Author: Aaron Weber

More Reading List

I just finished reading Mystic River. The novel has better detail about Boston, and greater depth of character for the detective character, than the movie. Lehane is mostly known as a genre writer (mystery) but this is a step up– sure, there’s a murder, and a mystery, but the characterization moves it into literary territory.

Next up are the books Megan brought back from the NEBA conference, where she represented theHarvard Bookstore (not that Harvard). As I read them (or fail to) I’ll provide opinions, which I’m sure you’re all just dying to hear.

On food, The Kitchen Detective, by Christopher Kimball (of Cook’s Illustrated), and Are You Really Going to Eat That? Adventures of a Culinary Thrill Seeker by Robb Walsh. I’ve been a big fan of Cook’s Illustrated ever since they ran an article about the gruelling and hazardous search for a perfect creme brulee, which placed their journalists in danger of exploding kitchen torches and exploding coronary arteries, but I’m more intrigued by the one about thrill-seeking. As I read them I’ll let you know.

On politics, Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, by Vidal. I don’t much like his fiction, and find his politics shrill, but he’s still an excellent scholar.

I’ve already flipped through The Metrosexual Guide to Style, which is basically the same as Paisley Goes with Nothing and all the other bullshit slightly-humorous how-to guides that explain what your deficient social upbringing failed to teach you. Is it so bad that we need books to teach us that clothes look best when they fit right, that one should not talk with one’s mouth open, and that paying attention to others makes them like us more? Hint: the word “metrosexual,” like the word “quirkyalone,” denotes a marketing demographic turned religion, and anything claiming to champoin it should be avoided.

I like the look of Wild East, a collection of stories by hot new post-Soviet authors. Megan brought advance galley proofs of Waterborne a novel set during the building of the Hoover dam, the new Goya bio by Evan Connell, and a humorous, possibly nonfiction, book called Join Me, about a guy who accidentally starts a cult of some sort. I hear the new Goya bio is great, but I’m probably going to pass on all three of those, although I’m not sure I can articulate my reasons.

Excuses

I’ve been out of town at the Gartner ITExpo. In Orlando. Yes, I saw Mickey. Megan spent Saturday at a book expo. Reading list now contains the new Get Your War On, a sociology book called “Sex in the South,” and a style guide for metrosexuals.

My impressions: Orlando is a vast wasteland. I don’t pretend to understand the economics of expos, but I think that, for the people who attend the talks and sessions, there’s a good reason to be there. Some people worked their way through the Novell booth to collect four stickers and get a prize, then seemed to actually be interested in what I had to say once I began saying it. “Oh, I had no idea you could do that with Linux. And here I was just looking for a free umbrella or baseball cap.” Trade show booths still seem to me like a gigantic display of excess capital that could have better been spent on advertising, cold-calling, or new software development. But I guess that’s why I’m a technical writer, not a CEO.

I feel bad for not posting, because it has become apparent to me that I have an actual readership now, outside people I know personally. Not like I’m in the a-list or anything, but I feel like I let people down when I fail to post for three or four days running.

Weekend

This weekend I put my scooter in the basement for the winter. I put fuel-stabilizer in it so it will run, theoretically, next spring, as long as I keep the battery charged properly.

Before that I spent nearly an hour scootering around Jamaica Plain in the cold and drizzle, trying to find the Boylston Street in JP that isn’t the Boylston Street in the rest of Boston. And I ran into people who knew old friends of mine from school: Orion Kriegman, of Yoism fame, and Jed Stamas, of… well… just fame. I know both from my E-house days in Haverford, although I haven’t seen them since then.

More reviews: Good review of the Kill Bill soundtrack, and a good review of Al Franken’s book, which I find funny and the reviewer found both funny and eye-opening.

Look upon my works

Back in the day, people used to hope their work would make them immortal. Or at least that they would be remembered for generations, or centuries. These days, you know you’re going to be forgotten in ten years, at best.

Places like the Institute for the Future and the Long Bets Foundation are trying to get people to focus on the long term. I’ll be lucky if I can focus on the immediate task before me, namely writing and editing.

I’m particularly proud of this paragraph, from the rug.1 man page:

RUG_ARGS
This environment variable is prepended to any command line
options that are passed to rug and acts as an extra set of argu-
ments. The variable is ignored if the –ignore-env flag is set.
Do not attempt to set the –ignore-env flag in the RUG_ARGS
variable; this is absurd.

Asses and Asinine Behavior

The word of the day is butt call, the accidental calls you get when people sit on their phones and it dials a speed-dial number. The side-effect, of convenience, is the inconvenience of others.

More on unintended consequences, this time with respect to the US war on drugs:
Reason magazine on heroin addiction, (they have a strong libertarian bent, so you know they’re going to be arguing that the drug laws are stupid).
Criticisms and directions on how to fix US drug policy, by some guy named Randy, whom I don’t know much about,.
Note also the previously posted questions for public health students.

Other unintended consequences: intellectual properly policies that are insufficiently clear can leave you open to annoying jokesters. And failing to plan for the extended character sets of non-English languages can leave your software mocked mercilessly by the famous Joel.

Secondhand smoke: hard evidence

Is there any real research to indicate that secondhand smoke is bad? Now there is: Helena Montana had a dramatic drop in heart attacks after banning smoking in bars. Then they dropped the ban, and the heart rate rose again.

The People’s Republik bar, in Cambridge MA, has a chalkboard out front. On the day the Cambridge smoking ban took effect, it read “You can’t smoke in here, but some of us can still stink up the bar.”

Three barely related paragraphs

The Church keeps trying to convince people not to use condoms because it’s a sin. Perhaps they need some information about harm reduction.
Speaking of deliberate harm, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds have a great ode to alcoholism, and Michael Pollan (of “Botany of Desire”) has a great article in the NYT this week on obesity which I wanted to turn into some sort of rant about the way people cede control over their lives to marketers and corporations, and then blame the corporations for running their lives poorly.

Of course if you give your life over to alcohol or television or junk food or consumerism, it’s not going to be yours, and it’s not going to make you happy. Of course if you give your life over to a philosophy that has very strict absolutes you’re going to find uncomfortably sharp edges and contradictions, like persuading people that condoms are useless in order to prevent contraception, and being unable to recognize that you are spreading potentially fatal misinformation and are therefore responsible for the deaths of thousands.

If I’m a marketer of a branded lifestyle like, say, McDonalds or Catholicism is it my responsibility to make sure that my customers are emotionally healthy and moderate in their beliefs? If someone loves me in an uncomfortable way, I can distance myself from them, help them love themselves instead. But I don’t want to make myself unlovable. I want to still be loved, just not loved by this person, or not so immoderately. What does Disney do with someone who loves, really LOVES, Disney? What does the Catholic Church do with someone who is, perhaps, over-fanatic? They don’t want to shut down! They can’t.

If someone gives their life over to your control, even partially, what responsibility do you bear for that? If it’s my job to be loved and lovable, and someone grows obsessed, what do I do? A celebrity, a product, an ideology, a lifestyle… are they the same in their obligations to their fanatics?

I’d say an ideology has a greater obligation to avoid its adherents getting out of control, since adherence is part of its makeup, whereas a product doesn’t include fanaticism by default and isn’t as in control of, or responsible for, that fanaticism. But I’m not sure. Is McDonalds as much an ideological state apparatus (to get a little althusserian on you) as the Church? Urgh, I’m getting back to my thesis here…

Misconceptions and Misperceptions

Forbes portrays the Free Software Foundation in a rather negative light. Of course, the FSF is known for being doctrinaire and annoying, but I wouldn’t exactly call them “hit men.” Meanwhile, conspiracy mongering about the mono project. Come on guys. It’s software. I know you live it and breathe it. I live it and breathe it.

But this isn’t the movies. There are no hit men. X never marks the spot. It’s not called “evil” or “double-crossing” in this world, it’s mere unethical business practices and breach of contract. You want to see pirates and hit men, go run opium from Burma to Hong Kong.