dr_tectonic, did you know that Z-man's favorite character is played by Simon Pegg?

Did you know that he asks me to make up a story about that character every night?

Did you know that, despite that practice, my English accent never really gets any better?

It is possible that we could arrange a showing of the movie this character is in, perhaps with dinner. We might even be able to arrange to play "Here Comes Science" if you haven't heard it yet.

But pray tell, do you know which character this is that he is obsessed with?

Interesting experiments on the traditional view of the behavior of audiences regarding the fold.

And if you don't know what that means, this might not be terribly interesting (though they define the concept in the article, so you won't be lost).

http://www.cxpartners.co.uk/thoughts/the_myth_of_the_page_fold_evidence_from_user_testing.htm

Just getting a plan out into text will help me organize. I also had a few more thoughts about it. And since that last post was one of my most commented upon in some time, maybe you're interested.

But certainly I don't know why you should be, so I'll hide it behind this cut.

( Read more... )

Well, while I am here I'll do the work -

and what's the Work?

To ease the pain of living.

Everything else, drunken

dumbshow.

-Allen Ginsberg

I want to discuss four terms: job, career, vocation, and work.
( Note: not really about my particular work, job, career, or vocation )

For $35 and your existing PC, you too can have over the air TV and a TiVo service.

http://www.nero.com/enu/promo-nero-liquidtv.html?NeroSID=7179a7bc3d384203362912b7a79c9149&utm_id=8764

I can't guarantee the awesome, because I only just bought it. Reviews say it's pretty good, but not a universal solution. It's only about as good as windows media center, only with the Tivo interface which some folks prefer. I'll include myself in the TiVo preference list, I think, after checking out my Dad's Windows 7 install--WMC is not awful, but not so fantastic that I want to learn a new interface.

Plus, the files recorded on your DVR are available to anyone--you can send them to friends, burn them to DVD, or pop them on your iPod.

Of course this is valid for satellite or cable, too. It comes with a year subscription, and it's hard to say how much it will cost after that--somewhere between $40/yr according to one report and the $100/yr that's the standard service.

Of course, once you're using your hardware you can do other stuff--increase hard drive capacity, use a UPnP routing service like PlayOn to play broadcast TV through your game console, etc.

Muahahahahahahaha....HA!

Included for $35: TV tuner through a USB port, settop antenna, remote control, TiVo software, 1 year subscription.

Or a horse race. You pick the analogy. But I sometimes like to look at politics purely from a "how do these folks succeed?" angle, rather than a "who do I want to succeed?" angle.

You don't have to look far to find analysts discussing the recent elections and the meaning or lack thereof.

Here's something I don't see mentioned--the economy will almost certainly be better a year from now than it is now.

Why? Well, not because I have some sincere belief in the ability of our government to pull us out of a slump. I don't even have a lot of faith in the ability of government to push us into one. But looking at how things are going, we're clearly seeing some improvement in things and based on history I expect that to continue into a post-recession bump. Jobs are going to stay down until companies think there are growth opportunities, and that will take a while. But we're talking six months, not eighteen months.

So regardless of what else happens in the next year, the economy will be better. And democrats, rightly or wrongly, will take credit for that.

Afghanistan is getting a lot of attention. I know that Iraq got a lot of attention for a long time, but I think we've learned a lot about dealing with an insurgency, and I think we'll start seeing something we can call an improvement in that situation in that time. Again, not because of a specific policy or idea I've heard, just because lots of people are thinking about it and my gut tells me whatever ideas bubble to the surface will probably begin to become effective in about 9 months.

Health care reform will pass in the next six months and the world will fail to end. It will be impossible to tell what the results are, though, because the changes will be so slow to take effect that we'll still be scratching our heads about it a year from now. The issue will be neutral--not a point to rally against since it's a done deal, but not a point to rally for since it's promises will not yet be fulfilled. Partisans and ideologues will rant in the usual ways, but everyday people will struggle to find it a relevant issue in a year.

It's hard to say what else will happen, but I think there are really good odds that those three black marks the democrats are struggling under will begin to lift. This means that the light the Republicans are seeing right now may well be short-lived. This is, I believe, the Obama administration's low point--again, barring the unpredictable stuff that will come up in the next 12 months, of which there will be plenty.

So the question to Republicans is not how to capitalize on the recent wins in specific issues, but rather how to use these wins to reclaim an appearance of relevance. There is an ability on the part of Republicans to fire up extremist reactions--see "the Palin effect" or recent town hall meetings around health care reform--but I don't think that allows the Republicans to prove relevance. If anything, the opposite.

There are several issues Republicans can lay claim to. One is a backlash against social change like gay marriage. If they can lay claim to the core concept behind "compassionate conservatism" then I think they can show that they are concerned because they care, not because they hate. This means finding a tone on traditional social values that isn't all vitriol. Certainly this can't be hard?

Another issue is the deficit and spending. Frankly, this is a bit of a shell game. Republicans, were they in power, would reduce social spending and increase military spending and the deficit would be the same. Still, it's a topic they have a long history of addressing (despite some of the biggest spenders of all time--Reagan and GW Bush--having led the party) and it should get them some traction.

Democrats, on the other hand, should be finding a way to show results in tangible terms without casting things so oddly that they seem out of touch. Having grand ideas and big criticisms are fine when you're out of power, but while you're in power you need to show some results. This means getting Afghanistan really, really right. Whatever that means, whatever that looks like.

It also means nurturing the economy, and trying to cut spending to blunt the Republican blade on deficit attacks. It will be hard--despite the fact that much of these deficits were inherited and the stimulus package would have been just as costly (tax cuts instead of direct spending) in Republican hands, they are the "tax and spend" party and they have to be especially careful about that.

But mostly both parties need to find a way to show leadership to whatever challenges will come up unexpectedly. Whoever can lay claim to the mantle of "statesman" more will have the edge, barring any huge missteps.

I just submitted this for the bulletin after getting approval from various folks:

As a way to engage Advent and explore the mystery of the incarnation, before mass on the four Sundays of advent there will be a review of the introduction or birth narratives in each Gospel. We will explore our own responses to what the evangelists are saying about christology and the Church in their first one or two chapters. It will be from 10-10:45 in room XXX and child care is available in the nursery at that time. The schedule is as follows: Nov 29, Matthew 1 and 2; Dec 6, Mark 1; Dec 13, Luke 1 and 2; Dec 20, John 1. Please try to read the section before the meeting. Call Neal Gamache with questions.

Anyone who wants to join in is welcome for this and mass following at 11th and Fillmore. I'll be facilitating more than leading the discussion, since I'm hardly an expert--and it's my hope some of the theology professors or Iliff theology graduates might attend. Even without that, I think a sort of reader response approach would be fruitful.

... or perhaps just a waystation.

I just want to re-iterate how many options there are out there. Making an informed choice is so much work that many times it seemed like it would have been easier to simply pull the trigger on the first thing that came to our attention. But that's not our style.

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I hadn't heard of the paleolithic diet before. So I read this summary.

Is it just me or does it seem like the first few sentences are demonstrably incorrect? I don't have the energy to the research right now, but from random memories of hunter-gatherer societies on TV documentaries, I don't remember straight teeth.

Unless he means that people with bad eyesight, poor teeth, and heart disease die so quickly that it's like they're not really part of the culture? And what about starvation and malnutrition-based disease like scurvy? I'm pretty sure that was a real health risk.

And where are the recommendations for grubs and insects? Rosehips?

I'm just plain skeptical about the blanket "let's get back to nature" thing, because in ultra-low-tech societies, people died. Young and often. There might be things that technology has really screwed up for us, things we might want to look at closely even though we've been doing things that way a long time. But just to set paleolithic culture as a model for today's life?

How about this: in addition to changing your diet this way, also walk 20 miles a day, carrying everything you own--including your kids who can't yet keep up the pace.

But this one goes out the Dignity Denver community that shares the church with my community.

According to this article, NVidia wants to create a cloud service that is capable of acting as your video card.

The article points out the major bottleneck here (aside from getting the technology right--for the moment let's assume they can pull it off eventually): you're trading a thinner client for more bandwidth. Does that bandwidth exist, especially in the wireless world?

However, given the fact that we're trying to cram more technology into smaller and smaller spaces (and where are my prescription glasses that are also a HUD with the processors, microphone, speakers, and cellular connection build into the legs, anyway?) outsourcing complex and constantly changing pieces of technology to "the cloud" makes a lot of sense.

Also, think about this: online games or AutoCad applictions could install their own implementation of the cloud graphics processing system. They could optimize the configuration for exactly their needs, then include it as part of the package, bringing down the minimum specs on the client machine. Game console manufacturers could do something similar.

This is probably an idea ahead of its time. Probably we need most consumers to have access to 4G wireless networks and residential fiber-optic lines before this can really gain traction, which I think is maybe 5 years away unless you live in a major market (in which case you already have those things).

Meet the Nook, produced by the great Satan, B&N.

It's a $260 e-book reader. Amongst other features:

• Android OS (which means the possibility of an ebook App store)


• WiFi


• Mp3 player


• Lending books to other Nook users

The big question: can you buy a waterproof case so you can read it in the bathtub?

(OK, truth be told, I never read in the bathtub. But wouldn't it be cool if you could?)

Interestingly, it seems like stuff like this could really kill bookstores the same way music stores died. I have a hard time being overly sentimental about that--there are still specialty music stores, and there will still be specialty bookstores.

But the really exciting thing could be that the same way teh Intarwebs became a way for small, independent bands to produce and distribute their own music, so this could become a good way for authors to produce and distribute their own work. Mind you, a good musician is not necessarily a good producer, and so too a good author is not necessarily a good designer. But such collaboration should be possible, making books more prolific and cheaper.

Heck, also, I think people could begin to experiment more successfully with new formats that fit this new reader better, just as the 250-400 page novel fit the paperback pretty well and so folks tended to produce and publish work in that format.

I hope it's successful. Of course, I also hope there's an open-source version that has a chance in hell of gaining traction, rather than the big guys (Amazon, B&N) owning this stuff.

Now that you have an idea of where to get content from, you need to get a sense of how you watch that content on your TV. For this, it's a question of direct play-and-forget streaming (be it from teh Intarwebs or good old fashioned radio waves), capture and replay (download or DVR), or physical media (DVD, Bluray, etc.).

I will leave aside the question of which kind of TV to use as that complicates matters significantly. I'm the example here, and I already have a TV I intend to use. It gets HD input from a DVI port or component in, but no HDMI input, and no digital tuner built-in because when we bought it we thought we'd never go back to broadcast signals.

This is already shaping what we can do, but it's not so terribly limiting. Which means another long list of options, this time for hardware, which I'll hide behind a cut.

( Are Viagra commercials only optimized for software? )

Decisions, decisions.

Oh my dear God, there are a lot of ways to get media into your home.

This makes sense: people are willing to pay money for media. Ergo, many people want to come up with their own way to get a chunk of that money. And if you're offering exactly the same service, the only option to differentiate yourself is quality of service and price. There's only so many ways to vary that, so people try to focus on succeeding in different areas. This is all very predictable.

But it results in very confusing decision-making.

Behind the cut lies the current state of our research into this area. Advice is fine (and already received in some cases--thanks chaosqueen42 and many others) and welcome, but this is more to get a snapshot of what we've learned and the pluses and minuses.

( Media schmedia )

There's a boy in a flying saucer floating out over the plains this afternoon.

25mph, capable of getting up to 10,000'. Don't be too shocked by that elevation, remember it's Colorado. My car has gotten significantly higher in elevation than that. Still, that's a 6 year old boy thousands of feet above the ground.

In a shiny, silver, helium-filled flying saucer.

You are now free to boggle about teh Intarwebs.

o.0

Update: balloon landed, boy was not inside. The boy's condition at this point will either be really good (was never really in balloon or jumped out quickly and is currently hiding in the park avoiding punishment) or really bad (he fell out at thousands of feet).

For anyone who was curious what writing for the web will look like in... um... some unspecified span of time, here's a nice overview.

He was a bad cartographer and a brutal proponent of slavery and exploitation. In order to fund his own fame, power, and notoriety he led a society that had been fueled on war and conquest for 800 years to a new territory unencumbered by treaties or alliances. As a result of his arrival, even if no one had followed him and he had only stayed a short time, millions died from disease and entire cultures disappeared.

He wasn't the first one here by any measure, nor was he the most successful European colonist, conquistador, or explorer. Even to the end of his life he never believed he had discovered a new continent, but that he had created settlements in east Asia.

But his intent was always to build a trade route, to bring together economies and cultures. And even if his intentions were far from noble, he accomplished that, and that correspondence produced dramatic and tumultuous transformations in Europe, Africa, and the Americas.

So mock him, mourn the lives and lifestyles that were lost, hate his greed and his selfishness. But you cannot forget that his is one of the few examples where one man can pick a place and time and shape the future in dramatic ways. If he had sailed for Portugal or Venice or France the world would be a different place; so too if he had failed, and Europe found the New World a century later, after the sinking of the Spanish Armada, which itself would never have existed in quite so grand a fitting without the New World's gold.

Though it seems clear he would not have felt too much guilt over the death of non-Christians, his genocide was inadvertent and unknown to him. Still, that depopulation created the concept of a frontier--a place to find and lay claim to because so few were using it. The only other place to have this characteristic--Australia--was smaller and its arable land and resources were much less significant. North America was a once-in-history situation in terms of the scope of the frontier and the power that came from shaping it.

It was that spirit of frontier and space to tame that fueled institutionalized slavery on one hand and freedom on the other. You could not have Manifest Destiny without the depopulation of the Americas, and you could not have the massive immigration, vast resource exploitation, and characteristic rugged individualism without Manifest Destiny. In short, you could not have America.

Christopher Columbus was no hero, and we should not honor him as one. But neither can we wish him away--it is impossible to imagine our world without his life, and it is a rare thing to find that in any historical figure. To wish away his life and the changes he brought is like trying to wish away Hellenistic culture, the Ming Dynasty, or the Koran. While it's not only his accolades we should be promoting today, it is correct that it should be his name that this occasion bears.

Today let's remember and honor the things that happened, the people who died, and the way the world was transformed over the last 500 years. Let's not forget where the world got those stains or whose labor made it, but for better or worse it's our world and for all its wear, rips, and patched-over holes I like it here. So should you.

The winners of Nikon's Small World Contest are on display at Wired.

They are judged on both scientific and artistic merit. I'm sure some artist or scientist out there disagrees vehemently.

My favorite is "Crystals of influenza virus neuraminidase isolated from terns (14x)." What's yours?

Of course, it's also interesting to see how tastes and technology have changed over the 35 years on display.

Although I think most of us can agree that the phrase "speaking truth to power" is tired and poorly used, I suspect we can also see it's appeal. You think of some everyday person coming before a council of ambiguously hostile, powerful people and telling them something. This something is completely ordinary and known to everyone, but with such plain talk the officials suddenly see as clearly as everyone else what they must do, and the world is made right because all the machinations and power-plays are blown away in the face of a burst of desire to do what is right, based on The Truth™.

"Senators, you've got to understand--steel men are starving in Pittsburgh, and they're looking to you for help. You've got to raise steel tariffs, you've got to raise them high, and you've got to raise them now!"

There's a bravery, almost a martyrdom, in that scene. I'm sure your archetypal version varies a bit from mine, but the high-flung emotion is the same. It's that emotion--a mix of outrage, self-righteousness, and defiance--that justifies the act. Which is of course why I'm distasteful of the concept, as emotional justifications are really appropriate to the realm of social, not societal, discourse. As with all clichés, it has also suffered a dramatic watering down due to being applied to situations where it doesn't quite fit.

I don't want to over-trivialize real life incarnations of this archetype. Certainly there comes a time when someone has to say something counter to the prevailing trends or interests of those who are making the decisions. Every once in a while it's even effective to do so in a dramatic way (although I'm naturally skeptical of that tendency).

Doing this, dramatically or privately, usually comes with some personal risk, because as much as it could change the course of events, it could also eject you from the mainstream of thought and push you, in the minds of those who make the decisions, to the margins of the discussion. Effectively, this is the act of scraping together what little clout you have and going all in, hoping that you've picked the right moment and the right people on which to bet, knowing that if you lose this gambit you're out of the game. It's easier and safer to sit back, scowl, and shake your head from the corner, so we appreciate those who come out of their comfort zone to try to make the world a better place.

But having said all that, speaking truth to power is really quite easy. Finding a venue or occasion for it is a bit tricky, and certainly there's more than usual amount of stage fright, but your only obligation is to tell these people the truth as you see it. How does this relate to other points of view, or other perspectives? Are there ideas or circumstances that should mitigate what is being presented? Speaking truth to power is always about telling the powerful the simple truth, not the complex, muddy world of different contexts.

Imagine the defiant everyman walking the senators through an economic analysis of Pennsylvania's steel industry in the global marketplace. Is that what people mean when they talk about speaking truth to power? Doubtful.

And even if there is no nuance to be lost through this simplification, the truth-teller is able to walk away from what must be implemented. What are the consequences? What about the details of the response to this truth? That's what the people in power are for--armed with the truth, they can now carry the cause to where it needs to go.

That's nice and all, but if you want to impress me, here's a better trick: speaking truth to the powerless.

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So rg_rothko is out to dinner with chaosqueen42 tonight, so I had a night in with the kids.

So dinner was orzo with steamed broccoli, shrimp, and orzo. The dressing was olive oil, white wine vinegar, garlic, parsley, and dill. To mine I added red onion and bleu cheese. The meal cried out for feta, but we had none of that and the bleu cheese is really nice and needs to be eaten.

It was delicious, but I couldn't help but be glad no one I wanted to kiss deeply would be around for a few hours. (Hence "undate.")

Then Z-man said, "I want s'mores!"

I rummaged around for a while to prove to him (and myself) what I was already pretty sure of--we had marshmallows but no chocolate bars and the graham crackers we had were only a handful of small sticks.

I said, "But we could make brownies. We could put the marshmallows on top of the brownies."

He said, "We could put M&Ms on the marshmallows. They're chocolate."

I said, "We could make the remaining graham cracker pieces into crumbs and put that on top."

It turned out I couldn't find where rg_rothko hid the M&Ms. In the search I turned up a few older pieces of chocolate.

So we had brownies with marshmallows, chopped chocolate bar, and graham cracker crumbs on top.

The cooking time put the kids actually asleep about 45 minutes later than I wanted, but it was a great night for food.