May 19th, 2008
Herding Cats vs. Holding Kittens
Today, I spent almost ten hours performing a rather silly task. I re-architected a wiki. I can already hear the geeks among you giggling. Wikis don’t have architecture, of course. They’re completely flat with no directories, no hierarchy… just a bunch of pages all mashed up in one big stew pot and crosslinked to hell. They’re organic and ever-changing—anybody can go in at any time and add a bit here, revise a bit there, make a new page… that’s the whole point. Re-architecting a wiki, therefore, is like herding the proverbial cats. It’s almost an oxymoron.
And I felt like a moron doing it. But I promised I would. Actually, I promised I would deliver it weeks ago, and by this morning my boss was almost out of patience. So I hunkered down and spent the entire day trying to impose a hierarchy on a couple hundred half-baked, frequently contradictory, often obsolete and always poorly organized pages of text. Building a castle out of Jell-O, if you will. Granted, that wiki was a mess, and if the plan I came up with is successfully implemented, it won’t be a mess anymore. So I suppose there was value… unless it becomes a mess again, and it will. Entropy, thy name is wiki. Meanwhile, I didn’t listen to a single note of music today. I didn’t write, I didn’t walk, I didn’t do anything even remotely enjoyable until I got home at about 8:00. I just wikied my iki off.
On the other hand, this is what my wife did today: she cuddled kittens. Seventeen itty bitty purring mewing cute as anything kittens. Messy, sure, but c’mon… KITTENS!!! Man, life is so unfair. I think I’m going to make a demand at work tomorrow: I want kittens in my cube! Live ones, mind you, not those drippy motivational posters. No kittens, no work! Give me purring or give me death! Dogs are fine too… Puppies for productivity! No labor without labs! Atta-boy! Atta-boy! Let’s start a revolution! Who’s with me?
May 16th, 2008
Fo’s Favorite Books(tore)
My day job is located in a nondescript quadrangle of office buildings, wedged in between Moffett Field, the mysterious Onizuka Air Force Station and Lockheed in Sunnyvale, California.
I hate working in Sunnyvale.
It’s too far from home, for one thing (about an hour each way). And there is nothing—NOTHING—within walking distance of my office except for fenced-in military facilities with big signs reading NO PHOTOGRAPHY posted every few yards, or, if you’re willing to walk for a long time, more office buildings exactly like mine. There are some good places for lunch in town, if you don’t mind driving AND dealing with a huge, noisy crowd. Or there are plenty of crappy places for lunch, but one has to drive to those too. Feh.
But there is one thing about Sunnyvale I just love: Leigh’s Favorite Books on Murphy Street, just down the block from those good but crowded restaurants and right across the street from what must be the biggest collection of porno mags on the peninsula. But I digress…
Leigh’s is the sort of cozy new-and-used book nook that used to be easy to find, and now is rare as hen’s teeth. But unlike a lot of those older shops, Leigh’s doesn’t greet you with chaos and musty odors. You won’t find foxing on the pages or random towers of books in the middle of the floor. What you will find is a clean, welcoming room with an eclectic selection of quirky new titles and used books in fine condition. It’s a bit tight in the rear stacks but never oppressive, as light streams in through the big front window.
I’ve only gone to Leigh’s around lunchtime on Fridays, so I’ve only met one staff member, who I presume to be Leigh herself. She’s very friendly, usually has a comment on the books I bring to the counter, and always brightens my day. It’s obvious that she knows her stock intimately, another rarity in these days of giant chain stores.
There’s a small but very well-chosen assortment of new titles in the front of the store, which includes the hot bestsellers everyone’s talking about, a few book-club stalwarts, and several things you’ve never heard of before [Do NOT ignore these! They’re usually gems]. The rest of the store covers a lot of ground in very little space, and reflects the same choosy, offbeat tastes as the new-book displays. Look closely and you’ll even find a section for supernatural romances. I usually make a beeline for the tiny music section, and darned if there isn’t always something there I want. Today I wandered in expecting just to browse (ha!) and came out with four lovely little books, including one long out-of-print collection of jazz essays and a nifty-looking overview of contemporary science.
Thanks, Leigh! You rock.
March 17th, 2008
Jazz and the Brain
Scientists from Johns Hopkins University and the National Institutes of Health have conducted a unique study of brain activity during jazz improvisation, and found that soloing both switches off inhibitions and activates centers of self-expression. The research, by Dr. Charles J. Limb of Johns Hopkins (a jazz saxophonist himself) and Dr. Allen R. Braun of NIH, was recently published in the online journal PLoS One, part of the open-access Public Library of Science.
A summary of the study elaborates…
Limb and Braun then analyzed the brain scans. Since the brain areas activated during memorized playing are parts that tend to be active during any kind of piano playing, the researchers subtracted those images from ones taken during improvisation. Left only with brain activity unique to improvisation, the scientists saw strikingly similar patterns, regardless of whether the musicians were doing simple improvisation on the C-major scale or playing more complex tunes with the jazz quartet.
The scientists found that a region of the brain known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a broad portion of the front of the brain that extends to the sides, showed a slowdown in activity during improvisation. This area has been linked to planned actions and self-censoring, such as carefully deciding what words you might say at a job interview. Shutting down this area could lead to lowered inhibitions, Limb suggests.
The researchers also saw increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, which sits in the center of the brain’s frontal lobe. This area has been linked with self-expression and activities that convey individuality, such as telling a story about yourself.
“Jazz is often described as being an extremely individualistic art form. You can figure out which jazz musician is playing because one person’s improvisation sounds only like him or her,” says Limb. “What we think is happening is when you’re telling your own musical story, you’re shutting down impulses that might impede the flow of novel ideas.”
- Read the full ScienceDaily article at www.sciencedaily.com
- Read the original research paper at www.plosone.org
January 21st, 2008
And now for a commercial…
January 4th, 2008
“This Was the Moment…”
Below are some excerpts from Barack Obama’s victory speech last night following the Iowa Democratic Caucus. I will have more to say in the next few days, but for now I think this will suffice:
[T]he time has come to move beyond the bitterness and pettiness and anger that’s consumed Washington; to end the political strategy that’s been all about division and instead make it about addition - to build a coalition for change that stretches through Red States and Blue States. Because that’s how we’ll win in November, and that’s how we’ll finally meet the challenges that we face as a nation.
We are choosing hope over fear. We’re choosing unity over division, and sending a powerful message that change is coming to America.
[...]
The time has come for a President who will be honest about the choices and the challenges we face; who will listen to you and learn from you even when we disagree; who won’t just tell you what you want to hear, but what you need to know. And in New Hampshire, if you give me the same chance that Iowa did tonight, I will be that president for America.
[...]
I know how hard it is. It comes with little sleep, little pay, and a lot of sacrifice. There are days of disappointment, but sometimes, just sometimes, there are nights like this—a night that, years from now, when we’ve made the changes we believe in; when more families can afford to see a doctor; when our children inherit a planet that’s a little cleaner and safer; when the world sees America differently, and America sees itself as a nation less divided and more united; you’ll be able look back with pride and say that this was the moment when it all began.
This was the moment when the improbable beat what Washington always said was inevitable.
This was the moment when we tore down barriers that have divided us for too long—when we rallied people of all parties and ages to a common cause; when we finally gave Americans who’d never participated in politics a reason to stand up and to do so.
This was the moment when we finally beat back the politics of fear, and doubt, and cynicism; the politics where we tear each other down instead of lifting this country up.
This was the moment.
Years from now, you’ll look back and you’ll say that this was the moment—this was the place—where America remembered what it means to hope.
For many months, we’ve been teased, even derided for talking about hope.
But we always knew that hope is not blind optimism. It’s not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It’s not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it, and to fight for it.
[...]
Hope is what led a band of colonists to rise up against an empire; what led the greatest of generations to free a continent and heal a nation; what led young women and young men to sit at lunch counters and brave fire hoses and march through Selma and Montgomery for freedom’s cause.
Hope is what led me here today—with a father from Kenya; a mother from Kansas; and a story that could only happen in the United States of America. Hope is the bedrock of this nation; the belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us; by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is; who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.
That is what we started here in Iowa, and that is the message we can now carry to New Hampshire and beyond; the same message we had when we were up and when we were down; the one that can change this country brick by brick, block by block, calloused hand by calloused hand—that together, ordinary people can do extraordinary things; because we are not a collection of Red States and Blue States, we are the United States of America; and at this moment, in this election, we are ready to believe again.
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