Category: Words

Every time I take a flight somewhere I buy a magazine or two to read on the plane. Sometimes it’s The Economist but as often as not it’s Motorcyclist, which has frivolity, shiny pictures and useless details to keep me occupied during a layover. But, like a lot of product-oriented journalism (see Jalopnik’s constant tilting at the glossy car mags, or mine at tech journalists), it’s written less to inform readers than to curry favor with manufacturers.

And of course, the writing is by motorcycle dudes with English degrees, so you get phrasing like “The broad, curved radiator, deep sump, and king sized triangular oil cooler say this twin is no 996. So do narrow cylinder heads that give the Testastretta its name” and “With no room for the 999’s 54mm throttle bodies and shower-type injectors, this Testastretta twin inhales through new 50mm bodies fitted with hybrid, 996-style injectors.”

What does that mean? Well, it takes some background, starting with explanations of Ducati’s desmodromic system at the Ducati tech cafe, and a definition of the testastretta from the end of this article on the S4Rs. But basically it’s mechanical pornography: it means nothing.

Obviously, motorcycle mags are ripe for being replaced or supplemented by blogs. I haven’t found a peer to Jalopnik for bikers. If I had fifty thousand dollars and a staff of two, I could do it myself. Or possibly a hundred bucks a year for hosting, plus some Google ads for revenue. Anyone care to join me?

My page on econ blogs is up at toptensources.com. I was pleased with the result, although one of the senior editors made fun of my picture, which is based on one from my Flickr page.

Anyone have suggestions for future top tens? I’ve been looking for decent motorcycle blogs, but a lot of them fail to live up to the standard that Jalopnik and the rest of the top ten car blogs set for automotive coverage.

I’ve gotten hit pretty hard by comment spam, and ended up deleting a legit comment along with about 150 pieces of junk mail this weekend. But I’m leavin’ comments on for now.

I learned a new word today: hyfrecator, an electrocautery tool used in medicine. Hyfrecators are also used in incredibly painful-looking branding rituals, as described here at Modblog.

The top ten sources for business news, my first page for toptensources.com, is now live.

Miguel points to George Clooney’s open letter defending liberalism.

I can’t say I agree with him.

We say “Progressive” now.

OK, I’m turning comments back on. We’ll see if I attract spammers.

Next: trying to write something worth commenting on.

Two words that for some reason keep popping into my head recently:

Melisma, the combination of multiple notes that the Village Voice and I both find so annoying in contemporary American pop.

Pellicle, the slightly sticky surface that meat develops when it’s been cured and dried enough to start smoking it. (See also the Wikipedia entry on pellicle, which points out that it can be a variety of different membranes.)

The Zanzibar Chest, by Aidan Hartley: Fascinating account of a white English boy born in Africa who grows up to be a journalist– he goes into a lot of depth about his family history and how it’s involved in the history of the region, as well. I recommended this to Luis, warning him that it started sad and got sadder. He said, well, it is Africa.

Charcuterie: Some of the recipes in this cookbook require expensive equipment, and some of them require almost none. Many of the items take days or months to make, and some may kill you. They are sausages and preserves and hams. So far I have packed some lemons in salt and put them in the back of the fridge; they’ll be ready in June. The next item I want to make is my own (fresh) sausage, then maybe beef jerky or my own bacon. But first, I need to buy more salt. I used up nearly five pounds last night, and we’re out.

The Paradox of Choice, from a prof at my brother’s school, Swarthmore, covers the fact that more choice doesn’t always make us happy. The idea applies to a lot of areas of life, such as user interface design and the success of specialty grocery stores. Also I think it has something to do with my ongoing pastoral fantasy: if we all just lived like Laura Ingalls Wilder, it’d be so much easier. We wouldn’t have to make decisions. We’d just survive. It’d be so great!

Lance Mannion has a great post on product design and manuals. The gist is this: the reason you can’t understand the product manual is that it is trying to explain something that is overly complex, and therefore as hard to describe as it is to do.

I found this to be the case in my manual writing for things like Novell Evolution: when I had a hard time explaining something, it was often because the process itself was too complex. Fortunately, I had access to the developers and I could file bug reports (“This dialog box is totally insane”) that people actually listened to.

I guess I’ve been lucky.