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May 26, 2005
Where the sidewalk ends
Off the grid until next Thursday. I’ll be fishing in a lake with no roads in much less telecommunications infrastructure.
My normal travel gear has been stripped to a shell of its former glory: iPod, noise-cancelling headphones, iPod battery pack, digital camera, cellphone (won’t work, but gotta bring), and phone charger. My god, that kind of minimalism makes me shudder. Like a tech methadone clinic.
This will be good for me.
Posted at 10:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Fun
Corporate Lingo Watch
Got smacked with a new flavor of corporate metaphor this week. This is so meta it deserves a post-modern critique.
Guy is referring to a business deal that is taking longer than it should. The metaphor here is that it doesn’t have much energy. Running out of steam. Batteries are low. That kind of thing. What does he say? “This deal is low blood sugar.” After the split second what-did-he-say? I next wondered if there were any diabetics on the line.
Also, please do not use “uptick” and “downselect” in the same sentence. Makes me need to grab the desk to steady myself.
Posted at 9:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Words
Sibling stance
In Ghana if a young child bends over to look through his or her legs it is a sign that the child’s mother will soon be pregnant. The bent-over youngster, according to West African tradition, is looking for a sibling. Interestingly, this idea must have currency in other cultures such as Louisiana French, because my wife’s grandmother also knows of it. My youngest son conks his head on the ground to look backwards all the time and whenever he does it sets off a flurry of giggling Twi, the dialect that our Ghanaian nanny and all her neighborhood pals speak. If translated I believe they would be saying: “job security”.
Posted at 9:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: The Darnedest Things
May 25, 2005
"A turbulent zone of near-nothingness"
No, not my marriage — which is nine-years-old today, hooray! — but rather a description of the edge of the solar system which the spacecraft Voyager I has finally reached. Launched when the first Star Wars movie came out in 1977, this diehard explorer (and its twin) embody the best of NASA: trailblazing and science-oriented. If today’s NASA could regain that clarity of purpose we’d be so much better off than wondering how long we can keep a geriatric low-earth orbiting big rig from falling to pieces.
Image copyright NASA.
Voyager is truly alone now. Even the sun is just a pinprick of light. Here’s hoping someone — some thing — eventually encounters her golden cargo. Seeya, V’ger!
Posted at 7:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Space
May 24, 2005
Idiot and the Odyssey
As I am getting on the elevator at work today a gaggle of dronish businessmen get off on my floor. Clearly they don’t work on the floor and are looking for a meeting. I hear one guy say “Odyssey. We’re looking for the Odyssey room. I wonder where that is.” Some other guy snickers “Next to the Caravan room, maybe.” Consensus chortling and I think even a ha-ha backslap ensue. I spend the elevator ride wondering what the hell he means. Some obscure Homeric allusion? Then it hits me. A minivan joke. The guy made a minivan joke, for the love of god.
Oh suburbia, is there any limit to the ways you enrich our culture?
Posted at 1:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Topic: Words
May 21, 2005
The Complete Angler
My father and brother and I are headed to Canada with friends for our first fishing trip in over 15 years. Naturally, we had to restock our gear supply. So we visited the frighteningly expansive Bass Pro Shops in search of a craggy old fisherman who could help us find what we needed. We certainly found him: a leathery, nearly-toothless Vietnam vet who could speak in English for sentences on end without seemingly ever using a word I understood. (“Psst, Dad. Did he just say that the crawler harness behind the bottom bouncer might catch on the planer board? Right, OK, thought so. Good to know.”)
Who would have guessed that fishing line and condoms would be marketed so similarly? You have XL for extra long, smooth action and XT when extra toughness is required and of course there’s new-kid-on-the-block Sensation monofilament for “Greater Sensitivity, Strength, and Control.” Having Mr. Fishervet unironically explain the differences between the types of prophyl- er, fishing line made me feel slightly unclean, quite honestly. He didn’t particularly care for the condom analogy, either.
And because I know you’re wondering, we bought Sensation … for pleasure.
Posted at 4:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Fun
May 19, 2005
Younglings
Readers of this blog know how much my almost-4-year-old loves Star Wars. The kid is obsessed. He actually cried when I shut off the NPR review of the movie (because I didn’t want to know) after they played a snippet of the film’s fanfare. He might have been looking forward to Revenge of the Sith more than I was. Well, I saw it today with some co-workers, without my son. What an excellent coda to two atrocious movies. It almost made up for Jar Jar and the other awfulness. Somebody doctored the script because even Lucas’s dialogue was decent. And the threads tied up for Episode IV were perfectly done. (Check out the young version of Darth’s star destroyer general — Tarkin? Nice touch.)
I was so skeptical of the pre-release warnings about not taking young children to see this movie. My first movie memory is my father taking me to see the original in 1977 so I desperately wanted to do the same with my son. But it ain’t gonna happen. Most of the violence is the normal stylized swordplay, but not all of it. The emperor is scary; Anakin’s final moments gory; and the clincher (stop reading: spoiler comin’) is that the child Jedis are not spared.
I’ll wait for the DVD for my boy. That is, after I go see it by myself again.
Posted at 11:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Movies
International Freedom Center building design announced
The design for the International Freedom Center — the only above-ground building on the original parcel of land from the World Trade Center — was released to the public today. Given the flashy, contentious architecture of the Freedom Tower and a desire not to loom too prominently over the memorial pools, the IFC designs are fairly understated. The building is raised off the ground to permit lots of ground-level interacion and wandering. But what I love most is that the raised structure is the opposite of a building that falls down. It levitates, is ascending — an implicit counterpoint to the collapse of the towers.
Snøheta, the Norwegian design firm responsible for the Biblioteca Alexandrina (a true masterpiece), created the plans.
Full press release here.
Posted at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: America | Topic: Work
May 18, 2005
Jumper at Trump site
Some yahoo climbed up the tallest crane at the Trump Tower construction site (no ladder, mind you) and is threatening to splat himself. Some intellectual property gripe, perhaps involving Oprah — or so the buzz at ground level says. The construction crew couldn’t be happier at this forced break and of course most of the pedestrian traffic is playing armchair negotiator or calculating his survival chances if he dives into the drink. (Um, that’d be zero.) I just want to know what the CPD Underwater Search and Rescue Unit can do.
UPDATE: After a slow descent the jumper decided he didn’t want to face the cops and he stalled. At this point I am guessing the subtle negotiation techniques used by the CPD turned to profanity-strewn yelling. Someone told the crane operator to lower the whole thing and the almost-suicide was apprehended. He sure didn’t like the structure going horizontal though. Probably scared him more than being 100 feet up. No lives lost, but oh the billable hours wasted!
Posted at 8:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Chicago
May 17, 2005
Zoo Illogical
So the Lincoln Park Zoo is in a world of hurt, having decremented their animal count by eight and not by sending ‘em back to the bush. I don’t know what’s going on there, exactly, but I can speak for much of Chicago in saying that we really really really want to give you the benefit of the doubt, LPZoo. You are one of the only free zoos left in the country and such a gem in the middle of the park. There is absolutely nothing better than a stroll on the lake with a quick duck in to see the animals. But, jeez! What’s going on?
Today I chaperoned my son’s class on a field trip to the zoo. Somehow all the 3-4 year-olds knew that the elephants had died. I know I didn’t tell them and I suspect the teachers didn’t either. Meme’s get around, I guess. It was all they could talk about. They don’t even know what death is. Problem is that at midday most of the animals are lounging in the shade, motionless, which of course prompted incessant questioning: Is the hippo dead? Are the coyotes dead? And my favorite, because it was was looking right at us: Is the tiger dead?
Suggestion for the LPZoo. In addition to your press relations effort regarding the deaths at the zoo how about you position a smart staffer at every one of the exhibits that used to house the now-deceased. Make it a point to discuss things openly with children who come by. Don’t remove the elephant signage and not expect kids (or adults) to notice. We know the zoo like our backyard. Be overt and forthcoming. Explain disease, explain the stress of captivity, explain that sometimes we don’t know why animals die. This will win the day eventually and will benefit the kids ultimately. Animals don’t just disappear.
Posted at 8:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: The Darnedest Things
May 15, 2005
Laughter, horror, frustration
CCTV had a professional badmitton tournament on the other day. It was about the funniest thing I have seen in months. So serious, so intense, so … badmitton. I’m sorry, people, I know you are athletes, but you simply cannot look cool smashing a shuttlecock. And lest you think this is a comment on Chinese culture I’ll note that the combatants were Euro of some flavor. (Implicit comment on Chinese viewing habits, I s’pose.)
Today in the antiques market I came within inches of slicing off a parabola of projectile vomit with my chest. Luckily this happened to me in Shanghai, also in a market — not kidding — so I was more than normally alert to being barfed on and I was able to leap out of the way. Shoes got a bit, though. What the hell?
Back in early 1996 in Atlanta people decried the traffic paralysis that would acommpany the Olympics. This never happened. People took public transport (which of course caused all kinds of other problems) and I-75/85 was no more sclerotic than usual. So maybe things will be OK in 2008, but I fear so much worse. Beijing is six rings of traffic hell. Rush hour does not exist. It just is. Arrrrrghhh!
Posted at 5:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: China
May 14, 2005
Some thoughts on translation
Presenting/demonstrating to an audience who does not speak your language and without real-time translation is not easy. Having a translator in non-real time requires you to think in complete, self-contained chunks — something I do not do. My thought-process (which is reflected in my presentation style) does loop-dee-loops, dithers in cognitive cul-de-sacs, and lurches forward without notice. This doesn’t mesh so well with the discrete communicational quanta required by the translator.
Translations of food descriptions into English rarely help and often make the dish far less appetizing. I’d rather be left to my ignorance of the original Chinese and take my chances. Just guessing at the Pinyin would be so much safer than actually reading “brown sauce from duck entrails,” for example.
There has to be a point at which signage translation into English crosses the line from useful to being more effort than it is worth to make sense of the grammar. I don’t have a ready example, but sometimes signage translations here are so muddled that you’d spend your time better looking for non-textual clues than trying to decipher the English. (Of course, sometimes it is worth it to read.)
Hyphenated translations from a culture whose language never needs hyphenation reminds you how strange it is to see hyphenation done improperly. To native speakers, the hyphen can only intrude at certain places in a word and certainly never to begin a line. Here, the hyphen is much bolder, splitting words wherever it damn well pleases. I like this. Punctuation with chutzpah.
See also: Words Are Pretty. (Seems to have stagnated of late, but I am banking on it revving back up.)
Posted at 10:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Topic: China
Chengde
My colleagues and I made a 4-hour trek to Chengde today. A summer palace of the Qing-era emperors in the mountains northeast of Beijing, Chengde is now a secondary tourist destination. It’s distance from the capital is great enough that you avoid most of the Great Wall tourist fly-bys that clog Badaling. In fact, en route to Chengde you pass some lovely half-ruined sections of the wall (at Simatai, I believe). Problem is, the wall was as interesting as Chengde itself. I wasn’t all that impressed. The grounds of the summer resort verge on dilapidation and the palaces themselves — like those in the Forbidden City — could only be peered into from behind glass. The interiors, also as in Beijing, were dust-draped Imperial still lifes, static and moribund. The rooms felt like tombs to me. Still, the vastness of the resort was sublime and the pagoda-lined lakes lovely. Verdict: not worth 8 hours in the car.
Posted at 8:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: China
May 10, 2005
Shang High
Well this is certainly an amazing city. I figured it would be difficult for Shanghai to live up to the hype it has received of late, but I’m unable to really refute things after having spent the better part of the day wandering around the city. Shanghai is comprised of three fairly distinct urban experiences. The newest area, Pudong, is straight out of Blade Runner, all dizzyingly vertical, clad in neon and LCD. The Oriental Pearl TV Tower looks ready for its encounter with the monolith from 2001 while the Jin Mao Tower sports the highest hotel (which I am in) in the world. Looking out my window I stare at three or four skyscraper-topping helipads and half-expect to see early-morning Tai Chi exercises atop them.
The Huangpu river divides Pudong from the main areas of Shanghai. A constant armada of barges and support craft ply the wide river making obvious that commerce is the lifeblood of this city. On foot you cross the river via a futuristic subterranean tunnel that uses four-man pods on electric rails to whisk you through what can only be described as the bastard child of the United Airlines terminal pedway at O’Hare and EPCOT Center. Cheesy, but fun to look at — once.
The Bund, as Europeans called the corniche promenade in the early part of last century, is a striking colonial contrast to the pomo Pudong. You’d almost think you were in pre-war Europe. Actually the opening scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom comes to mind. Beautiful, yes, but it stares across the river at the gleaming otherworldiness of Pudong and seems anachronistic and mildly pathetic. Architectural evidence of the years between colonialism and China’s recent resurgence is, thankfully, missing — at least here.
Proceeding south into Old Shanghai, you quickly find yourself in a tangled knot of vendor-strewn alleys, meaty odors, and hidden gardens. It is enchanting, actually. A tea house built atop stilts in the middle of a small lake. Rock grottos perfect for forgetting you are in a city of 16 million people. Ponds dense with koi and tourists staring back at them.
First impressions. But clearly the intersection of these diverse urban experiences is the engine (or at least one of the cylinders) powering Shanghai’s stunning vitality.
All Flickrlicious photos here.
See also Dan Washburn’s Shanghai Diaries. Excellent blog.
Posted at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: China
May 9, 2005
How to pass a 14 hour plane flight
Watch two stunning movies and spend the rest of the time thinking about them.
On this latest hop over to China — Shanghai, baby! — I took in two of the best movies I’ve seen this year. First was Hero, a Chinese martial arts movie set in pre-unified China. To call it a movie is maybe to overstate the fact that it was distributed on celluloid (or plastic disc). This is a “picture” in the truest sense. The scenes are so visually stunning I would just pause the action and stare. Like walking through a gallery of vivid stop-action animation, but it is all moving of course — and fast. The choreography puts Crouching Tiger to shame and that’s not easy to do.
Then after a too-brief nap in went Saw, a twisted recommendation from my brother. Not scary in the Ring/Grudge way, but ohmygod was it warped. Basic premise: two unlucky strangers wake up in a putrid bathroom, chained to the piping, and told they will die in 6 hours unless one guy kills the other. Depravity ensues. Since I was in the center seat I was constantly looking to my seatmates to make sure they were still sleeping. Some of the scenes in this movie, even seen peripherally, could probably be considered un-neighborly in a crowded airplane. (It was my DVD, not on the plane’s rotation.) Precisely the opposite — but no less enjoyable — than the rich tableaux of Hero.
Posted at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | Topic: Movies
May 6, 2005
Projects like menstrual cycles
A friend recently made the observation that no matter how many projects we have running concurrently in our development center they all seem to slide into lock-step and arrive at phases and milestones simultaneously. The analogy she used was that this seemed similar to the way that menstrual cycles of women in close quarters tend to synchronize over time. I find a lot of truth in this and don’t exactly know how to explain it. The extremes don’t seem to apply — if you are in the design phase of one project and launching another you’re obviously too far apart — but projects with only a few months offset do seem to synchronize, somehow. This is most noticeable when you realize that an entire entire category of skilled resource is busy simultaneously. (How come all the information architects are swamped all of the sudden?)
Why does this happen? Could be coincidence, but what if it a kind of macroscopic inability of an organization to truly multi-task? That is, what if there is some underlying tendency which drives teams working in close proximity to maximize productivity by shifting timelines slightly so that they are all in the same phase of a project at once? One benefit would be a kind of lateral development support. (Need help solving this particular design problem? Look at the team next door.) Other than that, though, it seems to me to be a trend fraught with downside: vertical resource shortages, projects completing at the same time (putting large numbers of people on the bench, potentially), and organization-wide single points of failure (if something should happen to prevent some step of the project methodology from being able to proceed.)
Maybe it has to do with pheromones. Thoughts?
Thanks, SBA!
Posted at 1:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Work
May 2, 2005
Friends who sell things online
Laura Gilligan meticulously creates customized wine charms and other baubles by hand at Cloud Village. Check out the wedding gift detail.
Melissa Pins turns her keen eye for fashion to custom-made dyeable footwear for women at Blue Tux Shoes. Oooh la la!
Matt Wenc creates paintings that warp spacetime ever-so-subtly at mattwenc.com.
The following message was not underwritten by any of the aforementioned merchants. (But I bet they’d like me more if you bought something.)
Posted at 10:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: I Like
Remanence
Matt Kirschenbaum has uploaded a really smart essay challenging the common notion of electronic text as impermanent or less stable than the printed word. He argues that the physical trace evidence of supposedly erased data force us to question the prevailing mental models of electronic text and also suggest a range of skills that will be needed of future bibliographers. Can’t wait for his book.
Combine this mode of investigation with the “literary forensics” popularized by people like Donald Foster and the potential for a completely new field of inquiry in new media opens up. The opportunity for a meaningful digital paleography arises precisely because electronic documents are considered so volatile and impermanent; rarely is the effort expended to truly expunge unwanted data. Somewhat boggling (and exciting) to consider what lies undiscovered at the level of the magnetic dipoles.
Posted at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Topic: Words
May 1, 2005
Act of volition, act of contrition
“Mommy, I accidentally hit Andrew on purpose.” Sobbing, sobbing.
The conflicted emotions of a rambunctious 3½-year-old.
Posted at 3:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: The Darnedest Things
