January 14, 2009
Speaker info
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January 10, 2009
151 changers of the game
JP Rangaswami chooses his favorite among the 151 responses to Edge’s question: “What Will Change Everything? What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?” JP chooses Chris Anderson’s essay on Web-empowered teaching. (This is the CA of TED, not the CA of Wired.) JP also recommends reading all 107,000 words of all 151 responses, which I have not done. But it’s a great pool to take a random dip in.
December 22, 2008
December 18, 2008
December 8, 2008
Honeymoon inflation
I haven’t researched this — I’m in Paris for LeWeb and am too beat to actually look stuff up — but it seems to me that I haven’t read any of the “First 100 Days” speculation that usually fills the newspapers during the transition. I assume and hope that’s because the media — and we the people? — understand the magnitude of the problems. Why, 100 days is like a billion dollars these days … a drop in the bucket.
Categories: misc Tagged with: economy • liquefaction • misc • obama • transition
November 28, 2008
Black Friday
Last night, my family and my brother’s family went to the outlet stores in Clinton CT at midnight when they opened. Or, let me be precise: At midnight we were waiting in the line of traffic sprawling out from the parking lot. We got one of the last spaces, and it is a bi-ig freaking parking lot.
The quarter mile of outlets store were jammed. People were lined up outside of popular stores, such as J. Crew, waiting to get in so that they could buy preppy t-shirts announcing their support of J. Crew and all that he (?) stands for, and then wait 20-30 minutes to pay for it.
I don’t know what this says about the economy. Maybe it means we’re not feeling as poor as we should. Maybe it means that we’re feeling so poor that we’ll line up to get a bargain. Maybe it means nothing.
But it sure was a pain in the ass. um, I mean, it was a shopatravaganza!
November 17, 2008
$1,080 an hour
From 8:02 until 8:58 this morning, I was in the care of an excellent endodentist, having a root canal. At the end of that hour, I was presented with a bill for $1,080, a number I associate more with high definition TVs than with hourly wages.
My endodentist was excellent. She’s highly skilled and had great chair-side manner, narrating each step, and preparing me for every delightful little surprise ( “You’ll feel a dull thud as I jam this this phillips-head screwdriver into your tooth, handle first.” “The smell of your own body burning may be a little pungent.”) I am old enough to remember when root canal was the standard measure of pain, just as “the length of a football field” is the standard measure of distance and “as many books as in the Library of Congress” is the standard measure of volume, so I have no complaints about a procedure that has become merely uncomfortable with occasional sharp twinges.
But $1,080 an hour? In Boston, that’s seems to be the going rate, albeit at the high end. On the other hand, after dental insurance, it only cost me $1,080….because there’s no practical way for me to get dental insurance.
I seriously don’t understand the pricing model. The endodentist is part of my dentist’s general practice. She shares the facilities and uses the same rooms. There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of complex special equipment involved, outside of some rasps, a keyhole saw, and a cash register. She’s had some specialized training, but are root canals really that much more complex than the range of procedures my general dentist can do, from reconstructing a tooth to diagnosing gum problems? Meanwhile, the endodentist is in danger of getting repetitive stress syndrome from doing the same motions — drill, scrape, fill, phone her broker — over and over.
Is it pure scarcity that drives the prices up? At those prices, why is there a scarcity? And why aren’t other dental procedures broken off and priced as exorbitantly? Or is this a residue of the days when root canals were so painful that people wanted to feel like they were getting their money’s worth?
Categories: misc Tagged with: capitalism • endodentists • misc • whines
November 16, 2008
Is the Net dangerous for kids? The research shows …
“…the increased popularity of the Internet in America has not been correlated with an overall increase in reported sexual offenses; overall sexual offenses against children have gone steadily down in the last 18 years”
That’s from a preliminary 70-page review of the literature on the topic. Actual research, not scare stories or assumptions. The draft was put together primarily by Andrew Schrock and danah boyd (of the Berkman Center), for the Research Advisory Board of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force. It of course finds some important problems — for example, “the Internet increases children’s risk of ‘unwanted’ (accidental or inadvertent) exposure to sexual material” — but “Threats involving the Internet have not overtaken other harmful issues that youth encounter.” There’s lots and lots of details in the paper. For example:
On the topic of sexual solicitation, studies show that things are either improving or have been shown to be not be as prevalent and distressing to minors as initially anticipated. Between 2001 and 2005, the proportion of youth receiving unwanted Internet sexual solicitations went down (Wolak, Mitchell, & Finkelhor, 2006), although this decline was only seen among white youth and those living in higher income households (Mitchell, Wolak, & Finkelhor, 2007a).
The Task Force will publish its findings in January.
November 12, 2008
Everyone’s position on linguistic correctness
AKMA points to two snippets from Stephen Fry on grammatical purity. The second snippet is classic Laurie and Fry.
AKMA expresses his usual admirable inclusiveness: He thinks grammatical correctness is worth striving for, but also acknowledges that language can usefully overflow its bounds. I’m with him. I was disappointed to hear Obama use the phrase “between her and meI,” and at his recent press conference to use “between” instead of “among” when referring to relationships of three or more. But I’m not a stickler. Why, I’ve recently become willing to blatantly split an infinitive or two.
When it comes to the sanctity of the rules of language, doesn’t everyone have the same position? While we think people ought to follow the grammatical rules that matter, we graciously condescend to permit others to make fools of themselves in public, unless they break rules the violation of which force a “Tut tut” from our lips. The difference is only over which particular rules we think are worth following, ignoring, or tut-tutting.
Or, to complete Henry Higgins’ thought: “Oh, why cahn’t the English … learn … to … speak … like me.” Pardon me: “…as I do.”
November 4, 2008
FCC approves unlicensed White Spaces
The FCC has approved unlicensed use of the White Spaces. This frees up spectrum for innovation. See Harold..
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