Fungible Convictions

Wife went to western Mass. yesterday for a day-long workshop. Returned with these:

Available year-round at Atkins Farms, 1150 West Street, Amherst, MA

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You yell from one room to the other, to your husband, “I was just talking to my mother on the phone. We found out our family history is totally different than what we thought. Our name was changed. My last name is made up. My great-grandfather was actually Polish and not Irish and changed his name to be able to get a job. God. I’m stunned. We’re all stunned. I’m not sure who I am now.”

You hear him yell back, “So, like, where are my genes?”

“Exactly!” you say. You start to continue the conversation in depth as you walk into the other room. You see him folding the laundry.

“The new button-fly ones,” he says. “They didn’t make it into the wash. Now, what were you saying?”

You punch him in the back of the head. Because he’s too awesome.

The wife is all excited because I just published a piece for PBS MediaShift’s Idea Lab blog about how really smart people, like Cliff Stoll, got the potential for internet-based news so wrong. I guess I’m excited too, except that because it’s such a challenge to get my busy colleagues to publish at Idea Lab like they’re obliged to, I know I’ll be the one volunteering to pick up the slack. (But that’s where good opportunities come from.) Funniest part about it–by virtue of working for the Center for Future Civic Media, I get to have “2007 Knight News Challenge Winner” below my name on the site.

Clifford Stoll Was Wrong, But Internet is Far From Perfect

The 1995 version of Cliff Stoll can take intellectual, if not actual, comfort in the fact that all of these new methods of access haven’t resulted in greater “source diversity” or better news comprehension. Americans haven’t increased the number of sources they routinely check — and yet they feel overwhelmed by those they do. The study found that:

Despite all of this online activity, the typical online news consumer routinely uses just a handful of news sites and does not have a particular favorite. And overall, Americans have mixed feelings about this “new” news environment. Over half (55%) say it is easier to keep up with news and information today than it was five years ago, but 70% feel the amount of news and information available from different sources is overwhelming.

In other words, rather than Stoll’s predicted “wasteland of unfiltered data,” the Internet today is more like the Big City, where residents can feel deeply connected to their neighbors, while at the same time being wary of ever asking “Who else is out there?” — because the answer is overwhelming.

Read the full post at PBS.org. Next up for that blog, I’m 99% sure, will be a post that cites the Southpark “Underpants Gnomes” episode. I’m sure they’ll ask me to stop after that.

Before the wife and friends and I go out to enjoy the birthday ridiculousness of Hot Tub Time Machine, I wanted to post one of the all-time great grounding poems. I’ve read this to myself the last few birthdays in fact. Certainly it’s difficult not to find the poem terribly sad; but it’s not sad. It’s a way of looking ahead honestly, to the ledger that some angel will have in front of him, with more in the “+” column than in the “-”.

“A Brief for the Defense”
Jack Gilbert

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

From Refusing Heaven (2005)

Today I’m 30.

A few people have asked if it makes me feel old.

I respond, “I was born old.” I enjoy going to bed early. I wake up early. I watch 60 Minutes. I wear the same wool cap my sixty-year-old father and ninety-year-old grandfather do. I drink scotch and fret about my retirement fund and can cite 1989 baseball starting lineups better than those from 2009*.

30 is the new 60 is the new prime.

* 1989 Baltimore Orioles, off the top of my head vs. actual…

Off the Top of My Head

1. Phil Bradley, CF
2. Mike Devereaux, LF
3. Cal Ripken, Jr., SS
4. Mickey Tettleton, C
5. Larry Sheets, DH
6. Joe Orsulak, RF
7. Craig Worthington
8. Randy Milligan, 1B
9. Billy Ripken, 2B

Opening day starting pitcher: Jeff Ballard

Actual (via http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/BAL/1989.shtml

1. Phil Bradley, CF (correct)
2. Mike Devereaux, LF (correct)
3. Cal Ripken, Jr., SS (correct)
4. Mickey Tettleton, C (correct)
5. Larry Sheets, DH (correct)
6. Joe Orsulak, RF (correct)
7. Craig Worthington (correct)
8. Randy Milligan, 1B (correct)
9. Billy Ripken, 2B (correct)

Open day starter: Dave Schmidt (incorrect)

One thing is humbling for sure: I’m older today than all but one of those players was in ‘89.

The last week or so have been a set of downright pleasant days. Shall we count the ways:

• Baseball’s position players reported to spring training yesterday
• I exchanged awesome emails with the wife of the late jazz great Charles Mingus
• We caught my friend Walter’s really excellent show at the Armory Cafe in Somerville
• We hung out with friends at Toad a couple nights later
• My wife gave me an early birthday present of a high-priced Invictus wristwatch bought for a preposterously low price
• And I wasn’t immediately shot down when I floated the idea of going to Chicago on the Center for Future Civic Media’s dime to present projects to high schoolers who happen to be students of one of my best friends

It’s like I’m Gatsby and life is a squirrel, and we’re just waiting for the right moment to attack and/or spoon each other.

It’s a lot better than the week or two prior, which was capped off by a scream from the bathroom as my wife accidentally discharged a loaded heart-shaped Valentine’s liquid soap:

Lindsay and I are just returning from dinner with an old grad school friend, whom we love but inexcusably haven’t seen in years. There’s not much to say other than, when you’re someone who once lost his memory, it’s great to have people around you that act as a thread to your own past.

Speaking of, Lindsay and I also have an online friend who helped us through our tougher times, someone I have lots in common with by coincidence, and she recently did a very nice thing for us, which has put her squarely on our list of people we want to visit if we can ever get out for a vacation to California. Which would be a heck of a trip: we’d see my sister-in-law, my wife’s best friend, two of my best high school friends, my college roommate, another close college friend, and probably a few other people I’m forgetting. Perhaps it’s even a chance for us to drive cross-country in our 1991 Ford Explorer and push it into the Pacific, except that it has absolutely no sign of ever dying. It would just drive itself out of the sea and say, “That was fun. Can we go back to the snow in Boston now?”

Ah, laser pointers. Is there any more entertaining way to mess with your dog?

When we first started playing with the laser pointer, we felt kinda bad, like we were breaking Gatsby’s brain. But then we realized she knows exactly what’s happening and just enjoys the fruitless chase.

Congratulations, Devon and Courtney, on your first lit’lun.

At times like these, I’m always reminded of a touching family story, first told upon the occasion of my own birth:

My mother: “GREG, IT HURTS!”
My father: “Well…that’s what you came here for.”

I’m currently enjoying some rare downtime, lying in bed with the dog and watching the Wake/UVA game. It’s been a ridiculous month, filled with:

• My Center’s response to the Haiti earthquake, which has resulted, mainly through Chris’s work, in coverage from BoingBoing, the New York Times, and lots of other outlets.
• A Project Management course at Harvard University’s Extension School, a class that ate up 2pm-5pm most days the last three weeks, plus hours of group work each night.
• The demoralizing loss of Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat to Republican Scott Brown, seriously curtailing what’s possible in health care reform
• Unexpected interest from my neurologist in the lightheadedness I sometimes have, requiring me to do a four-day EEG next weekend, which means I’ll be stuck at home looking like this:



• Needing to throw together some presentations—with great help from MIT colleagues—for a group of high school honors students on a tour through Boston
• Packing my office for our move from 14N to the old Media Lab building
• And planning my IAP course, materials for which are now posted at http://fungibleconvictions.com/web-typography.

But I have to say, this crazy month has been pretty fun. It’s the first time I’ve been reminded of my favorite, exhausted days from high school, when having little spare time meant I stayed mentally engaged, and being among colleagues who also had little spare time meant we stayed engaged with each other. We all end up doing things we’re not exactly prepared or qualified to do but find fun in it and end up doing it well. (One more dorky highlight: I got in touch with Robin Kelley, author of the Thelonious Monk book I’ve been praising, and one of the profs in my department was a researcher with him and wants to get him to MIT for a talk.)

All the same, it’s a quiet afternoon, watching basketball, half-reclined as I count down the next hour before leaving for the North End for good food with my wife, dad, and step-mom. Things are good.