The art of conversation
Overheard at Stanford:
Girl: “I’ve had three nervous breakdowns and they’re not that bad.” Nervous breakdowns? “[You know,] to the point where you can’t stop crying for days.”
Heavily made-up girl: (in an indignant tone) “You know, everyone is always bashing Western civilization.”
[From Aaron Schwartz’s Blog.]
I don’t believe it!
Meet the smartest three-month-old in the world.
Not my photograph, alas, but one taken by a proud parent and sent on by understandably proud grandparents. What I love about it is her expression of intrigued astonishment — like that of a retired colonel reading an article about body-piercing.
Stuff happens…
… as Donald Rumsfeld famously said. Who’d have thought that David Blunkett, the Home Secretary (that’s Minister of the Interior to non-UK readers) would have a glamorous mistress (who also happens to be the publisher of a right-wing magazine)? I always thought of Blunkett as the kind of serious chap who, when not devising measures for curtailing civil liberties in the interests of “law and order”, read the works of St Thomas Aquinas. It just goes to show that, as my dear Ma used to say, one cannot judge a book by its cover.
Mr Blunkett has now fallen out with his inamorata and is involved in a dispute over (i) paternity rights and (ii) whether he used his influence improperly to secure a visa for her nanny. Item (i) is meat and drink to the British tabloid press, while (ii) is of great interest to the chattering classes. Accordingly, his extra-curricular activities tend to dominate the news agenda, much to the dismay of his boss, Tony Blair, who had fashioned an entire electoral strategy around Blunkett and his tough, no-nonsense, law ‘n order agenda.
It all reminds me of something that Harold Macmillan, Britain’s most entertaining post-war Prime Minister, once said. A journalist asked Mac what he feared most. “Events, dear boy, events”, he replied.
Hot Cakes
Wonder which one is Charlie?
Microsoft discovers Blogging
Late — as usual. Microsofties are going to be offered their own toy blogging service. It’s got a cute name — “MSN Spaces”. Alas, it’s a bit wimpy for real men — for example Scoble (who works for Microsoft) has posted a useful initial critique on his Blog. He’s sticking to Radio Userland, it seems.
A salutary tale for PDA users
“At the Computer Human Interaction 2004 conference in April, Starner presented a study that he and his students conducted at Georgia Tech’s Student Center. The researchers asked 138 passing subjects — mostly students — what they used to keep track of their appointments: their memory, scraps of paper, a day planner, or personal digital assistant of some kind. After the initial question, the respondents were asked to schedule a meeting the following Monday. Then, the researchers watched.
With the exception of people who claimed to keep everything in their head, roughly half of the people who said they used one method for tracking their activities actually used a different method to schedule the follow-up meeting.
The most inconsistent were the 44 day planner users. Only 14 actually opened their planner to write down their appointment. The rest either scribbled a note or committed the meeting to memory. However, they were hardly alone in their actions. Of the 22 people who claimed that they used scraps of paper, nine didn’t bother making note of the meeting. Even the technologically inclined didn’t fare well. Six of the 14 PDA users said their device took to long to get ready, and instead opted for other, simpler methods.
The takeaway, Starner says, is that ease of use permeates every interaction we have with wearable and mobile technologies. The easiest solution for remembering, if also the least efficient, remains memory.” [From Tech Review.]
The Iraq problem in a nutshell
From a report in today’s New York Times:
“As military officials here prepare to start letting the first residents return to Falluja, possibly as soon as mid-December, they face an unusual challenge: how to win back the confidence of the people whose city they have just destroyed.”