DFW at Kenyon
17/01/2009 21:13
I had meant to post this back when David Foster Wallace died, but I got sidetracked. I also meant to share it with my students, but I don't think I did. I adore his writing. Here's a commencement address he gave at Kenyon College that was floating around the internet after he died.
Here's one good part:
[...]
And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about.
By way of example, let's say it's an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you're tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there's no food at home. You haven't had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It's the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be: very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it's the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop and it's pretty much the last place you want to be but you can't just get in and quickly out; you have to wander all over the huge, over-lit store's confusing aisles to find the stuff you want and you have to maneuver your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts (et cetera, et cetera, cutting stuff out because this is a long ceremony) and eventually you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren't enough check-out lanes open even though it's the end-of-the-day rush. So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you can't take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.
But anyway, you finally get to the checkout line's front, and you pay for your food, and you get told to "Have a nice day" in a voice that is the absolute voice of death. Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to the left, all the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive, rush-hour traffic, et cetera et cetera.
Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn't yet been part of you graduates' actual life routine, day after week after month after year.
But it will be. And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides. But that is not the point. The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it's going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way. And who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are, and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line. And look at how deeply and personally unfair this is.
Or, of course, if I'm in a more socially conscious liberal arts form of my default setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic being disgusted about all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUV's and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks, burning their wasteful, selfish, forty-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper-stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest [responding here to loud applause] (this is an example of how NOT to think, though) most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers. And I can think about how our children's children will despise us for wasting all the future's fuel, and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and selfish and disgusting we all are, and how modern consumer society just sucks, and so forth and so on.
You get the idea.
If I choose to think this way in a store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of us do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn't have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It's the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities.
The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it's not impossible that some of these people in SUV's have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he's in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.
Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do.
Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you are supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it. Because it's hard. It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat out won't want to.
[...]
Full text here.
Here's one good part:
[...]
And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about.
By way of example, let's say it's an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you're tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there's no food at home. You haven't had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It's the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be: very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it's the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop and it's pretty much the last place you want to be but you can't just get in and quickly out; you have to wander all over the huge, over-lit store's confusing aisles to find the stuff you want and you have to maneuver your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts (et cetera, et cetera, cutting stuff out because this is a long ceremony) and eventually you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren't enough check-out lanes open even though it's the end-of-the-day rush. So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you can't take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.
But anyway, you finally get to the checkout line's front, and you pay for your food, and you get told to "Have a nice day" in a voice that is the absolute voice of death. Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to the left, all the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive, rush-hour traffic, et cetera et cetera.
Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn't yet been part of you graduates' actual life routine, day after week after month after year.
But it will be. And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides. But that is not the point. The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it's going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way. And who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are, and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line. And look at how deeply and personally unfair this is.
Or, of course, if I'm in a more socially conscious liberal arts form of my default setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic being disgusted about all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUV's and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks, burning their wasteful, selfish, forty-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper-stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest [responding here to loud applause] (this is an example of how NOT to think, though) most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers. And I can think about how our children's children will despise us for wasting all the future's fuel, and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and selfish and disgusting we all are, and how modern consumer society just sucks, and so forth and so on.
You get the idea.
If I choose to think this way in a store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of us do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn't have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It's the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities.
The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it's not impossible that some of these people in SUV's have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he's in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.
Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do.
Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you are supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it. Because it's hard. It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat out won't want to.
[...]
Full text here.
|
The aardvark asked for an aardvark
14/01/2009 05:44 Filed in: Mac | tech geekdom
When, years ago, I went to see that documentary about comedy and comedians called The Aristocrats, I realized that the Onion writers included in it were by far the funniest people. They were smart and hilarious and funnier than everybody else, including Sarah Silverman who all the critics seemed to love.
Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard
And here are those sentences:
The aardvark admitted its fault.
The aardvark admitted it was wrong.
The aardvark asked for an aardvark.
The aardvark asked for a dagger.
The aardvark asked for health.
The aardvark asked for a ride.
The absinthe arrived by airmail.
The abortion went well.
The actor asked for an aardvark.
The actor asked for abstinance.
The actor asked for redemption.
The advertisement was effective.
The agile aardvark arrived by airmail.
The agile aardvark bathed with beauties.
The agriculture was cultivated by the coral.
The aggravated driver beeped on his horn.
The aggravated rooster scratched the dirt.
The Althusserian scholar gave his copy of Lacan's "Ecrits" to the
abortion doctor.
The amiable Althusserian scholar asked the aardvark for an absinthe.
The amiable crocodile brushed his teeth with a toothbrush.
The amiable doctor performed the operation admirably.
The annex was covered with asbestos.
The annex was crawling with beetles.
The apple was airmailed by the doctor.
The apple was consumed by the amiable crocodile.
The apple was inquiring about the amiable crocodile's friend.
The aquamarine lifevest was not used.
The aquamarine lifevest was unpopular.
The armchair was uncomfortable.
The armchair was favoured by the amiable housecat.
The ass asked for a better absinthe.
The ass brayed the moon.
The assumptive doctor did not accept our personal check.
The assumptive agricultural expert eyed out absinthe suspiciously.
The attractive peanut farmer graded the term paper.
The attractive rooster preened its feathers to attract absinthe.
The auxiliary generator has malfunctioned.
The awning covered the agile aardvark during the amiable rainstorm.
The awning was too tall to touch.
The babbling baby asked the aardvark for some absinthe.
Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard
And here are those sentences:
The aardvark admitted its fault.
The aardvark admitted it was wrong.
The aardvark asked for an aardvark.
The aardvark asked for a dagger.
The aardvark asked for health.
The aardvark asked for a ride.
The absinthe arrived by airmail.
The abortion went well.
The actor asked for an aardvark.
The actor asked for abstinance.
The actor asked for redemption.
The advertisement was effective.
The agile aardvark arrived by airmail.
The agile aardvark bathed with beauties.
The agriculture was cultivated by the coral.
The aggravated driver beeped on his horn.
The aggravated rooster scratched the dirt.
The Althusserian scholar gave his copy of Lacan's "Ecrits" to the
abortion doctor.
The amiable Althusserian scholar asked the aardvark for an absinthe.
The amiable crocodile brushed his teeth with a toothbrush.
The amiable doctor performed the operation admirably.
The annex was covered with asbestos.
The annex was crawling with beetles.
The apple was airmailed by the doctor.
The apple was consumed by the amiable crocodile.
The apple was inquiring about the amiable crocodile's friend.
The aquamarine lifevest was not used.
The aquamarine lifevest was unpopular.
The armchair was uncomfortable.
The armchair was favoured by the amiable housecat.
The ass asked for a better absinthe.
The ass brayed the moon.
The assumptive doctor did not accept our personal check.
The assumptive agricultural expert eyed out absinthe suspiciously.
The attractive peanut farmer graded the term paper.
The attractive rooster preened its feathers to attract absinthe.
The auxiliary generator has malfunctioned.
The awning covered the agile aardvark during the amiable rainstorm.
The awning was too tall to touch.
The babbling baby asked the aardvark for some absinthe.
Fujimori's Second Divorce
25/08/2008 16:43 Filed in: Japan
... sounds pretty fantastic:
?? "Fujimori's critics say he married Kataoka for her political connections. They wed in 2006 in an exchange of vows by mail while he was under house arrest in Chile, just as Japanese politicians moved to block Peru's effort to extradite him." ??
I didn't even realize it was possible to get married by mail.
The full article is here.
?? "Fujimori's critics say he married Kataoka for her political connections. They wed in 2006 in an exchange of vows by mail while he was under house arrest in Chile, just as Japanese politicians moved to block Peru's effort to extradite him." ??
I didn't even realize it was possible to get married by mail.
The full article is here.
Melofilms
22/08/2008 06:22
Melody Weinstein and I happened to be in the same introductory social science class as undergrads. It was a version of "Wealth, Power, Virtue" taught by Joe Hopper and I think everyone in the class knew how lucky we were to be there. Since then, Melody and I ran into each other at a restaurant in Manhattan and I found out she'd made a documentary about Hip-Hop in Japan, called "Remixed in Japan," which I screen in my Japan class.
Her blog about her other film projects is here.
Her blog about her other film projects is here.
The Dark Knight? Not so much.
05/08/2008 19:45
I LOVED the Dark Knight. I really think it's perfect, especially given the thumping music. I've seen it twice and decided that I need both the batpod and a really flappy cape. VQ saw it (again, for the second time) with someone who ended up not liking it. In her indigent representation of the conversation after the movie, she described this scene from Family Guy, which then happened to be broadcast that very evening. And she was kind enough to send it to me.
Full clip is here.
Full clip is here.
International Surrogacy
05/08/2008 16:33 Filed in: Japan
Digital Recorders
10/02/2008 16:17
Ellen wrote me last week to ask about the digital recorder I used for my fieldwork. I used, still use, and continue to love, my Olympus DM-20. I have constantly been amazed by how well it picks up voices and how, in the noisy coffee shops were I tended to record conversations, it would pick up exactly the voice I was trying to hear. What's also nice is that it comes with a very cheap looking microphone that performs very well, much better than it looks like it should. I understand now that the microphone is actually a dynamic mic and the mic built into the machine is a condenser mic -- at least I think this is what's going on -- meaning that without the plug-in mic I can pick up a lot of ambient noise and with it plugged it, the recording gets much more targeted to single voices / sounds.
I bought this four years ago but have never had a problem. It has never filled up -- although I always did daily data dumps onto my computer -- and I love that it keeps what's in it's memory even when you have to change batteries.
All in all I recommend this most highly! Of course, because I bought it so long ago, Olympus is no longer selling it, but the newer versions would be equally good. I know people who have bought similar models in more recent years and I think they're all happy with them, too.
If you want an example of how it records, I've been using to tape my lectures in Anth 254b. Click through the syllabus to listen to these audio files.
I should add that in all my years of using this, nothing has ever gotten lost. I never lost an interview or music recording. Partially this is because I was more paranoid about my digital recordings than almost anything else, but it's also because the system is solid and easy to use, and has always had easy conversations with the macs I've used.
Listservs
14/10/2007 08:31
Last week Ryan asked me about good listservs to read. I don't know about good, exactly, but here's what I'm on. I'd be happy for other suggestions.
Society for East Asian Anthropology listserv, called EASTANTH. A list for anthropologists of Japan, with most posts in English. Subscription information is here. As with other listservs, you can subscribe to the "digest" version and get massive mails once a week containing all the messages, or you can get them as they come in. EASTANTH is really good, and full of information, but, more importantly, it also produces pretty entertaining exchanges when people respond to the list though they mean to reply to a personal message. At least a couple times a year, something personal goes out to everyone that clearly wasn't meant to be public, to the extent that one reader finally sent what had to be a satirical message about his medical problems. Discovering his email in my in-box made me laugh for hours and continues to make me happy to be alive. (The link might require a subscription to the listserv, but it's completely worth it.)
H-Japan. Another standard and behemoth. A list for Japan studies and, despite the "H" that is supposed to stand for "humanities," it includes as much or more about the social sciences. This produces a lot of messages, but I am happy to scan through things quickly and ignore what I don't need. Of course, you can also create a filter that gathers all the listserv messages and let's you go through the lot of them when you have time. Subscription information is here.
Association of Feminist Anthropology has a list with less frequent postings. What goes up is helpful, though, and there has been good information about jobs in the past few months. They are particularly good about posting and sharing syllabi. Subscription information is here.
Tomorrow's Professor. Bill Kelly introduced me to this years ago, and it produces very helpful postings about teaching and professional advancement. I have found myself seriously reading these posts more than many other over the years. The above link goes to the blog version of the list, but I still get the messages as emails. Subscription information for that is here.
Social Science Japan (SSJ). Another good list for people working on Japanese studies. This tends to have more discussion about Japanese politics than the other lists, so I read it as a way to keep up with what's going on. Subscription information is here.
There used to be a great page called "Listservs related to Japan." It included a huge number of listservs and was how I originally found the now defunct "shakai" list. Unfortunately, when I click on the bookmark I'd made for it, I get only this. Here's a cached version of a similar list (thanks google!) and here's the original that remember. It's good stuff but seems only to be cached now.
I'm also on the National Association of Student Anthropologists' listserve (NASA). It's not a particularly active list but I occasionally get messages about conference plans or workshops. Subscription information is here.
I'd be happy for other suggestions about what's good to read!
Society for East Asian Anthropology listserv, called EASTANTH. A list for anthropologists of Japan, with most posts in English. Subscription information is here. As with other listservs, you can subscribe to the "digest" version and get massive mails once a week containing all the messages, or you can get them as they come in. EASTANTH is really good, and full of information, but, more importantly, it also produces pretty entertaining exchanges when people respond to the list though they mean to reply to a personal message. At least a couple times a year, something personal goes out to everyone that clearly wasn't meant to be public, to the extent that one reader finally sent what had to be a satirical message about his medical problems. Discovering his email in my in-box made me laugh for hours and continues to make me happy to be alive. (The link might require a subscription to the listserv, but it's completely worth it.)
H-Japan. Another standard and behemoth. A list for Japan studies and, despite the "H" that is supposed to stand for "humanities," it includes as much or more about the social sciences. This produces a lot of messages, but I am happy to scan through things quickly and ignore what I don't need. Of course, you can also create a filter that gathers all the listserv messages and let's you go through the lot of them when you have time. Subscription information is here.
Association of Feminist Anthropology has a list with less frequent postings. What goes up is helpful, though, and there has been good information about jobs in the past few months. They are particularly good about posting and sharing syllabi. Subscription information is here.
Tomorrow's Professor. Bill Kelly introduced me to this years ago, and it produces very helpful postings about teaching and professional advancement. I have found myself seriously reading these posts more than many other over the years. The above link goes to the blog version of the list, but I still get the messages as emails. Subscription information for that is here.
Social Science Japan (SSJ). Another good list for people working on Japanese studies. This tends to have more discussion about Japanese politics than the other lists, so I read it as a way to keep up with what's going on. Subscription information is here.
There used to be a great page called "Listservs related to Japan." It included a huge number of listservs and was how I originally found the now defunct "shakai" list. Unfortunately, when I click on the bookmark I'd made for it, I get only this. Here's a cached version of a similar list (thanks google!) and here's the original that remember. It's good stuff but seems only to be cached now.
I'm also on the National Association of Student Anthropologists' listserve (NASA). It's not a particularly active list but I occasionally get messages about conference plans or workshops. Subscription information is here.
I'd be happy for other suggestions about what's good to read!
Pandora
21/08/2007 12:51
As I'm writing, I spend a lot of time listening to an internet radio service called Pandora. It's a free service that asks you to give it either a song or artist that you like. Based on that, it finds music that is similar and plays it for you. If you don't like a song, give it a thumbs down and it goes away. Songs you mark with a thumbs up come back, eventually, if you listen to it long enough. (Like, say, twelve hours a day as you're writing some big paper.) I'm sure I'm not the average consumer, but this has prompted me to spend at least $40 on music in the itunes store. Specifically, D'Angelo led me to Donell Jones and Anthony Hamilton, whose first album has been occupying the empty spaces in my brain for two months now. Donell Jones, meanwhile, gave me the lyric: "I imagine that body's so soft / I won't know 'til you take your clothes off" which continues to make me laugh out loud.
More recently, I found a program called PandoraJam that automatically records what Pandora plays and drops it into your iTunes. Word on the street is that Pandora isn't going to last much longer because of copyright issues -- as it is now, I think they have access to copyrighted materials in the same way radio stations do, but it's surely more complicated than that -- so I'd recommend it asap.
More recently, I found a program called PandoraJam that automatically records what Pandora plays and drops it into your iTunes. Word on the street is that Pandora isn't going to last much longer because of copyright issues -- as it is now, I think they have access to copyrighted materials in the same way radio stations do, but it's surely more complicated than that -- so I'd recommend it asap.
Standing in Line
01/07/2007 15:38
My plan was to avoid all the lines and crowds and, instead, run by the 5th Avenue Mac store at 11pm on Friday night to pick up a phone. But then Raj called to say that our friend Scott was already in line and could use company, so I headed out. Scott and I (and his blue camping chair) hung out in line at an AT&T store around 51st St for the afternoon. He had gotten there at noon, I made it by 3pm, and Jess got there around 4:30. The store doors opened at 6(ish) we were probably about #20 in line. As had been widely reported, the AT&T (Dell) computers and servers crashed around 6:15 EST, so we didn't actually get phones until after 7. But when we did, WOOO WHOOO! I waited to start playing until after I got home, but it is pretty slick, and certainly worth the line (in the shade, on a nice cool summer day). I hadn't spent that much time outside in weeks. I think I was high on all the fresh air and vitamin D.
While in line, Scott was interviewed by a number of reporters and marketing firms. Together, we were interviewed by a reporter from the Wall Street Journal, but she was most interested in talking to someone who was willing to pay a fee to cancel old (non-AT&T) service to use the iPhone. Jess fit this bill perfectly, and so she made it onto the video report that is now posted. While the same reporter interviews the store owner, Scott, Jess and I are all clearly in the background. I am wearing a dark blue Tshirt and am, prepare yourself, eating a cookie. This is a pretty accurate representation of me.
Video is here: http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid452319854?bctid=1080170501
My pictures.....
Scott offering me his chair:
Scott showing off the iPhone case they'd pre-ordered and brought with them. Jess is reflected in the pillar:
There was also a good amount of email checking and iChatting going on:
The iLine, mostly white and 95% male:
Scott and Jess trying to find the phones in the store. I call this picture "Manifest Destiny."
After we got phones, we walked up to the 5th Avenue flagship store. Contrary to our expectations, the line was already practically gone, but there was still a crowd. Unlike the AT&T store, the apple staff didn't seem terrified. Instead, they were cheering people as they walked out of the store with new phones.
Another shot from in front of the Plaza:
We made a complete spectacle at dinner. People were GAPING. Actually, no, only men were gaping. A guy behind us seemed to be completely ignoring his date (who wasn't super happy) to watch us play with our phones. Only Scott opened all the packaging of his, and then tried to determine if the phone is heavier than a video ipod. We think it is.
The first start-up:
Scott's very genuine open-mouthed reaction:
At that time, my mouth was full of guacamole.
While in line, Scott was interviewed by a number of reporters and marketing firms. Together, we were interviewed by a reporter from the Wall Street Journal, but she was most interested in talking to someone who was willing to pay a fee to cancel old (non-AT&T) service to use the iPhone. Jess fit this bill perfectly, and so she made it onto the video report that is now posted. While the same reporter interviews the store owner, Scott, Jess and I are all clearly in the background. I am wearing a dark blue Tshirt and am, prepare yourself, eating a cookie. This is a pretty accurate representation of me.
Video is here: http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid452319854?bctid=1080170501
My pictures.....
Scott offering me his chair:
Scott showing off the iPhone case they'd pre-ordered and brought with them. Jess is reflected in the pillar:
There was also a good amount of email checking and iChatting going on:
The iLine, mostly white and 95% male:
Scott and Jess trying to find the phones in the store. I call this picture "Manifest Destiny."
After we got phones, we walked up to the 5th Avenue flagship store. Contrary to our expectations, the line was already practically gone, but there was still a crowd. Unlike the AT&T store, the apple staff didn't seem terrified. Instead, they were cheering people as they walked out of the store with new phones.
Another shot from in front of the Plaza:
We made a complete spectacle at dinner. People were GAPING. Actually, no, only men were gaping. A guy behind us seemed to be completely ignoring his date (who wasn't super happy) to watch us play with our phones. Only Scott opened all the packaging of his, and then tried to determine if the phone is heavier than a video ipod. We think it is.
The first start-up:
Scott's very genuine open-mouthed reaction:
At that time, my mouth was full of guacamole.
Obama
28/06/2007 16:04
Raj and I went to the "Generation Barack Obama" event last Friday in the Hammerstein ballroom. He was obviously preaching to the converted (and the wealthy-enough-to-pay-for-tickets) but I was still impressed. More impressed, say, than the last time I heard Bill Clinton speak (in 2002). I know he's not (really) running, but there's still a few potential comparisons.
The event began with a Ben Harper set that, in addition to taking me back to first year of college, quieted the whole crowd down. People were into it, but Ben Harper was playing mostly quiet, sleepy-time music that made us all quiet and sleepy. The last song did liven up right before Obama came on stage.
The pictures are not that thrilling and kind of remind me of being a used car dealership (with their huge flags). The talk was good, though, and went on for thirty minutes, at least fifteen minutes longer than I thought we'd get. I was particularly entertained because he made a comment including the phrase "our friends in India and China" that seemed a reaction to the Obama hates Brown People scandal of the previous week. Made me laugh out loud, which surely embarrassed Raj.
A pretty sunset on the way:
The event began with a Ben Harper set that, in addition to taking me back to first year of college, quieted the whole crowd down. People were into it, but Ben Harper was playing mostly quiet, sleepy-time music that made us all quiet and sleepy. The last song did liven up right before Obama came on stage.
The pictures are not that thrilling and kind of remind me of being a used car dealership (with their huge flags). The talk was good, though, and went on for thirty minutes, at least fifteen minutes longer than I thought we'd get. I was particularly entertained because he made a comment including the phrase "our friends in India and China" that seemed a reaction to the Obama hates Brown People scandal of the previous week. Made me laugh out loud, which surely embarrassed Raj.
A pretty sunset on the way:
Fake Cakes
15/06/2007 22:43
(photo from here)
Fake wedding cakes have been popular in Japan for decades -- big hard shapes that look like beautiful cakes but that are made of plastic (or something else) and have only a slice of real cake stuck in one side. This "real" slice is key for the cake cutting ceremony part of wedding ceremonies held at wedding hall.
Here's a description from one of the classic ethnographies of contemporary Japanese wedding ceremonies, Walter Edwards' "Modern Japan Through Its Weddings:"
"Outwardly, the cake looks no different from that used in our [i.e. white American] wedding ceremonies. It is the white bride's cake in tis most elaborate form, with three or sometimes four tiers and nearly four feet high, topped by miniature figures of a bridal couple in Western dress. Long read and white ribbons stream from their feet down to the base of the cake. There is a vast difference, however: the Japanese cake is inedible. The frosting, with its carefully sculpted swirls, ribbons, and rose blossoms, is usually made of hard wax, or more recently, of molded rubber. A small slot in the back receives the blunt blade of the knife, which like the cake itself is merely a prop in an elaborately staged event." (pages 24-5).
In the wedding hall where he did fieldwork, Edwards described the cake-cutting ceremony in this way:
"During the narration the director takes the knife, the blade carefully wrapped in a linen napkin, and places the handle in the groom's hands, on which the bride lightly rests hers. Keeping the blade covered with the napkin, the director positions the tip in the slot in the back of the cake. At the end of the narration, the pulls off the napkin and brings it high over his head in one sweeping motion while stepping quickly backward. This is the cue for the emcee to announce the moment in a loud voice, prompting the guests to applaud. As the director steps back he turns a switch releasing hot water onto a piece of dry ice concealed inside the cylindrical cake stand, causing a thick cloud of vapor to envelop the cake's base as the emcee makes his announcement. The bride and groom remain standing, sometimes frozen and sometimes managing a smile, with vapor flowing, cameras flashing, guests applauding, and the music continuing to play for a full minute. [...] As the music ends [about a full minute later] the director removes the knife from the cake, again carefully covering the blade with the napkin, and escorts the couple back to their places. The emcee then announces the kanpai and asks the guess to rise" (page 26).
I was reminded of this, and wedding cakes in Japan more generally, when I read this short post about how American couples are starting to use fake cakes in weddings. The most common reason in the US seems to be to reduce costs, but I'll be interested to see if anyone tries to characterize it as Americans doing a terrible imitation of Japanese practices. I'm guessing that description only gets applied in one direction...
http://consumerist.com/consumer/savings/wedding-cakes-buy-or-rent-269195.php
Strange Maps
13/06/2007 10:26
Songs to Divorce By
09/06/2007 16:53
As posted on metafilter, which has also been teaching me about marvel comic books, too. I'm probably the only person who would find this interesting, but I liked the distinction in the first sentence -- the emotionally devastating break-up, but celebratory signing of the divorce papers. I've heard other people talk about wanting to have divorce ceremonies, like weddings (rikon shiki like kekkon shiki).
Help me find music to divorce by.
June 9, 2007 11:15 AM
Untying the Knot: Songs about Divorce.
My friend was recently divorced, and while the breaking-up part was emotionally devastating, she is viewing the actual signing of the papers and being free as a celebratory event. Thus, she is holding a "Divorce Party" at our local dive bar in a few weeks. I want to make a CD of songs about divorce to present to her, and I need the help of the hive in coming up with just the right mix. So far I have:
"Divorce Song" by Liz Phair
"Last Day of Our Acquaintance" by Sinead O'Connor
"D-I-V-O-R-C-E" by Tammy Wynette.
... suggestions continue here.
Help me find music to divorce by.
June 9, 2007 11:15 AM
Untying the Knot: Songs about Divorce.
My friend was recently divorced, and while the breaking-up part was emotionally devastating, she is viewing the actual signing of the papers and being free as a celebratory event. Thus, she is holding a "Divorce Party" at our local dive bar in a few weeks. I want to make a CD of songs about divorce to present to her, and I need the help of the hive in coming up with just the right mix. So far I have:
"Divorce Song" by Liz Phair
"Last Day of Our Acquaintance" by Sinead O'Connor
"D-I-V-O-R-C-E" by Tammy Wynette.
... suggestions continue here.
Making Timelines
30/05/2007 08:36
Raj found a great web-based program to make timelines and it seems like something that would be useful to professors and students. The example online lays out JFK's killing.
View the entire version here. This screenshot doesn't do it justice, though. In the real one, you can slide it around, click on things, expand -- pretty much everything you'd want to do. It seems to have the potential to add a lot to classroom websites.
View the entire version here. This screenshot doesn't do it justice, though. In the real one, you can slide it around, click on things, expand -- pretty much everything you'd want to do. It seems to have the potential to add a lot to classroom websites.
The Poverty Business
30/05/2007 08:20
A recent Business Week article describes how lending companies have begun to target people living below the poverty line, to, in the author's phrasing, "see profits in thin wallets." The article goes on to explain how it is done, evidenced by a couple of portraits of people trying to pay off purchases at 24%+ interest.
For example:
"Happy as she was with the Saturn (GM ) she bought in December, 2005, Roxanne Tsosie soon ran into trouble paying off the loan on it. The car had 103,000 miles on the odometer. She agreed to a purchase price of $7,922, borrowing the full amount at a sky-high 24.9%. Based on her conversation with the Byrider salesman, she thought she had signed up for $150 monthly installments. The paperwork indicated she owed that amount every other week. She soon realized she couldn't manage the payments. Dejected, she agreed to give the car back, having already paid $900. "It kind of knocked me down," Tsosie says. "I felt I'd never get anywhere.""
Just to be clear -- the salesman at Byrider had told her that her "payments would be $150" but not that those payments would be twice a month. Further, the company doesn't include prices on their cars, and instead determines what a person can pay based on their income, and sets the car price around that.
The article includes other examples -- BlueHippo and people who try to live on all the credit cards they're offered -- but the best quote was in the middle of a paragraph:
In some instances, marketers essentially use products as the bait to hook less-well-off shoppers on expensive loans. "It's the finance business," explains Russ Darrow Jr., a Byrider franchisee in Milwaukee. "Cars happen to be the commodity that we sell."
In these cases, for "high-risk" loans or "sub-prime" lending, the product doesn't matter, and what appears to be a car dealership is actually just a financing company who happens to lure people into financing with cars.
For example:
"Happy as she was with the Saturn (GM ) she bought in December, 2005, Roxanne Tsosie soon ran into trouble paying off the loan on it. The car had 103,000 miles on the odometer. She agreed to a purchase price of $7,922, borrowing the full amount at a sky-high 24.9%. Based on her conversation with the Byrider salesman, she thought she had signed up for $150 monthly installments. The paperwork indicated she owed that amount every other week. She soon realized she couldn't manage the payments. Dejected, she agreed to give the car back, having already paid $900. "It kind of knocked me down," Tsosie says. "I felt I'd never get anywhere.""
Just to be clear -- the salesman at Byrider had told her that her "payments would be $150" but not that those payments would be twice a month. Further, the company doesn't include prices on their cars, and instead determines what a person can pay based on their income, and sets the car price around that.
The article includes other examples -- BlueHippo and people who try to live on all the credit cards they're offered -- but the best quote was in the middle of a paragraph:
In some instances, marketers essentially use products as the bait to hook less-well-off shoppers on expensive loans. "It's the finance business," explains Russ Darrow Jr., a Byrider franchisee in Milwaukee. "Cars happen to be the commodity that we sell."
In these cases, for "high-risk" loans or "sub-prime" lending, the product doesn't matter, and what appears to be a car dealership is actually just a financing company who happens to lure people into financing with cars.
Silent Minstrel Show
24/05/2007 17:35
Gwen Stefani's "The Great Escape" (live here) makes me laugh because, a few weeks ago, at the gym, a bunch of burly men lifting weights started singing the "Woo whoo! Whee whoo!" chorus spontaneously. I don't remember any of them being Asian American.
But, as in the video above, the Harajuku girls are still around, and I'm surprised to still see them. The four silent, seemingly Japanese women surrounding / following her were part of the pop-pseudo Japanese aesthetic theme for her last album (in 2004). And I'm surprised because 1) I would have expected her to move on to a different trendy culture, like maybe some place in Africa; and 2) I hoped that she would have figured out (or someone would have clued her in to) the problems with representing coolness with perpetually silent cute seemingly Japanese women. Here they are (circa 2005) for the previous album:
Notice the difference in shoes -- Gwen has platforms and the "girls" are wearing boxing shoes with no soles -- which makes it look like Gwen towers over the (nameless) women.
Margaret Cho has a short article here that describes how the girls are contractually obligated to speak only Japanese in public despite being Americans, and the choreography that makes them look like worshipful subjects. A quote:
"I want to like [the Harajuku girls], and I want to think they are great, but I am not sure if I can. I mean, racial stereotypes are really cute sometimes, and I don't want to bum everyone out by pointing out the minstrel show. I think it is totally acceptable to enjoy the Harajuku girls, because there are not that many other Asian people out there in the media really, so we have to take whatever we can get. Amos 'n Andy had lots of fans, didn't they? At least it is a measure of visibility, which is much better than invisibility. I am so sick of not existing, that I would settle for following any white person around with an umbrella just so I could say I was there."
Gwen responds in a more recent Entertainment Weekly article. (Wait for it...):
"But not everyone warmed to Stefani's ''whole fashion thing'' — in particular, the showcasing of her admiration for Tokyo trendsetters via an entourage of four Japanese women that she called the Harajuku Girls. The Girls silently accompanied her on photo shoots and to public appearances, and subsequently appeared on her tour. Stefani regarded the Girls, all of whom looked as if they had come straight off the streets of the capital city's hip Harajuku district, as a figment of her imagination brought to life in a culturally positive manner. But last year, Korean-American comedian Margaret Cho publicly decried them as ''a minstrel show.''"
''She didn't do her research!'' spits Stefani, who says she's been a fan of Japan and its mix-and-match fashion sense since first visiting the country with No Doubt in the mid-'90s. ''The truth is that I basically was saying how great that culture is. It pisses me off that [Cho] would not do the research and then talk out like that. It's just so embarrassing for her. The Harajuku Girls is an art project. It's fun!''
Punch line? Margaret Cho's emailed response. Satire is probably the only way to go, but I'm still guessing Gwen isn't going to get it:
Cho responded via e-mail, ''I absolutely agree! I didn't do any research! I realize the Harajuku Girls rule!!! How embarrassing for me!!! I was just jealous that I didn't get to be one -- I dance really good!!!''
I'd read an article last year when Memoirs of a Geisha/ Sayuri was released that addresses how English was used in the film although it is set in Japan, and populated, mostly, by Chinese actresses:
"The worst part of Memoirs is still that Ziyi Zhang speaks a slow and crude English that she learned in half a year. But even if God's wrath upon the Asian denizens of Babel is broken Engrish, at least it's not total silence. The Harajuku Girls are a quartet of dancers (at least one of whom is from California) on Gwen Stefani's solo music tour. They pose as avatars of the Tokyo neighborhood famous for being a spectacle of fashion and consumerism. Rumor has it that they were contractually obliged by Gwen Stefani (or her PR gurus) not to speak English while on tour, despite being fluent in the language. Love, Angel, Music, and Baby are, like the geishas in Memoirs, simply empty roles of Asian women who aren't allowed to speak openly. I hope that there is no doubt, but just to be clear, silencing people is the epitome of taking away their autonomy and subjectivity, even if Gwen Stefani thinks her silent Japanese fashionistas are part of an awesome and empowering counterculture. This raises the question: Why would an American entertainer who presumably knows cultural diversity (Stefani hails from a part of the O.C. not 10 minutes from my own provenance, where— unlike in the TV show—close to half the population is nonwhite) make such stupid demands specifically for Asian roles? What would be so wrong with Asian women speaking normally?"
... All of this also reminds me of a fantastic Kal Pen interview about his decision to accept the job playing a terrorist on 24. Not to mention all the other heavy accents he's been asked to fake.
“Yeah, the majority of roles I get offered are very stereotypical. Look at the movies I started off doing, like [National Lampoon’s] Van Wilder,” Penn says of his breakthrough role as Taj Mahal Badalandabad, an Indian exchange student whose only desire is to study “the great American art of muff diving.” He’s shooting a Kumar sequel right now, and as for his recent stint as a terrorist on 24, he admits, “I have a huge political problem with the role. It was essentially accepting a form of racial profiling. I think it’s repulsive. But it was the first time I had a chance to blow stuff up and take a family hostage. As an actor, why shouldn’t I have that opportunity? Because I’m brown and I should be scared about the connection between media images and people’s thought processes?”
The full circle? The most obvious cinematic minstrel I've seen lately is the white girl dating his character in The Namesake. Dumb rich New York white girl wears a tank top to an Indian funeral? And kisses people on the mouth? Please, Ms. Nair, you can do better.
But, as in the video above, the Harajuku girls are still around, and I'm surprised to still see them. The four silent, seemingly Japanese women surrounding / following her were part of the pop-pseudo Japanese aesthetic theme for her last album (in 2004). And I'm surprised because 1) I would have expected her to move on to a different trendy culture, like maybe some place in Africa; and 2) I hoped that she would have figured out (or someone would have clued her in to) the problems with representing coolness with perpetually silent cute seemingly Japanese women. Here they are (circa 2005) for the previous album:
Notice the difference in shoes -- Gwen has platforms and the "girls" are wearing boxing shoes with no soles -- which makes it look like Gwen towers over the (nameless) women.
Margaret Cho has a short article here that describes how the girls are contractually obligated to speak only Japanese in public despite being Americans, and the choreography that makes them look like worshipful subjects. A quote:
"I want to like [the Harajuku girls], and I want to think they are great, but I am not sure if I can. I mean, racial stereotypes are really cute sometimes, and I don't want to bum everyone out by pointing out the minstrel show. I think it is totally acceptable to enjoy the Harajuku girls, because there are not that many other Asian people out there in the media really, so we have to take whatever we can get. Amos 'n Andy had lots of fans, didn't they? At least it is a measure of visibility, which is much better than invisibility. I am so sick of not existing, that I would settle for following any white person around with an umbrella just so I could say I was there."
Gwen responds in a more recent Entertainment Weekly article. (Wait for it...):
"But not everyone warmed to Stefani's ''whole fashion thing'' — in particular, the showcasing of her admiration for Tokyo trendsetters via an entourage of four Japanese women that she called the Harajuku Girls. The Girls silently accompanied her on photo shoots and to public appearances, and subsequently appeared on her tour. Stefani regarded the Girls, all of whom looked as if they had come straight off the streets of the capital city's hip Harajuku district, as a figment of her imagination brought to life in a culturally positive manner. But last year, Korean-American comedian Margaret Cho publicly decried them as ''a minstrel show.''"
''She didn't do her research!'' spits Stefani, who says she's been a fan of Japan and its mix-and-match fashion sense since first visiting the country with No Doubt in the mid-'90s. ''The truth is that I basically was saying how great that culture is. It pisses me off that [Cho] would not do the research and then talk out like that. It's just so embarrassing for her. The Harajuku Girls is an art project. It's fun!''
Punch line? Margaret Cho's emailed response. Satire is probably the only way to go, but I'm still guessing Gwen isn't going to get it:
Cho responded via e-mail, ''I absolutely agree! I didn't do any research! I realize the Harajuku Girls rule!!! How embarrassing for me!!! I was just jealous that I didn't get to be one -- I dance really good!!!''
I'd read an article last year when Memoirs of a Geisha/ Sayuri was released that addresses how English was used in the film although it is set in Japan, and populated, mostly, by Chinese actresses:
"The worst part of Memoirs is still that Ziyi Zhang speaks a slow and crude English that she learned in half a year. But even if God's wrath upon the Asian denizens of Babel is broken Engrish, at least it's not total silence. The Harajuku Girls are a quartet of dancers (at least one of whom is from California) on Gwen Stefani's solo music tour. They pose as avatars of the Tokyo neighborhood famous for being a spectacle of fashion and consumerism. Rumor has it that they were contractually obliged by Gwen Stefani (or her PR gurus) not to speak English while on tour, despite being fluent in the language. Love, Angel, Music, and Baby are, like the geishas in Memoirs, simply empty roles of Asian women who aren't allowed to speak openly. I hope that there is no doubt, but just to be clear, silencing people is the epitome of taking away their autonomy and subjectivity, even if Gwen Stefani thinks her silent Japanese fashionistas are part of an awesome and empowering counterculture. This raises the question: Why would an American entertainer who presumably knows cultural diversity (Stefani hails from a part of the O.C. not 10 minutes from my own provenance, where— unlike in the TV show—close to half the population is nonwhite) make such stupid demands specifically for Asian roles? What would be so wrong with Asian women speaking normally?"
... All of this also reminds me of a fantastic Kal Pen interview about his decision to accept the job playing a terrorist on 24. Not to mention all the other heavy accents he's been asked to fake.
“Yeah, the majority of roles I get offered are very stereotypical. Look at the movies I started off doing, like [National Lampoon’s] Van Wilder,” Penn says of his breakthrough role as Taj Mahal Badalandabad, an Indian exchange student whose only desire is to study “the great American art of muff diving.” He’s shooting a Kumar sequel right now, and as for his recent stint as a terrorist on 24, he admits, “I have a huge political problem with the role. It was essentially accepting a form of racial profiling. I think it’s repulsive. But it was the first time I had a chance to blow stuff up and take a family hostage. As an actor, why shouldn’t I have that opportunity? Because I’m brown and I should be scared about the connection between media images and people’s thought processes?”
The full circle? The most obvious cinematic minstrel I've seen lately is the white girl dating his character in The Namesake. Dumb rich New York white girl wears a tank top to an Indian funeral? And kisses people on the mouth? Please, Ms. Nair, you can do better.
Electronic Japanese - English Dictionaries
26/04/2007 13:51
A friend wrote me recently asking if I had any ideas about good e-dictionaries (denshi jisho). I don't, although I have three, and can only say that I'm still crazy about the WordTank I used when I was 19, which has since died a quiet death. Last year, I took it in to a Bic Camera in Tokyo, hoping that some new batteries would help, but they didn't. Amazingly, guy helping me didn't charge me for the batteries (which he'd opened so I could try them) and was very supportive when I almost started crying.
What I love(d) so much about the WordTank was that it gave furigana readings automatically for all the kanji it churned out. Most of the time, what I need is to know how to pronounce a word. Other e-dictionaries give you kanji with no sense of how to read them. You can often get to the readings with a few more key strokes, but the machines are clearly built for people who can read and pronounce Japanese.
At the moment, at home and not out doing research, I use Jim Breen's online dictionary. But there is a good amount of information online. Here's an H-Japan discussion about handheld and online dictionaries. Here's Henry Smith's page about denshi jisho. Mark always swore by the program Jamming.
What I love(d) so much about the WordTank was that it gave furigana readings automatically for all the kanji it churned out. Most of the time, what I need is to know how to pronounce a word. Other e-dictionaries give you kanji with no sense of how to read them. You can often get to the readings with a few more key strokes, but the machines are clearly built for people who can read and pronounce Japanese.
At the moment, at home and not out doing research, I use Jim Breen's online dictionary. But there is a good amount of information online. Here's an H-Japan discussion about handheld and online dictionaries. Here's Henry Smith's page about denshi jisho. Mark always swore by the program Jamming.
The Bean
26/04/2007 13:38
I know Millennium park cost Chicago $500+ million, was four years late, and solidified M. Daley's egotastic reign. But I still really like the bean. The last time I was there -- waiting for the rain to end in New York -- it was 65 and beautiful. Chicagoians are nice because they really appreciate good weather, and the city seems so much more grateful for it than other places I've lived.
Raj was right
26/04/2007 13:26
Two weekends ago, we went out to Chicago for Jonathan and Karrie's wedding. Leaving Saturday morning, I thought I'd be back on Sunday afternoon, but the rain storm (tropical storm?) in New York forced us to stay in Chicago for a couple extra nights. I hadn't watered the plants and when I came back dear P-oat was looking pretty sad. Within three days, all the beautiful blooms had fallen off, leaving only the newest one that had opened after we got it. My hope rests in the buds that seem to be coming out of the ends of the sticks that used to be my orchid, but it's not so pretty anymore.
Pre-disaster, the new bud opening...
...
notice all the other pretty blooms in the background?
The Audrey II shot.
Newly minimalist, post-disaster
Possible new hope?
Pre-disaster, the new bud opening...
...
notice all the other pretty blooms in the background?
The Audrey II shot.
Newly minimalist, post-disaster
Possible new hope?
Building Websites
23/04/2007 14:22
A group of students in my department are talking about getting together to build websites. Although our first meeting was postponed, someone sent out a list of questions. I'll try to answer them here, so that other people can use them as well.
From her email:
I'm a PC user, so the needing a mac thing would be hard to get around for me. However I just spent the last two hours on this site:
http://www.pagetutor.com/
and now have a good idea of how to put together a webpage. For any other
self-starters out there, it was really easy to do. Yeah HTML!
So now I have a draft html document on my computer. But I still have a ton of
questions, like
1) can I get a link from the department to my page?
2) how do I load it onto the internet?
3) do I need any type of special permission to link to my documents in pdf form
(since they are copyrighted by someone else?)
4) do I need permission to create links to other pages?
5) if resolution varies from computer to computer, does that mess up my webpage?
6) how do I know if I'm making my webpage to big for slow speed internet
connections?
Here are my thoughts -- but I'd be happy to get more from other people!
1. Getting a link from the department page: I think you need to contact the IT rep in our department, or the web master. Some of the names on this list are linked to personal webpages, but I don't think it's been updated in a while. Perhaps there will be a big update in the fall when new students come in?
2. Uploading your html documents so that they are online: For Mac people, I'd suggest using CyberDuck. (It's free.) I have no idea why Yale recommends Fugu over CyberDuck on this ITS page. (To get to that page -- the software library download page -- you'll have to log in with your Yale id.) Only one of the many things that annoys me about Fugu is that you can't delete files in groups -- you have to go in and delete things individually, and it takes forEVER. Both of these programs are Secure FTPs, that will let you move your files to your Yale server space (or whatever other server space you'd like to use), and then make your files visible to other people.
For PC people -- My PC knowledge is now about five years outdated, but I remember there being some option in the start menu that let's you log into your server space. Here are some ITS pages that might help you get started with it all.
The trickiest thing for me, when I was putting up these pages a few years ago, was getting all the "permissions" correct. If you sftp your files into your "public" folder on your server space, and you still get an error message when you try to load your pages, check your permissions and make sure you've set it up so that they are "viewable" (or whatever your program calls it) to people other than the author.
3. Copyright issues surrounding uploaded pdf files. I really don't know, but I know other people have made an argument that files that are being used for educational purposes are ok. Bill Kelly, for instance, licensed his website and content under Creative Commons.
4. Do you need permission to link to another webpage? No, you don't. I suppose you could be polite and ask, but you really don't need to. Your link wouldn't bother the other webpage at all -- it's not like you're causing the other person/organization any extra work.
5. Webpages looking different on different computers. Yes, this is certainly possible, especially if you're building your website in html, rather than a page-building program that might include different coding for different operating systems or web browsers. If you're really worried, you could try to look at your site from a few different computers, with different browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari, etc.)
6. Websites too big for slow connections. If you want to check, my thought would be to built it and then see what happens when you try to look at it with a slow connection. My instinct would be that connections now are so (comparatively) speedy, that this shouldn't be a problem. But I also do my fieldwork in Japan where everyone has much nicer and fancier internet-ready cell phones than I do! So my perspective is very warped.
Please add comments or suggestions if I've missed something or am completely wrong...
From her email:
I'm a PC user, so the needing a mac thing would be hard to get around for me. However I just spent the last two hours on this site:
http://www.pagetutor.com/
and now have a good idea of how to put together a webpage. For any other
self-starters out there, it was really easy to do. Yeah HTML!
So now I have a draft html document on my computer. But I still have a ton of
questions, like
1) can I get a link from the department to my page?
2) how do I load it onto the internet?
3) do I need any type of special permission to link to my documents in pdf form
(since they are copyrighted by someone else?)
4) do I need permission to create links to other pages?
5) if resolution varies from computer to computer, does that mess up my webpage?
6) how do I know if I'm making my webpage to big for slow speed internet
connections?
Here are my thoughts -- but I'd be happy to get more from other people!
1. Getting a link from the department page: I think you need to contact the IT rep in our department, or the web master. Some of the names on this list are linked to personal webpages, but I don't think it's been updated in a while. Perhaps there will be a big update in the fall when new students come in?
2. Uploading your html documents so that they are online: For Mac people, I'd suggest using CyberDuck. (It's free.) I have no idea why Yale recommends Fugu over CyberDuck on this ITS page. (To get to that page -- the software library download page -- you'll have to log in with your Yale id.) Only one of the many things that annoys me about Fugu is that you can't delete files in groups -- you have to go in and delete things individually, and it takes forEVER. Both of these programs are Secure FTPs, that will let you move your files to your Yale server space (or whatever other server space you'd like to use), and then make your files visible to other people.
For PC people -- My PC knowledge is now about five years outdated, but I remember there being some option in the start menu that let's you log into your server space. Here are some ITS pages that might help you get started with it all.
The trickiest thing for me, when I was putting up these pages a few years ago, was getting all the "permissions" correct. If you sftp your files into your "public" folder on your server space, and you still get an error message when you try to load your pages, check your permissions and make sure you've set it up so that they are "viewable" (or whatever your program calls it) to people other than the author.
3. Copyright issues surrounding uploaded pdf files. I really don't know, but I know other people have made an argument that files that are being used for educational purposes are ok. Bill Kelly, for instance, licensed his website and content under Creative Commons.
4. Do you need permission to link to another webpage? No, you don't. I suppose you could be polite and ask, but you really don't need to. Your link wouldn't bother the other webpage at all -- it's not like you're causing the other person/organization any extra work.
5. Webpages looking different on different computers. Yes, this is certainly possible, especially if you're building your website in html, rather than a page-building program that might include different coding for different operating systems or web browsers. If you're really worried, you could try to look at your site from a few different computers, with different browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari, etc.)
6. Websites too big for slow connections. If you want to check, my thought would be to built it and then see what happens when you try to look at it with a slow connection. My instinct would be that connections now are so (comparatively) speedy, that this shouldn't be a problem. But I also do my fieldwork in Japan where everyone has much nicer and fancier internet-ready cell phones than I do! So my perspective is very warped.
Please add comments or suggestions if I've missed something or am completely wrong...
New addition
08/04/2007 17:59
For the past few weeks, I've been checking out an orchid for sale at a small food+more store near my apartment. I'd run in to buy cereal and be shocked and happy that it was still there. How could no one want it? How could no one else have noticed its petals through all the other greenery in the store?? Yesterday I finally decided that I'd waited long enough, that I'd tried my best to share it with the rest of the world, but now it's mine mine mine. With apologies to David Foster Wallace, it has been christaned P.O.O.A.T ("pee-oat"), for the Prettiest Orchid Of All Time. When I said I might take some pictures of it, Raj said, "That's a good idea, you know, before..." He means before we kill it. Consulting Orchid 101 has made me wonder if the bodega hadn't already gone pretty far in that direction, because P-oat seems incredibly over-watered. Still... I have just built an elaborate raft of unused disposable chopsticks, so it can hover over a dish of water, getting enough moisture while not sitting in it. Here are some pictures. You know, just in case.
... and the little chopstick raft, balanced on tupperware. One website told me I could prop my orchid over water as a way of keeping it moist but not wet, and then suggested I use small stones or pebbles. Having just used up my spare small stone collection, this was my work-around.
... and the little chopstick raft, balanced on tupperware. One website told me I could prop my orchid over water as a way of keeping it moist but not wet, and then suggested I use small stones or pebbles. Having just used up my spare small stone collection, this was my work-around.
Our collective dream of stapling without a stapler
05/04/2007 16:30
Earlier in the week, I was having a conversation with a professor who said something that he meant to be complementary, like, "All the students I know think of software as a means to an end, not an end in itself. You [all] aren't interested in some new software just because it's out there." I took this complement, and then ran home to play with my new, very favorite, piece of completely useless software. I love it so much that I actually had a dream about it, in which I explained to someone how it worked. Try it and you'll see that it doesn't take much explanation. It involves clicking and listening.
... straight from 1990, I give you: SimStapler.
Download it (macs only, sorry) and start clicking. Don't give up until you get at least to a score of ten. Then take a break and read the credits, in a file called "simstapler/what the heck?!" I'll quote a bit as a teaser:
"The first true office equiptment simulator, SimStapler© brings all of the thrill and excitement of a "real" stapler right to your computer screen!
Until now, the dream of stapling without a stapler remained just that, a dream. Only with the latest advances in virtually reality technologies has that dream become a reality! Today, anyone with a multi-thousand dollar Macintosh computer, color monitor, keyboard and mouse, can enjoy the act of virtually stapling, without the expense and bother of a "real" stapler.
It has been said that it is humanity's imagination that sets us apart from the beasts of the field. Now, your children can learn to be more human by imagining they are stapling two sheets of paper together, with SimStapler©
Having ones children be "human" isn't the only benefit of SimStapler©. Adults can pretend they are stapling three or more pages together. They can even imagine they are stapling one thousand pages together. Try THAT with a "real" stapler!"
... straight from 1990, I give you: SimStapler.
Download it (macs only, sorry) and start clicking. Don't give up until you get at least to a score of ten. Then take a break and read the credits, in a file called "simstapler/what the heck?!" I'll quote a bit as a teaser:
"The first true office equiptment simulator, SimStapler© brings all of the thrill and excitement of a "real" stapler right to your computer screen!
Until now, the dream of stapling without a stapler remained just that, a dream. Only with the latest advances in virtually reality technologies has that dream become a reality! Today, anyone with a multi-thousand dollar Macintosh computer, color monitor, keyboard and mouse, can enjoy the act of virtually stapling, without the expense and bother of a "real" stapler.
It has been said that it is humanity's imagination that sets us apart from the beasts of the field. Now, your children can learn to be more human by imagining they are stapling two sheets of paper together, with SimStapler©
Having ones children be "human" isn't the only benefit of SimStapler©. Adults can pretend they are stapling three or more pages together. They can even imagine they are stapling one thousand pages together. Try THAT with a "real" stapler!"
Barters, exchanges, and purchases
26/03/2007 19:46
A friend just told me about a website called CardAvenue, on which you can trade, sell, or barter with gift cards you have and don't want. I have been less than excited about gift cards for the past few months, ever since I read a NYT article that pointed out that the cards are interest-free loans to companies, let alone the fact that few cards get used entirely. Because I just found out that visa has started charging me between one and three percent for any purchases I make outside the US (like in, I dunno, Japan or somewhere), I am annoyed and certainly don't want to give gift cards that reward companies for sucking extra interest out of me.
I should have had more faith in people and in the internet. Although CardAvenue apparently charges five cents + a small percentage of the card's value, it seems, at this moment, to be a big step toward consumers' revenge. Or perhaps I've just been reading too much Mauss and Consumerist.
Speaking of! Here's a recent post about gift cards. In the comments, FangDoc points out that the only reason there's any market for gift cards is that it's "rude" to give cash. All roads apparently lead directly to Mauss.
I should have had more faith in people and in the internet. Although CardAvenue apparently charges five cents + a small percentage of the card's value, it seems, at this moment, to be a big step toward consumers' revenge. Or perhaps I've just been reading too much Mauss and Consumerist.
Speaking of! Here's a recent post about gift cards. In the comments, FangDoc points out that the only reason there's any market for gift cards is that it's "rude" to give cash. All roads apparently lead directly to Mauss.
Oslo and Lillehammer
20/03/2007 10:08
I spent last week in Norway, attending the Japan Anthropology Workshop conference (JAWS). The conference was wonderful, and I think our panel on ie (house/household/family) was interesting for at least the presenters, and hopefully for a few people in the audience as well! Here are a few of the pictures I was able to take while not in the conference itself. I'll add notes below the pictures.
Walking around Lillehammer. You can't really tell, but the ground is almost all ice, or icy. It was impossible not to walk like a very old, very cautious, woman. As I was doing this, actual old women were almost jogging past me. It was embarrassing.
Another shot of Lillehammer. Notice how the ice is mixed with slopes. The space of the small city reminded me of Seattle -- all hills leading down to the water.
Oslo at night. The sunset was a light, pale, yellow and the picture completely fails to capture the color.
Another view of Oslo, from the walls of a park that is also a military barracks. We had beautiful weather the entire time we were there.
Three pay toilets that also have to be art, because they're fantastic. Five kroner to relieve yourself in to either Liberty, Equality, or Fraternity. The Jeep does not appear to be art but it could, surely, be a commentary on the constant militarism in contemporary life.
The Viking museum, with ships from the 10th century recovered from bogs. The building seemed to be made of poured concrete and was vaguely church-like, with high rounded gothic windows and curves. It was beautiful space for the boats and made the room seem to bend around the ships in pictures. See below.
"The Norsemen plundered churched and monasteries and also whole towns. The Vikings were also merchants." -- made me laugh out loud.
Raj and Mark deciding what to buy -- the gift shop was before the exhibits. See how American we are! Even though Mark technically isn't.
Then we went to Vigeland's Sculpture park...
... stopping to buy waffles first..
A few of the sculptures and the beautiful sky.
Apparently, this is one of the most famous, and keeps getting stolen. Reminded me of the Hannah Gray picture.
Finally, the standard punch line for all my Norway jokes -- bacon spread in a tube. I understand that America has produced, and continues to consume, things like Cheese-whiz, but still, I'm allowed to think this is funny.
Walking around Lillehammer. You can't really tell, but the ground is almost all ice, or icy. It was impossible not to walk like a very old, very cautious, woman. As I was doing this, actual old women were almost jogging past me. It was embarrassing.
Another shot of Lillehammer. Notice how the ice is mixed with slopes. The space of the small city reminded me of Seattle -- all hills leading down to the water.
Oslo at night. The sunset was a light, pale, yellow and the picture completely fails to capture the color.
Another view of Oslo, from the walls of a park that is also a military barracks. We had beautiful weather the entire time we were there.
Three pay toilets that also have to be art, because they're fantastic. Five kroner to relieve yourself in to either Liberty, Equality, or Fraternity. The Jeep does not appear to be art but it could, surely, be a commentary on the constant militarism in contemporary life.
The Viking museum, with ships from the 10th century recovered from bogs. The building seemed to be made of poured concrete and was vaguely church-like, with high rounded gothic windows and curves. It was beautiful space for the boats and made the room seem to bend around the ships in pictures. See below.
"The Norsemen plundered churched and monasteries and also whole towns. The Vikings were also merchants." -- made me laugh out loud.
Raj and Mark deciding what to buy -- the gift shop was before the exhibits. See how American we are! Even though Mark technically isn't.
Then we went to Vigeland's Sculpture park...
... stopping to buy waffles first..
A few of the sculptures and the beautiful sky.
Apparently, this is one of the most famous, and keeps getting stolen. Reminded me of the Hannah Gray picture.
Finally, the standard punch line for all my Norway jokes -- bacon spread in a tube. I understand that America has produced, and continues to consume, things like Cheese-whiz, but still, I'm allowed to think this is funny.
Backing Up
20/03/2007 07:09
Apparently, this so-called blog has turned into me 1) geekily talking about technology that I love or 2) linking to the Onion. This post falls under the former category.
A fellow anthro grad student wrote me asking for tips about backing up. I don't haven't created the smartest system, but I must be close to the most paranoid. So here's what I do, for what's its worth.
There are three external hard drives in my life. The first, a Buffalo drive, sits in a corner and holds all of my music files. Raj created this system, and has set it up so that we can each connect wirelessly to the iTunes libraries stored on the drive (it came with the name "Share" but I thought it was appropriate to re-name it "Cher"). This is because we both have music collections bigger than our laptop's can hold. The 20 gigs of music (and videos and tv shows) that I have on my MacBook every day is a subset of the full-set that lives on the external.
But that wasn't about backing up -- sorry. What is extra nice about this machine, which could also be used as a regular back-up drive, is that it's set up to connect to our computers through the wifi. This means that we don't have to worry about cords (which I hate), and it seems to me that it would therefore be a nice (read: cordless) way of backing up as well. We're running it with the airport extreme we were already using. One possible downside to it as a back-up drive, or to backing up using a wifi connection, is that it's much slower.
My current back-up methods involve two external 250 gig LaCie drives, each of which I bought for a couple hundred dollars before I started fieldwork. (I took them both to the field wrapped in jeans in my carry-on bags, which security loved.) I remember reading some bad reviews of LaCie drives, particularly as they work with Macs, but I've had no problems and have been constantly using them for years. I do have one friend who left his drive in storage for a year (unintentionally) and it died. It is apparently possible to resuscitate dead externals by freezing them, of all things, but I've never had to try.
To back up, I connect one of the externals to my laptop via firewire. For many years, because I didn't have software I liked and didn't like to keep my external connected to my machine, I did simple "finder copies." This means I highlighted whatever files I wanted to copy and then dragged them to the external icon. The copy would take a while -- usually about two hours -- but it was very stable and I never had to worry about corrupted, compressed files that wouldn't open. Typically, I copy my documents, music (iTunes), pictures, and desktop. Email is trickier to get because, on macs, email data files tend to be hidden in strange places. At the moment, having finally switched to the program I swore never to use (Mail.app), my email data is hidden in allisonalexy/library/mail. I copy that entire folder, which only takes a second. Typically, I would set this up right before I went to sleep, and then let it run as I slept.
More recently, I've started using SuperDuper! which is a program that organizes backing up. With this program, you can decide what flavor of backing up you would like to do on a daily basis: 1) back up everything as an image file; 2) completely copy your computer and make a "bootable" copy; 3) copy only the things that have changed since your last back-up; 4) copy just the parts you pick. Bootable copies are something that I rarely use, but it's fun to see: it means that SuperDuper turns your external drive into an exact replica of your computer, same desktop, same programs, same passwords. With this, if you had to, you could take the external drive to a different computer and reproduce your computer exactly. I have only used this when I'm getting a new hard drive and need to have a complete copy.
Now, nightly, I either use SuperDuper or make finder copies.
Also, because I remain paranoid, I alternate between different drives, so that if something ever happened to one, the other would still be around. When I was in Japan, and thus extremely paranoid about a monster earthquake wiping out my still nascent dissertation, I would keep the most important files in many different places. If you have an iPod you can use that as a small external drive. I would keep some word documents on the iPod*, so that I'd at least have those on my person if something happened to my drives at home. Then, I also emailed my fieldnote files to my mother (safely in Pennsylvania, where there are no earthquakes), who didn't open the files but kept them just in case. My final bit of advice is to have multiple sites to which you back up. Yale students have their server space, and I've heard about, but haven't tried a new program called Mozy. It looks pretty good, especially if it's your second back-up.
*To make an iPod into a portable hard drive, you need to change the settings for it in iTunes. When you've connected the iPod, check the option "enable disk use." This turns your iPod into a "disk" (hard drive) and means that you'll have to manually disconnect the ipod each time -- i.e.: drag it to the trash -- but you'll also be able to drop anything you want onto it. It always made me feel better to know that whatever drivel I'd pounded out the day before was riding the subways in my pocket.
A fellow anthro grad student wrote me asking for tips about backing up. I don't haven't created the smartest system, but I must be close to the most paranoid. So here's what I do, for what's its worth.
There are three external hard drives in my life. The first, a Buffalo drive, sits in a corner and holds all of my music files. Raj created this system, and has set it up so that we can each connect wirelessly to the iTunes libraries stored on the drive (it came with the name "Share" but I thought it was appropriate to re-name it "Cher"). This is because we both have music collections bigger than our laptop's can hold. The 20 gigs of music (and videos and tv shows) that I have on my MacBook every day is a subset of the full-set that lives on the external.
But that wasn't about backing up -- sorry. What is extra nice about this machine, which could also be used as a regular back-up drive, is that it's set up to connect to our computers through the wifi. This means that we don't have to worry about cords (which I hate), and it seems to me that it would therefore be a nice (read: cordless) way of backing up as well. We're running it with the airport extreme we were already using. One possible downside to it as a back-up drive, or to backing up using a wifi connection, is that it's much slower.
My current back-up methods involve two external 250 gig LaCie drives, each of which I bought for a couple hundred dollars before I started fieldwork. (I took them both to the field wrapped in jeans in my carry-on bags, which security loved.) I remember reading some bad reviews of LaCie drives, particularly as they work with Macs, but I've had no problems and have been constantly using them for years. I do have one friend who left his drive in storage for a year (unintentionally) and it died. It is apparently possible to resuscitate dead externals by freezing them, of all things, but I've never had to try.
To back up, I connect one of the externals to my laptop via firewire. For many years, because I didn't have software I liked and didn't like to keep my external connected to my machine, I did simple "finder copies." This means I highlighted whatever files I wanted to copy and then dragged them to the external icon. The copy would take a while -- usually about two hours -- but it was very stable and I never had to worry about corrupted, compressed files that wouldn't open. Typically, I copy my documents, music (iTunes), pictures, and desktop. Email is trickier to get because, on macs, email data files tend to be hidden in strange places. At the moment, having finally switched to the program I swore never to use (Mail.app), my email data is hidden in allisonalexy/library/mail. I copy that entire folder, which only takes a second. Typically, I would set this up right before I went to sleep, and then let it run as I slept.
More recently, I've started using SuperDuper! which is a program that organizes backing up. With this program, you can decide what flavor of backing up you would like to do on a daily basis: 1) back up everything as an image file; 2) completely copy your computer and make a "bootable" copy; 3) copy only the things that have changed since your last back-up; 4) copy just the parts you pick. Bootable copies are something that I rarely use, but it's fun to see: it means that SuperDuper turns your external drive into an exact replica of your computer, same desktop, same programs, same passwords. With this, if you had to, you could take the external drive to a different computer and reproduce your computer exactly. I have only used this when I'm getting a new hard drive and need to have a complete copy.
Now, nightly, I either use SuperDuper or make finder copies.
Also, because I remain paranoid, I alternate between different drives, so that if something ever happened to one, the other would still be around. When I was in Japan, and thus extremely paranoid about a monster earthquake wiping out my still nascent dissertation, I would keep the most important files in many different places. If you have an iPod you can use that as a small external drive. I would keep some word documents on the iPod*, so that I'd at least have those on my person if something happened to my drives at home. Then, I also emailed my fieldnote files to my mother (safely in Pennsylvania, where there are no earthquakes), who didn't open the files but kept them just in case. My final bit of advice is to have multiple sites to which you back up. Yale students have their server space, and I've heard about, but haven't tried a new program called Mozy. It looks pretty good, especially if it's your second back-up.
*To make an iPod into a portable hard drive, you need to change the settings for it in iTunes. When you've connected the iPod, check the option "enable disk use." This turns your iPod into a "disk" (hard drive) and means that you'll have to manually disconnect the ipod each time -- i.e.: drag it to the trash -- but you'll also be able to drop anything you want onto it. It always made me feel better to know that whatever drivel I'd pounded out the day before was riding the subways in my pocket.
What does this mean about readership?
29/01/2007 22:35
While creating the link in the previous post, I saw, and clicked on, a link to another Onion story, this one published in 2002. "Sanrio Introduces New Divorced Character." Shocking! I mean, a shocking nexus of my reading interests and research topic, and shockingly tailored perfectly for me. But what surprised me the most was that nowhere in the article do they explain what "batsu-ichi" means. Could they just assume that their readers would get the joke? Do American otaku / fanboi make up enough of their audience that they don't have to worry? Or, perhaps, was it written hoping to entertain the four academics out there who might care? I'm just annoyed at myself for not finding it before I gave this presentation.
Whaddya mean linking to the Onion doesn't count as original content?
29/01/2007 22:17
While searching through articles I'd saved as pdf's, in the process of trying finish writing something, I came to an article saved under the title: "Oprah Stuns Audience with... Giveaway." "Hmm," I thought, "what's this? And why have I saved it on my computer?" When I opened it and saw the entire title, I laughed out loud. Not the article I was looking for, but it still made my night.
... Fieldnoting redux
22/01/2007 15:51
Here's my old post about possible softwares for writing fieldnotes. Take a look and email me if you have better suggestions. I'd be happy to add your ideas!