Richard Soderberg came up with a great idea today for the LazyWeb search engine — why not offer an RSS feed for each search, so that subscribers can monitor the results over time?
Why not indeed? It was a bit of genius that turned out to be easy to implement. Now every search query on LazyWeb gives you a little orange XML button that you can click on to get an RSS feed. Just paste the link into your aggregator, and when the search results change, you'll find out about it.
That's one reason vector-model search engines are good: you can actually do things like offer an RSS feed without making your server catch fire. Vector engines keep all their search data in memory, so there's no need to read every entry from a disk every time you run a search. You only have to retrieve the documents that are in the result set, and those can even be served from a different machine.
Being able to subscribe to individual queries is cool. Now what we need is the ability to combine many different queries, to different places, into one integrated list. I should be able to subscribe to the same search query on LazyWeb, and Mark Pilgrim's blog, and Bruce Schneier's security newsletter, and get the results back in a meaningful ranked list that updates whenever the results change. That's actually not hard to do on the search side, but there's no room in the RSS protocol for the kind of handshake I need. And of course aggregators don't support distributed search (yet).
If anyone who knows about designing protocols can spare the brainpower, I could use some instruction.
10:51 PMI watched the Superbowl tonight, for the first time since I was a kid. Not out of snobbishness, it's just that I didn't grow up in a football house. My mother, who has little patience for the English language, could never get past the name or the incessant time-outs. "They don't kick it with their foot, so why is it called 'foot' 'ball'? And what are they doing, hitting that man like that? They should call it 'pile of meat'".
The last time I watched a Superbowl was in the fifth grade, when I volunteered to write the game up for the school paper. It was probably a reckless thing to do, since I had no understanding or interest in the rules, and had to deduce everything from empirical observation. I guess the allure of seeing my name in print was too much to resist (now I have the Web), so I plonked myself down for almost an entire quarter.
Football is hard going when you are ten and can't drink beer, and have no one around to explain things to you.
I made it through about thirty minutes (the game clock said seven), and then went back to reading about the Loch Ness Monster. I was a big fan of the Loch Ness Monster, much more than of football. I made sure to catch the news before bed to find out the score, and the next day submitted a jaunty paragraph of historical fiction, describing the heart-stopping excitement of the contest. I didn't know how to describe plays or use words like 'down' and 'conversion', so I went with more of a human-interest angle (roar of the crowd, nail-biting suspense) and spent some time describing the halftime show. The teacher in charge of the school paper loved it, which taught me a bad and extremely useful lesson about the role of BS in student writing. Soon I was falsifying science fair projects and writing book reports about imaginary books. Now I write for the Internet.
I got to watch tonight's game all the way through, eating platters of nachos with the better half, and listening to an increasingly incoherent John Madden trying to fill dead air as the Oakland team sank deeper and deeper into the mire. Whatever medication John Madden is on needs to be given to him at a higher dosage, because it wears off by the third quarter and he begins to report from a dimension beyond time and space. Al Michaels, the other sportscaster, held a pen in his hand for much of the game, and you could tell how bad things were by how he played with it as Madden talked. By the fourth quarter he had that thing spinning like a propeller.
The musical acts were fun to watch, even if the actual game itself wasn't (Oakland, dammit, what happened?) Celine Dion started things off with a pre-game "God Bless America", and as she hit her final note, the camera pulled back to reveal a huge wall of fireworks engulfing the stage. For one blissful moment I thought Celine Dion had blown herself up, in a kind of masterful finale. Then I saw the overflying fighter jets, and thought it might be another affaire canadienne, thanks to our fighter pilots and their little red pills. But when the smoke cleared, she was still standing right there, unscathed as the Terminator, flapping her eyelashes at the crowd.
They had Shania Twain on during the halftime show. She came out dressed in a Barbarella outfit, clearly intending to prove that no other Canadian android could match her, fiery explosions or no. Her robotic masters actually had her segue from a tired old hit into a new song form her album, "Up!", medley style, finessing the rule about one song per act in the halftime show, but they forgot to make her lip-synch. For her own finale, Shania climbed on a little crane platform and had herself lifted high above the crowd, which again raised my hopes that she might go out with a bang, and take some of her fans out with her. But if it happened, they didn't show it.
Thankfully, the next act on the stage was No Doubt, with the lovely Gwen Stefani, followed by a surprisingly spry Sting, looking young. Sting let Gwen sing along to a song he wrote back in his salad days. It undid a lot of the damage.
And the game itself? It was a real nail-biter, a classic for the ages. First one team had the ball, and then the other. You could hear the roar of the crowd, and the suspense kept you on the edge of your seat. Hell of a halftime show. You really should have seen it.
Umberto Eco sounds off (years ago) on the Mac / PC schism:
I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counter-reformist and has been influenced by the 'ratio studiorum' of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory, it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach — if not the Kingdom of Heaven — the moment in which their document is printed.(via Anna, who has just joined us.)
The weather forecast tonight said lows approaching -20 F (that's -29 C, for you metric people. At forty below, we meet), which is the coldest forecast we've had so far. The actual temperature in the mornings, when I dash out onto the porch in a fit of curiosity to read the thermometer, is usually a good five degrees below the forecast low. I don't know if this is some fluke of geography, or if the two dollar thermometer is out of its depth. I don't envy it the job.
At half past seven, the air is brilliant and shockingly clear. The sun is dazzling, just clearing the rooftops (soon it will warm the neighborhood to a toasty sixteen below), and it leaves long morning shadows. Thick trunks of wood smoke rise from chimneys all around our house, standing up in the air like some kind of cloud forest. The little hairs in my nose all freeze. It is very pretty for the sixteen seconds I can bear to be out and look at it.
When I go start the car half an hour later, it makes gastly wheezing sounds before turning over. Just getting the door open is an ordeal, everything creaks and moves as if the oil in its hinges has turned to molasses. Which of course it has. Smart people in the Dakotas have an electric plug snaking out of their engine block for mornings just like this, a heater plug they can use to thaw the engine out before trying to start it. I have to make do with clenched teeth and prayer. But it works.
The cold snap started three days ago. I was driving to work (temperature: eight degrees) and the weather forecaster came on to say that we could expect 'a sharp cold front' to bring temperatures down that afternoon. A cold front! Now that's winter.
Last year it was rainy and in the forties for much of January, with barely any snow.
Excellent. I've shaken off the casual readers with dull weather patter; back we go to China :
Our boat trip started from Chongqing after nightfall. The day-long tour of the city I described earlier ended in mild pandemonium on an embankment some two hundred yards from the river, a steep descent down a gravelly path to where a variety of riverboats floated off of a large pier. Our bus pulled up at the top of the slope and disgorged us all into the inevitable crowd of hawkers selling maps. If cartography is your thing, go straight to China. Mixed in with the map and Rolex crowd were wiry porters carrying big wooden dowels, yelling for the chance to sling our bags on down to the ship.
The boats were lit up and gorgeous down in the inky water. There were food stalls lined up along the pier, some of them quite extensive, and the cooking fires lit them with a devilish orange glow. The boats themselves were tricked out in neon and floodlights, reflecting in the murk and looking very cheerfuly seaworthy. There was all manner of bustle and commotion near the boats, but on the gravelly beach it was dark and quiet, and for a few minutes we crunched along in welcome silence. It was cool and still.
You can float down the Chang Jiang (more borrowed pictures) at any desired level of comfort. At the top of the top end are the foreigner-only custom liners, a gorgeous deluxe riverboat in the shape of a giant dragon, or one of several sleek wedding-cake cruise ships without even a hint of scary Asianness to it, an oasis of Western comfort for the terrified luxury traveller. A rung below are the Chinese luxury boats, with Astroturf sun decks and ornately lit dining rooms we would occasionally glimpse across the water through our own windows in the night. And at the bottom are the countless banana-curved coal and cargo barges, motoring upstream with a sooty crew and a wire hamper full of sooty vegetables out behind the crew quarters.
hors catégorie is the Soviet-built hydrofoil that would regularly zip pass us, going up and downriver both, shrouded in a cloud of mist. I think it was called the "Proton", but knowledgable third parties disagree.
Our own boat was in the middle-to-high category, modest but seaworthy, and so well stocked with kind people that it would be rude to try and find fault with its amenities. There were little decks at the bow and stern for watching the river, as well as a snack bar, restaurant, and a karaoke lounge upstairs. When you opened the front doors to go out and look at the river, there was a great wind tunnel effect all down the center corridor of the ship. The restaurant was Spartan but wonderful. I wish I had had the courage to enter the karaoke bar.
We missed the first event of the cruise, the five AM trip up to a landmark that was apparently worth getting up at five AM to see, and had to spend several anxious minutes explaining to the round-cheeked tour guide that we did not hold him to blame. There was this kind of ruckus whenever we missed a scheduled event — urgent explanations in sign language that we had missed a deadline, great helpless arm-wavings and apologetic smiles. We tried to convey, through our nuanced use of the word 'hao' (good), that we weren't going to call the embassy, and promised not to ignore future early-morning commotions, particularly when people stuck their heads in our cabin and yelled at us in Chinese to get up. We promised ourselves we wouldn't miss any more attractions.
All the rest of the day was spent in dutiful sightseeing, hopping off the boat to climb tall Taoist crags and wander through little villages, getting back on to float further downstream in the chil air. By the time night fell, and the boat pulled up to another spot, we had a hard time getting out of our bunks to go see. But the map said this was the White Emperor. It sounded important. The better half could not endure the thought of more cold night air, but her brother and I decided it had to be done.
Bundled up, shivering, we hopped out onto the pier with the other Chinese passengers, many of whom seemed to have hit the rice wine pretty hard at dinner. Our guide was up front, waving his guide flag, and distributing tickets to everyone in the group. When he got to us, he held out the tickets, then rapidly pulled them back and shook his head. We didn't get it. He did it again. "How much?", the brother said, pulling out his wallet. More head shaking, then rapid Chinese. The guide Shanghaied a tall, affable man who had been with us on the original bus tour in Chongqing to be his translator. The man knew a very few words of English, and after listening to the guide for a bit, turned to us with an apologetic smile.
"This place," he said affably, "Not for foreign friend."
The guide confirmed this with vigorous nodding.
I was baffled and suddenly dying to find out what was being kept from us — the White Emperor! But the guide was adamant. We were not to go. Our translator friend seemed perfectly content to remain on the pier with us, along with some other people we recognized from the bus tour. He himself was a stately business type in his late forties, a big man in a good dark suit, chain-smoking brand-name cigarettes. He seemed to be in a great mood, a little bit tipsy and content with the day, perfectly happy not to trudge up to see the White Emperor. It was clear he wanted to make us feel better.
"This place", he said, gesturing up at the mountain. "This place very important in Chinese history. Chinese emperor [Emperor's Name] stay here. White Emperor. Very important for Chinese people. Not for foreign friend." His gaze took in the majestic peak, lit up in the night.
Off in the mists we could see the hints of a high wall, and hear the loud chatter of the group making its way up the mountain. The air was thick with history. Our companion waved his arms broadly as he spoke, trying to convey to us the vast importance of what lay before us, the glory of it all.
He pointed to his friends, who were chatting on the pier nearby. "You stay because you are foreign friend. My friends and I, we stay because there is very much Chinese history. My friends and I, we are not interested."
I liked this man very much.
2:01 AMI have spent this Sunday sleeping and basking in the heat of our woodstove, trying to erase yesterday's furnace trauma from my mind. Reading my way through the Internet, I found 0format, land of a hundred updates, and spent the next hour devouring the site archive. Go forth and read that site, loyal reader, while I sit here and try to finish the interminable Chinese voyage for you. You'll forget all your ice-in-the-cat-dish broken furnace woes.
11:53 PMFor all my recent posts about China, I never actually wrote about the Three Gorges. Regular readers will remember that the Chinese government has built a gargantuan dam on the Chang Jiang river, which means that the spectacular gorges behind it will soon be mostly underwater. You're still not out of luck if you fancy a river cruise — it will take a good ten years to raise the water level by nearly 400 feet. Still, the reservoir is filling.
The gorges are spectacular. I had wanted to wait until I had some photos to post, since it seems a little reckless to rely on just my breathless prose style. But the pictures have been slow in coming, and time is passing. Thank goodness for the Internet: there are other people's photographs of the Three Gorges to look . at, and I can vouch for their verisimilitude.
Part of the allure of going to see the Gorges is the roundabout trip itself. Most people do like we did, and float down the river from Chongqing. It's like going to see the Grand Canyon from Denver — it takes two days to reach the first gorge.
The Chang Jiang is a silty and dark river, a huge dark snake of water from the Himalayas, and the passage through Chongqing doesn't make it any clearer. Even this far inland the river is prone to tremendous floods, so the houses and towns along its steep banks are built high above the water. This makes the place seem remote and gives you a weird impression of impending doom, as if the locals knew something you didn't about getting too close to the river.
Throughout our journey there was a persistent haze or mist on the water — some combination of November fog and industrial smoke — and it lent a dreamlike mood to the journey. You could look down at the water breaking against the prow of the boat and really know that it had come from the remote uplands of Sichuan and Tibet. Though the river is far along in its course, there is still wildness left in it at Chongqing. For now.
The people on the boat were wonderful. Apart from a Dutch couple in third class, we were the only foreigners on the boat — all the other passengers were Chinese, on vacation. There were probably a hundred people on the cruise with us. We had a second class cabin, with four bunks and a tiny bathroom that featured (against all hope, against all expectations) a Western-style toilet. The fourth bunk was occupied by a mysterious figure who arrived late at night and left before dawn — he later turned out to be an exquisitely considerate member of a larger group of travellers, leaving us to our own American ways except to sleep.
In addition to a sit-down toilet, our miniature bathroom also featured a shower, or rather a showerhead, mounted directly in the ceiling. I had to admire the economy of it — it seemed like something you would find in a microscopic European apartment, the kind of place with a refrigerator that doubles as a hot plate. To take a shower, you had to walk into the bathroom naked, close the door, and turn on the tap. Water would rush from the ceiling, cleaning you and the bathroom at the same time. When you were done, the water would seep out of a hole in the bottom of the floor, down into the third-class cabins below.
I wish I had had the courage to try the shower out, but I didn't. For one, it was November, and the boat was cold and drafty. For another, I had a sneaking suspicion about where the shower water came from (the water from the sink tap had a certain Chang Jiangness to it), and I didn't particularly want to test my theory. I also didn't want to lock myself in to a Chinese bathroom naked, while water poured from the ceiling. In short, I was chicken.
[...]
11:49 PMAlex Grants writes to suggest an English-language Venezuelan weblog, the Caracas chronicles, for the foreign section. Francisco Toro had to choose between writing for the New York Times and writing his weblog, and he made a brave choice. It's in English, the reporting is excellent, and it's a story you won't hear much about in the mainstream press.
8:51 AMIt is five degrees below zero this morning, but according to the weather site it "feels like -13". I don't want to know what -13 feels like (I have a strong suspicion it doesn't feel good), but I have to go start the car. The car is of a certain age and takes almost as long as I do to get ready for work.
Out the window I can see huge billows of white steam coming out of my wallet — I mean, out of my furnace. Brr!
7:24 AMI've been working with some of the many Movable Type weblogs I got this week, seeing how my search code works and scarfing down the content. I purposefully picked weblogs that had been running for years, and left the dates out of the search display. I'd heard people go on and on about the chains and shackles of reverse chronological order, and I thought I'd experiment with just reading things by topic.
Well, it doesn't work. I mean, the search itself works — you search on dog and get back results on dog — but what doesn't work is the links. By far the majority of weblog posts are short one-liners with a link in them. The next category after that is the tossed salad variety format — a paragraph full of loosely connected ideas built around pointers to interesting sites. Of course this is the whole point — we're supposed to be making a reasonable stab at hypertext — but it turns out the links are terribly brittle.
Reading these grizzled posts is like looking through an old scrapbook, where the writing is clear but the pictures have all bleached to white. The further back you go in the past, the fewer working links you can find. 'Permalinks' to other boggers get broken as people change ISPs, domain names, or software. Links to novelty sites and flavors of the month dry up; links to bubble-era dot coms have gone down with the ship. 'Permanent' links to news sites get retired to a polite 404 every time the software changes.
The irony here is that most of this content still exists. More things get moved around than disappear, and much of what is really gone still lives on in the Internet Archive. But the cost of finding that information skyrockets once a link goes down. Something as simple as a tabbed interface made a difference to thousands of web users because it became easier to open new links. By the same token, any rotted link throws up a wall to the user. Even a custom 404 with a good search box on it, guaranteed to find the content you are after, is no match for a working link. And very often the link is an integral part of the content. Just think of dear old Suck, itself now defunct, where the links were their own commentary. Try reading a few of their back issues from 1998 and see if you can find anything in that link graveyard.
The sad part is that these old sites and old posts aren't old by any meaningful standard. The oldest blog entry I've looked at dates from 1998, and the blogger who wrote it is still in his twenties. I have book reports from the fourth grade in a paper bag in my closet, but I can't find a silly Jakob Nielsen parody done two years ago.
We're so caught up in keeping track of who is linking to what just at the moment that we've neglected to think about what is going to remain of the "blogosphere" ten years from now. *Two* years from now, for many sites. The average half-life of a link on an education site is fifty-five months — less than five years. What do you think the figure is for weblogs? What do you think it will be for trackbacks, or site comments?
I keep thinking of the museum up in St. Johnsbury, where they have case after case of stuffed tiny birds, meticulously catalogued, with their feet glued to the branches and their feathers all falling out. And in the corner, a gigantic piebald moose. We need some better way of capturing the web for posterity than just a bunch of screenshots grabs, essential as they are. There's got to be a way to make our links less brittle.
12:36 AMThank you to all the people who have sent me their Movable Type blog files so far. I have received a lot of data, exactly what I asked for, and as soon as I have something useful to share, I will make sure to let you know. Like always in these kinds of projects, eighty percent of the work is hacking out a workable installer and update script. Luckily the twenty percent that is the hard part (the search engine) seems to be working well.
I got many wonderful letters in connection with the MT project, one of which came from an Italian journalist in Milan, Stefano Porro, who wrote to tell me he'd given me a link on Quintostato, which he described as "one of the most famous Italian blogs".
The letter made me happy in several ways. For one, I found the idea of a 'famous Italian blog' pretty damned exciting. Sure, there is microfame to be had online, that momentary thrill when you get added to a blogroll, or mentioned in print somewhere, but can bloggers actually get legitimately famous in this world? Is this page eventually going to get me into limousines and Armani? "Why... You're the guy with the green page, Idle Words, right? The guy who writes about plastic asses in Shanghai? Could you sign my breasts?"
I like it. I hope that's how it is in Milan.
The letter also made me happy because it reminded me that New York, California and the vast, arid dialup tundra are not all there is to the Internet. In fact, if you go visit quintostato, you'll see that they have a hell of a conversation going on about weblogs, open source, wireless, and all of the usual hot topics. Sure, it's in Italian, but with the help of Babelfish and lots of techspeak, it's not hard to suss things out. It's also extremely fun to read it straight up, and see phrases like "separazione tra contenuti e presentazione". Even I know that that is bene.
The conversations you can find on quintostato and other non-English tech blogs draw on many of the well-known discussion sites on our side of the ocean, but I never really see the converse taking place. I for one have kept myself pretty painfully ignorant of what's going on outside the English-speaking Internet.
So one of my resolutions for the New Year is to try and remember that it's a world-wide web, and get to know some weblogs in other countries. Quintostato is just the most recent of several curious non-English sites I've come across over the past few days. You might find some of these others interesting, if you speak the language — and if you know of good foreign weblogs to check out, please send me a note. I'm going to try and create a catchall non-English blogroll to add to the list, in the spirit of our beloved local restaurant in Rutland, which specializes in "international cuisine".
Here is our menu so far:
That snippet of SQL is kind of the whole point. English is the language of computing, and for better or worse is going to stay that way. On the one hand, that's a big advantage for those of us who are native speakers; on the other, it holds us back. Bloggers from abroad participate in our sites and know a lot about what's happening on the English Internet — they don't have much of a choice, since so much of what's online is in English. We don't get that same kind of kick in the pants to broaden our horizons. In fact, because so many foreigners online do speak English, we can stay complacent and never really notice that we're missing out on something.
But we are. For one thing, fame in Italy! And damn, does it feel good to see yourself called "Il Programmatore".
11:49 PMIf you run a weblog using Movable Type, I have a small favor to ask of you.
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This is the worst time of year for a lot of people in New England; even though the days are getting fractionally longer, for some reason it's in mid-January that the seasonal blues kick in the hardest. Part of it is having to drive home from work well after dark, with the steering wheel all freezing cold — I have a hunch that two thirds of "seasonal affective disorder" has to do with having a cold steering wheel. The remaining third comes from getting snow in your sneakers.
Driving back home in the pitch blackness today, I heard a fun interview with the outgoing governor of Maine, Angus King. I have always had a soft spot for the man, who ran as an independent and was a very popular governor. A lot of people in the tech crowd may have heard of his biggest project, giving every middle school student in Maine a laptop (iBook). Whatever your politics, King is a thoroughly likable human being, so I was delighted to discover his plan after leaving office is to circumnavigate the United States in a big RV with his family. How many ex-governors are out on the open road, I wonder? Can't you just picture Bill Clinton driving down the back roads of Arkansas in a Camaro, slowing down for the ladies?
King's daughter Molly has started a website to chronicle their travels. There's not much on it yet, but it's worth a click just to see the floor plan of the massive land yacht they purchased for the trip (no doubt paid for by kickbacks from Apple). These babies are turning into real rolling hotel suites — you notice it most in Vermont in October, when RVs converge on the state to catch the leaf season, which for me coincides perfectly with road rage season, six weeks spent looking at the back panels of Winnebago trailers doing twelve miles an hour. A sticker for each state they've visited! And look, a Jesus fish! BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM...
The real miracle is that King's rolling palazzo actually gets ten miles to the gallon, which is considerably more than my house can do. And I envy him the ability to just roll into nicer weather.
Our own ex-governor, Howard Dean, is taking the more conventional route and running for President. He's a good guy — wish him luck, and think about supporting him if you're a Democrat.
10:13 PMBecause part of my plan for financial independence hinges on getting a windfall of $300,000, I made sure to get a ticket for the PowerBall drawing on my way to Maine over Christmas. I'm not usually a gambling sort of guy, but the jackpot was nearly $300 million, comfortably over the amount I require, and the drawing was to be held on Christmas Day. It sounded like the right present for me.
Winning numbers are drawn at 11 P.M. Eastern time, but it took me over ninety minutes to actually get the winning numbers over the Internet. When I finally got through to the lottery websites the next day, I understood why. Every state lottery webmaster, along with the web savants manning PowerBall headquarters itself, seemed to have gone through the same thought process:
Yes siree, the Powerball web page clocks in at 183K, has duplicate <html> tags and no <body> tag, and dies every Wednesday night at 11:00:01 PM. In fact, so do the other state lottery websites. They contain twenty bytes worth of useful information, but none of them can handle the load. Instead, they go down each week, during the only time anyone has a need for them.
I don't know how long they stay down, because I got lucky and found the winning numbers on the AP news wire.
I also found this wonderful guide to choosing winning numbers. It would have given my high school math teacher a stroke. They keep stats of which numbers have been "hot", and tell you the best ticket to play.
Me, I always play 1,2,3,4,5,6, just to piss everyone off should I win.
It snowed all last night, a good six inches of beautiful light powder, and because I am a lazy bum, I did not get out to shovel my walk until after dark, when it was time to go fetch dinner at the grocery store. Usually when the snow falls before dawn, the sun has all day to press it down into a sodden white slab, and the shoveling is hard. Tonight, though, the shoveling was effortless. It was like moving pixie dust around, little bits of it sparkling in the darkness, and falling down my collar.
Weblogs are an urban sort of phenomenon. Just like hip-hop, we have the west coast school and the east coast school, albeit with far fewer shootings, and the concomitant fixation on San Francisco and New York living. It does tend to give the community a terribly urban bias (and the reason is this: it's hard to be a net junkie without broadband, and you can't get broadband outside the major cities. This isn't South Korea). But I will pretend I am the Verlyn Klinkenborg of weblogging, and enjoy my snowdrifts and blissful winter quiet.
I just wish the better half would come home so we can make a snow pig.
11:06 PMA new look for the New Year. One of my resolutions was to be standards-compliant.
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I've been poring through old books since Christmas. The house my mother recently bought is full of them. The former owners were a physics professor and his wife, who were avid members of the Book of the Month club, and had a pretty keen interest in current events. That was back before their current events became our history. The professor also had a passionate interest in model trains, but he took the room-sized layout with him.
Many of the titles date from the cold war, and have a campy feel to them that is hard to resist. Lots of lurid dust jackets, and splashy red maps with barbed wire on the borders. So I was filled with ironic intent when I started leafing through Crusade in Europe, Eisenhower's memoir of the European war.
All my perceptions of Eisenhower have been shaped by received wisdom and the occasional PBS documentary on the nuclear age. I knew that he was President for most of the supposedly stultifying fifties, I had read the "Gettysburg address in Eisenhowerese", and I knew that the man had picked Nixon as his veep. Not too promising. I suppose I also I assumed his WWII career had consisted of attending long meetings far behind the lines, making sure the troops were fed, and looking for room on his chest to pin another medal.
Reading his memoir has been chastening. Not only does Eisenhower turn out to be a most eloquent man (with a wonderful, formal style), but it is clear from reading the account of the European and African campaigns that he was a very great man, as well as a skilled commander. What impressed me most in his book, which could so easily have been a stroll down Ego Lane, was Eisenhower's relentless insistence on deflecting credit from himself onto his fellow commanders, subordinates, and the soldiers who ultimately won the war. There are several wonderful occasions for self-promotion (Eisenhower showed great physical courage during several key battles), but these he passes over completely. His modesty is pretty terrifying for a self-promoter like me. Even when faced with incompetence or callous misbehavior by officers in his command, he finds a way to draw lessons and see through wrong behavior to the individual within.
The only time Eisenhower's empathy fails him is in discussing Hitler. For him the author exudes a profound hatred, both for prolonging the war after defeat was certain, and for conceiving the "horror camps", which Eisenhower visited for many hours but is unable to describe.
Reading this book made it all the more jarring to come across this photo for sale on the New York Times website — it's a D-Day shot of an attacking American soldier crawling onto the beach at Normandy, and somehow seeing it being marketed as an art object at $2500 a pop seems both disrespectful and wrong.
Luckily we have the Washington Post to save the day, with an article on World War II reenactors fighting an annual, abbreviated Battle of the Bulge in Pennsylvania. "The Germans have won the toss, and they will be attacking".
Input:
Dawn, 22nd Century
The Private Life of the Brain
Output:
Bioinformatics 101
A short tutorial on bioinformatics
The Vanishing Point
In my former life, I was a painter.
Searching Unstructured Data
A primer on latent semantic indexing and its use in navigating unstructured data
Shot Put:
Live Audio:
Glyphs:
maciej@ceglowski( eat flaming death, spambot! ).com'
Not so idle:
Anil Dash
New York City's finest. An all-you-can-eat content buffet - be sure to try the links!
Rabbit Blog
Heather Havrilesky, rejecting anonymous Internet marriage proposals since 1998.
Textism
Our man in France, and the world's handsomest weblog.
Nobody's Doll
The better half, who is also a better writer. Also damned foxy, if you ask me.
Megnut
The grande dame of weblogs. And if she posts a recipe, jump on it.
0format
Milk may shoot out of your nose.
Scrubbles
Posters, books, design, bric-a-brac. Smart writing.
Lawrence Lessig
Now all we need is guns and money.
Steven Johnson
Steven Johnson has been helping me test drive some search engines.
BoingBoing
Dim Sum for the mind.
Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About
I have no words fit to describe this link.
Semant-O-Matic
A demo semantic search engine for blogs. Someday I'd like to build a real one