cnn disgusts me

today we went and saw some of the super tuesday election results (go hillary!) at a group gathering on the berkeley campus. the organizers had put cnn up on the screen. after an hour i was about ready to throw up all over wolf blitzer.

why?

well, are we mice or .. er ... people? mice want cheese. that's what cnn gave. they'd give you a nibble of new york, then a nibble of georgia (but not a peach!), then a nibble of another state. but no aggregation! none! eventually we pulled out a piece of paper, and started writing down the candidate names and the states, and the associated percentages, to get our own aggregate sense. very much like the graphic on the nytimes.com homepage (or for that matter the cnn page):


when did tv viewers become so illiterate that we aren't allowed to have the global picture?

all that wolf blitzer had, amusingly, was his reference to huckabee as a "burgundy" (the color of the red on the map). that got a good laugh -- i wish someone would call me a burgundy, that most refined pinot.

this song, from the juno soundtrack, seems quite appropriate for cnn:

babysitting fun

today i babysat my cousin's son. despite being two, he was not terrible. in fact, he was pleasant. that is, until he started grooving to my daft punk but refused to dance with me. hope you enjoy his alternative dance partner suggestion, shown in the video below:



also, while babysitting i constructed some situations which amused me to no end. below you'll see alien vs predator :)

and here's alien vs predator requiem:

postsecret interview online

as promised, here's the link to my full interview with frank warren.

you can find the "secrets" issue this is part of here.

one fun article is:

Tampons and Taboos
Hsiao-Yun Chu

plastic bags: why so bad?

after reading that australia plans to phase out plastic bags by the end of 2008, and a multitude of other anti-plastic bag initiatives (like here in san francisco), i decided to do some research: why are plastic bags so bad?

the answers didn't completely surprise me. the main problem with plastic bags is likely the negative impacts if they are disposed of incorrectly (essentially a human behavioral failing) -- and that might be surprising to you!

ok, so we want to analyze the life cycle of plastic bags. let's compare plastic bags to paper bags, which is often what people do. here are a few things to consider:

• energy to create, and environmental impact of creation: plastic wins. plastic bags are a derivative of the oil refining process, whereas paper bags are made of trees, and sometimes from forests that are not sustainably harvested
• transportation energy: comparing the bags by carrying capacity, it'd take about 7 trucks of paper bags to transport the equivalent of 1 truck of plastic bags: plastic wins
• disposal: this is the kicker
• effects on natural environment: plastic bags, if not disposed of properly, can harm wildlife when ingested. paper bags don't have this problem
  
• effects on built environment: plastic bags can clog drains and have caused floods in numerous places. you, like me, likely see the plastic bags swirling around everywhere as a blight on our environment
• garbage dumps: plastic might win here. from what i've read, neither paper bags nor plastic bags do much decomposing in land fills, and since plastic bags are quite compressible, they actually don't take up that much space. BUT, a lot more plastic bags end up at the landfill than paper.. which leads to:
  
• recycling: generally people are far more likely to recycle paper bags than plastic bags. the plastic bag disposal programs are typically cumbersome (isn't it annoying to take that plastic bag back to the store!) and hence not utilized by individuals

in fact, on this recycling point i want to show you a figure from a relatively old study that, while the numbers may not be right, does a good job of conveying the importance of recycling in deciding if plastic bags beat paper:


Table 1 - Choice table. Determines bag preference at varying recycling rates. Either was used when the difference between energy efficiencies are inconsequential. (from Institute for Lifecycle Environmental Assessment: Paper vs Plastic Bags)

now, we should also note that governments and stores banning plastic bags aren't in love with paper, but instead are also trying to get out the message that paper vs plastic is a false dichotomy:
- what about reduction: using neither, instead using your own bag
- what about reuse of paper and plastic bags?
- what about alternatives: biodegradable plastics?

my overall conclusion is that we wouldn't be very concerned about plastic bags if people properly dealt with them. that's why i think biodegradable plastic and programs that make it easier to recycle plastic bags are important (like new york is doing). you could just ban them, but then you have to think about what is filling the void. of course, getting people to use their own cloth bag would be fantastic -- but causing that kind of behavior change, namely getting people to have the cloth bag around right when they need it, is likely quite difficult.

here are the resources (they are few, sorry only have so much time!) i examined:

• The Environment Literacy Council: Paper or Plastic?
• Plastic Shopping Bags in Australia: National Plastic Bags Working Group Report to the National Packaging Covenant Council
• Institute for Lifecycle Environmental Assessment: Paper vs Plastic Bags
• How Do You Say "Plastic Bag" in Australian?

Google Queries:
[what's wrong with plastic bags]
[environmental impact plastic bags]

british hoodlums, 1892

search for british hoodlum on google and look at the first result (i know this result will change.. but here's how it is circa dec 18,2007). what rubbish! the nytimes' historic content is jumping to the top, riding the nytimes pagerank, but it's quite irrelevant.

that being said, the result, an article from 1892 on cheerful british hoodlums savagely beating innocent moslem's in liverpool is an interesting, if sad, historic read. i never really thought about the muslim population in england in the 19th century. that must've been tough (well, the article shows that clearly it was). anyway, here's one quote:

The matter has been reported to the police authorities here and also to the Ottoman Embassy in London. The representatives of the latter have expressed great indignation that the unoffending Moslems in Liverpool should be subjected to such savagery, and it is hoped that the brutal fellows who have perpetrated these outrages will be apprehended and meet with the punishment they so richly deserve.

woo. that's a sentence! you'll not see something like that in today's new york times.

the power of a scent

i cannot get enough of this book, my name is red (see my previous post). in the chapter i just read a gossip-monger discusses the finer points of interpreting a letter between former lovers that, at least in written form, suggests the man should stop visiting the woman's father's home (she writes "It'd be best if you stopped coming to our house completely.")

the gossip-monger, illiterate but attuned to social ways, then discusses the finer analysis of letters. she writes many points, but here is the one that stuck with me:

Furthermore, the smell of the letter confirms [the love letter] interpretation. The fragrance was faint enough to be ambiguous -- did she intentionally perfume the letter?--yet alluring enough to fire readers' curiosity--is this the aroma of attar or the smell of her hand? And a fragrance, which was enough to enrapture the poor man who read the letter to me, will surely have the same effect on Black [the former lover].

many years ago (again i excavate, deep into my memories) a friend gave me a book that she had spilled COPIOUS amounts of perfume on. she apologized profusely. but what a treat to return to that book months and years after and still have the smell and associated memories. my brain is a smell-memory powerhouse. i remember how disappointed i was when perhaps 7 years after the perfume spill the book had finally no trace of the scent. sometimes i smell the scent again, when i wander, and it always puts me right back to those playful days.

imagination, the beautiful danger

many, many years ago i had a crush. oh to have a crush. to imagine the other, so perfect and wonderful. sometimes i think i should really love my imagination more than anything or anyone, because it can play such tricks with me, and i do love a good trick. in this case, i met this person again, years after the crush had faded, and all i could wonder was "what were you thinking, imaginative omar?" likely this has happened to you too!

but at the time, what a soothing balm. i remember a crush once got me through a boring, lazy summer at the cottage (along with drivel about elves by terry brooks). i'm coming around to the feeling that a crush, or strange inflation, is a carrot my imagination dangles in front of me, and i leap and grab and almost have my arms around the crush, to crush its foolishness, when my imaginations pulls up, and i fall back into the water, to come around for a yet higher leap, thrashing and looking increasingly comical, a fish out of water. so then, imagination, to what end do you employ this carrot?

orhan pamuk, a wonderful writer, gives me a hint in his book "my name is red":

[Shekure's face] was thin, though her chin was longer than what I remembered. So, then the mouth of my beloved was surely smaller and narrower than I imagined it to be. For a dozen years, as I ventured from city to city, I'd widened Shekure's mouth out of desire and had imagined her lips to be more pert, fleshy and irresistible, like a large, shiny cherry.

Had I taken Shekure's portrait with me, rendered in the style of the Venetian masters, I wouldn't have felt such loss during my long travels when I could scarcely remember my beloved, whose face I'd left somewhere behind me. For if a lover's face survives emblazoned on your heart, the world is still your home.

here is a graph giving my own interpretation of this passage (using the google charts API!):

the red X denotes the sweet spot. that's where you want to let reality take over. in the novel, perhaps that's when the character needed a portrait, and not his imagination. the odd thing is that a portrait, if sufficiently real, can halt a person, in the viewer's eyes, and then be its own bag of worms.

ok. of course i'm being a bit facetious with the graph. i just wish i had a better check on my imagination and its wily ways. you think i should be able to control it -- but you don't know it personally, now do you?

ps my friend lara has a great post on crushes that you keep in your back pocket. check it out, though i warn you that the color scheme is not for the faint-hearted.

janus at the de young

last night we went to the de young for their weekly friday night party. while browsing the collection, we came upon a wonderful depiction of janus, the roman god of beginnings and endings. above you see one face of janus. in this depiction, it's an outward face. now below, i give you the profile, and then the "back"


this work really resonated with me because it got me thinking about how we're all, in a way, two-faced, or perhaps of multiple minds. not necessarily in a bad way. i recall reading about people who would lose control of one of their hands, or say things aloud that they thought they didn't mean. the author of the book (i can't remember which book it was) discussed how certain centers of our brain seem to win out over other centers -- like when you reflexively react to something but then restrain yourself almost immediately upon receiving further information. the two janus faces got me thinking that the thoughts we inhibit subconsciously, and consciously, might be far more complicated than a reflex, but rather an entire train of thought that is suppressed, for some reason. there is a face to that thought. the encasing of the head on one side in this depiction emphasizes this enclosure, and the interior mirror helps us see what is inside there, as it's usually obscured.

about last night

this is from my writing class. the prompt was "about last night." i read this aloud, but it's so much easier to understand with italics representing one individual.

[beep vibrate. cell phone is answered]

so.. about last night.
uh, yeah?
well, i was sorta, you know... it wasn't anything.
oh, er, yeah me too. i didn't think.. uh..
yeah, thinking, god! where did that go?
seriously, if my brain is ice, i was melted.
er.. yeah melted. i see that, like slush and dirt. woh, dirty!
yeah and no shovel, er.. yeah
so.. um. about last night.
uh, yeah?
well, ok, maybe i meant some of it.
really? well.. um..
yeah so i was more ice, less slush
oh
yeah
well ... ok...
so do you want to...
oh wait i have another call.

[click]

The Magnificient Midge

"Both male and female Chironomidae [nonbiting midges] have mouths but will never use them, for the adults live only to breed. They have stored enough food in their bodies from their larval days to fuel the furious beating of their wings."

The male midge's "rapid [wing] motion raises their body temperature and may make them more potent. Females, lurking nearby in the grass or bushes, dart into the swarm once the males have become irresistible to them."



"Marissa, I'm not going to be able to resist much longer -- look at Walter's wings!"

Marg the midge, perched atop a blade of grass, admired the rhythmic dance of the male midges in the adjacent field. Her friend, Marissa the midge, hovered lower, unconvinced by the dance.

"Every night you fixate on Walter. How many flaws must I point out? Look at his metathorax -- I tell you he still eats, even to this day! No midge is that fat!"

But Marg could not stop swooning. "Think about our kids. His powerful wings, my lithe hind legs, they'd be the most attractive larvae."

Marissa hovered, unconvinced. She spun and looked up. "Wait Marg, wait. Check out Andre."

Andre flew into view above them. His wingers weren't as fast as Walter's; nor his metathorax as large. But Marg could not deny that he was something special. Andre was not rotating horizontally on the fourth wing beat like every other midge -- instead, he rotated vertically, showing off his glistening spiracles. When Andre's head faced Marg and Marissa he winked and caressed his mesothorax with his forelegs. Marg wondered what Andre's forelegs would feel like on her mesothorax.

funny doors

today i had some great bad door locking moments. the first involves a change room in a mall. i entered the change room and couldn't figure out how to lock the door. i looked at the handle, nothing. i look around the handle, nothing. then i look up and notice a lone screw, sticking up at the top of the door, about half a room above my head. here it is:

what would you do with a screw like this? well, i turn it, and it starts going in. then i turn it the other way, and it starts coming out. but neither action actually locks the door. here's my sister and i, filming an interaction with the door.

and now here's the mechanism (shot from above, door in locked position):

the second door locking problem is even more amusing, but i didn't take any pictures because my sister somehow convinced me not to. i go into a bathroom stall in a ukranian cultural center in new jersey, and i can't lock the door. the alignment of door latch to lock is all wrong, and so the door cannot be locked. i puzzle for a moment, conclude that this door must be broken, and go to the next stall. the same thing! so i try a third stall. the same thing, again! i can't lock the door. is this some kind of sick joke? i can't find anyone to ask, but i'm sure it must be.

socks with hole

into the shoe not a peep
out of the shoe, i weep
for the sock i have worn
is now slightly torn
the second in only a week

my didjereedoo

i bought a didj!

i'm in australia now. we went up to cairns, in queensland. this is a tropical area, with rainforests on land and the great barrier reef just 30 miles off the coast. wonderful place. anyway, i was rootin around in a market and i came upon this didjereedoo place, so i decided to try and play one. i loved it! i've always enjoyed the sound of a didj, and now i own one. i hope my roommate, cats, and neighbors can tolerate my practice.

here's the person i bought it from, playing the didj i bought. maybe i'll sound this good soon?

oh, and here's a picture of a koala we saw eating:

rewiring how we think

update: i made a shirt out of this. read below then check it out.

look at the picture below. what do you see?



Click here to see a clearer picture

Now do you see?

look back at the original picture. i'm sure you see it now. unfortunately (or fortunately) you will likely always see the picture in this new way now. you're tuned into it.

i saw this in a paper i'm reading called Research Methods in Human-Computer Interaction by Thomas Landauer.

what does this have to do with human-computer interaction? the paper is trying to make the point that an expert who has worked with a system for a long time can no longer think like a basic user, and hence we should be wary of relying on expert intuition alone when making usability decisions that might affect all users. landauer writes:

One you 'see' something, your cognitive structure (your brain, if you must) has been irreversibly changed, and you no longer see the world in the same way. What you could not see before you can now see easily, and it is virtually impossible to put yourself in the place of a person who has not had the same experience. If this brief experience can have such a dramatic effect, imagine what profound perceptual changes must result from tens or hundreds of hours of practice with an initially alien computer system.

of course, this idea extends beyond building usable computer systems.

it's fascinating to see that my brain has latched onto this structure. i did not see the cow prior to seeing the second image. now all i see is cow. what hope do i have of changing my perceptions about long-held beliefs where the evidence to the contrary might not be as clear-cut as the cow?

i miss the days when i could rewire my brain quite easily.

see the tshirt

pegs and holes

my family bought a new cabinet and we were placing the top on the cabinet. this was proving difficult as the cabinet makers had not properly aligned the holes on the cabinet with the holes on the top. this lead me to comment that it's like fitting a "round peg in a square hole." there was some dispute concerning this comment. see the video below:



now, obviously there exists round pegs which won't fit in square holes. certainly the main complaint is that the interfaces are not commensurate, and so problems will ensue. the question then becomes which fit is worse: the round peg in the square hole, or the square peg in the round hole?

take your time and think about it.

...

...

now, you could just work it out yourself, or you could pull a naive-google, or a thoughtful-google. now, a naive-google would use the result count to determine which statement is used more often, and then say that the statement used more often is likely the better analogy (why would people, since we are such smart beings, use poor analogies? ;) ). so here are the results:

"round peg in a square hole" : 41,700
"square peg in a round hole" : 91,900

so clearly square peg wins out.

now if we do a thoughtful-google and click on some results, we find this problem solving for kids site that after some simple geometry declares:

Hence the circle covers more of the square than the square does the circle. It’s therefore better to be a round peg in a square hole than a square peg in a round hole.

thus, since we want an analogy that describes something that is very difficult to do, we must conclude that i made a weak statement, and should've said it's like fitting a square peg in a round hole.

merry christmas.

UPDATE: someone recently commented that google is dumbing us down, because instead of just working out this simple geometric problem, we just ask google and get an answer that's already written up on the web. certainly there's some merit to this complaint (in this case, though, i worked it out myself because these little problems are fun. indeed, the circle in the square uses a larger percentage of area than the square in the circle). it's very tempting to be as curious as the answers google gives you. however, i also think we can now ask much deeper questions and build on all the knowledge that's easily available.

Wolf Parade I'll Believe in Anything

another wolf parade song that i like. and in the video, i love the wigs!

and what will you be?

at the Fundacio Antoni Tapies i learned that the artist antoni tapies determined he would be an artist while bedridden for months with TB. tapies is a genius of contemporary art, creating pieces like that above that fuse media and texture to evoke the subconscious and feelings that cannot be expressed concretely with language (or at least that's the gist i got from a video). he also does many other types of art.

what struck me was his statement that he figured out his life career-path while reflecting and lying bedridden for months. personally, i discarded the notion that long, deep reflection could lead you to the right career-path. first, life throws way too many curveballs that are just too pertinent and can't be easily factored into long deep reflection. second, "right" doesn't seem like a label you can apply to the path you choose for your life. there are probably many "right" paths.

in high school, my sister took a test designed to determine her ideal career path. i remember her telling me that the test told her to become a stevedore, a person who loads cargo on ships. how did it conclude this? had they analyzed the preferences and lives of thousands of stevedores, along with other professions, and determined that in some high-dimensional space my sister most aligned with the stevedore profession? i've read that if you take such a test a few weeks later, chances are your job recommendation will switch dramatically. this last point seems most pertinent...

a stevedore on the job

in an old star trek: the next generation episode (yes, geek alert) some children were stolen from the enterprise by an advanced society that could not procreate (how advanced are they if they can't do that...). a computer analyzed these children and determined their ideal professions. one was told to be a musician, another a woodcutter. they were given tools that would help develop these talents. talk about a form of hard paternalism!

van gogh worked in the art business for a number of years before becoming a painter, at the encouragement of his brother theo. would he have done better been told what to do initiallyly, hence avoiding his stumbling around? on the other hand, such advice might help a lot of people who have trouble directing their energy.

but for me, i'll continue stumbling, and avoid long bouts of reflection. don't get me wrong, i think reflection is good. i certainly think i didn't do enough reflecting when i chose computer science. for instance, i forsook my writing. since university i haven't really written seriously, and i used to be a half-decent writer. maybe i'll stumble into that...

should all content be readily available?

let me motivate the title of this thought. this past week i was reading the new yorker, specifically a wonderful article by Bill Buford called "The Dessert Lab: A pastry chef's quest for the new" about Will Goldfarb's new dessert place Room 4 Dessert in new york city (dessert pictured above is from Room 4 Dessert, courtesy yelp). i loved this article. i can't explain it exactly, it was just so perfect and fun and informative. i'll give you some fun quotes. goldfarb couldn't get a reliable bartender, so he had the author tend bar. the rules:

There were three rules. Break nothing. ("Please!") Make no money mistakes. And let people wait. "A pastry rule," he [Goldfarb] added. "Better to be perfect and slow than fast and flawed."

so buford tends bar for a bit, giving advice to the customers and having some fun. goldfarb does not approve of buford's work:

He [Goldfarb] took me aside: "You are too frantic. You've got too much adrenaline. You don't understand. There is no fourth wall here. There is no kitchen to hide in. Everything you do is on view. You have to be relaxed. Easy. Listen to the music. You are the atmosphere. Do you understand?" He paused, clearly convinced that I wasn't understanding. He was trying to be polite. "And the advice you keep giving? Do me a favor. Don't."

i wanted to share it with people i knew wouldn't have the new yorker. i have some friends who would really appreciate this article! of course, the new yorker site isn't serving this article (they only serve a subset of what they publish each week).

furthermore, i couldn't buy the article online. after some snooping, i found a blog that had posted a pdf version but they subsequently took it down when the new yorker came a servin' legalese. i contemplated scanning the article but never got to a scanner. in a last ditch attempt, i photographed a page of the article, but that came out poorly.

so i give up. the new yorker doesn't want its content flowing in the world. i'd be happy to pay for this article, to share it! and if ads mean more, then by all means make it available with ads all around it, online.

but i guess that the new yorker can distribute in any way they want. what if they never want an online copy? what if having that paper, the funny cartoons, the odd cover, the package is what matters to them? well, all i know is that i will be visiting Room 4 Dessert when i'm in nyc. here's the cartoon from the new yorker:

Award Error

I TAed for a class this semester and won an award for excellence in teaching. I received the certificate in the mail and wasn't very impressed... can you spot the error?


Update: the department is sending me a new certificate. they didn't approve of the spelling either... :)

the medical establishment

while in india i learned, just by chance, that i may have a medical problem that has gone undiagnosed for, well, my whole life! but let's say its affected me for 20 years. (NOTE: i'm in the process of getting this problem diagnosed.. it may be nothing, but i have strong reasons to think otherwise.. though i have been called a hypochondriac)

the condition itself isn't so bad, but nevertheless this made me so angry! not spotting this problem was a failure on my part, my parents part, the medical professionals i have seen all my life, as well as the medical system itself. i was really down and angry, and got into a bit of an argument with my sister, who's about to graduate from medical school.

here are three areas where i have problems with the medical establishments i've been involved with (canadian and american)

1. outcome evaluation
2. patient training
3. easy access to entire medical history, key diagnoses, chronic issues, etc..

outcome evaluation: i told my sister that i really felt that most of the time my doctors didn't actually evaluate the outcome of the treatment they prescribed for me. she told me that checking outcomes is huge in the medical profession, and gets a lot of emphasis in training. but my typical experience with outcome evaluation is that the doctor prescribes something, and if the patient doesn't reappear, they assume that everything worked out. maybe they don't even assume that, since doctors are so busy that it's hard to schedule time for everything. however, i feel that diagnosis gets the most time and attention, and outcome evaluation just seems like this fuzzy area. i'd love to know how outcomes are supposed to be tracked, and how good the profession is doing, if anyone has comments.

patient training: i didn't even know that the problems i was having were in fact problems! and even today when i feel some small ailment i don't always have a good language for describing it, and i'm sometimes not diligent enough to remember to track it, so that when i do see the doctor again, i remember to mention it. i imagine a few hours of training would go a long way in helping me do a better job of gauging my healthiness, and might help me to better understand when it makes sense to see a doctor. i've never heard of such training, anywhere.

medical history: coming from the area of computer science, and especially google, i'm astounded at the awful disorganization of my medical records. i've moved around a lot, and seen specialists from time to time, and so i have medical records in any number of places. even when i get one office to fax their records to another office, i've found it unlikely that the new doctor will actually take more than a cursory glance at these new records. instead, they will in fact ask me to identify what's important via questions and filling out a long form. sure, i have some ideas, of what's important, but really, this is laughable!

there are probably some excellent observations embedded deep within those records that will never again see the light of day. for instance, i had wrist problems in college and so had treatment there. some things worked, some things didn't. i don't even remember all the things we tried. but it won't be easy for me to discover what worked for me and what didn't. there are likely so many interesting and useful things pertaining to my health that can be gleaned from those records. but they aren't in any format that makes this easy.

i was recently reading a paper on a usb flash drive that is the soul of your computer -- all your data and programs. you could go around to another computer, plug in, and voila, it's your computing environment. it's called a soulpad. i want that for my medical records. i want my medical records securely stored on a flash drive that i can lug around with me. i can go into any doctor's office, plug it in to their computer, and the doctor can quickly grok my entire history, with hilights and everything. furthermore, when the doctor is done, i can get her report uploaded to my little medical flash drive before i leave the office. i am actually thinking of gathering all my medical records and going through a somewhat laborious process of making such a device.

perhaps one day all our medical records will be securely stored online and we'll be able to easily grant access and doctors will have excellent tools to understand medical histories and make highly informed diagnoses and recommendations that pool together the collected work of many diagnoses and analyses on innumerable patients. until then, having all my medical records in my hands, easily accessible to me and perhaps my health professionals is within reach, and hopefully it happens soon!