Seeing professors clearly

Tim Milburn, who works in student development, has a new website, College Students Rule!, a fine resource in the making.

When Tim asked if I'd like to contribute a post, I was happy to do so. "Seeing Professors Clearly" ponders five misconceptions that prevent students from doing just that.

Update, August 24, 2010: The site appears to be defunct: this piece has a new home in this post.

A Moleskine customer experience

When I tore the shrinkwrap from my 2008 Moleskine pocket planner on New Year's Day, I knew things weren't right. The elastic band that holds the planner closed was slack, and the silk ribbon that keeps the date was badly frayed at the end, with threads already pulling away through the ribbon's length. Neither of these problems might've been obvious to a casual user, but I'm a bit fanatical about my Moleskines.

And Moleskine srl is a company that understands. Every Moleskine notebook and planner comes with a pamphlet that includes a quality-control number and this statement:

Every notebook is handmade and it has been carefully checked for quality. If, despite our best efforts, we have overlooked a defect of any kind, please let us know.

All the company asks for is an e-mail message with the quality-control number and a digital photo. In exchange: "We will send you a new notebook."

On January 4, I e-mailed Moleskine srl about my planner. I received a reply that same day. Two weeks later a new planner arrived from Milan. That's a company that treats its customers well. Grazie!

(Srl? Società a responsabilità limita, private limited company.)

Related posts
Moleskine datebook review
My other blog is a Moleskine

Misheard

Our debate watching was interrupted by a phone call for Elaine (an interview for a composers' website). As she wended her way back to the living room, I gave her a report on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton:

"He's doing really well, but she's really taken the gloves off."

"Her clothes?"

"Her gloves."

The Clintons' cynical, contemptuous treatment of Obama worsens. Hillary Clinton may get the nomination, but there are already many Democrats who will not vote for her in the general election. (I'm one of them.)

Related reading
Obama v Clinton/Clinton (ABC News)

Related posts
Misheard ("The Tao is up")
Misheard ("that buttered crap")

Art Garfunkel's library

Since June 1968, Art Garfunkel has read 1,023 books. From the January 28 New Yorker:

He has been recording their particulars neatly on sheets of loose-leaf paper — forty or so titles to a page — for nearly forty years. About a decade ago, he posted the list on his Web site (which he pays a fan in Levittown to maintain).

Read the rest, and see the list:

The King of Reading (New Yorker)
Art Garfunkel Library

Yes, he's read all of Proust.

On MLK Day

On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right?

From King's last sermon, "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution," Washington National Cathedral, Washington, D.C., March 31, 1968.

Full text, via The Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project

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)