table.
|^. *Jack:*|Okay, this can function as a sonic blaster, a sonic cannon, and a sonic disrupter. Doc, what’s you got?|
|*Doctor:*|I’ve got a sonic…oh nevermind.|
|*Jack:*|What|
|*Doctor:*|It’s sonic, let’s leave it at that.|
|*Jack:*|Disruptor, canon, what?|
|*Doctor:*|It’s sonic! Totally sonic!|
|*Jack:*|A sonic what?|
|*Doctor:*|Screwdriver!|
|*Jack:*|Who has a sonic screwdriver?|
|*Doctor:*|I do.|
|^. *Jack:*|Who looks at a screwdriver and thinks, ooh, this could be a little more sonic?|
|^. *Doctor:*|What? You never been bored? Never had a long night? Never had a lot of cabinets to put on?|

Christopher Hitchens on Holland’s shameful treatment of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I need to do some more reading into the fascinating/scary subject of modern racial politics in Europe. I’d especially like a book that gives a broad overview of the last 58 years (or so) and perhaps does some compare/contrast with American thought on the subject. Anyone have reading suggestions?

Join us virtually for Beyond Broadcast

Berkman and PRX have organized what looks to be a kick-ass conference this Friday and Saturday called Beyond Broadcast. It aims to explore how traditional public media (public broadcasters like NPR, cable access, etc.) can use new media to better serve the public. I haven’t generally been advertising Berkman events on my blog, but this one is near and dear to me. I’m a big fan of NPR in the US and the BBC in the UK, and greatly admire how willingly both of those organizations have embraced the net and changing modes of distribution. I see the net as this really amazing force to complete shake up the existing production and distribution model for radio, television, movies, and the like, and this conference is a great opportunity to see what progress is being made.

It is also insanely cheap as far as conferences go. Take cheap and relevent and interesting and you’ve got one massively sold out event. But never fear, Berkman is here! We are going to be streaming the proceedings live on the web to as many people as our fancy new XServe can handle (and yeah, I’m in charge of that…*gulp*). So check out the Beyond Broadcast site today and if you’re interested, tune in on Friday to see the proceedings. There is even an online questions tool so that remote participants can submit questions to the panelists, and if you’re into the crazy virtual world known as Second Life, you can join us from in there by visiting the Berkman island and crowding into the “virtual” Harvard Law School buildings.

Wow, we’re so cool. 😉

Self-evaluating

I started filling out my employee self-evaluation form that was apparently due a few weeks ago, but then stopped. It is long, boring, difficult to apply to my situation (and the Berkman Center generally), and seems like a waste of time when there is so much other real work to be done. I’m supposed to pick out which mini-courses on team building, effective communication, organization, leadership, and the like would help me be better at my job. Huh?

★★★★☆
Review

The Big U

!>/files/2007/11/0-380-81603-2.jpg(The Big U)! I can’t remember the last time I read an entire book in a day, but when I picked up Neal Stephenson’s 1984 debut novel in the afternoon I found that I kept coming back to it as the day wore on, only to finally finish it early in the morning. Staying up this late almost makes me feel like I’m back in college, and the subject matter certainly doesn’t hurt that view.

_The Big U_ begins as a straight satire of life at a big public university. The setting is American Megaversity, the campus of which is made up of one massive building — the Megaplex — 20 stories tall and spanning nine city blocks of an unnamed metropolis with an unsurprising resemblance to the Boston University environs. Stephenson effortlessly skewers pretty much every single aspect of college life, from a bureaucracy seized with political correctness disorder to asinine course requirements, uncaring students, a useless student government, and tenured faculty content to coast along.

And lets not even discuss the massive central cafeteria constructed to feed 20,000, with its huge pressurized vats of processed food pastes and enriched soy substitutes.

As the story unfolds, characters end up interacting with radical student groups, strange religious cults, crazy academic departments, and a maintenance staff composed entirely of refugees from a Eastern European country with an unpronounceable name. And lets not even discuss the massive central cafeteria constructed to feed 20,000, with its huge pressurized vats of processed food pastes and enriched soy substitutes, or the complex battle plan used to respond quickly and efficiently to the ever-present threat posed by food fights.

Continue reading “The Big U”

Sensibilities

When I see old Brandeis mailing list posts referring to the need to move a bunch of web properties to the “Brandeis standard design” for second level pages, it makes me think, well, that I should have been paid more. I mean, people generally get more than $12.50/hour (or whatever it is they were paying me by the time I left) to design something that becomes the University’s standard web template!

_H BOMB_, billed as “Harvard’s magazine about sex,” just posted on the HCS jobs list looking for people to help with their web site. You may recall the controversy surrounding their first issue, which, while portrayed in major media as a pornography rag, appears from the preview on their web site to be pretty much exactly what they promised (think Nerve, not Playboy). Seeing as they’re planning a purely online edition this year, one can safely assume that Harvard’s decision to deny them funding has not changed. Too bad.

Boston Squares is an attempt by two Tufts students to create a directory of Boston businesses organized by town square. Slick site with wiki-like editing. I’m finding things in Davis and Harvard Squares that I never knew existed.

Bluff follow-through

Thirty-seven degrees Farenheit. Midnight on a deserted beach. Huddled with a group around a blazing bonfire. Your legs are warm, your feet are freezing, there are graham crackers and marshmallows and, of all things, Dunkin Donuts. You strip off almost all of your clothes, pick up a burning piece of wood, and run straight into the Atlantic ocean.

Its like trying your first spoonful of ice cream. Its like your first time up on water skis. Its like floating on your back in a tranquil pond while, up above, fighter jets shoot across the sky.

I didn’t know what I wanted, didn’t know if this was going to just be a disaster or something I look back on and say, “what was I thinking.” Nope, its not that. It is new, it is strange, it is amazing, and I want more. I need more.

Thanks Mat. 🙂

Gladwell finds the Duke rape case interesting because it gives us a chance to look at how the legal system will deal with the problems of eyewitness testimony across races when its a minority person picking out *white* defendants. There is a pretty good scientific understanding that our ability to identify other people is far reduced when they are people of a race different than our own. In most high profile cases in the past, though, it has been a white victim picking out blacks. Gladwell asserts that there could be thousands of black men in prison on the basis of flawed eyewitness testimony. He is probably right.