March 2008 Archives

The other night, I showed Amy's extended family my infamous ugly baby photo (see also "Ugliest Baby Picture"). After they got over their initial shock and awe, someone asked if this was, indeed, the ugliest baby picture.

What better way to determine that than to search Google?

It turns out, as of today, I'm number 5 if you search for "world's ugliest baby photo," and three of the first four are jokes. The only semi-legitimate competitor is this guy (girl?) who clearly does not hold a candle to me.

So, I need your help. Go to Flickr and add my photo as a favorite. Add a link to ""World's Ugliest Baby Picture" to your blog/website. Increase my Page Rank. Spread the ugliness! It craves to be seen!!

A friend of mine forwarded along the following snippet of bad academic prose from a communications department announcement:

Sadly, this is far from the worst academic writing I've seen. In fact, it's comparatively straightforward, which is still not saying much.

Bad writing is a time-honored and proud tradition among academics, and has even been rewarded satirically via an annual prize given out by Denis Dutton, the editor of the journal Philosophy and Literature. The 1996 winner was Judith Butler, an atrocious writer whose 1990 book Gender Trouble was required reading in just about every class I took throughout the following decade. Her winning sentence:

In researching this blog post, I also found an amusing review of a book titled Just Being Difficult? Academic Writing in the Public Arena. It seems that back in 2003, a number of hardcore academic theorists wrote essays justifying "bad writing" in an academic context. True to form, the contributors questioned and "deconstructed" what it means for "writing" to be "bad." The reviewer writes:

The reviewer continues:

And, really, that's what just galls me -- that supposedly progressive or leftist scholars deliberately develop and employ opaque jargon and tortured linguistic constructions to supposedly "challenge" "common sense" and "question" "transparency" and just end up excluding anyone who can't afford to go $50,000 in debt to get a Ph.D. from being able to read their stunning insights, pronouncements, and criticisms of the patriarchy/capitalistic/monolithic establishment.

See also: "Lucidity is Fascist" elsewhere on this blog.

My morning bus was re-routed this morning because NW 85th St. was closed off by a hoard of police and fire vehicles. As we looped around to the north and came back down Greenwood Ave., I could see what appeared to be a garbage truck up on the sidewalk. Judging from the intensity of the pulsating red-and-blues light illuminating the area and from the news helicopter noisily hovering above, I could tell this was no simple fender-bender.

I also knew that, since it involved a garbage truck, a certain four-year-old who lives in my house would be very interested in the story.

I called Amy and told her to open her laptop and find out what was going on. She called back a little while later to report that the garbage truck in question had smashed into a telephone pole and that rescue workers were using the Jaws of Life to free the trapped and injured driver.

As I suspected, Mr. Garbage Boy was fiercely excited by this news and expertly analyzed the photos published on the KIRO-TV web site. He determined that the truck in question belonged to Waste Management; was, in fact, a recycling truck, not a garbage truck; and that it was not our recycling truck because our truck does not have a white cab or white wheels. Ray was relieved, then, that it was not our usual driver (i.e. his hero) involved in the wreck.

Indeed, later in the day, our recycling was picked up normally. Phew.

Oh, and the driver was rescued and is expected to survive.

Posting has been rather light lately because I've been working on a new design for this blog. Well, here it is! What do you think? Please post a comment and let me know.

First of all, you'll notice that it's wider. And width is more important than length, right ladies? ;-)

Second, I think it looks less cluttered overall.

Finally, and less visibly, the backend is much improved as I started from scratch rather than base it on an existing template.

Ever since I took my new job, it's been hard to explain to people what I do. I don't run any systems, I don't write code, I don't manage projects -- I develop relationships and partnerships with members of the community. I put people in touch with other people. I assemble the necessary people to fix complex problems.

Amy and I watched Michael Clayton the other day. In it, George Clooney plays an attorney at a prestigious New York law firm who serves as a "fixer" -- or, someone who solves difficult situations through his intimate knowledge of "the system" and his network of powerful business contacts. Clayton does not do any trial work himself, and at one point a character comments that many people don't even realize he works at the firm.

At one point while watching the film, it occurred to me that I am the "Michael Clayton" of my organization.

I'm a "fixer."

The downside of this position -- professionally speaking -- is illustrated in the film when Clayton expresses concern to his boss over a pending merger with another firm. He is worried that he won't be able to convince the new firm bosses that he's worth keeping on so he wants to do more litigation work to have something tangible to show for himself. His boss tries to assure him that Clayton is far more valuable in his current role and would be wasted as a litigator. Clayton doesn't seem too comforted by this.

I, too, have a bit of anxiety that my current position can't be expressed in terms that make sense to future employers (note to coworkers: I'm not actively looking for another job). I am routinely assured by my coworkers that I'm serving a valuable role (and I believe that I do), but that role doesn't easily translate to a job title or function that can be summed up or easily demonstrated outside of this immediate context.

Of course, I probably don't have to worry about anyone putting a bomb in my car, so there's some comfort in that. Oh, sorry: SPOILER ALERT.

The 2008 Seattle Mariners TV commercials are available at MLB.com and are discussed here and here.

My favorite is "Fullness and Sheen."

If they'd had GPS's back when I lived in Detroit, I would have been known as, er ... the Human GPS. Or something more clever, maybe. Anyway, the point is, I had an awesome sense of direction, and could get from any point in the metropolis to any other in record time. East Grand Blvd. and Gratiot? No problem; take Warren Ave. as a shortcut. Need to get downtown at rush hour? Skip the Lodge and take Fort St. -- it's faster.

When I moved to Iowa City for graduate school, I ditched my car and became a full-time pedestrian. The IC (as I like to call it) was only about 10 square blocks, so walking everywhere presented few challenges, and I made sure to become well acquainted with Persons of Car (hi, Holly!).

I'd always believed that that little interlude forever destroyed my once formidable powers of navigation. After moving to Madison and splitting from She Who Shall Not Be Blogged About, I again assumed my role amongst our nation's motorized majority ... and proceeded to incompetently stumble around the city's streets. For the life of me, I just couldn't figure things out -- the one way streets, the diagonals, the lakes, the frustrating presence of the state capitol building right in the middle of the narrow isthmus ... I approached them with all the grace and command of Owl Eyes from The Great Gatsby (obscure enough for you?)

Recently, I was reading Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point when it suddenly dawned on me that the decline of my navigational skills was never my fault.

It's Amy's fault.

A few years ago, I took an architectural walking tour of Chicago. I particularly recall the guide explaining how the distinctive style of Mies van der Rohe emerged partly because of the city's building codes.

It seems that in downtown Chicago there had been a height limit on buildings that extended too close to the lot line. Mies got around that by constructing the building atop columns and recessing the ground floor so as to create a public plaza area underneath the rest of the building. The open area created by this design was consistent with the spirit of the code, and the majority of the building could then extend out to the lot line starting with the second floor. This fact stuck with me, I think, because I once lived in a Mies building in Detroit (pictured above).

The other night, I encountered another example of a practical restriction leading to an aesthetic innovation. I was watching a documentary about Blade Runner (My Favorite Movie) wherein Ridley Scott discusses that his decisions to set the film largely at night and for it to be constantly raining were ones made largely due to budget constraints. The set used for the urban landscape was the standard "New York Street" set at the Burbank Studios, and they needed to disguise it heavily as it had been seen in so many other films. The darkness and the rain were cheap ways to camouflage the familiar facades of the set.

I realize that in expensive domains such as filmmaking and architecture, such constraints are common, and that art history is full of examples of resource limitations leading to new aesthetics and innovations. But these two examples stuck with me far a number of reasons.

I'd love to learn that Picasso's blue period was inspired by a sale on blue paint at the local Dick Blick!

Twice in the last couple weeks now we've had door-to-door meat salesmen come to our house.

Meat salesmen.

WTF?

Both times they claimed to have "missed some deliveries" in the area and offered me a "great deal" on meat, and then seemed utterly shocked when I told them I wasn't interested.

Do people really buy meat from guys who knock at your door at 7:00 at night!?

After years of being a gin martini man, the Manhattan has become my New Favorite Cocktail.

Recently, I tried my hand at crafting my own "house" versions of Manhattan mixin's -- sweet vermouth and the requisite cocktail cherry.

For the vermouth, I followed the guidance offered at the "Art of Drink" blog. For sweet vermouth, start with red wine. Then infuse it with a mixture of herbs, spices, and sugar. Finally, fortify it with brandy.

I decided to use some apricot tea as the "herbs and spices." I steeped a few tea bags in a quarter bottle of wine while it simmered over a low flame for about 10 minutes. Then I added some baker's sugar and a cup of brandy, and finally poured the mixture back into the bottle with the rest of the wine.

The results: still very wine-y compared to the Martini & Rossi vermouth I usually use. I probably should have used a bit more sugar and maybe have steeped more of the wine in more tea. I can't really detect the apricot flavor, and it's not particularly sweet (though the M&R stuff is a bit too sweet, in my opinion). But that's not to say it isn't tasty in a cocktail!

I've already written about the evil that is the modern Maraschino cherry. The "Explore the Pour" blog has an amusing article about "the neon nemesis" as well as instructions (via a book called The Art of the Bar) for making your own sweet cocktail cherries.

I didn't have cinnamon sticks, so I sprinkled in a little powdered cinnamon (not the same, I know) and I only used one pound of cherries since this was a trial run.

The resulting fruit is really quite tasty -- even more so once it's soaked up a bit of the bourbon and vermouth from the Manhattan. Overall, the drink is much more aesthetically pleasing -- the dark vermouth gives it a deeper hue and the almost-black cherry peeks out mysteriously from the bottom of the glass.

Next on the list is the bitters, which I will try using the techniques outlined at Boston Cocktails. I'm especially excited to try the Jamaican variety!

At first, I decided to support Obama because I really liked him, not because I had anything against Hillary. Over the last few weeks, however, as Hillary has become more desperate, I have started to actively dislike her.

Take, for example, her fear-mongering new ad that begins "It's 3 am and your children and safe and asleep..."

Of course, with all her "experience" comes a whole boatload of baggage. This clip featuring the other Clinton and his description of "one of Clinton's laws of politics" is a neat answer to Hillary's ad.