Blog: Archive for April, 2001

It seems that a lot of the articles I'm likely to find interesting are no longer advertised on Salon's front page, which means I'm less likely to see them at all. At least they have room for all the sleazy stuff now.

Anyway, they had another “wacky marketer” article, this time about the corporate pursuit of “trendsetters”—people who don't actually use their products, but seem “cool”. The idea being that they might want to incorporate some aspects of the trendy people's interests into their staid products, so that Joe Sixpack and Susie Housewife can feel “cool”, too. But not too cool.

Bleah. It seems that I may have caught the cold (or 'flu, or whatever) that M brought back from sunny California.

We went out for a walk anyway, picking up bread for dinner, depositing a check, and then heading down to get popcorn from our somewhat nearby London Drugs (our supermarket of choice no longer carries Pop Secret popcorn).

On the way, we discovered that the new Save-on-Foods store was open, so we checked it out. It's all shiny, since it's only been open for two weeks. It's also smaller than our regular store, and seems to be more yuppie-oriented, with lots more organic food, drugs, and hygiene products. Also bottled milk (!) and more organic (but perhaps not free-range) eggs than the other store. And it has much nicer displays, especially in the meat and bakery sections.

It's actually a really nice store, and I almost envy the people living in the “quality concrete” tower blocks nearby.

In London Drugs, I finally got a chance to play with Mac OS X. I'm impressed. I can now easily imagine happily using this operating system, especially once Adobe and some of the architecture software companies get their software ported to run natively. It still has all the cool NEXTSTEP features, with a nice Mac OS like surface. Most of the reviews I'd read are by people who are either coming from the Mac OS world or the Linux world, with the people in the first group not having any appreciation for the coolness that is Unix, and the people in the second group not having any appreciation for the coolness that is the Mac. And none of these people have ever really used a NeXT. Needless to say, their opinions aren't terribly useful in judging what the system would actually be like for someone who loves Unix, deliberately bought a Mac, and has lusted after a NeXT since calling and ordering their very first brochure.

I'm happier running Linux on my Mac than I was running Mac OS—it's much more stable (although there are a variety of bizarre and annoying problems that still crop up on PowerPC Linux). I have access to some applications I didn't have on Mac OS (notably Emacs, which is both light years ahead and behind editors for Mac OS). Most importantly, I have terminals, where, if you know the right commands, you can create incredibly powerful chains of them to process text and change files.

But I also miss the power and ease of use of applications such as Photoshop (for which the GIMP is a challenger in power, but not even in the same galaxy for ease of use) and Illustrator (for which I not aware of an equivalent). I also like some of the aspects of the Mac OS Finder (although I prefer to do most things on the command line, it's nice to be able to organize files graphically).

Mac OS X looks like it will handle all my needs elegantly. I'm sure it's full of frustrations, like all operating systems, but it has the advantage of being open enough to allow fixes to be made, and the advantages of being corporate enough to retain a consistent look and feel and overall polish.

ArsTechnica has the best review I've read so far.

William Gibson provided a pointer to an interesting online shop: Muji. He also claims that Muji has the best toothpaste available anywhere.
Thanks to the null device for the pointer to the Gibson interview.

Looks like we're probably heading for Cali....

A shot of me standing next to an extension arm for launching gantry LG-1. The arm was used to keep the launcher from sliding off the track on the curved and banked sections. According to the crew, it wasn't really very useful.

If you've been in a university or college library, you've almost certainly seen the vast numbers of journals covering every imaginable subject area (and many more you'd never guess if you weren't a specialist).

What you may not know is that most of those journals are published by companies that obtain their content for nothing—authors receive no compensation beyond publication and (sometimes) a number of reprints. Those companies then sell that work back to the universities and colleges where the work was done at an impressive profit in the form of printed, microform, or electronic journals. (Subscriptions can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars a year for a single title; publishers' costs are mostly for production—copyediting, typesetting, printing, binding, and mailing—as the journals' editorial boards are generally made up of academics who may or may not be compensated financially. The production costs are also offset by advertising.) Some journals actually charge authors to publish their research.

Furthermore, the contracts that authors are asked to sign usually include significant restrictions on their rights to republish their own material (on, for example, their own website). In many cases, the publisher becomes the owner of the copyright on the material, even when the research was funded by public funds.

Some publishers have begun, after pressure from contributors and subscribers, to make the contents of recent issues of their journals available online (for free or at a charge) after some period of time has passed (typically 6 or 12 months). That access comes only through their websites, however, and generally can only be had on an article-by-article or issue-by-issue basis—it's not possible to do a general search across all journals in a field (let alone across all journals) and find pointers to electronic copies of all the relevant articles. Instead, you must do such a search using other resources (electronic or paper indexes) and then track down articles independently.

A group of biological scientists have issued an open letter for scientists to sign to persuade publishers of biological and medical journals to make the contents of their archives available in an independent, cross-linked electronic form so that broad searches can be done efficiently, and so that published scientific research can be made available to everyone, including people who cannot afford the journals.

You can read more about this initiative in an article in The New Scientist. You may also be interested in the editors' response to the original open letter in the AAAS's journal Science, which, not surprisingly, is critical of the idea. Be sure to check out the response to that response, as well.

Similar open databases already exist. The largest is High Wire Press, hosted at Stanford University. They include a list of other databases for a variety of fields.

A more distributed effort is ResearchIndex (CiteSeer), run by the NEC Research Institute, which indexes PDF and PostScript versions of computer science research reports available on the Web.
Thanks to Red Rock Eater mailing list for the initial message.

Back in April, the New York Times Magazine ran a special “how to” issue with some amusing and interesting articles.

Joey Ramone dies. The Ramones were the first band I saw live. Granted, I was chicken and stayed near the top of the bleachers in the gymnasium, and was, consequently, less bruised but possibly more deaf than some of my friends, but it was still a great show.

I've never been a huge concert fan—mostly because I think it's crazy to pay a lot of money to sit in a building with thousands of other people so far away from the band that you'd have a better view on television. My favorite concerts have been the ones that cost US$10 or less and were in small venues. I saw Psychic TV in a bar, which made for a fun “what I did on my vacation” talk in my Spanish class, since no one else had ever heard of them; Love and Rockets in another gym; Negativland in a small cafeteria at my alma mater; the Pixies at the Schine Student Center at Syracuse University (clearing a 10' circle as I was spun around and around and well off my feet); and Bim Skala Bim at yet another bar.

The Ramones were a great start.

Phil Agre distributes lists of URLs via his Red Rock Eater mailing list list. He also archives them, as well as election-related links.

Some of the more interesting links from the last list include: A Guardian article about Ian Thomas, the cartographer fired for revealing the environmental impact of George Bush's oil-drilling plans in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Muse of Mopar, a critical review of The New Dodge Caravan Owner's Manual. An article on the increasingly hairy question of who owns the copyright on courses developed by university professors. An article about Cecil Balmond, a structural engineer whose work has helped to warp the world of architecture into new and strange forms.

Amusing, but scary, is this article from The Onion.

Mmm. Crepes for breakfast.

More cool links from Phil Agre!

Footnotes to History, describing many small nations that “you didn't learn about in high school”. Examples include the Republic of Vermont, the Soviet Republic of Bavaria, and the Conferderal Republic of the Tribes of the Rif.

Fundy Christianists invade a peaceful gathering of sunset drummers on Easter. Also talks about the lovely Johnny Hart, and his awful cartoons. (My personal favorite was the one where the “punchline” of a strip involving cave people talking about RU-486 (?!) was that it was short for “Are you for 86ing the kid?” Gag.)

Not enough cameras watching you all the time? Soon every cell phone will have one, too!

Another uncontroversial Bush appointment is Otto Reich, new head of the Latin American office of the State Department. Reich was the head of the “Office of Public Diplomacy” under Reagan, whose main purpose was to help the media understand that the Sandinistas were evil incarnate, worse than Hitler and the Nazis (as, of course, were reporters who told the real truth (as opposed to the OPD's lies) in their stories).

“War Driving” for open wireless networks—the next big thing. I like the idea of wireless—it would be great to be able to wander around the house and yard with a laptop—but clearly there are some serious problems to be overcome before it's actually safe.

I may be making a trip to California in the next couple of weeks. My driver's license expires in early May, and I still don't know if they've accepted my renew-by-mail application (I passed all their requirements, but it's the DMV). I haven't been able to get through to my California landlord to see if they've responded at all.

Martha Stewart had a segment on making miso last week that was fascinating. I've been enjoying miso soup for the last few years, and have recently been tempted by bottles of imported miso paste in the supermarket.

But I never really knew what miso was. It turns out that it's basically mashed cooked soy beans mixed with koji (salted steamed grain (usually rice or barley) innoculated with Aspergillus oryzae) and allowed to sit and ferment in wooden vats for some amount of time before being packaged and sold.

South River Miso has a tour that shows the whole process.

Word from the immigration lawyer is that we might be screwed. He says that the EB-1 visa is only for Einsteins with dozens of publications, and takes 18-24 months, anyway. The quicker route, an H-1B, will still almost certainly take longer than we have (we have to leave Canada by July 31), and probably won't come through before the semester starts. Which means it's likely that M will have to go back to the UK and wait; I'll have to go back to the States and find some kind of a job, however temporary (especially since I'd rather be near family than go all the way back to California without M); and we'll have to put all of our furniture and such in storage somewhere.

In other bureaucratic jousting news, I apparently never received anything from the DMV, or maybe my landlord forwarded it into the void. The DMV hasn't cashed my check. The telephone number I'm supposed to call “for more information” on the renewal-by-mail process is long-distance and constantly busy.

Oh, yes: the weather here has turned dark, cold, rainy, and generally dreary.

Looks like we'll be going the H-1B route and hoping they'll get it done in time. We may be forced to take a vacation in Britain, which wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

I got through to the DMV and spoke with a woman who told me, essentially, nothing, and that they wouldn't be able to tell me anything until they actually got around to opening my letter. They apparently run 6–8 weeks (48–56 days) behind schedule, despite the fact that the form says “do not submit this form if your license expires more than 60 days from today.” In other words, don't submit the form soon enough that you could actually expect a response before your current license expires. I hate the California DMV.

Yay! The DMV cashed my check. With any luck, that means they'll actually send me a new license....

Today's fortune: “Matter cannot be created or destroyed, nor can it be returned without a receipt.”

Part of me really looks forward to being back in the States: I can work, vote, not worry about missing important mail.

But most of me is scared. George Bush weaseled his way into power, against the wishes of the electorate and with the help of the most activist Supreme Court in history. And reports show that things are getting worse, not better. Far from being humbled by losing the election but having Dad's friends hand it to him anyway, Georgie has been up to no good in every way possible.

The Village Voice will terrify you with greater insight into Attorney-General John Ashcroft's fervent belief in Jesus (as defined by evangelical Christianists who apparently never read the New Testament).

The American Prospect Online has an article about the right's claiming that Anti-Federalists—who opposed the Constitution—are Founding Fathers, too. They also suggest a strategy for preventing Bush from packing the courts by forcing the processing of Clinton's Federal court appointees and stalling Bush's appointees.

The L.A. Times has an editorial by Bruce Ackerman outlining a way that Bush can be prevented from packing the Supreme Court. From the same source, some insight into the Supreme Court's decision to allow cops to arrest people for petty crimes.

Meanwhile, the Guardian's Jonathan Freedland sums up the Bush administration's first 100 days.

These links, and far too many more, are available from the Red Rock Eater mailing list site.

The Nation has a speech Bill Moyers made to the National Press Club about journalism and democracy during a dinner celebrating his thirtieth year in broadcast journalism. Good stuff.
Via CamWorld.