thoughtcrumbs : january 2000

Someone stole my turn signal lights

Last night in the South Side, someone took the side parts of my car's front turn signals. It could've been worse; they did a clean job and I don't think anything else is missing. But really, how annoying.

The mechanic said: "That's not cool."

Cars are so well designed—I wouldn't have noticed the loss for days, probably, since I almost never drive and the lights still work. But the interior turn signal indicator blinked at twice its normal rate, alerting me immediately that something was wrong.

Week in review

Finally caught up with the work I missed while in Ecuador. Also found time last week to do a bunch of fun things around town, including:

• Beat poetry at the Silver Eye Center for Photography. Best part: Mid-sentence in a passage from On the Road, the reader interjects, "This guy is so full of bullshit."
• Phipps's current exhibit, a strange mixture of tulips and tropical plants. I felt a pang of sadness realizing I missed daphne season back home.
  
• Colter Harper jazz trio at the Underground. Eh. Good company, but mediocre performance.
  
• Soulcialism, lovely soulcialism. And maybe convinced a few prospective HCIIers that Pittsburgh is better than Palo Alto.
• Reduced Shakespeare Company's Completely Hollywood with Margaret, my free ticket fairy. The physicality of the three actors was amazing, especially in the goofy reenactment of a Matrix fight scene.
  

And we ate larvae

Back from Ecuador, itching for more adventure (and from bug bites). We camped for six days in the rainforest and then attempted to start a revolution in several small northern towns. More photos with longer stories to ensue (and really this time; I won't call in a guest host to fabricate them), but in the meantime, some pics.

Rooster tied to fence (there's a string around his leg)


Piranha


At the "real" equator (note the defensive GPS reference)


Ian flipping off the dock at our camp

The explanation

Hi, Moira’s fans! Ping here. This is the first time I’ve been asked to write on someone’s personal blog, and it’s an honour³. I note that last week Moira promised us an explanation and have taken it as my personal responsibility to uphold that promise. Thus, here is my explanation:

On her way home, Moira encountered a giant robot¹. The robot blocked her way and threatened to eat her. “Please don’t eat me!” cried Moira.

“But I have nothing else to eat,” said the robot. “I will eat you now.”

For a moment everything seemed hopeless. Then Moira remembered a little-known fairytale she had heard as a small child:

The Robot Who Wanted to Eat Inge
by Hans Christian Andersen²

On her way home, Inge encountered a giant robot. The robot blocked her way and threatened to eat her. “Please don’t eat me!” cried Inge.

“But I have nothing else to eat,” said the robot. “I will eat you now.”

For a moment everything seemed hopeless. Then Inge remembered that her mother had taught her how to make abelskivers using the apples in the magical apple grove by her house. It was said that each year among all the apples that grew in the apple grove, there would be one magical apple. The magical apple, when made into an abelskiver, would cast a spell on whomever ate it so they would never go hungry again.

So Inge said, “You don’t need to eat me. Come with me and I will make you some abelskivers.” And the robot followed her home.

Inge prepared the abelskivers anxiously, because she knew that only one apple a year was magical.

“You had better hurry up,” said the robot. “I am very hungry, and if those abelskivers aren’t ready soon I think I will just eat you instead.”

But the abelskivers were ready just in time, and Inge was lucky. The robot ate all the abelskivers voraciously, including one that cast its spell over the robot, and Inge and the robot became friends.

Maybe this is a Danish robot, Moira thought to herself. So she said, “Come with me and I will make you some abelskivers.” And the robot followed her home.

Moira prepared the abelskivers anxiously, because she had no access to any magical apples or magical apple groves.

“You had better hurry up,” said the robot. “I am very hungry, and if those abelskivers aren’t ready soon I think I will just eat you instead.”

But the abelskivers were ready just in time. And Moira discovered that it wasn’t the apples that were magical; the magic was in the recipe. The abelskivers she made were so good that not only was the robot’s hunger satiated, but the robot also instantly fell in love with her, as shown by the swirl of hearts above its head, the roses, and the box of chocolates.

1. The robot in the picture is small, but that is only because of a perspective trick with the camera. Moira is a very clever photographer. The robot is in fact twenty feet away and the stereo in the background is the size of a city block. (Consequently, Moira also hosts excellent dance parties.)

2. Not really. But at least he’s Danish.

3. After this, she might not ask me to post here again. But I still have a week left to post silly things on her blog.

Introducing your guest host, Ping

I'll be in Ecuador for the next two weeks, and Ka-Ping Yee has graciously agreed to post here in the meantime. I'm thrilled. Ping is a Ph.D. student in CS at Berkeley, where he's making better UIs for voting machines, and besides being a brilliant illustrator, outspoken proponent of social justice issues, and prolific get-stuff-done kind of guy, he's an all-around inspirational human being. He can also be found at his blogs, Usable Security and Without Loss of Generality.

Treat him well. I'll be back later this month with bug bites and stories.

Satori

Review of The Last Samurai over in reading. And no, it has nothing to do with the Tom Cruise movie.

Yesterday, I made abelskivers and a robot

Explanation to follow.

At least the internet still likes me

Feeling a little crummy about a harsh music review that I posted in a friend's blog earlier today. I should know better than to review live musicians while doing my machine learning homework. Makes a girl cranky. But it's reassuring to know that I'm the second search result for "nice people in pittsburgh."

We're in the Times

David Pogue, NY Times Circuits writer, mentions my old research in his blog today. And he links to our upcoming article in TOCHI. The gist of the work is that animated banner ads (which weren't nearly as passé when I started the project five years ago) are actually harder to remember than static ones, and they slow people down.

Oh, and what's at the top of his blog? An animated banner ad.

Dr. Ruth: Orphan, sniper, kindergarten teacher, psychosexual therapist

While it's easy to caricature Dr. Ruth, with her diminutive stature, heavy accent, and frank talk about sex, she reminded an attentive audience at the MOSAIC conference last Sunday that her words are grounded in a serious perspective on human nature. Orphaned at age ten during the Nazi occupation of Germany, she grew up in Switzerland, teaching herself English from textbooks borrowed from another orphan (a boy with whom "nothing happened . . . just a little hugging and kissing"). Later, she became a Zionist and trained as a sniper for the Israeli defense forces. ("I can put five bullets through a tiny hole as far away as you"--she points at a guy in the fifth row--"so you'd better pay attention.") Later still, she became a kindergarten teacher while earning a degree in psychology at the Sorbonne. In 1956 she immigrated to the U.S., obtained a Masters degree in sociology, and did her Ph.D. research on human sexuality, inspired by a stint at Planned Parenthood in New York. Her campaign for sexual literacy is, if anything, magnified by her compact frame and jovial demeanor, attributes that belie her hard past; she's an extremely likeable evangelist for sex education and communication.

Ira Glass: "I blame the topic sentence"

Sunday evening, Ira Glass revealed to a packed lecture hall the format that makes This American Life so successful: (1) A little plot followed by (2) "Some goddamned big idea." TAL vignettes are characterized by a little bit of action and storytelling, usually about mundane things, followed by reflection on its connection to some greater human truth. (Though he thought he invented this format in an editing-booth epiphany at age 19, he learned that it's a common format taught in seminary, as well.) In fact, Glass pointed out that much of public radio is boring, simply because of its reliance on the topic sentence. Rather than boring people upfront with a summary of points, just captivate them with narrative and a big idea; they won't turn away. (He pointed out that in the last presidential campaign, Kerry's logical points were no match for Bush's dogma, for similar reasons.)

Though the entire lecture was hysterical, the most fascinating portion came at the end, when Glass described the egregious FCC decency regulations (PDF). According to the FCC, a single expletive will hurt children. (Though this developmental psychologist disagrees.) A scatological David Sedaris piece that aired in 1997 can no longer be played; a few seconds of it would cost TAL's licensees hundreds of thousands of dollars. Thank goodness for the online archives. Tom, who sat "within kissing distance" of Ira Glass, took a pic that's now on Wikipedia.