I'm not dead yet, but I don't know what it is exactly. I tried looking in The Joy of Cooking and Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking, but no mention either place of this mysterious scallion sap. A user on Metafilter suggests it is a "monocotyledon ooze" (Scallion gel?), but that's not really an answer either.

Internet searches led me to discover that there many synonyms for such goo. Gel? Slime? Ooze? Sap? "Jelly" shows up in too many recipes, and "-okra" definitely helped cut down on the recipes as well. I'm fairly certain that it's just a mucilage, but what do I know? It always baffles me anymore that an answer to any trivial question isn't at my fingertips.

You've seen this gel inside of green onion tops, right?

Che - Latch Hook of Ernesto "Che" Guevara

Che - Latch Hook of Ernesto "Che" Guevara
Originally uploaded by cherdt

I don't even want to think about how many years ago I started this. It was when

chassy was still living in Ann Arbor, because I recall

flastron and I discussing our next "top secret project" at the regular Sunday night Movie Night.

I think at first I started it as a xmas present for by brother Ben, who was particularly impressed with Mao. I hope he'll forgive me that I'm hanging on to it for now.

flastron did a good deal of the work in Westland, after he canceled both his cable and Internet connection.

tawdryjones also pitched in, as well as giving me a little push to finish it, thanks to her own latchhook project.

The triptych is complete!

Rose Hip Wine
I am having a glass of 2003 rose hip wine. The color and flavor reminds me very much of a port, and I am fairly impressed with the results. I'm not sure how much 5+ years of bottle aging helped it, but this impresses me more than the last bottle I opened.

There's still one bottle left. I'll have to invent a special occasion for it!

"Ron" - Ronald Reagan Latch-Hook

"Ron" - Giant Ronald Reagan Latch-Hook
Originally uploaded by cherdt

I finally completed manufacturing Ron.

I was absolutely stunned last year (2007) at xmas when

flastron and

beninem stopped by my parents' house and I opened the unassuming cardboard box containing a nearly-complete Ron and the yarn and instructions to complete it. I knew that

flastron had been working on it, but I had somehow underestimated his incomprehensible dedication and work ethic, or perhaps overestimated his practicality. Either way, I was speechless.

(I was going to say nonplussed, but no one knows what that means anymore.)

The only reason it took me so long to finish, other than all the classes I took last year, is that I have been working on a friend for Mao and Ron, who will complete the Triumvirate Triptych. I stopped only because I ran out of the exact shade of black yarn I needed and had to order more online. I hope to have their friend done soon as well.

Change comes slowly
I read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers recently. In chapter 8, "Rice Paddies and Math Tests" he describes how much faster, simpler, and easier it is to work with Chinese numbers than numbers in other languages, such as English. His argument is fairly compelling, and it makes you wonder: why haven't we adopted the superior system globally?

well_lahdidah immediately pointed out Americans still haven't adopted the metric system, except for drug dealers and scientists.

It made me wonder about the switch from Roman numerals to the clearly superior Arabic numerals. I did a little quick research on the Internet, and it turns out that Arabic numerals are actually of Indian origin, are around 1400 years old, and gained foothold in Baghdad in about 1100 years ago. From there, it took another 300 years or so before Fibonacci got ahold of them in Europe, at which time scholars started using them. But it really wasn't until the printing press another 300 years later that they were truly adopted by the masses. It took roughly 900 years for this good idea to propagate!

Of course, things moved slowly then: knowledge and ideas had to travel in caravans just like spices and gold, and were probably written laboriously on sheepskin by the light of a dim oil lamp. Maybe now that we have the Internet, things could happen a little faster.

Language change is another area that interest me, in particular the Simplified Spelling movement in the U.S. in the early 1900s. That had the backing of prominent authorities and the support of President Theodore Roosevelt, and some small part it worked: catalogue is an anachronism in the U.S., colour and behaviour belong the Brits, and we need fiber in our diets rather than fibre. Other measures were not as successful, and we still write though instead of tho if we expect to be taken seriously. I think part of its success, other than that the changes were small and of little consequence, was that it was seen as patriotic to differentiate American English from English abroad.

I read the abstract of an academic study some months back, from which I drew the most outrageous and conclusions of perhaps dubious merit, but with that caveat let me continue: it said that a study was done of the reading ability of Greek schoolchildren that found the differences between strong readers and poor readers were largely eliminated by the 2nd or 3rd grade. The idea was, if I remember correctly, that modern Greek has a simple and clear orthography, and given a few years, everyone catches up. The conclusion I drew is that modern Greek is an inherently democratic language, and that, by comparison, English is not.

Although I will admit to occasionally writing hiccough for hiccup, I agree that a simpler orthography would probably go a long way to help people learn English, whether as a first language or second, third fourth, or fifth. Why do we need ph anyway? Why should a gh sound like an f? Why does a c sound like a k or an s when we already have those perfectly good letters to do the job? I have been occasionally concerned that without those clues we might overlook the origin of the words: a soft c is from a Romance language, a rough gh from a Germanic language, etc. But does that really matter to the average writer? Is any particular nuance lost? Sure, it would really shake up spelling bees, but I'm not sure I see the drawbacks. I think text messaging may soon speed up the adoption of some simpler spellings, and we'll all lol instead of laf, laff, or laugh, to think back on these clumsier times.

I am starting to wonder, though, if the world could be a smarter and fairer place if we removed a few roadblocks and all learned to count in Chinese and speak and write modern Greek. Kalimera!

Current Mood: curious
Current Music: Camper Van Beethoven - (Don't you go to) Goleta

Goodbye, Miss K
Miss K was living with cancer for quite some time, but over the course of this weekend it really took a turn for the worse. The tumor growth was rampant, she was leaking fluid faster than she would drink it, and the wound on her tummy wasn't healing. She was making only half-hearted attempts to eat and could barely hop up to her favorite spot on the couch. We pretty much knew what was coming, so we spent nearly all weekend at home, showering the leaky, lumpy kitten with as many treats and as much affection as she could take.

Miss K looks skyward

Yesterday afternoon we took her to the vet, who confirmed that some of her tissue was necrotic and that there really wasn't much else we could hope to do. It was a difficult decision, but we said goodbye to our constant companion, our muse of many silly kitten songs.

The apartment seems empty, in spite of the clutter, and is under constant threat from the now-unchecked string menace. She will be missed.

The Fine Print: Why can't I pay cash for that?
Printed on US paper currency is the phrase, "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private". I've often wondered why, if that's the case, some businesses can get away with not accepting cash as a form of payment.

If you've wondered the same, wonder no more! Apparently the key word is debts:
http://www.ustreas.gov/education/faq/currency/legal-tender.shtml#q1

If you are attempting to purchase goods or services, no transaction has yet taken place between you and the provider of the goods or services: no debts have been incurred.

BarCamp Philly
Today I attended BarCamp Philly, held at UArts. It's a series of conference sessions created by the participants, some more ad hoc than others, primarily about technology and the web. When I arrived this morning, people started filling in session names on 5"x7" cards on the schedule pinboard: basically, if you wanted to run a session, you just had to get there before all the slots filled up. (Some later slots, like 6 P.M. slots, never quite filled up.)

I briefly considered holding a session on collaborative writing (i.e. fiction) projects in one of the empty slots, since I saw there was another session on NaNoWriMo, but I either chickened out or correctly anticipated my future lack of energy, however you want to look at it.

Some described it as a sort of un-conference, which made me wary: I've attended unconferences before and found that the lack of structure means a lack of direction: after an hour, the group finally figures out what they want to talk about, and then the session is over. But BarCamp Philly seemed very on-the-ball: organized, a good web site, and lots of chatter on twitter preceding the "sold-out" event (it was free, but limited to 200 participants).

Sessions I attended:

Web 2.0 and Higher Education (this was a mostly lame discussion of whether or not colleges should actively troll Facebook)
Perfect Pitch - Telling Your Story (about generating publicity for your company/project)
Web Standards (not about standards themselves, but about how to get buy-in and later enforce web standards)
Usability Testing (w/s/g anti-usability advocate)
Re-thinking .edu (mostly about technology in higher ed should come from the bottom-up, rather than top-down)

Some sessions were naturally better than others. I'm disappointed that I went to the first session, which was a real bust in my mind, when I could have caught Aaron Held's session on what it's like to run the comcast.net portal (with upwards of 40MM daily pageviews). Live and (slowly) learn: I don't think I've every been to a satisfying session with "web 2.0" in the title.

I ran into several people that I know through work and school. I talked to some cool new people, but also listened to a lot of lame ones. I'm afraid I mentioned the latter to one of the former, who may have thought I was insulting him. I need to do better to quash (or at least delay) my negativity and criticisms.

There's an after-party at National Mechanics this evening, though I'm not sure if I'll attend. I'm up for beer, but networking does not come naturally to me, especially with people who like looking at their iPhones more than they like talking to human beings.

***

The shin-dig at National Mechanics was excellent. We bought some food, some drinks, and then I talked to a guy I met earlier in the day while

well_lahdidah played Rock Band on a huge projection screen with other conference attendees.

Nov 4th at Phila Ward 08 Div 05

well_lahdidah is mad as hell about voting this morning. Not because I dragged her out of bed before she's usually awake, though, or the 60 minutes we spent in line.

The young woman at the polling place started by asking her for her ID.

"I'm not required to show an ID," she said. "I have voted here before."

Sure enough, they look her up and there is no "identification required" next to her name. She signs her name next to the signature on file in the registry. The young volunteer says, "Those signatures don't match at all." Which, of course, they did—but chances are the volunteer was either irritated at being challenged, or was eager to do her best to insure all votes were valid. (Either way, it's still not right.) After a short stand-off,

well_lahdidah finally gave in and coughed up her driver's license, primarily because there were a lot of people behind us still waiting in line, but she wasn't happy about it. "Of course the signatures match because they're both my signatures."

"Look," the young woman said, "Maybe next time you'd like to volunteer so you can see what it's like on this side of the table. We're always looking for more help."

OK, I'm going to be a jerk here, but don't get all righteous for your one day of volunteering if you can't get it right. One of the other polling officials actually recognized

well_lahdidah because we see him every time we vote (and we haven't missed one yet). This volunteer, on the other hand, we don't know from Adam and is suddenly telling us what she thinks the rules are? There are a lot of johnny-come-latelies about, and although I appreciate their newfound interest in the voting process, maybe they ought to be a little more seasoned before they jump in the fray.

***

The voters in line were so young compared to past elections, and I'm sure the majority were required to show ID as they had probably never voted at that polling place before. I joked that it was the first time the average voter age was lower than retirement age. A young woman ahead of us was shocked to discover there were only three voting booths, although that's the number of voting booths they've had at past elections.

Also, there was no waiting for people whose last names began N-Z. (I laughed aloud when a man asked, "what about P?") There was a line a block long for A-M. Where are all the Smiths and Williams?

Lagbot Hogs the Bandwidth
I have a story to share with you. It is called Lagbot Hogs the Bandwidth.

If you enjoy it, I might also recommend an older story called The Day Paris Hilton Wore the Wrong Shoe.