nerdmeyr & K

In an article about iPods by Rob Walker in The New York Times Magazine back in 2003, Steve Jobs stated:

Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like…That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
–”The Guts of a New Machine“

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about interfaces and design and usability of the world. I just read an article in Wired about Getting Things Done, and as I was bicycling into campus thinking about it and how GTD attracts people who want to design their lives so they can better work their stuff, I had an experience thats been happening more and more often. I’ll be coming up behind a pedestrian on campus, purposefully stop pedalling so the freewheel clicks, and then, if they still don’t seem to hear me coming up, say, “Passing on your left…”, only to have the person show no indication whatsoever that they know I’m there. At this point, I’ll usually slow to a crawl or stop, and say the same thing again louder. And 100% of the time, the person will finally be startled, turn around, and take their iPod earbuds out. Its impossible to tell when people are iTuned out from behind (or the front sometimes), so I don’t know they’ve disabled themselves. Nor do passing cars, other pedestrians, or public safety officers. To me, somehow, this is poor design. To make a product which is meant for use while perambulating, and yet to render the user unable to interface with the environment they’re perambulating through. (Although clearly its within the control of the user, and much of the popularity of the iPod is the ability to push away the outside world, without the outside world really having any say whatsoever).

It also, nerdily enough, relates to object-oriented programming. In OOP, an object’s interaction with the outside world is defined through its behaviors – can this object jump, talk, or drink lattes? And, of course, objects which inherit from the People blueprint have different behaviors than objects which inherit from the Squirrel blueprint. There are things in OOP called “interfaces”, which is basically a formalized contract between a specific object and the outside world about the types of behaviors the object can be expected to provide, based on the blueprint(s) from which it descends.

In the outside world, humans are expected to be able to recognize other humans, and regard them as legitimate entities to share physical space with (at least according to my Western, post-Enlightenment way of thinking). Basic, yet often muddied by the complicated nature of humans and our environments – think of all the crazy messed-up interactive behaviors that happen between roommates, in public bathrooms, or at a Klan rally. And as if these things weren’t complicating enough, we seem to increasingly add cyborg-like attachments to ourselves that subtly alter our public interfaces – our contract about how we can be expected to behave in the outside world – without really publicly declaring that we’re doing so.

PS. All of the above should definitely not be construed to indicate that I think differently-abled folks (blind, deaf, etc. etc.) are somehow reneging on a social contract just because its not immediately obvious that they’re interacting with the world in ways different from me. My beef is with the self-absorbed people of the world.

In the past year or so, I would say that I’ve seen multiple advertisements and billboards advertising the presence of loads of “unclaimed property” here in Indiana. Since the billboards and property itself seems to be handled by state governmental entities, I have been chalking up the “unclaimed property” bonanza to bureaucrats feeling guilty about how much money they’re racking via the idiot tax (e.g., lottery), and so they’re throwing out the bone of potential millions tied up in unclaimed property. Being a relatively young person who has never dismissed anything of any worth (well, except that pristine Johnny Mathis record), I have always assumed a claim to “unclaimed property” required an unfortunate bout of amnesia, the ingestion of too many drugs in the 60’s, rich but perhaps unknown relatives, or some combination thereof.

Not true, apparantly. I idly checked the Oregon Unclaimed Property site because I’m somehow still on the Oregon Rugby Sports Union mail list and a random email message got through encouraging all the rugby players to check and see. (A good, properly targeted message since major head injuries are commonplace among rugby players…. rich relatives, not so much). So, I checked and saw:

weird! My name in its entirety is pretty unusual (in fact, Googling my last name turns up about 2 other people not in my immediate family)… so its not like the state of Oregon is confusing me with someone else. The zip code listed is one I’ve lived in, but the address is a complete unknown to me. At this point, a bit of a conundrum, as the instructions on the web site say: “If you found your name on our online database … fill out this form and mail it, with the requested supporting documentation, to the address below. Claims cannot be paid on name similarity alone. The burden of proof is on you to show that you are entitled to the account.” Without knowing what “the thing” is, how can I prove it belongs to me, besides the fact that I’m 110% positive no one else has lived in that neighborhood with my exact name? A conundrum indeed. If I have too much coffee one day, I may send in the form just out of curiosity (”Oh my god! So _that’s_ what happened to that totally creepazoid monkey’s paw I found in that banged up trunk when I was scuba diving in the Willamette river”) … or I may just let it go after duly noting that “All unclaimed money is held in the Common School Fund, and earnings from the fund are sent to all Oregon K-12 public school districts. “

In the latest CRYPTO-GRAM, Bruce Schneier writes about the current practice of RFID-tagging new babies in the hospital:

I know I’ve been neglectful. Oh, porr, misbegotten blog. To make it up to you, here are 2 articles I just wrote:

IMHO, How to Be a (halfway decent) (laptop) DJ for (very cheaply), part 1: Think Before You Leap, which invites you to ask whether you really want to be a DJ or not.

IMHO, How to Be a (halfway decent) (laptop) DJ for (very cheaply), part 2: Leaping After Thinking, which shares the rig and software you might want to look at to get set up to be a laptop DJ for as little money as possible.

Part 3, to discuss delicious add-ons like headphones and sound cards, may happen in the future.

Lupe Fiasco

My reasoning:

1. Say his name, out loud. Loooooooo-ppaaaaaay Feeeeasssscoh. The dude’s name is a workout for your mouth – it covers all the cool vowels in the English language. In fact, if you were to look in a mirror as you were silently mouthing ‘Lupe Fiasco’ over and over it would look like you were trying to mimic the bad Engrish over-dubbing of kung fu movies. Or like you were trying to make your mouth work again after being over-novocained at the dentist’s office.
2. He wears glasses. A lot. And not cool ones, either.
3. He raps about skateboarding and other topics of self-circular interest to us post-modern types. Witness the first verse from his song, “What It Do”:

I saw it on TV, I was told to buy a CD
The CD told me buy a TV
The TV that I bought came with a CD that said go and buy the DVD
The DVD that I bought came with a CD
which was the DVD of the makin’ of the TV, that I saw
Which told me to go and buy the CD in the first place, wait nah
I put the DVD in the TV so you can see what I saw
But wait, it’s a CD so you can’t see me, odd
Maybe I should just come out on DVD like CB, far
With mad special effects and maybe a CG, car
To ride around in on your TV
Bumpin’ the CD that I got when I copped the TV
Which is the same TV in my car

Righteous!

I’m not such a huge fan of food-related convenience, since the only tangible effects I see are ever-increasing indicators of poor health and garbage. (For an informal survey of the garbage-effect, next time you’re walking or biking, start cataloging the trash in the gutter and berms according to whether its convenience-food-related or not… my guess is that it’ll be 90-10).  (As another aside, I think there’s too much food-related waste packaging in general. Even when I’m at home and making something to avoid convenience food, I’m well aware of how often I throw away containers; this morning, I threw away 2: a small square plastic one that held turkey and a big ‘ol yogurt container.  Neither of which, of course, were recyclable)

At any rate, I get old-school conservative when it comes to aspects of American culture which promotes unthinking, laziness, and torpid dependence. Walking down the average grocery store aisle offers dozens of examples of this and tends to reduce me to angry muttering (also, it causes me to grow an enormous grizzly beard, a limp, and too many alyers for the weather).  What is up with products like:

• 6-oz. microwavable cups of mac’n'cheese (or soup, cereal, etc.).  Like boxed mac’n'cheese is so time-consuming and difficult to make.
• Individual frozen pbj sandwiches with the crusts pre-cut-off.  Absolutely fricking ridiculous.

etc. etc.

Well, lo and behold, when I was reading an article on CNN titled “Health Chiefs find ‘Smoking Gun’ Spinach“ about the e. coli spinach scare (Gadzookis!  At least we’re not dealing with Weapons of Mass Spinach here!), it said,

Observers said there are concerns the health scare may eat away consumer’s confidence in a $2.8 billion-a-year industry built on convenience and good health.

Marcia Mogelonsky, a Mintel International research analyst, said: “I’m afraid with this new food fear, people are going to stop eating salad because even if it’s in a bag they are going to have to wash it and it becomes inconvenient again.” (emphasis mine)

O. My. Fricking. God.  Oh, mercy mercy me. Take the spinach out of the bag and wash it??!?!? In water???!!! That’ll take, like, whole seconds!!???! I can’t think of anything more inconvenient!! I just don’t have that kind of time, between trying to find the latest celebrity sex video, TIVO’ing the entire season of Project Runway, and deciding how often I can afford Botox. I might be bloated, malnourished, constipated, pre-cancerous and completely alienated from my own corpus, but as long as fueling my body is as easy and mindless as fueling my car, I’m totally. happy. and. fulfilled. Patrick Henry said it best when he said, “Give me Convenience, or Give Me Deathe!”

• scratchy sore throats
• advertising for ginsu-knife-like kitchen utensils which show totally frustrated people who, in the advert, cannot complete simple tasks using the utensils already in their kitchen (slicing an apple, crushing an empty aluminum can, taking a pan out of the oven, stirring a pot of soup, etc.)
• micro-managers
• Hooters t-shirts
• mealy apples
• drivers who beep at me on my bike
• Katherine Harris
• long Friday afternoons
• lack of in-flight entertainment on flights over 2 hours, and extra charges to sit next to an aisle or window (Sandy also hates)

I hate to go on and on about a movie the moviegoers seem to be rating as “Decidedly Average” (and also contribute to the mounds of muckety already written about the MemeMovie of the Year), but I was thoroughly amused by this, as seen on BoingBoing and contributed by Dan Kaminski:

Perhaps one of the most interesting and colorful phrases in the English language today is the phrase “Snakes on a Plane”. It is the one magical phrase, which, just by its sound, can describe pain, pleasure, love, and Samuel L. Jackson.In language, “Snakes on a Plane” falls into many grammatical categories. It can be used as a verb, both transitive (John snaked Mary on a plane) and intransitive (Mary was snaked on a plane by John). It can be an action verb (John really snakes on a plane), a passive verb (Mary really doesn’t snake on a plane), an adverb (Mary is snaking-on-a-plane interested in John), or as a noun (Mary is a terrific snake on a plane). It can also be used as an adjective (Mary is snaking-on-a-plane beautiful) or an interjection (Snakes on a Plane! I’m late for my date with Mary). It can even be used as a conjunction (John is ugly, SNAKES ON A PLANE, he’s also stupid). As you can see, there are very few words with the overall versatility of the phrase “Snakes on a Plane.”

Aside from its R-rated-because-that’s-what-the-fans-demanded connotations, this incredible word can be used to describe many situations:

1) Surprise — “What the snakes on a plane are you doing here?”
2) Fraud — “I got snaked on a plane by the car dealer.”
3) Resignation — “Oh, snakes on a plane!”
4) Trouble — “I guess I’m snakes on a plane now.”
5) Aggression — “GO SNAKE YOURSELF ON A PLANE!”
6) Disgust — “Snake me on a motherfucking plane.”
7) Confusion — “What the…snakes on a plane…?”
Difficulty — “I don’t understand these snakes on a plane!”
9) Despair — “Snakes on a plane again….”
10) Pleasure — “I couldn’t be happier if I had snakes on a plane.”
11) Displeasure — “What the motherfuck is going on here, snakes on a plane?”
12) Lost — “Where are we going and why are there snakes on a plane?”
13) Disbelief — “UN-SNAKES-ON-A-PLANE-BELIEVABLE!”
14) Retaliation — “Up your fucking snakes on a plane!”
15) Denial — “I didn’t do it. The snakes did. On a plane.”
16) Perplexity — “I know everything to do with it, if it has anything to do with Snakes On A Plane.”
17) Apathy — “Who really gives a snake on a plane, anyhow?”
18) Greetings — “How the snakes on a plane are ya?”
19) Suspicion — “Who the fuck are you, snakes on a plane?”
20) Panic — “Let’s get the snakes on a plane out of here.”
21) Directions — “Fuck off, snakes on a plane.”
22) Awe — “How the snakes on a plane did you do that?”It can be used in an anatomical description — “He’s got a motherfucking snake up his motherfucking plane.” It can be used to tell time — “It’s five snakes on a plane thirty.” It can be used in business — “How did I wind up with this job? It’s snakes on a plane!” And of course, it can be maternal — “Motherfucking snakes on a motherfucking plane.”

The mind fairly boggles at the many creative uses of the phrase! How can anyone be offended when you say, “Snakes on a Plane”? Use it frequently in your daily speech! It adds to your prestige.

The subtitle of this post being, “When you Realize That You’ve Invited A Roomful of Socially Awkward People Apparantly Raised by Ectomorphic Racoons”

(I cannot take credit – K told me this):

So, with the runaway success of “Snakes on a Plane”, they’ve already started work on the sequels, figuring they have a pretty good formula for a blockbuster hit: just put 2 things in the title that terrify people.

The first sequel will be called, “Public Speaking to Sharks.”  The second sequel: “Spiders on a Clown’s Face.”

(Hall wrote another funny take on Snakes on a Plane)

SO, encourage your lame-ass guests to think up zany sequel ideas, with extra points for riffing already-existing movie titles. Some starters:

• Bastard Out of Scalia and Thomas
• Fall-Down Pants and the Mysteriously Growing Teeth-Lettuce

Add some 40s of Mickey’s Ice, and you’re set to host the party of the week!

My first thought:

thank GOD we aren’t at heathrow this week instead of last week … 33 hours coming home could’ve turned into 56!

My second thought:

i bet this is all made up by the government for political expedience and to distract and feed the fear

My third thought:

whatever it is that the government will claim that the “terrorists” were going to do… will mean that they’ll start screening passengers for it.  9/11 boxcutters = no more nail files. Shoebomber = take off your shoes.  What if the terrorists use nanotechnology to turn individual strands of their hair into wicked sharp glass-shard-like porcupine quills, which they then use to disable people on the plane by wildly shaking their heads at them? people will have to wear swimcaps while flying.  

It took me close to 2 minutes to read the article on CNN about today’s !!! Yeaaaah-Boyeeee!!!Preventative Booooyah Strike Against Terrorism!!!!!!. In those 2 minutes, 2 people died from heart attacks just in the U.S. alone. The disease of terrorism has killed maybe 2 U.S. citizens in the entire last year. 

According to Dean Ornish, M.D., testifying for a Health and Human Services subcommittee on the Senate Committee on Appropriations:

We initially focused on coronary heart disease as an example of the power of diet and lifestyle changes because cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of premature death in men and women in this country. Since 1900, it has been the number-one killer in the United States every year but 1918. Heart disease claims more lives each year than the next five leading causes of death combined, including cancer. Coronary heart disease is the single largest killer of American males and females. Every 26 seconds an American will suffer a coronary event such as a heart attack, and every minute someone will die from one.

Somehow, the thought of my heart seizing up and all the blood in my body suddenly stop circulating is a lot more grimace-causing than the likelihood of being in airplane as it gets blown out of the sky. A’course, no one’s asking me, except maybe Lieberman who is so desperate and ridiculous that he actually might call me up and ask me what I think.