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PS... A Column on Things |
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By Paul E. Schindler Jr. |
Some things are impossible to know, but it is impossible to know these things. |
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I have a day job. So every word of this is my opinion, not that of my employer. This offer IS void in Wisconsin. Except, of course, that some material in this column comes from incoming e-mail; such material is usually reproduced in the Sans Serif type font to distinguish it from the (somewhat) original material.
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April 25, 2005 Vol. 7, No. 16 Table of Contents:
General NewsEdwin Diamond My MentorEdwin Diamond, my mentor, already has a tribute page on my website. Add to that a lovely and thoughtful appreciation by Mike McNamee, editor of Volume 95 of The Tech at MIT (I was editor of Volume 93).
Hurray, Rae is HomeHow's this for dumb: spring break the last week of April and May 12 the last day of school. Well, it must make sense to someone at Brandeis University in Waltham, because that's the schedule for our daughter Rae. Not that I'm complaining; it means we'll see a lot of her between now and her departure for a two-month summer program
Travel in the Internet AgeThis from Richard Dalton: You know as well as anyone that the Internet has completely changed travel planning. I don't know anyone who calls up XYZ Airline and asks, "What's your best price to London?" anymore. It's great to have some Web site sort through thousands of airfares or car rentals deals and cough up a lowball booking, but I'm more intrigued these days by the depth of destination information that's readily available. We're going to England in two weeks and plan on spending a couple of days in the North Yorkshire Moors, a place we've enjoyed before. Looking for something new, I Googled and found a Web site that provides a succinct, newsy page on more than one hundred of the most obscure hamlets in the U.K that are located in the Moors. Included are Fangdale Beck, Kirby Misperton, Low Dalby. and my personal favorite, Ugglebarnby. The site confidently tells me that this odd name is derived from the Scandinavian nickname of "Owlbeard." Who would have guessed? I suspect that the U.K., with its reverence for history, is exceptional, but I've also found a low cost pensione in Florence around the corner from the Duomo and a motel in Aberdeen, Maryland that happily hosted us, including Bogie, our hundred-pound dog. I'm very willing to agree with anyone who values the joy of unexpectedly beautiful scenery or a surprisingly interesting place to spend a couple of days. Over planning does have its drawbacks. But foreknowledge that the headless corpse of Oliver Cromwell may reside somewhere in the Moor's Newburgh Priory is hard to beat. We are having the same experience as we plan for our France trip. The Internet has opened up a world of cool places to stay; alas, it is also telling us they're all booked for the last week of June. I thought the French went on holiday in August!
Political NotesBriefs
Computer Industry NewsCraig Reynolds' TechnobriefsTechnobits: U.S. Military's Elite Hacker Crew (see also) --- Bells' fiber plans spark political flame war --- hourly rentals: Re-thinking urban car journeys --- Intel ships wireless broadband chips --- Robot walks, balances like a human --- Model predicts hurricane activity (see this wind anomaly data) --- new work by Sophocles: Oxyrhynchus Papyri --- as previously noted here, its iceberg B-15A vs. Drygalski Ice Tongue redux --- Target Upgrades the Pill Bottle --- Experts Solve Mystery of Unpopped Popcorn. [See Also, from Dan Grobstein: Toronto Globe and Mail: That corn won't pop: Water content most important, but integrity of hull also critical]
HumorToo CrudeI made it onto a Top 5 list this week, but it's too crude to reproduce here. And that's saying something.
MoviesThe InterpreterWhen I was young, I always used to wonder about films that were described as a "roller coast ride." Until now. I've been on a roller coaster ride, and I enjoyed it more than I do most such rides. The Interpreter is the story of a Nicole Kidman (a UN interpreter) and the Secret Service agent assigned to protect her, Sean Penn. Everything moves in fits and starts, the story is slowly and lovingly unveiled, there are red herrings, MacGuffins and surprises galore. The coda was a bit sappy, but otherwise the film was put together like a fine Swiss chronomtere. Director Sydney Pollack, apparently, cannot make a bad movie. His list of hits is too long to include here. I like the fact that he appears in brief cameos in his own films (Tootsie was the best of these). Actors:
I'd like to spend a little more time than usual on the writing because it was taut, clever and riveting. A tip of the PSACOT hat to my late friend Richard Parker, who taught me how to read screenwriting credits; an ampersand means screenwriters wrote as a team, the word "and" means they worked sequentiall. The writing team of Martin Stellman and Brian Ward (previously: a handful of small movies) wrote the first draft of the script, for which they get story credit. The version on the screen was polish separately by Charles Randolph, Scott Frank (45, a number of films, started as a writer for TV's The Wonder Years) and Steven "Schindler's List" Zaillian (my age), who also wrote Mission Impossible. Great film. Everyone involved deserves kudos. Rated PG-13 for sex and violence.
LettersDalton on MIT Fake Paper, The Romensko Effect, Kevin Sullivan with 2 From Net Surfer, The Dan Grobstein FileRichard Dalton found the editorial Say What in the Boston Globe THREE MIT graduate students invented a computer program that can spit out randomly selected words to create grammatically correct research reports that make absolutely no sense. Now they have had one of those papers accepted for presentation at a July scientific conference. Anyone interested in the media should read Jack Shaefer's Press Box, including such gems as The Romensko Effect. Slate used to email me notification of his columns; they stopped and I didn't notice. Since I just got an RSS reader to check my own RSS feed, I guess now I'll have to add Press Box to my one-item list. Kevin Sullivan checks in with two from NetSurfer:
Jon Carroll of the San Francisco Chronicle recently wrote a funny column addressed to the "Imprisoned Citizens of the United States". He wrote it as if from the fictional Unitarian Jihad (UJ), and it was a satirical call for greater tolerance and moderation in the face of extremist thought. The Your Unitarian Jihad Name site and the First Reformed Unitarian Jihad Name Generator are boons to sig lovers everywhere. Carroll: http://tinyurl.com/6valr Unitarianism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian Your Unitarian Jihad Name: http://homepage.mac.com/whump/ujname.html First Reformed Unitarian Jihad Name Generator: http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/jihad Here's a useful discussion of what happened when Jason Kottke, a modestly successful blogger, tried to raise enough money to support himself for a year by asking readers to contribute. http://www.kottke.org/05/04/micropatron-report/
Dan Grobstein File
MSNBC:
Blogosphere
New York Times
Some Extra Heft May Be Helpful, New Study Says By GINA KOLATA People who are overweight but not obese have a lower risk of death than those of normal weight, federal researchers said. Will Work for a View of the Show By ANDREW JACOBS Off Broadway's corps of driven volunteer ushers is a special subculture.
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