tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8466111828569142262024-03-13T13:10:09.280-07:00Herding BatsDingbathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11058246707981617915noreply@blogger.comBlogger180125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846611182856914226.post-30757672702777396122015-12-23T08:30:00.002-08:002015-12-23T08:32:13.800-08:00Copyright law would be easy if it wasn't for all the damn creativityJames Grimmelmann, an always excellent writer and thinker on copyright, has written an <a href="http://2d.laboratorium.net/post/135400481820/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-computer-generated-work">article on computer-authored works</a>, which you should totally read. (I'll wait....)<br />
<br />
Broadly speaking, I’m in agreement with Grimmelmann’s argument, which is pretty well summed up in his opening sentences: “Copyright law doesn’t recognize computer programs as authors, and it shouldn’t. Some day it might make sense to, but if that day ever comes, copyright will be the least of our concerns.” The problem is, artists can and do very deliberately attempt to give computers creative agency, challenging the very notion of human creativity—and Grimmelmann's examples don't fully reckon with this. I'll quibble with a few things along the way, but the important thing is to consider a more challenging case: George Lewis’s computer program <i>Voyager</i>.<br />
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Briefly, Grimmelmann considers (and rejects) four possible circumstances under which computers might plausibly be considered to “create” a work: digital copies, digital works, algorithmic creation, sequential creation, and random creation.” Three of these (digital copies, digital works, and sequential creation) he correctly treats as trivial use of computers as tools for human creativity. It is in his consideration of algorithmic creation and random creation that his analysis does not cut deep enough.<br />
<br />
First, it’s necessary to collapse a few distinctions and clarify a few understandings: an algorithm is a set of instructions, but it is not (necessarily) “a process whose steps are completely explicit.”[7] That’s not a bad description of a computer program, but an algorithm can be much more flexible. It’s trite but instructive to think of algorithms as recipes: in ingredients (“5 apples”) algorithms can allow for a variety of inputs (imagine different varieties of apples, for example). This, crucially, allows for unexpected results from algorithmic execution.<br />
<br />
Secondly, “randomness” is not an accurate category for discussion of computer-created works. Randomness indicates either a deterministic process occurring at a scale too fine to measure, or a provably random process like radioactive decay, where the distribution of discrete events can be probabilistically predicted over time, but within any given timeframe their occurrence or non-occurrence is unpredictable (cite: I asked a physicist!). As computer scientists know, although we’re working on <a href="http://www.nist.gov/pml/div684/random_numbers_bell_test.cfm">randomness generators</a>, basically the best we can get at this point is pseudorandomness. It’s important to note that randomness is “unknowable in advance ... uncorrelated with anything in the universe”—in a word, unpredictable.
Unpredictability combined with utility or delight edges awfully close to a “spark of creativity,” especially when a system is designed specifically to maximize the freedom in which an algorithm operates.<br />
<br />
As a partial aside, how randomness is programmed is essential to considering the role of creative agency. <a href="http://sonic-pi.net/">Sonic Pi</a>, a popular environment for programming music both for recording and live-coding, will by default deliver the same set of “random” numbers each time a programmer calls a script with the command “rrand” the same pseudorandom sequence will be delivered (to be processed by other commands into notes, rhythms, or other attributes). As a performer or composer, one can learn to “play” the randomness—gaining control over its idiosyncracies like any other attribute of one’s instrument or medium.<br />
<br />
It may also be worth noting that a sonic pi script is “in fixed form” as code or as a sound recording. <a href="https://github.com/herdingbats/Sonic-pi-tunes/blob/master/Jesu-jesu-odderbeats">This script</a> will, unless it is modified, always produce <a href="https://soundcloud.com/timothy-mcgovern-3/jejejesu-odderbeats">this music</a>, despite containing calls for randomness (in this case “choose” commands). Obviously this is an extremely trivial view of “randomness”—it’s only surprising the first time it’s produced—and the computer’s pseudorandomness should be viewed as an adjunct to the creativity of the user.<br />
<br />
John Cage’s aleatory music (which is treated as a test-case for random creation) is closer to “randomly generated” but Cage aimed to <i>reduce</i> the role of the composer, not to <i>increase</i> the creativity of a process. As he wrote:<br />
<blockquote>
And what is the purpose of writing music? One is, of course, not dealing with purposes but dealing with sounds. Or the answer must take the form of a paradox: a purposeful purposelessness or purposeless play. This play, however, is an affirmation of life—not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent when one gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of the way and lets it act of its own accord. (John Cage, Silence, Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1973, p. 12)</blockquote>
<br />
Cage’s copyrights are full of contradictions and ironies (and Cage himself relished these ironies more than the law does), but there is a more apposite model for Grimmelmann to probe: George Lewis’s <i>Voyager</i>.<a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/leonardo_music_journal/v010/10.1lewis.html"> In Lewis's own words</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
My analysis of Voyager as an interactive computer music system uses Robert Rowe's taxonomy of "player" and "instrument" paradigms, although these two models of role construction in interactive systems should be viewed as on a continuum along which a particular system's model of computer-human interaction can be located. In Rowe's terms, Voyager functions as an extreme example of a "player" program, where the computer system does not function as an instrument to be controlled by a performer.<br />
I conceive a performance of Voyager as multiple parallel streams of music generation, emanating from both the computers and the humans--a nonhierarchical, improvisational, subject-subject model of discourse, rather than a stimulus/response setup.
</blockquote>
Lewis’s explicit aim in creating Voyager was to create an <i>equal agent</i> in composition. In doing so, he problematizes the notion of creativity when it comes to copyright. This radical re-envisioning of agency itself is key to considering computer authorship. If the creators of a computer program intend for the program itself to be creative, that must be reckoned with.<br />
<br />
But law aims to create understandable categories, and art aims (among other things) to challenge our categories. It's an eternal (if usually friendly) struggle. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01823267394299389825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846611182856914226.post-43966702669083799762014-08-25T09:30:00.001-07:002014-08-25T09:32:18.967-07:00Big changes afoot<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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I'm about to start work at O'Reilly Media, as an editor in the arena of data science. And while it may seem a bit odd that a background in ancient intellectual
history has landed me in a job working on one of the sharpest--and most
significant--leading edges in technology, I'll point out first that taking the
long view always pays off in the end, and second, that one of my interviews
consisted mostly of talking about Homer.</div>
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It has been an unending series of pleasures to work
at the University of Chicago Press for the past dozen years, and the wisdom
I've gathered from Doug Mitchell is only dwarfed by the wisdom he's
demonstrated and I've been too saturated to absorb. I've been honored to work
with the brilliant and creative people I've met over my tenure at the Press and
I'm looking forward to keeping up the relationships (and discussions--and bike
rides, and all sorts of other gatherings) we've begun. </div>
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But occasionally an opportunity comes along that's too good
to ignore, and this is certainly the case here. I will be shifting from one set of methods for
understanding the world to a completely different set, and this is incredibly
exciting. It's equally exciting to move from the leader in one area of
publishing to the leader in another. </div>
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On a practical level; I'll continue to work in Chicago, now
from home, and my contact info remains the same. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01823267394299389825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846611182856914226.post-57396611052640257812014-02-24T13:17:00.001-08:002014-02-24T14:28:59.904-08:00On Public Intellectualism, and Vertical and Horizontal Divides<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When somebody walks into a perfectly
nice room full of people and takes a shit on the floor, everybody reacts.
Somebody checks on the defecator to see why this happened, somebody opens the
windows to let the air in, somebody else gets a mop and a bucket, some
extraordinarily well-composed characters carry on, pretending that it didn’t
happen. But a lot of things are revealed in that moment. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This week’s room-shitter is Nicholas
Kristof, who wrote a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/opinion/sunday/kristof-professors-we-need-you.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1">column</a> whinging about how academics are keeping their valuable knowledge locked up, or
only developing useless knowledge, or… well, it’s not exactly clear what he’s
arguing, since those two arguments are in fact diametrically opposed. The
column was, as mentioned, a turd. But it got lots of responses, spurred the
whole room to action, in fact. (I here abandon the metaphor, you’ll be happy to
know.) There were a great number of academic responses pretty much tearing
Kristof’s premises to shreds, but <a href="http://tricksterprince.wordpress.com/2014/02/19/one-rant-two-tweets-and-the-exploitation-of-the-historians-labour/">Matt Houlbrook </a> and <a href="http://crookedtimber.org/2014/02/16/look-who-nick-kristofs-saving-now/">Corey Robin </a>homed right in on the position of the academic in the contemporary
economy: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Quoth Corey: </span><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">The problem here isn’t that
typically American conceit of “culture” v. nonconformist rebel. It’s the very
material pressures and constraints young academics face, long before tenure.
It’s the job market. It’s the rise of adjuncts. It’s neoliberalism.
Jacoby understood the material sources of the problem he diagnosed. Kristof
doesn’t.</span></li>
</ul>
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<li><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">And Matt: </span><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">If only it was that easy.
Here is the problem that Schama misses: engaging with an audience beyond the
academy often (but by no means always) means participating in a market in
knowledge-as-entertainment. And like all neoliberal capitalist markets this one
is profoundly unequal. We do not have the same resources to draw upon when we
participate it; not do we have equal access to the mediating institutions and
networks that control access to that market.</span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As an academic publisher (as Matt’s
publisher, no less!) I get just a wee bit defensive about hints of exploiting
the labor of academics. A couple of points, therefore, seemed in order with
respect to the structures in which academic work gets put out to the world—and what I see as the issues
separating knowledge-makers from society. And, to be fair to Kristof, this separation is a
better summary of the problem that he's trying to articulate, but to be fair to his critics, one common
thread among those respondents is that it bridging that divide is something that many academics are trying
to do. But publishers, whose very mission is the dissemination of knowledge,
have been (from what I’ve seen, and I think I’m pretty plugged-in) absent from
the discussion. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">One of Robin’s arguments is that
Kristof is a symptom: someone who is as well-informed as he is should in fact
be more familiar with the many publicly engaged academics out there. But this
is a symptom of a serious problem, what I </span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">refer</span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> to as the "middle of the market falling out.</span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">”</span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">* There are a very few well-known
(and well-compensated) public intellectuals, and a great many blogging along
wonderfully but not making any money or fame or reward beyond the approval of
their audience. This is not just a problem for that latter category of writers,
but for the </span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">quality of our public argument
as well. </span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It is totally fair to say that
publishers need to to a better job. Academic institutions (departments and
societies) see academic publishers as part of the peer-review and promotion
process,** not as outward-facing institutions who bring knowledge to the public.
The movement toward Open-Access requirements on the part of funders assumes
that the important work of academic publishers is peer review; once
something is vetted and ready to go, it should be given away free. A noble
aspiration, indeed, and publishers wonder “how are we to survive in this
environment? Where will we get funded? How do we justify what we do, so that
people will continue to pay us to do it?” And so we talk about what we do—you
can just go through the departments of a press: acquisitions, manuscript
editing, design, production, marketing, sales, royalties payment—but we don’t
talk about the importance<i> </i>of the market itself. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Peer review is a judicial model; it
is very explicitly posing a yes-or-no question (to publish or not) to a jury of
one’s peers. And that provides a valuable type of information, as well as one
particular kind of equality. However, it is a
dangerous naiveté to suppose that a judicial system provides some
form of unalloyed truth, still less of worth (of <a href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=16323360018899986775&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr">persons</a>, in the
case of the justice system; of ideas, in the case of the university). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And this is where the market itself
comes in. It also provides valuable information***—and (here’s where I part
most from Robin and Matt) a valuable kind of equality. The market doesn</span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’</span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">t merely fill the role of
rewarding </span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">better ideas with cash, although p</span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">ublishers' very dependence on sales provides a necessary
gut-check on the limits of peer review. </span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The equality that the market brings
to </span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">academia is that consumers of ideas
are equal: the $29 that a professor pays for a book means precisely as
much to us as the $29 that an interested undergraduate pays, or the $29 of a
fringe theorist, or—to bring us full circle—the person watching a TV show about
World War I, who shows up at a bookstore (or, more likely, at Amazon) saying,
"Hey, I’d like to learn more about life on the Home Front.” </span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This delicate balance between
judicial and market models is in peril—like the status of public intellectuals,
books, too, are developing a bimodal distribution on the price and circulation
axes. Too </span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">many publishers’ catalogs have
affordable trade books up front, and $100+ academic books at the back, with the
middle range sparse or nonexistent.**** (I’m proud to say that <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/">we</a> are holding
out against this trend, and doing our damnedest to keep our books under
$40. ... Ok, well, $50.) </span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">One can only fault publishers so
much; the sales data indicate that we only lose a few sales when we raise
prices on an academic book, but the problem is who those marginal cases
are: they are precisely the interested non-academic reader. The person who is
not buying a book because it is required for class, or because it must be cited
in the next article to be written. In short, it is in that middle ground
that good—and even <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/Q/bo3534360.html">great—public scholarship</a> occurs. Yes, the
marginal cases are few, but they make all the difference. </span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’d like to say, “bwahahaha! Look at
those foolish other publishers, ceding this area to us!” but the fact is that
we’re all operating in the same arena and the many pressures of competition
(hey, I never said markets were perfect, just that they had virtues!) are
pushing us all into a bifurcated catalog. We need a robust <i>community </i>of
middle-range books and scholars in order to keep a healthy ecosystem of
ideas—and one that bears fruit for citizens outside the academy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">_________________<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">* I haven’t yet read Tyler Cowen’s <i>Average
Is Over</i> but from his <a href="http://marginalrevolution.com/?s=Average+is+over">summaries of and nods to</a> it, I think there are many
institutional parallels to the argument he’s making about employment and
skills. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">**As I <a href="http://herdingbats.blogspot.com/2013/07/some-thoughts-on-ahas-statement-on-open.html">pointed out</a> in the kerfuffle over the American Historical Association’s statement on Open
Access, the most embarrassing part of their statement was that one of the
cnetral goals of the historical profession is the acquisition of a publishing
contract—an awful confusion over means and ends. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">***I have to tip the hat here to <a href="http://nataliacecire.blogspot.com/">Natalia Cecire</a>, whose<a href="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/64088818/reveal.js-2.5.0/public-knowledge-distributed-knowledge.html#/"> slide deck </a>on "Distributed Knowledge and the Digital" is (cheekily) full of Hayek. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">****Worse, though, is seeing a book
supposedly intended for a general audience with a price tag of $150. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Dingbathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11058246707981617915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846611182856914226.post-41302669985376154662014-02-19T11:31:00.000-08:002014-02-19T11:31:37.117-08:00How to prevent a suicide<i>Note: I wrote this letter to my friend Greg, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. Any of us might know someone at risk of suicide, though, and there are a fistful of things you can know which might help you both through that situation. </i><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Greg,</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">It feels weird to be offering—no, imposing on you with—advice, but helping people not commit suicide is one of the few life-and-death matters I have some experience in. I’ve spent a few nights literally wrestling with people who were trying to kill themselves (trying to bash their heads on stone, or throw themselves out windows, or—and this sounds absurd now, but he was sincerely trying—to </span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">drown himself in a toilet), and probably a dozen or more nights just talking with people to try to avoid that crisis moment. And now that I’m no longer in the midst of a big at-risk population (college students) and you are (combat veterans, and people with guns), I’m going to pass on some knowledge. This is stuff I was trained on and stuff that I’ve put into practice. The Army has a 94-page pamphlet on this, but there are four things you can know and do that save lives. Please, share it forward. The odds are horrifyingly high that you or someone you know will need this.<br /><br />1: Suicide delayed is suicide prevented. This is hugely important to remember. You’re not going to solve a guy’s problems by talking to him. He’s not going to solve his problems talking to you. That’s ok. Suicide survivors by an overwhelming majority agree that the crisis they were in was temporary, and it is a minority of suicide survivors who even attempt again. Prevent an impulsive and irretrievable decision:<br />2: Hold onto their guns. It may well be true that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, but it is definitely true that good guys with guns far too often stop themselves. Offer to do this—ok, beg, plead, cajole, if you want to help. You’re not confiscating the things; you’re holding on to them so your buddy doesn’t do anything rash. Also, remember, your pro-gun credentials are solid—you can (and for god’s sake you’re saving somebody’s life—you should) lean on this to remind people that you are ready to give them back. This is really hard, therefore:<br />3: Prepare and practice. Tell your friends ahead of time, “If I’m ever in a bad way, I want you to hold onto my guns, and I hope you’ll do the same for me.” And practice—say this stuff out loud, it’s not easy—saying, “Joe, I’m worried about you. I can hold onto your guns this week. If you want to go hunting give me a call.” Practice saying to someone—literally, say the words out loud, “Are you thinking of hurting yourself?” This is hard stuff.<br />4: It’s okay that you’re not a professional. You don’t need to be a psychiatrist to help your buddy. Unless you’re dealing with somebody who’s literally standing on a ledge, or pointing a gun at himself, then anything you can say or do with that person will help. So talk, spend time with the guy, go to the movies, go to the gym, go for food, go for coffee, rake leaves, mow the lawn, build a deck… what the fuck ever. Just spend time together.<a data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=2906179&extragetparams=%7B%22directed_target_id%22%3A0%7D" href="https://www.facebook.com/thelma.tennant.7" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">Thelma</a> and I spent two weeks basically bringing a friend along anytime we were going out, and half the time when we were home. We weren’t talking all the time, we weren’t trying to solve the problems or talk through them, we were all just being there.<br /><br />You’ve dealt with more serious shit than I can imagine; you’ve got the strength and the standing with your friends to handle this. And it’s something that you can be prepared for.<br /><br />Tim</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01823267394299389825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846611182856914226.post-12823611539138819502014-01-04T07:30:00.003-08:002014-01-04T07:30:44.518-08:00How academic ebooks will happenMy kids both have iPads now (and this post is not about how they're growing up "digital natives"—it's much more practical than that). Theirs are a few generations old, hand-me-downs from an aunt and a friend of ours. We have other friends who are already eager to get the latest models and pass on their old ones (and, to be honest, we're looking forward to getting these as hand-me-downs from them: thrice-outdated tablets).<br />
<br />
All of which adds up to the increasing ubiquity of 7- and 10-inch screens in our lives. As a family of two adults, one reading child, and one pre-reading child, we now have two 10" tablets, one 7" tablet, and three e-ink readers. (I note here that of those, we've purchased only two of the e-readers—avid consumers will have even more.) And this erodes one of the biggest competitive advantages of paper books over e-books in an academic context: the computing power of a big desk.<br />
<br />
When I was in graduate school, it was not uncommon for me to be working with a monograph or two open on my desk, a Greek text of Josephus or Philo, a translation of the same, a Septuagint, a Hebrew Bible, a commentary or two, a lexicon or two—and a computer on which I was taking notes or writing. Obviously, the first of these to go electronic were the lexica (flipping alphabetical pages is a nearly-unmitigated waste of time). Then—mostly when reading secondary literature—the ancient texts. Again, flipping for references, and checking text against text (Josephus's telling of a story, the Septuagint's rendering, and the Hebrew) are sped up by clickable text. But for delving deep into the texts themselves, the 15" screen of a laptop was too crowded.<br />
<br />
It's well-known that <a href="http://gbr.pepperdine.edu/2010/08/three-ways-larger-monitors-can-improve-productivity/">bigger monitors increase productivity</a>. Academics, however, already had bigger "monitors"—to wit, desktops, with two, or six, or ten books and journals and notepads and scraps of paper on them. You could (I did) physically print out a paper and cut it into sections, and rearrange those sections in order to see if the argument made more sense a different way, or if a section of the thing you were writing was weak on evidence.<br />
<br />
The sheer number of screens in our daily lives, increasing by the year, makes ebooks vastly more practical for the way academics work, comparing and weighing sources (whether textual, visual, or artefactual). The next step, by the bye, will be apps to make multiple devices work together seemlessly.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01823267394299389825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846611182856914226.post-28723961791684570112013-09-06T08:51:00.002-07:002013-09-06T08:51:53.041-07:00The Full and True Account of ThursdayIt all started Wednesday night; Dr. Fledermaus and I were working late at Bat Jr's school (Back to School night) and we were exhausted when we left. "We'll just take the car to get the kids," we agreed, "and pick up the bikes in the morning." [SFX: Cue ominous music.]<br />
<br />
Thursday morning was as hectic as mornings ever are with a three-year-old and a seven-year-old; I was even more confused than usual: "Get your shoes and go to the back door!" I was saying, when Dr. Fledermaus reminded me that we were going out the front door, and walking to school, picking up the bikes, and then carrying on as usual. [SFX: Cue even more ominous music.]<br />
<br />
Arriving at school, what did we find? Dr. Fledermaus's bike, my bike trailer...and a heavy duty chain and cut mini-U-lock on the ground.<br />
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The only response possible was rational. I numbly went through the list. Call police, file a report. Tell everyone: facebook, twitter, the bike forums, the stolen bike database. I thanked God, and my 2011 self for having<a href="https://portal.chicagopolice.org/portal/page/portal/ClearPath/Online%20Services/Bike%20Registration"> registered the bike </a>with the Chicago Police Department. The world was on notice. By the time I'd walked halfway to work, a friend was meeting me with a loaner bike. <br />
<br />
Lunchtime. Enough mooning about the crappy summer. Three dead pets and a stolen bike--it was time to take fate into my own hands.You make your own luck. (Hah. So I told myself.) "Everyone knows," my internal monologue went on, "that stolen bikes show up at Swap-O-Rama."<br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/chicagoceli/3548157562/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="Swap-O-Rama Flea Market by celikins, on Flickr"><img alt="Swap-O-Rama Flea Market" height="229" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3651/3548157562_f861a8bc90_z.jpg?zz=1" width="320" /></a></div>
The flea market. I don't know how many acres, but it's two and a half city blocks of stolen, grey-market, and otherwise dubiously capitalistic tools, stereo equipment, DVDs, socks, shampoo, dried beans, and, yes, bikes.... I walked the
full grounds, singleminded in purpose: checking out every plausible bike..could it have been repainted in a morning? New decals put on? bar tape changed? Nothing. Kids bikes, BMX, road bikes, mountain bikes, single speeds. There was a yellow van I went by twice; it had two nice rides on the roof, but its open back doors were facing a concrete wall--could it be inside? A pickup truck pulled out, having closed up shop for the day, with at least fifteen close-packed bicycles in the back, held down (more or less) with clothesline. None looked like mine. I thought. <br />
<br />
Eventually, I texted my wife to say, "Saw a bunch of stolen bikes,
but not mine." I was taking a last mosey around, contemplating how many visits it would be worth making, but mostly looking for friends' recently stolen bikes, when I spied, past a pile of tools, toys, and electronics accessories, a glint of silver and white in the
back of a guy's dirty red van: There it was! I'd recognize that 1" head tube and
silver brake lever from...well, 45 feet. I walked up and said, "That's my
bike in your van. I'm going to need it back." He immediately started
talking about "the guy who sold it to him" but I didn't listen. There was one thing I was there for, and that was in front of me. It was in my hands. I took
it and got the hell out of there, never looked back.<br />
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When I got back to the car, I took a longer look. She'd been stripped of her pump, saddlebag, trailer hitch, SPD pedals, any reasonable dignity of handlebar angle, and one bottle cage, but she was mine again. <br /><br /><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BTbHAJUCEAA93Tk.jpg" target="_blank"></a> Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01823267394299389825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846611182856914226.post-28571788084460314822013-08-26T13:24:00.004-07:002013-08-26T13:24:47.047-07:00The past is unevenly distributed, too. William Gibson famously said ("<a href="http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Gibson#Quotes">many times</a>"), "The future is already here; it's just not very evenly distributed." What if we turn this around, and think about the past? "The past is still here; it's just not very evenly distributed." <br />
<br />
Traveling in Europe (as an American), it's easy to be jealous of the past, the overwhelming physicality of cathedrals and castles, ruins and walls, stone roads with thousand-year-old ruts. We need a Faulkner to remind us that we are saturated in the past, too (and a <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/06/showbiz/movies/faulkner-midnight-paris-allen-lawsuit">Woody Allen</a> to remind us that Faulkner reminded us). Our past is in the stories we tell, and mistake, and repeat, and tell falsely, and misattribute, and misrepresent.<br />
<br />
The great error, of course, is thinking that the past is gone. But the other (greater?) error is to have a crappy copy of the past. A cheap knockoff past, that looks, from one angle, and in a dim light, like the past. But it's beyond fake; it's a toy, a cardboard cutout that could never have worked.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Belle_da_Costa_Greene_by_Paul-Cesar_Helleu,_c_1913.jpg/220px-Belle_da_Costa_Greene_by_Paul-Cesar_Helleu,_c_1913.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Belle_da_Costa_Greene_by_Paul-Cesar_Helleu,_c_1913.jpg/220px-Belle_da_Costa_Greene_by_Paul-Cesar_Helleu,_c_1913.jpg" /></a>Or worse, it's a working model, like a model railroad: it chugs along, clean and on-schedule and under control in its little world; but again, the past isn't that utopian memory. It's got an infinite number of moving parts, it doesn't run on some magical plug in outside the universe; it's coal fired and the coal has to be mined by dirty men and shoveled with dirty shovels and Jesus everything is dirty and your lungs are eventually dirty and you die.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Richard_T_Greener.jpg/220px-Richard_T_Greener.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Richard_T_Greener.jpg/220px-Richard_T_Greener.jpg" /></a>But refusing to be bound by the past is one of the freedoms of America. And freedoms are never free ("Thank a serviceman" the bumper sticker goes on). <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_da_Costa_Greene">Belle da Costa Greene</a> passed for white, broke free of the centuries of being Black in America; she spent (incredibly well) vast sums of money collecting the best of the past for J.Pierpont Morgan, and never spoke to her father, Harvard-educated lawyer and diplomat <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Theodore_Greener">Richard Greener</a>.<br />
<br />
Richard Greener lived at 5237 S. Ellis, a few blocks from where I sit now. The apartment building he lived in was, evidently, <a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/negroinchicagoho00wood/negroinchicagoho00wood_djvu.txt">home also to Ida Platt</a>, admitted to the Illinois bar in 1894 as the first Black female lawyer in the state. She was making a living in 1910 passing as a white woman. <a href="http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/4/0/6/3/6/p406368_index.html?phpsessid=89f94ff4be5763b986e2024cc03e7d90">In 1920, while Platt was still practicing, Violette Anderson became the (second!) first Black female lawyer in Illinois</a>. While Richard Greener watched, Ida Platt gave up her place in history, for flourishing in the present, just as his daughter had. The past came and went and folded back over itself. <br />
<br />
And the apartment building is gone, now, replaced by townhouses. <a href="http://www.suntimes.com/11149243-417/it-gives-me-gooseflesh-remarkable-find-in-s-side-attic.html">The past cropped up a few miles away, in Englewood</a>, though--unevenly distributed. <br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01823267394299389825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846611182856914226.post-17725883732203823432013-08-23T05:37:00.005-07:002013-08-26T13:38:14.654-07:00A Tale of Two—No, Three—Libraries<br />
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Last Tuesday I found myself in New York City, with a few hours in the afternoon to spend. I’d arranged to meet my Vergil, <a href="http://jebruner.com/">Jon Bruner</a>, at the New York Public Library. Awaiting Jon on the steps, I felt I’d stepped into a W.H. Whyte map: </div>
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<illustration 1="">The place demands interaction, and lo! a fellow sitting behind a tray table, with a sign on on the front proclaiming, “MEET THE AUTHOR.” Well, why not? The gent turned out to be <a href="http://garrettbuhlrobinson.blogspot.com/">Garrett Buhl Robinson</a>, and he read from his books, with a pitch-perfect southern accent and pace. As an editor, I caught some quibblable phrases, but on the whole, the imagery, the connection of the personal and the historical and, the rhyme between structure and sentence were impressive.</illustration><br />
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The Library is, of course, an astounding achievement, not just a monument to the democratization of knowledge, but an ongoing project of the same. The openness of the reading rooms and the easy access to the collections are obvious. And my god, is it astoundingly beautiful.</div>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomdz/4479361920/" title="New York Public Library by tomdz, on Flickr"><img alt="New York Public Library" height="427" src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2798/4479361920_5735035d76_z.jpg" width="640" /></a>
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<illustration 2="">But wait, as they say; there’s more! The NYPL does its exhibits well, too (we went to <a href="http://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions/abc-it?hspace=216333">The ABC of It: Why Children’s Books Matter</a>), as any good late-20th-century research library does. The building renovation, <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/350-million-renovation-nypl-avenue-branch-endanger-iconic-rose-reading-room-suit-article-1.1390241">subject of debate</a> is one indicator of their thinking about the future—I’ve got no dog in that fight but it’s easy to see that they’re focused on their users and trying to continue providing what their users need.</illustration><br />
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But let me back up a week and mention the last time I came across the NYPL. A few years ago, it would have been in the course of acquiring images from their collection; this time it was much more exciting.* The <a href="https://github.com/NYPL/map-vectorizer">NYPL map vectorizer</a> is a really cool tool to extract data from paper maps and encode it as geographical information that can be layered with hundreds of other layers and kinds of information.</div>
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What’s more, it’s a totally open-source project on GitHub, so you can tweak it to your purposes or contribute to improving the original project. This is democratization of research at its highest. Given the range of <a href="https://github.com/NYPL/">what NYPL has put on GitHub</a>, they are taking ‘public’ very seriously.</div>
<h3>
Changing gears</h3>
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The next stop after the NYPL was the (Morgan Library and Museum)[<a href="http://www.themorgan.org/home.asp">http://www.themorgan.org/home.asp</a>]. An utterly flabbergasting place, it was J.P. Morgan’s personal study and library, since converted into a research library and museum, with an appendix by Renzo Piano. The presence of so many historically mindblowing and phenomenally valuable things (<i>three</i> Gutenberg Bibles! manuscripts from Percy Bysse Shelley to <i>Blowin’ in the Wind</i>! I could go on, but I’d break down in tears) in such a setting was almost too much.<br />
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(As an aside: if you go, be sure to ask the security guards—they are very well-informed—about the staircase. I won’t spoil the surprise.)<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jginsbu/8307659694/" title="_C020271.jpg by ginsbu, on Flickr"><img alt="_C020271.jpg" height="480" src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8078/8307659694_935c2e359b_z.jpg" width="640" /></a> </div>
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It’s good to be the richest man in America (and to have <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_da_Costa_Greene">Belle da Costa Greene</a> managing your collection and acquisitions).<br />
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Between the NYPL and the Morgan, we have two wonderful and very different libraries, mappable onto (let’s be honest—ancient Athenian) notions of democracy and oligarchy. But they called to mind a third library, George Washington’s library at Mount Vernon.</div>
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Washington was, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/05/the-net-worth-of-the-us-presidents-from-washington-to-obama/57020/">according to the Atlantic, America’s wealthiest president.</a> Yet <a href="http://www.librarything.com/catalog/GeorgeWashington">his library</a> had a mere 1,300 volumes (<a href="file:///Users/timmymcg/Downloads/A%20Tale%20of%20Two%1F%E2%80%94No,%20Three%E2%80%94Libraries/A%20Tale%20of%20Two%1F%E2%80%94No,%20Three%E2%80%94Libraries.html">1,287 + maps, charts, etc, to be specific</a>). <a href="http://www.librarything.com/catalog/herdingbats">Mine</a> has about 700 (probably a few more; I haven’t updated my catalogue in a systematic way in a while). Mount Vernon is about <a href="http://www.mountvernon.org/visit-his-estate/preserving-his-estate/restoration-projects/mansion/mansion-dimensions">7,000 square feet</a>; my house is about 3,200. You see where I’m going with this: One of the wealthiest men in America, and our first president, had a standard of living (hey, can you think of a better measure than library and living space?) broadly comparable with mine; the multiplication and spread of wealth and knowledge brought about by the Industrial Revolution is embodied in these three buildings.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">*Your excitement level may vary.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01823267394299389825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846611182856914226.post-65226074116571565812013-07-23T13:15:00.001-07:002013-07-23T13:15:45.848-07:00Some thoughts on the AHA's statement on Open Access<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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This is just a brief note on the<a href="http://blog.historians.org/2013/07/american-historical-association-statement-on-policies-regarding-the-embargoing-of-completed-history-phd-dissertations/"> AHA Statement on Open Access </a>(with a
special hat-tip to<a href="http://www.jasonmkelly.com/2013/07/23/american-historical-association-statement-on-phd-dissertations-an-initial-point-by-point-response/"> Jason M. Kelly’s insightful point-by-point response</a>). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Though I’m writing from a standpoint within academic
publishing, I won’t comment on whether we deprecate works published open-access
as dissertations (for various reasons I'm sure you can imagine). I want to pull the focus back a bit and point out a few
obvious things. (Hey, somebody has to!) The AHA’s statement is quite pragmatic in
working within the status quo: publishers have a lot of power, especially over
young academics’ careers. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
However, publishers have that power because departments
(and, perhaps more crucially, university administrations above them) have given
it to them: hiring and tenure are not, cannot be done in today’s university, on
the basis of a departmental decision. Rather, there needs to be outside
evidence, measurable evidence!—checklists and scores and quantifiably lawyer-proof
mountains of Why we hired X and not Y. This is a fact of life, and the AHA is
wise not to take on the ABA (and that ain’t the booksellers’ association here).
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But the AHA could have done more. Let me quote one point
from the AHA and Kelly’s counterpoint. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i>AHA</i>: By endorsing a policy that
allows embargos, the AHA seeks to balance two central though at times competing
ideals in our profession–on the one hand, the full and timely dissemination of
new historical knowledge; and, on the other, the unfettered ability of young
historians to revise their dissertations and obtain a publishing contract from
a press.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i>Kelly</i>: It is important to protect
the interests of early career historians. But, this statement seems to <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">understand their interests narrowly. </b>What
kind of academic community should we help craft with them? I would
suggest that we help craft a community of openness and collaboration — one
that embraces technologies that are likely to expand our impact and reach wider
audiences. This may mean remaking the conventions of the profession and
likely requires that we abandon ad hoc attempts to protect the status quo.
This will likely mean confronting the <i>habitus</i> of
our profession and disrupting the institutions that we have been working in for
over 100 years.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
(my <b>emphasis</b>)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The “ability of young historians to revise their
dissertations and obtain a publishing contract from a press” is not by any possible stretch of the imagination an “ideal
in our profession”—it’s a means, a practical stepping point to keep future
scholars in business. But far more importantly, academic publishing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is exactly</i>
the business of “full and timely dissemination of new historical knowledge.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And here’s where the AHA erred. They should have called out
both publishers and their own membership for slowing down the timely publication
of new scholarship. “Confronting the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">habitus
</i>of our profession and disrupting the institutions” is another way of
saying, “We need to raise our game to a new level, and fast, or we're going to be looking for a new game."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Young scholars--don't just "obtain a publishing contract," make that diss into a manuscript. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Senior scholars--turn around your goddamn manuscript reports. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Publishers--you know how complicated this is and the gazillion things that can derail or slow publication. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Everyone: Do it better. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01823267394299389825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846611182856914226.post-32444881308358319242013-04-14T21:05:00.000-07:002013-04-14T21:05:03.160-07:00Twelve movies about foodTo watch over the coming months. I haven't seen all of them, additions or recommendations welcome.<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Big Night</li>
<li>Jiro Dreams of Sushi</li>
<li>Scent of Green Papaya</li>
<li>Like Water for Chocolate</li>
<li>Babette's Feast</li>
<li>Moonstruck</li>
<li>Tampopo</li>
<li>Mostly Martha</li>
<li>Julie and Julia</li>
<li>Delicatessen</li>
<li>Ratatouille</li>
<li>The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover</li>
</ul>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01823267394299389825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846611182856914226.post-19915100901683114572013-04-03T13:33:00.002-07:002013-04-03T13:33:52.580-07:00Accidental Haiku<i>The New York Times</i> has gone and created a <a href="http://haiku.nytimes.com/">haiku-generator</a>—no, it's a haiku-discoverer, pulling haiku-meter quotes from NYT articles. It's <a href="http://www.niemanlab.org/2013/04/not-an-april-fools-joke-the-new-york-times-has-built-a-haiku-bot/">based ultimately</a> on an <a href="https://github.com/jdf/haikufinder">open-source Python program</a>, written by <a href="http://mrfeinberg.com/">Jonathan Feinberg</a>. I grabbed the code and tackled my sent email from the past few months. Here are the (better among the) results:<br />
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
I may ask for house</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
keys later but we'll see how</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
the day is going.</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
The other issue</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
is one of length -- and this could</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
be a bit tricky.</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
Save your work often,</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
you know how reliable</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
your computer is.</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
I think m4m</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
is a little too oblique</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
for a subtitle.</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
Hope you celebrate</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
with champagne and foie gras, or</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
some facsimile.</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
And, as expected,</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
the Terman and Kinsey books</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
are totally cool.</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
I should start to look</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
at those if I'm sending it all</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
in less than two weeks.</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
They are not stylists,</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
but their writing is clearly</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
comprehensible.</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
Do you want to hang</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
out with daddy more because</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
he is not as brown? </div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
Then they went and moved</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
the whole thing to Las Vegas,</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
ruining our plan.</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
Just took a skim-look.</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
I think this is a good plan.</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
But not a good goal.</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
This is, however,</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
putting some parts of the cart</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
before the horses.</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
She has published two</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
dozen journal articles</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
in addition. Bored?</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
Yup, that's it! The back-door</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
one has been clicking away</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
since February.</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
Or is discretion</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
dictating another day</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
in prone position?</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
Is there anything</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
additional coming, or should</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
I just remove that?</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
Ponder what you might</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
do with a few extra hands</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
for a long work day.</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
It is hard to lift</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
out the title embedded</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
in the lighter text.</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
As a grad student,</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
you're managing one big project,</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
the dissertation.</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
So I got involved</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
in the 'keeping the author</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
happy' end of things.</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
You can tell her, too,</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
that we're processing the second</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
half of her advance.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01823267394299389825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846611182856914226.post-91746380200281408472013-02-18T10:15:00.000-08:002013-02-18T10:15:07.841-08:00On selling a bike<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I sold a bike this weekend. I’d had it for a bit over a
year, and had a ton of fun riding it, but I hadn’t ridden it in four months,
and when a friend posted a “Want to Buy” for just such a beast (single speed
mountain bike) on the local bike forum, it was a clear sign that it was time to
pass it on to another rider. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Selling a bike is always an occasion for mixed feelings, but
three main currents stand out. First, there’s the thrill of freeing oneself of
a possession, particularly a possession that has become part of one’s identity.
Second, there’s the regret at the loss of a freedom; there are now paths I can’t
ride which I probably could have. Third, there’s bewilderment: “How does the money
disappear so fast?” <o:p></o:p></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01823267394299389825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846611182856914226.post-89720332208423794392013-02-12T11:49:00.000-08:002013-02-12T11:51:27.104-08:00Map Is Not Territory*It's not enough to write a book any more. Now you have to write a proposal to get the book under contract, a grant application to get funding, another grant application to get funding (rinse and repeat as necessary), a report for your department on what you've done this year, and what you plan to do next year... and now your publisher is asking for chapter abstracts and keywords when you send the final manuscript in for editing. <br />
<br />
"Have you had any push-back from authors?" our manager asked. Well, no. They're used to writing about what they've written about—not that it's necessarily enjoyable, or valued. But the reflexivity of that activity (writing about what you're writing about) isn't just a cute way of stating the obvious, it reveals a bit of a truth about writing: the object of the writing (the research, the story) and the writing itself aren't easily separable. You're always trying to tell the story, you're always inevitably condensing and narrating and leaving out and framing and filtering. Whether you're giving your elevator pitch ("You'll love it; it's about this early modern German named Hermann Connring and the fundamental shift in the relationship of past and present.") or writing an 800-page manuscript, or editing that manuscript down to a reasonable 120,000 words, or even distilling that manuscript into a 7-line table of contents (Germans, by the way, call it a "table of content"—that little change always reminds me that there must be substance to the book.), it's always a representation. The only sharp line in representation is between the representations and reality. <br />
<br />
And so, no, we don't get push-back. Maybe grumbling about another task to do, but hey, we've been adding to authors' tasks to do ever since we took away their typists (well, most of their typists) thirty years ago. (The division of labor giveth, and the division of labor taketh away.) We still overexplain the need; we throw around words like "mixed media environment," "searchability," and "discoverability," but fundamentally, we're asking for a map. <br />
<br />
And so I write: You’ve already created one map of your book: the table of contents. The table of contents is a large-scale “highway map” of the general route that your readers will take. There will soon be another map in the form of an index; this is a very local map (“Where was that excellent taco restaurant? Come to think of it, where are all the taco restaurants? This guy did a wildebeest-shooting helicopter ride but I want to do a cross-country taco hop.”). The abstracts and keywords are yet a third kind of map: they’re like the maps posted on signs at the entrance to a campus, with a “you are here” to situate the visitor, and to show that reader, who may not have come in the main entrance, what there is to see. Publishing now involves searching and coming at books (and chunks—that's a technical term—of books) from all sorts of directions, and so you can't rely (if you ever could) on a reader looking at the Table of Contents and the Introduction. <br />
<br />
But it's all representation, and it's What Authors Do.
<br />
<br />
*Thanks to <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo3640955.html">J.Z. Smith</a> for my title phrase.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01823267394299389825noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846611182856914226.post-28942012267990542622012-09-13T08:17:00.000-07:002012-09-13T08:17:12.894-07:00Naked teachingWe interrupt our regularly-neglected programming to bring you thoughts on "what I’ve learned from our week of small-group schooling (in brief)." (Future generations and foreigners reading this may want to know that this is occasioned by the Chicago Teachers' Strike of 2012.)
When you have a classroom full of kids, it’s fairly easy to get them all to do the same thing. You put on an air of command, say “sit down,” they all sit down. You say “listen,” and you can even get them (yeah, it may take some barking and nipping at the heels of the wanderers) all to sit quietly and look up at whatever you’re showing them.
When you’ve only got two or three, they’re a lot harder to control. They each want to talk more—no, they all want to talk, all the time. Except for the one(s) who never want to talk (but with them, you can’t say to yourself, well, he’s quiet and not disturbing the class; he must be doing ok). You have to get them all to buy in to what you’re doing, because there’s no pressure to conform working in your favor. You have to work harder. You can tell when they’re not learning, when their attention is wandering, when you just haven’t got the right tone or metaphor or explanation. You work harder, you re-pitch what you’re saying, you have to reach each of them individually. You have to work harder.
They learn more. They work harder (Evidence: Nellie has been completely exhausted every night this week.). There’s no hiding in a class of three: they can’t hide behind a superficial conformity; you can’t hide behind public persona, and, more importantly, the group pressure to conform that can make it look like they’re all learning.
Differences between kids stand out. The ones who get whatever you’re talking about get it, and want to move on. They can’t—they realize they don’t have to—slack through something they can do quickly. The ones who don’t get it on the first go-round—you can’t move on until they’re ready, because you can see it in every part of their bodies when they haven’t got it yet. You have to figure out how to resolve this.
It’s exhausting and great. It’s not scalable (though the really great classroom teachers come close).
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01823267394299389825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846611182856914226.post-3801318684270404242012-04-11T09:11:00.003-07:002012-04-11T09:16:31.272-07:00E is for Every DayAhh, resolutions. The problem with them is that when you resolve to do something Every Day, and you miss a day, you've flunked. I've been riding every day this month (even if just the 1-mile round trip to the office and back) but manifestly not posting to the blog. Belated catch-up, this is, then. <br /><br />But a bit more on self-motivation. I resolved this year to attempt to ride 100 miles a week. Resolve to attempt? sounds week. But it keeps the resolution fresh and renewable; if I miss 100 miles in a week, there's no reason not to come back at it next week. Keeping track of my mileage, I've had a week of 33 miles (just commuting and errands) and a week of 233 miles. Average is a bit under 100/week for the year, but no matter; as summer comes, we'll do more biking out to picnic for dinner.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01823267394299389825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846611182856914226.post-88422907025113842032012-04-04T10:30:00.002-07:002012-04-04T10:47:45.591-07:00Dropped!Getting dropped is a common occurrence for a lousy bike racer like myself; this morning it wasn't due to an inability to maintain the speed of the pack, nor even the mechanicals that plagued my last two races. No, I can admit that my beloved spouse, riding along on what she refers to as her "granny" bike, with big 'ol front basket and (I'm embarrassed to admit; we have the same mechanic, Dr. Fledermaus and I, and he is me.) squeaky chain (it just started squeaking, honest!) and 8-speed hub gear that only reaches 4 gears, and unreliably at best (I've been working on it, honest! I replaced the crunchy cable housing but that didn't solve it; the shifter ring is sticky for some other reason.) dropped my sorry ass like a bad habit about seven times as we trundled the smaller of the Batchildren to his 2-year check-up and back home. <br /><br />And she scoffs when I tell her she'd be good at bicycle racing.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01823267394299389825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846611182856914226.post-52280572191752316552012-04-03T13:23:00.001-07:002012-04-03T13:25:08.073-07:00A, B, C<span style="font-weight:bold;">Announcement/Ambition: </span><br />I heard (belatedly) about the 26-days-of-April <a href="http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/">blog posting challenge</a>. And it seeems like a good idea: to post every day except Sundays in April, with a theme inspired by the letters of the alphabet. I'm late to the party so I'll slink in by the back door and quick, try to catch the bartender so I can catch up. I know, it seems like three or seven martinis in a row will do the trick, but <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqBQKFXEHPg">it so rarely does</a>. <br /><br />But we make announcements like this to hold ourselves to some sort of standard: to keep ourselves honest. It's one of the reasons I race: to be sure that I'm actually doing the best I can. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Base mileage: </span><br />One of the things on my mind recently is training, and the big picture of the bike racing season. Most training plans for bicycle racing involve a period of lots of long slow distance: the mid-20th century saw a yearly arc for a road racer that consisted of long rides across the winter and early spring, and, essentially, "racing into shape" across the season, by taking part in the spring classics one-day and three-to-seven-stage races, followed by the summer tours. Cyclocross in the fall or early winter was a way to "burn off excess fitness" as I've heard it said (alas, no citation). <br /><br />Starting in the 1980s, a few developments converged to change this practice. In no particular order: the invention of wearable heart rate monitors and power-measurement devices made the quantification of effort and the rationalization of training easier. Meanwhile, the economic background of the sport brought cyclists to focus harder on fewer events (world championships, Le Tour). And after the fall of the Soviet bloc, the methods of eastern European trainers (both licit and il-) were revealed to the rest of the world. All these things were distilled in a few now-seminal books, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Cyclists-Training-Bible-Friel/dp/1934030201/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333480588&sr=1-1">Joe Friel's <em>The Cyclist's Training Bible</em></a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Periodization-5th-Edition-Theory-Methodology-Training/dp/073607483X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333480660&sr=1-1"> Tudor Bompa's <em> Periodization</em></a>, for example. Periodization approaches changed the racing season approach by sharpening the focus on fewer races, with a more specialized lead-up to those races, but the idea of putting in a lot of long, slow miles fairly long before the racing season was confirmed. <br /><br />In essence, what you're doing with LSD (long slow distance, you hippies!) is building aerobic capacity in your muscles--capillaries, the delivery system for blood (oxygen and glycogen) to the muscles. This is a long (not just months but years) process (there's a reason why there aren't 17-year-old world champion marathoners). Additionally, higher-intensity efforts (racing as well as the higher-intensity efforts of a periodization program) actually break down--or "use up"--this aerobic base. <br /><br />But that's not (exactly) what I've been up to. Based on a few different training plans, I've done a more compressed training schedule for the past couple of months, with a mix of short and medium-length efforts, intervals ranging from one minute to twenty or thirty minutes. This is the sort of program that, for example, Chris Carmichael pushes in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Time-Crunched-Cyclist-Powerful-Athlete/dp/1934030473/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333483673&sr=1-1"><em>The Time-Crunched Cyclist</em></a>. The basic idea behind Carmichael's "time-crunched" approach is that it skips a certain amount of base-building in favor of improvements in top speed. <br /><br />I suspect that I'm seeing both the positive and negatives of this approach--in the past two weeks I raced Barry-Roubaix, a 62-mile gravel raod race, which I finished near the bottom--it was a four-hour effort--and one day of the Gapers' Block crits, a half-hour race where I hung with the pack much better than I did a few years ago (my last racing season). <br /><br />So the question I'm wrestling is what to do over the coming months, given that I've got a couple of races coming up, <a href="http://lelandkermesse.blogspot.com">Leland Kermesse</a> on the 21st, and either <a href="http://ucvc.uchicago.edu/Monsters.html">Monsters of the Midway</a> or <a href="http://gravelmetric.wordpress.com">Gravel Metric</a> in May) and then basically no racing until fall (cyclocross and 24 Hours of Moab). <br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />Commute</span><br /><a href="http://kentsbike.blogspot.com">Kent Peterson</a> is one of my favorite bicyclists and bike writers; he's the one who turned me on to the Blogging-from-A-to-Z thing, and he's aiming to bike to an interesting destination daily with his acrostic focus. Today, for me, naught but a commute, and even the simplest of commutes, as I didn't have to drop kids off at school. A mile. Would love to get more riding in today but I'm sporting an awful crick in the neck, a Colossal Cervical Crick, if you will.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01823267394299389825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846611182856914226.post-60883263616147889592012-03-28T09:38:00.001-07:002012-03-28T09:40:48.870-07:00Emmet Larkin, R.I.P.<a href="http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2012/03/27/emmet-larkin-prominent-scholar-irish-history-1927-2012">Emmet Larkin has passed away.</a> He may have been the finest professor I had in my time at the University of Chicago; he taught me what it means to be a historian: to discover, interpret, and, perhaps most importantly, to maintain mental access to, a massive body of knowledge, and then to synthesize new understandings from that knowledge. It was an old-school sort of history: as Mr. Larkin said, you can't do really good history until you're in your forties; you just can't know enough until then. Such an approach doesn't fit well with the "publish two groundbreaking works by the time you're up for tenure" requirements of the modern academy, it hardly needs to be said.<br />But Larkin was of a different generation, the one that came to college (for him as for many, the first ones in the their family) on the GI Bill, with an understanding that work was central to life, achievement, recognition, awards were secondary. <em>Ora et labora</em>. He set his sights higher, no, broader, than merely slogging through archives and finding unpublished letters between bishops and cardinals (and translating them, contextualizing them, and, most importantly reading between their lines, knowing whose brother had married whose cousin seventeen years before…)<br />Today's scholars seek new interpretations, and crunch vast amounts of data in their databases, and do things, above all, quickly--someone else may be working on this and you might be scooped! No, Larkin's project was simple, vast, and, as he foresaw, unachievable: The History of the Catholic Church in Ireland. This was the work of a lifetime and more; even in 1997, he knew that he probably wouldn't finish.<br />But the inspiration to work, to toil in the library, to learn and to know and to know what you know--This was inspiring to a would-be historian. To think historically and precisely on any topic--to know why you know what you know--this was an achievement beyond the scale of his nine (excellent) books.<br />He challenged us on every front: "Who was the greatest American President?" he asked us one day (I can't remember the context), "and why?" Larkin's own answer was Lincoln--for he excelled in magnanimity. This story has a classical ring about it, as if from Plutarch or Aristotle; perhaps Larkin was already a Great Man, of the Sort They No Longer Make in his own generation, as much as he was to mine. Virtue and knowledge; or<em>a et labora</em>.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01823267394299389825noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846611182856914226.post-62715157530270958382012-03-26T12:16:00.004-07:002012-03-26T13:02:30.649-07:00Barry-Roubaix 2012<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PIjoaN4Bnp4/T3DA0Xo8ZNI/AAAAAAAAAmE/Oi-5xlB9j5w/s1600/Tim%2527s%2BBarry-Roubaix%2Bin%2Bone%2Bphoto.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 299px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5724287132319376594" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PIjoaN4Bnp4/T3DA0Xo8ZNI/AAAAAAAAAmE/Oi-5xlB9j5w/s400/Tim%2527s%2BBarry-Roubaix%2Bin%2Bone%2Bphoto.JPG" /></a> The mud'n'the blood speak eloquently of the great fun had <a href="htt://www.barry-roubaix.com">romping 62 miles across the back roads of central Michigan.</a> The grease? 9 chain-drops. A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client, they say, and I suppose that applies to bike mechanics, too. At 39 seconds per (the schleck, the universal measure of time lost in a chain drop), that lost me five places. Sorry to say, it wasn't my mechanical fumblings that kept me off the podium but my climbing and my ability to stick to a paceline. The micro-pops of power that give a racer even the chance to compete for wins. Back to the workout schedule, back to the workouts. (Photo by <a href="http://about.me/avi.schwab">Avi Schwab</a> who had a damn fine day himself, top-halving the field in his first race.)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01823267394299389825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846611182856914226.post-65578198159203394122012-02-07T07:15:00.000-08:002012-02-07T08:03:08.183-08:00Myth is the material; tragedy is what you make of itThe world of professional cycling saw two news stories of no small import this weekend. <a href="http://velonews.competitor.com/2012/02/news/contador-gets-two-year-ban-from-cas_205693">Alberto Contador was stripped</a> of his 2010 Tour de France title (as well as all his professional results since then) for a positive blood test at the Tour, having been issued a "retroactive ban" from racing, which will expire this August. In other news, the federal prosecutors investigating Lance Armstrong's alleged doping <a href="http://velonews.competitor.com/2012/02/news/feds-drop-armstrong-investigation_205505">announced quietly</a> that they were dropping charges against Big Tex. (Why were the feds interested? Your US Postal Service sponsored his team, so government money was involved in supporting his racing.) <br /><br />One case of the other shoe dropping (well, the other fuzzy red slipper dropping quietly as the UCI crawls back into bed with its sponsoring businesses, hoping that they didn't notice anything. Successfully, it seems; <a href="http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/sponsor-saxo-bank-continues-to-support-riis-team">love is indeed blinding</a>), one case of a ball dropping (there being no instant replay, we can argue for months over whether Armstrong's legal team should have been called for defensive interference or given credit for a <a href="http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/concerns-over-closure-of-federal-investigation-into-armstrong-and-us-postal">blocked pass</a>). <br /><br />Such is the stuff that myths are made of. And epics and tragedies are made from. Red Kite Prayer had a somewhat pedestrian <a href="http://redkiteprayer.com/?p=7707">retelling of Lance Armstrong as Oedipus</a>, but it aims too low--dragging the story of Oedipus down from myth, from the things a culture just <span style="font-style:italic;">knows </span>and attempting to nail it to the facts (such as they might be [re]constructed) of the Armstrong case. No, the point is that Armstrong is already a myth; the facts---facts are for prosecutors when they have balls and institutional support and no political armtwisting to leave them the fuck alone; it's World Cancer Day, and cancer is a trump suit and…where was I? ... Armstrong is a myth. Contador is a myth. They're bigger than life, bigger than facts. Creations, created through words and culture (and money, but hey, this is modernity, we don't create our myths by annual animal sacrifice anymore). <br /><br />Now take the myths and spin out tragedy and epic and, if you can, comedy. <br /><br />Some enterprising Aeschylus can tell of Armstrong's cancer as preemptive punishment for the wrongs he's about to commit; the final act in the trilogy can redeem the character through "selfless"--thinly veiled penance--cancer work. Redemption and closure are options in drama, after all; this isn't real life--maybe like a sweet formulaic Shakespeare moment, the redemption can ring hollow (don't tell me that the Montagues and Capulets weren't slaughtering each other in the streets again before the star-crossed lovers' blood had dried). The broken family echoing across generations, that's just the icing so you know what kind of cupcake you're getting. <br /><br />A Sophocles can treat Contador--the Spanish enemy, dark-skinned of course, with a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cHXPMjYVX8">stupid finish-line post-up</a> and bad teeth, to boot--and force us to confront his humanity, make us all complicit in his crime and bring us through the muck to come out feeling smugly better on the other side of it (I'm sure if the <span style="font-style:italic;">New Yorker</span> doesn't pick this up, then the <span style="font-style:italic;">Atlantic </span>will; liberals love that shit). <br /><br />This leaves Greg LeMond, Tyler Hamilton, and Floyd Landis for a Euripides, and a sophisticated (ah, sophistry, thy name is WADA) romp through philosophical oppositions: the clean and the dirty, the wet and the dry, the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the north and the south (of course; what's an American tragedy without north v. south?). LeMond, Hamilton, and Landis--each of them spinning, tumbling, but in orbit of Armstrong's gravity.<a href="http://velonews.competitor.com/2008/09/news/road/armstrong-press-conference-turns-tense_83679"> LeMond crashing</a> Lance's ("Cancer! I win. Cancer cancer cancer cancer.") press conference, melting into incoherence, every fiber of his being tied up in opposition to Armstrong; if LeMond is to be the greatest American cyclist, Armstrong can be nothing; if LeMond is clean Armstrong must be dirty and if Armstrong clean, then LeMond dirty--only narrative logic can explain LeMond. He has transcended humanity and entered myth. <br /><br />Hamilton, equally twisted, and perhaps the most colorful of the bunch, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/sports/cycling/altercation-between-lance-armstrong-and-tyler-hamilton-interests-fbi.html?_r=2&smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto">bringing the brawl to an Armstrong bar</a> (how West Side Story!), and opening a himself-themed <a href="http://cyclismas.com/2011/10/tyler-hamilton-to-open-new-boston-eatery/">restaurant</a> (one gapes in adimaration of the heroic ego) whose centerpiece, no, whose omphalos, is its bathrooms--Armstrong bathrooms! Tread upon the symbol of my enemy while you defecate! Here is a master of the symbolic shambolic act. <br /><br />In comparison to Hamilton, (how can you compete with a drinkin' man persona on the stage or screen or epic campfire telling?) Landis seems almost brutally pedestrian; he's the John Henry of the bunch, going up against not a mechanical steam engine but something more powerful, a story. Landis can <a href="http://nyvelocity.com/content/interviews/2011/landiskimmage">hammer at facts all day</a> and all night, in exquisite and heartbreaking detail. His soul slipping away is all subtext, of course; he's busy naming names and telling how it works. <br /><br />This isn't the stuff for journalists anymore. Matt Rendell told the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Death-Marco-Pantani-Biography/dp/0297850962">death of Marco Pantani</a>, and for 320 pages, the story doesn't get out of the dirt; the facts are so… known. Cocaine, EPO, iron supplements, yeah, yeah, yeah, names dates times amounts.<br /><br />The domineering Italian mother still convinced of his innocence; the girlfriends and "doctors" and psychologists and coaches, of whom Mama Pantani thought Marco innocent--now we're gtting somewhere, for they all tell stories, their stories all make sense only as stories, not facts. But the stories are better than the facts, and stories are what we make of myths, the things that we do to make the larger than life understandable while still larger than life. The Death of Marco Pantani, the Passion of Greg LeMond, the Twisted Saga of Tyler Hamilton, and the Ballad of Floyd Landis must be sung, not written.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01823267394299389825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846611182856914226.post-8803059363923030622011-11-21T09:48:00.000-08:002011-11-21T13:42:07.939-08:00This Thanksgiving, let's talk about the economyMy fellow Americans [that's how one is supposed to begin these things, no?], <br /><br />This Thanksgiving, we will gather with our families and give thanks for the many good things that we have. The first thing we always put, with varying (and not necessarily related) levels of piety and sincerity, is each other. Then we enumerate, or mention, or ponder, our stuff. But while we're all here, let's have a talk. There are some folks missing Thanksgiving because they're camped out in public parks and various other public places across the country. <br /><br />I don't know what to make of them. But I do know that they want us to think. And they want us to act. It's probably fair to say that they don't exactly know what action they want. But if we're to have high-quality action, we've gotta talk. You'll be sitting down at the table with those who love you, despite the fact that you each think that each others' politics are absurd. Now's the time to have a few drinks (we're tipping back the pinot noir with our turkey. Probably some white wine before, and bourbon after) and open up a conversation. <br /><br />Resolve to bring up the economy. Because it sucks; we can all agree on that. And we can't vote in a new government (regardless of our politics, I'm sure we can all find someone representing us that we'd rather not), so let's start getting out of the gridlock at the grassroots level. Bring up the economy with someone you know disagrees with you. <br /><br />Get past the frustration, and ponder that the person you're talking to has some rational or emotional reason for the opinions you're hearing. The explanation is not just "they're frickin' nuts." "They want to end the economy as we know it." "They're just jealous." "They're just defending the status quo." <br /><br />Lefties: recall that it took the modern economy for "dignity of the individual" to have any meaning. Read <a href="http://www.deirdremccloskey.org">Deirdre McCloskey</a>'s <span style="font-style:italic;">Bourgeois Virtues</span>.<br /><br />Righties: recall that it takes respect for the dignity of others to make the modern economy work. Read Matt Taibbi's ongoing reportage series. <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/owss-beef-wall-street-isnt-winning-its-cheating-20111025#ixzz1c8I08H75">Here</a>'s a good spot to begin. <br /><br />Everyone, be thankful for the things that make this country great. Here's my favorite from the past couple of weeks: <a href="http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/a-bialy-shops-unlikely-pakistani-saviors/?scp=1&sq=muslim%20bagel&st=cse">a bagel shop in New York, about to go out of business and getting white-knight investorship--from a pair of Pakistani cab drivers.</a>. <br /><br />We come together at Thanksgiving--putting aside our differences is great and all, but how about resolving some of them?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01823267394299389825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846611182856914226.post-1335075794753555152011-11-16T21:17:00.000-08:002011-11-16T22:00:47.787-08:00On growing up...or notA friend invited me to a bike race today. It's a big bike rice, a mountain bike relay race out west. Right off the bat, let me tell you, I am STOKED. This is going to be a little mini-vacation, or maybe an extra-large weekend. What's a little funny about it is that it simultaneously has me feeling like a little kid, too excited to sleep. And a Big Important Adult: I have the grown-up freedom to take a weekend off. <br /><br />So you grow up, in order to be a kid again.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01823267394299389825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846611182856914226.post-71687898061510012022011-10-17T14:54:00.000-07:002011-10-25T14:17:29.916-07:00Peasant Riding: An Invitation<img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 366px; height: 539px;" src="http://davesbikeblog.squarespace.com/storage/wheel-carrier.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1216777224328" border="0" alt=""><br /><blockquote>“The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.”</blockquote><br /><align="right">--Alexis de Tocqueville<br /><br />This is the way I ride my bike: like a peasant. I aim for simplicity, and even rusticity--the fresh air of the country (to be found, for sure, in the city) and the rustle of trees over the road, the society of acquaintances associated with the village. The virtues I seek an acquaintance with? Self-reliance, hardiness, strength, <a href="http://sheldonbrown.com/">bricolage</a>, to name a few. The necessarily attendant vices? Miserliness, impatience, mistrust of the new(fangled)... I'm sure I'm missing many others. Coarse habits we have aplenty: Excess drinking, public urination, the stench of sweat. The <a href="http://carolinacyclingnews.com/2011/09/01/lost-art-of-the-group-ride/">simple graces</a>, which I confess I'm still aiming for: An easy pedal stroke at high RPMs; a consistent line and pace in a group ride; a demure changing from sweaty and skin-tight clothing after a ride; a welcoming attitude toward strangers.<br /><br />The early stage of civilization we aim for? England or continental Europe in the middle of the 20th century. An idealized version, to be sure, with no world wars or polio, no intra-club discord, flat tyres, rolled tubulars, or concussions. But a culture where commuting and training and riding-to-the-race ran together into <em>riding somewhere</em>. Where <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/10509480@N04/3192081448/">winter</a> was the season not for boredom on the trainer inside, but for sloggingly spinning (or spinningly slogging?) <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/05/07/sports/07cycling.2.ready.html">a fendered fixed-gear in the snow</a>. Where your <a href="http://www.2011.handmadebicycleshow.com/2011/02/26/flasks-indiana-mountains-and-cyclocross-utility/">racing bike + fenders and racks</a> = your bike.<br /><br />So I ride like a peasant, in the city, in the Information Age. I commute. Resistance on my training ride comes from hauling the kid-trailer. Or the kid. Or both kids. Or <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/02/08/sports/08cycling_CA0.ready.html">the dog</a>. I sneak out in the morning or late at night, so as to have clear roads, clear mind, and a clear moment in the hectic schedule. I ride with friends; if they're faster, I struggle; if they're slower, I ride on the dirt or grass and let them ride on the pavement. Or I spin like mad. I do training rides to a bar (and recovery rides home?). I change out of my lycra (or at least pull on some warmup pants) when I get there. I get <a href="http://www.bigringriding.com/post/10980157652/muddy-hell">dirty</a> with glee on a cyclocross course. I fiddle with my equipment constantly--but with secondhand parts. I have little patience for "data" (but it's so tempting for the going faster). I race, to challenge myself. I commute, for fun, thrift, and exercise. I ride like a peasant. <a href="https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=u3grvl5h8qps5qab7ebjmmevjs%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/Chicago">Join me.</a> </align="right"><div><br /></div><div><br /><br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01823267394299389825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846611182856914226.post-65218847090608921272011-09-26T13:16:00.000-07:002011-09-26T13:21:12.460-07:00Run (!?!?) reportJust got back from a lunchtime run, with a few observations. <br /><br />The park is overrun with adolescent ducks, about ready to head south for their first winter, the squirrels are all quite fat. The birds are slower than usual, too; I think they're putting on weight (insofar as creatures made mostly of feather and air are able to). <br /><br />Discovery of the day: You can run under the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Darrow#Other">Clarence Darrow Bridge</a> (on the west side of the lagoon). Odd to realize that you've been in a place for years before finding something like this. <br /><br />I've been running as a second (or sometimes only) workout for the past week and a half, as it's a quick way to get the heart rate up; more cardio fitness in less time than biking. (At least, that's the idea.) Did my "speedwork" on one of the bird trails, so as not to subject myself to embarrassment at how slow I am (instead, I'll talk about it on the internet so the whole world can laugh at me, with the exception of those--Hi, Mom!--who think I'm being charmingly self-deprecating). Realized this may have backfired when I was doing my recoveries at an even slower pace, with all the gasping and wheezing of maximum effort, in front of the golfers and fishermen. <br /><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4b/Birdtrail.JPG/800px-Birdtrail.JPG"><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Birdtrail.JPG"><small>Photo by Urbanrules, used, with thanks, under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license</small></a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01823267394299389825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846611182856914226.post-27705089889086659292011-09-23T07:39:00.000-07:002011-09-23T07:48:02.594-07:00Race Report/oddball chain-drop issueHere's the situation: Cyclocross season started up yesterday* (How do you say, "Whoo hooo!" in Belgian?) and so I, being the larkity fool that I am, built up my bike on Saturday night for racin'. The frame is a vertically dropped-out Lemond Poprad--yer basic CX frame. I (in my usual spirit of cussed bricolage) decided (rather a long time ago) that I'd build it up (and race it) fixed if at all possible. I tried out a pile of chainring and cog combinations with a length of chain and found that 41 x 17 was the sweet spot: no fiddlin' needed and perfect shain tension. I procured a new chain (and a needed half-link), and a 17t cog (I'd been testing gearing on multi-speed freewheel), and went to assemble the whole thing. <br /><br />No dice; chain too short. Okay, not a hard problem; it's the difference between a new chain-and-cog and an old one; I'll just grind a flat onto the axle so that I get the 1 or 2mm of adjustability I need to get into the dropout. Piece of cake; I didn't even need to grind past the threads to get it into the dropout. <br /><br />And all was well; I raced in the Masters 30+; with a bit of rain sprinkling the course and for just a taste of mud and wet leaves, and performed embarrassingly as expected (hey, I was just getting my bearings back; I'd not ridden fixed in a year or two, not raced in two years and, oh, yeah, not trained either). All was well, my focus was on the 4's (beginner) race in the afternoon. <br /><br />By the start of the 4's, it was really raining. Ahh, a mudfest! I remember I used to do well in these! (And my chain felt a bit loose. But how loose could it be? It was brand new, cog was, too, and I knew that the whole thing was pretty tight to go together. Besides, I was in the staging, and I damn sure wasn't going to lose my starting position in the race I had a chance of finishing in the points in.)<br /><br />But I started almost as tentatively as the Masters race; where was the aggression? Then, maybe 500m in, it all clicked again: Not winning? GO FASTER! Not passing someone? GO FASTER! Braking? STOP BRAKING! I was really feelin' it; the virtue of riding fixed in the mud---rather than front-braking in the corners, skidding the front wheel (at worst), understeering, and scrubbing a ton of speed, I started challenging myself to take all the turns with no handbrake; slow as needed with the rear wheel to feel the slip in the mud, to carry more speed, to slip for oversteer rather than understeer…. It was going great. <br /><br />Something had to go wrong. And it did: Chain drop, coming out of corner (I'd been resistance-slowing into the corner). I knew it was a bad sign; I could crank the chain back onto the chainring like a derailleured (derailleurisé?) bike. It was bound to happen again. And while it was fun to pass the same fifteen people, drop the chain, and repeat (twice more), when my rear wheel started falling off (and falling off again), I knew it was time to DNF. <br /><br />But a blast was had by me--anytime you have to come straight in the basement door, undress next to the washing machine, and rinse your legs in the utility sink before entering the house, you've had fun. <br /><br />QUESTION. <br />How did my brand-new fixed drivetrain go from sweet-spot tight to chain-droppingly loose in the course of 10K on roads (on the way to the race) and maybe 10K of racing on dirt, grass, and mud? <br /><br />My first theory was initial chain stretch, maybe wear-in (it's a KMC chain, IIRC); my second theory is that the cog (a black Eighth-inch brand cog) was powdercoated all over, and I've worn the powdercoat off the teeth. I've since readjusted the wheel back in the dropouts, maybe 1 mm back, and it seemed nicely snug again--but it reared its ugly head on Wednesday morning again. <br /><br />New theory, suggested by an <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/internet-bob">iBOB</a>: unround chainring and unround cog combining to give loose spots. Maybe a slightly bent chainring, too, with a tooth coming up outside the sideplates all on its own. <br /><br />Other new theory (also via iBOB) is that the powdercoat on the sides--the clamping surface--of the dropouts is letting the axle slip forward. <br /><br />Last new theory (home-grown) is that the axle is slipping up as I go over the bouncy ground, and into the middle of the dropout, no matter where in the dropout I start it out. <br /><br />(New datapoint is that the chain is pristinely new-length (12" per 24 links).<br /><br />Thoughts? <br /><br />*wrote this a-Monday; late posting to the blog since this is my last venue for readership.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01823267394299389825noreply@blogger.com0