From Duncan Watts' Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age (pp. 61-62):

Physicists, it turns out, are almost perfectly suited to invading other people's disciplines, being not only extremely clever but also generally much less fussy than most about the problems they chose to study. Physicists tend to see themselves as the lords of the academic jungle, loftily regarding their own methods as above the ken of anybody else and jealously guarding their own terrain. But their alter egos are closer to scavengers, happy to borrow ideas and techiques from anywhere if they seem like they might be useful, and delighted to stomp all over some else's problem. As irritating as this attitude can be to everybody else, the arrival of the physicists into a previously non-physics area of research often pressages a period of great discovery and excitement. Mathematicians do the same thing occasionally, but no one descends with such fury and in so great a number as a pack of hungry physicists, adrenalized by the scent of a new problem.

Duncan Watts "holds a Ph.D. in theoretical and applied mechanics and has published in leading physics and sociology journals" according to his book.

On CBC Radio One, I heard some
very interesting advice from a blind man to those who are "light-dependent"
in Ontario (say my family in Toronto) who need to make it through the night
without electricity (and therefore light):

• keep doors open -- not half-open
• follow a wall with your hands
• clear your floor of obstacles
• grab the things you need for the evening to have close to you
• if you drop something on the floor, don't bend over to grab it. crouch carefully
  and use one hand to sweep the floor for the itme
• don't stick your hand out suddenly -- you might end up banging your fingers
  into an item; curl your hands before slowly lifting your hands

In forwarding my blog entry from several days ago about the Web and the church to fellow church members, I wrote a sentence that began with the words "I blogged". When asked what I meant, I realized how I was using a vocabulary that is very foreign to most people. It's interesting how being immersed in blogging has made me think that everyone is doing it!

At any rate, in search of a way to explain blogging, I turned to the handy whatis site to come up with a reasonably good definition of weblogs.

When I found out about the big power outage that has hit Toronto, New York, and a good number of other cities in the north-east, I immediately tried to reach my family in Toronto. I got through -- suprisingly -- and found out that they were sitting in the dark (both figuratively and literally). Kris, my brother-in-law, told me that they didn't know what was going on other than the fact the power was out. I read him a big chunk of the New York Times article about what is happening. I was glad that people seemed calm -- maybe calmer than I am! As I walked over to Evans Hall, I left messages for a friend in Washington, D.C. wondering about her. Later I realized that D.C. wasn't hit by power outages -- my geographic sense of that region is a bit shaky. At any rate, I hope that she appreciates the thought if not the substance of the concern.

Personally, I'm pleased that Krista feels free to diverge from the transportation theme of her blog to write about Macbeth, for instance. I've not read Macbeth myself but my image of the story has literally been transformed by Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood. This film was the first Kurosawa flick I ever saw (the first of fifteen in two months, that is) and made an unexpectedly strong impression on me. I won't quickly forget the menacing fog, the mask-like faces, the blood-curdling shuffle of "Lady Macbeth's" kimono on the floor, the final volley of arrows that finally dispatches the main character. It was amazing, and I was won over to Kurosawa's art.

Imagine my surprise this morning when I woke up to find that my wiki had been graced with some new pages written by Christian Stimming, my former housemate! Not only did he introduce himself but he also contributed to the running discussion between Krista and me on the joy of bicycling. Christian demonstrated concretely for me the power of many eyes. He read my quick page on my 1-year "sabbatical" from new committees and asked why I was still resting (since I had written the dates as 2002-2003); what I meant was 2003-2004. His comments got me to correct that piece.

Although I'm supposed to be on a personal
sabbatical year, I have a hard time resisting joining committees, especially
if they join two of my favorite things: the church and the web. On Sunday evening,
I attended the first meeting of the Web Advisory Board (WAB) for my church,
the First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley
(FPCB), rationalizing my attendance as an opportunity to advise without having
to do any work (a great thing for dreamers like me).

Continue reading →

I've been running a public wiki for
almost three weeks now. What, might you ask, is a wiki? Not having done a comprehensive
search for a definition, I nevertheless recommend the following from wiki.org,
which I will quote here:

Wiki is in Ward's [Ward Cunningham]
original description:
The simplest online database that could possibly work.

Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and
edit Web page content using any Web browser. Wiki supports hyperlinks and
has a simple text syntax for creating new pages and crosslinks between internal
pages on the fly.

Wiki is unusual among group communication mechanisms in that it allows the
organization of contributions to be edited in addition to the content itself.

Like many simple concepts, "open editing" has some profound and
subtle effects on Wiki usage. Allowing everyday users to create and edit any
page in a Web site is exciting in that it encourages democratic use of the
Web and promotes content composition by nontechnical users.

Continue reading →

I remember The Timmins Public Library as divided between two floors. The basement held the children's collection, but the top floor was the adult section. I started out as a child borrower with a library card that indicated such a status. One day, while still a kid, for some reason I can no longer remember, I was given adult borrowing privileges. It seemed that my avid reading habits advanced me prematurely into the top floor. A new world was open to me, one that beckoned to me every Saturday morning for years and years to come.

Of course, I did not immediately become an adult reader in the full sense. I still remember learning about Margaret Laurence's The Diviners, specifically the controversy about its handling of love and sex. Being the curious child that I was -- and perhaps bolder than I ever thought I would be -- I approached the reference librarian to ask about the book. I don't recall her exact words, but apparently, she found a gentle but effective way to ward off my request to get my hands on the book.

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