August 20, 2004

China's Glories

This rules: Some of China's elder statesman are calling for more openness in media and politics. They're using the 100th anniversary of Deng Xiaoping's birthday on Sunday as their "policy peg." Deng was the leader who really pushed China's economic growth and opened the country up to all sorts of foreign economic involvement. His catch-phrase: "To get rich is glorious."

So who's going to be the Chinese leader to say, "To be open and accountable is glorious"? Not as catchy, I know, but...

August 14, 2004

And We're Off...

Robin and I ship out tomorrow to our respective stops in California (I'm going straight to Fresno; he's making a week-long stop-off in Michigan before heading to Sacto). So Snarkmarket, a little dusty and unused these past couple weeks while we've been making our preparations to move, will continue to gather dust for a week or so more. I know it will be difficult for you to bear the continuing wait. But next time you hear from us, it'll be from Californ-eye-ay. And we'll be back with a vengeance. Promise.

August 5, 2004

'It Ate Its Children' (or) I Love Blogs

More and more these days, I am enjoying the Web as a window into the passions and pursuits of smart professionals and scholars.

Via Space and Culture, I found this great post on a bumpin' blog called City of Sound. It's titled "Shanghai Diary #1," and here's the setup:

My friend and ex-boss at Manchester Metropolitan University, Dr. Justin O'Connor, is spending a very hot summer in Shanghai. I, like most of those obsessed with modern cities, am fascinated by Shanghai - the idea of Shanghai, for I've never witnessed the reality (whatever that is) - so I asked him whether he fancied writing some impressions of his visit there for this blog.

Turns out he did.

O'Connor sets the scene in Shanghai, and then ramps up to this:

I give a lecture on Manchester - shock city - trying to evoke the newness of the city, of its unprecedented growth, its raw energy, the brutal but exhilarating power of its modernisation. Because it ate its children, it sucked them into its furnace stomach from farther and farther afield. Shanghai is doing this now. The architects are exhilarated, but it's fuelled by cheap migrant labour. Labour is cheap. [...]

Here's a city that everybody says is 'exciting' because it’s being built on a huge scale, aiming to become Asia's (yes, including Japan) economic and financial capital. Already Hong Kong is feeling slightly less exciting. It is far more powerful financially – but it feels like a place that has had its time. But apart from the architects - always slaves to power and money - what's exciting other than a vicarious reliving of the West's own innocently brutal days of early industrialisation and modernisation. That’s a difficult one.

That's the end of "Shanghai Diary #1," but there are two more: #2 and #3. These both have less macro stuff and more street-level reportage -- plus there's some neat history notes and photos of the city.

Thanks to City of Sound's Dan Hill for scoring these dispatches. Every blogger ought to get his or her smart friend to write in every once in a while.

August 4, 2004

It's Raining Brains

Coming soon from the people that brought you "Google Hacks" and many others:

"Brain Hacks"??

Oh yes.

At first I was afraid this was going to actually be, like, ways to mess with your brain. (I feel like that subject has been well-documented elsewhere.) Instead it sounds to be more of a user's guide:

I'm talking about minute-by-minute stuff: This is why you scratch your face when somebody else does. This is what will grab your attention in the corner of your eye, and this is what won't. Why the status icons in the corner of your desktop should be black and white and not in colour. That's what Brain Hacks is about, letting you see how all that works, from a standing start.

We, the nerdy public, have been treated to many good brain books in recent years.

Steven Pinker's excellent "How the Mind Works" was one of the best books I read in college, and Steven Berlin Johnson's "Mind Wide Open," which I kinda stalled out on in the middle of the second chapter, still looks really good -- he uses his own brain as a lens to explore and explain modern neuro- and cognitive science.

Malcolm Gladwell is coming out with a brain book, too, though his has a different angle. I actually heard about it back in November 2002. Here's a re-enactment:

Setting: a large house in Cambridge, Mass., full of journalists.

Robin: (sidles up) Hey, Malcolm. Nice speech.

Malcolm: (with huge afro) Thanks.

R: So, whatcha working on now?

M: Book on intuition.

R: Cool.

End scene.

Now Jason Kottke has the deets from Amazon.com:

Drawing on cutting-edge neuroscience and psychology, he shows how the difference between good decision-making and bad has nothing to do with how much information we can process quickly, but on the few particular details on which we focus.

Apparently Gladwell "leaps boldly from example to example" as well.

I think all these books are actually very important insofar as they all seem to be based on actual science and not just neat-sounding theories.

As Matt Webb, a co-author of the new "Brain Hacks" book, explains, there really is all this new knowledge -- generated only in the last few years -- that has yet to be absorbed by the public, even the smart book-readin' Web-surfin' public. We really do have access to way, way more legitimate information about our minds than Kant could ever have dreamed of -- now we just have to learn it.

So, "Brain Hacks" looks fun. "Blink," too.

I'm sure there will a "Your Brain for Dummies" before long.

August 1, 2004

"Chemotherapeutically Nauseating"

So you've seen the pictures of John Kerry in a protective blue jumpsuit, crawling around inside the space shuttle Discovery with John Glenn. Looks dorky, it's like Dukakis in the tank helmet, whatever, no actual events are occurring in the world, etc.

Here's Clive Thompson with the ultimate meta-commentary:

Of course, Kerry was wearing completely standard-issue scientific gear. He was dressed the way scientists dress all the time. Which is what makes this little media pile-on so chemotherapeutically nauseating -- because of course, the point is that scientists are about as "unmanly" as you can get. [...]

Hey, I've got an idea. If political pundits and right-wing assholes find scientists such laughable fools, why don't they all go live on an island somewhere utterly devoid of scientific progress past, say, the 13th century? Then they can all foam at the mouth with scurvy and beat each other to death with human thighbones.

I was going to write something about the popular perception of scientists and engineers, the coolness of FIRST, blah blah blah, but forget it. Just bask in Clive's righteous indignation.