stop. start. stutter. http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/ (this is where the braindump goes) en Copyright 2008 Thu, 13 Mar 2008 09:31:06 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss not-so-friday cool books about cool topics Lunacon this weekend (say hi if you're there!), so this week's Books About Cool Topics comes early. (Disclaimer: Links to go Amazon; if you buy with the link, I get a kickback. Which I will use to buy more books. Please, allow me to buy more books.) The topic: Sociolinguistics The book: Language, Culture, and Communication: The Meaning of Messages by Nancy Bonvillain This is way, way more textbooky than I've been trying to keep these -- I've been aiming more for a popular-science approach, whereas this is, in fact, a leftover from my days as a Linguistics major. (Er. My few days as LING major. Undergrad took me eleven semesters, four colleges, and thirteen majors. It's a long story.) But for all that this is clearly a textbook, and clearly aimed at the textbook market, and makes some assumptions about your knowledge base going into it, and has the sticker-shock price that college texts often carry -- it's still a fabulous book about the intersection between language and culture. It's about semantics, and bilingualism, and cultural register, and class-structure as revealed in language, and cultural presupposition, and a whole host of cool things about what how we speak tells us about who we are (and what others see). It's English-centric, and more than that, American-centric, but the principles are extendable. While it might not be a good introduction to the discipline of linguistics as a whole, you should be able to get by with some work on Wikipedia if you run into a concept that you're not familiar with, and the neat bits are worth it.]]> http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/03/friday_cool_books_about_cool_t_1.html http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/03/friday_cool_books_about_cool_t_1.html books about cool topics Thu, 13 Mar 2008 09:31:06 -0500 friday: cool books about cool topics Books About Cool Topics. (Disclaimer: Links to go Amazon; if you buy with the link, I get a kickback. Which I will use to buy more books. Please, allow me to buy more books.) The topic: Quantum computing The book: Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos by Seth Lloyd What is quantum computing? It's a computer built to take advantage of fundamental principles of quanta, using the idea that quantum particles can be used to store data and perform operations on those data. Which means that any book about quantum computing must explain not only computer science, but also quantum physics. And quantum physics is the new rocket science, in the sense of being the discipline that everyone thinks nobody understands. Fortunately, Lloyd seems to delight in the fact that even the quantum physicists don't understand quantum physics. He knows what he's talking about, clearly loves his topic, and has a sly sense of humor that often has me looking at the page and going "...did he just make a joke there? Yeah, he just made a joke there." If you ask ten quantum physicists to explain quantum physics, you'll get twenty-five different answers, all of which contradict each other, and one really confused cat. But Lloyd does a really good job of explaining hard-to-explain pieces. This is a topic I wasn't expecting to understand as well as I understood this book, honestly; I've mentioned my problems with math, which meant that I often just gave up on my science education and have had to self-teach since then, which means that I've got some curious gaps. But Lloyd's one of those people who loves his discipline like nobody's business, loves the problems he's working on, and is willing to do a lot to make sure you think they're just as cool as he does -- which is my main criterion for a book on science, which you might have already guessed -- and on the whole, he manages wonderfully. I did not expect to walk out of this book having had so many a-ha! moments about quantum physics as I did, and if I were at MIT, I'd audit Lloyd's classes just to have the privilege of hearing his theories directly. ]]> http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/03/friday_cool_books_about_cool_t.html http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/03/friday_cool_books_about_cool_t.html books about cool topics Fri, 07 Mar 2008 07:29:29 -0500 why i can never hold down a corporate job, ever: ]]> http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/03/why_i_can_never_hold_down_a_co.html http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/03/why_i_can_never_hold_down_a_co.html Sun, 02 Mar 2008 11:54:41 -0500 friday: cool books on cool topics Books About Cool Topics. (Disclaimer: Links to go Amazon; if you buy with the link, I get a kickback. Which I will use to buy more books. Please, allow me to buy more books.) The topic: The NYC restaurant scene The book: Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain This is a little less academic than the previous two; I figured it was time for something lighter! This is Bourdain's memoir about life in the NYC restaurant scene, and it's great. Fascinating in places, disturbing in others, hysterical in yet others. If you're the type of person who can't stand thinking where your food comes from and what might have happened to it before it hits the table, you'll probably want to give this one a pass, but if you're down with the concept that we all eat a little dirt, this is a great book. It covers what goes on in the kitchen of restaurants, what drugs your chef has likely done this afternoon, the economics and basics of running a restaurant, how to deal with suppliers, and what not to order in the restaurant. (And why!) Bourdain's got a light, deft prose style, but he doesn't hold back, either. In a lot of ways, he reminds me of Hunter S. Thompson (may he rest in peace, with booze and loose women). This is a great look into the food service industry, both good things and bad, and it's entertaining even as it's educational.]]> http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/02/friday_cool_books_on_cool_topi_1.html http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/02/friday_cool_books_on_cool_topi_1.html books about cool topics Fri, 29 Feb 2008 13:17:59 -0500 Friday: Cool Books on Cool Topics Books About Cool Topics installment. (Disclaimer: Links to go Amazon; if you buy with the link, I get a kickback. Which I will use to buy more books. Please, allow me to buy more books.) The Topic: Religious history: specifically, the Council of Nicaea The Book: When Jesus Became God: The Struggle to Define Christianity during the Last Days of Rome by Richard Rubenstein The Council of Nicea -- which is actually the First Council of Nicaea; there were others, but this is the one people most often mean -- is the point at which Christianity truly started to be shaped and codified. Before Nicaea, there were a bunch of different ways of looking at God and Jesus and the meaning of both, and individual churches taught and believed the version that they thought was most appealing. Rubenstein brings us through the argument (which actually displays surprising similarity to an Internet flamewar, although slightly more bloody-minded) providing just the right level of detail, and -- as is very rare for a book on religion -- without giving away which side of the debate he comes down on. More than that, though, Nicaea was the story of Arius and Athanasius, the two main voices on both sides of the Christological debate, and Rubenstein gives us an excellent look at both men, their histories, their backgrounds, and their motivations, reconstructing very vibrant pictures of the two men from what's available to us today. This is a really good history book, well-researched and eminently readable, and very approachable for the layperson. ]]> http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/02/friday_cool_books_on_cool_topi.html http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/02/friday_cool_books_on_cool_topi.html books about cool topics Fri, 22 Feb 2008 07:01:45 -0500 go out! look up! lunar eclipse. (I'm writing this post ahead of time and scheduling it so I don't forget either, so I don't know what the weather's going to be. *laugh*)]]> http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/02/go_out_look_up.html http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/02/go_out_look_up.html Wed, 20 Feb 2008 21:55:01 -0500 bang bang bang bang bang bang bang weekends, even) I bemoaned to my friends: Doesn't Baltimore have a noise ordinance? Turns out they do. But you have to speak calculus to understand it. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. It's better than the Medevac helicopters, at least; the construction noise is generally rhythmic. But, you know, I'd kind of like the parking spaces in front of our building back sometime this century. Not to mention how they keep turning off our building's water. (Accidentally or by design.)]]> http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/02/bang_bang_bang_bang_bang_bang.html http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/02/bang_bang_bang_bang_bang_bang.html Mon, 18 Feb 2008 08:33:20 -0500 run, little creature! run! breveCreatures, an iterative artificial evolution simulation screensaver. Basically, you get a bunch of blocks connected together (in often non-Euclidean fashion, heh) and the object is to have it move as far from the origin point as possible; the blocks move at all points of join/articulation, and the locomotion either moves the piece as a whole or makes it work against itself, based on how it's constructed. That's not the cool part. The cool part is: Every "generation" (25 iterations), the design evolves by taking the most "successful" designs of the previous generation and "breeding" them together, introducing random mutation, and continues to see which one is successful and which ones aren't. It remembers the state, so when you turn off the screensaver, it goes back to where it was in the process when you turn it back on. The early generations are the ones that have the most drastic changes, whereas by a certain point you just want to restart it and give yourself something new to look at, but: Go, little creatures, go! Have little block sex and build the next generation for my amusement!]]> http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/02/run_little_creature_run.html http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/02/run_little_creature_run.html Sun, 17 Feb 2008 13:29:55 -0500 White Chocolate Mousse Cups way more time on it than you actually did. You need: 16oz. bag of white chocolate chips 1 pint (16oz) of heavy cream (whipping cream) Raspberries 3 boxes of miniature phyllo-dough shells (usually in the frozen-foods aisle) 1. Melt the white chocolate -- and yes, they really mean it about the double boiler; white chocolate does not melt well in the microwave. 2. Put the heavy cream into a bowl, and using an electric mixer, beat it until the cream is thickened enough that it will form stiff peaks when you pull the beaters out of the cream, but not so thick as to start forming lumps. 3. Pour the melted white chocolate into a separate bowl, and -- with the electric mixer on lowest speed -- pour the stiffened cream into it, slowly and gradually. Keep beating until thoroughly mixed. 4. Spoon a tablespoonful into each of the phyllo-dough shells, carefully patting the mousse into the shell so that it fills all available nooks and crannies. Top with a single raspberry. (You'll probably have more mousse than available shells; the rest can go into shot glasses.) Refrigerate at least 2 hours before serving. Try not to eat too many at one sitting.]]> http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/02/white_chocolate_mousse_cups.html http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/02/white_chocolate_mousse_cups.html Sat, 16 Feb 2008 08:09:59 -0500 the problem with wikipedia Comic by xkcd The last 48h or so of Wikipedia searches 5150 (Involuntary psychiatric hold) Thrust stage BOFH Niall of the Nine Hostages Human Y-Chromosome DNA haplogroups List of Y-DNA single nucleotide polymorphisms Haplogroup R1b Haplogroup Population genetics Hallsatt culture Celt Old High German Alemannic German High German languages Alamanni Old High German Classical antiquity Germanic peoples Getae Fall of Rome Dark Ages History of Europe Sigmaringen district Herdwangen-Schönach Black Forest List of the Child Ballads The Real World The Fause Knight Upon The Road Peace Corps Reality television Thomas the Rhymer Colitis Nielsen ratings Child Ballad TheGreatHatsby Donburi Roti Steganography Halliburton Library Prisoner's Dilemma Street layout of Seattle Four-minute mile Phreaker DEF CON 2600: The Hacker Quarterly Eric Gorden Corley Hacker (computer security) List of most common surnames Community card poker Computer crime Black hat 0-day Texas hold 'em Blue box (phreaking) Risk (game) Kaiser roll I really need to just set up a service for writers: "email me with what you need to know; I will choke Google and Wikipedia until I get an answer for you."]]> http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/02/the_problem_with_wikipedia.html http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/02/the_problem_with_wikipedia.html Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:49:45 -0500 friday books about cool topics, #1 GoodReads account" project (except when I'm not, but, well) -- but I'm only logging in new books (or books I reread since I started keeping track). So let's do books about cool topics that you don't learn about in high school. (Or at least, that I didn't learn about in my high school; your mileage may vary.) And to force myself to get into patterns and habits, I shall do them on Fridays. Disclaimer: Links to go Amazon; if you buy with the link, I get a kickback. Which I will use to buy more books. Please, allow me to buy more books. Today: The Millennium Problems: The Seven Greatest Unsolved Mathematical Puzzles of Our Time by Keith Devlin. I am one of those great tragedies; I am a lover of math (I can't call myself a mathematician) who suffers from medium-to-severe dyscalculia, which went undiagnosed the entire time I was in public education. (I thought everyone had trouble telling 42 and 24 apart. Or plus and minus. And don't get me started on phone numbers. Or division. Or greater than/less than.) I love math; I just can't do it without tears and swearing. (Concepts, fine. Abstracts, fine. Ideas, fine. Actual problems? I will shoot myself.) This book tackles the seven Millennium Prize Problems, each of which carries a million-dollar bounty for a "solution". (Scare quotes are because some of the "problems" aren't so much equations to be solved as "dude, this works, but we don't know why it works.") Devlin does a great job of explaining what the problem is for all but the last two, which honestly can't be explained to a layperson (at least not without interpretive dance), but the best part of the book is the background grounding he provides for the mathematical leaps-of-glee he's about to get into. I've had people try to Explain Math Shit to me before, and they have about a seventy percent chance of causing me to have a screaming nuclear meltdown, because they do it in the wrong way. But Devlin's good at it -- informative without being patronizing or condescending, the way so many specialists can be when they're talking about their specialty to a layperson. Devlin's not interested in proving that he knows what he's talking about; he wants you to see why Hey, Math Is Fucking Cool. And, you know, since math is fucking cool, it's a win/win situation. ]]> http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/02/friday_books_about_cool_topics.html http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/02/friday_books_about_cool_topics.html books about cool topics Fri, 15 Feb 2008 05:22:10 -0500 really, they should just rename it "surly singles' day" lot since then -- and no, it has nothing to do with being happily partnered, it has to do with just being too old for that shit -- but still, I'm so relieved that Best Beloved shares my approach and attitude. Every February, we stop our regular flower-buying (Safeway: a dozen roses for like $10, high-quality, long-lasting, and very pretty on the kitchen counter, thank you very much) when the late-January/early-February price-hike kicks in, eat in on both the weekend before and the weekend after instead of risking the hoardes of humanity in our favorite resturants who are looking for a 'romantic' dinner, and wait for February 15th when the chocolate goes to half-price. (November 1 and February 15, man, are great days for those of us who can't resist the sweet tooth.) And I'm sure you've all heard the rant a hundred thousand times before -- about how love isn't love if it needs validation from Hallmark, how Valentine's Day is a charade that legitimizes the 1950s happy-nuclear-family myth while ignoring the disturbing sexist and heterocentrist underpinnings of the custom, blah blah etcetera -- so I don't need to deliver it again, but still: So today, tell your partner that you love him or her, but not because it's Valentine's Day; tell your partner that you love him or her because you should tell him or her every day. Save the chocolates and flowers for one random day in March or July or October; save the gifts for a time when you see something perfect and just want to make your partner smile. Practice kindness and charity as a habit, not as an exception. And don't get stressed out about being Romantic and Fairy-Tale and Storybook one single day out of the year, because it's the other 364 that make up the sum of a relationship. And if you're single, and you're tired of the hype too, I think there's probably a college-apartment-quad picnic table somewhere in New Jersey that's free for use as a soapbox.]]> http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/02/really_they_should_just_rename.html http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/02/really_they_should_just_rename.html Thu, 14 Feb 2008 10:38:41 -0500 the great pain debate 101 Things in 1001 Days list -- so I shall branch out a little from just talking about storytelling, stories, media, etc tonight and grab the soapbox for a while: If I ever meet one of the hundreds of thousands of fucking assholes who make it impossible for people who actually need it to find doctors who don't live in terror of providing decent pain management, I'm going to punch them in the fucking face. I've got a genetic disorder that means my joints occasionally decide that they're tired of being joints; they really want to be a lumberjack. It's crippling, but it's not debiliating; nine days out of ten, with my regular regimen of 'scrips and a little luck and careful planning, I'm perfectly capable of meeting the challenges of daily life, particularly since -- thanks to the heroic efforts of my partner Sarah, who does so much around here -- my challenges of daily life often involve "get up, sit in front of computer, go to sleep". The tenth day, though, is one of those days when my hip joint is leaping wildly from tree to tree in the hinterlands of British Columbia with its best girl by its side, or my shoulder has put on women's clothing and is hanging around in bars, and on those days, you'd better believe I am reaching straight for the narcotics my (wonderful, fabulous, incredible) doctor is willing to prescribe. Last week when I was in there, though, she looked embarrassed and said that the hospital administration is starting to really question anyone who regularly prescribes scheduled drugs, and would I mind if we put together an official pain management contract so that when anyone took a look, she didn't get in trouble? Not wanting my (wonderful, fabulous, incredible) doctor to risk her license for my sorry ass, of course I said yes. Not being the kind of person who signs anything without reading it through first (except for software license agreements, but really, is there anyone out there who reads those?), I sat there and read it. And number 10 would have confused the crap out of me, if I didn't regularly read a few medblogs. Paraphrased (mostly because I can't be arsed to find it right now), it said:
I agree that if my medication is lost or stolen, I will be placed in counseling and/or rehabilitation for addiction, and will no longer receive any prescriptions for narcotics.
Translation: Isn't it funny how it's always the Vicodin that gets dropped down the toilet, and never the ibuprofen? I'm lucky; my doctor believes in proper pain management (which is to say, a multi-tiered approach that addresses both proximate and secondary causes of pain, works to reduce and improve the things that can be reduced or improved, will take research and clinical studies into account, will happily consider a holistic approach to pain and pain management including other medical disciplines, diet, exercise, massage, chiropractic treatment, etc, etc -- but that also doesn't fail to take into account that sometimes you're just going to goddamn hurt anyway and that shit ain't right, yo). But really, it's disgusting that there are people out there who are making it so that doctors are terrified of getting played. I don't blame the doctors. I blame -- a little -- the drug regulations and the culture of paranoia that's sprung up around them, but mostly? I blame the people who are gaming the system. And I think getting punched in the fucking face is a fitting punishment, because then they get to know what it's like to hurt like hell and not find anyone who's willing to prescribe them something to deal with it.]]> http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/02/the_great_pain_debate.html http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/02/the_great_pain_debate.html Tue, 12 Feb 2008 23:13:01 -0500 the boob tube a television set. It sits over there in the corner, and it is hooked up to a Playstation 2 and the second consecutive DVD player to die on us this year. (I feel sometimes like we need one of those things like you put on the dishwasher to tell other members of the household if it's clean or dirty. The DVD player is currently: Dead.) What we don't have is cable, and the building we're in doesn't get network, and I'm not entirely sure how to get the TV to receive network if I wanted it to. This basic fact of my life -- I haven't owned a functioning television hooked up to a cable broadcast since I moved out of my parents' house lo these many years ago -- confuses people. A lot. They always stare at me blankly, unable to comprehend a life in which someone could not watch TV. I'm not judging you! It's not an idealistic thing! I just don't value cable enough to consider paying for it, don't hold a regular enough schedule that I can reliably be certain to catch any shows I'm interested in, and really don't value TV enough to pay for TiVo and watch my stuff whenever. Instead, I watch TV through the secondary distribution model: I iTunes-download stuff as it comes out (or torrent it if it's not up on the iTMS -- come on, people, I want to give you money here, work with me!), and then buy the DVDs when they come out if I like it enough. (This is one of the reasons why I'm so interested in the outcome of the writers' strike, since I know that both these models don't compensate the writers as much as broadcast.) So what do I look for in a TV show? One of two things: a). A thoughtful, well-characterized, engaging show that says interesting things about our society while telling a good story, or, b). Outrageous, over-the-top fluff that I can put on and pay .5% of my attention to while I'm knitting. This season I'm watching American Gladiators, The Apprentice, House, LA Ink, and Supernatural, and filling in back-seasons of NCIS (I can't just start watching something, I have to start from the beginning), with Battlestar Galactica next on the "to be caught up with" list. I also have a season of High Stakes Poker to catch up on, and am flirting with adding Lost and Heroes, although people whose opinions I respect are telling me that Heroes has some really troublesome subcurrents that will probably make me want to punch it in the nuts. Deciding which show falls into which category can be left as an exercise for the reader.]]> http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/02/the_boob_tube.html http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/02/the_boob_tube.html Mon, 11 Feb 2008 21:03:41 -0500 a whole house full of nothing to read heroic efforts -- is always covered in books, requiring us to shove books aside to eat on the table) and one actually on my desk. And I don't have anything to read. This is kind of like when you open the pantry, stare at completely full shelves, and claim that there is nothing to eat. There are over two thousand books in this apartment. You'd think I'd have some chance of maybe, possibly, perhaps finding a book (or two) in here that would strike my fancy. But alas, all I want to read are things that we don't currently own. And though I hear that they have these fancy new-fangled things called libraries, our city one, despite being excellent -- I'm told -- has shit fucking hours and isn't near enough to public transport for me to get to it on the days when I am awake during the day. Clearly, someone needs to start an online lending library. Kind of like Netflix for books. You ship me the book, I read it, I ship it back to you. (Yeah, yeah, I know, postage would be prohibitive. And it's not like enough people read for it to be profitable -- which is another rant for another night -- but still. Sometimes, a girl just needs to be able to build thousand-book queues of Stuff She Wants To Read. (I think our Netflix queue is at something insane like 300 titles now. We'd be making better progress, if our average length of possession of a Netflix title weren't something like three months -- but to us, it's worth it to sometimes be able to get a certain movie delivered to your mailbox within 48h.) (And hey, if you wanna see what I'm reading, sign up for GoodReads and add me as a friend. Or just check my reviews. I do try to review everything I read, even if it's very quick, instead of just rating it. Sometimes the reviews are fun to do, and sometimes they're agony because it's hard to articulate why I feel a particular way, but either way, it's fun.) I've had a breakthrough on the book, which is good, and it makes it a much better book for it, which is fabulous, but it's also going to entail tons of rewriting, which is not good. And I owe so many people critique/opinions on manuscripts it's not even funny. And I really don't want to talk about the email situation. On the plus side, I finished one of the two short stories, which is going out sometime this week once I finish edits, and a draft reader confirms that I really am right to get excited about it, so! The spam to this blog is starting to get ludicrous, and so many people seem to prefer reading/commenting to it on the LJ feed, that I'm seriously considering ditching the MT install, embedding an LJ account, and washing my hands of trying to get the damn spam filters tuned right. Say what you will about LJ, nobody can deny that they're the top hosted service on the internets for anti-spam; I'm still kind of proud of that. Anybody out there not particularly down with that plan? (Since so many of you comment on the LJ feed, and those entries go away after two weeks, I'd really love to be able to keep those comments...) Alternate possibility is to cross-post with comments disabled here, but that's just way too much effort.]]> http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/02/a_whole_house_full_of_nothing.html http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/2008/02/a_whole_house_full_of_nothing.html Sun, 10 Feb 2008 03:30:33 -0500