The Atlantic Monthly's September issue has an interesting, lengthy article on the early admissions process for college and how it has placed top schools at a disadvantage to ... Harvard. Because Harvard is typically the top choice for a student applying to the top notch colleges, the early acceptance and early decision processes have made life difficult for the other top schools. Also, the article supplies data to show how early acceptance has made the admissions process unfair for students and colleges (that aren't Harvard), and claims that some colleges are depending more on SATs instead of less so that their rankings and reputation can go up. I can't begin to try to explain it all here, but it was an interesting, if somewhat scary, look into the college admissions process. The Atlantic has also republished an article from 1892, The Present Requirements for Admission to Harvard, which was meant to assure people that Harvard's shift from memorized knowledge to assessment of reasoning ability in their admission criteria did not mean that the college had lowered its standards. I hope they didn't have to write something similar when they started finally giving women diplomas with Harvard on them instead of Radcliffe.
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Sister Wendy has made it to the United States, and she presents artwork from six U.S. museums in the latest installment of her PBS series. Her knowledge of the art and its creation is full of depth. And she's amusing too. It's difficult to believe that she lives in solitude amongst the cloistered Carmelite nuns (she's a sister of Notre Dame herself).
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Thursday, August 30, 2001

A legendary airplane ends its Air Force One life. Yesterday, Bush took his first and only ride in the historic Boeing 707, a short hop from San Antonio to Waco where others who had been on more memorable rides greeted it for a retirement ceremony. Nixon's pilot, Reagan's pilot, and George Bush's pilot bid the plane farewell. Airliner.net photos of the plane.
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I have been slowly accumulating girls' series books, trying to stay away from the very well known ones and instead picking up more obscure ones. Of course nothing is obscure on the 'net, so I've found bits of info on each of them. My rationale for collecting these books was reflected clearly in the statement made by the Powell's bookbuyer who rang us up. He said "I couldn't figure out who would want to buy these and read them." They are, indeed, incredibly dated, and that is why they are so interesting to me. The blatant sexism and racism of earlier eras is fading now, but in order to appreciate where we are, it's important to remember where we came from. My latest finds include The Meadow-Brook Girls In the Hills, Betty Wales Junior, the Peggy Lane Theater series (surprisingly well written), and my favorite series title of all (though the writing seems to make use of an overly abundant gush of adverbs) Polly the Powers Model and The Puzzle of the Haunted Camera.
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Wednesday, August 29, 2001

The New Yorker has a nice item about David Letterman's cue card guy. He inks and holds the cue cards. And he always laughs at the jokes, because he's in Letterman's line of vision.
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How do colleges select roommates? At UT Austin, students fill out an online form of preferences. Davidson College goes beyond the call of duty, using a Myers-Briggs personality type test and family backgrounds, in addition to the usual preferences. My first year at college, we discovered that the incoming students in our dorm had been assigned to rooms alphabetically. We were in perfect alphabetical order within the dorm (not within the entire incoming class though). Our theory was that since we were in the "co-ed" dorm (Wellesley, a women's college, had male students living on campus through the college exchange program), and we had all checked off the "I don't mind living in a dorm with male students" question on the roommate form, we had been quickly lumped together and roomed alphabetically. It wasn't any better or worse than other rooming systems. (via LTSeek)
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Tuesday, August 28, 2001

Between packing boxes and gift boxes I think the cat has sat inside more boxes this past month than she's ever seen in her life. And right now she's sitting inside a glass bowl. Too darn cute.
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Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is like Kevin Smith's version of The Muppet Movie with a bit of The Great Muppet Caper thrown in too. That doesn't mean little kids should go see it, of course.
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From the Journal of Mundane Behavior, a social experiment, The Bride, Off Duty. A woman dressed in bridal finery goes about her business, getting money at an ATM, walking the dog, pumping gas. In the wrong context, and without a groom, the bride elicits suspicion, congratulations, requests for photos, compliments. Is there a costume that carries more emotional identification than a bridal gown?
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Monday, August 27, 2001

Thanks everyone for all the congratulatory links and email. We have returned from a mega bookshopping trip that involved us visiting every single Portland location of Powell's. When the weather cleared (coincidentally) we visited Mount St. Helens. Some day I'll get all our photos web consumable.
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If I wanted to study stressful driving, I'd pick Boston too. Of course MIT is already ideally located for that, and Rosalind Picard's continued research into discerning human emotions has a study focused on producing a car that can analyze its driver's stress level. Partially funded by automakers (isn't it nice when you can get a corporation to pay for your research and it's for good, not evil?), the hope is that the car can calm the driver down when necessary. Or perhaps it can just tell other cars to get the heck out of the way.
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HumanMarkup Language "seeks to embed human characteristics within data, through XML." It's an interesting and ambitious concept. I'm trying to imagine what it would be like if I could mark a phrase in my weblog as being sarcastic, and have a reader's browser indicate it as such. My writing style would certainly be different, perhaps not for the better, if the intended mood could be sent over the wire in addition to the words. A better example of an application for an emotional markup would be avatars, like the newsreader Ananova who already interprets XML in order to convey the proper emotional look for a news story. A scary example is a website with a laugh track. Perhaps this concept will help cross cultural boundaries. But the reality is, even if I find something funny and mark it as such, not everyone will. So it's a communication device that says "this is what I think", not "this is how you should think." Which is, perhaps, always the proper way to communicate. (from a New Scientist item)
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Tuesday, August 21, 2001

We're married. Everyone and everything was wonderful.
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Saturday, August 18, 2001

(Special "bored while waiting for friends to arrive from the airport" entry): I'm enjoying the extra verbiage that is now appearing under the ratings in the movie ads. You can play "guess which movie" when reading them aloud. "PG-13, Western Violence", "PG-13, Action, violence, language, and some sexual material", "R, Strong sexual content, crude humor, language and drinking", "PG-13, Thematic elements and frightening moments". Those movies are, in order, American Outlaws, Rush Hour 2, American Pie 2 (you got that one, right?), and The Others. Unfortunately the one in the Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back ad is too tiny to read. And I'm too tired to look it up. But I bet it's good.
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Friday, August 17, 2001

The wedding frenzy is upon us. I'm taking a needed break from updating here. I shall return in a week or so. Until then, make sure to enjoy some time away from the computer with someone you care about. Or a good book. Or both.
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Wednesday, August 15, 2001

Personal news: My honor attendant's mother passed away today. It was sudden, unexpected, and therefore a complete shock to everyone. I feel a bit disrespectful plastering the news here on my weblog, but this is the best place for me to express, in public, my dismay and sadness. And writing has always been a part of my healing process.

Needless to say, my honor attendant and I were best friends for the longest of times. We don't see each other much now and our paths have drifted apart, but our friendship was so tight and close that we were each a part of the other's family. So her mother's death has ripped me into two sides. First side: if this had been any other week, and I mean any other week, I would be on the plane home to be there with her. But I'm getting married on Sunday and, even if I wanted to, there's no way she and her mom would allow me to derail our wedding. Second side: I am hating that my best friend from childhood is not going to be able to share our wedding day. But, again, there are just too many people and logistics involved to do anything about that.

Ultimately, the beautiful gift her mother has left us is the importance of perspective. What life means and what love means. The wedding itself means little. It is the marriage, family, and community that truly matters.
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Tuesday, August 14, 2001

NASA's Helios may be the next new-fangled solution for "last-mile" broadband. At 1,850 pounds it can take off at an amazing 30mph, fly at an altitude of 100,000 miles, and recharges with solar power. Subscribers would use a satellite dish for access. Most surprising? "Helios' 'brain' is an Apple Computer Macintosh computer." Our skies could be layered with all sorts of transportation and telecommunications equipment soon.
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What a revelation: pink was once a masculine color for boys and blue for girls. Take a look at this pink-trimmed sailor suit from the Smithsonian's online exhibit HistoryWired. "...the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger color is more suitable for the boy; while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl." Have we flip-flopped back yet?
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Monday, August 13, 2001

The Seattle Opera is in the midst of their ambitious Ring Cycle performances. Their Siegfried injured his leg, so his understudy lip-synced the role while the hurt tenor sang from a chair. That's Wagnerian drama for you.
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There are services that will watch a domain name registration "around-the-clock" and snap it up for you if it becomes available. For a nice fee of course. There are probably some rather decent ones coming up for renewal nowadays. If only we could make money off of them.
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The Classic Gaming Expo was this past weekend. Take a look at the speaker list for a trip back to how things used to be done. The Wired News writeup makes the interesting point that while modern games can take days to master, the classic games take just minutes to learn and are just right for a quick diversion. I dunno about that. It's true that you can easily pick up an older game, but it's the addiction factor that is the true time sink, not the ramp up time.
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Friday, August 10, 2001

I bookmarked Curl Corporation over a year ago because I noticed some high profile MIT types were involved with it. At the time, I didn't know what they were up to, but they are starting to get some press. It involves a new language and a different business model (charging companies for each byte of it downloaded). I haven't looked closely at the language, but it aims to combine the best of hypertext markup capabilities and the object-oriented ease of Java. And application download time is supposed to be fast. At least they are being realistic about having a business model, but the results have got to be extremely compelling for companies to sign on for that type of payment and a new technology to ramp up with.
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I'm only linking to The Google Store to point out that the link in it says "Take me to the store. I'm feeling shoppy." "feeling shoppy??" That just doesn't work as well as their "I'm feeling lucky" slogan.
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Paint the Moon, an incredibly optimistic project to get millions of people to point their laser pointers at the moon at the same time to create a visible field of color. It probably won't work, but that's not the ... point. (via memepool)
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Thursday, August 09, 2001

Housekeeping update: This site may be down temporarily for a couple days. The server is moving, our IP address is changing, things need to propagate, etc. And then I'll take some time off around the wedding (which is August 19th). (These two items are not actually related to each other since I don't host my own server. I know, what kind of girlhacker am I? One with much more well-informed geek friends.)
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Here is the fascinating story of the quest to burn a NeXT Cube. Well written (as it should be) by technology writer Simson L. Garfinkel, it conveys the drama and suspense of a journey to fulfill his dream of burning the entire magnesium case of the original NeXT cube. Magnesium produces a brilliant white flame, that is if you can manage to set it on fire. By the end of the tale, the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory is involved, raindrops threaten, and a grand metaphor for NeXT's demise has a physical manifestation. (via /usr/bin/girl)
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Thank goodness someone finally updated the MIT Gallery of Hacks. I'd been waiting patiently, and stopped checking just in time for them to catch up as best as they could. There's been some clever activity in the past few years. Making the elevators in the student center announce the floors is probably the most electronically clever one. Wile E. Coyote is quite cute. And there appears to have been a continuing theme of black monoliths for the Class of 2001. I hope there's more to come soon! I want photos of the parachuting beavers!
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Wednesday, August 08, 2001

News to me: there is actually a major league baseball player of Chinese descent (I'd say "finally!", but I haven't researched if he's the first one). Bruce Chen, born in Panama, is a new addition to the NY Mets and just threw seven shutout innings for them. Excellent.
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Will the lights on my cable modem and router ever cease their incessant blinking? The Code Red worm has been merrily requesting away for days and days. Perhaps if it goes through the holidays, I'll hook up my Christmas lights to blink the traffic outside my firewall.
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Someone is actually taking on radio giant Clear Channel in court. Not surprisingly, the big gorilla has been throwing its weight around. They own concert promotion companies who would, of course, prefer to have their acts featured on their radio stations. And the radio stations give preferential treatment to their sister promotion companies. It's nothing earth shattering in the dirty world of the entertainment industry (or many other industries). But the small promotions firm Nobody in Particular Presents is fighting back with a lawsuit charging anticompetitive business practices. It unfortunately takes a lot of law to create a free market.
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Tuesday, August 07, 2001

Home of the Underdogs is a site devoted to underrated PC games. The listings by year are fun. I completely forgot that IBM, as the original PC manufacturer, used to publish games to help entice people away from the Apple ][. They also list old operating systems. DR DOS anyone? (thanks brig!!)
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Japan realizes they are behind in the scientific world, so one of their few Nobel Laureates is devising a plan to get them back on track. In a NY Times article, Dr. Hideki Shirakawa offers an explanation for a cultural lack of individual initiative: "Fundamentally, Japanese culture is based on rice farming. Rice cultivation requires a lot of water, and water must be shared evenly by everyone. Planting rice also required teams of people walking from row to row, at the same speed. And all of this has meant that uniqueness had to be suppressed." Peer reviews don't work well because colleagues don't wish to openly criticize each other's work. The ministry is trying to create a more competitive atmosphere and upward mobility, but they are fighting a strong culture. Perhaps there's a way to work within the current system? There's some irony in the reality that Japan as a country feels competitive enough to want to keep up with the U.S. and other countries in scientific advancement, and yet that lack of competitiveness within their scientific community is what they believe is holding them back.
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Monday, August 06, 2001

I used to rave about the spray gel (for styling hair) that you could get at a certain salon in the Boston area, and I just never found anything similar out here. The key ingredient was gelatin, and it wasn't until I did a web search that I realized I could make my own spray gel by dissolving plain gelatin in water. "Duh", said I.
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I've been enjoying the Not Martha weblog. It's been charming (and I don't mean "charming" in a real estate-speak "this house is so charming none of your furniture will fit in it" kind of way). The author "trolls Martha Stewart so you don't have to" (a very Good Thing(tm) in my book), actually accomplishes the crafts she relates (try making your own lip balm!) and gets the projects down to their basics -- especially by not paying Martha prices for kits of repackaged goods you can get elsewhere much more economically. Parts of our wedding planning are like one big long crafts project, so this has been a comforting place to visit.
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The John Hughes Files includes some interesting trivia on those classic '80s teen films. The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink trivia is especially interesting. John Cusack and Judd Nelson were both up for the role of Bender in TBC, but Cusack didn't look "threatening" enough. I'd agree. Parts of Pretty in Pink were filmed in the same high school as Grease. (via Yahoo's Weekly Picks)
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Friday, August 03, 2001

McWhorter's is being partially rescued from extinction! Yippee! It was unfortunate that their stores, reportedly profitable, had to suffer from their parent company's bankruptcy. It has been very inconvenient lately trying to find nice things at the office superstores or hoping a Hallmark store had what we needed.
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I'm a sucker for books marked "annotated edition", "critical edition", and sometimes "definitive edition". Here's an article on a new edition of Huckleberry Finn. U.C. Berkeley researchers studied the original manuscript and Twain's letters to try to undo the work of well-meaning proofreaders and typists' errors. Other critical works I've made note of are The Annotated Alice, which is wonderfully done by Martin Gardner, The Annotated Wizard of Oz, which I haven't taken a close look at yet, and The Diary of Anne Frank: The Critical Edition, which I'm waiting for a cheaper copy of; in the meantime I've got The Definitive Edition.
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Thursday, August 02, 2001

We now have a wedding license. It's good for 90 days and can be used anywhere in California. The clerk seemed surprised that we had filled it out beforehand. Yay for downloadable PDF files. Oh, and they didn't mention in their copious web information that we were going to have to raise our right hands and take an oath swearing or affirming that the information we filled out was true. Luckily there's that "to the best of our knowlege" clause.
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Typically for celebrity photos, the photographer takes a tight shot with few other photographers in view. Compare this photo of Paula Poundstone greeting a baby to one where she is under the intense scrutiny of a dozen or more cameras: What it's like to be a celebrity.
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Heather Mills got a sapphire engagement ring too. I finally saw a clear shot of it and I think mine is a lot prettier. They don't photograph very well though. I've captured mine in many different shades of blue, none as beautiful as the actual color. Her nails are a lot nicer than mine though. Looks like she buffs 'em. And hey, did Paul get a ring too?
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In researching the recent news that Heinz is introducing purple ketchup, I discovered that they chose between orange, purple, hot pink and yellow. I'd prefer hot pink to purple, but I prefer red to anything else. But then, I'm not their target market.
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Wednesday, August 01, 2001

Here's an excerpt from Chinese American Personality and Mental Health. Although I've spent plenty of time considering various nuances of the psychological conflict of living in American culture while being raised in a different one, I hadn't boiled the results down into three boxes, as these researchers did. They have the Traditionalist who has adopted Chinese values, Marginal Man who has become essentially American, and Asian American who has developed a coalesced identity. I wonder what other types the researchers developed. Gender should really be a key variable in a report like this, something glossed over in this excerpt. Perhaps I should find the source article (which is also 30 years old, so that's another factor) so I feel less itchy about this one.
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The article Bad writers never had it so good tells the tale of a revival in interest of late mystery writer Harry Stephen Keeler's books. The Internet, it seems, has upped the demand for books by bad writers. Not just any bad writers, though, apparently these ones are admired for their uniquely awful style, coining awkward phrases, using terrible punctuation gimmicks. They are the eccentrics of the writing world, and online booksellers are cashing in (I don't think the authors are making any money on the used books sales, after all). I feel like I've discovered the collectible kitsch of the book world.
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