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Lovely. Glad that we’re bravely facing adversity.
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Looks like I’ve found my next time waster.
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I was thinking “Ig Nobel” material until I read the part about being used for TB testing. Then I decided this guy has a lock on next year’s medicine award.
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Sounds much better, doesn’t it? Hiney Flu.
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Interesting discussion about parts of the Bible that challenge faith when viewed from modern perspectives.
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Interesting – an adaptable type specimen sheet for proofing web fonts.
One of the more evocative notes in the official history of the Virginia Glee Club is this, from Philip Alexander Bruce’s centennial review of the University:
In January, 1915, Professor Hall-Quest, who, during six years, had been in charge of the Princeton Glee Club, undertook to reorganize the old association [the Glee Club] and train it scientifically.
I’ve written about the troubled history of the Glee Club at the turn of the century before, but we didn’t look at the motivating actor. Who was Professor Hall-Quest? And why, after giving an illustrious account of his success, does the historian Bruce say little further about him in the five volume history?
Let’s start with Hall-Quest’s official biography, from 1917. Alfred Lawrence Hall-Quest was 36 by the time he was directing the Club in 1915. Before that he took degrees from Augustana College and from Princeton Theological Seminary and was ordained to the Presbyterian ministry in 1903. Reading between the lines, he appears to have rambled: between ordination and 1914 he was associate pastor at one church and pastor at three, professor in philosophy and education in Westminster College, Fulton, MO, and “assistant in education” at the University of Illinois. He is listed as teaching the summer session at Illinois in 1914, then teaching the summer session at Virginia in 1915. That fall he was reconstituting the Glee Club and winning the hearts of students. From 1914 to 1916 he was associate professor of education, and by 1916 he was on the full faculty as professor of educational philosophy. It was in 1916 that his seminal educational theory work, Supervised Study, was published. By 1917 he had moved on to the University of Cincinnati. There he appeared to have stayed through the early 1920s until he made a move to the University of Pittsburgh.
Then: scandal struck in October 1924. Hall-Quest’s wife very publicly ran off with his best friend, and he granted her the divorce. This was grounds for dismissal from the University of Pittsburgh.
Hall-Quest landed on his feet, somewhat, at Milwaukee University, but left that position under a cloud in 1927 after public disagreements with the board of trustees. From there the trail goes a little dark, and we don’t know when or how he died. In 1940 he’s listed as an influential educator in The Swedish in America, and his writings on supervised study are still cited in educational theory today.
After all that, one wonders: how did he end up with the Glee Club in the first place? The evidence, drawn largely from the pages of Madison Hall Notes when that institution was still the home of the Young Men’s Christian Association, is that he helped reform the Glee (and Mandolin) Club as part of his larger work with Madison House. He had been “head organist at Princeton” while there, and in addition to the Glee Club was directing a chancel choir in 1916. So Club’s rescuing from obscurity and training in scientific principles appears to have been a happy accident. Hall-Quest had ambition and drive, and did a lot, but in the end he was just passing through Virginia. Though he refounded the group, he didn’t provide the stability the group needed to move beyond its year-to-year existence. That wouldn’t come until the 1920s and the establishment of the Music Department.
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As John Gruber wrote, I never thought I’d say it but I agree with Grover Norquist.
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The problem with the original Google Books plan was “the agreement gives too much market power to Google over out-of-print books. How’s that again? Out-of-print books, by definition, are those for which there is no market today, nor likely to be one any time in the future.”
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Jimmy Wales schools Poynter in how Wikipedia and the Internet work. Funny read. Best quotation: “There is no move to restrict editing on Wikipedia pages of living people. The rest of your question is negated by this fact.”
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Interesting list of security, forensics, and general troubleshooting tools for the Mac OS X platform.
I could have sworn that I wrote something else about our addition project since the foundation was completed in mid-October, but it seems I didn’t. It’s really astonishing what you can do in a month:
- First floor framing
- Moved utilities
- Cut a door in the basement wall
- Second floor framing
- Tyvek and roof framing
- Laundry reframing
- Shingles
- Cut a door in the first floor and gutted the old guest bedroom
- Plumbing in the new bathrooms
- Radiant heat in the new basement room
- A new door into the garage
- Electrical, cable, phone, and Ethernet wiring
And Friday, the exterior painting began. And this Saturday, the crew came in and finished most of the insulation.
Today, I think, is more insulation, and maybe initial blueboard.
Along the way, we have learned, so far, that working with contractors is a lot faster than doing it yourself, but there are still as many decisions to be made. Meaning that you’re not driving yourself crazy working on the house one slow room at a time, you’re driving yourself crazy driving around creation looking for “owner purchased items.” Our job has been to have the “owner purchased items” ready to install, which meant a lot of back and forth 0ver tile, medicine cabinets, lights, and other ephemera. From our last remodels, we learned not to sweat the small stuff (towel bars etc.) and knew what we wanted for tile, but it still took three weekends of home store visits (I think we managed to visit four Home Depots and two Lowes stores in a single weekend, looking for enough tile to complete the bathrooms) to get everything ready.
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Awesome sounding fried chicken recipe including some fancy-schmancy sous vide.
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Mobile deathmatch calls out the iPhone on management issues and the quality of the phone experience (thanks, AT&T).
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Good explanation of the evolution of Twitter’s official retweet feature. My takeaway: RT in Twitter should now only be used as an amplifier. If you want to comment on someone’s tweet, comment on it and point to the original with a short URL rather than RT. This is instructive as a product manager to understand how Twitter thought through the product design process.
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Chris Wysopal argues that more disclosure is needed to ensure that the avenues used to shake down RBS’s ATM network are not exploited at other firms.
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SAS 70 Type II is a major milestone for the trustworthiness of “cloud” computing. This is a great option to have for deploying an application.
It’s been an interesting few days. While I was tied up at work, home, and a class, a lot of debate raged about my open letter to Peter Vadala, both here and where it was replicated on Facebook. (Side note: the major difference between this blog and Facebook was that here a bunch of total strangers were arguing theology with me and each other, where on Facebook it was all my friends. Vive le network socíale.)
Part of the debate was spurred by the abruptness of the letter, in which I reacted to a complex situation in a brief and simple way. As a result, I simultaneously accused Vadala of uncharity and was myself highly uncharitable.
But part of it is that it’s a complex situation. In the comments thread around the post on Facebook (you have to be my friend there to see the link), we discussed employment law, courtesy, theology, gay marriage, prejudice against homosexuality generally, free speech and the heckler’s veto, the Great Commission of Christianity, Biblical interpretation, queer deportment, and behavior in a pluralistic society. On this blog, there was some name calling and a lot of Scripture verses, which were somewhat to the point.
So many angles. Where to begin? I think, perhaps, with an acknowledgment that my knee-jerk response to a perceived injustice overlooked a lot of complexity.
I still feel that MassResistance’s use of Vadala’s firing to protest gay marriage is, as the Tin Man has put it, completely beside the point. This discussion would have come up without Massachusetts legalizing gay marriage–Vadala would have told the manager how much he disapproved of homosexuality regardless. But my response lacked, ironically enough, a certain charity. Perhaps I should have tried to remove the beam in my eye first.
The central question is still unanswered: what did I mean when I accused Vadala of a lack of charity? What do I mean when I acknowledge my own lack? I’m not talking about tax deductions, but the Christian concept of unconditional love for others, or caritas as it’s expressed in the Latin.
Caritas is one of the core virtues; not accidentally, the liturgical poem “Ubi Caritas” states that “where there is charity and love there is God.” The Greek translation agapē may be closer to the mark, describing God’s response to man through the gift of his Son. I like Thomas Jay Oord’s (uncited) quotation in the Wikipedia article: “an intentional response to promote well-being when responding to that which has generated ill-being.”
So let’s break it down: was the manager charitable in (allegedly) continuing to talk about her upcoming wedding after noting that it made Vadala uncomfortable? No.
Did Vadala show charity by telling her that he thought homosexuality was wrong? Depends–he may have thought he was witnessing to her, but it was certainly not promoting well-being to pour disapproval on her love for her partner.
Did the manager show charity by reporting him to HR? Probably not. We don’t have the context to know whether she wanted or expected him to be fired. (But he was certainly at this point in violation of his employment agreement; see Tin Man’s assessment above.)
Did Vadala and MassResistance show charity by using Vadala’s case to sow fear about gay marriage laws? I’d argue not; they responded to ill-being by trying to use it to generate more ill-being.
Did I show charity in the open letter? No. I kneejerked, almost never a charitable move.
Right now the only charity has been with my friends who have helped turn my kneejerk into a serious discussion, for which I’m grateful.
But, and let me return one last time to my point about this whole thing: the use by MassResistance of Vadala’s faith-based objections to bludgeon the happiness of others is an act of supreme uncharity, and unbecoming to their cause.
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Interesting advice for how to stage features across multiple releases rather than going for the big bang. In my book the last point is the best–if you don’t get customer feedback before making your big-bang release, how are your customers going to have a voice in the future of your product?
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Best wishes to Kareem.
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Interesting advice on roasting vegetables for Thanksgiving dinner. For what it’s worth, put me down in the turkey camp.
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Another perspective on Vadala’s case.
Please also see the follow-up to this post.
I was watching the evening news tonight, something I do rarely, when my attention was caught by a local item about a man named Peter Vadala being fired from his job because he “expressed his opinions” about gay marriage.
The story went on to clarify: a coworker mentioned that she was getting married to another woman, he apparently told her at length how wrong he thought gay marriage was. She complained to HR and he got the sack. The termination letter was then described, in which the company essentially said, you’re welcome to your beliefs but don’t use them to make other people uncomfortable in the workplace. Now he’s on MassResistance.org telling people in other states that if their state legalizes gay marriage, they too could be fired.
The real lesson of Peter Vadala, though, is that if you can’t keep from using your beliefs as a bludgeon, you can be fired. And rightfully so.
Here’s the letter I wrote to him through MassResistance:
I’m sorry for Peter Vedala that he hasn’t learned an important professional lesson: don’t impose your beliefs on others.
I’m also sorry that he hasn’t learned about Christian charity.
I was further sorry to see him digging himself in further in continuing to claim that he is being persecuted for his faith. If I were his manager, I would have terminated him in a heartbeat for creating a hostile work environment, and I would have had cause.
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On the one hand: “hey, mobile phone vulnerability!” On the other hand, if you’re jailbreaking and installing ssh, but not changing your root password… maybe you shouldn’t be jailbreaking.
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Yikes. Amputated toddler fingers = bad.
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Review of the BSO/TFC performance of Beethoven’s 9th. Glad you enjoyed the show.
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“Here’s what Beethoven’s Ninth felt like on Friday, with Lorin Maazel conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Imagine that you gave someone a fancy sports car, and they drove it around for a while without realizing that it had more than one gear, and then made up for it by repeatedly climbing up and down all six gears—reverse and neutral included—for twenty minutes.” Guerreri is in full force in this review. For the record, though, that opening verse was only a mezzoforte.
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Maria Cirino, Veracode investor, is profiled.
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FREE LIVE PIXIES EP. Y’all.
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Nice Christmas Lego plans.
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Sounds a little more staged than the 2004 reunion tour, not that that’s a bad thing. But. Mission of Burma won’t be opening for them this time out.
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Opening with the b-sides sounds like a good reason to go to my first show since Neko Case’s “Fox” tour.
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I may have to check out this application. Tired of forgetting to edit my photos until much later.
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Nice alternative for working with pork chops.
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Explains a lot about how I work.
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I like this — looks nice and background-tasky, which is how I like my vegetables. Plus: rosemary.
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Photoshop techniques for taking isolated elements out of composite illustrations.
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Shades of Nouveau Vague.
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Wu-Tang Clan album covers in the style of Blue Note. Nice.
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“… the Tanglewood Festival Chorus delivered a rousing and focused performance, with less visceral intensity than Michael Tilson Thomas requested from them at Tanglewood in August, but with all the control and dexterity Maazel required. At certain climaxes, they positively saturated the hall with sound.”
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Best comment: “Apple doesn’t look at the source code, they only have access to the binaries. It can be extremely tricky to guess what a program does based on the binaries.”
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. This was supposed to be Maestro Levine’s first complete Beethoven symphony cycle (he’s never conducted the 4th). But he ruptured a disc, is still out following surgery, and so the entire cycle has been taken by guest conductors. For the orchestra, it’s been a high profile opportunity to show their musicianship under a variety of batons. For me, I’m getting used to Lorin Maazel’s style and getting ready to head into our last rehearsal prior to tonight’s performance.
He’s got an interesting style. During last night’s piano rehearsal, he put us on our toes by asking for adjusted dynamics, entrances, pronunciation, and balance in a number of sections. I think some of the chorus, who sing this work every summer at Tanglewood, were surprised. I’ve only sung it once before and was more or less rolling with the punches. After the orchestra rehearsal following, he turned to the basses and said, “You sang that part better than I’ve ever heard it sung”–high praise indeed.
The whole run is sold out, but it should be on Boston area radio on Saturday night.
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When IE6 withers away to nothingness, I hope I’m still alive to dance on its grave.
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I wouldn’t mind having one of these, but $500 is a bit pricey for my blood.
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“…exit polls conducted by Edison Research on Tuesday showed that support for Mr. Obama had diminished only slightly in the state since his victory here in 2008. The polls suggested that many of Mr. Obama’s voters stayed home on Tuesday, allowing Mr. McDonnell to win on strong support among white men and independents and among voters who say they are very worried about the direction of the nation’s economy.” In other words: turnout turnout turnout.
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I’m looking forward to seeing this. Anything that roughs up Mickey and brings back his edge is good by me.
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More nice home office stuff.
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This is what the gay marriage initiative problem comes down to for me: “individual rights should not be subject to democratic vote. Majorities should not be able to take away the rights of minorities.”
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Awesome: White House Iron Chef!
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Looking forward to playing with some of these. I’ve often thought this constellation of small apps is one of Flickr’s big strengths; nice to see them all in one place.
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A real home office setup for two in 10×12. Pretty awesome.
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Someone remind me why letting this be negotiated in secret is good for national security, the ostensible reason for doing so.
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I have no patience with antivaccination parents for reasons like this. If you don’t get your children vaccinated, you endanger everyone else’s.
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It’s not definitive, but Krugman’s chart of world industrial production gives some intellectual support to the idea that we’ve pulled back from the brink.
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Interesting notes about signup pages (customer acquisition via conversion forms).
A reminder that addons, extensions, and other bolt-on software capabilities aren’t free:
It was a maddening bug. On my machine, and mine alone, our web based application slowed to a crawl when I chose a particular option. No one else could recreate the bug.
As I was showing the bug to the developer, we had a hunch, checked my add-ons, and turned off about half of them. The problem went away. Now I had a hunch about where the problem was. I turned on all the add-ons except LongURL Mobile Expander. The web application was working properly again, and I had my culprit.
I’m not a JavaScript developer so I’m not sure, even looking at the source code, why there was a problem. I wonder whether the issue was the fetch of the list of supported services, which seems to happen on every onload() event — possibly on our Ajaxy web app, the lookup was firing more than once per page? (Update: No See below.) All I know is that it’s turned off for good for me.
It’s kind of a shame, because LongURL performed a useful function: with it installed, when you hover over a link to tinyurl.com, bit.ly or one of the other URL shortening services, it looks up the link and shows you the destination in a tooltip–so you can tell if you’re going to get RickRolled, essentially. Useful, but not at the cost.
Update: the developer who looked at the issue with me does speak JavaScript, and he says the issue is not the fetching of supported services (happens once, then cached). Instead, the real issue is that the script re-parses the web page’s document object model each time a new node is added. This is what just about every AJAX app does all the time, which explains why the problem is only visible on apps like ours–or Facebook, as one rater of the add-on points out.
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Favorites: “a lamentation of Morlocks,” “a murmur of the possessed,” and “a delectation of nymphs.”
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Oh yeah. Digital paint for easy home renovation planning.
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Heuristic binary patching based on observation of an attack.
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Brilliant review of how color design conveys mood, emotion, and story through a classic children’s show–just in time for Halloween. Good read for designers.
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This was my question–what’s the security context of the PayPhrase concept? Seems like a phrase plus a PIN isn’t too much easier to remember than a username and password, but it would be a lot easier to break a four digit PIN than a proper password.
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Good tips for getting good photos from the iPhone 3GS. I can already tell that the colors on the iPhone camera are much more saturated, almost Lomoesque, compared to the original model. I’m having fun taking pictures with it.