For people old enough to remember phone booths, a blunt reference to salary in a social setting still represents the height of bad manners. But for many young professionals, the don’t-ask-don’t-tell etiquette of previous generations seems like a relic. For them, salary information is now fair game, at least among friends. Many consider it crucial to prosper in an increasingly transient, winner-take-all workplace — regardless of the envy that full disclosure can raise.

— "Sharing Salary Figures on Facebook" by Alex Williams in the New York Times

Politics and longevity

So what do we think, is Hillary Clinton staking the future of her candidacy on Obama having a large enough “gaffe” to derail his campaign? Because that seems like the only realistic chance she has of winning the nomination, and thus her only justification for tearing apart her party with a never ending nomination fight. No one likes giving up.

Or wait, is the eventual Democratic strategy going to be a twist on Clinton’s, namely hoping for a McCain health problem to sour the public to his candidacy? If so, they may be in for a shock, since the odds good at this point that he’ll live at least another ten years.

There is a really weird but excessively interesting New Yorker article called Mine Is Longer Than Yours about life expectancy. The author calls it “the last boomer game.” I’d quote at length, but life is (I guess) short, so here’s a morsel that might encourage you to click through:

We are born thinking that we’ll live forever. Then death becomes an intermittent reality, as grandparents and parents die, and tragedy of some kind removes one or two from our own age cohort. And then, at some point, death becomes a normal part of life—a faint dirge in the background that gradually gets louder. What is that point? One crude measure would be when you can expect, on average, one person of roughly your age in your family or social circle to die every year. At that point, any given death can still be a terrible and unexpected blow, but the fact that people your age die is no longer a legitimate surprise, and the related fact that you will, too, is no longer avoidable.

With some heroic assumptions, we can come up with an age when death starts to be in-your-face. We will merge all sexual and racial categories into a single composite American. We will assume that there are a hundred people your age who are close enough to be invited to your funeral. Your funeral chapel won’t fit a hundred people? No problem. On average, half of them will be too busy decomposing to attend. As Max Beerbohm noted in his novel “Zuleika Dobson,” “Death cancels all engagements.” And why a hundred? Because it’s easy, and also because it’s two-thirds of “Dunbar’s number,” of a hundred and fifty, which is supposedly the most relationships that any one set of human neurons can handle. We’re crudely assuming that two-thirds of those are about your age.

Anyway, the answer is sixty-three. If a hundred Americans start the voyage of life together, on average one of them will have died by the time the group turns sixteen. At forty, their lives are half over: further life expectancy at age forty is 39.9. And at age sixty-three the group starts losing an average of one person every year. Then it accelerates. By age seventy-five, sixty-seven of the original hundred are left. By age one hundred, three remain.

Crazy Microsoftitude (Part 1)

I’m doing some Microsoft stuff at work, and in order to keep my sanity I’ll post the occasional inanity that I discover, at least if they’re humorous. I guess the requirement of one AD server for every 3 web servers is more sad than humorous, so that doesn’t count. But hey, check out this great error message!


A request has been received to deliver files over the internet. Because we had to launch this super-fancy ActiveX control to manage your huge download, clearly it is something big and important. So can you verify that you requested a file called “anyfile” with an extension of “ext?” Kay, thanks.

On the eve of tomorrow’s hotly contested and relatively close Democratic presidential primary in Pennsylvania, a number of voting activists are sounding the alarm one last time about the state’s election systems. Over 85 percent of PA voters will vote on paperless touchscreen machines that are hackable, failure-prone, and fundamentally unauditable. 

— "PA primary will be unauditable; GOP blocks e-voting reform" by Jon Stokes in Ars Technica

A picture of ROI

Nikon D70 Digital SLR CameraI’ve now had my Nikon D70 digital SLR camera for almost three years, and in that time I’ve taken about 600 photos that I have considered worthy enough to put on Flickr (some of which I have not yet posted). It looks like after listing fees and shipping and such, I could get about $400 on eBay for a camera that originally cost me closer to $1000, meaning a 60% depreciation or, put another way, each of those pictures cost about a buck apiece.

I love my Nikon D70, but a few months ago I made perhaps not the wisest decision in the world, purchasing a pretty amazing telephoto lens that, while powerful and convenient, also adds additional weight and bulk to an already weighty and bulky camera. As a consequence, I find I’m now even less likely to take my big, heavy, expensive rig with me when I go places. And there’s not much point having an amazing camera if you never take it anywhere.

So I’m thinking I might be putting camera and lens up on the auction block and “downgrading” to the smaller, cheaper, lighter, cuter Nikon D40. Being able to worry less about the heft and price of the equipment means being able to worry more about taking good pictures, which is really the point. Or am I crazy?

★★★★☆
Review

Juno

I may be a bit late to this particular party. I just often find movies like this very difficult to get through. Especially if I have a pause button.

You’ve seen the trailer or at least know the story is about a pregnant teenager with an acerbic wit. But it isn’t really. It is about a pregnant teenager who knows she is a teenager and who knows she is in way over her head. She has a supportive and pragmatic family and a boyfriend that is pretty far out of the picture. She hooks up with an adoptive couple with some baggage of their own and stumbles through her interactions with them without either side being patronizing.

The film is sweet, even when it overreaches and strays into cringe-inducing turns of phrase that just cry out for you to revel in their cleverness. It is at other points understated and hilarious and the dialogue perfectly crafted. Several of the characters are introduced slowly, minimally, even obliquely, and yet they feel deep and fully formed. Many people love this film’s soundtrack; I thought it was distracting and tone-deaf. The acting, in contrast, was amazing. Everyone hit their notes, no one stole the spotlight. And Ellen Page is, obviously, one to watch.

Some people are determined to deliberately misunderstand much of what they encounter in life. Sometimes I have a hard time realizing that that’s their problem, not mine.

— Jason Kottke, interviewed at Clusterflock

Scarring

Neil Gaiman writes:

I drove Maddy to school this morning. She has an extremely cool crescent-shaped scar next to her eye, from when, as a small child, she ran into the corner of a table.

Weird. I also have a crescent-shaped scar next to my eye from when, as a small child, I ran into the corner of a table. From now on I’m gonna start explaining it the way Maddy does: sword fight. With Spiderman.

Coming of Age on Antidepressants

For people who have lived their entire adult lives on antidepressant medication, it is difficult to have any baseline to judge their normal behavior and personality. Antidepressants mess with you in all sorts of weird and unexpected ways, and without that baseline it is often impossible to know if certain feelings and behaviors are innate or are the effect of drug interactions that no one really understands.

Geeking Out

Using PHP in Harvard FAS’s environment

FAS IT’s web site helpfully points out that their servers support PHP “in cgi-mode,” but does not explain what that means. What follows are three fairly straightforward steps for setting up PHP in your FAS web space. This assumes some basic UNIX knowledge. If you lack it, find a friend to help you.

The method described here may not be officially supported (or appreciated) by FAS IT. Since they don’t provide documentation, who knows. Exercise due caution.
  1. SSH into fas.harvard.edu and create a public_html directory if you don’t already have one. Make sure it has permissions 755. Also make sure your home directory is world executable.
  2. Copy the PHP binary into your public_html directory (note: this file is nearly 5MB in size and will count towards your quota). Since it is stored on the web servers but not the shell servers, you need to do this by creating a CGI script and visiting it in your web browser. This one does the trick:
    #!/bin/sh
cp `which php` php.cgi && chmod 755 php.cgi

    After using it once, delete it. You should now have a php.cgi executable in your public_html directory.

  3. Create an .htaccess file to tell the web server how to server your PHP files. It should look like this:
    Options +ExecCGI
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php .php
Action application/x-httpd-php /~youruser/php.cgi

Now create PHP files as you normally would and they should work fine without any special permissions or modifications. Tada!

CBS won’t be the only network experimenting with Realism Programs. NBC has a full slate of the revolutionary new programming planned, highlighted by Crooning With the Stars, Celebrity Hooverville, and New Deal or No New Deal. In that last show, contestants match wits with host Eddie Cantor for the right to receive government contracts handed out by a shadowy government figure — rumored to be Eleanor Roosevelt herself!

— "'Realism Programs' Turn Radio On Its Ear" from Radeeo, the April Fools edition of TeeVee

I told her I just want to bum around for a few years. She says, “your brother is a Vice President and makes over $100,000 a year.” Yeah, but we own the company. It doesn’t count when daddy buys you a business.

— Overheard in Harvard Square. Later she said she wants to open a bookstore in Italy, even though she doesn't speak Italian.