Barack Obama on Martin Luther King, Jr.

Barack Obama, speaking today at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on how Martin Luther King Jr. "led this country through the wilderness":

He led with words, but he also led with deeds. He also led by example. He led by marching and going to jail and suffering threats and being away from his family. He led by taking a stand against a war, knowing full well that it would diminish his popularity. He led by challenging our economic structures, understanding that it would cause discomfort. Dr. King understood that unity cannot be won on the cheap; that we would have to earn it through great effort and determination.

That is the unity — the hard-earned unity — that we need right now. It is that effort, and that determination, that can transform blind optimism into hope — the hope to imagine, and work for, and fight for what seemed impossible before.

The Great Need of the Hour (full text)
The Great Need of the Hour (video)

One idea of hell

My son Ben speaks from recent experience:

"If there's a hell, it's a racquetball court."

Bobby Fischer (1943-2008)

I remember how exciting it was to be a teenaged chess player in 1972, watching the Fischer-Spassky match on public television, hearing the moves coming in on the teletype and wondering what was going to happen. No one could have imagined what was going to happen to Bobby Fischer in the years that followed that match.

Rene Chun's 2002 Atlantic article is an excellent account of Fischer's life.

Library of Congress photographs

The Library of Congress has made 3115 photographs from its collections available on Flickr, with no known copyright restrictions. A partial explanation:

We want people to tag, comment and make notes on the images, just like any other Flickr photo, which will benefit not only the community but also the collections themselves. For instance, many photos are missing key caption information such as where the photo was taken and who is pictured. If such information is collected via Flickr members, it can potentially enhance the quality of the bibliographic records for the images.

The above photograph is labeled "Unidentified shelf of kitchen utensils and jars of spices [between 1941 and 1945]."

The Library of Congress' photos (Flickr)
My Friend Flickr (Library of Congress blog)

Microsoft, innovating

"It looks like you're having a breakdown. Would you like help?"
[Microsoft Office pop-up message of the future]

"All your brain signals are belong to us!"
[Microsoft advertising slogan of the future]

Apple comes out with the MacBook Air, and look at what Microsoft's working on: a Clippy-like version of Big Brother. The Times of London reports:

The Times has seen a patent application filed by the company for a computer system that links workers to their computers via wireless sensors that measure their metabolism. The system would allow managers to monitor employees' performance by measuring their heart rate, body temperature, movement, facial expression and blood pressure. Unions said they fear that employees could be dismissed on the basis of a computer’s assessment of their physiological state.

Technology allowing constant monitoring of workers was previously limited to pilots, firefighters and Nasa astronauts. This is believed to be the first time a company has proposed developing such software for mainstream workplaces.

Microsoft submitted a patent application in the US for a "unique monitoring system" that could link workers to their computers. Wireless sensors could read "heart rate, galvanic skin response, EMG, brain signals, respiration rate, body temperature, facial movements, facial expressions and blood pressure," the application states.

The system could also "automatically detect frustration or stress in the user" and "offer and provide assistance accordingly." Physical changes to an employee would be matched to an individual psychological profile based on a worker’s weight, age and health. If the system picked up an increase in heart rate or facial expressions suggestive of stress or frustration, it would tell management that he needed help.

Microsoft seeks patent for office 'spy' software (Times of London)
All your base are belong to us (Wikipedia)

Steve Jobs on connecting the dots

Here, on the morning of the Macworld keynote address, some earlier words from Steve Jobs, from a Stanford commencement address, June 12, 2005:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

Found via The Paper Chase (Thanks, Lisa!)

Tracy Flick speaks

Yes, from Alexander Payne's 1999 movie Election. Flick is the driven high-schooler who wants to be student-body president. The election is supposed to be hers:

"None of this would have happened if Mr. McAllister hadn't meddled the way he did. He should have just accepted things as they are instead of trying to interfere with destiny. You see, you can't interfere with destiny. That's why it's destiny. And if you try to interfere, the same thing's going to happen anyway, and you'll just suffer."

Life imitates art?

Seersucker mystery

In the frozen-food section of our favorite Asian grocery store, I noticed a package bearing an unfamiliar name: salted seersucker. The package displayed a plate full of bright-green cylinders, a little like stuffed grape leaves — just a little.

I jotted down the name to look up, but neither Google nor the Oxford English Dictionary has given me a clue as to what salted seersucker might be.

I can though report that the word seersucker derives from the Hindi śīr-śakkar and the Urdu shīrshakar, meaning "milk and sugar." (Thanks, Merriam-Webster.) Wikipedia suggests that seersucker might be a matter of the resemblance of the "smooth and rough stripes" of seersucker fabric to "the smooth surface of milk and bumpy texture of sugar."

Salted seersucker, anyone?

[Update, June 23, 2008: The mystery is solved.]

Dowdy cup and saucer

Elaine and Rachel spotted this cup and saucer in World Market today and decided to get them for me. Thank you, ladies!

The cup is filled with dowdy coffee — Maxwell House.

All "dowdy world" posts (via Pinboard)

Harmony guitars and Juno

Juno MacGuff checks out a Gibson Les Paul. Then someone asks her what she plays: "I rock a Harmony."

Harmony, the People's Guitar!

If you too began musical life on a Harmony, you'll find lots to remember at the unofficial Harmony Database. (I started out with an H1215 and an H162.)

Juno by the way is well worth seeing. The best lines in the movie though are not arch and knowing but plainly felt: "I wanted everything to be perfect. Not shitty and broken like everyone else's family."