28.10.06
mambo dance
totally out of context, this random youtube recommendation made me smile this evening. also reminded me to go back to dance latin dances this winter.
25.10.06
milton glaser life lessons
a very inspiring list of life lessons written by designer milton glaser (of 'i heart ny' fame) was forwarded to me recently.
i pretty much agree with all ten, and fi anything, i feel that the ones i do not implement in my own life are things i would like to get better at.
here's a sampler:
[W]hen you are doing something in a recurring way to diminish risk or doing it in the same way as you have done it before, it is clear why professionalism is not enough. After all, what is required in our field, more than anything else, is the continuous transgression. Professionalism does not allow for that because transgression has to encompass the possibility of failure and if you are professional your instinct is not to fail, it is to repeat success. So professionalism as a lifetime aspiration is a limited goal.
LESS IS NOT NECESSARILY MORE.
Being a child of modernism I have heard this mantra all my life. Less
is more. One morning upon awakening I realised that it was total
nonsense, it is an absurd proposition and also fairly meaningless.
HOW YOU LIVE CHANGES YOUR BRAIN.
[...]
[T]he brain is susceptible, in a way that we are not fully conscious of, to almost every experience of our life and every encounter we have.
[...]
I am convinced that if someone was to yell at me from across the street my brain could be affected and my life might changed.
Some years ago I read a most remarkable thing about love, that also applies to the nature of co-existing with others. It was a quotation from Iris Murdoch in her obituary. It read Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real. Isnt that fantastic! The best insight on the subject of love that one can imagine.
Wed, 25 Oct 2006 22:27
this one makes me happy: "One of the signs of a damaged ego is absolute certainty."
although much of what he says is tinged with what seems like pretty strong certainty... :)
- cynthia
22.10.06
bullshit security
dropping off a friend at the airport today i once more realized what bullshit this whole airport security really is. better people than me agree with my longstanding claim that most of the measures that the t.s.a takes to secure flights are nothing but snakeoil. and today i experienced two new examples for that.
without going into details, for about 45 minutes i engaged in what by all means is an unusual and suspcious behavior at logan airport this morning. i had my reasons, but i was sure that within minutes someone would approach me and try to figure out what's going on. no such thing. t.s.a officers walked by and didn't even seem to care. i guess they were busy ridding people of their toothpaste.
what they don't understand is that there's only two kinds of airline security: one - trying to find the terrorists long before they're at the airport. this is done using intelligence, be it surveillance or snitches. two - if you really failed to find them in time, the best thing you can do at the airport is to detect suspicious activity and investigate it.
unfortunately, there is no 'trick' for that. you need to observe people, know what's normal, and try to spot when something's fishy. like, for example, me, today.
the problem is that this is totally opposed to the american way of doing things, especially in these kinds of underpaid jobs. here, everything must follow rules. if something changes, new rules must be drawn up, they come into effect and everyone starts to follow them.
unfortunately, this is perfectly useless for the task at hand. as soon as they are rules, perpetrators can change their behavior to adapt to the new rules. what you need is not rules, but an eye for human behavior, and some honed people-reading skills. and in a culture that favors eye-aversion, this is not an easy feat.
to top things off, my friend, who was traveling with a computer in his check-in luggage was told that no computing equipment can be shipped. after all, we know how dangerous computers can be. even cellphones apparently can crash a plane.
but the best part comes later: after much discussion, they agreed to check his computer, under the condition that he removed the c.p.u from the machine. now there's security for you! sigh. also, i'm sure the t.s.a officer was in a perfect position to judge whether my friend actually removed the c.p.u.
Mon, 23 Oct 2006 20:51
what in the hell could you have been doing suspiciously for 45 minutes? maybe it's because you are blonde. anyway i agree that security is a joke but you can't write the whole country off as eye-averting, mr. eye averter yourself. only the northern half of this country favors that.
- cynthia
21.10.06
architecture
as part of my 'possibly last year in america' catching-up campaign, i made this the other day:
20.10.06
new addition to the film list
Thu, 26 Oct 2006 10:49
funny, I just watched it as well last week, I wonder, was that a netflix recommendation?
- assaf
Fri, 27 Oct 2006 08:01
no. just saw it in the video store and decided to take it out. what did you think about the movie?
- guy
Thu, 2 Nov 2006 15:23
Thought the script was a bit loose, specially the insomnia and the love story.
Loved the acting and the build up of the moral dilemma.
If you liked it check out "maria full of grace" same genre, similar restrained acting styles, but over all felt much tighter.
- assaf
Sat, 5 Jan 2008 15:44
Thanks for that funny list! really great.
- erik
keith olbermann on the loss of habeas corpus
i'm not an american. by law and by plan i am but a temporary visitor in this country, and i appreciate the hospitality i'm afforded here. still, after over 4 years of residency here, and with all the humility of accepting that it is really none of my goddamn business, i feel entitled to at least comment on what seems to be a horrendous turn in one of the most admirable aspects of american political principle.
the american political system grew out of suspicion towards government. i believe that history shows us that this suspicion is based. many times in the past have political groups in power increased their power 'for stability' just to abuse it within a short amount of time.
this week it seems that a particuarly unbelievable undermining of some of the most basic constitutional rights has been signed into law, and as g.w.u law professor jonathan turley said "the strange thing is, weve become sort of constitutional couch potatoes. I mean, the Congress just gave the president despotic powers, and you could hear the yawn across the country as people turned to, you know, Dancing with the Stars. I mean, its otherworldly."
on another topic, i was surprised that many people don't know keith olbermann, who i consider one of the sharper political pundits on the left side of the spectrum (although he does look like a ken doll...). so killing two birds with one stone, watch olbermann's special comment on the military commissions act, and his interview of turley.
via the rude pundit.
18.10.06
replaced old motd
"it turns out that we don't think the way we think we think!"
Jordan B. Pollack, 'Mindless Intelligence'
16.10.06
comments-on, america, religion
it's hip to be good
during a recent conversation at a fancy boston restaurant, in a scene so ironic, it might have just been lifted straight out of a mike leigh movie - i noted that the big trend these days was for not-do-gooder types to "do good". the non-hippie hippie, the good samaritan capitalist. since this phrasing was met by some surprise by my co-diners, i thought i'd say a little something about it here, too.
so yeah - if you want to know what the hippest thing in america these days is, it's charity and changing the world. everyone who's someone is into it, and it's so trendy that even the biggest and coolest corporations are digging their hands deep into the do-gooder game. but don't confuse it with dreamy-eyed hippies. the deciding factor about the new do-gooder movement is that they're also looking out for themselves. turning a buck while saving a life, so to speak.
it's a strange blend between extreme capitalism and light tree-hugging. apple is doing it, bp is doing it, fucking timberland has now become a world leader in sustainability, and of course the list is endless - these are just the latest three examples i've seen in the last 24 hours.
timberland's slogan really captures this new trend: "make it better" - the vague "it", meaning: make great and expensive shoes, but also make the world better. no need for birkenstock, ma'am.
wherever you go in the high-powered circles in which i seem to commute these days, every over-privileged person i meet is working on some sort of idea on how to make the world a better place. this seems to come especially from people with professions that have not traditionally been connected to the love-and-peace crowd: investment bankers, economists, tax attorneys, and venture capitalists. they all emphasize the 'pragmatic' side of it, making sure i understand that this is not some lefty bullshit, but that there's a lot of money in it. as in: "i just want to say one word to you...just one word." -- "yes, sir."-- "are you listening?" -- "yes, sir. i am." -- "solar energy".
one of the reasons this new trend is possible is exactly that new twist on doing good: you can still look out for yourself, work in a top-notch creative job, get rich and famous, eat in fancy restaurants, and have only the nicest champagne at home. it's even part of the image!
another crowd that's drawn to the samaritan table is the designer crowd. the coolest names in design are all donating some of their time to good causes. some visionaries have caught on early, but designer houses around the country are catching on rapidly. here is the designer version of this trend: no need for crummy xerox prints of shiva drawn by untalented hippies. now the finest looking stuff in true haute fashion can be counted towards your global karma.
the trend has two big slogans. one is "like you give a damn", emphasizing the combination of caring and cool. the other is "doing good". you will see these come back over and over again.
it seems that this movement has been born out of a rebound from two extremes, meeting in the middle. on one hand people have become disillusioned from being unrealistic hippies (many have just gotten into the 30-something bracket, which requires a little more selfishness), and on the other hand people are getting a little sick with their selfish and empty lives after realizing that there's little satifsaction in choosing a great-earning or superficially hip or fun career. even the frequent dinners at the best bars in town are not helping. so the fusion of these two rebounds, has become this new 'good' movement.
i've been thinking about this for a while now, but it finally really hit me how big this has become, when i realized that the movement now even has their own wired-style magazine. and this is what their first editorial statement said:
We see a growing number of people tied together not by age, career, background, or circumstance, but by a shared interest. This revolves around a passion for potential mixed with fierce pragmatism and creative engagement. We sum all this up as the sensibility of giving a damn. But to shorten it, let's call it GOOD. We're here to push this movement and cover its realization.
afterword: i realize that this is a much bigger and more complex issue, which i have only touched on very lightly and from one angle. maybe at some later stage i'll write something a little more thoughtful on it.
Mon, 16 Oct 2006 19:58
yeah it's something that has been happening for several years, especially after the success of films such as the corporation and supersize me etc. in fact i'd say those films (and a few others i can't recall at the moment) drove it more than anything else. but don't worry, there are plenty of us lower-class people out there who don't give a shit about doing good. :) your perspective is tainted by the crowds you hang with.
- cynthia
Mon, 16 Oct 2006 22:47
there is more to this- part of it is a change from the idea that the govt shoudl be looking out for public welfare to the idea that individual citizens should be-- part of the trend. don't make it a 'public'/govt issue, don't make it an idealist vision based on fuzzy feelings... make it pragmatic and market-based so that the solutions are sustainable.
But you seem to imply there is something wrong with mixing the market and social change projects? The only things I see wrong with it are:
1) govts ought to be more accountable and this lets them not be so accountable
2) when people talk the talk and don't walk the walk. corporations like you mention aren't really that big into it-- many of them are just for PR. but if a corporation really mobilized its infrastructure around things and genuinely had a great double bottom line (like check out: www.worldofgood.com), why is that bad?
- paula
Mon, 16 Oct 2006 23:10
i was careful to not say that there's anything wrong with it. that's because i don't think that it's bad. my tone might be a little
suspicious, but i haven't really made up my mind either way, so i'm just pointing out the trend.
in complete honesty, something about it rubs me the wrong way, but i can't quite place my finger on it. maybe i'll figure it out at some point.
- guy
Tue, 17 Oct 2006 09:29
Yeah-- there's something that makes me uncomfortable too. Namely, the
self-congratulation about all of it; the sheer arrogance of young business people
thinking that all they need to understand is the market and apply market based
solutions and naturally social change will follow. Like they're the heroes of the
new order. When many of them have little background or training in the very very
complex issues involved in social change work, and need to, if they truly want
sustainable solutions as they suggest.
So: I think it needs to be made much more careful and humble. And as I said
before, shouldn't distract us from also holding govts responsible for the aspects of
public welfare they're responsible for. But overall, I still think ( or think I
think) it's a trend with some promise.
- paula
Tue, 17 Oct 2006 12:16
i've had conversations like this before and it's always tricky. people who are very
invested in doing good are very sensitive about any hint that the impulse is
anything but good. and it's hard to argue otherwise, of course. and i'm not arguing
otherwise, necessarily. but there are subtleties, and the knee-jerk offended
reaction they give always smacks of a certain closed-minded self-righteousness.
i'm sounding like a republican. i'm not at all.
- cynthia
14.10.06
regulate marijuana in nevada
if you happen to vote in nevada, vote to legalize marijuana. not much else to say on this topic. oh, maybe this: you must be a total idiot if you support the criminalization of weed. maybe nevada will lead the way to normalize the rest of us.
12.10.06
club d'elf
just came back from a great show at the lizard lounge. i was tempted by the playbill appearance of john medeski, who i long admire, but the band hosting him, club d'elf were the real treat. i'm a fan.
so -- go see them when you get a chance.
for the new yorkers among you, they are actually playing with medeski again on wednesday at the tonic in the lower east side, and later that week in great barrington, a cute little town on the mass/ny state line.
and while we're at it - i made another musical discovery last night (really a comedy discovery i guess): flight of the conchords. watched it for the 4th time now and it's still cracking me up. youtube has more where that come from.
bollocks, a bloody bad week
you gotta hand it to the brits. following yankee pitcher cory lidle's crash yesterday, the times of london gave you the view you couldn't get in the american mainstream media, which was very careful about praising the deceased.
it's hard to not raise an eyebrow at a title like 'cory lidle's crash caps bad week for yankees', but the real prize is in the follow-up:
Born in California, where he lived, Lidle was a 34-year-old journeyman starting pitcher who enjoyed a nine-year Major League Baseball career but was not respected by some colleagues because he was a replacement player during the 1994 strike. "The only thing Cory Lidle wants to do is fly around in his airplane and gamble. He doesnt have a work ethic", Arthur Rhodes, a former teammate, said.
Married with one son, he was traded in July from the Philadelphia Phillies to the New York Yankees, and his most recent performance came last Saturday in Michigan, when he pitched terribly, giving up three runs in just over one inning as the Yankees were eliminated from the play-offs by the Detroit Tigers.
Thu, 12 Oct 2006 18:34
that's hilarious. even if someone still alive had pitched 'terribly', i can't imagine any american newspaper using that word. and this article generally reads as very amateurishly written, but it could just be my american reading of it. the brits are known for being gossipy in their jouralism and that's how this reads.
- cynthia
Thu, 12 Oct 2006 19:19
i don't think there's anything more gossipy about this report than about the american ones. it's not like this is news about anything of national importance. this one is just funnier.
- guy
Thu, 12 Oct 2006 19:43
it's the tone. maybe you don't see it but it's there.
- cynthia
10.10.06
so, where's my robot?
my friend and colleague andrea has started a very cool blog about social robots and machine learning. it's serious but accessible, just the way it should be.
charlie is here! and should be shot
this post is long overdue. it concerns the horrendous conception and execution of the 'charlie ticket' project for the boston subway system.
i mean, where to begin? how about with the simple fact that there was *nothing* broken with the previous fare system, or at least nothing that was fixed with the new one. if someone can point me to a single acquired benefit of the new system except profit for the developers (who i'm sure are friends of some mbta officials) and employment for their workers, please let me know.
to the uninitiated, the boston transport authority (mbta) has, in what seems to be another case of new-york penis envy, converted its token- and change-based system to a new system which includes stored-value magnetic paper cards. in parallel it has replaced the turnstile system with stupid-ass glass gates that already look like they're some 1980s joke on futuristic design (and notice the slight misalignment of the gates. this station is no exception, apparently it's part of the bad design).
but what's really wrong with the new system:
- paper waste. every fucking time you buy a ticket, you get another piece of magnetic paper trash. even if you want to refill your card, they actually replace your card with a new one. if you use your debit card to buy the ticket, you also need to accept another piece of magnetic trash which has your receipt printed on it, whether you ask for it or not. the previous system had reusable tokens and reusable federal reserve currency.
- the death of the monthly ticket. it used to be a collector's item with its new design every month, and obviously it was easily distinguishable from a token (one's a card, the other is a piece of metal). the new ones look like the stored-value tickets and you have to read the print on the ticket to distinguish them. real helpful when the gates are broken and the station is manned.
- the ticket vending machines. god, what an improvement. if you're quick and well-rehearsed, you can sometimes get a ticket in only double the time it took you on the old token machines. but hey! it has a computer screen on it! so it must be better. most people just stare at the machine with the horrible 1990s unix user interface (including sgi blue) and don't even know where to start. luckily, the credit card slot is not marked for insertion direction, resulting in an average of 2-3 insertions before you get it right. the interaction flow of the machines can be described in one sentence: the programmers designed it. to name only one example: you have to press 'confirm' after you've selected your payment type, but before you actually can insert the payment.
- the transition management. months (a year?) after the first station was converted, the mbta still runs on both systems. it's a dice roll to anticipate whether you will need a charlie ticket or a token (or exact change) for your return trip, making ticket/token buying a nightmare. obviously you can't buy tickets in tokened stations and vice versa. that would be too easy.
- but i left the best to last: the stupid-ass glass gates. these are really a work of art. not only did it take them up to an incredible three months to install in some stations, they also seriously suck ass, and i can't for the life of me understand why they are supposed to be better than the turnstiles. (a) there is a significant delay between activation and opening. this means that every person who leaves the station needs to stop, wait, and then cross the gate. if you ever used a subway station you can imagine how annoying that is, and how that scales in rush hour. (b) the glass panels with the 'smooth' swoosh action look like the most fragile mechanism imaginable. i expect one out of five to be jammed within weeks. if you see it in action, you can only reach one conclusion - this is not something you want to lead millions of people through. (c) once the system senses a person in the gate it won't (hopefully - see below) close, enabling any number of people to pass through on a single fare. good thinking there, mbta. (d) given the asinine design of the vending machine software, i imagine that very soon we will find out that someone has been crushed to death by an erroneously closing gate because of a software bug. these motors are strong, a fact you can confirm for yourself if you try to hold the gate closed when it wants to open (how's that for investigative journalism?)
in short - everything in the new system is fucked up and useless. the people behind it should be investigated, and probably fired, and i'm sure the dig will uncover some huge conspiracy there at some point involving mitt romney's favorite prostitute's brother.
coz, while admittedly slow and unreliable (and closing early), the one nice thing about the t was its informal fare system, with the free buddy ride on the weekends and the it's-ok-if-you're-a-nickel-short attitude for exact change. now they killed that, too with what will probably go down in history as the worst fare system conversion in any mass transit system ever.
i probably forgot some additionaly annoyanced, so feel free to chime in.
Wed, 11 Oct 2006 07:52
well, i'm always a new version junky, even when the previous is good. but this indeed seems to suck. and still, i hate the turnstiles too. they tend to bump into my legs in ways that break physical laws. anyway the delay you mentioned in the opening of the gates is really unforgivable. that would have pissed me off much more then the legs annoyance.
- yotam
Wed, 11 Oct 2006 09:49
i'm glad i left just as this was being installed. though i didn't get
out before having to buy a stupid token-ticket at south station that i
then couldn't use anywhere else because no other station had the stupid
glass gates. maybe i'll mail you my ticket that has a dollar still on
it, i won't ever need it again.
i should add though that i expressed sadness to one of the mbta guys
that the colored monthly passes were gone and he said they'll be back,
and they will again be different colors every month, and that the
current system is a stopgap while they get a system up and running that
will combine bus and subway passes into one. which probably means
higher fares all around. and still makes it a ridiculously bad
execution of the new system.
and i will also add that the excellent dc metro system just announced
that it may turn off some escalators at some multi-escalator stations
in order to save money. boston never bothered to announce that, they
just never had them running, even at stations that had only one
escalator.
- cynthia
Wed, 11 Oct 2006 11:48
p.s. i know you think all things new york are wonderful but the ny subway system is shit too. it's just more extensive and runs all night, those are the only advantages i see. and i dont think it's new york the boston system is trying to emulate--the dumb new system seems much more like a very horrible imitation of d.c.'s system.
- cynthia
Wed, 11 Oct 2006 12:43
yeah, one of the most annoying parts of this is that it's not like they don't have *very* good places to invest their money in - like getting the trains to run faster, on time, and with some sort of indication as to their schedule (and no - saying that the next train is arriving _now_ is not an indication). and i'm not even talking about the continuously broken escalators, which still seems to be technology too hard to handle for kone.
and about nyc - i totally agree with you cynthia. i actually have an old rant about the ny subway system from my first days in new york lying around somewhere. the ny system does have the advantage of getting you faster further.
i think the best investment the mbta can do is to send their execs on a trip to european capitals. it might be quite an experience for them.
- guy
Wed, 11 Oct 2006 12:51
here it is: http://web.media.mit.edu/~guy/misc/nytales-subway-series.txt - written a mere 11 days after my arrival in the states.
- guy
Wed, 11 Oct 2006 18:32
yeah i was considering getting a bike in nyc too. seems a few of the things on your list about nyc have since changed. only the very minor ones though, of course.
- cynthia
09.10.06
letter from iraq
don't know if this is all over the web already or not, but i liked it.
Most Profound Man in Iraq -- an unidentified farmer in a fairly remote area who, after being asked by Reconnaissance Marines if he had seen any foreign fighters in the area replied "Yes, you."
[...]
Most Surprising Thing I Don't Miss -- Beer. Perhaps being half-stunned by lack of sleep makes up for it.
02.10.06
castro alive? dead? almost dead?
with a headline like "Venezuela's Chavez: Recovering Castro prepared to die", and given our experience with communism, and my personal affinity for conspiracy theories, one must wonder.
is he alive? is he dead? did chavez kill him? is chavez really castro in a fat-suit?
and most importantly, who will sit in the tribuna antiimperialista in the next u.s.a-cuba beisbol match?
Mon, 9 Oct 2006 04:13
This guy is still alive and his thinkings and plans will continue, alsof after his dead... We`ll see, time will learn...
- Eric
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