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In a mystery neighborhood filled with fog and frightening monsters, Halloween 'trick or treat' is fun. Especially if everyone is kind. But if not, things can get really scary... Later that evening I started reading one of the scariest books I've read in years.
First was Alfred Crosby's book
America's Forgotten Pandemic : The Influenza of 1918
buy at amazon.com. The flu ran through the dense concentrations of soldiers at military bases. Unlike today's strains of flu virus, it killed mainly the strong and healthy. Today biological warfare would be one of the prime suspects. But I had recently read Gina Kolata's book on the flu of 1918, which I reviewed here, so I'm still working my way through Crosby's book. Then I got Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox buy at amazon.com by Jonathan B. Tucker. This book is well regarded and well reviewed. But I didn't even open it at the time. Why not? Smallpox has been eradicated, I reasoned, and what goes on in bio-weapons laboratories is just another universe. Was I wrong? I was wrong I discovered this once I got well into Richard Preston's book
The Demon in the Freezer: A True Story buy at amazon.com, which begins with an anthrax death. He wrote another 'true disease thriller,' The Hot Zone, but I always reasoned that Ebola would burn itself out right away. Not so with Smallpox. The pacing in this book is excellent, and the chapters are not too long either. It is so well written that you can't put it down, even if you're getting scared out of your wits! Tucker develops a real rapport with the subjects of his stories, and he has a deft touch for description that is really admirable. Consider this passage about the smallpox storage freezer at the CDC:
Cartons for storing wine! Size of a beach ball. This is just a description of a refrigerator, but he really holds your interest, even in a passage like this one, where nothing dramatic is happening.
There are about four hundred and fifty different
strains of smallpox inside the freezer. The samples
are frozen in the little plastic vials called cryovials.
The cryovials stand upright in small white boxes made
of cardboard or plastic, which are divided with
grid inserts, like cartons for storing wine.
The boxes are stacked in metal racks, and they sit
suspended over the pool of liquid nitrogen, bathed
in cold fumes. The entire volume of the CDC's smallpox
is about the size of a beach ball.
I don't know why, but I was surprised when "Sources of Power, How People Make Decisions" by Gary Klein, turned out to be about how people actually make decisions. A book well worth reading, it is descriptive and absorbing, while at the same time rather deep. So, rather than just reviewing it, I would like to take a different approach. I would like to see if it repays further study.
The pace will not be too rapid. The first time through I was on vacation, after all. But if you would like to join in, there's plenty of time for you to get the book and read along. If you decide to, you can meander over to amazon.com and grab a copy of Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions by Gary Klein What are we in for? In the first chapter, we get an outline of what the focus will be. Klein points out that the sources of power for decision making have been, in the past, deductive logical thinking, analysis of probabilities, and statistical methods. Reliance on "experience" has been acknowledged but not examined. Klein focusses on four areas which are novel to decision research.
pools=XML, Blog, Ruby
I have just started reading Mary Anne Weaver's book "Pakistan: In the shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan." What is so surprising about this book, even a chapter in (I read the last chapter, too, because it was on Kashmir) is that given the importance of Pakistan in current affairs, I have been able to learn so much from the book. After all, I do read the newspaper, even Pakistani newspapers from time to time.
And both countries have been the beneficiaries of military aid from the United States: Pakistan much more so than Israel, soaking up billions of dollars worth of weapons in the failed Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Both countries have a serious refugee problem...
A little while ago on the Web Design List ([email protected]),we were debating the virtues of Liquid Design vs. pixel-perfect page positioning . The topic comes up from time to time. In an effort to uncover some insights on the difference between printpage-based graphic design (constrained) and webpage-based design (fluid), I turned to Phillip B. Meggs excellent book "A History of Graphic Design", which is so comprehensive and well-considered that I always enjoy turning there. Needless to say, I was quite surprised by what I found.
I turned first to Chapter 9 which details the influence of the Industrial Revolution on typography, in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Typeface design flourished. New type was popping up all over the place. Sans serif type made its first appearance. The wealth of typefaces available then was far more varied than you get from the standard font configuration available in standard web browser. Page layout was constrained by the need to lock type mechanically into its printing frame. Straightforward rectangular layouts marched down the page. Also, reduction in cost drove the fragmentation of skills, as labor was divided among writers, printers, artists, typesetters. No longer could an individual do it all. Fast forward two hundred years. Just before personal computers and the WWW, again there is a profusion of typeface design. Even more type! Are designers constrained by the printed page to be less fluid? Not anymore. Although the type stays right where it is on the page once placed there, the placement and range of type to choose from is far FAR greater than you get when you are knocking together a web page. Ok, argue. But look at this page, look at most pages. Do you see any lines of type set at a 23 degree angle, just for fun? It's rare.
What I learned from my sojourn into the history of graphic design is that web design is more constrained than I had thought. It's far more constrained in its way, than print design. Also, the economics have changed. And the balance has shifted back to an individual being able to control all aspects of the publication, except of course in the context of commercial expression.
Many would argue that pixel-precise control is antithetical to the web’s nature. (...)
On some sites, precise visual alignments across a page convey an immediate sense of quality assurance. That notion of quality and precision may be a paramount brand value. Flexible, liquid design won't communicate that brand value as effectively as a perfectly rendered grid.
I have been trying to come up with a good way to agree with this outlook, because I respect Zeldman and I think he could be right. But I'm having trouble because I don't see any rationale for the assertion aside from the fact that "clients agree with this: this is what they want". I think it's a lot less mentally challenging to limit focus on how the site's visual elements line up than on what the site is saying, and how it's organized. It's a lack of depth in approach to design that accounts for a lot of sites that look great but say very little. And on that note, having said far too much already, I think I'll just shut up now.
In the meantime, rush right over to amazon.com and grab yourself a copy of
A History of Graphic Design By Phillip B. Meggs. You won't regret it; the history of graphic design is the history of our world.
(...)
To many designers, a few pixels make the difference between a professional effort and a sloppy failure. Many clients agree. Ours, for instance.
With the exception of the occasional visit to 'In and Out Burger' (a burger chain in California), I have avoided fast food restaurants for years. I always thought that slow food was better. Now I know why. It's not just a matter of personal style or nutrition. In a book that should be required reading, certainly for all teenagers (they may decide not to eat at or work in a fast food restaurant after reading the book), Eric Schlosser engagingly details all aspects of the fast food industry.
But it's more than just an industry. The book's title, "Fast Food Nation", says it perfectly.
This book, filled with painstaking backup detail in the notes (which of course you don't have to read, but I couldn't resist), paints a picture of government support of the industry of franchised fast food stores (new businesses, but with a higher failure rate than independents), combined with a governmental hands-off attitude on food safety; a situation with far more potential for terrorist harm, that could be improved with far less effort than is being expended now on getting ready for war on Iraq. The fact that there is very little government inspection of food, and that bacteriological science has not been harnessed for this obvious benefit to our food security, is more than annoying. It's maddening. Fast food in schools? Schlosser has this topic covered, too, right down to the kind of cattle that are used for the meat that goes to schools.
In fact, some rather unappetizing items surface in the later chapters of this book. But rest assured there are no gruesome photographs to turn your stomach. It's all lighthearted and fast-paced, with the possible exception of the chapters on Mad Cow disease and the '90s E.Coli deaths in the Pacific Northwest. This book had an added interest to me personally because of the light it shed on changes in cattle industry due to the growth of the fast food chains over the last several decades. Both of my grandfathers and my father were employed in this industry, by one of the companies Schlosser has studied. So I have a certain historical family interest in an industry that no one really talks about much. And in case you're wondering, Swift and Company came out smelling like a rose in Schlosser's account. But those days are long gone.
Super Size your way over to www.amazon.com for your meaty copy of Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser.
expires=Oct 31 2002 stories=20 days=14 pools=XML, Blog, RubyI finally finished this collection of stories by P.G. Wodehouse (Sir Plum). It's the best thing to read when you're sick in bed. The stories, ostensibly collected under the defining rubric 'Women in Wodehouse', are actually with a few exceptions largely about golf. For me, there is nothing finer (not to mention more rare) than a good story of golfing romance.
The assertion that few of Wodehouse's stories are about women is of course patently false. Women are at the heart of Wodehouse. And so is Golf, if not England. Actually several of the stories are set in the U.S.A. and have nothing to do with golf at all, but with movie making.
There were so many introductions, I barely got to the Dialogue Concerning the two Chief World Systems, so unbeloved of the Pope in Galileo's time. So unbeloved, in fact, that Galileo was forbidden to argue that the Earth, as we have come to know it, goes around the Sun. Something to think about next time you see the phrase "WWJD". Maybe it's better to think WWGD. Anyway, introductions were by Stephen Jay Gould, Albert Einstein, J.L. Heilbron, Stillman Drake (the translator) and last but not least Galileo himself. Let me tell you a little of what each of them said.
Best of all I like what Galileo says in his dedication: "He who looks the higher is the more highly distinguished, and turning over the great book of nature is the way to elevate one's gaze." Stephen Jay Gould pointed out that writing courses in college all too seldom use science writing as their source material. People reading Darwin, for example, often say 'where does he explain things in technical terms', not realizing that Darwin chose to write for the general reading public. Galileo is very clear, not least because Stillman Drake chose to break up many of his very long sentences, shortening them for the modern reader. I cannot but wonder if this was a mistake, but of course I really have no way of knowing, since I don't read Italian. And Einstein had an interesting point. Of course, I've always wanted to say that, but his point was that the renaissance was kind of in full swing anyway, lifting Europe out of the dark ages. So maybe even if Galileo hadn't made his argument it wouldn't have mattered to the march of science, but that, well anyway, he did, so there you are.
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