Category: Uncategorized

Conversation 2.0: Annotated vs. interrupted

Everybody has a smart phone these days, which means that everybody is constantly within hailing distance of Wikipedia.

Wikipedia, Settler of Disputes, Furnisher of Backstory, and Destroyer of Conversations.

You start with two people talking over lunch about who played the Riddler on Batman, and the next thing you know, one of them is nose-down, running silent, and plowing the prosy deep. By the time he emerges triumphant with Frank Gorshin in his teeth, the conversation is dead, and poor Frank must float slowly back to the page he came from.

I was in one of these conversations the other night. Long after we determined the length of the Triassic, or whatever it was, my interlocutor was lost in some other dark gallery, bewitched and out of reach. I took the opportunity to order another beer.

The interrupted conversation is a common enough complaint (and likely to get much more common). But there is a pleasant flip-side to the interrupted conversation: the annotated conversation. I was in one of these over lunch earlier this week. We were talking about sociology and cultural concepts of fairness and appropriate behavior. Matt had some good stories, but couldn’t quite remember a key phrase. After lunch, he sent us this email.

FYI, the phrase I was looking for at lunch today was “polite fiction”. This is the passage that I remember reading:

One of my favorite concepts in anthropology is that of the polite fiction. It’s something nobody believes, but we all pretend to because it makes life so much easier. My favorite example was of a Pygmy couple. Pygmy divorce involves quite literally breaking up the home: the couple tears apart their house (it’s easy – the houses are made of leaves) and once it’s down, the union is dissolved. One anthropologist was watching a long-married couple have a fight. It escalated until the wife threatened to leave, and the husband yelled something along the lines of “Fine!” and there was nothing the wife could do but start tearing down the house. She began tearing the roof off, clearly miserable. The husband looked wretched too, but at this point neither could back down without losing face and by now the whole village was watching.

Finally, the husband called out the Pygmy equivalent of “You’re right, honey! The roof is dirty! It’ll look much better once we get those leaves washed!” The two of them started carrying leaves down to the river, soon with the help of the whole village, and then washed and rebuilt the whole roof. When the anthropologist later discreetly asked how often one washes the roof, everyone looked at him like he was a complete doofus.

For the not-work-safe context this came from, see this URL:
http://www.improvresourcecenter.com/mb/tpcs1.php#post40128

Oh, and here’s the parable I tried to tell:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Workers_in_the_Vineyard

This little note was a real gift. It was a reminder of an interesting conversation, and a resource for future ones (not to mention being blog fodder). And it didn’t interrupt the friendly flow of conversation. Rather, it recalled it after the fact. I love the Annotated Conversation. We’ll be seeing a lot more of those too.

Have you had any?

All software is a service now

One of the fun things about using an online service, say something like Gmail or LibraryThing, is that it gets better when you’re not using it. Software that you install doesn’t have this property. Or it hasn’t until very recently.

Increasingly, even the software that lives on your computer makes it easy to see if you’re due for an update. That’s good, but given a few dozen applications, it gets to be a burden to remember to check for updates and then dutifully install them. The web browsers Google Chrome and Firefox try to remove you from the equation by upgrading themselves automatically.

We’re also seeing a rising tide of programs whose job it is to act like software sheepdogs, nipping at the heels of all your programs and telling you when they get out of line. From MakeUseOf I learned about AppUpdater, a program that looks at all your other programs and makes recommendations about what you should upgrade. The FileHippo Update Checker does much the same thing. And on the Google Operating System blog I learned about the Secunia Personal Software Inspector which is similar to the others, but with a focus on keeping your computer securely up-to-date with all the latest patches.

It’s easy enough to see where this is all headed. Whether you browse to your software on a web site or install it on your hard drive with your bare hands, it will thereafter be kept continuously up-to-date. When you buy software, you’re no longer buying a bushel of bits, but something more like a promise to behave a certain way for a certain amount of time. All software is a service now.

Pen spinning

When I was in fourth grade, I thought I was pretty darn good at the Standing Broad Jump. I would practice with a yardstick, and after every jump I would look back and admire the great distance I had flown. I had to practice because I was representing Mrs. Murphy’s class on Field Day, the day in spring when all the kids would empty onto the playing fields for competitions and popcorn eating.

I sucked at Standing Broad Jump, and it took Field Day for me to learn that.

When you don’t see what your peers are up to, you can delude yourself about how good you are. Contrariwise, when you are in constant contact with your peers, competing and trading tips, your community can improve with startling speed. Tightly linked communities of practice are achieving astonishing results. Throw in a few web sites, some Facebook, some YouTube, some Yahoo Groups, and bang! you’ve got the giantest giant pumpkins you ever saw. These turbocharged web communities are among the great wonders of our age.

And, by the way, can you spin a pen on your thumb? Think you’re pretty good at it? Watch this video and you’ll see you suck as bad as Standing Broad Jump Fourth Grade Ned.

Wow. This may be some kind of high point of our civilization.

Spotted on MakeUseOf.com.

The forgettable decade

On New Year’s Day, I speculated (via Twitter) that we’ve now made it through the better part of this decade without giving it a single clear name. And not for lack of trying… we’ve seen suggestions ranging from the Noughties to the Zeroes. The point is that none of these has stuck in the popular imagination. VH1 has a series of TV shows variously called “I Love the 80s” and “I Love the 90s”. What do they call the show about this decade? I Love the New Millennium. This name, I feel, will reveal certain flaws over time.

Martin Wattenberg replied to my Twitter message, “And lacking a name for the decade, no one talks about it. Sapir-Whorf redux?” I had just been pondering this. Sapir-Whorf says that the nature of our thinking is colored by the nature of our language. So, if the linguistic “handle” for the First Decade is particularly slippery, perhaps it will transitively render the things that happened that decade as less memorable.

It’s been a newsworthy decade by any measure, but I can’t help but wonder if, historically speaking, George W. Bush will get off easier than otherwise because he had the good fortune to stumble into an exceptionally forgettable decade.

Does anybody know of languages where the First Decade doesn’t present any linguistic difficulties? Presumably in such a language the first decade of each century would show to better effect in the history books.

Any port in a storm: Prius powers house

My family was up visiting my wife’s uncle in Maine this weekend. He told us some harrowing stories: for the better part of a week, his house in York was without power after the recent ice storm (the lights were on in time for our visit, mercifully). A few hours without power can be a charming, boardgame ‘n’ candles filled trip into the nineteenth century, something like a flying visit to the local historically themed attraction. But more than a day without electricity in Maine in the winter is a serious hardship. Most of us have become quite used to the twenty-first century by now.

It quickly became impossible to buy an electrical generator at any price. But Wendy’s Uncle Pete was lucky enough to have a little generator for his old boat from his sailing days. He was able to wire it into the house and keep minimal services online (fridge, furnace, aluminum smelter). Because I still had Pete’s story in my ears, I was particularly interested in the following item from the NY Times Green Inc. blog: Prius: It’s Not Just a Car, It’s an Emergency Generator. It’s the story of a guy who wired his hybrid car into his house. It’s a portent of the coming decentralized grid. Get ready!

House powers car, that’s not a story. But car powers house, now THAT’S a story.

Rainforest diversity

In the beasts of the tropical rainforest we see a riot of color and shape like no other place on earth. This lovely poster calls attention to some of the remarkable species found in the modern rainforest.

loggers

Here we see arrayed everything from the small and reclusive Franklin 3600 to the swaggering John Deere Feller/Buncher (shown here in a florid courtship display). The enormous blue “Ripper” Caterpillar may have savage-looking mouth parts, but we should remember that this gentle giant is a vegetarian.

Sadly, biologists are now concerned that time may be growing short for these lovely lumbering beasts. Habitat destruction is shrinking their wild ranges, although there is some evidence that, when the last tree is plucked, they may be able to switch their diet to houses.

(I saw this on a fun blog that I just came across called Inspire me, now!)

A day in the life of FedEx

All roads lead to Rome, but all skyways lead to Memphis. Watch this video and you’ll see what I mean. I defy you not to think of ants crawling into an ant hill.

You’re watching 25 hours worth of FedEx flights, and there’s no better way to understand the hub-and-spoke nature of the business. Everything they ship (almost everything) gets routed through Memphis, regardless of its ultimate destination. As you watch this counterintuitive stroke of logistical legerdemain, remember that FedEx founder Fred Smith is the guy who invented the whole hub-and-spoke idea. It’s the same idea that was adopted by every airline and ultimately sent you through Minneapolis on your way from Schenectady to St. Louis. Fortunately, overnight packages don’t mind the layover in Memphis.

If you liked this video, watch the visualization of flight deviations around a Memphis thunderstorm.

Labels and authenticity: How true is a true name?

Have you ever been walking on Wall Street and realized you were walking on Wall Street?

When I was in college, I spent a few touristic days in Bruges, Belgium. While strolling along the old cobblestones one night, I suddenly realized that the street name “Langestraat,” which sounded so exotic to my American ears, simply meant Long Street. The idea hit me with great force. I stopped walking and looked it up and down. Long Street. Everything about that town was so ancient and lovely, dripping with medieval ornament like some Flemish Disneyland. But this street name was a fraud… why there was nothing to it. The street was long so they called it Long Street. The church was old, so they called it Old Church. Plain old names! I had paid good tourist money for my exotic artifice, and here it was evaporating before my eyes.

We want from names two things: meaning and magic. The first is a consequence and the second is a sound, but it’s easy to forget how tangled together these two things are. This entanglement puts me in mind of Häagen-Dazs, the ice cream brand with the fanciful and fabricated name. To their credit, they tell you right on their web site that company founder Reuben Mattus “called his new brand Häagen-Dazs, to convey an aura of the old-world traditions and craftsmanship.” It doesn’t mean anything. Or rather, it means what it sounds. And it has an unbreakable code: you’ll never find out that it means old cheese in Dutch, or that Messrs. Häagen and Dazs were Nazi collaborators. The name is a pure confection. But stack it up next next to a utilitarian name like Langestraat and it doesn’t fare well. The beauty of Langestraat, as I came to appreciate, is in its tough old bones, whereas Häagen-Dazs simply melts away.

One of my favorite blogs, Strange Maps, has a post on the Atlas of True Names. Some researchers in Germany have put together an atlas that dwells on the “deep etymology” of place names. Dublin becomes Blackpool, London becomes Hillfort, and so on. Even if some of the etymology is dubious, as is so often the case, it’s good fun. Back in North America, I have often wondered why we kept the transliterations of Indian place names but translated the names of many Native Americans. So we say Mississippi, not “Great River”, but we say Sitting Bull, not Ta-Tanka I-Yotank. Which version has more magic?

One final note before closing: from Douglas Hofstadter’s Le Ton beau de Marot, I learned about Anglish, the imagined modern language that might be spoken in England had William the Conqueror been merely William the Unsuccessful. Pluck out the Greek and Latin and you end up with a more “self-evident” language, or so goes the theory. Writer Poul Anderson even wrote a treatise on atomic theory in Anglish which he called Uncleftish Beholding. Unclefts are small motes that no knife can cut. Get it?

MontyPython’s YouTube Channel

Look, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, I really am, but Monty Python now has their own YouTube channel. You may commence wasting time now. As they say in their intro video, “For three years, you YouTubers have been ripping us off…” But now, they’ve decided to put authorized high quality videos directly on YouTube. Their motivation is an increasingly common one in this age: they might as well make some money selling trinkets and t-shirts around the edges of their work rather that be bitter and make no money at all.

At this moment only 31 videos have been posted, but some of them are truly from the Greatest Hits collection: Silly Walks, Biggus Dickus from Life of Brian, and the Witch Village from Holy Grail. I imagine, or at least I hope, the plan is to add steadily to this collection.

There are also a few pieces like Eric Idle on what a pain it is to write with John Cleese.

But the one I’ll leave you with is the The Four Yorkshiremen.

“We were evicted from our hole in the ground.”

Earliest sunset 2008

Where I live, yesterday marked the earliest sunset. From now until summer, you’ll get more afternoon for your money. It’s cold and dark in New England. I always resent the sunlight when it goes vacationing in the southern hemisphere, but I am always happy to welcome it back. Nice Sun… make yourself comfortable. Shall I get you a towel and lounge chair?

I have come to think of this, along with Groundhog Day, as one of my favorite faux-holidays. It needs a name, though. Peak Dusk? Dark High Water Mark? Twilight of the Twilights? The Turn? I like the fact that it appears on different days in different places. If you lived in San Diego, you’d be celebrating on December 3rd.

Anyway, I was able to find a nifty iPhone application to feed my obsession with the sun’s progress: the Vela Design Group’s VelaClock. It provides a lot of information on the rising and setting of the sun and moon (including azimuth), and, charmingly, it works off your exact location based on the GPS unit.