Best efforts

Cory Doctorow forms an interesting analogy about dealing with the firehose of internet information flow:

There was a time when I could read the whole of Usenet — not just because I was a student looking for an excuse to avoid my assignments, but because Usenet was once tractable, readable by a single determined person. Today, I can’t even keep up with a single high-traffic message-board…. I’ve come to grips with this — with acquiring information on a probabilistic basis, instead of the old, deterministic, cover-to-cover approach I learned in the offline world.

It’s as though there’s a cognitive style built into TCP/IP. Just as the network only does best-effort delivery of packets, not worrying so much about the bits that fall on the floor, TCP/IP users also do best-effort sweeps of the Internet, focusing on learning from the good stuff they find, rather than lamenting the stuff they don’t have time to see.

In a lot of ways, I feel the same. Time was, I could be a completist about what I read and listened to: in college I bought every album released by Chicago (and after the first one, they were conveniently numbered) and I set myself the task of reading all the William Faulkner in print. Now, I am content to cherry-pick an author or a band. I really liked Graham Swift’s Last Orders, but I didn’t like his next book that I picked up, so I’m done.

Lime green

David Pogue reviews a beta version of the XO, the controversial “$100 laptop” device from One Laptop Per Child. As has been reported elsewhere, to help drive down unit costs, a donate-one-get-one program will be in place for a limited time. I’m thinking a solid-state Linux box with web browser would be a cute thing to have around the house. And the tax deduction wouldn’t hurt.

Upgrades: 3

After an irritating couple of hours fumbling about with the WordPress documentation, I came up with this fragment to draw the dynamic part of my left sidebar:


<!-- Begin - Links from the 'Links Manager'-->
<?php
$link_cats = get_categories('type=link&orderby=ID');
foreach ($link_cats as $link_cat) {
?>
<div class="left-widget-title"
id="linkcat-<?php echo $link_cat->cat_ID; ?>">
<?php echo $link_cat->cat_name; ?>
</div>
<div class="left-widget">
<ul>
<?php wp_list_bookmarks('categorize=0&category=' . $link_cat->cat_ID . '&orderby=name&title_li=0') ?>
</ul>
</div>
<?php
}
?>
<!-- End - Links from the 'Links Manager'-->

The assignment of the id= attribute to the widget title <div> is mainly there for debugging purposes.

Man oh man, it’s miserable work extracting information from the WordPress docs. And I’m not really happy about an app that breaks existing code every time a point release comes out. Oh well, it didn’t cost me any coin.

I used these doc pages: category, wp_list_bookmarks, and get_categories.

Upgrades: 2

Once again WordPress has reworked the category system:

WordPress 2.3 introduces our new taxonomy schema. Any plugin that queries against the old table will break horribly. Plugins that use the category API should be fine.

This means that this code in my left sidebar, which I modified from the original Tiga theme:


<?php
$link_cats = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT cat_id, cat_name FROM $wpdb->categories");
foreach ($link_cats as $link_cat) {
if (get_links($link_cat->cat_id, '', '', '', FALSE, 'id', FALSE, FALSE, -1, FALSE, FALSE)) { /* anything to show? */
?>

needs some work. Looks like this evening’s project is figuring out how to use category filters.

But you knew that


You Are Bert


Extremely serious and a little eccentric, people find you loveable – even if you don’t love them!

You are usually feeling: Logical – you rarely let your emotions rule you

You are famous for: Being smart, a total neat freak, and maybe just a little evil

How you life your life: With passion, even if your odd passions (like bottle caps and pigeons) are baffling to others

(Link via Living the Scientific Life.)

What it means to be civilized

The center-right Economist takes an unexpected but eloquent stand against torture in a leader this week:

A hot, total war like the second world war could not last for decades, so the curtailment of domestic liberties was short-lived. But because nobody knew whether the cold war would ever end (it lasted some 40 years), the democracies chose by and large not to let it change the sort of societies they wanted to be. This was a wise choice not only because of the freedom it bestowed on people in the West during those decades, but also because the West’s freedoms became one of the most potent weapons in its struggle against its totalitarian foes.

If the war against terrorism is a war at all, it is like the cold war—one that will last for decades. Although a real threat exists, to let security trump liberty in every case would corrode the civilised world’s sense of what it is and wants to be.

Hollywood calling

From the very start of his career, [Michael] Haneke’s films have been calculated to shatter the viewer’s complacency to a degree rarely seen since the early work of Mike Leigh or perhaps since the politicized days of the French New Wave.

John Wray profiles the Austrian director, who made The Piano Teacher and Caché. He is remaking his Funny Games in English with Tim Roth and Naomi Watts.

A man to be reckoned with

I’m enjoying reading Eric Newby’s A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. Newby, perhaps the last of the rank amateur explorers, has perhaps seen a small bump in sales of his books as a result of his recent demise. Newby and his friend Hugh Carless set off to explore the remotest bits of north-east Afghanistan in 1956, and the book is the record of the trip.

The whole ill-prepared Newby-Carless expedition reminds me of my friends Chuck and Mike during the Three Mile Island disaster in the 1970s. Chuck and Mike were living in New York, downwind of the crippled reactor in Harrisburg, Pa. (Anne and I were living in Philadelphia then). At the height of the crisis, when we all thought the dang thing might blow, in the middle of the night, Chuck and Mike said, “let’s get outta here,” and jumped in their car. They were on the road for several hours before they realized they were driving west, into Pennsylvania.

Anyway. Having honorably failed in their attempt to get to the top of Mir Samir, a 19,880-foot mountain, Carless and Newby wanted to push on to the province of Nuristan, but met with resistance from their local horse drivers, who feared its Wild West-style reputation. Nuristan was converted to Islam only recently, and by the sword. After arguing with the porters for several hours,

…Hugh lost his temper.

‘Go back then!’ he said. ‘Go back to Jangalak and tell your people that Newby Seb and I have gone to Nuristan alone—and that you let us go alone! They will call you women.’

As soon as he had said this is was abundantly clear that both Abdul Ghiyas and Badar Khan were prepared to let us do this very thing. Hugh was forced to try a more subtle approach….

‘When I return from Nuristan… I shall demand audience of General Ubaidullah Khan and tell him what you said about “idolatrous unbelievers.” General Ubaidullah Khan is a man of importance and …he is also a Nuristani.’

The effect of this was remarkable. At once all opposition ceased. Before we finally fell asleep long after midnight I asked Hugh who General Ubaidullah Khan was.

‘So far as I know,’ he said, ‘he doesn’t exist. I just invented him; but I think he’s going to be a very useful man to know.’

At the park: 11

I got some good information at the public meeting on September 21 on the planned wetland restoration project at Huntley Meadows Park. We heard from Park Manager Kevin Munroe, FCPA staff naturalist Charles Smith, and Park Resource Manager Dave Lawlor.

The central wetland at the Park constitutes the only large, non-tidal wetland in Fairfax County. (Tidal wetlands can be found along the Potomac in places like Dyke Marsh.) A number of factors—siltation from runoff from housing construction in the 80s and 90s, drought, and the migration of the beavers once they had consumed the desirable trees—has meant that the wetland is going through its natural succession to wet meadow on its way to becoming woods. Along the way, the ecology of the wetland has simplified, with the near-disappearance of crayfish (a foundation species in the food web); the dominance of native but aggressive cattails and rice cutgrass; and the loss of standing dead trees (whose presence supports a variety of species). A consultant’s report in 1993 indicated that, to preserve the freshwater marsh more or less as it was then, as an island of diversity in burgeoning suburbia, water level management would be needed, eventually. Eventually is now.

The new dam across Barnyard Run and its accompanying water control structures will raise water levels as much as two feet. The high-water mark will be 33 feet above sea level. In addition, plans (as yet unfunded) call for four pools to be excavated to a depth of three feet (which means a maximum water depth of five feet), which will enhance habitat diversity. Munroe and staff made it clear that water levels on the wetland will follow the healthy natural cycles within the year (drawdowns in summer, recharging in winter) and across years.

There will be downsides, both short- and long-term. Munroe stressed that the racket of chainsaws and bulldozers will be part of the park experience when construction begins after the 2008 breeding season, next July (per plan). There may be some preliminary work and tree removal as early as November. The expectation is that excavated trees and soil remain inside the park, to be used as habitat. Long-term, the state-mandated access road to the dam will link up the trails leading in from the two entrances of the park (South Kings Highway and Lockheed Boulevard). This historical gap was by design, in order to discourage mischief-makers and joy-riders. Munroe has mitigation plans; I rather like his idea of a fence and stile as a barrier to bikes.

It’s a big, disruptive project, and I suppose that it has to be done. $2 million isn’t a lot of money to preserve a really special place in the county. Munroe seems to be on the ball and he’s doing a great job of citizen outreach.

Movie picks

Edward Copeland has released his collaborative 100-best list of foreign films. I’ve no real quibbles with anything in the top 25, but I find the high ranking of Wings of Desire at #41 inexplicable. This movie is perhaps the art-house version of The Princess Bride or The Gods Must Be Crazy in its overratedness.

I agree with many of Copeland’s committee that the Kieslowski Three Colors trilogy should be considered as one movie, not three: the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Here’s an edited version of the note that I sent Copeland, with my picks:

I think that I have seen about 40% of the films on the list, albeit some of them not since college. Many of them are perfectly good, but I’m not sure that I would give them a 1-25 ranking. So here are my top 12…, including a few write-ins:

#1 M, Fritz Lang [#3 on the Copeland list]
#2 The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Demy [#65]
#3 Three Colors: Red, Kieslowski [#39]
#4 Three Colors: Blue, Kieslowski [#62]
#5 Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Almodovar — write-in
#6 Ran, Kurosawa [#16]
#7 Repulsion, Roman Polanski — write-in
#8 The Conformist, Bertolucci [#18]
#9 Three Colors: White, Kieslowski [did not make the Copeland cut]
#10 The Vanishing, Sluizer [did not make the Copeland cut]
#11 Open Hearts, Susanne Bier — write-in
#12 Fantastic Planet, Rene Laloux — write-in

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring, Ki-duk Kim, should also be on the list, but I don’t think it meets your release-year criterion.

The voting has served as a prod to get Das Boot and Jules and Jim onto my Netflix queue.

Il miglior fabbro

Having recently chided a local reviewer, I think it’s appropriate to give some props to another local critic who does a damn fine job: Bob Mondello, who reviews for NPR’s All Things Considered and the Washington City Paper. Consider his recent write-up of two shows that I also viewed, 33 Variations and The Unmentionables.

Compared to my sketches, Mondello sees in sharper, more vivid colors; he chooses his words more precisely (prig, amanuensis, decency) without losing a conversational tone. Writing for both radio and print, he knows how to put a button on the end of a piece. He is one of the writers that I have to avoid reading before I see a show in hopes that I will appreciate a work and express myself without undue influence.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that he and I agree on the merits of a lot of shows—these two, for instance. Granted, he has his formulas, but he makes them work (“Original? Well, not entirely.”) for him. His compact yet avuncular style works just as well on the air as on the page.

Silver Line progress report: 1

Virginia Governor Tim Kaine headed up a bipartisan group to announce $300 million in cuts to Phase I of the proposed Metro expansion to Dulles Airport and beyond in order to meet Federal Transit Administration cost-effectiveness guidelines, as reported by Leah M. Kosin (for the Reston Observer) and Amy Gardner (for the Washington Post).

  • $45 million in management savings by completing more work in-house instead of using outside contractors.
  • $86 million in design savings by eliminating a planned maintenance yard at the West Falls Church Station and using half-canopies instead of full canopies and pressed concrete platforms instead of tile pavers, which are expensive to install and maintain.
  • $7 million in upgrades to technology such as electric power systems. Going digital is less expensive than using existing Metro technology.
  • $122 million in alternative financing, including the removal of $77 million designated for improvements to Route 7 at Spring Hill Road. This would be paid through the state’s six-year transportation plan instead. And $40 million would be saved by building a planned parking garage at the Wiehle Avenue Station in Reston with a private partner.
  • $46 million in contingency reductions.

Avoiding the tile pavers will make Leta happy. The cut that I see as perhaps worrisome is the item for the maintenance yard at West Falls Church (there is already such a facility, so perhaps what is being cut is an expansion). Dulles is a long way from the rest of the network: where are the cars going to be serviced?

The Unmentionables

Bruce Norris sets his bitter comedy of post-colonial race and economic relations in the villa of Nancy (newly blond company favorite Naomi Jacobson) and Don (Charles H. Hyman), somewhere in West Africa. It’s a comfortable, attractive place, but we can just see—at extreme stage right—the strands of razor wire that surround the compound.

Don is an industrialist with a mutualistic relationship to “Aunty” Mimi (the versatile Dawn Ursula), representative of the current government and member of the native aristocracy. When Don opens his house to Dave (Tim Getman) and Jane (Marni Penning), missionaries in matching sunburst tee-shirts, after their school and dwelling burn down under mysterious circumstances, the principals square off in a hard-edged geometry of vexed entitlement. Each character clings to the right to expropriate or civilize, as he or she sees fit, the grindingly-poor people of this equatorial backwater.

There’s more than a whiff of Tennessee Williams in Norris’s play, what with the Big Daddy-like Don nursing a secret heart ailment; the tropical setting; and the comic foil of The Doctor (the very enjoyable John Livingston Rolle), a local who has escaped into smoking pot but who is wise enough to know when to prescribe only a placebo.

It’s the passive-aggressive churchman Dave who provides the tautness to the story in the first act. Dave, when asked whether he objects to another’s smoking, says only “It’s not a problem for me,” with a lightly-veiled supercilious smirk. And yet it’s Dave who seems to have the most realistic grasp of the situation, and who cautions against do-gooders who want only “easy Jesus.” So when Dave goes missing at the end of the first act, the narrative comes unglued, as the remainder bicker over the severity of the response needed to ensure his return.

The play is framed by the fourth wall-breaking monlogues of Etienne (Kofi Owusu), a punk who may be involved in the arson. He tells us that the play is no good, that we’d be better off watching something entertaining on television. Though we can’t agree with him completely, he’s a good reminder that we haven’t fixed any problems by sitting in a theater box for two hours.

  • The Unmentionables, by Bruce Norris, directed by Pam MacKinnon, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington

Buy a map

Via ArtsJournal: John Barry nurses his grudge [corrected the link] about being stuck in Baltimore covering theater at $55 a pop. He focuses on a college production of Tom Stoppard’s Hapgood that he showed up for in the middle of the first act—no wonder he didn’t understand it.

He makes the good point that the people who do community theater (both as watchers and performers) aren’t looking for Frank Rich-level criticism. They do it in

the shoebox theatres trying to squeeze out a little applause from people willing to watch. That population — people who like to watch plays just for the hell of it — is admittedly getting older and smaller.

All that I expect from a review of a community theater production is the name of the show, a paragraph that tells me whether it’s suitable for my mother or my nephews, the run dates, and the phone number for reservations. A word of praise that singles out good work is gravy. Many of my colleagues are more thin-skinned than I am, and take criticism too seriously. So it doesn’t surprise me that many of the local papers (what we used to call “suburban shoppers”) hake taken to running previews rather than reviews in order to avoid offending anyone.

But by conflating amateur, semi-pro, and college theater, Barry does himself and his readers a disservice. The point of a college production (like the one is his piece) is learning how to do theater. One month you’re playing a 75-year-old Russian and the next month you’re designing lights. Of course only your boyfriend comes to the performances.

Maybe it’s time for Barry to find a new beat to cover.