annals of spacetime

idiocracy, interrupted

2012-01-18T02:52:00.004-05:00

Today, the Internet is protesting a House bill called the Stop Online Piracy Act, which is purportedly aimed at wiping out online piracy but which, as written, would actually open the government and certain private parties to completely altering the way the Internet, digital commerce, and digital citizenship work. For a non-lawyer, I know a fair amount about this particular bill, what it actually says and doesn't say, thanks to my having family with intimate knowledge of both Internet and intellectual property law. It all started two months ago, when I received a phone call from said family. It was a distress call the likes of which I hadn't heard in quite some time. The fam was lamenting the fact that these two pieces of legislation, SOPA and PIPA, were flying through Congress with bipartisan support, and they were absolutely insane and ridiculous, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. "SOPA?" I asked, honestly not sure whether he was talking about a new law governing cleansing products. "What the hell is that?"

He then told me all about it, and I got hot and bothered, to the point of wanting to do something. So I tweeted. And he doesn't tweet, but he talked to people. And as is wont to happen, those people talked to other people. It seemed clear that from the community of those who had figured it out, a discussion would need to grow—and fast—were there any shot at stopping this thing. So it was awesome to see that it did begin to grow, in ways little and not-so-little.

Before long, I found myself watching hours and hours of the House Judiciary Committee's SOPA markup, which...is not like me at all. Let's face it: Much as I care about American politics, C-Span is pretty much where I draw the line. But to quote my friends from down South, hooeeeey boy! Was that an eye-opener. Washington Post commentator Alexandra Petri likened it to waking up from a nightmare only to realize the nightmare is real. Right-o. See, I've known for a long time that things in Congress are bad. But this was embarrassing. I listened for about eight hours, and the quickie version goes like this: The vast majority of the folks voting on this thing don't have a clue about what they're voting on. They huff and haw and bandy about words they think make sense but which, in fact, make no sense at all.

Which is kind of what you'd expect if every member of Congress were somehow Sarah Palin. But of course, and very thankfully, this is not (I think) the case. So what's really the problem, it would seem, can be summed up in two words: Lobbying. Money.

Taking a step back, we have to agree that here's a situation where almost everyone is on the same side: Foreign thieves stealing American goods is bad! We should stop them! Yet the bills were written not by people who carefully weighed all the factors and players in this game and crafted a plan of attack that would get to the core of the problem while protecting other American interests. Nope, the bills were (as is the norm these days) written by people who pay Congressfolk to vote the way they want them to vote. In this case, that would be Hollywood and other Big Content Providers who feel the need to stop at nothing to try to save their dying business models—even if it means spending over $2.5 million in legalized bribery or screwing with the First Amendment along the way.

The truly weird thing about this case, though, has been the bipartisan nature of it. You wouldn't bat an eyelash if it were all Republicans, since they like to slide crazy stuff through Congress ALL. THE. TIME. (I’ll spare you the links, but trust me on this one.) Usually, there are Democrats to push back. This time, however, the hot-shot movie producers and such who pony up big cash for the Dems each November are the ones trying to slip this legislation through—and they’ve paid off both sides of the aisle. The approach seemed to work pretty well until the tech sector and intellectual property experts started asking questions. And that brings me to the other weird thing about this case: Early on, the opposing side wasn't even allowed to be at the table! Yup, you heard me. In the lone hearing on the bill, only one representative of the Internet community was asked to speak, and it was clear she was only invited to serve as a punching bag. It recalls days of yore when, with 10-year-old index fingers firmly planted inside our own ears, we would yell, "Nya nya nya nya, I can't hear you!"

So back to last month's markup. There was a point in the day in which it seemed like reason was going to prevail: Democrats and Republicans alike began to come out of the woodwork, admitting they were playing with fire to support a bill that they themselves had no real understanding of. Sadly, that didn't last long, and suggested fixes after suggested fixes were voted down. But it was almost Christmas, and the few reps who'd brought their A-games were refusing to back down, so a vote to move the bill out of committee was finally delayed until the new year.

And that brings us into the here and now... In fact, it recently started to look like the not-so-friendly fire might be history. Over the weekend, statements emanated from the White House intimating strongly that President Obama would veto any bills with workings similar to the current SOPA and PIPA. Representative Eric Cantor was later reported to be dropping action on SOPA if there was no consensus, which got the blogosphere rejoicing—a bit prematurely—over the bill's death. So here we are, just a few days later, and a significant chunk of the Internet is blacking out in protest and in solidarity with the cause. The truth of the matter is that there is still serious work to be done in the way of killing these bills. But, how cool is it to know that there are tens of thousands of tweeters out there who now sport anti-SOPA badges? That everyone who trots on over to Wikipedia today to look up Elton John's birthday is gonna at the very least now have heard of SOPA and PIPA and the efforts to prevent them from becoming law? That you can get your own "I fought SOPA and all I got was this stupid t-shirt"? It's true, we haven't won the battle yet. But I'm impressed as hell that we've all rallied the troops enough to fight another day. ∞

Update: Hooray! SOPA and PIPA have officially been shelved just two days after the blackouts. The issue is sure to be revisited soon, but score one for democracy in action.

noel, noel

2011-12-09T01:37:00.005-05:00

So I'm now in my fourth year of releasing a holiday music mix. (For your listening pleasure, please to check out the 2010, 2009, and 2007 playlists, plus a nice little GeekDad review dating back to last winter.) As in years past, I've included something for everyone... folk, alternative, indie pop, electronic, a cappella, soul, classic rock, and whatever you wanna call Beck's 7-minute spoken-word foray into the Jewish traditions ("spin around and around like a dreidel; kind of science that puts you back in the cradle"). For good measure, I even threw in a poignant protest song from the talented Brett Dennen, who I'm sure would encourage us to #OccupyChristmas. Oh, and please note that the last song is very much NSFW... Happy holidays, everyone! &infin

Cambridge Xmas mix | Listen on Spotify
Merry Christmas, Baby (Please Don't Die) - Crocodiles & Dum Dum Girls
Joy To the World - Future of Forestry
Hazy Shade of Winter - The Bangles
Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto - James Brown
Valley Winter Song - Fountains of Wayne
The Little Drum Machine Boy - Beck
Coventry Carol - Sonos
Silent Night - Boys II Men
Lux Aurumque - Eric Whitacre
The Atheist Christmas Carol - Vienna Teng
Christmas in Prison - John Prine
Christmas Day (I Wish I Was Surfing) - Emmy the Great & Tim Wheeler
The Holidays Are Here (And We're Still At War) - Brett Dennen
Little Drummer Boy / Silent Night / Auld Lang Syne - Jimi Hendrix
Did I Make You Cry on Christmas Day? (Well, You Deserved It!) - Sufjan Stevens
Have Yourself a Bitter Little Christmas - David Ford
A Christmas Duel - The Hives & Cyndi Lauper

ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space

2011-12-03T16:46:00.007-05:00

Love all things cosmic? Love exploring the musical universe? Behold my newest project: Astrotunes. A different spacey song every day or two, from artists distinguished and obscure. ∞

Image: DJ cat by buckeye

best manicure ever

2011-10-30T11:12:00.006-04:00

Via IrrationalFantasy

interweb shoutout: take back halloween!

2011-10-21T14:11:00.007-04:00

Welcome to late October, the time of year when folks begin to seriously consider their Halloween duds. Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, but as I've noted previously here on Annals of Spacetime, there's one thing about it that irks me to no end: the part where women and girls often have a hard time finding non-slutty, non-sexist costumes.

Enter my new favorite project, Take Back Halloween! Launched in 2010, the site offers concrete ideas and instructions for making costumes of notable historical and mythological women.

"This is not your typical Halloween costume thing,” says Suzanne Scoggins of the Real History Project, which sponsors the site. “We’re pushing back against the rule that women have to dress up as sex kittens. That shouldn’t be the only option for Halloween, much less a requirement. We’re trying to reclaim some space for a different vision of the holiday, where women can use Halloween to explore history and celebrate their heritage."

So, want to go as a notable scientist this year? Try dressing as physicist Lise Meitner (above, left) or computer science pioneer Ada Lovelace (above, center). If ruling nations is more your thing, you can be Jezebel, former queen of Israel; Hatshepsut (above, right), the Egyptian pharaoh; or Himiko, the first recorded ruler of Japan. Prefer to be a glamorous star of song or stage? Turn yourself into Diana Ross, Audrey Hepburn, or Josephine Baker! There are also designs for women's suffrage champion Susan B. Anthony; artist Frida Kahlo; Greek goddess Demeter; and lots more. One thing I really love about the offerings—and there are about 60 costume ideas currently available—is that they include impressive female figures from all over the world. Case in point: Ix Chel (below), a Mayan goddess of the moon, medicine, water and weaving. Nicknamed the "Lady of the Rainbow," she was apparently known for wearing bold, bright colors, jaguar pelts, and a coiled snake on her head. Sign me up!

If there's one down side to the site it's that it currently only offers instructions rather than an opportunity to purchase actual costumes. It would of course be wonderful if someone took this idea and ran with it as a business venture... In the meantime, if you don't have the sewing gene but would like to have one of the Take Back Halloween costumes made for you, I suggest joining Etsy and posting a request for the costume through Etsy's custom order team. How it works: Buyers post requests for custom-made items, and sellers contact buyers with proposals for making those requests come to life. You have to jump through a few hoops to be able to leave a request comment, but I tried it recently and it does work quite well.

Anyway, a ginormous thank you to the folks at Take Back Halloween for getting this idea out there...you've just made Halloween a whole lot cooler! ∞

lady laureates, revisited

2011-10-18T10:15:00.012-04:00

Curt Rice, Vice President for R&D at the University of Tromsø in Norway, has a smart post on his blog today regarding the Nobel Peace Prize committee's embarrassing track record for recognizing women. As I noted recently, the number of all-time female Peace Prize laureates jumped up from 12 to 15 this year—that's an increase of 25 percent with just one award! Unfortunately it still means that 85 percent of Peace Prize recipients have been male. As Rice rightly asks, does this mean that only 85 percent of men have done valuable work for peace?

In one sense, it's laudable that the Nobel Peace Prize committee appears to be trying to make up for past omissions by giving three women the prize in one year. At the same time, it's hard to disagree with Rice's assertion that in so doing, the committee devalues the impact of the award, not only because it forces three people to share the prize money but because this award seems to throw together three women working in three different arenas just for the sake of numbers. Peace Prizes have been split before, but that's only happened when awardees were co-recipients with organizations or when they were working together toward the same specific goal. One might counter the notion that this year's three-way-split is unfair by arguing that giving the prize to three unrelated people—regardless of gender—spreads the wealth, if not literally then figuratively, by drawing attention to three causes rather than just one. And I have no doubt that if you ask any of this year's recipients they'd say they're thrilled simply to be awarded, jointly or no. But Rice's point here is a valid and important one: The vast majority of the time, individual men have taken home the gold and the glory, so lumping three women together under the banner of advancing women's struggle for peace makes it seem like the work of each individual recipient isn't worthy of the award on its own.

Rice further suggests that to improve the situation, the Nobel Peace Prize committee might consider adding a quota system by which they force themselves to award women a certain percentage of prizes from year to year. The idea of gender quotas may be controversial, but it's one I've come to favor in recent years, not necessarily in the realm of international awards but in response to the deplorable percentage of women we see in government, particularly here in the United States. To wit, according to the fascinating quotaProject, a database of quotas for women in government around the world, countries as diverse as Albania, Honduras, Rwanda, and Sweden have achieved success in implementing gender quotas in some part of their election structure. And as Rice points out, "Research shows that gender balance enhances quality. Quotas have not reduced the quality of corporate Boards, and there is no reason to expect they will reduce the quality of Peace Prize recipients, either."

Of course, for me this discussion only begs the question, Why stop at the Peace Prize? As I've written previously, the total number of Nobel Prizes awarded to women has been nothing short of pitiful. At the top of this post you'll see the latest version of the chart I created showing all female Nobel Laureates. To date, women have still only received 8 percent of all Nobels given to individuals. You think 15 percent of Peace Prizes going to women is bad? Try 11 percent for literature; 5 percent for physiology or medicine; 2 percent for chemistry; 1 percent for physics; and 1 percent for the Prize for Economic Sciences.

Admittedly, the candidate pool of women for some of the science prizes is, at least for now, smaller than for the peace prize; in the areas of physics and chemistry in particular, there have simply been significantly fewer women than men producing paradigm-shifting research. But that doesn't mean they don't exist and couldn't be expressly sought out for recognition now and again. Furthermore, the numbers argument doesn't really fly for an area like literature; there are plenty of deserving female authors out there. So the question is: If the Nobel organizers begin to consider whether to actively consider gender in rewarding seminal work in the field of peace then shouldn't they do the same for the other awards? To be sure, each Nobel and the Prize in Economic Sciences is awarded by a different committee, using different rules, but for the sake of argument I'll suggest this rule change should be considered wholesale.

My vote would be to give the various committees a probationary period of 10 years or so to self-correct, but then after that, if no significant improvement in female representation is seen, then yes, some sort of weighted quota system should be implemented. Of course, it's certainly possible that this issue will someday be moot—one look at the winners of this year's Google Science Fair has to bring hope for that. But the Nobels are in many ways an important tool for promoting continued excellence in science and the humanities, and there's no reason the world shouldn't hear the message now that women are just as capable and valued as are men in the Nobel disciplines. ∞

channeling ada: maria klawe, computer science cheerleader, champion, and sage

2011-10-07T22:39:00.010-04:00

It is Ada Lovelace Day once again, the day on which bloggers around the world write about inspiring women in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) disciplines. Ada Lovelace Day has become a wonderful tradition, and I’ve been proud to participate now for all three years of its existence. (If you care to step into my DeLorean, you’ll find my ALD posts from 2009 and 2010.) This year, I will begin with a little drama...

This past April at the Ensemble Studio Theater in Manhattan, I attended the reading of a most impressive opera titled, simply, ADA. Written by Kim Sherman and Margaret Vandenburg, it depicts the brief, wondrous, but also tortured life of Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace. Ada Lovelace is considered by many to have been the first computer programmer for her ideas concerning early calculating machines. She was born in 1815 to parents whose tumultuous marriage was fractured by irreconcilably disparate worldviews: her father, the poet Lord Byron, was a free-spirited dreamer whose livelihood involved dancing with words, while her mother, Anna Milbanke, was stoic, rational, and much more interested in practical pursuits like science and mathematics. Based in large part on actual historical events, the opera follows young Ada as she struggles with the clash between her mother’s insistence on strict dedication to academic studies and the flights of fancy she’s clearly inherited from the father she would never meet.

As much as I appreciated the opera's focus on Ada's internal conflicts, I also thought the work shed fascinating light on Ada’s mom, who in true life was both remarkably talented and burdened in her own right. Unlike most girls in 18th-century England, Anna Milbanke was introduced to academics at a young age. She was raised as a boy of privilege would have been, with private tutors who immersed the young Anna in lessons of philosophy, science, literature, and—her favorite—mathematics. These lessons helped her blossom into an intelligent young woman and would color her personality for the rest of her life; even her future husband would one day come to call her “Princess of Parallelograms.”

Years later, though, when the Don Juan author began acting out and Lady Byron ultimately asked for divorce, things began to take a turn for the worse. In raising the couple’s daughter Ada alone, Lady Byron feared her former husband’s wild influence so much that she became unwavering in—one might say obsessed with—her goal of steering Ada into scholarly work. In the dramatized version of events, although Ada displayed immense scholastic aptitude and an innate curiosity about a great many things—most notably, the ability of machines to one day perform unimaginably complex algorithms—she suffered irrevocably from the stifling condemnation of her true passions by her mother and by society at large. In the end, we’re led to conclude that if her mother had been different, had not only wanted for her daughter to appreciate the magic of math and science but also the creativity and whimsy that shows up in everyday life, then Lovelace may not have died, broken, at the age of 36.

Whether this version of events bears any resemblance to the actual reasons for Lovelace’s fall from grace and ultimate premature demise is anyone’s guess. (For the record, her proximate causes of death were uterine cancer and bloodletting, though by the end of her life she clearly suffered mentally as well, as she had become addicted to painkillers and gambling.) Yet in pondering how things might have turned out differently, one can't help but wonder whether being nurtured by someone else, the Enchantress of Numbers might have been saved . . .

* * *
Most people outside the computing world have probably never heard of Maria Klawe. To briefly summarize, Klawe (pronounced CLAW-vey) is the current president of Harvey Mudd College, an accomplished computer scientist, and an overall inspiring human being. I decided to profile her this year for her enormous contributions to technology, not only in her own research, but in her steadfast dedication to the cultivation of aspiring computer scientists—especially those who are women.

Klawe’s biography reads like a laundry list of gold star achievements. A native of Canada, she received a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Alberta before launching a career that has spanned both industry and academia. During eight years at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, CA, Klawe rose to the rank of department chair before moving on to the University of British Columbia, where she spent 15 years building up the computer science department and serving as its head. She was eventually wooed by Princeton, and in 2003 she relocated to New Jersey to become a rock star Dean of the university's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Three years later, Klawe accepted an offer from Harvey Mudd, a small university in Claremont, CA that specializes in the STEM areas, to become its first female president. In 2009, she was invited to serve on the board of directors at Microsoft, becoming only the second woman to do so. Not too shabby a CV, eh?

Truth is, though, it’s the little things about Klawe’s studies, passions, and overall attitude that have really impressed the dickens out of me. Her research has focused on some interesting problems in computational geometry, like the so-called art gallery problem, which aims to determine the minimum number of guards needed to observe an entire gallery with a set architecture. She’s also spent a lot of time studying how gender plays a role in video game performance and development. In a paper from 1995, for instance, she concluded that when girls play a video game together they do significantly better than if they play apart.

That idea mirrors one that’s gotten a heavy share of attention in the blogosphere recently; namely, that one of the reasons women shy away from computer science is its reputation for being über competitive. I was surprised to learn that back in the 1960s and 70s, the percentage of CS majors in the U.S. who were women was much higher than it is now—it peaked at about 30 percent. But the following decades brought a shift in attitude toward computing as a career, and today only about 15 percent of all CS majors in the U.S. are female. To challenge this paradigm, Klawe and her colleagues have attempted to morph the prevailing computer science culture into one that fosters support and inclusion, especially for women who may simply need a little nudge to help their talent shine through. “The imposter syndrome is something that many people suffer from, [but] it’s persistence and hard work that will make the difference,” she said in a recent interview. “If you just keep pushing on it and get encouragement and help from others, you’re going to do just fine.” Their efforts seem to be paying off in spades: Since Klawe’s tenure at Harvey Mudd began, the percentage of female computer science majors there has more than tripled, to 42 percent.

So how does she do it? By all accounts Klawe is warm, energetic, and enthusiastic about just about everything and everyone she encounters, and she strives to bring harmony and creativity into each endeavor she undertakes. Case in point: she loves to paint watercolors, and she’s been known to whip out her brushes during meetings to help her focus on the discussion at hand. She’s also encouraged young children to explore mathematics with hands-on activities that demonstrate the wonders of math in ways not often taught in schools. "The thing that scares me the most is that we would think it was amazingly bad for an educated person to not be able to read, but for some reason we think it's okay for an educated person to say, 'I'm not good at math,'" Klawe has said. "I really want our culture to value having our students learning math and science in high school and continuing [the subjects] in college."

Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Klawe’s penchant for skateboarding around campus, which is totally awesome! When I first saw the photo of her goofy-footing it with black helmet, fuscia jacket, and multicolored kicks, I knew I had to find out about this woman. Turns out, it’s not just a hobby; Klawe’s boarding doubles as a way to get students to feel comfortable approaching her and opening up about their lives and their passions. How rad is that?!

Indeed, throughout her life, Klawe has—not unlike the mother of a certain historical computing visionary—encouraged youngsters, and women in particular, to be independent thinkers; to seek out solutions to problems that don’t have easy answers. But she also has a certain something that Lady Byron apparently did not: an attitude that attending to the whole person is a huge part of education, and that young learners shouldn’t be afraid to be themselves, to embrace their passions, be they in the classroom, the art room, a ballfield or stage. I’m eternally grateful for Maria Klawe’s spirit and efforts to make science and math more appealing to students of all backgrounds. In that, she truly epitomizes the many heroines of Ada Lovelace Day. &infin

women for peace

2011-10-07T10:05:00.009-04:00

It's been an exciting week for Nobel Prizes, but I have to say I was getting a little disappointed to think we might go another year without any ladies being recognized for their contributions to society. Women had a record haul in 2009—five Nobel Prizes in four different categories—but 2010 was the 77th year in which all men and no women were awarded Nobels. What a pleasure, then, to wake up to the news that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gwobee, and Tawakul Karman had been awarded the Peace Prize for their work on the "non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work."

Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia, is the first and, currently, only female head of state in Africa. A former banker, she left the corporate world to participate in government in the mid-80s and has been fighting for peace ever since. Gbowee may be best known in the Western world as the woman who organized a sex strike against the men of Liberia during that country's brutal civil war, but she's also been a longtime leader of Women of Liberia Mass Action For Peace, which aims to unite females from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds in the common cause of ending violence and promoting women's participation in government. Karman is a human rights activist, member of Al-Islah (the Yemeni Congregation for Reform), and head of the group Women Journalists Without Chains. Among other accomplishments, Karman has played a significant role in organizing rallies and protests during this year's uprising in her native Yemen.

In case you were keeping score, Karman, Gbowee and Johnshon Sirleaf are the 99th, 100th, and 101st individuals to receive the Nobel Peace Prize—though only the 13th, 14th, and 15th women to be so honored. (I've just added them to my chart of all women who have ever received Nobels.) With today's announcement, I am hopeful that we'll continue to see more women—AND men—recognized for their efforts to promote the equal treatment of females around the world. Congrats to these remarkable ladies, and to all of this year's Nobel recipients! ∞

i can haz nobel pryz?

2011-10-04T23:21:00.001-04:00

It's Nobel Prize time once again, and I couldn't be happier to see everyone getting a little giddy over science. It shouldn't go unmentioned, however, that with Nobel season comes a little silliness, too. Last week, the 21st First Annual igNobel Prizes were awarded in grand fashion here in Cambridge, and there were some truly juicy papers among the winners. I had the pleasure of seeing the prize lectures in person a couple of days later, and let me just say that I haven't laughed that hard in quite some time. Kudos to Marc Abrahams and the rest of the igNobel crew for making us laugh, think...and giggle uncontrollably about the numbers 1 and 2.

Also on the topic of science silliness this week, I was highly amused to stumble upon a brand new blog . . . the kind of blog that makes you go: Why hasn't this been around for ages? Epochs? Eons, even?! It is GeoKittehs, a joint venture from geologists Evelyn Mervine and Dana Hunter that aims to vault earth-science-lovin' kitties onto a national stage. Looking to find some crust-cat-al accretion? Why yes, they've got that. Need an example of normal cat faulting? Look no further. Of course, my own feline had to join the party with a powerful demonstration of catslides. Needless to say, I have high hopes for the GeoKittehs, and I implore those of you with geology-minded fuzzballs to participate.

Continuing with the silly, in the spirit of this week's Nobels, and with GeoKittehs and the fantastic Particle Zoo Physics LOLcats in mind, I hereby announce the winners of the LOLcat Nobel Pryzes, 2011:

•In Physiology or Medicine, for revealing fundamental truths about the nature of biomedical research:

•In Chemistry, for discovering heretofore unknown properties of inert gases:

•In Physics, for demonstrating that the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics was right all along:

•In Literature, for lifetime contributions to cat prose and feline linguistics, including the development of a promising alternative to lolspeak:

•In Economic Sciences, for significant advances in decision theory:

•And in Peace, for proving once and for all that inner strength and a pink nose can conquer all:

where i was

2011-09-11T11:19:00.006-04:00

I wasn’t going to write anything for this because frankly, I don’t consider my experience particularly remarkable. I wasn't close with anyone whose life was completely altered that day. I have no tale to tell of meeting someone who decided to wait in line for a 400-calorie bowtie from the coffee cart that morning instead of getting to work on time on the 97th floor. At the same time, I was there, on that same little island, and it was scary, and it was weird. It was an event that precipitated a drastic change in attitude in our country, and I was old enough to be cognizant of what that change really meant. My grandfather lived through the great San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, and I’ve always been thankful for having heard the telling of his experience. These days, we live in a world where everything is documented, sometimes ad nauseum. But at the end of the day, everyone does have a story to tell. I wasn’t there when JFK died. I missed the first men on the moon. But here’s my 9/11 tale, for what it’s worth.

First, a word about September 10th. On the morning of September 10th I ran into a friend from college on the way to work. This isn’t the kind of thing that happens to me too often; in 12 years of living in New York City I think I randomly bumped into friends and acquaintances maybe once a year⎯if that. I was never close with this guy, but he also happened to be the very first person I’d ever met from my college. We exchanged hellos the summer before I matriculated, when I was on vacation and we were at the same hotel, some 3,000 miles away from our school. I noticed he was holding something that had our university seal on it, so I asked, and sure enough, he was one year ahead of me. When coincidence brought us together once again, 24 hours before the most historic day I’ve lived through thus far, we were both going off in new and exciting directions in our lives. Josh, if you’re reading this, I’ll never forget chatting with you that day...

Also on September 10th: pandas. Yup, the night before the new world order began, I went to see a press screening of an IMAX film featuring pandas in China. It was on the Upper West Side, and it was a pretty lame flick. “Didn’t like it very much,” my 24-year-old self wrote. “But the pandas were ridiculously adorable and the scenery was breathtaking.” Not a bad way to spend a rainy Monday night in the middle of September, I suppose.

The next thing I remember was waking up to the sound of the phone. It was a bright, sunny morning and, being on the 30th floor of a midtown high rise, I had a clear view of the Hudson River and New Jersey just beyond. As was my custom in those days, I’d stay up ‘til all hours and sleep as late as possible before heading to work. The phone call, it turned out, was from my mom. I had no business being that far downtown, and she knew I was on a late schedule, but she had wanted to hear my voice and, in the event that I was still asleep (ahem), to tell me the news. I promptly ran into the living room and turned on the television. Without knowing anything else, with just the visual of fire, smoke and the understanding that this devastating thing had happened to innocent people in my city (and on the planes), I started to tear up. For a moment or so, it was unreal. Not just “unreal, man.” Actually not believably real. I ran up to the roof, six floors above me, to see if I could see anything. My apartment was just north of Times Square, so there were a lot of tall buildings in the way. But unmistakably, it was there: heavy black smoke, way downtown, rising in a ghastly plume. Holy shit. This was happening. It was then that I noticed the sirens: Firemen from local stations were headed downtown in droves to help out. Little did I know that many of them wouldn’t be coming back . . .

I returned to the television, my only connection to what was going on. I started to internalize the situation and cried some more. Mind you, I’m not someone who tends to get emotional on a dime, so the fact that this overwhelmed me so quickly is a testament to how powerful the moment was. It was noteworthy that even the local newscasters, who were trying to be “professional,” were also struggling to hide their shock and dismay. Finally, the unimaginable: “This is crazy. The whole fucking left tower just collapsed,” I wrote. “It was like one of those huge pyroclastic flows. I have this terrible feeling we’re about to go to war . . .”

Not long thereafter, I was on the roof again, looking south, when the second tower fell. All of a sudden the smoke just disappeared from view. In that moment, I started to worry for my own safety. It was obvious at that point that this was coordinated event, but no one knew if there was more to come. I lived relatively close to some pretty iconic buildings, and it seemed entirely plausible that I could be in some danger. I packed up a bag of stuff, put on some running shoes, and left the building. I wasn’t sure exactly where I was headed, but my thought was to walk north off of the island, where I could somehow get to my parents’ house in the suburbs. (At this time, there were no subways or trains, and bridges were being used primarily by fleeing pedestrians.)

When I got to the street, it was busy, but a calm busy⎯not like gridlock with people honking and frantic to get out of there. It was already a good hour or so after all of this began, and scores of people were headed north. As I looked down Broadway, toward Times Square, it seemed eerily quiet, at least as far as vehicular traffic. No one was going south. Every few blocks I’d find a car parked next to the sidewalk with its doors open, the radio cranked up, and people huddled around to hear the latest. I entered Central Park. Businessmen and women in suits, ties, and heels were walking quietly, briefcases and jackets in hand. Everyone on the main park road appeared cool and composed, and it was turning into a gorgeous day⎯not a cloud in the sky. In fact, aside from the parade of overdressed walkers, it would have been difficult to guess, if you weren’t already aware, that anything was terribly wrong on the lower tip of Manhattan. The only other clue was an unusual silence punctuated by the occasional deafening roar of F15s, which by then were zooming over the city at regular intervals.

I walked for a good hour or so through the park with only my thoughts, and then ventured back onto the streets, where it sounded from various reports as though officials believed the attacks to be over. Eventually I reached the campus of Columbia University. It was there that I decided I wasn’t going to walk off the island. It was also at Columbia that I saw the first signs of organization to rally around the victims. At the medical center, passers-by in threes and fours came and glanced at a piece of paper that had been taped to a door announcing in magic marker that no further blood donations were needed. I also witnessed a peaceful ceremony of students sitting in a circle, praying, and singing softly. I sat and reflected for a while on the campus green. I was unsure of how to proceed at that point. Should I walk home again? Sit tight and just wait to see if anything else unfolded? Either way, my feet needed some tending: In my haste to leave the apartment, I had neglected to put on socks, and I was developing blisters. I went into the student bookstore and purchased some socks with the school’s logo on them. I still have those socks, and will always remember buying them that fateful day.

I did indeed walk back home to midtown. I had a cell phone with me, but the lines were completely jammed, and folks were being asked to stay off of them unless it was truly necessary. The feeling on the street was one of somber camaraderie. When you looked into the eye of the people you passed, it was as though you were already acquainted. . . a knowing glance, and then you moved on. In the hours that I walked, I learned more of the details surrounding the situation downtown, and heard rumors as to the number of fatalities. When I finally got home, my roommate was there with a friend of hers who had been across the street from the World Trade Center when everything began. We sat and listened to his story before he left to meet up with his family outside of the city.

The rest of the day is a bit of a blur, but that evening, I recall being glued to the television and wondering what this was going to mean for our city and for our country. I wasn’t a Giuliani fan, but I will give him credit: At least for a few days, he calmed a lot of nerves, and he handled the situation as best as anyone could under the circumstances. Later that night I returned to the roof to take in the city below me, and it was eerily empty and silent. Times Square, which of course is bustling at most hours⎯especially on a warm night in mid-September⎯should have been packed with people and cars. There was nothing. The traffic lights turned from green to yellow to red and back to green, directing no one. I think I counted two or three people and maybe one taxicab from 56th Street all the way down to 42nd. It was spooky.

The next day, I went down to 14th Street, the farthest south you could go without proof of residency or some other good reason for being down there. Looking downtown from there and not seeing the towers was absolutely surreal⎯and it’s something I didn’t get used to for at least a year. There was some military presence, but the overall feeling was that the city had come out to mourn together and search for victims. American flags and “missing” signs were everywhere—street posts, statue pedestals, makeshift message boards. In Union Square a huge shrine with candles, flowers, handwritten notes, and drawings from children had been erected and was getting larger. Media cameramen were present at every corner. Brown dust from the towers was visible as a thin layer on the few cars parked in the area. And you could definitely smell that musty odor from the destruction. I shuddered every time I thought of what I was actually smelling . . . No one really knew what to say, but we all wanted to be there, to quietly take in what was happening. I picked up a copy of The New York Times and read it cover to cover, wondering again how the country was going to respond.

Slowly, the city carried on. I was certainly one of the fortunate ones, not to have been affected directly by the loss of a loved one. My feelings about the events of that day, though, have been complicated by the anger toward our country’s actions following the attacks. It seems clear to me that one kind of evil beget another kind of evil, the kind that deftly manipulated public sentiment for those we lost and turned the country’s outrage into a justification to start a costly and unfounded war against a nation that had nothing to do with 9/11—all in the name of money and power. To be honest, it makes me sick.

Four years after the attacks, I moved to Brooklyn, close to the harbor and the Promenade, which boasts one of the best views of the city, especially of downtown. I never had a chance to experience the view from there with the towers still standing, but every year on this date I would witness from my window or from the Promenade the huge twin beams lighting up the sky from where the towers once stood.

In all this time there were daily reminders, too. The one that touched me most was the Cortlandt Street subway station, which sustained major damage but whose main supports were deemed safe enough for trains to pass through. For years, the Cortlandt R stop remained shaded out on subway maps, like a ghost station that existed only in memory. But reconstruction did take place, if at a snail’s pace, and a year and a half ago the northbound station quietly reopened for business. I’ll never forget the day my train stopped there for the first time after so many years… I had gotten used to the conductors giving their spiel every time we were about to bypass the station. But on that day, it was “Next stop: Cortlandt Street.” No one said a word, but as I looked at the women and men around me, I felt that everyone on that train knew what a significant moment it was. As for the southbound platform, it remained in shambles until very recently. Even just a few months ago you could still see daylight through the perforated wall that opened up into Ground Zero. It was clear that work had picked up in preparation for today, though, and I’m happy to report that earlier this week, the southbound Cortlandt Street station received its final shiny white tiles, restored original artwork, and commemorative plaques before opening to traffic. It was a little bittersweet to know that I couldn’t be there to experience the train slowing and the doors opening for the first time that day, but I’ll certainly make a visit the next time I’m in town.

Today, I’m in a new city, in a different state altogether. It feels strange not being in New York on this morning, my first 9/11 away since that day in ‘01. I do think it’s time for the city and the country to move on, though, and I welcome the thought that this 10th anniversary might serve as a mark of closure for all of us. In any case, thanks for listening. ∞

winning isn't everything

2011-08-06T16:33:00.004-04:00

Life got you down? Just remember it can always be worse. Case in point: You could be these lovable losers from Vilanova i al Geltrú, Spain, a suburb of Barcelona. The members of this co-ed soccer team haven't just lost every game they've played . . . they haven't even mustered one measly goal all season! Future stars of FC Barcelona these little Catalans ain't. I looked up the team's website after coming across this video and found amusing the organizers' confession to all who may consider joining that "the goal of [the team] isn't results." At least they're honest! And boy, are the kids adorable. So check out the 9-minute documentary, in Catalan and Spanish with English subtitles, on the team's trials and tribulations. It'll put a smile on your face, guaranteed. ∞

where no toy has gone before

2011-08-04T02:23:00.003-04:00

The folks at NASA threw a cute little curveball at the pre-launch briefing for the Jupiter-bound Juno spacecraft today: They announced that three specially made LEGO minifigures would be flying to the outer solar system along with the spacecraft, which is scheduled to lift off Friday from the Kennedy Space Center. The three figures represent Galileo Galilei, who used his early telescopes to study Jupiter and its moons some four centuries ago; the Roman goddess Juno, namesake of the Juno craft; and the Roman god Jupiter. (In case you've forgotten your ancient mythology, Juno is the equivalent of the Greek Hera, and Jupiter is the same as Zeus.) Unlike normal plastic LEGOs, these figs were molded out of a special aluminum blend that should withstand the harsh launch and interplanetary environments the figs will experience in the upcoming days and years on their journey to the Jovian system.

If you follow along with my blog or Twitter feed, you know that I'm a big LEGO fan, especially when brick creations help folks get excited about science and technology. It's heartening to know that LEGO and NASA have made a strong commitment to one another within the past year, since our nation's future rests on our inspiring today's children to become tomorrow's mathematicians, scientists, and engineers. Can't wait to see what's next! ∞

home is where the nerdy art is

2011-07-28T00:15:00.007-04:00

One of the nicer aspects of moving is getting to make your mark on a new space. Now that I've finally started thinking seriously about in-home design for my new pad, I'm realizing how tough my decor decision-making is going to be. I've got a ways to go yet, but I thought I'd share some fun sciencey/geeky stuff I've come across recently:

Endless Forms Most Strange
Alexander Ross is one of my favorite contemporary artists. His works recall fantastically detailed biological films and cellular structures at once beautiful and weird. I adore the glossy, green Play-Doh-like appearance of his paintings and can only hope that someday I'll be able to place one of his unique pieces in my home. For now I'm happy to know that he's just published a new collection via the David Nolan Gallery in New York.

On the Origin of Species... Down to the Letter
Whether you choose the single finch or the evolving primate set, nothing says "I love science" quite like Darwin's entire manifesto printed out line for line on your living room wall. Posters by Spineless Classics.

See the Solar System
Physics professor and graphic designer Tyler Nordgren created a lovely poster series for the National Parks Service stressing clear skies perfect for stargazing. Last year he also drummed up some fantastic prints depicting travel scenes from around the solar system, including these two gems from Saturn's moon Enceladus and Jupiter's moon Io.

Stop and Feed the Robotic Lions
What can I say? This Voltron print by Scott C., titled "Super Hungry," is super cute.

Cheat Sheet
Last, but certainly not least, is this clever Mac shortcuts print by birdAve on Etsy. Who says wall art can't also be useful? ∞

those were the days

2011-07-25T22:10:00.005-04:00

This is the very first email I ever received, exactly 17 years ago today [high res]. It was the summer of '94 and I had been interested in finding out about Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which was smacking quite visibly into Jupiter at the time. [See how easy that was? This was before links to Wikipedia, kids.]

I was still a high school student, attending classes at Brown for the summer, when I sent the initial email from what was then an awe-inspiring computer lab. Ah, to secure a spot in the sea of black-and-green monitors at the CIT... Anyway, Peter Ford over at MIT kindly sent me some websites to check out (I hardly had any idea what a website even was back then) and pointed me in the direction of Brown's stellar planetary geosciences department. As fate would have it, I ended up taking a super planetary geo course with Pete Schultz, who's mentioned in the email, as an undergrad several years later.

Things to point out in the actual message: It took two pages to print! And gosh the headers were intense back then. This was before we were introduced to Eudora, which Brown used for I don't know how long...through the end of '99 at least. Anyway, I happen to have printed this puppy out and was surprised to find it this week in a stack of stuff I thought I'd long tossed away. Makes me wanna start yammering about trudging five miles to class in the snow, etc. etc.

saying goodbye, times two

2011-07-22T01:52:00.004-04:00

“The end of an era.” It's a phrase that's been uttered countless times these past two weeks, as the country and the world waited with anticipation for the last chapter of NASA’s storied space shuttle program to come to a close. Having trekked to Cape Canaveral to witness Atlantis’s final two launches in person—and having known only one American spaceflight program in my lifetime—I certainly joined in the fanfare. Yet those five little words had not one but two melancholy meanings for me this week in particular, as I counted down to an ending of my own: I officially left New York City after a dozen remarkable years and headed off into a whole new cosmos. In many ways, I’m incredibly hopeful for both the future of human spaceflight and for my days ahead in a new city. But I find myself this week stuck in the gloaming, that transition time between day and night, with bittersweet emotions all over, often in places where I'd least expected them. So, here’s where I raise a glass—let's make that two. To the space shuttle, and to Gotham: You will both always be in my heart. &infin

Photo credits: Top - NASA; Bottom - pixbymaia

up up and away

2011-07-06T21:54:00.006-04:00

last one by shlomi yoav

And so it is time for me to bid adieu to the space shuttle. The very last mission is set to begin this week with the launch of the Atlantis orbiter from the Kennedy Space Center on the Florida coast. This particular launch is a gift from the American people, whose representatives voted last year to tack on one last go before the entire shuttle fleet is permanently grounded and the orbiters put on their pedestals for future generations to ooh and ahh at. Yet those same politicians are also now looking to drastically defund NASA in what amounts to a serious rethinking of whether or not America has a real future in space. Will the U.S. forever take a back seat to the Russians or Chinese or anyone else in our quest to land humans on Mars? It could very well happen. In the U.S. we certainly like to talk the talk when it comes to being innovators, in space development and otherwise, but so often in the past decades, walking the walk has proven to be another story altogether.

Millions of words will be spoken, penned, blogged, and microblogged about this final countdown, so I won't clog the fiber optic cables with too many thoughts on this bittersweet occasion. But I will say that in the end I choose to believe that the American people will keep outer space in mind when they fill out their ballots of the future. And how, you ask, will we do this in the face of economic uncertainty, declining political will and an ever-straining space budget? By reaching out to each other. In the past couple of years I've met, virtually and in real life, more folks than I'd ever known existed who consider space exploration—both robotic and human-based—one of the most important endeavors humanity can undertake. And these folks have passion. If we can group together, to share our excitement with those unaware of what our space program actually does, to get our representatives to think beyond the next election and out toward the stars, to teach our little ones about what they might one day discover beyond our blue planet, we'll have a force to be reckoned with when it comes to our future in the cosmos.

A friend of mine is still hoping to be an astronaut someday. Despite NASA's uncertain future, he and others like him are keeping the dream alive by continuing to do what astronauts and all scientists do: constantly asking questions. What a stupendous waste it will be if we let this collective bundle of energy and human spirit go for naught.

And with that, I'll leave you with this brilliant 45-minute visual feast of the space shuttle on its way off the pad. I dare you not to marvel as you sit and watch, agog and wide-eyed, at the ingenuity it took to make this peculiar bird fly up, up, and away. &infin

for the love of the game

2011-06-09T01:33:00.014-04:00

We live in a post-Title IX age, but it's an unfortunate reality that girls and women in the sporting world still face plenty of uphill battles. You may have heard me grumble about certain inequities that continue to exist for women and girls who attempt to play with the boys...or who want to manage or officiate their games. And I'd be happy to talk your ear off about the paucity of insightful, fair, and unsexist coverage of women's collegiate and professional sports in the media these days.

But these gripes aside, I'm reminded from time to time of how far we've come in the last few decades, and how much we athletes of the modern West take for granted. Today, it was a young woman named Khalida Popal who really drove the point home. Popal is the captain of an all-women's soccer team, which might not sound all that special until you realize that her team is based in Afghanistan, a war-torn nation where girls and women are regularly treated not just as second-class citizens but as subhuman beings.

While the Taliban ruled in Afghanistan, playing sports was strictly forbidden for any female, young or old. More recently, though, officials have allowed limited playing opportunities for Afghan women. For a time, Popal and her teammates even managed to procure practice space in the same Kabul stadium in which public executions were once held. But the players still received threats for continuing to follow their passion for the game of soccer.

Now, after the authorities took away the women's practice space, NATO has offered the women a small patch of grass near its headquarters that doubles as a helicopter landing pad. They play friendlies against a bunch of NATO women, but even this is seen as offensive behavior, and the Afghan women continue to be ostracized. And yet, things have started looking up, especially in the past year; in December, a team of Afghan women was allowed to play an international game for the first time.

This isn't the first I've heard of females in strict traditional societies butting heads with the law of the land in the name of the sport they love . . . I'm reminded of the the Iranian woman who had to get special permission from a local ayatollah to race Formula-One-style cars; the Palestinian girls who defy their culture to surf along the Gaza Strip; and the Pakistani women who've faced death threats for trying to play cricket. I'm also all too aware that sports are just the tip of the human rights iceberg when it comes to women and girls suffering from all manner of physical and psychological violations each and every day.

But hearing Khalida Popal tell her story truly made me appreciate for a moment the freedoms we have here in America—and not just the freedom to play sports, but the freedom to act when we feel our rights are being infringed upon. I can only hope that Popal and others like her continue to defy the odds and fight for their rights—and that more of the men in traditional societies recognize that female athletes are not a threat, and speak out in favor of letting the games go on. I also encourage you to learn about organizations such as Goals For Girls, cosponsored by UNICEF and FIFA, to find out how you can contribute to the empowerment of girls and women through sport. ∞

the day the earth shook

2011-04-18T23:52:00.011-04:00

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, earthquakes with a magnitude of 7 or greater take place about 15 times a year. Often these quakes have little effect on human life, but every now and then, as we've seen so recently in Japan, the world experiences a shake-down for the ages. On a cosmic scale, these events are nothing special; it's all part and parcel of a geologically active planet doing its subducting and fault displacement thing. But when they happen where humans have set up shop, "nothing special" has the tendency to turn into all-out "calamity."

105 years ago today, the world experienced one of those calamitous shakers in the great city of San Francisco, California. My grandfather, age 6 at the time, was right in the middle of it. He was one of the lucky ones.

Every April 18th I get a little nostalgic for what it must have been like in the City by the Bay, back when horse-drawn dreighs were a common mode of transportation and a porterhouse steak would set you back about 75 cents. This morning I watched reels of footage on YouTube from that time. The most compelling was a comparison between a film shot from a trolley making its way down Market Street just four days before the quake with a similar film shot in the dizzying aftermath of the devastation. I was also heartened to discover the reproduction of a magnificent article, first published in 1933, memorializing the city that had fallen: "Shaken to shards in the dawn, gulped in part by a mad sea, swept by flame. Ruin covering agony, crowned by hunger, thirst, fever, pest. Death over all."

After reading that, I decided that I wanted to add to that picture with thoughts from one who was there, in the fire and fury.

My grandfather, Louis Weinstock, Sr., was born in Winnipeg, Canada, to a family of immigrants from what is now Kiev, Ukraine. After the sudden death of his mother from complications of childbirth (as well as of his newborn sister, who only lived about a month), his father—my great grandfather—packed the family up and moved to what was then the 9th most populous city in the union. On the day of the Great Earthquake, my grandfather was just a little kid. Here's what he saw, as recounted some three-quarters of a century later:

It happened on April 18, 1906. I was in bed, and because of the earthquake my bed became jammed against the door. I called for help in moving the bed. My father, [step]mother, and sister came to my rescue. My father moved our beds to the shop, where we all slept cross-wise. We lived very near the Golden Gate Park. The Army set up tents at the park.

I was chosen to go to the Park to fetch food, which was being distributed there. Going to get the food was a big adventure for me. People sat at the curbs and would ask, “Where’s the fire now, how far’s the fire?” The government had requisitioned all the food. The markets were all closed, except the bakeries, which kept working. The papers—Examiner, Tribune—kept publishing, although with reduced editions.

All the trains in the country gave preference to relief effort. There was a lot of destruction, but the worst destruction came with the fires. The water mains broke and the fires could not be put out. They reached all the way to Van Ness Avenue, which became a fire breaker.

Because of the earthquake, we became refugees. One of my uncles got a dreigh, a wagon with big wheels. He then made reservations for the ferry to Oakland/Alameda/Berkeley. We put the whole family’s belongings and took off. As we went by a burning building we whipped the horses to go fast. Right after we went past this building I looked back and the building collapsed.

Why did we go to Alameda? I don’t know. We just got out as soon as possible.

It's astonishing to me to think that a boy of six lived through this catastrophe, which claimed the lives of several thousand and left homeless more than half the population of 400,000; moved across the country to New York; and grew up to have a full, adventurous life, three children of his own, and five grandkids, including little old me. Last fall I returned to San Francisco and thought a lot of my grandpop, who passed away when I was a little girl. I explored the areas and streets he'd talked about from that time, and I even took a ferry over to Oakland/Alameda the same way he did more than a century earlier to flee a burning city. Amazing what time can do, isn't it? ∞

supermoon tunes

2011-03-19T22:44:00.009-04:00

For your amusement, I've put a little mix together in honor of the supermoon, which is super spectacular in New York tonight! Enjoy. ∞

Walking on the Moon - The Police
Many Moons - Janelle Monae
Tears From The Moon - Conjure One feat. Sinead O'Connor
I Was on the Moon - Apollo Sunshine
Man On The Moon - R.E.M.
Moonlight - Digitalism
Must Be The Moon (Hot Chip Remix) - Chk Chk Chk
Moonlight Dancing - Bette Midler
Sister Moon - Sting
Moonchild - M83
Blue Moon - Elvis Presley
Full Moon In My Soul - Robyn Hitchcock
Goodnight Moon - Will Kimbrough

oscar doc predictions

2011-02-27T00:34:00.010-05:00

It's been three or four years since I started getting obsessive about seeing Oscar-nominated documentaries prior to the big red carpet event. But let's face it: Most Americans don't do docs. It's a damn shame, if you ask me. Documentaries are like college classes, without the tuition and without the prerequisites. True, you have to be prepared to get angry or upset, but docs teach you what the world is really like, without the sugarcoating of shows you might see on cable networks, even the ones that purport to offer "in depth" coverage of real-world events. And before you complain that documentaries do nothing but make people feel helpless, I'd counter that the best docs often reveal how one person, or a small group, can make a big difference, even in the face of powerful, monstrous forces.

Fortunately, it's been getting easier to find the Oscar docs in theaters here in New York over the past few years. The Paley Center in midtown Manhattan now shows all nominated docs, both feature-length and short, every year on the weekend of the Academy Award ceremony, and at least this year, the IFC Center screened all short subject nominees each day for more than a week. But you'd expect docs to show in New York and LA; it's time to get more of them out to places like Wichita and Montgomery and Albuquerque so everyone can watch and learn!

This year's crop of Oscar-nominated docs features a few recurring themes: big business's devastating impact on the environment; the plight of American soldiers during and after war combat; and funky-ass art. But there are some powerful and moving wild card topics, too. So on the eve of the Oscars, here are my picks for who should win and who will win in both of the documentary categories! You can find synopses and trailers for all 10 nominated docs on this page; some are also available for purchase from iTunes. ∞

Documentary Short Subject

Will Win: Strangers No More The most upbeat and heartwarming of the five nominees in this category, Strangers No More tells the story of a unique school in Tel Aviv, Israel in which refugee children from around the world come together to form the ultimate melting pot. There are really no losers in this year's batch of doc shorts, but considering the Academy's choice in the past two years of the similarly hopeful Smile Pinki and Music By Prudence, this seems like a pretty good bet to take home the statuette.

Should Win: The Warriors of Quigang Whether we like it or not, China is going to have to lead the environmental movement of tomorrow. This doc gracefully captures how one small city in Anhui Province is attempting to battle both an unruly local polluter an unrepresentative and unresponsive government. Here's one great example of a film that not only explains where the big problems lie but also makes heroes out of ordinary citizens trying to better the ugly hands they've been dealt.

Documentary Feature

Will Win: Gasland I had never heard of hydraulic fracturing, or "hydrofracking," before I saw this film, and what I learned scared the bejesus out of me. There's been quite a bit of press coverage about this doc since the nominees were announced, mostly due to the unsurprising loud reaction from the natural gas lobby over the film's depiction of their use of what can only be described as a poorly regulated and highly toxic method of extracting gas from the ground. While some have criticized certain methods of director Josh Fox, I think that in seeing this film, Academy voters will have come away with a pretty powerful overall message. What's more, the time seems ripe for a major environmental movie to take home the big doc prize.

Should Win: Inside Job Okay, boys and girls, here's the one movie that everyone in the country needs to see, and pronto. Director Charles Ferguson does an epic job of weaving one-on-one interviews together with easy-to-follow narration and infographics to explain how the recent financial crisis of the late '00s came about. At the end of the day, the lesson is obvious: Our economic policies have been set by the very cronies who masterminded what one interviewee describes as the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time. What's more, the film makes it crystal clear that our government is deeply embedded in the pockets of a few powerful corporations, who literally gamble away our security in order to make billions for themselves—with no reprecussions whatsoever when everything collapses. I happened to catch this film in a theater, and the rage of the audience was palpable; people shaking their heads over and over, guffawing and sighing out of frustration at just how blatant the deception was and continues to be. Aside from the surprising production value, which I thought was super considering how dry a subject finance might seem to the average American, this doc needs to win for the sheer power it has in making people see why increased financial regulations—not to mention campaign finance reform—are absolutely essential to the future of our country, and indeed the entire global economy.

making her pitch

2011-02-22T15:07:00.011-05:00

<a href="http://msn.foxsports.com/video?vid=50a79c78-3053-4493-bf8b-7291f43b62fe&from=IV2_en-us_foxsports_articles" target="_new" title="Ladies first">Video: Ladies first</a>
The last throes of February are upon us, which can only mean one thing: Major League Baseball's spring training is officially in full swing. It's a time when fans of our national pastime can get up close and personal with the sport's biggest stars, hottest prospects, and the support staff who whip them into shape. It's a time when anything is possible; there are no winners or losers, only players and coaches with an eye toward Opening Day. But yesterday, at a training facility in Goodyear, Arizona, one individual shone above all the rest when she became the first woman to throw batting practice to an MLB team.

For most of her adult life, Justine Siegal has been an outspoken supporter of girls and women who want to be involved in the world of baseball. She is the founder of Baseball For All, which seeks to empower girls to play hardball. In case you're unaware, some of the earliest baseball players were women, but by the middle of the 20th century, the sport was mostly considered off-limits for girls. In 1973, a judge opened the way for girls to play Little League ball, but Little League organizers decided that while it could no longer deny them from participating, it would encourage them to play softball, a very different sport. Today, relatively few girls get into baseball, primarily because they think they can't. Justine Siegal is trying to change that.

Siegal grew up playing baseball in Cleveland, Ohio, and dreaming of one day donning the uniform of her hometown Indians. At 13, her coach told her he didn't think girls should play baseball and suggested she quit. He clearly didn't know who he was dealing with! Siegal ignored him and continued playing for another two decades. In the late 1990s, she started Baseball For All as a way to encourage others like her who wanted to enjoy the experience of participating in our national pastime. She eventually became a coach for the men's team at Springfield College in Massachusetts. And in 2008, filmmaker Max Tash released a documentary film about her attempts to bring an all-girls' team to the Cooperstown Dreams Park Tournament, a prestigious tournament for youngsters near the National Baseball Hall of Fame. A year later, Siegal became the first woman to coach in the pros when she spent part of her summer with the Brockton Rox (pictured) of the Can-Am League. Since then, she's been seeking out and gaining an increasing amount of national support for her girls-in-baseball projects.

A few weeks ago, I found out that Siegal had been invited to throw batting practice for both the Oakland A's and her hometown team, the Cleveland Indians, at their spring training facilities in Arizona. Justine has been a great inspiration to me, a former ballplayer who's long been frustrated with the marginalization of girls and women in the baseball world, from the majors all the way down to tee ball. When I attempted to start up a girls' baseball program in New York City last year, Justine served as a valuable mentor, and she even came down to host a clinic for a number of young girls who were eager for more than they were getting with their local teams. (My project eventually stalled, but I'm hopeful that girls in the NY area will soon have a new baseball outlet thanks to a new initiative, led by Justine, that partners players with various RBI Baseball teams in cities around the country.) So I was thrilled to hear the news about her Major League assignment, and I enjoyed reading about her preparation for the big event. I was also not surprised to learn that Justine would be dedicating her outing to the late Christina-Taylor Green, the youngest victim in last month's tragic Tucson shooting spree. Green had been a second-baseman on her Little League team, and, like Justine before her, had hoped to break the so-called "grass ceiling" by becoming the first woman to play in the majors.

If you'd like to know how it went, Glenn Swain in The New York Times and Tim Brown at Yahoo! Sports have good recaps of yesterday's historic session. And I highly recommend Justine's own stirring posts relating to the event on her new blog, Justine's Baseball Journey. Her writings are the kind of thing I wish I'd had available to me growing up, when coaches, players, and parents were telling me in ways both subtle and explicit that baseball is for boys. So if you know of a girl or woman who could use some baseball inspiration, please pass it on! You can also follow Justine on Twitter.

Anyway, congrats on your awesome accomplishment, Justine! Can't wait to see what's next. ∞

the art of science

2011-02-12T22:36:00.008-05:00

One of my favorite things in the whole wide universe is when art and science get a little wild and make some sweet music together. With Valentine's Day fast approaching, it was inevitable that I'd spy some new pairings that clearly just need to get a room. To wit, first there were the cute scientist valentines, featuring the likes of Ada Lovelace, Nikola Tesla, and Carl Sagan. But my heart truly went aflutter for the Periodic Table Printmaking Project, an outstanding work by 97 graphic artists from around the globe who obviously adore science as much as I do. As you can see from the samples above, the idea was to identify each element in a way that's some combination of historical, whimsical, and (of course) scientific. What can I say? I'm in love. The full complement of 118 elements can be seen as a group in periodic table form or individually on the project's Flickr set. ∞

remembering challenger

2011-01-28T00:51:00.009-05:00

I was only eight when the Challenger disaster occurred on that icy January morning in 1986. I distinctly remember perching on my chair in Mrs. M's third grade class, eager to watch the launch on the bulky brown television that had been wheeled in so that my fellow classmates and I could feel like we were a part of the action. At the time, it seemed a matter of course—at least to us kids—that people could routinely travel to space and to the moon. Even girls could be shuttle explorers after Sally Ride had flown on the Challenger three years earlier! We were encouraged to include 'astronaut' among our future career choices anytime a grown-up asked. And we did.

Third grade happened to coincide with my first real exposure to astronomy, too. It was the first time, for instance, that I learned about my very eager mother . . . not to mention the pizzas she'd just served us—though there are plenty of folks today who'd urge us to skip the pizza. As a child of the 80s, imagining that someday I, too, might fly through the asteroid belt or make a quick trip to the canyons of Mars seemed a perfectly reasonable ambition. I was ready to sign up.

To add to the excitement of the day, we'd been told that Christa McAuliffe was going to become the first schoolteacher ever, in the history of the world, to travel into space. We knew about this not just because it was all over the news, but because our school's phys ed teacher had also applied for the Teacher in Space program. And boy, did he get us excited about it! I don't recall whether Mr. W ever disclosed how far along in the process he'd reached before being cut, but he'd clearly felt that doing experiments to gauge how microgravity affected physical fitness would have been one of the greatest gifts he could give to students at our elementary school and around the country.

And then . . . the forked puffy cloud. The confusion. The silence.

It's clear to me now that I was too young to truly understand death. I had actually lost a grandmother just a month before, but my still-developing brain prevented me from grasping the enormity of her passing until much later. Obviously it was the same for these seven people I'd never even met. Yet my classmates and I knew right away that something terrible had just happened. And we were all a little scared.

The Challenger incident has stayed with me over the past quarter-century, well into my adult life. My love of all things space grew as time marched on, and when the shuttle program resumed, I once again looked forward to watching launches on the news, and later, on NASA TV. But to this day, there's a palpable anxiousness in the last hour or so before liftoff. And until I hear the "main engine cutoff" call from mission control, my heart remains firmly embedded in my throat. Sadly, ever since the Columbia breakup in 2003, shuttle landings have become equally nerve-wracking for the same grim reasons.

To be sure, I recognize that many of us put our lives on the line every single day. I think of miners and factory workers who endure precarious and downright dangerous conditions on a daily basis. And there are the firefighters, police officers, and other civil servants who purposely risk bodily harm for the sake of the common good. Heck, every time we get behind the wheel we put ourselves at the mercy of road conditions and other drivers. And yet I can't help but get verklempt when I think of the men and women who voluntarily strap themselves to the back of a rocket and hope that a million things go right on their way out to the stars and back. One of my longtime dreams of attending a shuttle launch finally came true last May, and I can assure you that there were tears streaming down my cheeks as I watched that plume reach deep into the brilliant Florida sky. As with every mission since STS-51-L, I was thinking of Challenger that afternoon—and yes, Columbia, too.

So today marks 25 years since that fateful morning back in 1986. I'm now 33, and sad to say I haven't yet booked my flight to the asteroid belt. In 2007, though, Christa McAuliffe's alternate, fellow teacher-astronaut Barbara Morgan, did eventually carry the torch for educators when she flew aboard the shuttle Endeavor and visited the International Space Station.

The legacies of those lost with the Challenger—Jarvis, McAuliffe, McNair, Onizuka, Resnik, Smith, and Scobee—live on in all of us who were watching that day. I, for one, will never forget. ∞

Lego photo courtesy of BriXwerX on Flickr

the giants take manhattan

2011-01-24T01:29:00.009-05:00

Followers of this blog know that I'm a die-hard Mets fan who bleeds orange and blue through thick and thin. I grew up in the heart of Yankee country, in the New York City suburbs, always having to explain why I followed that other team. Well, readers, it was quite simple; it was because my father grew up following the New York Giants, who called Manhattan home for three-quarters of a century before skipping off to San Francisco in 1957. Dad eventually became a Mets fan when the National League re-established itself here in New York in the early 60s (rooting for the hated Yankees, of course, was never an option). And so, we were a Mets family. But my father always kept the Giants in his heart, and he'd occasionally share stories from his childhood, of catching the bus from our little town down to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, and then walking across a bridge into Manhattan to watch the Giants play in their cavernous Polo Grounds, also long gone but not forgotten.

Three years ago I happened upon a newspaper article about a group of old-time New York Giants fans, the kind who still argued about whether Thomson had stolen a sign before his epic shot heard 'round the world, and who sounded a lot like my dad reminiscing about his old team. Not finding much online about the New York Baseball Giants Nostalgia Society, I got in touch with the reporter, who gave me the name of the group's leader, one Bill Kent, of Riverdale, NY. Well, one thing led to another, and I eventually found myself setting Bill up with a listserv so that he could more easily send out notices and share photos and stories with the crew. Since then I've attended a bunch of meetings, sometimes with my father in tow, other times on my own, and I have to say it's always a hoot to hear how passionate these guys are (and it is mostly guys) about the team that abandoned them for sunnier California skies.

And then 2010 happened.

When the San Francisco Giants started getting really good, started looking like playoff contenders, started convincing everyone they might make it to the World Series, a small but devoted group of folks 3,000 miles away from the City by the Bay started feeling the thrill of baseball again. Many of the old timers had remained faithful to the orange and black for all these years. But even those like my father, whose primary allegiance had strayed after the Jints left town, felt a pang of longing for the glory days when, on November 1st, the "fear the beard" crew made it official: the Giants were champions of the world once more.

This weekend, those folks got to be kids all over again. We received word a few weeks ago that the Giants organization had decided to pay tribute to its New York roots by bringing the World Series trophy to the East Coast. Hall of Famer Willie Mays, the Giants' most celebrated ambassador and one of the greatest players to ever don a Major League uniform, thrilled all of Harlem on Friday when he visited a school in his former neighborhood. And the trophy would be on display in midtown the next day for the benefit of Giants fans old and new. In a move of true sportsmanship, the team also invited the Nostalgia Society to a private meeting with not only the trophy, but Giants top brass Bill Neukom (owner) and Brian Sabean (general manager); catcher Buster Posey, the National League's Rookie of the Year; and the "Say Hey Kid" himself, Willie Mays. For guys like my dad, it was like Halloween, Christmas, and your birthday all wrapped into one!

It sure did turn out to be a day to remember. Many of the guys brought their wives and kids, all of whom took turns taking mugshots with the trophy. Everyone was in total awe when Mays came out to greet us, beaming and full of joy. He interviewed Posey for a while and answered questions before signing copies of his biography—which, by the way, the team provided to all of us free of charge. And we heard plenty of stories of old NY Giants memories. It was a moving demonstration of the power that baseball has in bringing people together. While my father and I will continue to hope that the Mets might someday make it back to playoff contention (a girl can dream!), it was truly awesome to have this moment to share with all the other fans in Giants Nation. &infin

carolyn in wonderland: a little video about big things

2011-01-07T22:22:00.015-05:00

It's early March, 2007, and planetary scientist Carolyn Porco has just opened the TED conference—a high-profile gathering of the world's brightest thinkers, movers, and shakers—with a bang. Her stirring presentation on the exploits of Cassini-Huygens, a space mission that's been investigating Saturn and its cornucopia of moons since July of 2004, is so inspiring that it goes on to become one of the top-voted talks on all of TED.com. It is, as they say, fantabulous.

Zoom ahead two and a half years to the waning days of 2009. I'm sitting at my desk, furiously scanning Google for a decent photograph of computer pioneer Ada Lovelace for a short piece I'm writing about her life. Before long, I stumble upon an image that makes me smile from ear-to-ear; it's a portrait of a small LEGO person with garments and hair just as Lady Lovelace would have worn them back in 1850. Almost immediately, my synapses start firing. How cool would it be to make minifigs (as these characters are known in the Legophile vernacular) of current well-known scientists and science popularizers? My first thought is to do one of Carolyn, whom I've been getting to know over the previous months. But I envision mini plastic versions of a number of other scientists and personalities as well . . . and thus, an idea is hatched.

Carolyn's minifig, the prototype for what will become an ever-growing collection of "LEGO scitweeps," is finished a few weeks later. But my creative juices are just getting started, and I find myself longing for a greater challenge: a stop-motion movie. I've never done one of these before and wouldn't even know where to begin. Yet it soon becomes my mission to recreate, in as much detail as possible, Carolyn's 2007 TED talk.

Many hours, quite a few moons (including one total eclipse!), and somewhere around 2,500 photographs later, my project is finally complete. The more vigilant among you might notice a few minor goofs (ahemupsidedownshorelineahem). But otherwise, I’m proud to say that this stop-action replica holds pretty true to the original, even down to the faces in the audience! So if you're as excited as I am about planetary exploration, I hope you'll set aside 18 minutes of your day and allow Carolyn's yellow Doppelgänger to, as she so eloquently enchants, take you on a journey . . . And why not check out these behind-the-scenes pics, while you're at it? ∞

the year that was - 2010 in photos

2010-12-31T14:22:00.022-05:00

2010 has been a whirlwind year. Here are some of my best shots from the last 12 months! (Click on images for larger versions.) ∞

Brandi Carlile rocking out. Ridgefield. January.

Snowpocalypse I. Brooklyn. February.

Architecture. Barcelona. March.

Avia's street. Masnou. March.

White House bowling alley. Washington. May.

Shuttle engines. Kennedy Space Center. May.

Liftoff. Kennedy Space Center. May. (w/thx to George)

The library. Brooklyn. June.

The eminent cosmologist. Manhattan. June.

Obligatory feline snapshot. Brooklyn. June.

Ice. Rocky Mountain National Park. June.

Walt Disney Concert Hall. Los Angeles. July.

Caltech. Pasadena. July.

Hairpin walkway at the Getty. Los Angeles. July.

Michael Jackson party. Brooklyn. August.

A new mark. Mount Monadnock. September.

The Huntington Library gardens. Pasadena. October.

Ceiling of the Civic. Pasadena. October.

Palm trees and condos. Cali coast. October.

Rolling hills. Cali coast. October.

Sea stuff. Monterey. October.

Cal Academy of Sciences. San Francisco. October.

Cargo. Oakland. October.

Snowpocalypse II. Brooklyn. December.

gone in 2010

2010-12-31T02:11:00.006-05:00

This is the time of year when we remember those who have left us. The following is a short list of those departed in 2010 with whom I am particularly proud to have shared some time on this planet. Some you may have heard of, some undoubtedly not. All will be missed. ∞

Jean S. Cione: All-Star pitcher with the All American Girls Professional Baseball League of the 1940s and 50s

Geraldine Doyle: Factory worker whose photograph became the basis of the iconic World War II "We Can Do It" Rosie the Riveter poster

Jaime Escalante: East Los Angeles high school math educator whose motivational teaching style inspired the film Stand and Deliver.

Miep Gies: One of the protectors of Anne Frank's family during the Holocaust, and the person responsible for saving Frank's famous diary

William E. Gordon: Electrical engineer who designed, built, and operated the Arecibo Observatory, the world's largest radio telescope

Dorothy Height: A leader and unsung champion of both the American civil rights and women's rights movements

Naomi Prawer Kadar: Inspiration behind BrainPOP, the children's educational website, and founder of BrainPOP ESL, for English-language learners

Dorothy Kamenshek: Former All-Star with the All American Girls Professional Baseball League who provided a basis for the lead character in the 1992 film, A League of Their Own

Juanita Kreps: Pioneering economist and businesswoman who became the first female Secretary of Commerce under President Carter

Benoît Mandelbrot: Innovative mathematician who developed the field of fractal geometry

Brian Marsden: Astronomer who directed the Minor Planet Center and coordinated celestial discoveries made around the world

Robert Macauley: Connecticut businessman who founded AmeriCares, one of the largest private health-care charities in the world

Paul the Octopus: Famed cephalopod who became renowned for his ability to correctly predict the winners at this year's FIFA World Cup

Sylvia Pressler: New Jersey judge whose most famous ruling gave girls the right to play Little League baseball

Allan Sandage: Prolific cosmologist whose observations helped establish the currently-accepted age and fate of the universe

Bobby Thomson: Major League outfielder whose "shot heard round the world" propelled the New York Giants to the 1951 World Series

Theresa Weinstock: Someone without whom I literally would not be here: my grandmother!

George C. Williams: Evolutionary biologist who contributed major insights into the workings of natural selection

Howard Zinn: Historian, writer, and progressive thinker whose A People's History of the United States offered an alternate view of American democracy

on politics: a picture speaks a thousand words

2010-12-09T23:47:00.011-05:00

I had zero intention of writing a blog post today, but this photo wouldn't let me go. It so perfectly encapsulates the serious frustration I've been feeling toward our government this year. It was taken moments after a bill to extend health benefits to 9/11 responders—the very "heroes" that members of the Grand Old Party have invoked time and again in the wake of that tragic event—was blocked by Republicans from entering a full vote in the U.S. Senate. At left, New York's junior Senator Kirsten Gillibrand seems utterly defeated, while her colleague and mentor Charles Schumer, NY's senior Senator, tries to console. One can only imagine the words between them at that moment. I'm reminded of that scene in Lost in Translation...you know the one. It doesn't matter what he said to her, and you don't need to know because you get the gist.

Sadly, it was just the first major blow for the two, and especially the junior Senator, on this day. Hours later, the Senate GOP blocked another vote, this time on a bill that included a provision Gillibrand had put her full force behind, a repeal of the military's discriminatory Don't Ask Don't Tell policy. Even the recently despicable Joe Lieberman of Connecticut had gotten behind this one! And yet most of the rest of the Senate's conservative wing refused to set aside "procedural niceties," as one blogger so eloquently put it, to ensure equal rights for all our service men and women. W...T...F?

But back to the picture. Schumer, the sage elder who you can tell here has been around the Congressional block a few times, may be more adept at this point at swallowing defeat, and it's heartwarming to see him encouraging his counterpart to keep her chin up. Gillibrand is a young, energetic Democrat, elected to the Senate just last month after serving two years in the seat Hillary Clinton vacated when she became Secretary of State. I can't help but feel that Gillibrand in this photo represents what most Democrats are feeling these days: growing disappointment and disillusionment in the wake of what seemed so promising back in 2008. To be sure, it's nothing new for me to get annoyed with Republicans. And I freely admit that an unfocused Democratic caucus shoulders a certain amount of blame for recent events. But the GOP obstructionism has gotten totally and completely out of hand. I recently saw a blog post explaining how today's Republican strategies closely resemble those of Cold War-era Soviets. They include:

•Taking extreme starting positions
•Employing emotional tactics such as exasperation, or getting angry and storming out of the room
•Viewing concessions by the adversary as a sign of weakness
•Delaying giving concessions and then only giving very small amounts
•Paying no attention to deadlines

In other words, they're being little brats! And hypocritical little brats at that; see 2:31 in this short video on GOP obstructionism. The poster went on to quote (a hardly liberal) David Brooks:

"[My] problem with the Republican Party right now ... is that if you offered them 80-20, they'd say no. If you offered them 90-10, they’d say no. If you offered them 99-1 they’d say no. And that’s because we’ve substituted governance for brokerism, for rigidity that Ronald Regan didn’t have."

Sigh. Anyway, as I tweeted earlier, hang in there, Senator Gillibrand, and keep fighting the good fight—even though I get that it might feel right now like you're smacking your head against a slab of cold concrete. To put things in a completely random perspective (and I know you're probably a Yankees fan but go with me for a second), this is sorta how we Mets fans feel every year. We deal. We pick up. We carry on and try again tomorrow. By the way, I hear you turned 44 today...here's hoping a few birthday drinks were able to numb the pain. ∞

Photo by Drew Angerer for The New York Times

hum for the holidays

2010-12-01T02:02:00.003-05:00

Wait, is it December again already?!! My, how 2010 has flown by. Well, I'm not quite prepared for the holidays just yet, but I've been cruising for some fun and unique winter songs, and I think I've come up with a set that you'll fancy, entitled Brooklyn December. (In case you missed my previous two holiday mixes, behold Brooklyn Xmas and Brooklyn Holiday.) As in years past, I've focused on indie/alternative tunes and interspersed various soul, country, and electronic/pop ditties. This year I came up with about twice as many songs as I could hope to fit into one mix, so you'll have to wait til next year for the rest ;) Enjoy! &infin

Brooklyn December mix | Listen on Spotify
Father Christmas - The Kinks
Look Out the Window - Gene Autry feat. Rosemary Clooney
Fallen Snow - Au Revoir Simone
Ain't No Chimneys in the Projects - Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings
Christmas Tree - Lady Gaga feat. Space Cowboy
Carol of the Bells - Straight No Chaser
Christmas - Leona Naess
Santa Claus is Coming to Town - Jackson 5
LeRoy the Redneck Reindeer - Joe Diffie
It Came Upon a Midnight Clear - Sixpence None The Richer
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - Francesca Battistelli
Forget December - Something Corporate
Angels We Have Heard on High - Relient K
O Holy Night - Weezer
Christmas Ain't Like Christmas Anymore - Kitty Wells
Jag Vet En Dejlig Rosa - Robyn
Winter Song - Sara Bareilles & Ingrid Michaelson

rosalind franklin gets her closeup

2010-11-21T20:31:00.016-05:00

This weekend I went to get a chest x-ray for a minor but persistent lung infection that doesn't seem to want to go away. While at the hospital, I chatted up the radiologist, a pleasant and efficient man who explained the procedure while securing around my waist a heavy lead sheet. I knew that the sheet was meant to protect my reproductive organs from potentially harmful effects of the radiation I was about to receive. So I quipped that I'd just seen a play about Rosalind Franklin, and that I was all too happy to don the bulky shield if it meant keeping my ovaries in good, working order.

"Rosalind Franklin?" the radiologist repeated quizzically. "Who's that?"

It's a question I'd expect from, oh, pretty much anyone without a significant science background. But I was rather shocked and dismayed to hear it from someone who not only works in the very field that Franklin contributed so much to, but who utilizes every day the same stuff that made Franklin's historic career—and that led to her untimely death. And so, as playwright Anna Ziegler did so eloquently in her recent production at the Ensemble Studio Theater in Manhattan, I couldn't help but muse, in nothing more than a hospital gown and leaden sash: What if?

Photograph 51 tells the story of Rosalind Elsie Franklin (pictured below), a British physicist and biochemist who made major insights into the molecular structures of coal, graphite, viruses, and the hereditary molecules DNA and RNA. In particular, the play centers on her contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA, which tantalized scientists until the April, 1953 publication of three papers in the journal Nature. These papers, one of which was co-authored by Franklin, effectively elucidated the biological mechanism of reproduction—or as many have dubbed it, the secret of life.

Though Photograph 51 is billed as a fictionalized account of the personalities surrounding the discovery of DNA's structure, Ziegler clearly did her homework. Much of the information presented in the play has been documented as fact: In 1951, Franklin went to work with Maurice Wilkins at Kings College London on x-ray photography of the structures of biological molecules; Franklin and Wilkins formed an icy relationship, resulting in less of a professional partnership than a simple sharing of physical space at the Medical Research Council's biophysics unit; For two years, Franklin worked tirelessly, with the help of her grad student Raymond Gosling, to create x-ray diffraction images of DNA in an effort to uncover its form; Wilkins and rivals James Watson and Francis Crick would ultimately share the glory for their work on DNA's double-helix structure, while Franklin's contributions were largely ignored; It later became known that Watson and Crick had, unbeknownst to Franklin, secretly been shown one of her unpublished photographs, which led directly to their determination of the correct DNA structure.

While the play raises many questions about how and why this all came to be, Ziegler makes no apologies for Franklin's apparently prickly personality and the role it may have played in history's outcome. It was refreshing for me to watch actress Kristen Bush in the lead role, not only because she nailed the repression of Franklin's inner conflicts, but because despite all that I'd ever read about Franklin in books and articles popular and scientific, I'd never really envisioned how her contrary comportment might really have come across. I'd certainly known that her reputation was far from that of a cuddly teddy bear, but sometimes it really takes hearing the words and seeing the facial and body expressions to appreciate what a person was truly like in the flesh.

It's tempting now to consider what Franklin—who died of ovarian cancer at 37, just five years after the DNA structure was confirmed—might have thought of her legacy today. In some sense, it would be logical to conclude that she'd have been embarrassed by the whole thing and simply urged people to accept what happened and move on. But I can't shake the feeling that she would have been pleased at having become a feminist icon for women who, half a century later, still face uphill battles in being accepted as equals in the scientific world. One might also surmise that Franklin, at least privately, would have felt vindicated for being considered a pioneer after all the criticism that swirled around her personality and methods. In one of Photograph 51's early scenes, Wilkins fails to notice how hurt Franklin is that he's decided to lunch in the men-only common room on her first day at the lab. She feigns indifference but is obviously fuming inside, not only at the unfairness of this discrimination but at the clear slight by her new colleague. Yet just when you think she's going to let it pass, Franklin comes straight to the point about her displeasure upon Wilkins's return from lunch. She had no intention of letting it go, we find out . . . so why would she let a little thing like her legacy go unchallenged, either?

At the end of the day, of course, all we can do is speculate: What if she'd been more open to sharing her work? What if she'd been less methodical, more of a risk taker in the lab? What if she'd been easier to work with, more gregarious? What if she'd lived at a time when women were more accepted as scientists? What if she'd known about the dangers of radiation? What if she hadn't died before the Nobel were awarded for the discovery of DNA's structure? If any one of these factors had been different, might my radiologist have known who I was talking about when I mentioned Franklin's name the other day?

As her character opines in the play's final scene, I suppose we'll never know. What I do know is that I'm elated that Anna Ziegler and director Linsay Firman decided to bring Franklin's life to the stage. And I can only hope that Photograph 51 will be replicated in theaters everywhere, so that the world might ponder the same questions of biology, personality, history, happenstance, and the pursuit of knowledge. &infin

felons and felines

2010-11-15T01:52:00.010-05:00

William Minnick is a wiry-haired inmate at the Indiana State Prison, a maximum-security correctional facility about 50 miles east of Chicago. He's been behind bars since 1982, when he was convicted of assaulting and killing a young woman in her home. Minnick knows a thing or two about the darkness of prison life; he was on death row for many years until his sentence was stayed in 2004. Even then, he remained confined in a small cell with little to live for.

Enter Mr. Magestyk, Minnick's slightly overweight and clearly pampered cat. The pair became fast friends in 2006 when Minnick, now 47, adopted Magestyk (pictured below) as part of a pilot program to allow inmates to care for homeless cats. Today, Minnick and Mr. Magestyk are inseparable. By all accounts, the introduction of this little ball of fur into Minnick's cell has given him a new lease on life.

I learned about the Indiana State program after coming across a fascinating blog post detailing one woman's quest to discover how cats are making life better in a place where 70 percent of convicts are there for murder. Diana Korten, who not only visited the prison but also interviewed corrections officers and inmates there about the program, found that aside from giving inmates something to love and be responsible for, the cats have mellowed them out considerably—which means fewer incidents of violence for officers to deal with.

Not that the cats haven't instigated a few rumbles... In one case, an inmate was found murdered after he had allegedly spit soda on another inmate's cat. Another time, several convicts put out a contract on the life of whomever was responsible for killing the cat of a particular prisoner. The cat killer was never found, but the fact that his own life was threatened illustrates how closely the inmates at Indiana State have bonded with their felines!

Simply put, this program appears to be a blessing for a population that doesn't have much else going for it. And considering there are so many cats in need of homes, it seems like a great system to try out in other prisons across the country. Some might argue, of course, that allowing prisoners to own cats or other animals is a pleasure they shouldn't be afforded, especially when the crimes they've committed are particularly heinous. But it's my belief that convicts should be given some way to grow as people while they're behind bars. And if a prisoner can find some humanity with the help of a pet then why shouldn't he have that opportunity? It should be noted, by the way, that inmates in the Indiana State Prison program have to pay out of their own pockets for the upkeep of their cats—which means for most of them that they have to work to earn money for food, toys, and medical expenses. So the kitties give their owners that extra incentive to stay on task, too.

Anyway, if you're interested in learning more, here's a short piece detailing some of the history of the Indiana State Prison cat program, and an article on pet therapy for prisoners. You can also check out the video below on cats in prisons, including at Indiana State (Minnick and Magestyk make an appearance). &infin

ballot initiative 300: that would be illogical

2010-10-27T01:52:00.012-04:00

So I was minding my own business last night, taking a quick peek at the Twitter feed, when the following post popped up on my screen from @absolutspacegrl:

Denver voters to decide whether their tax dollars should be spent on creating an "extraterrestrial affairs commission"
http://is.gd/gjc7A

There must be some misunderstanding, I thought. People don't "vote" on "forming extraterrestrial commissions" any more than they "vote" to "have municipal garbage collectors dump trash on the steps of city hall." I clicked the link. What I found was, as my Twitter pal Luke later put it, a gift that keeps on giving.

To be sure, I do realize it's that time of year...the time of year when ghouls and goblins come out attacking everyone and we all pretend like it's normal. I'm talking, of course, about midterm elections. But I was still a little taken aback to confirm that indeed, the great city of Denver has somehow managed to attach to the very bottom of their ballots a small eensy weensy measure on the formation of a coalition to investigate UFOs and other instances of extraterrestrial beings here on Earth. It is real, folks. It is called Initiative 300, and it has a music video, "Pink UFO."

Just so you know, aside from being the official music video of Initiative 300, this production—which stars (alleged) hip hop musicians TIME and Damon Jevon—was created to raise awareness about the fact that there's a cure for breast cancer floating about the heavens somewhere, and that the ETs have so nicely offered to give it to us, but the U.S. government won't let us take it from them. You. Can. Not. Make. This. Stuff. Up. (Of course I now have to decide whether to add this to my pink post; I should probably refrain.)

A quick glance at the website for Initiative 300 gives away the madness. I must admit it was heartening to find out that Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson were both alien fans before they died, and that Ronald Reagan was followed by a UFO once, but he didn't have the cojones to report it. But it got better. Luke alerted me to an article pointing out that in 2014, a group of representatives from eight civilizations from various nearby stars and constellations will be dropping in on the United Nations general assembly for a little chat with us. Do they get diplomat parking privileges with that? I can only imagine the rubbernecking along First Avenue when those guys fly into town. Or maybe they can beam themselves in? Perhaps JJ Abrams can clue us in on that one.

So clearly, some folks in Colorado have been watching a few too many Balloon Boy YouTube reruns, I thought to myself. Hopefully Denverites will see right through this and vote a resounding 'over my dead body.' But then...then I found out that the organizers of Initiative 300 are already targeting New York for a similar ballot proposition! And now it gets personal. So all I will say is this: If my posse of Flying Spaghetti Monster-fearing droogs and I have to raise some hell and kick some snooty New York ass on account of this unscientific horseshit, then by golly, it will be done. We will not be voting on the aliens, thank you very much!! And to those of you in Denver next week: If you know what's good for you, VOTE NO ON 300. &infin

what's in a logo? a lot

2010-10-24T14:46:00.004-04:00

By now you've all heard about the recent Gap logo brouhaha, in which the purveyors of inexpensive office duds revealed their new corporate marker to a fury so loud, they were forced to recant and issue a big, public "never mind." For what it's worth, I think it was the right decision: While their logo isn't one of my favorites, the new one was awful. But more importantly, the new logo had nothing whatsoever to do with their old one, which had come to be known and trusted by shoppers everywhere.

Some have argued recently that logos don't matter anymore, but I strongly disagree. If that were the case, then why does the image of a U.S. flag awash in logos conjure sentiments of outrage? Why is this taxonomy of species so powerful? And why did Logorama win best animated short at the Oscars this year?

Of course, many successful companies periodically update their logos as a way to refresh their image or reflect a new line of thinking. But my opinion is that unless you're changing the entire gist of your offerings, the best redesigned logos don't completely start over; they instead build on the existing design so that the public can still identify the brand. When Gap decided in the mid-90s to ditch Banana Republic's safari/travel theme and go after the "casual luxury" clothing market, the resulting logo redesign made a lot of sense. But Gap's change this year was just dumb. It reminded me of the decision that New York City-based pharmacy chain Duane Reade made a few years ago—only this time, the parent company realized the error (albeit after severe public excoriation) and wisdom prevailed. ∞

stuff of life: time to learn on blog action day

2010-10-15T00:09:00.003-04:00

Today is Blog Action Day, and this year's theme is water. While there are so many issues I could focus on for this, I'm simply going to whip out one of my favorite statistics to get things going: If you fill a bucket with water and have it represent all the H₂O on the planet's surface, the percentage representing clean, safe drinking water would amount to no more than a spoonful. One spoonful!

It's no secret that the lack of potable drinking water around the globe is a ridiculously huge problem. In fact, it's so big that we in our busy lives have a tendency to pretend there's nothing wrong or otherwise ignore the issue because we think there's nothing that just one person can do about it. Well, there are things you can do! But the solutions do start with a small sacrifice: your time. To really make a difference, we all need to set aside whatever we can—a few minutes, a few hours—to learn about the water problems we face. And amidst all the gloom and doom, we need to hear about progress, too; there are a number of ingenious ways in which folks have already achieved success at helping keep our waters—and the waters halfway around the world—clean and clear.

For those of you looking for a basic background on the state of our world's drinking waters, you might enjoy my recent post on water safety. The following videos should also serve as quick, helpful primers on issues of water security, both in developing and developed nations. &infin

A friendly reminder about the world's drinking water, from Charity: water

How one man's invention could save millions, from TED.com

Why bottled water is evil—and not necessarily clean—from The Story of Stuff

making a mark

2010-09-21T23:31:00.010-04:00

I've been wanting to do this for a long time now. Finally worked up the nerve to make it happen! I chose the seven brightest stars in the M45 star cluster, better known as the Pleiades. That's five of the "seven sisters" from Greek Mythology plus their parents. (From an apparent magnitude standpoint, the other two sisters were a little too puny to include.) My star, 20 Tauri, is at the top right of the central "box." ∞

Update: My tattoo is now featured in the astronomy section of Science Ink, a marvelous collection of math and science tattoos from noted science writer Carl Zimmer!

postcards from an alien world

2010-09-02T19:29:00.005-04:00

Most of the time if you hear me gushing about planetary vistas, it's about Saturn, its rings, or its lovely moons. But let's not forget about Mars! This week, scientists working with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been circling our ruddy neighbor since 2006, released a series of exquisitely detailed and hauntingly moody images of the Martian surface. Wired offers an informative write-up with long captions for a few of them, but I'm posting my favorites here. I encourage you to browse through all 236 of the latest shots on the web portal for HiRISE, the camera system in charge of these amazing views. I'm telling you, each page is better than the next! ∞

cool covers

2010-08-30T23:58:00.006-04:00

This is apparently the week in which my new faves cover my old faves.

I was pleasantly surprised last week to learn that a favorite artist of mine, Fever Ray (half of the Swedish duo The Knife), decided to record a version of "Mercy Street," the classic track from one of my all-time favorites, Peter Gabriel. As haunting as the original but with a distinctly newer electro flavor, the cover earned an instant five-star rating on my iTunes collection. (That's Fever Ray in the image above, by the way...not sure why she's dressed like a monkey for this one, but that's the shot for the new single. In general I find it simpler to just nod and smile when it comes to her outfits!)

Then today I found out that another one of my faves, Robyn (who you can listen to me gush about here), recently covered the incomparable Björk at a ceremony honoring the Icelandic chanteuse for her winning of the 2010 Polar Music Prize. To make things more perfect, it's my very favorite Björk song, "Hyperballad," which I must have listened to a thousand times my freshman year in college.

Without further ado, here are the new takes on two stellar musical creations. ∞

Mercy Street by Fever Ray

trouble in the jungle

2010-08-11T22:06:00.004-04:00

Okay, boys and girls, time for a quiz. Your question for today: What's the worst oil spill you can think of?

Did you say Exxon Valdez? Oh, sorry, no. In the grand scheme of things, the estimated 30 million gallons it released into Alaska's Prince William Sound are chump change. Try again! Okay, the Deepwater Horizon disaster must have been worse, you're thinking. And you are correct. But even this year's catastrophe—which, depending on who you ask, leaked anywhere from 206 million to 348 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico—pales in comparison to a systematic leaking of some 18 billion (with a "b!") gallons' worth of petroleum-infused toxic waste into the waterways and soils of the Ecuadorian Amazon Rainforest over the past 30-odd years.

Known to many as the Amazon Chernobyl, this horrid large-scale spill has poisoned once-pristine rivers and vegetation, killed untold millions of animals, and plagued thousands of Ecuadorian and indigenous peoples with various types of cancers, birth defects, and other ailments. Of course, with all the pollution taking place in a relatively remote jungle over several decades in a country you probably can't even place on a map, it'd be no surprise if you'd never heard of this environmental catastrophe. Well, you have now. Keep reading.

I learned about the calamity affecting the Ecuadorian region of Lago Agrio (Spanish for "sour lake") through a documentary released last year—and available now on DVD—called Crude. The film charts the struggles of some 30,000 Ecuadorians and indigenous peoples who've banded together to file a class action lawsuit against the Chevron Corporation, owners of the former Texaco, who were the initial drillers of oil in the 1,700-square-mile Lago Agrio area. The suit charges that Chevron should be forced to pay an estimated $9 billion—about two weeks' worth of their annual revenue—to clean up the contamination caused by Texaco's lingering oil pits and install new water systems.

Of course, prosecuting one of the wealthiest and most powerful companies on the face of the planet ain't easy—and Chevron is playing hardball. The script of this true-to-life drama has Michael Clayton written all over it, with corporate finger-pointing, alleged assassination attempts, and legal shenanigans the likes of which U.S. courts could only dream of (the case is being tried in the perpetually corrupt Ecuadorian legal system). At the end of the day, it's impossible not to take sides with the individuals who have no choice but to consume their polluted waters and face the consequences: a destitute mother who struggles to come up with the money to pay for cancer treatments for her teenage daughter; a baby, not two weeks old, covered head to toe with a dangerous skin rash common among those exposed to polluted waters; even a poor white goose, whose intake of oily water has clearly affected her nervous system to the point where she's paralyzed, webbed feet flailing in the air, staring at the cameraman with the look of certain death in her eyes.

The picture is grim, and it's an uphill battle for these folks, yet the film suggests some hope. One ray of light comes in the form of a Vanity Fair article, which exposes the issue, at least temporarily, in its high-profile pages. Another comes from Trudie Styler, wife of the rock star Sting, who teams up with her husband to raise awareness and money for the victims of the Lago Agrio disaster. As the film shows, their case has become a veritable David-versus-Goliath scenario, with no immediate end in sight. But with a scrappy legal team led by the feisty Ecuadorian prosecutor Pablo Fajardo and a savvy New York litigator, Steven Donzinger, it's still within the realm of possibility that David may actually win...if the trial ever ends. Anyway, check out the links below if you'd like to learn more. &infin

If you've got 10 minutes: See the 2005 New York Times op-ed about the Lago Agrio disaster and/or Trudie Styler's call-to-arms in the Huffington Post. You might also try this more recent article in the British Independent, or make a quick visit to the watchdog site ChevronToxico, which is devoted to the issue.

If you've got 15 minutes: Watch the 60 Minutes segment on the Chevron lawsuit.

If you've got 30 minutes: Read Vanity Fair's tell-all article about the lawsuit, from its 2007 Green Issue.

If you've got 100 minutes: Here's the website for the Crude documentary; it's also available on Netflix or for purchase from Amazon.

Images by the Rainforest Action Network on Flickr

konichiwa, robyn

2010-08-07T00:21:00.002-04:00

Carnegie Hall, 1998. I’m backstage, ready to hit the big time after all those ‘practices’ we were told would get us here. It’s the finals of the National Collegiate Championships of A Cappella, and my gals and I are about to sing four songs in a bid to be named best collegiate a cappella group in the country.

I’ll cut to the chase: we don’t win. (Though, being the only all-female group in the finals, we’re happy to call ourselves the best all-female group in America for that year.) I’m thrilled to have sung the lead on "Mysterious Ways," which I guess I nailed in each of the previous two rounds to help get us here! But, most importantly for this post, it’s the first time a tune by the Swedish sensation Robyn has been sung within the hallowed walls of Carnegie Hall. “Show Me Love” never sounded sweeter, if I do say so myself! And now, let's fast-forward.

Twelve crazy years later, my knees and back are #killingme. I’ve been standing among sweaty boys for the past four hours, waiting for Robyn to make her grand entrance at Webster Hall. It has got to be 104 degrees in here—so hot that Robyn’s co-headliner Kelis decided in the previous set to do away with her 70s-style wig of flowing glittery locks and just finish the show in her natural cropped coif. In the dozen years between Midtown West and East Village, Robyn has gone from wannabe R&B pop diva to veritable synthpop darling, with her two most recent albums, 2007’s self-titled Robyn and this year’s Body Talk Pt. 1—one of three albums she’s releasing in 2010—garnering serious props from music critics major and minor.

And now, I cannot wait to dance.

Robyn is a bit of an enigma. She’s Swedish, which might suggest bulky blonde. She is in fact quite petite, but she does pack a punch, both in her vocals and her stage presence. She clearly loves the interplay of technology and music; in the past few years she’s released tunes with titles like “The Girl and the Robot,” “Fembot,” and “Robotboy.” And these songs do tend to incorporate the beeps and drones of robot-sounding machines. But Robyn’s the kind of artist who’s just as happy to whip out a rap or reggae track, like the playful “Konichiwa Bitches” or the trippy “Dancehall Queen,” or a sweet ballad such as the acoustic version of “Be Mine.” She’ll even throw in a Swedish folk song now and again! But the heart of her repertoire is electronically-infused dance music. Lest you think that sounds like any old pop star’s lineup, think of Robyn’s as a wall of ear candy, with a spray of lush minor chords and unique arrangements coming at you from all directions, with the Swede’s strong yet quirky voice carrying whatever melody or rhythm she lays on top of it all.

So, back to the night in question... Finally Robyn hits the stage, and it is awesome. Singing and dancing ensue, and the audience and I don’t stop until after her two encores, which come about an hour after she first appears. She performs a slew of oldies, most of the tracks from Body Talk Pt. 1, and even unveils the first-ever performance (“in the history of the world!” she says) of “Hang With Me,” the lead single off of Body Talk Pt. 2, due out next month. She dances so hard, she has to take most of an entire song out to breathe. Other standout numbers include “Dancing On My Own,” “Dream On,” and the mesmerizing “With Every Heartbeat.” The audience is left begging for more, but it’s been a dreamy, if sweaty, night.

The next day, Robyn has a brief in-store performance uptown, just a few short blocks from Carnegie Hall. And of course I’m there, front row! But no dancing this morning. Admittedly a bit hung over from the previous night, Robyn performs lovely acoustic versions of three songs, including the first one I ever heard her sing, “Show Me Love.” And then, wonder of wonders, I get to meet her. I tell her about her Carnegie Hall debut, and she laughs and remarks how cool that is as she signs my album. And that, ladies and germs, is a keeper. ∞

Top two photos by Kolored via BrooklynVegan. Bottom photo by 20tauri.

all hail winnebago man

2010-07-14T01:10:00.006-04:00

I don't really remember when it was that I first witnessed Jack Rebney making a fool of himself on the interwebs. In between unavoidable fits of laughter, though, I distinctly recall thinking, man, this poor guy is having a seriously bad day.

Turns out I wasn't alone. Over the past four years, several million people have tuned in to YouTube to watch a (NSFW) clip of hilarious outtakes from a 1989 series of promotional videos that Rebney shot for Winnebago, longtime purveyors of fine recreational vehicles. And until this past weekend I had no idea that, with the mouth of a sailor and a penchant for self deprecation, Rebney had become not only the top Internet search result for "angriest man in the world" but also a cult hero of sorts. All that changed when I attended a screening of Winnebago Man, a humorous and heartwarming ode to Rebney from up-and-coming documentary filmmaker Ben Steinbauer.

We start off clueless as to the whereabouts of the former Winnebago spokesman, who drops off the face of the planet after being pink slipped in the fallout from the creation of the outtake video. But we soon learn that the enterprising Steinbauer—who plays a significant on-screen role throughout the film—has decided to stop at nothing to track down this mysterious character. Eventually, we find the former salesman and his faithful dog Buddah living alone, deep in the woods of northern California. Thus begins the deconstruction of an enlightened but frustrated soul who enjoys the simple pleasures of life and wants nothing to do with the modern world, yet craves an audience for his surprising political and existential theories.

I don't want to spoil anything by saying much more, but I'll mention that at our screening, we theatergoers had the distinct pleasure of hearing a bit of commentary from the comedic yet cantankerous Rebney, who's currently traveling with Steinbauer to help promote the film. All I can say is: That a man who flings f-bombs like they're going out of style could so eloquently and succinctly castigate the previous presidential administration and at the same time deliver a call to arms for this country to invest in things like education and our national infrastructure pretty much left no doubt in my mind that Jack Rebney is my kind of people!

And with that, I whole-heartedly recommend that you go out and see this little indie flick, which will surely be more fulfilling than any blockbuster you might catch this summer. It'll make you laugh, it'll make you think. But mostly, it'll make you feel good about being a part of this sometimes crazy, but often enlightening, Internet-world we all now live in. ∞

space coast adventures

2010-05-23T18:30:00.001-04:00

Last week I had the privilege of being a guest for the final launch of the space shuttle Atlantis from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, FL. The launch itself was magical, a once-in-a-lifetime event that certainly lived up to the hype of being way better in person than on TV. But I also took an extra day to explore the KSC grounds since I'd never visited before, and I was pleasantly surprised at the depth of the offerings, both for children and adults alike.

As of this writing, there are only two planned shuttle missions to go before the entire space program ceases. Naturally, there is quite a bit of concern about lost jobs and a decline in tourism on the Space Coast following the STS-134 mission, which is currently slated to launch in November. But I'd argue that KSC can remain a tourist destination for some time, with or without shuttle launches, if NASA can step up its game and do a little more to draw people in. Aside from the main visitor center, which caters more to children, I was particularly impressed with the newer Saturn V Center, which houses not only an entire full-scale Saturn V rocket but a wonderful museum dedicated to the history and science behind the Apollo program. After this year it might be quite a while before we see piloted missions launching from the Cape again, so I'd suggest NASA would be wise to hurry up and build a similar annex dedicated to the shuttle program to help sustain tourism in the area.

In the meantime, I still think KSC is well worth a visit for anyone interested in space exploration. And of course, if you have the chance to attend one of the two remaining shuttle launches, by all means do it! Just know that there will be lines, and lots of them, if you happen to stop by around launch time. Anyway, here are some pics from my recent adventures on the Space Coast! ∞

tunes to start your day...in space

2010-04-20T09:17:00.006-04:00

I've always thought it pretty groovy that our space agency maintains a tradition of beaming wake-up songs to astronauts at the start of each new day in low Earth orbit. This little routine is observed not only to ease the transition from "sleep time" to "awake time," but to encourage a sense of camaraderie between flight crew and NASA managers on the ground. Last week I was even more delighted to learn that NASA keeps a detailed log of all the wake-up songs played for astronauts over the years! So in honor of the successful landing of the space shuttle Discovery just a few moments ago, I've put together a list of 25 of the best wake-up songs blasted on the space shuttle throughout the program's 29-year history.

The astronaut wake-up song tradition dates back to the Gemini and Apollo programs of the 1960s. Today, musical selections are made by managers at mission control in Houston and by crew members' families. Often, songs are played for individual astronauts. For example, there have been quite a few college fight songs (ex: "Hail Purdue" for various Boilermaker astronauts); songs about states or cities from which astronauts hail (ex: Billy Joel's "New York State of Mind" for New York native Mike Massimino); and songs featuring astronauts' names (ex: "Come on Eileen" by Dexy's Midnight Runners for STS-114 commander Eileen Collins).

Songs may also reflect specific missions or tasks for a particular day. For instance, Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," which features a verse about Galileo, was selected in honor of the Galileo spacecraft, the main payload onboard STS-34. And Kylie Minogue's "Walking on Sunshine" was played on the day of an important spacewalk during STS-113. Of course, there have also been plenty of songs that simply reflect the wonder of waking up on Atlantis, Challenger, Columbia, Discovery, or Endeavour with a view of the world below and the infinity of space above. (In case you were wondering, prior to reentry this morning, the STS-131 crew awoke to Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again.")

Without further ado, here are my shuttle song selections! Wherever possible (from STS-91 on) I've linked to the actual wake-up call recordings, which include astronaut greetings from mission control. ∞

Rocket Man - Elton John (STS-51D: April 18, 1985)
A Hard Day's Night - The Beatles (STS-30: May 8, 1989)
Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen (STS-34: October 21, 1989)
Kokomo - The Beach Boys (STS-31: April 27, 1990)
Shiny Happy People - R.E.M. (STS-58: October 25, 1993)
All I Wanna Do - Sheryl Crow (STS-72: January 18, 1996)
Space Oddity - David Bowie (STS-78: June 24, 1996)
Higher Love - Steve Winwood (STS-82: February 15, 1997)
Manic Monday - The Bangles (STS-91: June 8, 1998)
Girls Just Want to Have Fun - Cyndi Lauper (STS-92: October 13, 2000)
Here Comes the Sun - The Beatles (STS-97: December 7, 2000)
Fly Away - Lenny Kravitz (STS-98: February 18, 2001)
She Blinded Me With Science - Thomas Dolby (STS-102: March 15, 2001)
Voodoo Chile - The Jimi Hendrix Experience (STS-110: April 13, 2002)
Message in a Bottle - The Police (STS-110: April 19, 2002)
Fake Plastic Trees - Radiohead (STS-107: January 19, 2003)
Imagine - John Lennon (STS-107: January 29, 2003)
Clocks - Coldplay (STS-121: July 10, 2006)
The Astronaut - Something Corporate (STS-121: July 17, 2006)
Homeward Bound - Simon and Garfunkel (STS-118: August 21, 2007)
Have You Ever - Brandi Carlile (STS-124: June 4, 2008)
In Your Eyes - Peter Gabriel (STS-127: July 25, 2009)
Beautiful Day - U2 (STS-130: February 11, 2010)
Galileo - Indigo Girls (STS-131: April 13, 2010)
What a Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong (STS-131: April 18, 2010)

channeling ada: catherine wolf, master communicator

2010-03-24T02:14:00.004-04:00

Happy Ada Lovelace Day! Today is the day when the blogosphere comes to life with postings about inspiring women in technology. Now in its second year, Ada Lovelace Day was created by British software consultant and Web developer Suw Charman-Anderson as a way to highlight often overlooked women doing amazing things in the tech world. The event is named after Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, a 19th-century mathematician who is often credited with being the world's first computer programmer. You can read more about her on FindingAda.com or by watching this short animated biography!

Last year's inaugural Ada Lovelace Day generated several thousand posts worldwide. (In case you missed it, you can read mine, on planetary paparazzo Carolyn Porco, here.) This year, I've decided to profile someone that relatively few people have heard of but whose story really moved me when I first read about her. She is psychologist and researcher Catherine Wolf.

Starting in the mid 1970s and spanning some three decades, Wolf's career has focused on trying to get computers to understand how we humans communicate. As a research psychologist at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY, she designed and tested various interfaces between people and machines: speech-to-data, handwriting-to-type, and more. She spent much of her time thinking about how verbal cues translate into meaningful information, and she helped IBM develop new technologies like an automated audio teller program that would allow users to do their banking over the phone. In all, Wolf holds the title to six patents and more than 100 journal articles and textbook chapters on the subject of human-computer interaction.

Since 2003, however, Wolf has had an entirely different relationship with the technologies she helped develop. In the late 1990s she was diagnosed with the progressive motor neuron disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS—more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. ALS is a heartbreaking illness; it causes progressive loss of motor functions until, one by one, the body's systems shut down. But instead of tuning the world out in the face of such a devastating fate, Wolf has challenged her disease head-on and even used it to uncover new ways for ALS sufferers to communicate long after they've lost the ability to speak.

These days, Wolf counts herself lucky to still have the use of her eyes and some of the surrounding muscles, for it's her eyebrows that help her connect with the outside world. Bound to a wheelchair with almost no volunteer muscle movement and no ability to speak, swallow, or even breathe on her own, Wolf is nevertheless able to type, talk, go online, and even check her Facebook status with the help of various computer programs and a headband that senses when her eyebrows move.

Writing out a single word may take several laborious minutes, but Wolf is grateful that she can still write poetry and connect with her family and with others who struggle with ALS. In fact, last spring, in what she considers her proudest professional publication, Wolf co-authored a paper introducing a new scale of abilities in people with ALS that described finer-scale skill sets than doctors had previously recognized in ALS sufferers. Is that impressive, or what?!

In our everyday lives, most of us have a hard enough time expressing our thoughts and feelings even with our full set of faculties. But to learn about someone like Catherine Wolf is to know what it means to be a part of the interactive human world. On this Ada Lovelace Day, I applaud Wolf's contributions to the field of communication technology, and I stand in awe of her unyielding efforts to reach out in the face of such trying physical circumstances. I urge you all to read more about her in this stirring profile by Beth Schwartzapfel in the Brown Alumni Magazine. &infin

pink stinks

2010-02-24T02:02:00.015-05:00

I don't really hate pink. As colors go, it's brilliant when leaning toward magenta and, well, pretty in its paler form. I own (among other things) a hot pink rain slicker and myriad writing implements in various shades of fuchsia and rose. But I have to say that I see red when I think about the pinkification of anything and everything related to the female gender.

It might surprise you to learn that pink didn't always conjure images of princesses and other precious playthings; the truth is, until the late 20th century blue was actually considered the daintier, more girly color, while regal pink was considered stronger and more masculine. Today, of course, we've done a complete 180, and then some. Consider, if you will:

Exhibit A: Toys! Step into any major toyshop—or chain store featuring a toy section—and it'll be painfully obvious which toys are intended for girls and which are for boys. I won't even go into how horrible it is that we're socializing our children to assume that certain skills/pastimes/careers are more masculine or feminine, but I will share with you one example of mind-blowing pink stupidity. A recent Toys "R" Us catalogue featured simple telescopes and microscopes for budding young scientists. The 'scopes were available in different colors and with different levels of magnification. Sickeningly, the lowest-resolution options for both microscopes and telescopes were (wait for it...) the pink ones. How idiotic is that?! Even the newly announced Computer Engineer Barbie, one of very few toys portraying women in technical fields, has to come with a pink laptop, pink cell phone, and pink accessories like shoes, glasses, and wristwatch. Yeesh!

Exhibit B: Electronics! When you offer a product in a rainbow of colors—think candy-colored earbuds or iPod Nanos—pink is a perfectly good option to add to the mix. But when you throw pink in as a second color simply to try to woo certain female customers, the outcome is often just ridiculous. Let's see...pink SLRs? Check. Pink PSPs? Check. Pink Wii remotes? Check. And then there's this monstrosity. Excuse me while I find somewhere to throw up. But seriously, who buys this stuff? I am genuinely curious to know.

Exhibit C: Team sports apparel! So apparently the people who own major sports franchises have decided that instead of offering items for their female fans in, say, their team's colors (a logical choice, right?), they'll instead provide only one option: pink or pink. No joke, most of the time it's either pink jerseys and caps or black t-shirts with pink rhinestone studs. This isn't a fashion show, folks, it's a sporting event. Oh, and have you ever been to a ladies' giveaway day at the ballpark? Nothing screams "Let's beat the Evil Empire!!" like a pale pink visor, ya know? (Small consolation: The Evil Empire gives away pink visors, too.) Mind you, it's not exactly rocket science to figure out why no professional sports team that I can think of—male or female—has pink as it's primary color; even women's teams would be seen as too feminine or girly for that. Unless, of course, they're dressing up for a special occasion...which leads me to my next point!

Exhibit D: Breast cancer awareness! Yup, even the pink cancer ribbon (and the pinkification of anything in the name of breast cancer awareness) bothers me. Now obviously, cancer of any type is a very serious matter. But I completely agree with social activist Barbara Ehrenreich, who recently wrote in the LA Times of her frustration with the fact that pink has become a symbol for what I'll call "feminism lite":

"To some extent, pink-ribbon culture has replaced feminism as a focus of female identity and solidarity. When a corporation wants to signal that it's 'woman friendly,' what does it do? It stamps a pink ribbon on its widget and proclaims that some minuscule portion of the profits will go to breast cancer research....Instead of embracing the full spectrum of human colors—black, brown, red, yellow and white—we stick to princess pink. While we used to march in protest against sexist laws and practices, now we race or walk 'for the cure.'"

I must say, I'm happy to know I'm not the only one truly bothered by the pinkification of the female gender. While the marketers of the world continue to do their damnedest to make sure pink = girl/woman, I've seen more articles in the last several months examining the role of pink in modern society than I have in many years of caring about this. There's even a new book about the subject, Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys From the Girls in America by University of Maryland professor Jo B. Paoletti, due out later this year.

I was especially happy—dare I say tickled pink?—to read about a new campaign out of the UK that hopes to "challenge the culture of pink which invades every aspect of girls' lives." Called Pink Stinks, the organization aims not only to encourage girls to think in other shades of the electromagnetic spectrum (okay, truth be told pink isn't even cool enough to be in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum...), it also strives to reverse gender stereotyping by providing positive role models for girls in all walks of life—especially those traditionally closed to women.

Sadly, the two sisters who started Pink Stinks, Abi and Emma Moore, have already been branded by naysayers as "dour and humorless feminists," "communist loonies," and worse. I find it amazing how strongly these Defenders of Pink can come out against what seems like such an egalitarian agenda! Well, I, for one, support Pink Stinks and everyone else who's raised awareness about this issue of late. To be clear, I don't think pink should be demonized as a color, but niether should it be the only color associated with feminity. Why not start on day one? If we could get to the point where babies come home from the hospital dressed not in pink or blue but in something a little more gender-neutral (chartreuse, anyone?), I think we'd all begin to see the world through slightly more rose-colored glasses. ∞

Photographs by JeongMee Yoon

score one for the girls: sylvia pressler (1934 - 2010)

2010-02-17T01:46:00.019-05:00

It was a bright afternoon in May of 1992, and I was two strikes down. Sixty feet away, the opposing pitcher, a scruffy kid of 14 or 15, stared intently into his catcher's mitt and tried to remember that I was just another batter before hurling a fastball in my direction. As soon as I caught the ball in my sights, I knew it was going places.

Before long I was on second base, having knocked in the go-ahead run for my team. It would be one of two run-scoring hits I'd have that day, my best as a member of the local Babe Ruth Little League that I was the first girl to ever play in. My mother would later recall how she'd overheard several parents complaining that I was trying to show up their sons, that I was embarrassing them, that I didn't belong there. They wondered, a little too loudly for my mom's taste, what I was trying to prove.

Thing is, I wasn't trying to prove anything; I just wanted to play baseball. And I might never have had the opportunity to help my team that day had it not been for a woman named Sylvia Pressler, who died on Monday at the age of 75.

I was but a glimmer in my parents' eyes back in 1973, but that year a 12-year-old girl named Maria Pepe pitched three games for her Little League team in Hoboken, New Jersey. Unfortunately, while women had participated in our national pastime since the very birth of the game in the mid-1800s, and had even boasted their own professional baseball league during the 1940s and 50s, girls growing up in the 60s and 70s were generally not welcome in the game of baseball. So when the national Little League Baseball organization heard about Pepe, they threatened to revoke the charter of her local league. In response, the National Organization for Women stepped in and filed a lawsuit on Pepe's behalf.

The case was heard by New York City native Sylvia Pressler, who in 1973 was a lawyer for New Jersey's Division on Civil Rights, the state body set up to hear such cases at the time. A legal trailblazer, Pressler had earned a law degree from Rutgers School of Law thirteen years earlier at a time when female lawyers were virtually unheard of.

In her decision on the Little League case, Pressler ruled in favor of Pepe and the National Organization for Women, arguing that Little League's no-girls policy violated state and federal anti-discrimination laws. "The institution of Little League is as American as the hot dog and apple pie," she stated in her opinion. "There is no reason why that part of Americana should be withheld from girls."

After losing an appeal, Little League Baseball amended its rules the following year and in fact decided to create an entire program for girls. Sadly, though, the girls' program was not for baseball but for softball—which, as anyone who's ever played the two knows all too well, is a very different game. Today, although it's still illegal to disallow girls from playing on Little League baseball teams, the reality is that most girls don't even consider baseball as an option anymore. This has been a bitter twist of fate for someone who thought for sure progress would have spun in the other direction—more girls playing baseball—in the 18 years since her last season of Little League!

Pressler made national headlines following the Little League decision but would go on to hear much more challenging cases after she became a judge. Four years after her landmark ruling, she became only the second woman appointed to judge on the Appellate Division for the state of New Jersey. And in 1997, she was the first woman to be named as the division's presiding judge, a position she held until her retirement in 2004.

In case you were wondering, we won the game that spring afternoon in '92. And in his victory speech to the team, our coach presented me with the game ball for my achievements at the plate and in the field. It was one of my proudest baseball moments, and I still cherish that worn-out ball—as well as the shiny blue trophy I earned after our team went on to win the league championship that season. Baseball has always been in my blood, but thanks to Sylvia Pressler, I've known what it's like to play the most American of sports. I thank her for that. ∞

we are all made of corn

2010-01-31T14:27:00.011-05:00

Last summer, a friend and I took two weeks to drive a 6,000-mile loop around the United States. We saw all sorts of terrain, from the rolling wooded hills of the Appalachians to the eroded badlands of the Dakotas to the majestic mountains of Montana and Wyoming. But there was one thing about the lay of the land that hit home above all else: corn is everywhere.

As I've mentioned in the past, I've been trying of late to educate myself about what I eat so that, when confronted with the many food options available to me, I can make healthier and environmentally friendlier choices. In the process, I've continued to learn quite a bit about the food industry and its role in our country's economic, medical, political, and environmental history. I regret to report that with every new article or book I read, and with every documentary film or television program I see on the subject, the picture only gets worse. Still, the fact that food production is even a topic of discussion at all these days gives me some semblance of hope. To that end, I wanted to give kudos to a film I recently saw that deftly gets to the root of one of the biggest problems with what we eat today: the fact that almost everything we consume comes in some way from industrial corn.

I first learned about this idea when reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, in which author Michael Pollan describes (among other things) just how ubiquitous the giant grass Zea mays has become in our food system. And it certainly hit home last summer when I experienced for the first time what thousands of miles of corn and more corn really looks and feels like. But the 2007 documentary King Corn breaks the story down even further, bringing viewers not only into the homes and offices of the people who produce all this grain and the livestock that feed on it, but into the lives of some of the people, far removed from the corn belt, who've been affected by our glut of the yellow stuff.

The film starts out with two recent college graduates, Ian and Curtis, undergoing a chemical analysis of their hair. The results indicate that the majority of the carbon in their bodies originates from corn; you are what you eat, indeed! So the duo decides to take a year out of their lives, move to a farming town in central Iowa, and try to find out how this came to be. To understand the process, they plant one acre of corn on a small patch of a willing farmer's land and interview everyone who'll talk about the life of their corn, from its planting to its harvest to the various channels it may go through after that.

One of the reasons I really liked this film is that it shows you the state of the corn industry without being preachy: This is where we're at, this is how we got here, and we'll let you draw your own conclusions. As you can imagine, there was quite a bit of watching the grass grow during the making of the film, so aside from talking to the locals and playing a lot of wiffleball, Ian and Curtis also took some time to create fun stop-motion animations as a way to explain the basic economic and political trends behind the corn industry in the United States. The film definitely misses an opportunity to discuss some of the major environmental effects that farms have had on the country since World War II. But I'd say that's probably one of the reasons why the movie doesn't feel (as others I've seen have) as though you're being clubbed over the head by an insurmountable sensation of doom and gloom.

In any case, I highly recommend putting King Corn on your Netflix queue or going out and buying it on iTunes or DVD. There are no concrete solutions offered here other than being aware of what you're eating and of how the government plays a major role in keeping the status quo. But if understanding the problem is the first step in solving it, then this film should serve as an entertaining primer. ∞

earning her stripes

2009-12-27T23:24:00.003-05:00

I'd like to send a hearty congratulations to Sarah Thomas, who yesterday afternoon became the first woman to referee in a college football bowl championship game. Thomas took the field as a line judge during the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl between Ohio and Marshall universities. I dare say, I couldn't have cared less about the game itself, but it was grand to see Thomas out there making her calls! And appropriately enough, one of the announcers for the national telecast was Pam Ward, who in 2000 became the first female sportscaster to call play-by-play for a college bowl game.

As I wrote back in March, the world of professional sports officiating has remained largely impervious to women. But in Thomas, who was the subject of a supportive New York Times profile earlier this fall, we might be witnessing the first legitimate female candidate for a refereeing position in the almighty National Football League. A mother to two young boys, Thomas, 36, became the first woman to ref in Division I in 2007. Today, she's the only woman officiating at the highest level of college football. Here she is in a recent interview:

Of course, the only frustrating thing about the news of Thomas's feat is that it highlights the fact that there's still a long way to go as far as allowing women officials to follow their dreams of making it to the pros. It's particularly disheartening for me, a serious baseball fan, to know that even in the über-macho NFL, a woman right now has a better chance of breaking the stained grass barrier to pro officiating than any current female umpire with her sights set on calling games in the MLB. Still, it's obviously a step in the right direction, and I wish Thomas nothing but the best! ∞

2009 cassini all-stars

2009-12-20T00:47:00.012-05:00

2009 was a spectacular year for the Cassini spacecraft, which in July celebrated five years in orbit around Saturn. I've been following the mission pretty closely since then, and the results cease to amaze me. So to wrap up the year, I decided to join in on all the "best-of-09" blog action with my very own 2009 Cassini All-Star Team! The following are, in my mind, the 12 most captivating images to have hurdled a billion miles through space this year, from the eyes of Cassini's cameras to a few desktops in Colorado, and then out onto the World Wide Web for all to enjoy. Kudos to Carolyn Porco and the rest of her CICLOPS team for a job well done. Can't wait to see what's in store for 2010! &infin

12. View From Down Under
A lovely natural-color view taken from roughly 48 degrees below the plane of Saturn's rings. The dark stripe across Saturn is actually the shadow created by the sun shining on the rings edge-on.

11. Ring Around Titan
Not the most detailed image ever taken of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, but this eerie view won me over nevertheless. Look closely and you'll see a very thin ring around the moon's outer edge, demarcating the boundary of Titan's thick atmosphere. This shot is best viewed enlarged.

10. Slopes of Enceladus
In November, Cassini performed two flybys of Saturn's sixth-largest moon, Enceladus. One of the most intriguing moons in the entire solar system, Enceladus features rare geological activity at its southern pole. This close-up of the "tiger stripe" region, taken from only about 1,000 miles above the surface, highlights icy ridges that seem ripe for ripping up on skis or snowboard!

9. Shades of Gray
While I of course enjoy the color views that Cassini's cameras occasionally capture, there's something stark and haunting about a scene like this one, with the planet's rings shown in various shades of gray. Simply stunning.

8. Prometheus Streaming
This one really surprised me. On the lower left you'll notice the 53-mile-wide potato-shaped moon Prometheus making its way through Saturn's ribbony F ring. But also cool are the dark trails to the right, which Prometheus left previously on the ring!

7. Into the Darkness
Taken as the coming winter approached Saturn's southern pole and prepared to cloak it in darkness, this image bespoke to me the enormity of the jeweled planet; the stormy vortex seen here is roughly as large as the Earth! Looking closely at the whorls and eddys within, you can't help but be humbled by the scale of it all.

6. Spouting Plumes
Down is up in this shot of Enceladus, taken during one of the November flybys. Spouting from the moon's active southern pole are jets of water and other volatiles, which are believed to spew out like water geysers here on Earth. I love that the image is so off-center; though likely done to make sure Cassini captured the full extent of the plumes, to me it just makes the composition that much more compelling.

5. ...Now You Don't
I love, love, love this image...so much going on! For one thing, you have Saturn's shadow making the rings seem to disappear, which is spooky and awesome. The fact that Saturn's night side is visible at all here is a result of "ringshine," an effect in which the light bouncing off the lit part of the rings scatters and hits the planet's surface, faintly illuminating it. You'll also notice the long shadow of Saturn's moon Tethys on the rings at the upper right. And last but not least, the small moon Janus can be seen hovering above the top ring. Amazing!

4. Pock-marked Moon
Sure, Saturn has many small, cratered moons, and yes, a lot of them look alike. But in my mind, this shot of the 660-mile-wide Tethys belongs in an art gallery. Gouging the surface at right is the large crater Penelope.

3. Titanic Shadow
What a beautiful shot of Saturn, its thin ring plane, and that ginormous shadow cast by the Saturnian system's largest moon, Titan. Wow.

2. Akimbo
I don't even want to spoil this one with words. If it weren't for the next shot, this would be my winner for 2009. Don't miss the closeup.

1. The Rite of Spring
I have to say, it was pretty difficult to sort through Cassini's cache of images to pick my favorite dozen from this year. But there was never any doubt as to which one would top the list. My photographic Cassini All-Star of 2009 is this truly mesmerizing view of Saturn during the planet's equinox this past August. In the interest of keeping this post to a manageable length, I'll say no more, but I urge you to visit the image's description page to read about how the shot was taken and what, exactly, is going on. You can also check out this brief summary from Time Magazine, which named the photo to its 2009 Year In Pictures.

Honorable Mention: The Seven Sisters
Okay, I had to add one more to the list, for personal reasons! This photo of the Pleiades cluster was actually taken in 2008, but it was released to the public back in April. As you might have noticed, these familiar stars (especially one in particular) are near to my heart, so it was wonderful for me to find out that Cassini would take a moment give them a look-see :)

the sounds of xmas

2009-12-18T02:23:00.012-05:00

With just a week to go before Christmas, I figured it was time I started thinking about doing another holiday mix. So, on the heels of my original Brooklyn Xmas mix—which won rave reviews from the people for whom I actually printed the playlist onto CD (remember those?)—I give you the second in the series, aptly titled "Brooklyn Holiday." As before, the flavor is mainly indie pop/rock with shades of blues, old-school country, and 80s hip-hop. This year I've also thrown in a Hanukkah song and a little lullaby for those of you who, like myself, celebrate Christmas in a secular way. Hope you enjoy it!

Brooklyn Holiday mix | Listen on Spotify
Christmas Wrapping - The Waitresses
Come On Santa - The Ravonettes
Christmas - Rogue Wave
Are You Coming Over For Christmas? - Belle & Sebastian
White Wine in the Sun - Tim Minchin
Silent Night - Priscilla Ahn
Christmas Is - Run-DMC
Santa Claus Is Back In Town - Elvis Presley
Little Christmas Tree - Michael Jackson
Don't Shoot Me Santa - The Killers
Back Door Santa - JET
Hanukkah Dance - Woodie Guthrie
Carol of the Bells - The Bird and the Bee
Maybe Next Year (X-mas Song) - Meiko
All I Want For Christmas - Matt Costa
The Heartache Can Wait - Brandi Carlile
Happy Xmas (War Is Over) - John Lennon

godless gaining ground

2009-10-22T01:06:00.003-04:00

As an unapologetic atheist, I've been pleased to hear so much in the last several months about what appears to be a very real growth of public support for the godless life. Helped along by the likes of Twitter and a few good blogs, I've become convinced that despite what you may hear, there are actually quite a few ladies and germs out there who don't need some guy in the sky to make their world go 'round!

But don't just take my word for it; let's look at the evidence! A couple of weeks ago, the Atheist Alliance International held their annual meeting in California, and they reported record attendance. The term "no god" was the most tweeted term on Twitter for a short while this week, while this gem of a Twitter offshoot was created to replace the word "science" in any tweet that mentions the words "God" or "Jesus." And just two days ago, it was announced that the New York City subway system will soon carry a new advertisement proclaiming (apparently with statistics to back it) that more than 1 million New Yorkers—that's about 15 percent of the city's population—are "good without God."

By the way, don't forget that earlier this year, Barack Obama gave a shout-out to atheists during his inaugural speech, the first time any incoming president has done so. And on top of all this, I recently found out about a wonderful Internet show called Mr. Deity, which is beyond cool. The segments are short, they're all available online, and while some could use a little more direction, their overall impact is priceless. All I can say is: ~~God~~ FSM bless the nonbelievers. ∞

brandi carlile will rock your world

2009-10-16T01:08:00.009-04:00

I have my bathroom to thank for Brandi Carlile being in my life. If I hadn't redone it from scratch last summer and been forced to relocate to my folks' house for two months, I never would have watched almost every second of prime-time coverage of the Summer Olympics. And I certainly wouldn't have heard and fallen in love with her song, "The Story," which was played repeatedly for a commercial. I also have my father to thank, who on his own went out and bought me her brilliant album of the same title.

So that's how I found out about this amazingly soulful rock-country-pop chanteuse from suburban Washington State. It's rare to find a singer who can as easily pull off moving folksy ballads as absolutely steamroll through Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues." But Carlile does it all with a maturity that far exceeds her 28 years.

I was lucky enough to catch Brandi in concert recently when she played the Beacon in Manhattan. I scored third-row seats close to dead center, and this made the experience pretty magical. Carlile works closely with a set of twins, Phil and Tim Hanseroth, who play guitar and bass and who also contribute backing vocals. The set started off with the three of them plus their new drummer huddled around a single mike on the soft unplugged ballad, "Oh Dear," which actually concludes her new album, Give Up the Ghost. Carlile then proceeded to rattle off song after song from her three full-length albums, all the while giving the audience some amusing and, at times, poignant commentary (this play-by-play is from an earlier concert, but you definitely get the idea).

Highlights of the show included "Turpentine," in which Brandi divided the audience up into sections so that we could engage in a resounding three-part harmony at the appointed times. She also led her bandmates in a completely unplugged version of "Dying Day," which was absolutely incredible. This is the historic Beacon Theater, mind you, full to capacity as far as I can tell. A barefoot Brandi and friends shuffle up to the very front of the stage with no microphones, no amps—nada; they belt out this song; and heck if we didn't all get a chill down our spines. It was a bit of an emotional roller coaster later on in the show. Brandi gushed like a 12-year-old with a crush about recording sessions with her idol, Elton John, who sang and played piano on one of her new tunes, "Caroline." Shortly thereafter, she broke into a devastating song, "That Year," about the suicide of one of her high school classmates.

One particularly amusing moment came when Brandi introduced a new song she'd written as a spoof of modern country tunes. She played us a few examples of horribly bad lyrics from actual songs she'd heard on the radio, and then broke out into this hilarious new piece, the name of which I didn't catch. She also took to the piano to do a lovely rendition of "Let It Be" before finally rocking out to her big hit, "The Story," which I had first heard during the Olympics just over a year prior. Of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention what was perhaps the most rewarding event of the whole concert for me: when Brandi threw one of her guitar picks into the crowd and it hit my leg. I've been using that pick ever since to practice my guitar again after having let it collect dust for a couple of years.

Suffice it to say, regardless of what kind of music you listen to, you pretty much can't be a human and not be entertained at a Brandi Carlile concert. So if she stops by a venue near you, do not walk, run to the box office and make sure you get a ticket. This young lady is going to be a huge star and will most likely be selling out arenas before long, so get a piece of the action now while the crowds are more intimate. I guarantee you won't regret it. ∞

climate genie: wish list for blog action day

2009-10-15T21:08:00.006-04:00

Today (and every October 15th) is Blog Action Day. Now in its third year, the event aims to bring worldwide attention to one critical global issue through the power of blogging. This year, that issue is climate change.

As someone who blogs fairly regularly about the human impact on our environment, I originally considered whipping out yet another issue and hammering into your brains why it's so critically important to our one shot at keeping the world habitable. But then came all the pressure of choosing the perfect topic, and, well, I blanked. So I decided that it would instead be more fun to make a list of things I'd love to see come true in the name of quelling some our climate problems. Call it my little climate genie project! But instead of the traditional three wishes, I get 10. Okay, here we go!

Wish #1: Here's where I wish for an infinite number of other wishes. Obviously.

Wish #2: I wish people would teach their kids not to keep the water running while they brush their teeth. Personally, I've never understood this phenomenon—why one would keep the water on whilst brushing one's teeth. Call me crazy, but I've never in my life kept the water running, and my teeth and I have turned out just fine, thank you. And as I now know as a grown-up, it's just a needless waste of water! And we all know how I feel about that.

Wish #3: I wish people would just recycle already. It's really not that hard, and if everyone got on board, it would decrease pollution and use of fossil fuels like nobody's business. I visited an environmentally-friendly camp in New Hampshire this weekend, and I was amazed at (okay, and a little jealous of) their recycling shed. Everything was separated into its proper place, like with like, in dozens of plastic bins. My inner "J" was off the charts! And while I admit that most city dwellers like myself don't have room for such a tidy separation depot, lots of other Americans do; simply use a corner of your garage, ladies and germs. Even if that's too advanced for you, just separating your empty bottles and used newspapers and doing what you need to do to get these items to your municipal recycling collection area would be a huge step forward.

Wish #4: I wish people would carpool more. It just makes sense. Vehicle emissions are one of the biggest contributors to global warming, and while I'm not saying we should take all cars off the streets, it behooves us to use them more wisely. Plus, it would decrease traffic! A win-win for those of you who otherwise can't use public transportation.

Wish #5: I wish major supermarkets would start restricting what foods are available at certain times of the year. The amount of money spent and carbon dioxide belched into the air trucking out-of-season foods thousands of miles across the continent is just shameful. Not only that, all the time spent in transit means the foods you buy are far from fresh, even if you eat them the day you take them home!

Wish #6: I wish people would stop watching crappy doomsday movies like The Day After Tomorrow. These over-the-top films don't do any good for the dissemination of real science. Don't get me wrong, I am a science fiction fan. But I would bet that most people who go to these slick Hollywood apocalypse flicks come out thinking that whatever the hunky actor playing a government agent just said was real science, since it sure sounded plausible. No, friends, the Statue of Liberty isn't going to be underwater anytime soon. Don't believe the hype!

Wish #7: I wish we would finally get serious about solar energy. The Chinese are starting to make it a priority, and the U.S. is painfully behind in making solar cell technology cheap enough to compete with other fuel sources. We've got another several billion years of sunlight left; let's do this!

Wish #8: Back to food: I wish people would start thinking more critically about where their food comes from. Agriculture is another one of the biggest sources of pollution in the world, whether it's in the form of the chemicals used as fertilizers and pesticides, or in the form of methane burped and tooted out of cattle. I guarantee you if you follow the trail back far enough, it'll make you sick to know what that double Whopper just did to the people, animals, plants, and soil it touched along the way to your mouth.

Wish #9: I wish someone would build a car that could drive 300+ miles on one tank and look awesome in the process. What? It's already been done? Score!

Wish #10: And finally, I wish we would really start teaching our kids what climate change is all about. Let's stop treating this like some political hot-button issue that'll offend people to high heaven and blow up in everyone's face if we actually discuss it in any meaningful way. Climate change is not made up; it is happening, and we've known about it for at least half a century. The kids of today are going to be living with our messed up world for a long time to come. The least we owe them is a basic understanding of what's going on so that they'll be equipped with, at the minimum, an accurate vocabulary with which to continue the discussion with their kids. One idea: It would be great to start some version of the TED talks (which I love dearly) specifically aimed at grades 6-12. That would be sweet! ∞

lady laureates

2009-10-09T11:09:00.010-04:00

It's only been a few hours since the Nobel Prize committee gave the world something to talk about with its rather surprising choice of Barack Obama as the recipient of 2009's Nobel Prize for peace. Lost in the commotion are some impressive historical facts: More Nobel Prizes were given to women this year than in any year before, and it was the first time a woman received a prize in the category of either chemistry or physics in 45 years. Congratulations to Elizabeth Blackburn (Physiology or Medicine); Carol Greider (Physiology or Medicine); Ada Yonath (Chemistry); and Herta Müller (Literature), who are pictured clockwise from top left.

Sadly, of course, women trail men by far as recipients of Nobel Prizes. As of today, the ratio of awards won by men to those won by women is a dismal 762 to 40. And there has yet to be a female recipient of the award for economics. But hopefully the 2009 showing is a harbinger of a sea change in that respect. For some perspective, I've put together this chart showing all prizes that have gone to women thus far (click to see full-size version). &infin

Update: Well, I guess I should have waited to post this until today's economics prize announcement, because ladies and gentlemen, we now have our first-ever female winner in the category of Economic Sciences! Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University (pictured at right) shares the 2009 prize with another American, Oliver Williamson for their "analysis of economic governance." That brings the total prize tally for women to five in 2009 and 41 overall. Way to go! I've updated the chart below.

the worth of water

2009-09-23T01:46:00.005-04:00

A famous man once quipped, "When the well's dry, we know the worth of water." That man was Benjamin Franklin, writing in his 1746 edition of Poor Richard's Almanack. For a guy who lived 260-odd years years ago, Franklin sure sounds like he knew a lot about the year 2009. That's because the state of the world's clean water supply today is so dire, it's becoming inevitable that an all-out water war is likely to come to pass very soon. You think running out of oil is going to be a crisis? Oh, it will be. But it'll be nothing compared to the very real—and already growing—problem that a lack of clean freshwater will present to the human population.

Let me make this clear: People are already dying from a lack of clean water. Roughly one-sixth of the world's population currently does not have access to safe drinking water; that's over 1 billion people today! If we don't act now, you, too, are going to be affected. Yes, you, in your luxury condo in that big American city. Yes, you, in your rural wooded town with a seemingly endless supply of nearby rivers and streams. And yes, especially you, in your 2.5-acre lot in sprawling suburbia in the middle of the desert. And I promise you, it's not going to be a matter of if, it'll simply be a matter of when.

So what is the problem, exactly? The Earth is covered with 326 million trillion gallons of water; you'd think that'd be enough to keep us all hydrated. The reality is, although dihydrogen oxide is present on our planet in copious amounts, less and less of it is available for us to drink, while more and more of it is being polluted by fat cat companies who don't give a damn about anything but the bottom line. And sadly, the governments of some the biggest polluters—China, the United States, and India come to mind—are doing precious little to combat the disastrous effects that a lack of clean water is already having on their citizens.

From all I've been learning over the past few weeks on this topic, I could literally write a book about what's wrong with our water today—and why you should care. Instead, I'm going to make three simple recommendations for how you can do your part. I strongly suggest you comply with at least one of these; otherwise, I just might have to get all Erin Brokovitch on your ass!

1. Get Smart, Part 1: Watch a Movie! If you don't see another film for the rest of the year, do yourself and the world a favor and rent 2008's Flow, directed by Irena Salina. By doing so, you'll get to see with your own two eyes what the major threats to the world's clean water supply are. Most jaw-dropping to me was discovering how companies that want to treat water as a commodity are, in collusion with the World Bank, screwing people the world over by taking over previously communal freshwater supplies and selling that water back—often polluted, no less!—at exorbitant markups. And they do it with a smile, too. It's disgusting.

2. Stop buying bottled water. Sounds simple, and really, it is. It's not just a matter of saving all that wasted plastic—not to mention the thousands of tons of fossil fuels spent trucking and shipping very heavy water from far reaches of the globe (ahem, Fiji Water) to your nearest supermarket or corner bodega. You should also keep in mind that the companies that package and sell water are making gobs of money off of something you can get for free just by turning on the tap or using a water fountain. What's more, most of the water you get in bottled water is simply tap water anyway—it's not any safer or tastier! Do you really want to help giants like Coke (Dasani), Pepsi (Aquafina), and Nestle (Poland Spring, Deer Park, San Pellegrino, and Perrier, among others) line their pockets with more of your money at the expense of the environment? I didn't think so. Instead, just buy a safe (BPA-free) washable, reusable water bottle and bring it with you to the gym or wherever you need portable water. See? Easy. It'll save you a few bucks in the process, too.

3. Get Smart, Part 2: Read! I won't bother mentioning some of the great books on water consumption, pollution, and misuse that are already out there. If you've read down this far, I'm simply going to reward you with a much quicker tip: Pick up the Summer 2009 issue of Good magazine and read it cover to cover. In this issue you'll find an excellent explanation of why dams are so bad for us; a look ahead at how drinking pee may be in our future; an illustrated listing of all major models of water gun ever produced (yes, I'm talking Super Soakers); a step-by-step guide to reducing your water impact; a moving plea from legendary oceanographer Sylvia Earle on why we need to take care of our oceans; and much more. Alternately, pay a visit to The New York Times, which just published an important series on water pollution called Toxic Waters. Among other things, you'll read how good people are getting cancer from carcinogens in their tap water and how an unregulated farming industry has been dumping tons of pollutants into our water supply for years with nary a slap on the wrist.

The good thing to keep in mind, of course, is that all is not lost. One word of hope I've gotten from almost everything I've read and watched about our current water crisis is that with a lot of hard work, some concentrated brainpower, and some political will, we can easily solve all of our water issues before they become truly catastrophic. But you have to understand the problem before you can fix it. So get educated and spread the word, and we might not have to bear out old Ben Franklin's prediction about finding the true worth of water. &infin

oh yes, you will be mine

2009-09-17T21:31:00.012-04:00

Living in a big city, in a neighborhood with seriously annoying parking, I really don't need a car. I've been using mass transit for over a decade now, and aside from the occasional late-night (read: early-morning) never-ending wait, you really can't complain too much about the New York City commuter system. I mean, my carbon footprint is a fraction of pretty much anyone who uses a motor vehicle, and counting traffic, the train often gets me where I want to go faster than a car anyway. So I'm good.

But you know what? Screw all that.

Starting today, I'm buying a lottery ticket every day until I win the big one. What irrational craziness has invaded my brain, you ask? Simple: I want to be one of the first people to own this pimped out green machine, the new L1 diesel bullet car from your favorite German car maker and mine, the almighty Volkswagen.

The L1 was designed with the goal of consuming as little energy as possible. And wow, they've made a few seriously funky adjustments to do just that. The most obvious are that the car seats only two people—one in front of the other, like in a fighter jet; and that the rear wheels are all but invisible, shielded to improve the car's aerodynamics. It reminds me of something out of Tron, which I have a strange itch to go watch again right this second. Oh, and the result of all this new engineering and design? The L1 can go 100 kilometers on 1 liter of diesel. That's 170 mpg, people!!

Now for the messy details: Volkswagen says the L1 will be available next year in limited numbers. What that means in plain English is that only multibillionaires will be able to afford one. If the run is successful, consumers will have to wait until at least 2013 for the L1 to go into regular production. I'll be waiting, alright, but I'm gonna add nylottery.org to my bookmarks in the meantime. &infin

snail mail to president obama

2009-09-09T22:41:00.004-04:00

Dear Mr. President,

I have never felt compelled to write to someone in your office before, but after hearing you speak to Congress on health care this evening, I simply had to put pen to paper (well, fingers to keyboard, anyway).

I am 32 years old, in overall good health. My brother, J, however, is very ill. Just 30 years old, he suffers from a rare and serious form of multiple sclerosis. Every day is a struggle; there are times when he literally cannot move his limbs, and when the most basic of tasks are impossible. For the last four years, J has endured a cocktail of drugs, from daily injections to monthly infusions of steroids and other chemicals that have helped with the MS but ravaged his body in other ways.

For the moment, my brother enjoys a good job that accommodates his physical ailments and provides private health insurance. But even so, his medical bills are extremely high. He has been denied various treatments despite his desperate state, and he is often forced to go to the emergency room, where out-of-pocket costs are exorbitant. But perhaps scariest of all, Mr. President, is that my brother lives in Massachusetts, the one state in the Union that assures health insurance for all. What of all the other Americans, suffering day in and day out as he does, who can’t get any coverage at all based on their condition, which will never go away and will therefore be “pre-existing” for the rest of their lives?

To be sure, I didn’t write to burden you with another sob story. What I am writing with is my message that you must pass this health care bill. This may be the fight of our time, but it is one that simply cannot fail. I urge you to continue to reach out to our young people, to educate them about how government works for them. One of the biggest problems I see with American politics today is that the right aims to keep its followers down. They want to keep information out of the hands of those who most need it. You and I both know that it’s the poor and uneducated who have most at stake with this bill—and who least understand it. It’s an unfortunate state of affairs when fear is the driving factor holding up as important a bill as this one. And so I urge you to keep fighting the good fight.

Thank you for all the hope you inspire in so many of us.

Sincerely,

MW

august

2009-08-18T20:28:00.005-04:00

You feel it long before you see it
The faintest of breezes gives your
   cheek momentary pause
The hairs on your arm sway,
   ever so slightly,
   as wheat in an Iowa field
A rumble, low and steady
Perks your eardrums alive
Ahhhh: a driving wind
Small relief from the thick fog of August heat
Excitement grows as a thunder draws
   nearer and nearer
You avert your eyes to delay
   impending joy

The train!
Is here!

Now get to work

jordi sabater pi (1922 - 2009)

2009-08-12T20:49:00.010-04:00

Unless you live in Spain or are connected to the world of ethology, you've probably never heard of Jordi Sabater Pi, who died last week at the age of 87. Yet he was one of the most successful and influential Spanish primatologists of the 20th century.

Born in Barcelona in 1922, Sabater Pi traveled to the former Spanish colony of Equatorial Guinea when he was just 17. There, he decided to research the local rainforest fauna, which included various species of great ape. He taught himself the Fang language and gained the nickname of "the person who never drinks water" among the friends he made there. He went on to study in other parts of Africa, at which time he made some crucial discoveries about primate behavior. One of his most important finds was that chimpanzees in the Okorobiko mountains transmitted cultural information from one generation to the next, and in particular used sticks to maintain community ties. In Rwanda, Sabater Pi also worked with primatologist Dian Fossey; the two collaborated in a study of mountain gorillas.

Despite decades of work and dozens of scientific publications, Sabater Pi is probably best known for his role in finding the only albino gorilla known to modern science. In 1962, he was the director of the Ikunde Zoological Adaptation and Experimentation Center in Guinea when a group of locals told him that they'd found a rare animal in the bush. The men had killed a mother gorilla who was supposedly threatening their crops, and they soon realized she had been holding a single baby the color of snow. Sabater Pi purchased the orphan, who would go on to become the most famous resident ever to reside at the Barcelona Zoo. He was named Floquet de Neu, which means "Snowflake" in Catalan, and he lived for close to 40 years until his death in 2003.

Aside from his fieldwork and later duties as a professor at the University of Barcelona, Sabater Pi enjoyed drawing. A collection of his nature sketches—along with thousands of his documents and photographs—can be seen at the Barcelona Science Park in Spain. For those of you who speak Catalan, this interview, which he gave just over a year ago, provides a wealth of information about his background, achievements, and personal thoughts. ∞

to the moon(s)

2009-07-20T01:15:00.003-04:00

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the first human steps on the giant orb that lights our skies at night and captivates our collective imagination. And of course, in this instant news age of Twitter and blog reporting (ahem), it's no surprise that pretty much every media outlet is covering the event—and that businesses are using any angle they can to cash in.

But what was surprising to me about the day in question, July 20, 1969 (N.B. it was already July 21st in the U.K. and points east when Neil Armstrong put his boot down), was that the only way people could really follow along was via radio. I'd heard stories of people watching the news on television that night and of feeling glued to the set as the reports came in. Yet until yesterday, when, prompted by the death of newscaster Walter Cronkite I watched the CBS broadcast (see below) for the first time, I had never realized just how in-the-dark the country and the world really was about what was happening. And frankly, it starts to make sense why all these conspiracy theorists might have been so skeptical!

As you can see for yourself, the broadcast included a crude animation of what was supposedly happening as the Eagle landed. And that was it, folks! The only other clue people had that this was actually taking place was the rather anticlimactic radio broadcast between the Eagle astronauts and NASA's Houston command center. Today, of course, we take for granted that it's standard operating procedure for space agencies to provide live video feeds from high-resolution cameras flanking rockets and other spacecraft as they're flung through the atmosphere, into space, and onto the surfaces of other worlds. So it really makes me appreciate just how far we've come since then.

As for our future on the moon, much has been discussed about the next couple of decades of human spaceflight, and I'm somewhat ambivalent about our current direction. Certainly I'd love to see humans achieve ever-more impressive feats and conquer the cosmos one planet at a time. But I'm not sure that setting up a base on the moon is going to be our best way to make that happen. I would definitely want to make sure that programs like Cassini and New Horizons, which are doing advanced scouting to help us figure out which are really the most interesting and worthwhile places to send humans, get properly funded before we start sending people to hang out on the rather dull and relatively uninteresting moon. (Sorry, moon; nothing personal.) Either way, the leaders at NASA and the other space agencies will have a lot of hard questions to answer in the coming years, and I don't envy their difficult task.

For today, though, I think we can all agree that taking a look back at what we've achieved so far makes a lot of sense, especially when old-school science fiction is so much fun! Among other things, this little media frenzy might very well be a career-changing inspiration to a future planetary scientist or astronaut-in-waiting. And who knows? Perhaps that young girl watching a moon special on TV this evening will grow up to be the first person to walk on Enceladus or Titan or Europa—all moons with a lot more promise of life than our cold, yet ever-enchanting, Luna.

the myth of the unbiased judge

2009-07-13T22:24:00.015-04:00

The confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor began today, and by all accounts, plenty of senators are ready to dig their heels in and start grilling when the questioning session begins in earnest tomorrow morning. I suppose this is to be expected nowadays, and I'm not particularly concerned that Sotomayor will have any trouble getting confirmed. But I wanted to take a moment to discuss what many believe is going to be a central argument in these proceedings: namely, that a Supreme Court justice (or any court judge for that matter) is supposed to be completely unbiased when deciding his or her rulings.

To this I say: Nonsense.

Justices of the Supreme Court—and indeed of any trial court in the United States—are charged with applying the rule of law as written in the Constitution and the web of Congressional laws passed in the 200-odd years since our country began. As discussed in some detail in yesterday's New York Times, some, including Chief Justice Roberts in his own confirmation hearings, have likened Supreme Court justices to baseball umpires; the idea is that they simply enforce the laws, they don't make them. But everyone knows that judges' decisions are but interpretations of the law. Laws aren't always black or white; if they were, we wouldn't need judges. Indeed, the word "judge" implicitly suggests using one's experiences and understanding of the law to make a conclusion about a given case.

So how do judges make legal decisions? Well, they hear arguments from both sides and look to current laws and judicial precedents to guide them whenever possible. But when precedent is lacking, or when society has changed such that precedents must be rethought, it is personal point of view that necessarily impacts how a judge views the facts of a case. This is indisputable; there would be no "conservative" judges or "liberal" judges otherwise—there would simply be judges. And there wouldn't be any need to question Supreme Court appointees quite so fiercely; everyone would be in agreement about what's right and what's wrong.

Ergo, to complain about a judge drawing on her background to help interpret laws and predict how decisions may play out in the real world is kind of crazy. I guarantee you that every Supreme Court justice has drawn from his or her experiences at one time or another during his or her career. That legal verdicts are also called "opinions" is another etymological clue to the fact that even the Founding Fathers realized that judges would draw from their lives to make decisions.

From everything that's been said so far about Sonia Sotomayor, it seems clear that she's a superb judge who has been as objective as realistically possible in her decisions. Indeed, out of some 400 cases she's decided as an Appellate Court judge, only three were overturned by the Supreme Court—and of those, two were narrow decisions. Sotomayor may be wishing right now that she had refrained from her "wise Latina" comment, but most people forget that immediately before it, Sotomayor declared that "there can never be a universal definition of wise." This was, perhaps, the wisest remark of all. ∞

summer sounds

2009-07-02T00:37:00.006-04:00

Well, it's officially summer again, and that means it's time for me to start thinking about making a summer mix! While I ponder the particulars, I thought I'd share a few of the songs I've been obsessing over for the past couple of months. &infin

My Delirium (Ladyhawke): To my mind, Kiwi lass Pip Brown, who goes by the name Ladyhawke, comes off as a hipster, techie version of Stevie Nicks (her voice isn't nearly as witchy, but she does pull off the husky alto rather well). There was a span of two or three days where I think I listened to this song oh, maybe 30 times. And the video is fun...a cross between "Take On Me" and Thelma and Louise.

The Girl and the Robot (Röyksopp feat. Robyn): Maybe it's because I work for a company whose mascot is a robot, but I love the idea of Robyn falling for a real automaton in this collaboration with fellow Scandinavians Röyksopp. The song is addictive, and the video (which happens to share the woman-waiting-in-bedroom theme from "My Delirium") is fantastic.

Gimme Sympathy (Metric): I recently saw Metric in concert, and they were off-the-wall fun. This particular video is rather pedestrian (empty stage, band playing, colorful lights, yadda yadda), but the song is fresh, and I love it. I dare you to blast it into your earbuds or car stero and not start bopping your head.

Graveyard Girl (M83): I've written of my adoration of M83 on these pages before, but it definitely bears repeating! This song is a holdover from last year, but it simply does not get old. It's the perfect addition to any summer mix.

revolution within

2009-06-17T23:48:00.006-04:00

With all that is going on in Iran right now following the country's recent controversial elections, many people are struggling to understand the historical background of these fast-changing current events. To that end, I thought it would be a good time to recommend a work that I've been a fan of for some time now: Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi.

Persepolis is an autobiographical account of an independent-minded Iranian girl (Satrapi) growing up at a time of great political unrest. But unlike most autobiographies, Persepolis is told in black-and-white comic form, which makes the story at once approachable and timeless. The book centers around Satrapi's life as part of a relatively well-educated and progressive Iranian family before and after the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Not only does Satrapi give context for understanding what happened and how Iranian society transformed in the aftermath, but she also does a wonderful job of offering a unique and eye-opening view of what it was like being an inquisitive, punk-loving female in an often repressive, male-centric society. I actually had the pleasure of hearing Satrapi as part of a panel discussion with fellow graphic artist Chris Ware this past winter, and she was an incredible speaker—every bit as animated and full of life as her character in the books and film!

So far there have been four Persepolis books published in French; all four have been translated and compiled into one U.S. publication called The Complete Persepolis. It's a fast read, and I recommend it as an excellent addition to any bookshelf. Alternately, the book was adapted into a motion picture in 2007 (it won the Jury Prize at Cannes and was nominated for an Academy Award), so Netflixing it is certainly a worthwhile option! Although Persepolis may not delve into the most current goings-on in Iran, it will give audiences young and old a substantive background with which to begin further research into that country's recent past. &infin

Update: A new online version of Persepolis, which uses Satrapi's illustrations (with her permission), has been created to address the events of the recent election. It is called Persepolis 2.0.

lovable losers

2009-06-13T01:04:00.009-04:00

Oh, Mets. This season, my New York Metropolitans have found every way imaginable to lose. Forgetting to slide at home plate? Check. Thrown out at third for the last out? More than once! Missing third base on the way home? You betcha. Dropping a routine pop up against the boys in pinstripes with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, and letting the tying and winning runs score in the process? Holy mother of—

But then, you have to take a step back and think of the bigger picture. Hey, we did well just to get back into that game! How many other times have we laid down and died from the third inning onward? At least the Phillies lost, too! In the broadcast afterward, you could tell that the sportscasters—several of them former Mets themselves—were literally at a loss of words for this latest, most humiliating debacle. Others were downright angry: These guys get paid millions of dollars to drop pop-ups? They'll try harder tomorrow?!

It is not easy being a fan of the New York Mets. For one thing, we've had more than our share of disastrous seasons, despite our large payroll. But for another thing, we will always, always play in the shadow of our crosstown neighbors, the New York Yankees. Sure, there are plenty of Yankee haters in the world. But most of them don't have to share the same subway car, the same cubicle, the same line at the Shake Shack, as so many of those smug Yankee fans—many of whom, i will point out, have no real reason to root for the Yankees other than the fact that they are the darlings of the baseball world. I mean, come on, how can Hillary Clinton, who's a Cubs fan first and foremost, just pick up and start rooting for an American League team once she moves to New York? It's called front-running. And it's annoying.

As I made my way into the kitchen after this incredulous loss tonight, I almost wished we could go back to the old days, when the Mets were lovable losers. We'd all just shrug and smile. This story from Wikipedia warmed my heart:

How bad were the Mets those first several seasons? Absolutely terrible. On May 26, 1964, in Chicago, they played like champions (at least for one game) and pummeled the Chicago Cubs, 19-1. According to legend, later that day a fan called a New York newspaper to get the score. He was told: "They scored 19 runs." There was a long silence, then the fan asked: "Did they win?"

Then a friend of mine, a fellow die-hard, emailed me, and of course he had some good points:

What can you do but laugh? If that wasn't the most ridiculous loss in Met history, I don't know what was, but it probably involved Marv Throneberry. The truth is, it's a simple example of who the Mets are vs. who the Yankees are. We are fated to suffer bizarre indignities, and the Yankees are fated to capitalize on the bizarre indignities that befall others. It was inevitable that at some point we would lose a game to them in ridiculous fashion. They have Jeffrey Maier catching Jeter's ball; we have Zeile's hit bouncing off the top of the wall as Timo dogs it around second. They have Rivera; we have Benitez. Even this year, it's been evident—they have Melky Cabrera delivering 100 walkoff hits, while we have Ryan Church forgetting to touch third base.

Whether we knew it or not at the time, this is what we signed up for when we became Met fans. So when we reach the inevitable confluence of our destinies, what else can we do but laugh? This is who we are, this is our heritage. We share it with each other, and we all know EXACTLY how it feels. We may be doomed, but we'll never be alone.

I guess that's the only comfort I can take right now. I know it's just one game out of the entire season. And I guess I'll get over this cruel shame that creeps in knowing that at least half of Yankee nation is laughing at you. But I suppose that's what makes true Mets fans what they are. You win some, you lose some, and then you laugh at Bobby V getting fined for his Groucho clubhouse disguise. I can't believe it's been 10 years since that happened, by the way...The good old days, already? I'm getting old. ∞

stop-action magic

2009-05-30T20:56:00.009-04:00

I'm a sucker for stop-motion films, so I thought I'd post a few of my recent faves. Some of these animations include humans, some are more of the "claymation" variety, but either way, they're really fun. ∞

Sweet Dreams by Kirsten Lepore

Sorry I'm Late by Tomas Mankovsky

Western Spaghetti by PES

DEADLINE by Bang-Yao Liu

Her Morning Elegance by Oren Lavie

rebuilding america

2009-05-29T23:49:00.007-04:00

Good things are starting to happen on the streets (and bridges, and railways) of America.

A few weeks ago I attended a lively panel discussion at the Municipal Arts Society called "Transportation and New York's future." The panelists, who represented various levels of governance of the metro area's infrastructure, fed us with insights into the development of some long-awaited road, subway, and train improvements in and around the city. With President Obama pledging significant funds to repair and upgrade our crumbling infrastructure, the sense of excitement at the possibility of pipe-dream projects actually seeing the light of day was palpable.

For example, one of the city's new ventures, which was unveiled this week when parts of Broadway were officially closed off to vehicular traffic, has pedestrians—not cars—ruling Times Square for the first time. So far the move, which aims to emulate programs in other major cities, has been hailed mostly as a success. But that's just one of many projects around the country aimed at improving the landscape of our roadways and railways, so that they can more efficiently—and cleanly—serve not only cars but buses, cyclists, train commuters, and pedestrians.

A glance at the current issue of GOOD magazine is all you'll need to get your wheels spinning (so to speak) on the topic of rebuilding America. It contains an almost mouth-watering feast of articles and infographics focusing on the future of transportation and—there's that ugly word again—infrastructure around the U.S. If you don't get GOOD (and I suggest that you do if you're interested in science, environment, design, society, and the public good), you can power through the online version of many of the articles from the issue.

In particular, I recommend checking out their "livable streets" contest posting, which features interactive graphics depicting the revitalization of various American cityscapes. Some of the designs may at a glance seem prohibitively expensive, especially for cities that are already reeling from the current economic downturn. But the ideas are there to grow on, and could be implemented slowly, or with some creative, cheaper solutions. One example is the idea of making crosswalks built out of brick, which gives intersections more of a sense of pedestrian right-of-way. Of course, ripping up roads to put bricks in is expensive. But that hasn't stopped Providence, Rhode Island, from painting fake bricks onto their crosswalks to get the same effect (pictured)—but for much less cash.

Anyway, keep your eye out for more on this hot topic. I long to see the day when cars and buses and bikes and trains and our own two feet can get us where we need to go without causing a fuss and completely wrecking the environment in the process. It may take some doing, but I think we're on a promising new track. ∞

blazing trails

2009-05-28T12:36:00.012-04:00

Congratulations to Justine Siegal, who tonight will become the first woman to ever coach men's baseball at the professional level. Siegal, who has long been a staunch promoter of women's and girls' inclusion in the baseball world, has been hired as a coach for the Massachusetts-based Brockton Rox, a member of the Canadian-American League. Siegal has been playing baseball for nearly 30 years, and she's competed internationally with some of the best female baseball players in the world. She's also coached for many of those years, both in the U.S. and internationally. Best of luck to Siegal throughout the season! ∞

three simple things

2009-04-22T00:58:00.026-04:00

Twenty years ago, a little book called 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth was published for the first time. I remember getting a copy shortly thereafter, around the time of the big 1990 Earth Day celebration, and I vowed to practice as many of the 50 things as humanly possible. I guess I lost track of my copy, but I've always tried to live by that vow to the best of my ability.

As luck would have it, I happened to find an old copy of 50 Simple Things on a neighborhood stoop a few weeks ago, so I of course picked it up. (By the way, the habit of leaving used books on stoops for others to take, instead of tossing them in the trash, is one of my favorite Brooklyn traditions.) I wasn't surprised to find that although 50 Simple Things was written decades before things like carbon credits and hybrid vehicles became mainstream ideas, it remains as relevant as ever. So on this Earth Day, I thought I'd pick out what I consider to be the top three truly simplest things from the book that you can do to pitch in.

Stop junk mail: According to 50 Simple Things, in the late 80s Americans received almost 2 million tons of junk mail each year, and could expect to spend eight full months of their life opening it. While these stats are now 20 years old, I can personally attest to the never-ending influx of catalogs, credit card come-ons, and other unwanted mail that continues to pour through. Indeed, the EPA estimates that the amount of junk mail Americans get today has doubled to 4 million tons. How many trees, and how much energy and money have we lost to the junk mail industry? Now that we're in the age of email and spam (which is another problem, but certainly not as detrimental environmentally), it's pretty shocking to contemplate just how much we're wasting on junk mail. The good news is, there are a number of easy things you can do to cut down on your mailings. One is to simply call the companies you regularly get mailings from and tell them to stop. But you can also get in touch with the Direct Marketing Association, which handles postal mail preferences on this handy website. Or, you can sign up with groups like 41Pounds.org, which strive to help eliminate unwanted mail from being sent. Of course, for any mail you do get, make sure you recycle it! (And if you're worried about privacy, I recommend purchasing a cheap shredder.)

Recharge your batteries: Since 50 Simple Things was published, battery technology has gotten a lot better. For one thing, the amount of toxic mercury in household batteries has decreased by some 98 percent. On the flip side, though, we're using and throwing out more batteries than ever before, what with the rapid increase in the number of electronics that now call for batteries, where electrical cords might once have been used. So the two simple things you can do to reduce the amount of toxic chemicals released into the ground and air as a result of battery use are: use rechargeable batteries and recycle the one-use batteries you do purchase. Rechargeable batteries have gotten significantly cheaper and longer-lasting than in years past, and they're really easy to use. And more and more companies are offering free recycling not only of basic alkaline batteries, but for things like cell phone and camera batteries, too. For example, many Whole Foods Markets feature battery recycling bins, where the public can drop off used batteries. If you don't have a Whole Foods in your neighborhood, go to Earth911 to find the battery recycling center nearest you. And for more on battery recycling in general, check out this page from the EPA.

Bring your own bag: Paper bags are making a comeback at some retail stores, but plastic bags are still cheaper to make, so they aren't going away anytime soon. You can recycle paper bags and reuse plastic bags for garbage or packaging, but your greenest option is to bring your own bag when you go shopping. It sounds simple, but there's one catch: you have to remember to bring your bag even when you don't anticipate going shopping! Pretty much every chain grocery store has made some money off of selling non-disposable grocery bags, which look and feel virtuous when you parade them out of the store. But so often, people forget to bring them the next time they go to buy something, which defeats the whole purpose of buying a reusable bag in the first place! So if you really want to make a difference, buy an easily collapsible canvas or sturdy plastic bag—and not one you care too much about keeping pretty—in your car or your handbag or briefcase at all times. You'll be surprised at how often you find yourself using it, and you'll feel a lot better when you get home and realize that there's no baggage to dispose of! ∞