Towse: views from the hill

q & a : the photographic interview: “about this project — it’s simple, take 20 questions and answer them by taking a photograph.” Questions include

one. who am i?

two. who knows me best?

three. how old am i? (or how old do i feel?)

four. the most important thing in my life is _____________

five. i always carry _____________________

six. something i always do _____________________”

This is the latest cooperative photographic project from sh1ft.org. I found sh1ft.org through a Google search for /26 things/, a prior project. I found my first “26 things” through a link on Gordon McLean’s blog.

Check out McLean’s blog. ’tis full of tasty things.

True Desktop Project is a collection of images uploaded by computer users, images of their desktops, offices, workspaces. Over 300 desktops. Great pickings for someone needing a creativity whack.

I haven’t worked my way through all of them, but almost all I’ve seen are far neater than mine.

Interesting Atlantic interview with Jonathan Rauch who has a new book out from Times Books titled GAY MARRIAGE: WHY IT IS GOOD FOR GAYS, GOOD FOR STRAIGHTS, AND GOOD FOR AMERICA.

That interview led me to his article in the April 2004 Atlantic Monthly, “A More Perfect Union: How the Founding Fathers would have handled gay marriage.”

One point Rauch makes that strikes me is “Same-sex marriage would dramatically reaffirm the country’s preference for marriage as the gold standard for committed relationships.” Rauch points out that the more benefits that accrue to “domestic partner” status — the status some states are offering in lieu of the privilege of marriage — the more attractive “domestic partnership” is to couples who can marry and the weaker the reasons to opt for marriage.

To those who claim that gay marriage is an anathema and will weaken marriage, I’m listening. If I were Empress, churches would do the marrying thing for those who wanted a religious blessing, but what would be legal and what would be registered with the government and what would qualify a couple for inheritance rights and tax rights and medical rights and all the other “rights” accruing today to married couples would be civil union — open to both gays and straights, and open to polys.

I’m reminded of a talk Jeremiah Healy gave last fall, in which he led us through an escalating series of questions to make us think about how brutal we would allow ourselves to be to a fellow human if we thought that brutality would elicit information from that fellow human that, if known, could prevent harm to others. Most of us have probably discussed or at least thought about that question and variants thereof.

The news re Abu Ghraib and the defense that the soldiers were only doing what they were doing because “This is how military intelligence wants it done.” reminded me of those entirely academic discussions.

What is Evil? Would you torture a child, whose parent might break down and provide information that would stop the massacre of thousands? Would it make a difference if you knew for sure that the parent had the information even though you didn’t know for sure that the parent would crack?

Seymour Hersh has a thought-provoking article titled “Torture at Abu Ghraib” in the New Yorker this week.

Signed up for Gmail not because I think I’ll shift all my e-mail to it (I’m not too keen on having a stash of my e-mail somewhere where I don’t control access) but more as a public reaction to do-gooder Liz Figueroa, a state senator from Fremont, who wants to ban Gmail because of privacy concerns: Google is SCANNING YOUR E-MAIL to decide what ads to display. HORRORS!

Well, if you don’t want free e-mail with ads to offset the costs of a gig of mail storage, don’t click “OK” after you’ve read all the disclaimers, don’t use Gmail. If you don’t want your e-mail scanned, don’t send e-mail to people with gmail.com addresses, and let them know why.

Make Gmail’s methods illegal? Ban it? What bee got into Figueroa’s bonnet?

Figueroa’s SB1822 specifically says, “A provider of e-mail or instant messaging services to California customers may review, examine, or otherwise evaluate the content of a customer’s e-mail or instant messages if the provider has the consent of the customer, and reviews, examines or otherwise evaluates only the customer’s original outgoing e-mail or instant messages with the consent of the customer. The provider may review, examine, or otherwise evaluate the content of incoming e-mail or instant messages only from another subscriber to the same service and only when that subscriber has consented to the procedure.” Figueroa’s bill excepts scanning for viruses or spam.

Is it me or does it seem weird to make it okay to scan and block spam, but heaven forefend Google scan to provide the advertising that pays for the free service.

Figueroa is concerned, she says, not for those chumps who knowingly sign up for the Gmail service but for those folks sending e-mail to those Gmail chumps, folks whose e-mail will be scanned without their explicit permission. Me, I’d assume anyone sending e-mail to a gmail.com address has given implicit consent to have that e-mail scanned. The sender would have to have the brains of a plank not to realize that Gmail is scanned so Google can add ads.

Figueroa probably doesn’t realize that the sys admin of whatever service she uses can read her e-mail. Easy peasy. Say Figueroa uses a mail-forwarding service to forward mail from liz.figueroa -at- im-a-senator.com to her plain-jane earthlink address. Does she know how simple it is for the sys admin to set up forwarding so a copy also goes to the curious voyeur who likes to thumb through all mail coming into Figueroa’s account?

Think your mail at work is secure? I’ve known of sys admins who got their jollies poking through the e-mail sent and received by people who used work e-mail for reasons that, let’s say, were not work-related.

Think you’re having a private discussion with a friend? Guess you can’t see the BCC: to the circle of others when your so-called friend replies to you.

Don’t put anything in e-mail you wouldn’t want your worst enemy to see.

Botox, it’s not just for vanity. Research presented at the American Academy of Neurology meeting in San Francisco last week discussed the use of Botox injections to help ameliorate task-specific focal dystonia AKA occupational cramps.

Read a story in the Merc yesterday about pianist Larry Fleisher, who began using Botox in the nineties to combat focal hand dystonia which caused the two outer fingers of his right hand to curl inward, preventing him from playing two-handed piano. Fleisher, who played piano with the New York Philharmonic at age 16, spent two decades touring before developing focal hand dystonia in his prime. For over thirty years, before using Botox, he could only play left-handed. He stopped touring and turned instead to conducting and teaching, always searching for a solution to his situation.

The day after his first Botox injection, he was able to use his right hand again.

Over 300K North Americans have dystonia, AKA involuntary muscle contractions. According to the research discussed at the meeting last week, 70% of participants got some relief after just one injection. Continued injections — in Fleisher’s case every eight months — are required to maintain the effect. Some doctors are concerned that continued use of Botox will permanently weaken patients’ muscles, but leave it to patients to decide whether the benefits offset risks.

Found the EurekAlert press release and a USAToday article on the same subject, if you don’t want to register just to read the Merc article. The New Yorker also has a Fleisher article. Fleisher is creating a media blizzard on the issues surrounding dystonia. He gave a keynote address at the AAN meeting and received the AAN Foundation Public Leadership in Neurology Award for 2004.

Check Google News for additional articles.

The Dystonia Medical Research Foundation provides a wealth of information about the disorder. Musicians with Dystonia, a program entity of the Dystonia Foundation, is “dedicated to serving the special needs of musicians affected by task-specific focal dystonia, particularly hand and embouchure dystonias.” An estimated 10K musicians worldwide suffer from task-specific focal dystonia.

We’re spending the weekend packing things up and sorting through what-not. We made a trip to the Goodwill this morning and off-loaded a backseat and a trunkful. That makes three or maybe four trips since we started sorting through things in April. More trips will follow.

Funny how when we gather things all together out of cupboards, garage and boxes we find we have three french fry cutters, circa 1955 or so. (Who still uses a french fry cutter to make french fries?) One is just a flat, grid cutter. The other two are hand-operated mechanical types, one still in the box, albeit not un-used.

Funny how when we gather things all together out of cupboards, garage and boxes we find we have four rolling pins — one without handles that belonged to my grandfather, who was once a baker, another without handles, two with handles and bearings. We saved the one that belonged to Grandpa because that’s the one I tend to use. Saved the handled one that spins easier of the two. Set the other two aside in case the younger guys want one. We find multiple vegetable peelers, multiple turkey basters, glass pie pans up the wahzoo.

Really, there’s no reason for more than one turkey baster except maybe to have one on hand as backup? What would you do, in the middle of roasting a turkey, if your baster heads south? Same reason we have two replacement seals for the pressure cooker. No, the reason for that is because we had a replacement seal … just in case, and Case had a replacement seal … just in case, and when we acquired all Case’s stuff, well … there we be with two replacement seals. Here’s hoping the rubber still holds when the day comes when we need a new seal.

The french fry cutters, though, that’s really odd. How many french fry cutters do you need? The backup of the backup is probably the result of picking up “interesting” stuff at the Goodwill and the weekend collectibles shows and forgetting we already had stuff stashed away way back. Tell us the last time we even toasted up store-boughten frozen french fries at home, let alone cut them from scratch. Might be an interesting experiment to use the cutters to cut other sorts of veggies, though.

And mugs! Mugs! We raided Dale’s stash of mugs to supply Hill back when rather than buy anything new. (Heaven forfend!) Today we went through the stash that continued to grow at Dale. We saved the mugs from defunct companies. Saved the clear glass Stanford Sierra Camp mug on which the geniuses in marketing etched butterflies and the mug’s slogan: GA/GR Conference 2000 / Millenium Metamorphosis. Saved the DECUS mugs … that’s almost like a defunct company, isn’t it? Saved the mugs we love. Saved the mugs we use every day. In the end, we packed up twenty-two coffee mugs for the Goodwill, and that’s just the coffee mugs.

As a break from the sorting (and a reward for sorting yesterday), we trekked off earlier today to the Saratoga Rotary Art Show — held at West Valley College in Saratoga on the first Sunday in May. The juried show (“the largest single-day, fine art show in the western United States”) showcases 175 artists, selling a wide variety of artwork, wearable art, jewelry and more. Some of our favorites keep coming back. We like to check out what they have new and see what other artists are doing. Some favorites weren’t there this year. We’ll have to trawl the Web, checking to see if they’re scheduled for the Union Street Fair the first weekend in June or, perhaps, some other venue.

Among our returning favorites:

Stan Beckman. His Paris Bookshop print “Librairie de Seine” hangs in the stairwell at Hill.

Dennis Kohn. His Santorini collage, which we bought fifteen years ago, hangs at Dale. Kohn had some wonderful works focused on Nepal at today’s show, some of which I’d seen before, some not. His latest “theme” is Prague. There were several of his works, I could’ve taken home in a flash. I was especially taken with this one. If I ever win the Lotto …

Claus Sievert was exhibiting his tree and nature etchings. Lovely stuff. Can’t find a Web site for him. Sievert’s also printing his work on note cards again: ten cards/$20. I’ll probably regret not buying a set.

We didn’t buy a single thing today at the show. Didn’t buy a single thing at the Goodwill either when we peeked inside after dropping off the donations. Somehow the piles of stuff still waiting to be sorted make it hard contemplate buying anything.

Long ago, my niece, then quite young, was at the beauty parlor with my sister. A woman there was having her hair colored and my niece was fascinated. The woman explained what was happening and what the hair colorist was doing. My niece asked why she was doing that to her hair and the woman answered that she was doing it so that her hair would look young. My niece looked at her, and at her youthful hair and said, “But your face will still look old.”

… not to mention her voice giving away her true age.

Heard about voice lifts?

Voicelifts – Take Your Breath Away – By Gabrielle Fagan, PA Features

“After the face lift, the tummy tuck, the forehead tighten and the jowl trim comes the latest treatment to turn back the clock.

“The voicelift – a delicate surgical tinkering with the vocal cords – is claimed to stop that gravelly or breathless voice being a real giveaway about your age.

“Patients in America who believe their voices just don’t match their cosmetically firmed-up faces and figures are already opting for a ‘voice job’.”

[...]

Cost? Upwards of $7K.

Sent a link to this off to his nibs a day or two ago. Found it written up in the Merc this morning.

eBay item 3189039958 (Ends Apr-30-04 09:58:51 PDT) – DECREASE YOUR ERDOS NUMBER! scientific coauthorship

As Kevin Bacon is to acting, Paul Erdös is to writers of scientific and mathematical papers. The auction’s over, but the writeup for the eBay auction offering an Erdös number of 5 is a keeper. madd_greg paid $1,031.00 for the privilege of co-authoring a paper with someone with an Erdös number of 4.

update: Science News has an update on the Erdös number auction on eBay. (“Theorems for Sale: An online auctioneer offers math amateurs a backdoor to prestige” by Erica Klarreich)

Turns out that madd_gregg was really “Jose Burillo, a mathematician at the Polytechnic University of Barcelona in Spain with an Erdös number of 3 [who]—wrote that he had placed the winning bid ‘to stop the mockery this person is doing of the paper/journal system’ and called the auction a ‘travesty.’”

William Tozier “whose Erdös number is 4 … launched the auction as a joke, in his words, ‘one morning before I’d had enough coffee.’” He used the exercise as an experiment in social networking. He told four friends about the auction and asked them to spread the word, then tracked how the news carried.

Although the first auction was a bust due to the Burillo sabotage, Tozier is considering running the auction again. He says he would like to use some of the money earned to set up a collaborative community where amateur mathematicians would have the opportunity to work with academic mathematicians and others with similar interests. Tozier said he received more than one hundred responses from non-mathematicians who were interested in his offered collaboration because they feel excluded from any opportunity to discuss their mathematical work with the academic mathematical community.

Read the Science News article for more detail.