Instructions for cooking in a normal oven tell you how long and how hot. But microwaves rely on unscaled buttons for “power” that vary from machine to machine. Why isn’t there a standard unit of cooking energy for microwaves so instructions could say “Cook in your microwave for ten minutes at 350 joules” (or ohms, watts, newtons, pounds per square inch, parsecs, francs, or whatever the right unit of measurement is…I’m a humanities major, dammit!)? [Tags: doep puzzles]

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Richard Ericson has a very useful review of Office 2007 in Computerworld. It sounds like a user like me will get nothing of real value out of it, except that I’m a power-user of PowerPoint, so I’ll likely have to make the switch.

The review doesn’t mention whether Microsoft has managed to fix the Word revision tracking bugs that have been there for the past ten years. And not just the bug that causes files to go corrupt if they’re too heavily revised. I mean things like not handling paragraph joins correctly; after backspacing two paragraphs together, the only way to get rid of the invisible paragraph marker that remains is to delete a few characters backwards and a few characters forward of the join. Also, if multiple people go through multiple revision cycles, I haven’t found a way to show only the latest revision’s changes by a particular person. Also, if you toggle off displaying your revisions to a document and then make a change, it toggles the display back on.

I don’t know what software number Office is up to, but maybe after spending another $329 to upgrade to the Professional version (which should be called the Penultimate version since $539 is the upgrade price for the Ultimate version), I’ll have a word processor with rev tracking that works.

Or maybe it’s time to switch to Open Office for real. (Alas, I seem to be stuck with PowerPoint, though. I use all its animation features and I can’t show up to give a speech for which I’m paid with a presentation that my hosts can’t run.) [Tags: microsoft office reviews]

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I’m looking forward to Timo Hannay’s upcoming Tuesday lunch talk at the Berkman Center. Timo is Director of Web Publishing at Nature magazine and has been involved in some of Nature’s forward-looking projects. He’s going to talk about what the Web means to science. This should nicely complement Dan Burk’s talk on open science, which was more concerned with legal issues about patent and copyright than Timo’s is likely to be. If you want to attend, you should rsvp at [email protected]. The talk will be on Oct. 17, 12:30-1:45, at the Berkman offices at 23 Everett Street in Cambridge. Sessions are also Web cast and Second Lifed. [Tags: berkman science timo_hannay nature_magazine]

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So, Libya has ordered 1.2 million computers from the $100 Laptop initiative, formerly known as One Laptop Per Child.

Excellent!

1. OLPC has more revenue to do good things with.

2. A generation of Libyan kids maybe will become computer literate.

3. A computer literate, networked generation will further integrate Libya into the life of nations, AKA peace.

4. We have 1.2 million more potential Linux hackers.

5. Since Wikipedia comes loaded on the laptops, now we see what happens when 1.2 million Libyan kids decide to spend the afternoon editing. [Tags: olpc libya wikipedia ]

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So, now we see how well the Bush policy on North Korea has worked out. The world is a step-function more insecure, not only because North Korea is a nuclear-tipped loonocracy, but because it well may decide to arm stateless groups that cannot be deterred from nuking us.

Nice going, George.

This is the price you pay for being a stubborn jackass, um, I mean, standing by principles. The principle of not negotiating with bad guys has a pragmatic justification: Negotiating encourages others to adopt bad guy tactics. But, that means the no-negotiating principle is really dependent on the practicalities. Instead, Bush has been overpowered by its macho sound. When it comes to near-nuclear powers who have been begging for direct talks, standing by the principle as if it were an 11th Commandment, and refusing to recognize differences in different cases—”I don’t do nuance”—results in criminally stupid policies.

And now our cities are at risk because of it.

What a miserable failure this presidency has been. [Tags: north_korea george_bush politics]

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What would it take to make a bumble bee happy?

(My answer is the first in the comments.) [Tags: puzzle :doep]

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A WSJ article reports that a John Hopkins study says that 600,000 Iraqis have died violently since the war started. That’s 2,5% of the population that would have been alive if there were no conflict. Granted, they would have been living under the control of a homicidal dictator who Human Rights Watch estimates killed up to 290,000 people in twenty years.

Everyday when I read about the latest slaughter in Iraq, I think what our reaction would be if dozens of people in Boston were being blown up and shot every day. My imagination fails. This morning, though, I choked up at a photograph in the Boston Globe of a teenager clutching his father’s casket. Policy isn’t dictated by such photographs. But it ought to begin there. [Tags: iraq]

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The audience formerly known as the audience is now meeting up and having parties. This YouTube explains the basic idea. Four Internet activists—Zack Exley (who ran the Kerry Internet campaign), Josh Hendler, Mave Gibson and Madeline Stanionis—created FrakParty.com where fans of BattleStar Galactica could organize parties for watching the season premiere. (“Frak” is an expletive used in the show.) Strangers got together in over 100 parties, in part because the series’ producer noticed the blogging about it and promoted it in his blog.

So, one of the surprising twists of the digital world is that it’s turning abstractions such as markets and audiences into real phenomena. [Tags: frakparties media zack_exley]

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danah boyd disputes the ComScore report that says that more than half of MySpace visitors are 35 or older. It smells wrong to her, and she’s trying to find additional research or insight. My hunch is that danah’s hunches are very likely to be right, especially on issues such as this. [Tags: danah_boyd myspace comscore]

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After three seasons of trying, I finally biked up the big hill that leads to our street. I had to drop into second gear and stand up and pump each half-cycle like Suzanne Pleshette bench pressing her own weight*, but I made it, dammit. Of course, being passed by a twelve-year old on a bike piled with 75 pounds of school books didn’t do anything for my mood. But I made it, dammit.

The hill is named “Corey Road,” but that doesn’t sound very impressive in sentences that begin: “I finally beat _____.” So, I’m looking for a more impressive nickname for the street. “I finally beat Glory Road.” “I finally beat The Widow-Maker.” You know, something like that.

Suggestions? [Tags: doep puzzles]

*That was a completely gratuitous Suzanne Pleshette reference. I just like her name. It sounds like fake fur.

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