Vacuum

Edna St. Vincent Millay: This Gifted Age



Upon this age, that never speaks its mind,

This furtive age, this age endowed with power

To wake the moon with footsteps, fit an oar

Into the rowlocks of the wind, and find

What swims before his prow, what swirls behind ---

Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,

Rains from the sky a meteoric shower

Of facts . . . they lie unquestioned, uncombined.

Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill

Is daily spun; but there exists no loom

To weave it into fabric; undefiled

Proceeds pure Science, and has her say; but still

Upon this world from the collective womb

Is spewed all day the red triumphant child.



via http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Poetry/Millay/Upon_this_age.html

I've changed the title of this blog back to Vacuum, since all of the extra gobbledygook was making it hard to bookmark things.



The "quick compose" part of Typepad makes it easier to post things that are short that don't have titles, so I don't get stuck figuring out what the title should be and I can just type.



Trying to be more regular about dumping something into this input box when things warrant, generally late at night.

Checklists, eptitude, how to get things right - Atul Gawande

The Checklist Manifesto; review in the New York Times.

THE CHECKLIST MANIFESTO

How to Get Things Right

By Atul Gawande

Atul Gawande, home page.  

Excerpt from Freakonomics review

Even more interesting are the stories about Walmart’s response to Hurricane Katrina, and the real reason why David Lee Roth used to demand that there be a bowl of M&M’s with all the brown ones removed in his dressing room backstage.

Times Online review

The surgeon-author was on the track of what might be described as a classic magic bullet — a low-tech way in a high-tech, expensive world in which lives might be saved and costs reduced. Gawande, using his own word, was searching for “eptitude” — the business of making sure that those with knowledge applied it effectively.

Google books preview

First chapter is free; and it includes the word "eptitude".

Checklist for checklists

"The following checklist is designed to aid the checklist creation process and ensure that your checklist helps instead of hurts.  It was created by Dr. Atul Gawande, the Brigham and Women's Hospital Center for Surgery and Public Health Dissemination Team, and Dan Boorman of Boeing."

The nicest wiki implementation of checklists I've seen is at Sunshine Review, using the MediaWiki dpl extension.

⑳⑩

Two unicode characters to start the new year right.

working on metadata - stopped in your tracks and watched until you get it right

Michael Sippey writes about Ben Hammersley writing about metadata.

The quote he pulls is

So why do everything you can to keep metadata intact? Because it’s from this information that new products can be automatically created, at a scale and rapidity that would be impossible otherwise. With every piece of metadata that you don’t throw away, you gain a factor more potential ways of slicing through your content and delivering it as a separate product, simply as a result of a database lookup.

Let me give a worked-out example of this, for starters. AnnArbor.com uses Movable Type as a publishing platform; as a part of that, we have tags for each story.  A staff of journalists tagging their stories creates a lot of tags (because you are writing about a lot of things) and a few tags with a lot of stories (because you are writing a lot of stories about those things).

Keeping a collaboratively maintained set of tags sane is work (in the same way that moderating comments is work; but that's another post).  When you are writing on a deadline, you don't have the luxury to work out every last possible reuse of your work, and so you don't tag aggressively.  When you are copy editing, you might well have a reason to use or prefer a specific tag, in part because it lets you direct readers to previous coverage on the topic in a way that's much simpler than specifically deep linking to each page.

What helps me keep some part of some of the metadata I care about within the AnnArbor.com world sane is to build links to the stories that I want to refer to from an outside source - in this case Arborwiki - and as I'm doing updates to that site use it as a sanity spot-check for coverage.  Some wiki templates help speed the process of explicit linking, and an internal category helps me figure out what fragment of the tag space I've covered.  When I see a story that isn't easy to link to from a relevant page, I go back and add the tag - not because it's useful in the abstract, but because it's relevant to one specific external instance.

In this way I think that Ben is missing one of the elements of metadata, the element that says that you never really stop working on it, and that simple repurpose through a database lookup only works when you are still actively editing the database. There's nothing worse that going to a lot of work doing an attractively formatted page that's driven by a database query against a database that you can't control, and having to answer the question why a certain piece of unwanted data is there and having someone stop you in your chair and watch over your keyboard until it's gone.

Metadata only works when you un-meta it and deal with it again as data.  The list of metadata elements that I care enough to keep updating is not just meta; it's a first class real list, one that has to be treated as a first class citizen and not just some accidental system artifact.  Sometimes the metadata you expose just makes it clear how incomplete your first pass at storytelling was and what it takes to bring it back to the level of refinement that you expect.

(tags: stopped watched; so meta it hurts; arborwiki)

network buffering, a design for robustness

Networked buffering: a basic mechanism for distributed robustness in complex adaptive systems, James Whitacre and Axel Bender, 2009/12/10, arXiv:0912.1961

Excerpt: This paper proposes a generic design principle for generating robust traits in complex systems that requires two basic conditions to be satisfied: 1) agents are versatile enough to perform more than one single functional role within a system and 2) agents are degenerate, i.e. there exists a partial overlap in the functional capabilities of agents. Our principle claim is formulated within the so-called networked buffering hypothesis. It outlines how degenerate systems may readily produce a distributed response to local perturbations and reciprocally how excess resources related to a single function can indirectly support multiple unrelated functions within a degenerate system.

Translating a bit out of complex systems speak, here's my interpretation.  Note that the paper proposes a design principle (and not a rigorously tested set of experiments) so there's room to explore this principle in a variety of worlds and words.

The first note is that the pieces of the robust complex system in question are flexible and reconfigurable ("versatile").  Every part has multiple uses; every person has multiple sets of skills; for every functional role, there's more that one piece that can fit that functional role.  The expectation is that for any gap that you find from the temporary dislocation of a portion of the system there would be some other resource available to fill it, and also that if you have a temporary need for increased resources in some role that there would be a variety of resources available to pull into it.

The second note is the that the agents are diverse (oddly, in this language, "degenerate") in their skills.  This implies most critically that if two agents could fill the same functional role, that there might always be a swap between them so that one of them could take it one while the other applied their exceptional talent to the need that was pressing. 

Between the two principles you see how a system might get a considerable amount of redundancy and of reconfigurability to address exceptional needs.   For any individual task, there's more than one set of agents to address that task.  Any portion of the system that is redundant for any given task is also exceptionally qualified for some other task. 

I want to draw conclusions to modern management, to staffing and scheduling and vacation time, and to the risks to brittle organizations when budgets are cut.  I haven't even made sense yet of the "network buffering" piece.  Too short a post for that, please do have at the paper and see how that makes sense to you.

emptying out my inbox into my blog

Every so often the inbox is full and the blog is empty; this is an attempt to remedy that.

How to do an introduction online.  X, meet Y; Y, meet X.  X is notable for a1, a2, a3; Y is notable for b1, b2, b3.  You have a mutual interest in c1, c2, c3; you should connect.  There are several of those pending.

How to make the best of not responding to mail promptly.  Answer long, hoping that your thoughtfulness makes up for your tardiness.  Follow up with a new question, assuming that anything that went more than some period of time - two weeks, a month, or more - was overtaken by events and you want to be seen as having good follow up skills.

How much inbox is too much inbox.  Inbox zero, for sure, in someone's dreams.  I'm generally happier when the bottomless queue reaches 100 or less, since it seems more likely that each one might represent a chance to connect with someone in particular.  There's also a time duration beyond which it makes more sense to start afresh than it does to reply.

Cauliflower Curry

Cauliflower Curry

1 Tbs canola oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 8 oz packages savory baked tofu
curry powder
1 head cauliflower, cut into florets, steamed
coconut milk, about half a can
diced tomatoes, one small can

Heat the canola oil over medium heat (6/10).  Add chopped onion.
Cook until fragrant.  Add curry powder - I generally sprinkle it
lightly over the top - and stir until even more fragrant and colorful.
Add diced tofu, stir so that the curry powder is equally mixed in.

Don't cook so hot that the onions brown, but get everything hot
enough that if you stopped you could eat the mixture right there.

Add steamed cauliflower, stir until everything is coated with the curried
onion.  Adjust the seasonings so that the color is right.

Add the coconut milk and diced tomatoes.  If you are using canned
tomatoes, consider reserving some of the liquid so that the curry
is not too soupy.  Stir, bring to heat at 6/10, then reduce the heat
to 3/10 and cook until the color is right.  (At the start, you will
have a pinkish tone because the tomatoes are raw; you are aiming for
a more curry color, which will happen when the tomatoes are cooked
through).

With the right amount of liquid, this can be served over rice or with
rice on the side to sop it up.

Serves as many people as you make it for; I allow 4 oz of tofu per
family member.

Notes

It could probably have peas added to it.

Freeze the other half a can of coconut milk for the next time you
do this recipe.

Even better the next day if there's any left.

We like the Panda brand savory baked tofu from Michigan Soy Products in Royal Oak, MI, available in Ann Arbor at the People's Food Coop.

Popcorn recipe, oil ripples, and Bénard-Marangoni convection

Popcorn

canola oil
popping corn

Heat a sturdy deep pot with a lid to the same temperature you'd use for low temperature sauteing; on our stove it's 6 of 10.  When the pot is properly warmed up, pour a bit of oil on the bottom (about a tablespoon or a little more) and bring that up to heat.  I know it's at the right temperature when the thin layer of oil starts to form standing waves, ridges, or ripples.  If it starts to smoke, it's too hot; if it's a completely flat layer of oil, it's too cold.

What is that ripple effect?  From Harold McGee, The Curious Cook in the New York Times:

As the temperature of the pan surface rose above 350 degrees, the oil began to move and form thick ridges and thin troughs, a stage that some recipes refer to as the oil “rippling.” As the temperature kept climbing, the thin areas spread out and the ridges became fewer and higher. The pattern reminded me of the long drops that run down the inside of a glass of wine or spirits. Eventually the thin areas seemed to run completely dry, and most of the oil had collected in a ring around the pan edge.

With some research, I soon learned that I had been observing Bénard-Marangoni convection, which is related to Marangoni convection in a wineglass. Uneven temperatures at the pan surface cause regional differences in the oil’s surface tension, and this causes the oil to get pulled toward the cooler areas.

When the oil is at the right heat, pour in enough popping corn in the pan to make a layer of kernels a single kernel deep.   Shake the pot around so that all of the kernels get a very thin coating of hot oil.  If there's any excess oil pooling around, you've put
too much in.

Put the pot back on the heat - again, it's 6/10 on our stove - and keep the lid in while it pops.  Shake the pan back and forth every so often.  When the popping stops, take the pan off the heat.

Cinnamon Popcorn Cereal

a recipe from Jonathan

Fresh popped popcorn
Cinnamon
Milk

Pour fresh popped popcorn in a bowl.  Sprinkle cinnamon on top. Pour milk in the bowl.  Eat.

Note: do not salt the popcorn if you want to enjoy this cereal.
Note: This should work with crumbled rice cakes as well.

Detroit Daily Press not off to a great start

This is such a curious story that I want to preserve bits of it as they appeared, to help better make sense of it.

The back story is that some veterans of the "strike newspaper" industry decided they could make a go of doing a new daily Detroit paper, with delivery.

They launched to the point of being able to print a week's worth of paper, then abruptly shut down.

The Detroit News:

"Due to circumstances beyond our control, lack of advertising, lateness of our press runs and lack of distribution and sales, we find it necessary to temporarily suspend publication of the Detroit Daily Press until after the (first) of the year," the statement read. "Once we can fix these things, we plan to be back stronger and more organized when we return. This is just a bump in the road and not the end of the Detroit Daily Press."

Bill Shea from Crain's had a hard time finding a copy on Monday when it got started:

While 3,500 sounds like a lot, I’d hazard that one could easily find 100,000 retail spots, or more, pretty easily in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties, so the paper might be harder to find that some might expect. I looked at a few downtown Detroit places at lunchtime with no luck. I’ll check again later and pop up to Royal Oak so I can get a copy to dissect for you on here. Stay tuned.

TIME's Detroit bureau weighs in:

Surprising -- yet not surprising -- news out of the new Detroit Daily Press. The city's new paper says it needs to regroup. Editors and writers now have a five-week vacation to see what happens. Many friends were working there, and they were the ones who took the buyouts or were laid off from The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press. I'm sad to see an enterprise that could have been an exciting addition to the community fall so quickly.

Media critic Jay Rosen had only this cryptic comment on the situation:

Not a single thing do I get about this story. Either the reporter is incompetent or the actors are crazy.

And I suspect it will take a while to figure out what really happened.

@CantonWiki is looking good - http://cantonwiki.org

Trying Typepad Micro.

links for 2009-11-12

• From EFF's Secret Files: Anatomy of a Bogus Subpoena
  In a report released today, EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston tells the story of a bogus federal subpoena issued to independent news site Indymedia.us, and how the site fought back with EFF’s help. Declan McCullagh at CBSNews.com also has the story.
  (tags: subpoena doj eff indymedia privacy)

Ypsilanti, Michigan to adopt more stringent Open Meetings Act rules

YPSILANTI - A very straightforward yet revolutionary approach to open meetings in Ypsilanti says that every subcommittee of City Council must abide by the Michigan Open Meetings Act - including providing advance notice of meetings - just in case enough council members show up to form a quorum.

Ypsilanti Citizen story:

The OMA resolution, which was added to council’s agenda at 5 p.m. on Oct. 20, was discussed in relation to the approval of the Ypsilanti Downtown Development Authority bylaws - a separate agenda item at the meeting.

Murdock said the resolution is simply about “having meetings where decisions are made open to the public.”

Although he had previous discussions with City Manager Ed Koryzno during Council’s goal-setting sessions in January, Murdock moved forward with the resolution Oct. 20, when the DDA violated the Open Meetings Act earlier in the month by having a quorum, or more than seven members of the board, participate at a planning committee meeting.

the Advance Ypsilanti PAC notes that the resolution snuck in at the last possible minute

Sadly, the process by which this open meetings resolution was enacted is exactly the opposite of an open process. This is not just ironic, but suspect.

For instance, consider that this resolution was sent to the city clerk and posted to the council packets at 4:16 p.m. the day of the city council meeting, less than 3 hours before council was to convene. AY PAC asks ‘why’? There was no emergency, no timeline that needed to be met on this issue. There was no pressing need that forced this to be addressed and resolved THAT NIGHT.

If anyone can inform AY PAC as to why this was so urgent that it needed to be addressed in a timeline that included NO opportunity for public comment and little reflection by council, we welcome the information.

The back story is the Ypsi DDA meeting in October 2008 which was held in closed session, in evident violation of the Open Meetings Act.  From YpsiNews (Steve Pierce) at the time:

(October 7, 2008) During a meeting of the Ypsilanti Downtown Development, the DDA board violated not one, but two sections of the Open Meetings Act.

The Director of the Ypsilanti DDA, Brian Vosburg, called an emergency closed session meeting to be held on Friday, October 3, 2008 at 12 noon. The purpose of the meeting was to meet with DDA attorney Tammie Tischler.

The DDA Director said in the meeting notice the “Closed Session (is) to consider material exempt from discussion or disclosure by state or federal statute - (Open Meetings Act 15.268, Section 8(h))”

However, neither the DDA Director nor the DDA attorney would cite which state or federal statute exempts the DDA from the Open Meetings Act. Failing to publicly state the reason for a closed session is a violation of the Open Meetings Act.

Great Ships of the Great Lakes at Lake Erie Metropark, Nov. 22, 2pm, Brownstown MI

Cut and paste of a press release, with a few hyperlinks tossed in.

Great Ships of the Great Lakes at Lake Erie Metropark

 

Join nationally recognized lecturer, model maker and marine historian Keith Steffke for a fascinating look at some of the great ships that have plied and died on the Great Lakes at our special presentation “Great Ships of the Great Lakes,” on Sunday, November 22 at 2 p.m., at the Marshlands Museum and Nature Center of Lake Erie Metropark, in Brownstown. 

 

Steffke will focus on the many ships that were made at the legendary Great Lakes Engineering Works – a River Rouge/Ecorse (Detroit River)  shipyard that operated from 1902 to 1961. The Edmund Fitzgerald is perhaps the best known vessel produced at this facility, but there were many others. Each ship has a story to tell and Mr. Steffke will relate some of the more fascinating tales. 

 

This November marks the 50th anniversary of the end of commercial shipbuilding in the Downriver area.  The launching of the freighter "Arthur B. Homer" on November 7, 1959 spelled the end of 135 years of shipbuilding tradition on the Detroit River. Her builder, the Great Lakes Engineering Works,  was founded in 1902 and finally ceased operations in 1961.   This legendary shipbuilder was noted for the great variety and number of bulk freighters, tugs, car ferries and luxurious passenger ships they constructed at their River Rouge/Ecorse shipyard over the course of a half century. Steffke will deliver an entertaining program filled with anecdotes about  this renowned builder of ships such as the ill-fated "Edmund Fitzgerald", among other famous vessels.  Using unique prints, photographs, artifacts, and other rare archival items, Steffke documents the rise and fall of the last Downriver shipbuilder.

 

Travel back to a time when the rattle of the riveting gun and the tremendous splash of a launching hull could be heard along the Detroit River!

 

Fee: $2 per person. Pre-registration required.  Please call 734-379-5020 for more information, or to register.

Edmund Fitzgerald - memorial at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, Whitefish Point, MI

(write about the display in Paradise)

from the Sault Star:

The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum is getting to once again ring the bell 29 times, during the 14th annual Edmund Fizgerald Memorial Service.

The Edmund Fitzgerald, a 729-foot ore carrier, and her entire crew of 29 men were lost on Lake Superior 34 years ago in one of the worst storms in three decades.

The freighter lies north-northwest of Whitefish Point in 160 metres of water.

The service begins Tuesday at 7 p. m. at the Whitefish Point, Mich., museum.

Each year, in honour of the Fitgerald crew, the bell is uncovered and rung 29 times during a 'Call to the Last Watch Ceremony.' The 30th ring is for all mariners lost on the Great Lakes.

Music will be provided by Great Lakes balladeer Carl Behrend and Michigan singer and songwriter Dan Hall. Guest speaker is William Maki, watchman on the Arthur M. Anderson the night the Fitzgerald was lost.

The shipwreck museum will be open from 10 am. to 3 p. m.

For more information, call 1- 800-635-1742.

The Sault Star Contact Details

Send all correspondence to:

The Sault Star
145 Old Garden River Rd
Sault Ste Marie, Canada  P6A 5M5

a new freedom of information blog starting

I've been writing a "FOIA Friday" series at AnnArbor.com, and the thought has started to occur to me that it would be a lot easier to write it if I had another blog to use to cut and paste clippings into so that I had more material to work from.

So, prepare for a new FOIA blog at http://vielmetti.typepad.com/foia which doesn't have a clever name yet but will serve as a place to collect stuff that's relevant and interesting to open government issues, yet out of scope for the newspaper.

on the email interview and the validity of written communications

There's a wide variety of quality in people's ability to express themselves in written form, and an "email interview" is one way of assessing this.  This generally takes the form of a set of questions provided to the interviewee to be answered by them using whatever means they have to prepare a suitable answer.  You will often find that it takes some time to get a response back, especially if there are a lot of questions or if the questions are hard.

Frankly, I'm disappointed that more people don't spend the time on getting better at both writing written questions and in responding to them.  A well-written set of questions, thought through in advance, can give a candidate or any other interview subject time to prepare and reflect on the tone they wish to project.  This can be very instructive when compared to the same person's behavior in an unreflective, spontaneous, unscripted moment.  In addition, email leaves a trail and a public record and you know how useful it is to have a public record to refer to from time to time rather than private, unreliable personal notes.

I know that the stereotype is the ink-stained reporter clutching the steno pad grabbing a good phrase here and there.  But there needs to be more attention to how people present themselves in email, especially given how much municipal business is transacted through the email.  I am certain that a reporter is capable of being just as tough and as hard-nosed via written form to members of government and candidates for elected office - just as good elected officials are skilled in the art of writing pointed requests for information from agencies and departments in order to get at the details they want.

Small wins, incremental improvement, and cumulative advantage

http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/decline.txt

In this book, Gregory Feist reviews and consolidates the scattered literatures on the psychology of science, then calls for the establishment of the field as a unique discipline. He offers the most comprehensive perspective yet on how science came to be possible in our species and on the important role of psychological forces in an individual’s development of scientific interest, talent, and creativity. Without a psychological perspective, Feist argues, we cannot fully understand the development of scientific thinking or scientific genius.

say something about Manfred Kochen and the slow accumulation of intellectual debts reflected in bibliographies

links for 2009-10-28

• Change is Easy on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
  neon sign
  (tags: annarbor pinball pinball-petes neon)
• PINBALL: Pinball Repair Guides. Collector buys pinball, arcade, coin operated sport games, baseball pitch bat, manikin mannequin games
  (tags: pinball repair)
• Fixing the past: the art of collecting pinball machines - Ars Technica
  (tags: pinball repair)
• Leading Game Room Supply Company || Pinball, Video Games, Billiards... || Game Exchange of Colorado || Sales: 303.288.6500
  "Since 1981, Game Exchange of Colorado has been the premier provider of home entertainment games and equipment throughout Colorado and much of the United States. We have an incredible inventory of new and used pinball machines, billiard tables, video games, and other entertainment products, including poker tables, arcade games, air hockey tables, shuffleboard games... even game room furniture!"
  (tags: colorado pinball)
• HSA PINBALL
  pinball playing field restoration in chicago
  (tags: pinball restoration chicago)