Sudden Plans
I've discovered that William Gibson is onstage tonight, being interviewed by Nancy Pearl, for free.
I'm planning to attend.
[Edit: The official event page indicates that this will cost $10. Not sure about attending, but more inclined to go if others are going -- e-mail or call if you're planning to attend.]
Tokyo tourism details
The following is an e-mail I sent to one of my co-workers, heading to Japan. I'm recording it here so that I can find it if I ever need to do so, as the corporate e-mail system has eaten it before. "The Hotel" is the Royal Park Hotel, which is right next to TCAT.
Hot-air artists
Far be it from me to say something nice about our current president, but hot-air artist is a wonderful turn of phrase to describe not just any old gasbag, but an eloquent one.
In praise of Don DeLillo
Slate discusses Don DeLillo's new novel, Falling Man, and reminds me exactly why he may be America's most iconic novelist: the titles of his novels become the titles of entirely unrelated movies.
Given American culture, that makes him a truer visionary than if they turned his books into movies.
Dog-Free Floors in Apartment Buildings
While I like dogs, my wife doesn't: she grumbles when neighbors' dogs disturb her with their barking, and she's a touch nervous around larger, more ferocious-looking specimens.
I wonder if some apartment buildings limit dogs to certain floors. It's more forgiving than blanket permission, but also gives people who prefer to be dog-free some choices as well.
One line to rule them all…
Lately, at the QFC near my apartment, I've taken to checking out in the self-checkout line, even though I despise it on principle: I prefer the modicum of human interaction in the regular checkout line — I stopped to say hello to a cashier tonight, one I've known since I moved to Seattle nearly three years ago — and because I don't like the idea that automation will be a wage-supressing bargaining chip come contract negotiation time. I further object to the notion that the store is saving money but not giving me an additional discount.
Moreover, people are much slower at checking themselves out than an experienced cashier is. Oodles more slow.
So why do I stand in that line, then, with the inherent inferiority?
Because it's one line to four registers: even if each person checking out is a third the speed, and the line is the same length as the others (it's frequently shorter), I still save time.
One line for all of the cashier-managed registers (a la Fry's and the Post Office) would have me back there in no time. Of course, that's fine with QFC.
PowerPoint Slams
It's like poetry slams, but for hip, with-it Silicon Valley manager types. Maybe "Jargon Watch" style slang for long conferences with back-to-back presentations, like Sales conferences or Demo-oriented conferences.
(Tip of the hat to my co-worker Ron Dubois, from whose mouth the term came.)
Absolutism is the New Relativism
In an eye-opening article in Slate, Fred Kaplan writes that Condoleezza Rice "invokes her academic credentials to evade responsibility for decisions that she's made or for policies that she's helped devise." More specifically, Rice argues that as a student of history, she has learned that far-future consequences are unforseeable, that the now-seemingly-negative may turn out to be positive, and vice-versa — and that, because we can't predict how her decisions will be judged in thirty years, a hundred years, or a thousand years, we must not judge them today, either.
This may strike many people as both eminently true and eminently indefensible; after all, we still have to make decisions, and build on those decisions, even if we can't know what our great-grandchildren's great-grandchildren will think, even if our goal is to make choices that will enable those distant descendants to exist and to thrive.
To me, the interesting aspect of her comment is that her eschatological objectivity (in The End, we can and will know) brings Rice and her fellow conservative academics to the same place as the radical subjectivity of their left-wing postmodern academic opponents in the culture wars, a position for which the postmodernists were soundly spanked by the good upstanding believers in absolute, objective reality.
Of course, the news isn't that people engaged in politics (even academic politics) pillory their opponents for things that both sides do for opposite reasons. The news (if such an aphorism can be news) is that the poet was right: extremes meet.
There oughtta be a word…
... it's not notorious, exactly, nor is it infamous. It is a work of art or cultural phenomenon that is wrongheaded and odious, but either incredibly influential or perfectly evoking the zeitgeist. Examples may be, depending upon your political and/or artistic persuasion, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Moore, Robocop, Magnolia, Lydia Lunch, Paris Hilton, Duran Duran, or KISS.
Urban Housewares
It seems to me that Bed, Bath, and Beyonce would be a great name for a funky, contemporary housewares store.
Extortion Novelties
I dreamed about a company like Despair, Inc. whose gimmick was not being a stifling corporation but being an extortion racket. Demanding more information than necessary to sell you product; sending followup letters after something's sold asking for more money; vaguely threatening language in the catalog...