Bush Does Not Laugh
April 30, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Governance | People & Society
The Happy Tutor educates us on the meaning of Steven Colbert's savage roast satarizing Bush. [video]
Refreshing Authenticity
April 30, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | People & Society
Meanwhile, in looking to see if Umair had posted on the dumbest move this week™, I saw he pointed to this.
What a riot! Columbia Business School Dean Glenn Hubbard, who was in the running to be the new Fed chairman, issues a parody video set to "Every Breath You Take," poking fun at Ben Bernanke, who got the job.
This is the opposite of the Times move. First, it's riotously funny and very well done (as opposed to vaporware). Second, it pokes fun at the author, the subject, and the band (instead of thinking it's going to actually matter). Third, just how many professionals would be willing to take this risk, to be this authentic, to speak in a human voice without press releases? Certainly not the Times. I have several academic clients, all constrained by the institutional voice. I've seen this up close, at the point of decision.
Oh, if only more organizations could act with the spirit of carnival that this video demonstrates.
Breaking Update: We received an electronic communiqué from Doug, saying CBS.Chick.2007 is reporting that the star of the video is a student, not the Dean. Whoops, bad reporting on Notio's part. Wisdom of the crowd in action, right there. But still, the fact that this video is going out under the banner of the School is admirable. And worth another laugh, even with the student actor. He's a grad student, at least.
Disintermediation Denial
April 30, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Software | Technology
Dumbest move this week™.
Microsoft and The New York Times unveiled software on Friday that would allow readers to download an electronic version of the newspaper and view it on a portable device.
With Microsoft's new Windows Vista software, to be available in January, virtually any newspaper, magazine or book can be formatted into an electronic version and read online or off. The software would allow The Times to replicate its look — fonts, typeface and layout — more closely than its Web site now does.
I agreed with Dave Winer's comment, ("Bill Gates helps the NY Times turn the clock back.") but then I thought about it some more and went further.
This is so lame.
First, there's this thing called the "Web" – maybe you've heard of it? It has a structural markup language called HTML, and a styling layout language called CSS. If you use this, your stuff can work nearly anywhere, Mac, PC, Linux, mobile phone, TV display, etc. The Microsoft/Times approach is so 1996, and probably has more to do with DRM than anything else. This announcement is very disappointing, and indicative that the Times is not thinking clearly about digital disintermediation.
Second, there's this other thing called PDF. It's been around for years, and it's pretty well debugged (unlike the yet-to-ship Vista, nee Longhorn, with it's constantly slipping schedule and on-going feature-kill). Even better, PDF currently allows "virtually any newspaper, magazine or book [to] be formatted into an electronic version and read online or off." [Is there an echo in here?] Only one problem, it's from Adobe, and Microsoft would never think of using that!
Instead, what they should be doing is figuring out how to engage the army of bloggers to use Times stories as a focal point for their efforts. Who freaking cares if the formatting looks good offline? I'm reading most of my news in generic text via NetNewsWire anyway. It's very train-friendly already.
Hint: The advertisers care. Therefore realize that the "customers" of the Times are advertisers, not readers. What the readers are is not clear, though "consumers" might fit. I'm surprised Umair hasn't written about this yet, perhaps because it's such a dumb move that it's not worth commenting.
Face it. The Times is going to be very distracted for the next year. They've moving into a new building late this year or early next (I forget) - the whole staff, moving a new place for the first time since the 1800's or somesuch crazy-long time. They're building the building, so you can imagine the impact on your "core competencies" if you've ever built or renovated a house. The Bush administration is going to sue their ass off for the NSA spy leak; you can see pretty clearly that it's going to get ugly. And they're still hamstrung by the myth of objectivity. They (along with everyone else) still print whatever the Administration says, even when it's a blatant outright lie (c.f. anything Cheney has said for the past several years).
Imagine instead if the Times had a Blogger Research Program. It would work like this: Bloggers would sign up, and there would be a nominal annual fee to separate out the serious from the hasslers. Say, $20 a month. For that you get access to a password-protected RSS feed of story drafts in development. (You might also include a subscription to Times Select.) You submit your thoughts, corrections, research notes, and op-ed comments to a private forum or blog, where there is one topic/post per story. Every time the Times uses one of your quotes or research in a published story you get paid a nominal amount. Say, $5. The goal for bloggers would be to earn some income (eBay style). Maybe some people are occasionally invited to write an op-ed piece for full publication. Maybe some longer pieces are commissioned based on the blog posts. Maybe the super-pros rise to a full-time gig at the Times. The goal for the Times is to get hundreds of people competing for pixels and ink in a national pub. Their quality would go sky-high. The online dynamic would change too – bloggers would write for broad appeal and re-use, not just for venting. The Times would be hungry for their blogger army contributions because they could never pay for such a large and well-distributed research staff.
The details need more thought than the 15 minutes I've put in. But this is what comes off the top of my head, and IMHO it's a hell of a lot more pragmatic and clear-thinking than what Sulzberger and Gates came up with. [How's that for ego inflation?]
To my loyal Times employee reader: I would love to help implement something like this, and guess what? I'm already an experienced consultant working in the field! How convenient is that?
Have your people call my people and we'll do lunch.
My Brother Esau
April 29, 2006 | Life
The more my brother looks like me, the less I understand
Spring: Transitions and decisions. Buds bursting and cool nights. Grass growing slowly now. New kinds of chores. Winter's over, summer's not here yet.
Idea No. 22
April 28, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life | People & Society
Some of my loyal readers are already subscribed to the Signals vs. Noise feed; to you I apologize for the repetition. Just skip ahead to the last three paragraphs now. For everyone else:
Could you live like this?
A slide show (NY Times) of commisioned pieces from the collection of Ohio art collector Andy Stillpass, “one of America’s most radical and eclectic contemporary-art collectors.” This is what happens if you decide to spend your fortune by having artists run around your place rearranging books, filling drawers, painting the house, etc.
Rob Pruitt’s “Idea No. 22 ‘Fill a desk drawer with gravel and make a secret Zen garden’” (1999). [with photos]
Related: There is Nothing Wrong in This Whole Wide World (photos/description) was a 2004 public installation at Adobe Bookshop in San Francisco. The store allowed its 20,000 books to be reclassified by color. McSweeney’s interviewed Chris Cobb, the idea man behind the event. [with links]
Sure, okay, rearrange the known world - bookstore or kitchen or bedroom.
Art.
That's a thought.
Neil Young Gets It
April 28, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | People & Society
Neil Young has a new album, Living With War and he is working the digital network to best effect.
"Living With War will stream on NeilYoung.com beginning Fri, Apr. 28th. The album will be available at digital retailers beginning May 2nd. CDs will be available in stores early May."
Listen to the whole album free.
The Blog.
The MySpace profile.
The YouTube video.
The video interview on MySpace is fantastic. He gets key ideas of liberty and freedom onto national TV. Spread the word.
(Greendale is a masterpiece, by the way. You should really see the movie.)
The Shangri-La Diet
April 28, 2006 | Life | People & Society
Most interesting diet (fad?) in a long time. I first read about it at Aaron Swartz's weblog, and he posted a followup today.
This is where Roberts's big insight comes -- he argues that we use a Pavlovian sort of flavor-conditioning system to see whether food is scarce. If we eat foods frequently, we grow to like their taste, and thus our brain realizes we're eating them out of choice and raises the set point. On the other hand, if we eat new foods or foods with little taste, our brain assumes we're eating them because there's nothing else around and the set point is lowered.
And thus, the way to lower your set point: eat foods with no taste. Of course, they have to have calories as well, so Roberts's preferred suggestion is extra-light olive oil (ELOO), which is basically just oil with absolutely no taste. Your body gets the calories but it doesn't get the taste, so the set point goes lower every time you eat it.
Possibly just another diet fad, but easy to try, and unlike Atkins (for example) would appear to have no (potentially) dangerous side-effects. Most interesting to me, whether it's this diet or some other future "eliminate fat" method/technology, are the societal implications.
Among those results: lots of people you know getting thin. It's difficult to imagine what this is going to be like. The fat guy at the office won't be fat anymore. That cute-but-slightly-overweight girl you've had your eye on won't be slightly overweight anymore. Social dynamics will be seriously disrupted in a way that, to my knowledge, has no analog. People have gotten taller, and thinner, and prettier over time, to be sure, but never quite this fast.
Imagine if your weight were a choice, and everyone chose to be thin. Imagine if, in the span of two or three years, everyone were the exact weight they wanted to be. Eating whatever you want, no complaints about your weight, clothes fit more or less forever. It's nearly unfathomable. Some magazines would die. Whole companies profiting on diets would go bust. Exercise would be focused on mobility and endurance rather than weight loss.
If this happened, people might actually have the attention span to focus on government corruption and nuclear war in the Middle East and electronic voting machine rigging and possibly slow the decline of our republic and the destruction of our planet.
Secret Doors
April 27, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites
Tilting stairs, rotating bookcases, disappearing wall stashes. Fully installed starting at $10,000 and DIY kits starting at $1,500.
Creative Home Engineering is a registered contracting company that adds value to homes by integrating silent, automated hidden passageways.
A Hardy Boys fantasy come true.
Just For The Irony
April 27, 2006 | Arts & Culture
Video: Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, and Vince Welnick of the Grateful Dead sing the National Anthem in Candlestick Park, San Francisco on April 12th, 1993.
Fun While Flying
April 26, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | Travel
Chris Pirillo mimes the airplane safety instructions. Hilarious. [via Scripting News]
From The Mailbag
April 25, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Life
The life of a consultant....
Notio: Were you out of town this weekend?
A: Well.... that's a pretty good story, actually. After waiting for a half hour to be picked up at the Asheville, NC airport for a Fri-Sun retreat I started to have anxiety about standing outside the wrong airport. Nope, that wasn't the problem. I was at the right place at the wrong time! Their retreat is NEXT weekend. Yikes. I was able to get home (call it a mutli-hundred, 13 hour, 6 airport lesson in attending to details). The sad part is that I'm booked next weekend and will now be helping [these] folks from a distance rather than in person. So, I was home this weekend, by surprise. Then was hit by allergies and overall exhaustion from a full day of nonstop travel.
Notio: That's highly bloggable.
Name withheld to protect the detail-challenged. Let this be a lesson to us all.
Sometimes It's Better Not To Know
April 23, 2006 | Cooperatives | Life | People & Society
We had our Co-op annual meeting tonight. As board president, it means I'm more or less running the show. The face of the meeting at least. Luckily we have a great staff and I can pretty much show up half-an hour before and everything is all set up. But I have to have an agenda and something to say.
So I was preparing my remarks this afternoon, working from the list I made earlier in the week. I left the list on the dining room table during the week so I could think about it in passing while I went about my days. This works well for less complicated topics – if there's real work to do then I need to sit down for hours on end and actually focus and draft and revise and edit and re-structure and grind it out. But brief remarks I can write from the heart after some background processing and everything tends to work out okay.
The most important section of the meeting tonight, from my perspective, was presenting my friend Bruce Pacht with the Allan and Nan King Award for Community Service. Bruce is a family friend; I nominated him for the award, and as president I would present it. That writing went well, primarily because Bruce has a 30-year resume of community contributions and I could work quickly from his accomplishments.
Then I worked up some notes about the Board's decision earlier in the week to pay itself a stipend for service. This idea failed a board vote a few years ago, but this week we agreed on $200 per meeting attended for board members, and $300 per for the president. During the spirited discussion about voting ourselves a salary, the moral and ethical dilemmas therein, and the potential reaction of our member-owners, someone asked, "How will the members find out?" I said, "I'm going to stand up in front of them Sunday night and tell them, and ask for feedback. Then I'm going to write an article for the Co-op News." Someone suggested we ask the members first, perhaps at the meeting. This is reasonable from many possible angles, but I came down on the side of leadership – we should consider a broad range of material and as leaders decide what's best, then explain ourselves to whom we are accountable, and then just listen. Make adjustments as required. An important component of leadership is making decisions – constant polling and triangulation generates train wreaks like the Democratic party.
So anyway I wrote up those notes, and checked the clock. It was 2:45 PM. I had to leave at 4:30. I was done, save for another round of edits, so I took a break for lunch. When I came back upstairs to check the agenda, I realized I hadn't printed an agenda yet, because I was working from Tuesday's 3x5 notecard. So I printed one out. An then it jumped out at me: The first agenda item was President's Remarks – uh oh, I haven't written that yet!
Um, maybe we could start the meeting by skipping the first agenda item?
Maybe not. So on two sheets of yellow pad paper I wrote everything that came into my head in sound bite format. Not the exact words to say but the main idea and any connect-the-dots language necessary to the other ideas. Then I got in the car and drove to the church basement where we hold the meeting.
Once things got rolling there were perhaps 60 or 70 people there. We had a very nice meal for the $5 fee, and then saw a slide show of a fair-trade coffee trip to Mexico, where an employee and the manager of another nearby co-op had travelled to pick coffee beans as ambassadors of American co-ops. A fascinating personal report. As you might expect, the village is extremely poor. The exceptional houses are constructed of cinder block and are slightly larger than New England tool sheds. They hike two hours, on a steep slope to the top of the mountain, barefoot, to harvest the beans. I saw the photos. Men, women, children; all hands on deck. When they pick the beans they put them in sacks which, when full, weigh about 100 lbs. The sacks have a strap at the top that goes across your forehead, to leverage the weight of the bag slung onto your back – you need your arms free to balance and hold onto trees going down the trail. Barefoot. My chiropractor would be horrified. Not to mention my pedicurist. When the beans make it down the hill, they have to remove the outer skin with a hand-cranked machine, and then they dry the beans out on a cement pad, like a garage bay. The moisture content has to test correctly for the beans to be valuable for export. If it starts to rain, they have to scoop them all up and put them inside then spread them out again later. In the old days, they'd walk them to market, a couple of hours away, and then be forced to take whatever the gringo buyer paid that day. The world market price is set by the commodities markets in New York and Chicago, but the farmers didn't know this number. Sometimes they had to accept ten or twenty cents a pound for their product. And, guess what, the gringo brought his own scales....
I am a tea drinker, no coffee for me, but I wonder what the grim reality is for harvesting the green tea crops.
So now that they have a co-op of their own, they have a laptop in the office that can get the current world market pricing – they have the information. They also have their own scales. And because they're dealing with Equal Exchange, the pioneer of fair-trade, they get $1.25 a lb for their coffee beans, or $1.45 for organic. Score one for co-op's, and score one for fair trade.
My remarks went over fine. The Celebration of Bruce was nice, though it sounded a bit wooden to my ear as I spoke it. Some other things were reported. I opened the "Q&A" section with the board pay bits, and we got some feedback on both sides of it. Some other questions were asked and answered. We even almost came close to approaching the beginning edge of audience dialogue there for a brief moment.
Then it was a wrap, I thought. But Don, the board VP, snatched the mic and launched into a very nice tribute to me. Because I will not accept a nomination for next year's presidency, this was the last meeting at which I'll preside. I'll stay on the board, but as a past-president. Don waxed eloquent about abstracting up, my leadership and vision, and my thoughtful concern for all things co-op. It was very nice. Then he gave me a whoopee pie as a departure gift, about which I'll have to consider the hidden meanings. Then it was a wrap.
I talked with some members who approached me. I gathered my things. I finished my water bottle. I picked up my coat. Then the GM came up to me and said, "Did you see that crazy guy in the back?"
I had, actually. He had a weird look. The winter parka, the fidgeting, the unkempt hair, the look in the eye. Down from the woods. I had smiled to him on my way to the restroom and I got a sort of vacant return. The GM said, "Did you know he had a pistol?"
What??? No, I did not know he had a pistol. Speaking as the guy in front of the microphone most of the time, I was not excited to learn that the weird fidgety guy with the vacant stare at the back of the room near the exit had a pistol. I was not LOL.
It turns out that employees Tony and Aaron had noticed this situation and had debated what to do. They didn't want to cause a scene. I appreciate this. They work in a public market, and there are discreet ways to handle disturbing situations. I once had lunch at the cafe, where, behind me down the hall an employee was having a seizure, and it was absolutely amazing how the staff handled it. Very calm, loving, professional. So I dig that they didn't want to accost the guy and create a scene.
Tony called the police to see if it was legal. They told him that if they guy had a concealed weapon permit it was legal. How would you know if he had a permit? Ask him to show it to you, they are required to carry it. Okay, Tony tells us now, he didn't really want to ask the guy because that's heading toward making a scene. So Tony and Aaron position themselves on either side of him, in case Something Needed To Be Done. Apparently when I was talking about store expansions, and a couple of other topics, the guy got really fidgety, rubbing his hands and twisting his thumbs and breathing heavily. Eventually he'd had enough and left early. Nothing happened.
I was totally freaked out. I am a very accepting person, but this was over my line. I just don't think weird fidgety guys with vacant stares are being very cooperative when they bring pistols to member meetings.
So next year, when you walk into the Lebanon Cafe and see the sign on the door announcing the annual meeting, you will see at the bottom, "Firearms not allowed." I'm not sure if we'll hire security and do actual searches, but I am just not sitting on stage at the front of the room when weird fidgety guys with vacant stares have pistols under their coats. Not even for $200 a meeting, no way.
More Hell for Web Developers
April 22, 2006 | Software | Technology
Dave Hyatt, chief architect of Safari and WebKit, outlines a proposal to solve the "high-DPI" problem:
Consider a Web page that is designed for an 800×600 resolution. Let’s say we render this Web page such that the pixels specified in CSS (and in img tags and such on the page) map to one pixel on your screen.
On a screen with 1920×1200 resolution the Web site is going to be tiny, taking up < 50% of the screen's width and half the screen's height. In terms of absolute size, the text will be much smaller and harder to read.
Now this may not be a huge problem yet, but as displays cram more and more pixels into the same amount of space, if a Web browser (or any other application for that matter) naively continues to say that one pixel according to the app’s concept of pixels is the same as one pixel on the screen, then eventually you have text and images so small that they’re impossible to view easily.
How do you solve this problem? The natural way to solve this “high DPI” problem is to automatically magnify content so that it remains readable and easily viewable by the user. It’s not enough of course to simply pick a pleasing default, since the preferences of individuals may vary widely. An eagle-eyed developer may enjoy being able to have many open windows crammed into the same amount of space, but many of us would like our apps to remain more or less the same size and don’t want to have to squint to read text.
The full solution to this problem therefore is to allow your user interface to scale, with the scale factor being configurable by the user. This means that Web content has to be zoomable, with the entire page properly scaling based off the magnification chosen by the user.
Much more detail in the post, including elaborations on questions such as, "What the heck is a CSS px anyway? Most Web site authors have traditionally thought of a CSS pixel as a device pixel." Yup, I sure have.
Subtle Changes Over Time
April 21, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites
Photohistory of the Netflix mailer, from 1999 to the present.
2000: Customers are asked to peel off a sticker to reveal Netflix's return address. The design is eventually deemed too complex.
A well-captioned tour through iterative product design – what is the most convenient, cost-effective, earth-friendly, practical DVD mailer? (Remember that you want to send 1.4 million DVD's a day.)
April 24 New Yorker
April 21, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | People & Society
Just a mention that the current issue of the New Yorker has a number of great articles around the theme of "Journeys." Especially fantastic is Anthony Lane's European Journal contribution on low-cost air travel. It's literally littered with witty asides that resonate with anyone who gets on a plane more than once a year. I was laughing out loud the whole time.
The article is not on the web, and the contents page doesn't have a dedicated URL, so no links to all that.
One thing that is online is editor David Remnick's comment on Al Gore, with which I wholeheartedly agree.
Alex Meets The New Neighbor
April 20, 2006 | Life
Database uber-nerd Philip Greenspun checks in with 34 photos of a 13-week old Golden Retriever meeting his much-loved Samoyed Alex. As a commenter noted, this probably violates a maximum cuteness regulation.
Also, unrelated except by the author, he's looking for a personal assistant, and the job description is a paragon of the modern age.
Update on Police Solicitations
April 19, 2006 | Life
Re: the solicitations and implications. Got a call from the Chief of Police. Turns out this was an International Brotherhood of Police Officers union project, which was not cleared through the town administration. The complaints started coming in, and finally today they went down to the telephone "boiler room" and read them the riot act on using the Town's name. Two union guys were fired (for not clearing the project). Mine wasn't the first complaint, and the Chief is spending quite a bit of time on it this week. Quote: [Sigh] "Having one employee is one too many." The Town did something like this ten years ago and decided never to do it again – little of the money stays locally. It's not the way the Town or the Police department operates, he apologized for the trouble, and if it happens again call him directly.
Can't really ask for more than that.
Looking backward, who would have thought 25 years ago that the Chief of Police and I would be on the same side of any issue? Maturity, I tell you. Hopefully this buys me some slack the next time I'm out raising hell and have a run-in with the local law.
Choosing Your Empty Calories
April 19, 2006 | Life
If you read the last post you might get the idea that I'm a model of healthful eating. Well, I eat a lot better than the average bear, but I still want variety and tasty goodness every once in a while.
I've started to pay attention to the calorie counts on various junk foods and this has influenced my eating. For instance, I am a big fan of the Stoned Wheat Thins crackers. Then I noticed that each cracker is 20 calories. So if I had six of them, that's 120 calories. Well, compare to the extra-dark chocolate Le Petite Ecolier butter cookies. Two of these is 130 calories. So, if I'm going to eat ~120 calories, do I want crackers, or chocolate butter cookies? Hmm, not sure. Salty crackers or sweet dark-chocolate butter cookies? I'm still not sure, let's think about it some more: Bland, salty, refined white-flour crackers, or divine, rich, heavenly mix of 70% chocolate mixed with crisp, snappy, butter cookies? Um, let's take the cookies.
[As an aside, who knew you could get this stuff at Amazon!]
This has been a helpful way to consider the choices and compare against my taste preferences (which is all that matters with junk food, right?).
Stomach vs. Bloodstream
April 19, 2006 | Life
Now that I'm exercising more I've started to notice a difference in how I think about hunger, and this could be a helpful distinction for children learning about eating, or adults trying to change their habits.
In the past, when I was hungry, it was mostly about satisfying my stomach with something tasty. It was about filling up, not being empty, and doing so in a pleasurable manner.
Now when I'm hungry I'm thinking about my bloodstream – what nutrients do I want to add to my blood? It's about providing energy, nutrition, and balance with what I've eaten (or not eaten) in recent hours.
This sounds simple, but it's been a game-changer for me. For instance, let's say it's 4 PM, and I'm hungry. Not an unusual case if you have a salad for lunch. I am planning to exercise, but I don't like going between 5 and 6 because it's so busy then. So I'm going to work until 6. That means I'll need to eat before I exercise. It's a little early for dinner, so I want a snack. In the past this would have been any number of empty-calorie foods, like ice creme, chips, etc. Let's own up to it: Even Oreos were on the list, conveniently sold in six-packs these days. Or, even, a two-pack of Pop Tarts, though that pushed the limits of my upper-middle-class self-identity and didn't happen too often (thank goodness).
Now, I think, "What nutrients haven't I had recently? What does my blood want?" The answer tends to be more along the lines of carrots! an orange! a banana! some grapes! turkey rollups! I have to think a little bit more, and it's more like a discovery game to figure out the right answer, but it's much more satisfying mentally because I know I'm being good to myself, and physically because I don't feel like crap after I have a snack.
By changing my mental model of hunger from "stomach" to "bloodstream" I have completely changed how I think about food, snacks, and eating. This feels like a long-term change.
More on Police Solicitations
April 19, 2006 | Governance | Life | People & Society
Good morning Julia and Nicholas,
When I woke up today I had more questions about the police solicitations.
-- Is Jim Reid an employee of the Hanover Police Department? The voicemail said "with" the Hanover PD, so I assume he is, because if he isn't he should have said "for" the Hanover PD.
-- If he's NOT an employee, then I'm annoyed that I was lied to by someone representing the town. There should be much more careful monitoring of outside contractors. For instance, perhaps he should say his firm's name, along with "representing the Hanover PD." I'm sure you can understand why someone misrepresenting themselves to be a Hanover police department employee would be problematic, in both the present situation and in the long-term consequences.
-- If he IS an employee, is he being paid for this time soliciting businesses? That is, are taxpayers paying to have town employees call citizens and ask for money? I'm not sure what to think about that, but it's not an obvious win from my point of view.
-- If he IS an employee, and is NOT being paid, i.e. this is a volunteer effort, then I have concerns about the "wink wink, nudge nudge" aspect of "volunteering" for your employer. This is common in white-collar businesses, where salaried employees are regularly expected to work more than the specified 40 hours per week, violating all sorts of Federal labor act provisions and State labor laws. For some reason this is never enforced, presumably due to the power of Capital over Labor, but I would dislike the idea that a town government, especially one the size and quality of Hanover, would engage in this behavior.
Perhaps you can shed some light on the operation of this program and address my concerns, which I'm sure are shared by many others in our community. Thanks for your consideration.
Michael J.
Police Solicitations
April 18, 2006 | Governance | Life | People & Society
Hello Julia and Nicholas,
I received a voicemail today from Jim Reid. The message was (exact transcription), "Mike this is Jim Reid calling with the Hanover Police. Please give me a call at 448-1108. No emergency, just gotta talk to you. Thank you."
So, I'm sure you know where this is going: This was a solicitation for an ad for the crime prevention booklet. Okay, that's fine, I like to support community organizations. Jim's a nice guy, and he handled this well, and I registered no complaint with him. This is a policy issue.
My opinion is that the voicemail message should say, "I need to talk to you about our first-ever crime prevention booklet and how you can help," or somesuch thing. Because if it doesn't, you're diluting the value of the police department authority.
Which is to say, like you two, I lead a busy life. I don't have time to call back solicitors, but I would always call back the police or fire department. However, if I ever get another voicemail like that and I call back to find it's another solicitation, I will never ever return another police or fire department call that is not emergency-related. Period.
Using the goodwill and authority of the police department should be very carefully considered. I hope this experience helpfully informs your policy decisions going forward.
Thank you for having a functional website that allowed me to quickly find the appropriate contact information and make my opinion known at the time of the incident.
Best regards,
Michael J.
Stuff You Don't Have Time To Read Either
April 17, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | Life | People & Society
- The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (book, wiki, free pdf).
- Collaborative Thesaurus Tagging the Wikipedia Way (abstract, pdf, author's blog).
- Integral Communication (review, master's thesis pdf).
They all look great. Wish I had time to read them. Maybe next year.
Once in a while you get shown the light...
April 17, 2006 | Life | Nature & Environment
...in the strangest of places if you look at it right.
The earth is not handed down to you from your parents, it is on loan to you from your children.
—Message printed on Ruth's check.
Kunstler Interview
April 15, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society
Continuing the video theme, The Orion Online posts a five-part video interview with James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency. Each video segment is six or eight minutes long. If you want a summary of the book, Rolling Stone excerpted it just before publication.
Pay Special Attention To Human Faces
April 15, 2006 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
Berkeley economist Brad DeLong experiments with video. A worthy 2:45 of your attention.
Regulating Sliced Bread
April 14, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Life | Products & Opportunites
I am tired of buying pre-sliced loaves of bread that have an odd number of slices. WTF? What do you do with one slice of bread? Is this some sort of industry handout for the songbirds or something? There oughta be a law.
A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
April 12, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life | People & Society
Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains,
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways,
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests,
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.
Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin',
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin',
I saw a white ladder all covered with water,
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken,
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.
And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin',
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world,
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin',
Heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin',
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin',
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter,
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.
Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony,
I met a white man who walked a black dog,
I met a young woman whose body was burning,
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow,
I met one man who was wounded in love,
I met another man who was wounded with hatred,
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.
Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin',
But I'll know my song well before I start singin',
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.
—Bob Dylan
Copyright © 1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music
Primary Sources
April 12, 2006 | Life
From a phone conversation:
"I got email from MoveOn.org and Working Assets – something about Iran. I thought, 'I should go over to Notio and see what's up.'"
Scary, isn't it?
An Awkward Third Bridge Steak
April 12, 2006 | Arts & Culture | People & Society | Travel
Idle Words ("brevity is for the weak") brings us Argentina On Two Steaks A Day:
The classic begginer's mistake in Argentina is to neglect the first steak of the day. You will be tempted to just peck at it or even skip it altogether, rationalizing that you need to save yourself for the much larger steak later that night. But this is a false economy, like refusing to drink water in the early parts of a marathon. That first steak has to get you through the afternoon and half the night, until the restaurants begin to open at ten; the first steak is what primes your system to digest large quantities of animal protein, and it's the first steak that buffers the sudden sugar rush of your afternoon ice cream cone. The midnight second steak might be more the glamorous one, standing as it does a good three inches off the plate, but all it has to do is get you up and out of the restaurant and into bed (for the love of God, don't forget to drink water).
The afternoon steak is the workhorse steak, the backbone of the day. It's the steak that gets you around the city, ensures a successful nap, steers you into the bar and (most importantly) gives you the mental clarity to choose the right cut of meat in the restaurant that night. Misorder the first steak and you will either find yourself losing steam by eight o'clock, when no restaurant is open, or scampering to find an awkward third bridge steak, to tide you over until dinner.
It's a great bit of food writing.
New Service Offering
April 12, 2006 | Life
Do you need to procrastinate more? We can help. Notio is now offering a new service: Procrastination Coaching. We have dozens, hundreds even, if not thousands, of ways to avoid the critical to-do items on your list. Our program includes advanced techniques such as using non-profit volunteer work to avoid the paying gigs, using life changes to avoid the non-profit obligations, and using the overdue obligations of paying gigs to create so much internal stress you can't deal with any more introspection. It's a win-win-win trifecta of passive aggressive success-avoidnance meltdown. Don't settle for simple procrastinative blogging! Order your advanced procrastination starter kit today!
Let's Just Dwell On It
April 12, 2006 | Governance | Nature & Environment | People & Society
Here's a good analysis from Bill Arkin at the Washington Post:
A war with Iran started purposefully or by accident, will be a mess. What is happening now though is not just an administration prudently preparing for the unfortunate against an aggressive and crazed state, it is also aggressive and crazed, driven by groupthink and a closed circle of bears.
The public needs to know first, that this planning includes preemptive plans that the President could approve and implement with 12 hours notice. Congress should take notice of the fact that there is a real war plan -- CONPLAN 8022 -- and it could be implemented tomorrow.
Second, the public needs to know that the train has left the station on bigger war planning, that a ground war -- despite the Post claim yesterday that a land invasion "is not contemplated" -- is also being prepared. It is a real war plan; I've heard CONPLAN 1025.
Economic collapse is the only thing that will stop the US from being such a bully. The problem with accelerating this scenario is that it affects all of us directly. If we nuke Iran then, as Billmon says, "we’d truly be through the looking glass."
When I was a nomadic Deadhead in the '80's I thought I was learning about sound and music and tribes and love and dancing and joy and groupmind and ecstasy and interconnectedness and Dionysius. Instead, maybe the key skills learned were how to live out of a car and scrounge by in a barter economy on a few dollars a day, traveling from city to city. Could be useful later this year. (Don't tell my clients.)
Touch Base
April 12, 2006 | Life
Yesterday I got three emails with the subject "Touch Base" or "Touching Base." One from a current colleague, one from a contractor about to start a project, and one from a former co-worker I hadn't caught up with in a while.
I can't remember the last time I got an email with that subject, so getting three in a one day was memorable. Let us declare April 11 Touch Base Day, in honor of baseball, and our kinesthetic being.
Speculative Is Not a Synonym For Untrue
April 11, 2006 | Governance | Nature & Environment | People & Society
Billmon conducts a thought experiment.
Maybe it's just me, but I've been at least a little bit surprised by the relatively muted reaction to the news that the Cheney Administration and its Pentagon underlings are racing to put the finishing touches on plans for attacking Iran – plans which may include the first wartime use of nuclear weapons since Nagasaki.
I mean, what exactly does it take to get a rise out of the media industrial complex these days? A nuclear first strike against a major Middle Eastern oil producer doesn't ring the bell?
3,400 words of truth.
Nuclear Weaponeers
April 9, 2006 | Nature & Environment | People & Society
Hopefully this article is disinformation for state negotiations. If it's not, then we're in for a game-changer:
The lack of reliable intelligence leaves military planners, given the goal of totally destroying the sites, little choice but to consider the use of tactical nuclear weapons. “Every other option, in the view of the nuclear weaponeers, would leave a gap,” the former senior intelligence official said. “ ‘Decisive’ is the key word of the Air Force’s planning. It’s a tough decision. But we made it in Japan.”
He went on, “Nuclear planners go through extensive training and learn the technical details of damage and fallout—we’re talking about mushroom clouds, radiation, mass casualties, and contamination over years. This is not an underground nuclear test, where all you see is the earth raised a little bit. These politicians don’t have a clue, and whenever anybody tries to get it out”—remove the nuclear option—“they’re shouted down.”
The subject of discussion: Planning for war with Iran. God help us.
Quote Of The Day
April 8, 2006 | Life
"Keep in mind that four psyches will be vying for control: two innocent children who are confused and hurt, and two adults trying to make strong heroic statements. Take care of the children." —David Kantor, My Lover, Myself
This Week's Mail
April 7, 2006 | Life
Jeff: Might be a question of 'adequation'. Adequation is one of the seven paradigmata. (The third, I believe.) The one that has to do with issues like "What sort of answer would you find satisfying for that question?" In other words: It's particularly difficult to find something if you both aren't looking for the same thing.
Notio: Did you make that up, or do you have a pointer for more?
Jeff: Sorry, I made it up. Any ideas for the other six?
A High Degree of Mental Extensity
April 7, 2006 | People & Society | Science
Here is an excerpt from a list of psychology tests from 1890.
Mental Time
- The time stimuli must work on the ear and eye in order to call forth sensations.
- The reaction-time for sound, light, pressure and electrical stimulation.
- The perception-time for colours, objects, letters and words.
- The time of naming colours, objects, letters and words.
- The time it takes to remember and to come to a decision.
- The time of mental association.
- The effects of attention, practice and fatigue on mental time.
Mental Intensity
- Results of different methods used for determining the least noticeable difference in sensation.
- Mental intensity as a function of mental time. [p.380]
Mental Extensity
- Number of impressions which can be simultaneously perceived.
- Number of successive impressions which can be correctly repeated, and number of times a larger number of successive impressions must be heard or seen in order that they may be correctly repeated.
- The rate at which a simple sensation fades from memory.
- Accuracy with which intervals of time can be remembered.
- The correlation of mental time, intensity and extensity.
I'm not sure why I'm posting this, except I like the idea of mental extensity, and while cleaning out my email in-box I'm also cleaning out my blogging drafts.
Focus Over Planning
April 7, 2006 | Life
It's amazing, really. If you actually get up early, get your butt in the chair at work, focus, don't surf the web, avoid blogging, have enough caffeine, ignore unrelated phone calls, turn off email, don't clean your office, don't run errands, don't call anyone for lunch, don't buy office supplies, and do only things that you owe other people – well, you can actually get a lot of work done! My in-box has gone from 47 to 7, and it might be zero by the end of the day.
Of course, I'm stressed-out and brittle, talking too fast, inattentive, and darting, but I guess that's what it takes to succeed in high-productivity symbolic analysis work these days. Or maybe it's just me. In any case, there will be more completion soon. Progress is our only product!
Quality of Life
April 6, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | People & Society
I read an alumni profile recently of someone who graduated in 1950, and is quoted as saying,
"I worked there from sophomore year through senior year. The work paid much of my way through college."
He worked as a waiter at the college-owned restaurant. I wonder if you could pay your way through college today, on campus, as a waiter? An Ivy League college?
These are questions that define quality of life for me. It's not about the vastly increased bling, or the so-called time-saving machines and so-called paper-saving computer equipment. It's about affording the basic building blocks of progress. Shelter costs, educations, literacy, numeracy, consciousness. On these measures it's hard to argue we're better off than in 1972, when my Dad bought a nice house near the center of town for the price of a department manger's one year salary. Today that same house is easily double the cost of a similar salary. Maybe close to triple.
Our education system is largely a factory producing people for last century's jobs. 17% of Americans are illiterate. If there were rising numeracy then Bush wouldn't get away with rampant spending amidst top-tier tax cuts. And we know consciousness is not evenly distributed. I guess we live longer, if you can afford health insurance.
And.... and.... what are some other ways we're better off, as a society, since 1972? ("We have blogs" is not a valid answer!)
Flu Simulation
April 6, 2006 | Nature & Environment | People & Society | Science
Real modeling, from rocket scientist guys:
Simulation of a pandemic flu outbreak in the continental United States, initially introduced by the arrival of 10 infected individuals in Los Angeles.... Without vaccination, antiviral drugs, or other mitigation strategies, the entire nation becomes infected within a few months. Depending on the reproductive number R0, effective intervention strategies including vaccination and targeted antiviral prophylaxis can be successful without resorting to economically damaging measures like school closure, quarantine, and work or travel restrictions. This large-scale agent-based simulation involves 280 million people, and uses demographic and worker flow data at the Census tract level, as well as long-range travel statistics, to describe the geographic movement of people.
There's a quicktime movie that visualizes the spread.
Live Better, Longer, and Even Forever
April 5, 2006 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
jwz supplies this gem of a link: Awakening Discomforts.
Inside the apartments, known as Reversible Destiny Lofts, the floor of the dining room slopes erratically, the one in the kitchen is sunken and the study features a concave floor. Electric switches are located in unexpected places so you have to feel around for the right one. A glass door to the veranda is so small you have to bend to crawl out. You constantly lose balance, gather yourself up, and occasionally trip and fall. There's no closet space; residents will have to find a way to live there. "[The apartment] makes you alert and awakens instincts, so you'll live better, longer and even forever," says Arakawa.
If they didn't cost $763,000 I'd move there is a heartbeat!!
Exercise for the reader: Am I joking?
N-Dimensional Web 2.0
April 5, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | Life | Nature & Environment | People & Society | Products & Opportunites | Science | Site Maintenance | Software | Technology | Travel
Many people are trying to define "Web 2.0" – what it is, what it means, how to build Web 2.0 apps, what makes a company a Web 2.0 company, etc. All of those efforts fall short, because Web 2.0 is n-dimensional. Web 2.0 is "reflecting more complex multivariable situations.1"
Today I learned of a new dimension to Web 2.0. Chris2 invited me to join a beta of CollectiveX, a new Web 2.0-ish social widget. To invite someone you have to set a temporary password, and when they log in they change it to whatever they want. Chris set my password to "ratdoggy." Ha! Now that's a good one. This made me laugh out loud, and when I told Meg3 she lost it too. What's so funny?
Well, it creates a strong but secret connection between the title of a recent post I wrote – wherein "maybe too much information" was offered4 – and an unrelated client task. Chris' password was an acknowledgment that he read the post. Maybe even he liked it. And he certainly knew it would make me think of that post in the middle of the workday. But in any case "ratdoggy" is not in frequent usage (Google: "Did you mean: ratdog?") and his reference expanded its sphere of influence.
Which is like a link, just not a web hyperlink. It was a link from one mind to another, from one blog post to a work moment, from a concert review to a social software login, from my original post written on a couch in the lobby of a cinderblock hotel in Charlestown to my colleague's laughter at the password in an office building in Hanover, from all that to this post which you are reading now. Links, links, links, everywhere you look. Which makes me smile.
And that seems to be the common element of a Web 2.0 app – that it makes you smile, somehow, in some way that maybe you never have before.
1) An Introduction to Chemometrics. A report given as Session F of Educational Symposium No. 17, The Use of Statistical Methods in Formulating and Testing of Rubber at the 130th Meeting of the ACS Rubber Division by Brian A. Rock, Ph.D. in October, 1985.
2) Blog updated according to a complex precision timing schedule involving the highway, the moon, the clouds, and the stars.
3) I did not invoice for this minute of laughter, nor did the client utilize any official company time or resources in reaction to the laughter event.
4) Plausible Story, personal communication.
Now, how many new links can you find in the above footnotes?
April Snow
April 5, 2006 | Life | Nature & Environment
Looking northeast out the kitchen door this morning. A beautiful tangle. Wet snow on shadowy branches. Blue sky, but cloudy. Moving shards of sunlight dart around the view. Looking into the woods, but can't see that far. Trees at odd angles, falling over but not yet dead. They'll never stand straight again – should we leave them to grow sideways, or cut them down and clear the space? There's a wounded beauty in scenes like this. Very nice for a view, but challenging if pervasive.
Ratdoggy Style
April 2, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life
I'm in Boston for a SoL consulting gathering. Conveniently, Ratdog played across town at the Orpheum Theater last night. Technically, I'm staying in Charlestown at the Constitution Inn, which is in the Navy Shipyard, which is sort of a planned community built in the 1700's.
I left the hotel and walked to find a restaurant. Stopped at the generically named "Bistro" and sat at the z-shaped bar. After I ordered I got out the bus schedule and the local map to figure out my options. There was an escort across the corner of the bar waiting for her first call, and she asked where I was going. Turns out you can walk to North Station from here, and I took her instructions and headed out after supper. I stopped at the guard station to checkpoint my wayfinding, and then again at the final navy yard guard station.
You end up walking through a wild backstreets neighborhood parallel to the radical new bridge, behind the Bank North Garden, nee Fleet Center, nee Boston Garden. I stopped several times to verify my orientation, and every time they pointed me straight ahead, just that each time it was a different direction. So after about half an hour, without too much zigzagging, I found my way to the Boston Common, and heard the drums.
The tribe was gathering, but it turns out the drums were played by a homeboy on five gallon buckets. Patchouli and related scents were in abundance. One of the first things I saw was a woman beating up a blind guy near a subway exit. His cane was flailing, and he was on his back covering his face, as she twisted his nose and beat the side of his head with her hands and pulled his ears and kicked him in the chest and screamed at him. I was struck dumb by the sight – it's not every day you see a chick beating the hell out of a blind guy, but eventually a few of the Deadheads broke them up and she stormed off cursing while the guy got up and got his bearings and poked along. It all happened in less than a minute.
The next thing I saw was a couple of 40-something parents walking with their teenage girls, stuck in the sidewalk traffic jam of miracle seekers and paraphernalia vendors. The girls were wide-eyed and smiling, and the parents were tight-jawed and worried, and pulled them quickly through the crowds. Hehehe – curiosity was sparked; they will return.
I walked toward the theater, and remembered the last time I was here, six or eight years ago, for Blues Traveller. We had backstage passes, but no tickets. So Tenz walked us to some pretty darn fine seats up front, and when the rightful owners came he talked them out of getting security by waving his laminated tour pass telling them we could all fit. Which we could, sort of. It was miserable. I can tolerate a lot of ambiguity, and put up with a lot of crap at rock concerts, but this was pushing it. Plus, the show sucked. Bad sound, drunk audience, amateur playing. The only worse times I remember were the show where a guy in the row behind me vomited on my back (that was pretty bad) and the time the teenage jerks were throwing cigarettes into Cheryl's hair from the balcony above. I think that was probably Cheryl's last rock show – she had a run of bad luck in her first few concerts, and it wasn't very encouraging. The Orpheum Blues Traveller show wasn't that bad, but I wasn't planning to see them again, or rushing back to the Orpheum.
Anyway, as I walked down the little side street that fronts the theater, the tour buses were parked right there by the entrance. This made me laugh, because it meant the band was hanging out right in front with the audience – I've been on those tour buses, and everything you've read or heard is true. Much better to park them behind the theater, because what happens backstage is best left backstage, but I guess you can't park back there at the Orpheum, or maybe they didn't get there early enough to get a parking space?
Once inside I bought a 20-oz beer ($8) and hung out. I met seven year old Cora Blue, who was at her second show with Mom and Dad. She went to Danbury last week, on a school night, and she like it a lot, but Mom got yelled at by the teacher the next day, saying she shouldn't take her daughter to concerts on school nights. Everyone's entitled to their opinion, I suppose. Cora likes Playing In The Band, and Ramble On Rose. She said she liked dancing to Playin' and I explained that it's fun to dance to because it's written in 4/10 time, which means if you're normally counting in fours, like 99% of the songs written, then you get a never-ending cycle effect, since the count is 4-4-2 and when you're in the 2 you're halfway through the third 4, so to speak. She nodded and said, "Cool."
The show opened with Jack Straw, jamming between every verse, and halfway through I knew it was going to be a way better show than the one Lynne and I saw in Northampton last week. Emphasis on way. It turned out to be an awesome performance, fantastic and flawless with an enthusiastic and energized audience. Jack Straw flowed into Cassidy which flowed into Birdsong. That triplet was probably 40 minutes and they hadn't stopped yet, moving right into Odessa.
[An imaginary version of this blog post would link to each song in the set, extract a personally meaningful lyric to highlight, and relate my comments to support the metaphor. This isn't that post. Instead, here are someone's photos, and a setlist, as a nod to formality.]
During Odessa a Beautiful Usher came into our aisle, to check tickets of the aisle in front of us. The Beautiful Usher stopped in front of me, and apologized, but she had to clean up this aisle, pointing in front (where there were a couple of people for every seat). The Beautiful Usher pulled out her flashlight and leaned over the seats to start checking tickets. This had the effect of grinding her (also beautiful) butt into my crotch. I was simply unwilling to stop dancing during this minor inconvenience, and the Beautiful Usher kept doing her job, pressed into me. This combination turned out to be not unpleasurable. Eventually she was done hassling the people in front of me and the Beautiful Usher stood up and turned around. She said, "Sorry!" And I said, "You're not going to stay and dance??" She laughed, "Ha! I wish!" and the Beautiful Usher moved along. But at that point I knew what the blog post would be titled.
Then the band (you remember there was a band playing, right? I was a bit distracted) went into Lazy River Road, a very thick Deep Elem Blues, finally landing on Greatest Story Ever Told. I thought this would be the last song of the set, but they jumped right into a crankin' Help On The Way – we were now completely out of control – and then a really, really kick-butt Slipknot to end the set. Wow.
During intermission I scoped out my neighborhood. The guy next to me was too wasted to speak, but he was quiet, so that was neutral. The 50-something Harley babe on the other side apparently only talked to people with long gray hair, so I didn't qualify. The two guys in front of me were from Strafford VT, just up the road. This was a mail-order ticket faux-syncronicity. If the people filling tickets have time they try to put people near other geographically-related orders. You sure don't get this kind of service from Ticketmaster.
The second set opened with an acoustic Black-Throated Wind, and moved into Dylan's Hard Rain's Gonna Fall. During Hard Rain I was dancing so hard that my fingernail caught the pen in my front pocket and I accidentally flung it somewhere in front of me. Oh well. The band headed into a fast-moving Good Morning Little Schoolgirl, and we still danced. They played a smoking Althea, and we danced some more. They moved into Ashes & Glass, and a lot of people sat down. I didn't – it's one of the better recent-vintage Weir tunes, which I like for it's harmonic structure and the interesting jam before the last verse. In this case they jammed not after every verse, but after every line of every verse, bringing a whole new concept of "jam-band" to the song. After another semi-lame drums and keyboard segment – which seems to exist solely so Bobby can leave the stage and take care of business – they dropped into Sugaree, a long slow romp which could possibly pass for the ballad near the end of the show, save for the fact that you can dance to it in almost any style or speed. They headed for a jazzy jam, which I thought might be the Wheel but turned out the be the end of Birdsong, which I forgot they hadn't finished, and then the jam out of Birdsong landed on the ending segment of Cassidy which I also forgot they hadn't finished – blowing me away. I figured dollars to doughnuts that Franklin's Tower would close the set to complete the normal Help > Slip > Franklin's triple-play, but they played an over the top One More Saturday Night which brought down the house. A stunning end of the set, from Sugaree onward.
The encore started with Mark playing bass instead of guitar, Robin on guitar instead of bass, a roadie on drums, the drummer on piano, the horn player on keyboards, and Bobby on trombone. The song sounded a little familiar, but I couldn't place it. [Turned out to be Get On The Bus.] In any case I realized it was April 1st, and that explained it. One by one the switched to their regular instruments while the song played on, and then on a single downbeat they arrived at Franklin's Tower. They didn't seem rushed, even though it was 11:40, and played a longish driving version. Even the laggards danced at this, knowing the show was about to end, and when the house lights came on everyone was exhausted and satisfied. (You can order an official recording of the show here.)
Left the building close to midnight. The understated picky Deadhead would say, "Good show." It was better than good, and I needed it. Got to bed at 1:30 old time, 2:30 new time.
Then, four hours later I was waking up. Two hours after that I was sitting in a circle for check-in, and then we played with Legos in a group aspirations exercise until lunch. My play date continues. Cora Blue would be happy at this.
Take Me For Longing
April 1, 2006 | Life
Whatever the answer, it's yes that's the question
[insert meta-post here. abstract up. relate it to something unexpected. close with an astute observation. check for comments.]
