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Checking in with The DCA Site

It's been a week since I last wrote about dichloroacetate (DCA), the chemotherapeutic agent that targets tumor cells by an interesting new mechanism based on the Warburg effect, as I've described in the past. After a very interesting article in Cancer Cell in January by investigators at the University of Alberta, the blogosphere erupted with wild speculation that this was a "cure" for cancer, based only on animal studies that were fairly impressive. Because DCA is a small molecule that is supposedly "unpatentable," pharmaceutical companies have been rather cool in their interest, and it is…

In Which I Am Thwarted by Computers

1) I downloaded the demo version of Corel's Grafigo program, which a colleague really likes on his tablet, and earlier this week, I spent a short time playing around with it. A very short time, because there are controls on the top menu bar that simply disappear when you have the tablet in portrait mode-- they're off the screen to the right. These include "Settings" and "Help," making the program significantly less useful. I won't be buying that. 2) A few days ago, I tried to buy a bunch of new music at iTunes. After successfully adding two or three albums to the shopping cart, it suddenly…

Meme: 101 Ways to Improve Your Life When You Can't Find a Job

While the economy is still performing CPR on itself, you may find yourself without a job. Worse still, if you are like me, you may not be able to find another one. In the meantime, here are 101 ways to improve your life (and take up some extra time) when you can't find a job no matter how hard you pound the pavement. Here's my edited version of their list along with some of my annotations. Those activities I've done, or do, are noted with a red asterix. *Catch up on all those books you've ever wanted to read through the local library. :: I go to the library nearly every day, thanks to MY…

You Don't Know Me

When I start to lecture, I go into Teaching Mode, which affects the whole way I present myself. I speak at a slightly higher pitch, and the whole cadence of my speech changes. I talk a little bit faster, but repeat myself more, and speak in a more formal style. The funny thing is that I'll drop in and out of Teaching Mode during the course of a class (or a research talk, which gets a very similar treatment). When I respond to questions in the middle of a class, I usually do so in something closer to my normal tone of voice, returning to Teaching Mode when I return to my prepared lecture.…

Time to Take Inventory

End of summer is a really good time to sit down and look at your preparations and your food storage and take inventory.  What have you put by?  What do you still need more of?  What did you use over the last year?  What did you have too much of?  Whither from here?  September is National Emergency Preparedness month, so now is the time to think - am I ready for the next crisis (do you even have to ask whether there will be one?) If you’ve been working on this, but you don’t feel you are ready, here are some questions to ask yourself, and some possible remedies if things aren't where you want…

dlamming's Latest Idiocy

At the risk of doubling his daily hits up to a whopping 26 for the day, I can't help but respond to the latest rank stupidity emanating from our old pal dlamming. This glutton for punishment keeps taking brave leaps in the dark, and keeps landing with a resounding thud. He is responding to my post about the growing nanny state. On the matter of the Arkansas example, he ducks right into the punch and says that he does support a law that would prevent taking a child to McDonald's: Actually, that doesn't sound like a bad idea - maybe it should be a crime to take kids to McDonald's. We don't let…

"My" New Book

I am a lucky author. Anyone who writes a book hopes to avoid the fate that David Hume famously ascribed to his Treatise of Human Nature, which he said ''fell dead-born from the press, without reaching such distinction, as even to excite a murmur among the zealots.'' I certainly have managed to make the zealots murmur--but I have also made the thoughtful argue, which is far more gratifying. The evidence: Parlor Press, and specifically its imprint Glassbead Books, has now officially released a book about my book, The Republican War on Science. Entitled "Looking for a Fight: Is There a…

SpaceChem!

A few months ago I got an email from Zachtronics, creators of the Codex of Alchemical Engineering, about the new indie game called SpaceChem. It was billed as "an obscenely addictive, design-based puzzle game about building machines and fighting monsters in the name of science." What's not to love? Here's a preview. . . Science! Game reviewer Quintin Smith loved it: SpaceChem is a game where you build fabulous contraptions. It's about getting stuck into a massive puzzle, laughing at the optimism of what's expected of you, and then finally applying what might be the finishing touch to your…

SCIENCE SPRING SHOWDOWN: Chair Region -- Sweet 16 Result (Corporate vs. Darwin)

GAME PREVIEW | PRESS CENTER Yesterday's game between Corporate and Charles Darwin was a battle between free market capitalism and the greatest naturalist of all time. The Corporate team is loaded with the world's top pharmaceutical and chemical companies. Darwin is the author of important works such as On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man. To find out who came out on top, click through below the fold. Everyone expected Darwin to start out with a heavy dose of the Origin. And if he didn't come heavy with that, he'd bring The Descent of Man. But Chuck use neither in the opening…

How do you pick a content management system?

Joomla! is a Content Management System that is so widely used and cool that you can buy Joomla logo gear, like this shirt. Could that mean that it is a good CMS? And why would you want one? Before I started Gregladen.com, I went through all of the content management sites that I had available to me in order to consider possibilities for running my blog. I ended up using Wordpress, which is a kind of CMS that specialized in blogs, for a number of reasons. But I did use a couple of different content management systems for private or small scale projects. At the moment, I'm looking again…

Liveblogging the debate, part deux

Well, it's that time again. With the world economy in crisis, and the administration sticking to it's "Everything's gonna be OK" strategy, our candidates are holding a "town hall"-style debate. I live-blogged the last debate, and it wiped me out and pissed off the other people in the room, but the online response was quite positive, so we're gonna try this again. (An auditorium of undecided voters---why the hell is anyone "undecided"?) Tom: Intro, with Brokavian gravitas Friendly greeting. Both appear comfortable, Obama more so, perhaps. Tom: Econ will be biggest issue Q to O from bald…

For-Profit Scientific Publishers and the Culture of Entitlement.

I used to have a hard time explaining the anger, resentment, and hostility that many scientists feel toward the big academic publishing houses. It's been getting easier, though. Recent events have, unfortunately, provided people with an experience that makes it easier to relate to what the academic community has been going through. Gas prices are going up. You've been combining trips, cutting your milage as much as you can, driving a more efficient vehicle, and your fuel costs are still going up. You drive home from work, stopping along the way to put $30+ dollars worth of gas into the 10…

Intro to ERVs: Quick point about retroviruses

Before I start talking about endogenous retroviruses, there is one thing I need to make clear about exogenous retroviruses first, for anyone who deals with pseudoscientists. When dealing with Creationists/Deniers on the topic of virology, almost immediately you will be confronted with a form of 'viruses are magic'. For instance, Professional HIV Denier Rebecca 'Blondie' Culshaw is just certain that HIV-1 is really a harmless ERV (see points 1-17), and Creationists routinely pull 'scientific facts' about ERVs out of thin air. So I really cant stress this one point enough: Okay, you all know…

Strange Travels, Part 8: Inspirational Organizations

My adventures in NY, continued: Friday Morning (Or was it Thursday night?) I meet Janet at Denver International Airport, late at night, and together we take a redeye to New York. I manage to leave my laptop cable on the plane, and realize it just in time to watch the doors to the jetway close. It is still too early to talk to anyone associated with the airline. Despite the mistake that will leave me without a laptop for several days, all is well, and we catch a train into the city. We arrive a little bleary-eyed, but are soon refreshed by the smell and sustenance of classic NY diner…

ScienceOnline'09 - Saturday 4:30pm and beyond: the Question of Power

I know it's been a couple of months now since the ScienceOnline'09 and I have reviewed only a couple of sessions I myself attended and did not do the others. I don't know if I will ever make it to reviewing them one by one, but other people's reviews on them are under the fold here. For my previous reviews of individual sessions, see this, this, this, this and this. What I'd like to do today is pick up on a vibe I felt throughout the meeting. And that is the question of Power. The word has a number of dictionary meanings, but they are all related. I'll try to relate them here and hope you…

'Going Direct' - the Netizens in former Yugoslavia

Back in 1999, during the NATO bombing of Belgrade, Salon.com bragged that they could send a reporter to Serbia - the first online-only magazine to do such a thing. That was a sign that online-only journalism was maturing. But Dave Winer, while agreeing this is a sign of maturity for a US-based outlet, voiced the opinion that the Web was already there, in Yugoslavia, and that the people were on it, using it. Last week, Dave remembered that episode in a different context and I have, in a few posts before (regarding Mumbai attacks and Iran revolution), wondered why would American audience put…

Olbermann Nails O'Reilly

Keith Olbermann routinely declares Bill O'Reilly to be The Worst Person in the World, but I thought yesterday's edition was especially amusing: And our winner? Oh, it's a two-for, Bill-O offering you this splendid deal, buy a copy of his book, “I'm Squinting While Wearing a Wind Breaker” -- no, I'm sorry, it's called “Culture Wart”--I will get it somewhere. You buy a copy of the book from him, and he will send a free copy to a U.S. soldier somewhere. So you've got copies to give away to the soldiers, but you only do that if I give you at least 26 bucks first? That's generosity. You…

Taxes And Other Four-Letter Words

I have bad news and I have .. more bad news ... Even though I am unemployed and have mounting debts for medical bills that I can't possibly afford, I learned today that I owe income taxes, according to the misnamed online tax program, FreeTaxUSA.com (which isn't free at all). In worlds other than this one where things are a little fairer, owing taxes would normally mean that I earned enough money in 2007 that I can afford to share a little with others instead of purchasing a plasma screen television, but unfortunately, this is not the case. How the @#!*& did this happen? I am paid a…

Diary of an ICC Addict

The new issue of New in Chess magazine arrived in my mailbox this weekend. It contains an article by British grandmaster Daniel Gormally about what it is like to be addicted to the Internet Chess Club. I know the feeling well, and can affirm that this is only a small exaggeration: Wake up around 2 pm. Blearily switch on your computer. Check your e-mails, no new e-mails. Open ICC. Check who's online. Immediately experience frustrsation as when you type '1' (the comand to enter the one-minute pairing pool) you are left waiting for a game. Experience withdraweal symptoms (sweaty palms,…

Can Jake tie together social attachment and Dungeons and Dragons Online into one article? Watch him try...

FuturePundit posted an article about the decline in American's social attachment that my Mom actually emailed to me. My Mom being a Mom has a continuing interest in my social health, particular where this is related to my reproductive success (just kidding Mom). Anyway, this article is about a study that shows the Americans have declining numbers of friends and confidants: It compared data from 1985 and 2004 and found that the mean number of people with whom Americans can discuss matters important to them dropped by nearly one-third, from 2.94 people in 1985 to 2.08 in 2004. Researchers…

Links for 2009-08-21

Liberal Arts Rankings - Best Colleges - Education - US News and World Report The annual clown show begins anew. Williams is #1, Union #43, for those who care. (tags: academia education silly us-news) Francis Collins' "Five Themes" for the NIH : Respectful Insolence "In the end, I don't give the proverbial rodential posterior what Francis Collins' religious views are, as long as they don't directly impact NIH science policy, and I see no evidence from his track record that there's any reason to be concerned that he'll be somehow injecting them into the NIH or using them to determine policy…

Anonymity, real names, and dialogue.

Matthew C. Nisbet put up a post today titled The Right Room for a Dialogue: New Policy on Anonymous Comments . In it, he writes: I've long questioned the value of anonymous blogging or commenting. Much of the incivility online can be attributed to anonymity. And with a rare few exceptions, if you can't participate in a dialogue about issues without using your full name and true identity, then what you have to say is probably not that valuable. These long standing thoughts were called to mind again after reading a post by Andrew Revkin at Dot Earth. Quoting as the subject to his post a line…

Smoke Signals, Blogs, and the Future of Politics

I first posted this on June 24, 2004 on the www.jregrassroots.org forums, then republished on August 23, 2004 on Science And Politics, then a couple of times on this blog. Why did I decide to re-post it today? Because I have been thinking and reading about the current state and potential future of journalism, including science journalism, and writing (still in my head) a post about it. So, I am forcing myself to go through my evolution of thinking about the topic, digging through my categories on the Media, Science Reporting, Blogging, Open Science, onlin Technology, etc. and this essay was…

Joy of Science Course Update

Thanks for all your initial interest and inquiries about the course. I thought maybe I'd better do a "going over the syllabus and answering some questions" post as a result. So here it is! Books: The books needed for the course are posted on the syllabus. PLEASE NOTE THIS ADDITION TO WEEK 1 READING: Beyond Bias and Barriers:Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering, NSF Report, Summary, pp. 1-10 (available free to read online; must pay to download). I know the books are expensive, so not everybody can afford to buy them. If you have access to a university…

A Con to Nick's Pro -- Open Access to Scientific Literature

Nick from The Scientific Activist has busted out a salient article from the archives related to the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006. I think he gives a fair treatment to the Act and its implications. As he is giving it a qualified endorsement, I thought I would chime in on the Con side to give a diversity of opinion. Though I would read his post, I have tried to faithfully summarize his arguments for and against below (if I have been unfair in my summary I hope he or someone else will let me know): Pro 1) The public pays for the research making it public property that should…

Mike Adams endorses the antivaccine Canary Party. I almost feel sorry for them.

Does anybody remember the Canary Party? As I described two and a half years ago when I first became aware of it, the Canary Party is a weird mutant hybrid of antivaccinationists convinced that there are "toxins" in vaccines that are making all our children autistic, "health freedom" activists, and, more recently, Tea Party activists. The name of the party was chosen based on the old story about how miners would keep canaries in the mine because they were more sensitive to toxic gases. The idea was that, if the miners saw their canary collapse, they knew they'd better get out of that shaft…

Pathetic poll

Recall the car dealership ad that suggested that non-Christians sit down and shut up? A poll by a television station asks, Does the Kieffe and Sons Ford ad make you want to buy a car from the dealership? The only choices are "yes" and "no" — they don't even include "no, it convinces me to never buy anything from those clowns", so the poll is a bit biased already. Would you believe that right now 31% are saying "yes"? They like car salesmen who discriminate.

Apple Feels It Owns You

If you buy an iPhone from Apple, you don't own the iPhone. No. Apple owns you. According to this item on Slashdot regarding this item from somewhere else on the intertubules. So if you buy this thing, you can do whatever you want with it as long as whatever you want is what Apple wants. If you want to do something else with your thing, the Apple Police will come and get you. Big brother, it turns out, is all about Oedipus.

Big Science and Outreach

In comments to my complaint about the over-identification of physics with particle physics, I noted that this is largely because high-energy physicists have been successful in getting the media and general public to buy into their belief that high-energy physics is the coolest and most important thing in physics, for a number of reasons. Jonathan Vos Post asks: The reasons being what, in your opinion, Chad? And, if so, what should we do (as citizens or a physicists)? I think most of it comes down to the scale of the experiments and the collaborations that run them. There are two components…

The iPhone: A User's Guide

This is one from the vault. Though not our vault. It was posted here in the original. But we offer a full reprint below the fold. If you're a fidgety right-finger-on-that-mouse-scroller zooming-down-the-page reader (oh, did I nail it Mark?), don't miss chapter 18: XVIII. Using the iPhone to learn whether superstring theory's positing of 10 dimensions (or 11 in M-theory) is viable in light of recent discoveries relating to dark matter Enjoy. "The iPhone: A User's Guide," by Darren Cahr. Congratulations on your purchase of the 8-gigabyte iPhone from Apple Inc.! For the first time, you will be…

Music publishers eye guitar tablature aggregation sites for copyright infringement

From BBC News, "With the fight against illegal downloading of songs starting to pay off, the music business has set its sights on a new enemy on the internet - websites which transcribe pop songs into musical notation." Not content with suing Moms and kids who illegally download mp3s, the recording industry is looking to further alienate a core demographic, the amateur hack musician. Millions of scientist and non-scientist rockstar-wannabes around the world make use of guitar chord and tablature postings (tabs) to learn how to play complicated and not-so-complicated songs, trade ideas, and…

Catherine Clabby covers Frank Stasio (WUNC-FM's The State of Things) for Durham Magazine

Homer alert. The title pretty much covers three of some of my favorite things about living in Durham, NC. From the Pharmboy mailbox and Durham Magazine website: Catherine Clabby - former reporter extraordinaire for The News & Observer, current editor extraordinaire for American Scientist magazine and a long-time Durhamite extraordinaire - spent hours finding out why The State of Things host Frank Stasio has fallen head-over-heels for Durham. Sometimes it takes an outsider to help us all appreciate how good we have it. Frank's doing that in a big way, both through his work at NPR and in…

Survival Skills 101: Frugal Living

tags: frugal living, survival skills, unemployment, underemployment, financial crisis I have been barely surviving living frugally for nearly all of my life, although I have been taking this to the extreme these past five years. But now that many of you are also having to either cut back on your living expenses, due to unemployment, underemployment or fear that you will become un(der)employed soon, I no longer feel I have to be so secretive about my own lifestyle, so I thought I'd share some of my own tried-and-true strategies for basic survival skills with you. Life style changes:…

New Boat Smell

What does 78.1 million U.S. dollars buy you? Presidential election? A month's supply of prescription medication? Health care? A house in California? Definitely not enough money for any of those. What it does buy is a shiney new ship from fine Norwegian shipbuilders and a visit from royalty.  Who else are you going to have build a ship?  NERC (National Environmental Research Council, UK) and the National Oceanography Centre recently welcomed thier new addittion to the family.  The RSS James Cook will see her first expedition to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

Second Life

I have too many hobbies. It's always been true. And, indeed, a quote by Mike Dunford has spurred me into writing a post... but not this one. The other one will come sometime (I hope). In grad school, I suppose it's possible I would have graduated sooner if I hadn't done some much theater. I wasn't always doing a play, but I had small roles in the musical Working and a sort of dramatic reading of John Brown's Body; I was the stage directory for a musical revue (the baby of my housemate, musical director Deepto Chakrabarty); I was a unicycling waiter in Hello Dolly!; I was Brutus in Julius…

All I Want For Christmas Is A Pair Of Swim Shorts

It's that time of year again - the time when I begin to contemplate swimsuits, and curse under my breath. You see, the last several years, Mr. Z and I have sworn off birthday, anniversary, and Christmas gifts for each other in lieu of saving our cash for a week-long escape to a sunny, sandy locale sometime in December. It's the perfect time to go. The leaves have been wind-torn off the trees and dutifully raked up into a pile for composting. Nothing's left of November but bare branches, gray skies, and the grim march of five weeks of holiday-themed commercials on t.v. and radio. Some…

On shelving

While Matt Selman's rules of book shelving are clearly insane, Ezra Klein's response is clearly not quite right either. The basic rule, from which all the others follow like a pack of hallucinating baboons, is: It is unacceptable to display any book in a public space of your home if you have not read it. Therefore, to be placed on Matt Selman's living room bookshelves, a book must have been read cover to cover, every word, by Matt Selman. If you are in the home of Matt Selman and see a book on the living room shelves, you know FOR SURE it has been read by Matt Selman. No, no, no. Some…

Scam Publisher Fools Swedish Cranks

Perennial Aard favourites N-A. Mörner and B.G. Lind have published another note in a thematically unrelated journal. It's much like the one they snuck past peer review into Geografiska Annaler in 2009 and which Alun Salt and I challenged in 2011. The new paper is as usual completely out of touch with real archaeology, misdating Ales stenar by over 1000 years and comparing it to Stonehenge using the megalithic yard. No mention is made of the fact that this unit of measurement was dreamed up by professor of engineering cum crank archaeoastronomer Alexander Thom and has never had any standing in…

Why it's fun to be a scientist on Halloween

Everyone knows being a scientist has its downsides (like the Pay Rate), but it definitely has its upsides, too. If you're in a really fun lab, you'll have a glowing cat or something else strange to show off. For the rest of us, simply having access to a well-stocked lab and a basic understanding of chemistry provides definite advantages on a holiday based on magic and mystery. Here's a few reasons it's great to be a scientist on Halloween: 1. You can wear your work attire as a costume - and a pretty good one, at that. Throw on a lab coat, some safety goggles, and mess your hair up and…

Andrew Wakefield hits up his supporters for cash

Any regular reader of this blog knows who Andrew Wakefield is. He's the British gastroenterologist who almost singlehandedly ignited a panic about the MMR vaccine (well, not quite single-handedly; the sensationalistic British press helped a lot) with his shoddy, fraudulent research linking the MMR vaccine to "autistic enterocolitis" and then later to autism itself. Ultimately, his support for non-science-based speculation (not to mention his unethical behavior) caught up with him, and he was "struck off," which is a lovely bit of British verbiage describing his having his license to practice…

Security theater

Airline captain, lawyer, child on terror 'watch list': James Robinson is a retired Air National Guard brigadier general and a commercial pilot for a major airline who flies passenger planes around the country. He has even been certified by the Transportation Security Administration to carry a weapon into the cockpit as part of the government's defense program should a terrorist try to commandeer a plane. But there's one problem: James Robinson, the pilot, has difficulty even getting to his plane because his name is on the government's terrorist "watch list." That means he can't use an…

Reader survey - would you buy a Not Exactly Rocket Science book?

Folks, I'm toying with the idea of publishing a book that compiles the best of Not Exactly Rocket Science from the last year. I'll select about 60 or so of my favourite pieces from 2008 and transfer them from code and pixels to ink and paper.  The plan is to launch the book in early November in time for the Christmas market. So the big question is: would you buy it? And related questions: would you buy it as a gift for anyone? Would you recommend it to people? Is this a good idea or a silly one? Do any of you have contacts who could help to market something like this? -E

The Real Access Problem with the Hugos

There has been a lot of stuff written in response to the Hugo award nomination mess, most of it stupid. Some of it is stupid to such an impressive degree that it actually makes me feel sympathetic toward people who I know are wrong about everything. One of the few exceptions is the long essay by Eric Flint. This comes as a mild surprise, as I've always mentally lumped him in with the folks whose incessant political wrangling was a blight on Usenet's rec.arts.sf.written back in the day; now I can't remember if he was actually one of the annoying idiots, or if I've mistakenly put him in with…

African Grey Parrot Apparel for a Good Cause

Ok, hold the phone everyone!!!!!!! A volunteer from Irene Pepperberg's lab has informed me that parrot-related merchandise is available for purchase, to help support her lab and research on grey parrots. I am totally going to buy every one of these items, er, once I get my stipend check, that is. Buy some too, and help support parrot research! Also, Alex recently turned 30. Happy Hatch-Day Alex! If parrots could wear t-shirts, this is the one they'd pick. Feathers are much more awesome though. Parrot pens! Alex eyes it suspiciously. I think 2 seconds after this photo was taken he either…

Tablet PC Query

So, for the last several months, I've had a loaner tablet PC from our ITS department, that I used when teaching in the Winter and Spring terms. It's a Toshiba, and a few years old, but it worked pretty well for what I was doing. Since I've got some book money coming in, I'm looking to buy one for myself. I can do some product research on my own, but I'm sure there are people reading this who have strong opinions on the subject, so: If I'm looking to buy a tablet PC, what should I get? It needs to be a Windows machine, so please don't tell me about wonderful products from Apple, if they exist.

Futures thinking and my job in 10 years

Thinking about the future is very hard. You'd think I'd know just how hard it is, having engaged in it on numerous occasions during my blogging career and even writing a book about it. But the more I think about the future -- of the climate, of society, of the economy, of information, of publishing, of libraries and, ultimately, of librarians like me -- the harder it is to pin down what I really think is going to happen. The future has a nasty way of sneaking up on you and actually happening in the past. Some things happen faster than you thought, some slower. Some things you thought were…

The first review of Open Laboratory 2009

The fourth anthology barely managed to hit the virtual shelves when the very first book review was published. Of course, considering the speed, this was done by a blogger - Grant Jacobs from the 'Code for Life' blog on New Zealand sciblogs. Read his review here. You liked what you just read? Buy the book! And if that is not enough for you, check out the 2006, 2007 and 2008 editions. Or buy a few now and save them for presents for next Christmas....

Cash for evaluations?

I hope this doesn't count as biting the hand that feeds, but hey, dissent is supposed to be the highest form of patriotism or something. From my university: COLLEGE STATION -- The chancellor of the Texas A&M University System wants to give bonuses worth up to $10,000 to some instructors, but so far, many aren't interested. "I've never had so much trouble giving away a million dollars," Chancellor Mike McKinney said, laughing. The voluntary pilot program being done at Texas A&M University along with the campuses in Prairie View and Kingsville will award bonuses from $2,500 to $10,000…

scio10: Science in the Cloud

John Hogenesch, Assistant Professor of Pharmacology - Penn School of Med gene-at-a-time is giving way to genome wide - larger datasets, collaborative research last year more added to genebank than all previous years combined (wow!) - exceeds Moore's law. Academia responds by buying storage and clusters - but you need great IT staff - and it's really hard to get and keep them (they go to industry), heating & cooling, depreciation, usage/provisioning (under/over utilized). Larger inter-institutional grids - access is tightly regulated, they are very complex to program in/for Cloud computing…

Car wreck in DC: the snapshot as memento mori

Klingle Ford Bridge Wreck, 1925 National Photo Company Collection Courtesy of Shorpy: proof that even in 1925, traffic on Connecticut Avenue was hell. This wreck occurred about a mile or so from my apartment, near the National Zoo. As a work of art, it's uninspiring. But somehow its placement within my personal territory gives it a certain poignant fascination, a sort of urban archaeological authority. John Updike recently wrote a book review for the New Yorker on "the art of snapshots," in which he said, My own shoeboxes of curling, yellowing snapshots derive their fascination almost…