ForcedPerspective

My Eyes!!!!

Sarah — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 03:42:23 +0000

So some towns in Australia are having problems with swooping birds (birds are protecting nests, but people get pecked in the head while just strolling around), so here’s some help in protecting yourself: printable eyes to tape to the back of your head!!!!

Also, there is a link going around to an animated gif of a molting cicada. If someone had said “hey, would you like to see a movie of how a cicada molts? It is pretty neat,” I may well have said yes. But because the links were on a forum of short thoughts, I did not get that vital context. I just ended up looking at a picture of a big ole bug that SUDDENLY BEGAN REARING UP OUT OF ITS OWNSELF. I was creeped entirely out the door by what should have been a friendly sharing of information. I don’t know how people with actual phobias can even cope, what with url shorteners and so forth.

Even better option: Jetsons noise

Sarah — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:59:13 +0000

I was initially opposed to proposals to make electric or electric/fuel hybrid vehicles make more noise. Isn’t one of the benefits of these vehicles that our neighborhoods are less noisy? But I guess people are concerned about the possibility of accidental death and dismemberment (?!?!?!?). All of my concerns are addressed in this excellent press release and video from Toyota for their new noisifier system. Not only does it sound super futuristic, you can turn it off if you need to murder someone!

July Reading

Sarah — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 17:17:05 +0000

Westward ha!, or, Around the world in eighty cliches, S.J. Perelman, drawings by Hirschfeld
This is the first long-form work by Perelman that I’ve read, the story of his and Hirschfeld’s journey around the world in a westerly direction (it looks like there’s another volume, going the other way) with many stops in Asia and the Middle East. Perelman is funny and good with words, and Hirschfeld adds lots of detail with his illustrations (though they split up a couple of times on the trip, the illustrations follow Perelman rather than diverging then). Lots of added poignancy that the trip was in ’47, definitely a tipping point at many of their stops. Four stars.

The hive detectives : chronicle of a honey bee catastrophe / Loree Griffin Burns ; with photographs by Ellen Harasimowicz (Y)
This is one of a long running series, Scientists in the Field, and another really good one. The mystery facing the apiarists and research bee studiers is Colony Collapse Disorder. I learned a lot about bees that I hadn’t known (I begin to suspect that my childhood bug education was sadly incomplete and/or inaccurate) and a lot about CCD and CCD research that I hadn’t known. I will now have to find a good source to update me on the research that was still ongoing as the book was completed. Four stars.

Cul de sac, Richard Thompson
You know, I haven’t been impressed with newspaper strips in the last several decades, but this one got a recommend from Bill Watterson and David Malki! The first bunch of strips were in a magazine supplement and are in gorgeous watercolors– once it moved to newspapers, it had to be simplified, but the art is still amazingly expressive (reminded me of Ronald Searle and George Herriman), and all the way through the stories and writing are funny, charming, and (most impressive for a syndicated strip) not dumbed down. Four stars!

Children at play: a Cul de sac cartoon collection, Richard Thompson
Volume 2 of the comics. Still quite good, but I can see the strictures of newspaper comics: especially the weekly vs. Sunday storylines. I do like reading them all in a go, however, so I can follow the story threads more easily. I like Ernesto the weird kid’s outfits, too. Four stars.

Craze: gin and debauchery in an age of reason :consisting of a tragicomedy in three acts in which high and low are brought together, much to their mutual discomfort. Complete with stories, some witty and some not, conducive to meditation on recent events, Jessica Warner
A book I had been meaning to read for years, dense, rich, and full of thought provoking lines of reasoning. Turns out that politics and history are complex and people’s fears and difficulties in life interact interestingly with the world around them. The gin craze in London during the 1700s and the various legal efforts to tax gin or limit its consumption and why are really satisfyingly explored. Four stars.

Who would buy this? : the Archie McPhee story, Mark Pahlow
I only just noticed while grabbing the link to the library’s copy that this is self-published. I suppose it isn’t that surprising for a corporate biography (of sorts), but I do think that the cultural impact of Archie’s would make this worthwhile for a major publisher. Their major products are presented and (as much as one can) explained. The best bits were the products marked “BUSTED!” that led to attention from government agencies or the dreaded Apple Corps. I enjoyed remembering the early days of the store (mom took me when she bought prizes for the summer reading kids) and the various things I bought there (the plastic ants I used to customize a jacket, a squeaky pickle, buying my new boyfriend gifts there, later registering there for our wedding). I had not thought about how much that store had been a part of my life. Four stars.

The spies of Mississippi: the true story of the spy agency that tried to destroy the civil rights movement, Rick Bowers (Y)
While I will admit that I have the occasional gap in my knowledge of history, I was astounded that the state of Mississippi had an official agency to maintain its sovereignty, aka maintain segregation. This is a short (120p, including end matter) well researched (pages and pages of original source citations) and well written book that will knock your socks off. National Geographic is doing some amazing historical nonfiction for young people. This deserves a whole shelf of awards. Five stars. (Online access to the files created by that agency, used extensively in the book, are available through the MS state archives.)

Who we were: a snapshot history of America, Michael Williams, Richard Cahan, Nicholas Osborn
From the guys at Square America, an assortment of historical US amateur photos. The photos are pretty neat, the additional info is fairly spotty. OK, I guess. Two stars.

Cosmic, Frank Cottrell Boyce (Y)
It’s a book about a twelve year old who looks like a grownup (he’s very tall, and started to go stubbly) so is able to do all sorts of things if people make certain assumptions. Including, it turns out, going into space (all the more impressive in a realistic present-day setting). But the book is also about challenging yourself, helping other people, and most especially about being a dad. It made me think about how much I love my dad (A LOT). I got very misty at the end. SO GOOD!!!! Five stars. (PS Cottrell Boyce also wrote the scripts for 24 Hour Party People and Tristam Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, both totally great films. Yay for him, say I.)

Reviews elsewhere: 7/9, 7/16, 7/23, 7/30

The future is confusing

Craig — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 05:12:18 +0000

More a Twitter- than blog-worthy story, but I couldn’t get it down to 140, so here’s the long version.
I’m on the bus, on my way home, and a guy gets on. He’s mid-20s, tie, no jacket, and he starts asking the driver and many passengers if they know where business x is. The consensus seems to be that it’s on the route, and I think they even narrow it down to an intersection.
The guy keeps asking every new boarder, though, and occasionally one of them will say “oh, no, that’s down by [other stuff, quite far away].” My policy in these situations is to prevent the confused party from doing anything unrecoverably wrong but otherwise not get involved, so I Google business x on my phone, and find it is, indeed, at the intersection that had been suggested. Since the guy shows no sign of getting off, I figure he’s good to go. But he does not share my sanguinity, and continues his course of inquiry, mostly pestering the guy who gave him the best information. Finally, the informative passenger (I fancy with some impatience) says “Don’t you have [a popular model of smart phone]?” and the answer is at least somewhat in the affirmative, because Uncertain Guy pulls out a [probably more common but less sexy model of smart phone]. I think to myself “Finally, he can Google the address and relax.” But no. He uses his phone to call someone and ask for directions. And he still gets off the bus two stops (four blocks) early, despite the driver’s assurances that he’ll get closer.
Most of the reason I found this noteworthy at all was my shock and dismay that Uncertain Guy was using his phone as a phone. I was thinking something very like “You idiot, you have a perfectly good phone in your hand, and you’re using it to talk to someone?” And I’m still not convinced it was an entirely ridiculous thing to think.

I [heart] @DellCares

Craig — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 03:32:11 +0000

Some months ago, my laptop monitor developed a one-pixel-wide vertical line. It was intermittent for a little while, and I did a little web research to find out how to get to the connectors and reseat them. With the intermittent nature of the problem I was unable to tell if the reseating made any difference, and eventually the line was there to stay. A few months later, it was joined by another. The intermittent period with the second was much shorter. My web research indicated that some Dell laptops of mine’s model and vintage (Inspiron 6000, shipped August 2005) had defective screens, and that Dell was extending the warranty for those screens to three years and refunding money to those who had paid for repairs. This, of course, did me no good, my machine being more than a year out of even the extended warranty, so I thought no more of it.
Then, a few weeks ago, the lines started multiplying more rapidly, and I thought, why not at least drop them a line? So I found the @DellCares twitter account and gave them a brief description of the problem. The representative asked for my service tag, which I forwarded via direct message, and shortly got back to me with the information that there was a chance mine was one of the affected machines, and that though they hadn’t seen the problem surface after so long, they were going to swap out my display. They offered me the choice of performing the installation myself or having a tech install it (at no charge to me). Fancying myself somewhat handy, I opted to do it myself. They shipped a new (well, refurbished) display overnight, with a pre-paid label for me to return my old display, and I made the swap. And now my machine is as pretty as new.
So, my thanks to Dell. I wouldn’t have been surprised had they said “Sorry, too late,” and I honestly wouldn’t have held it against them. Instead, they went above and beyond, and that is how a company builds loyalty in its customers.

Blackout Review

Craig — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 04:34:34 +0000

Blackout, Willis. Yes. In the acknowledgments (I think it is), Willis mentions that this story grew from one book into two, and I think I saw quotes from her talking about how there was a lot of material that she had to discard. I mention this because I frequently got the notion while reading Blackout that it had been padded, like maybe the story grew to about a book and a half, and Willis’s editor encouraged her to round it up to two. I just don’t remember feeling quite so impatient with previous stories in this setting.
That said, it’s Willis, and therefore worth reading. It may be my least favorite of the Oxford time-travelling History department works thus far, and I certainly hope that All Clear makes me happier, but none of that changes the fact that Willis is an extremely strong writer.

Molasses Tips

Sarah — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 00:16:40 +0000

“Bulk molasses has a specific gravity of about 1.3, and in cold weather thickens and becomes difficult to pump. When transferring cargo under the conditions noted, it should not be heated above 100 degrees F., in order to avoid sugar deposit.
Molasses tanks should be hosed down with sea water. It has been found that neither fresh water nor steam gives satisfactory results in the operation of cleaning the tanks and pipe-lines used in carrying molasses.”

Merchant Marine Officers’ Handbook by Edward A. Turpin and William A. MacEwen, Master Mariners. New York: Cornell Maritime Press, 1945.
p. 202-203

Tiny Booklist: Clearly Fictional Pirates (Comedic)

Sarah — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 18:14:30 +0000

The music of Captain Bogg and Salty
The pirate novels of Gideon Defoe

June Reading

Sarah — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 19:38:20 +0000

Purple Heart, Patricia McCormick (Y)
This is one of those teen books that transcends the genre, more like a really great novel. Not just a good author with an eye for character and setting, but a good researcher who brought other peoples’ experiences together. Four stars.

Brain Camp; Susan Kim, Laurence Klavan, Faith Erin Hicks, Hilary Sycamore (Y)
The artwork and color was really good, but the story was kinda stupid (a promising start with a camp to make kids smarter with something to hide, then took a turn into bad aliens vs plucky kids. Bah.). This was the first online advance readers copy that I’ve read. Stars for art only.

Dapper Caps and Pedal Copters, David Malki!
The third Wondermark collection. Writing reviews for webcomics collection is hard, because I have to think of how I would explain what is good about the comics as a whole. So here are a few half-formed ideas: beautifully composed art from Victorian illustrations re-purposed, modern style gags with a sophisticated tone, extra punchline (online it’s in hover-text, in the book it’s under each strip), several strips I had to share with housemates because they were so on the nose. Four stars.

I am a genius of unspeakable evil and I want to be your class president, Josh Lieb (Y)
It lives up to the excellent title (and cover art) by presenting a genius who is evil because he controls everyone around him with his massive hidden resources, and pays off for the reader (besides being really funny) by delving into why he wants to be evil and having a wonderful diabolical potential love interest and an unknowing nemesis (his dad). Only a few minor missteps that seemed editing related. Four stars.

(un)Fashion, Tibor + Maira Kalman
I was hoping for a book of everyday clothing from around the world, but was disappointed to find assorted worldwide photos of everyday and festival and oddball clothing with minimal context provided by notes at the end. It seemed like a poorly thought out Flickr pool. No stars.

Swords: an artist’s devotion, Ben Boos (Y)
This is the ideal book for kids fascinated by swords in history and books/movies/video games: chock full of gorgeous paintings of swords with really cool embellishments. There is some informative text, but the bulk of this book is awesome swords. Bring it to your D&D evening! Three stars.

Secret subway, Martin W. Sandler (Y)
So I got it because I thought the premise was that the first subway in NYC was built on the sly. Turns out only sort of: the guy got permission to built a subterranean pneumatic mail and package delivery system, but actually built a demonstration passenger line. It was all because the payola for a passenger line would have been too expensive (it cut into the horse drawn omnibus biz) and he hoped that the public’s love for the demonstration line would be enough to get the whole thing approved without payoffs. It was, but then there was a financial crash, eliminating the private investment he had figured on. Fun story, three stars.

Reviews elsewhere:
6/4, 6/11, 6/18, 6/25

Long for This World Review

Craig — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 18:42:45 +0000

Long for This World: The Strange Science of Immortality, Weiner. Non-fiction. Review is based on a publisher-provided pre-pub proof. This is a survey of the state of the science of life extension, with particular focus on the work of Aubrey de Gray, an optimistic (relatively) young man who believes that aging (more specifically, the problems that crop up as age advances) can be solved with a relatively simple, seven-pronged approach. It’s a pretty standard “science for the populace” work, in that there’s a lot of reprising of the various threads. As far as I can tell, Weiner does a creditable job of explaining what must be awfully complicated molecular biology, and I feel like I learned a lot that I will probably forget in another week or so. After the jump, various items that struck me one way or another while reading.
Weiner asserts that explaining aging is harder than explaining consciousness: “No one has managed to explain consciousness yet, either, but for some time we’ve had the source narrowed to a zone above the neck.” This strikes me as glib to the point of inaccuracy. Seat of consciousness, perhaps, but I strongly doubt that a brain separated from sensory—motor-sensory, even—apparatus could ever achieve consciousness. I expect it would be no less helpful (and perhaps no more accurate) to say we’ve narrowed the source of aging to a zone within the cell membrane (to be fair, Weiner does later present a more nuanced view of consciousness).
de Gray asserts that once we have achieved what he calls negligible senescence, people will stop reproducing; and while Weiner does present some evidence to support this view (as life expectancy is increasing, birth rate is decreasing), I suspect this may be the single craziest notion de Gray has. One thing I am completely certain of: nobody has any idea what the biggest societal change brought on by immortality would be.
I found disappointing the frequent mentions of Crick and Watson (as in “Watson and Crick made the greatest breakthrough of the twentieth century”) with nary a nod to Rosalind Franklin, without whose work Crick and Watson would not have done what they did when they did it (and I must admit my shame that I had to look up her name).
Finally, toward the end of the book Weiner asserts that behavior matters more than genetics in an individual’s life span, apparently supporting this assertion with the statement “studies of identical twins suggest” twice as much influence from environment as genetics. Without reading the studies, I could not be certain, but in my current state of ignorance I find the equating of behavior and environment to be dubious.