Embodied History

When I was doing research for my dissertation, I compiled an impressive list of women who were central in the development of networks, microcomputing, digital processing, and programming. Their stories are shunted aside in the quest to locate the "father" of the Internet/computer/network/whatever.

“The names of Betty Snyder Holberton, Jean Jennings Bartik, Kathleen McNulty Mauchly Antonelli, Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer, Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum and Frances Bilas Spence belong in our history books and computer courses,” says Kleiman. “Not only did they program the first modern computer, some devoted decades to making programming easier and more accessible for all who followed.”

Read more and remember.

Steampunk about to Jump the...er, Steam-Driven Mechanical Shark

Newsweek has a good article on steampunk. When the popular press finds out about a trend, it is usually on death watch. Expect the release of The Golden Compass to officially kill this formerly-underground aesthetic

Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti...

We are Cyborg

How is your outboard brain feeling these days?

We are ALL Monkeys

Have you ever seen the experiment where a baby monkey is separated from it's mother and forms an attachment to an inanimate sculpture made out of chicken wire and carpet?

Meet your new mother.

Park That Anywhere!

On a recent walk, sport and I encountered a few WWII airplanes (a Mustang and a Corsair, to be semi-precise).
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Of course, it was kind of cool to see them parked next to a WWII-vintage theater, but I don't think that we are now creating chronological zoning ordinances. I mean, planes still belong at the airport, no?

Early-Mid-Life Crisis

When I played tennis in college the conditioning mark that we were supposed to meet before we started the season was running two miles in twelve minutes. I never quite hit that mark.

Well...now I'm trying to see if I can make good on what I couldn't do at 19 years of age. I'm currently able to run that pace for three minutes. Only nine more to go.

Pray...for...mojo.

Viral Travelogue

Where the Hell is Matt Interview

Matt Harding talks about breaking free of his job as a video game designer to dance around the world.

Un-Good News

The Good News is that Ian McKellen is coming to the Guthrie in October in the Royal Shakespeare Company production of King Lear.

The Un-Good News is that as soon as sport and I found this out, all shows had long been sold out.

Bummer.

Technology Disruption

I've been working on publishing a study on Eclipse Aviation's rhetorical appeals during the startup phase. CNN has a pretty interesting video on some of the enabling/resulting informatic developments that scaffold the new Very Light Jet industry.

I Spy

Things I spotted today in the shared work refrigerator:

• spring mix
  
• acorn squash stuffed with wholegrain rice
  
• mozzarella and sharp cheddar cheeses
  
• grape tomatoes
  
• pistachio rice salad
  
• Sobe
  
• hummus
  

Cheering for the Little Guy

If you haven't had a chance to see the movie Once, I would do so this week. The incredibly annoying hypebole of the NY Times ads aside ("Once in a lifetime movie..."), this is a full-hearted moviemaking effort worth supporting,

AND...

it makes a great bookend to The Commitments. Not only is it a treat to see how Glen Hansard has matured musically, both movies provide a vastly different backdrop in Dublin. The 1991 Dublin depicted in the Roddy Doyle adaptation has neighborhoods with children playing around burned-out cars. Buskers alternate between picking up their "dole check" and auditioning for a longshot place in a band. The 2007 Dublin shown in Once frames the hardscrabble busker searching for a reason to stay in an ultra-gentrified Dublin. The "Miraculous American" who promises to pull the feckless Irish youth into stardom is replaced by the Eastern European immigrant who prods Irish diasporic dreams.

The movie can stand on its own incredible sweetness, but it is worth a look for so many reasons.

Blog Apology Poem

My life has been the poem I would have writ,
But could not both live and utter it.

Henry David Thoreau

Commitment

In the U.S., most of us take access to education for granted. It is different in some places.

Simpsonize Me!

August 7, 1991

Aug. 7, 1991: The world wide web becomes publicly available on the internet for the first time.

The web has changed a lot since Tim Berners-Lee posted, on this day, the first web pages summarizing his World Wide Web project, a method of storing knowledge using hypertext documents.

From WIRED

Another One Bites the Dust

The Imus vs. Sharpton argument just took an interesting turn.

Don't Mess with Jack Bauer

The next baddie in Jack's sights? Global Warming

Wanna Buy a Jet?

This one is cheap. Pocket change, really.

And So Here I Am

"Since if I'd gone up to Moorhead or North Dakota State, I'd still have to be living at home, I said the heck with college and came to New York. And so here I am."

Philip Roth--The Human Stain, p. 120.