Morality, the Wikipedia, and Academics

Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior - New York Times:

Biologists argue that these and other social behaviors are the precursors of human morality. They further believe that if morality grew out of behavioral rules shaped by evolution, it is for biologists, not philosophers or theologians, to say what these rules are.

Moral philosophers do not take very seriously the biologists’ bid to annex their subject, but they find much of interest in what the biologists say and have started an academic conversation with them.

Wikipedia is good for academia -- nice to see an essay about how the Wikipedia is good for the university and academic culture. I should say more about what I mean here....

Notelets for 2007.03.15

I'm happy that TimesSelect University program opens up TimesSelect to university folk like me. (It would be even better if my friends and family outside the university could also read the special features of The New York Times for free.

Enchanting TED - Pogue’s Posts points to the latest round of TEDTalks (audio, video).

Guidelines for Using a Cellphone Abroad - New York Times is useful if I ever go to Europe or Asia -- but mostly, when I leave the USA, I'm in Canada.

The Bach Birthday Bash sounds tempting. Stanford is just a bit too far away these days for me:

Join us for a celebration of the master's 322nd birthday with a musical party, featuring Bach family videos, a wig tossing contest, and an intimate performance of several of his wonderful Brandenburg Concerti. Featuring the award-winning Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra and their music director, Benjamin Simon, this evening will be an opportunity to brush up on your Bach trivia, have a fugue explained to you, and learn the names of all of Bach's twenty-plus offspring. Those attending in period costume are eligible for valuable door prizes!

Notelets for 2007.02.17

I want to do a closer reading of Philip Jenkins' Believing in the Global South because it helps me to see how much of my cultural heritage/baggage is entwined with my particular experience of Christianity in the west.

The functionality I showed in class a week or two ago, namely the blogging integration in Flickr, got mixed reviews. I think it's so cool to be able directly to weblogs right within Flickr. Some people agree, others thought that things are still too messy, that few non-techie end users would use this functionality. I would certainly agree that configuring weblogs is still a bit too difficult to do within Flickr. (I think the flock is a pretty good job of figuring out how to configure a weblog given its URL.) It is true that plumbing is really exposed right now. And that in the future, we need to move towards more hidden and interconnected plumbing.

It's good to know that you can get average temperatures for places such as Sitka, AK when you think about traveling to such places.

Berkeley Asian Americans; Orhan Pamuk as a writing son

Little Asia on the Hill is a fascinating NYT article about the huge number of Asian-American students on the Berkeley campus.

This morning, I read Orhan Pamuk's Nobel Lecture: My Father's Suitcase, an essay that stirred up deep emotional wells in me as a writer and a son. A choice quote:

The writer’s secret is not inspiration—for it is never clear where that comes from—but stubbornness, endurance. The lovely Turkish expression “to dig a well with a needle” seems to me to have been invented with writers in mind. In the old stories, I love the patience of Ferhat, who digs through mountains for his love—and I understand it, too. When I wrote, in my novel “My Name Is Red,” about the old Persian miniaturists who drew the same horse with the same passion for years and years, memorizing each stroke, until they could re-create that beautiful horse even with their eyes closed, I knew that I was talking about the writing profession, and about my own life. If a writer is to tell his own story—to tell it slowly, and as if it were a story about other people—if he is to feel the power of the story rise up inside him, if he is to sit down at a table and give himself over to this art, this craft, he must first be given some hope. The angel of inspiration (who pays regular visits to some and rarely calls on others) favors the hopeful and the confident, and it is when a writer feels most lonely, when he feels most doubtful about his efforts, his dreams, and the value of his writing, when he thinks that his story is only his story—it is at such moments that the angel chooses to reveal to him the images and dreams that will draw out the world he wishes to build. If I think back on the books to which I have devoted my life, I am most surprised by those moments when I felt as if the sentences and pages that made me ecstatically happy came not from my own imagination but from another power, which had found them and generously presented them to me.

Notelets for 2006.12.02

The East Is West: The Best Chinese Restaurants in Southern California - New York Times:

THERE are probably more Chinese in Los Angeles than in any metropolitan area outside of China. (The same very likely could be said of Mexicans, Iranians, Koreans, Japanese and more, which is what makes Los Angeles the best international eating city in the world.) Fifty years ago, most Chinese immigrants were concentrated in a typical downtown Chinatown, which still exists, but more as a relic than a vibrant community.

100 Notable Books of the Year - The New York Times Book Review - New York Times.

Berkeley poet Lerner writes from heartland:

It can be challenging to convince students that reading and writing are inextricable, that writing is just a very intense form of reading, as Wallace Stevens said.

Rebecca Loudon: Wallace Stevens once said that the act of writing poetry was actually a very intense form of reading.

What's the actual Wallace Stevens quote?

Notelets for 2006.10.23

I'm quite pleased that Dave Gustafson has released SourceForge.net: EccoTools as an open source Python library for manipulating Ecco Pro. He was kind enough to let me use earlier versions of his code a while back. His officially releasing his code into the public makes it easier for me to share whatever little utilities I've written.

Laura is right: It's time for me to write a chapter from my Book. The one that occurs to me is the one on maps. Then the chapter on blogging.

Notelets for 2006.10.17

Google Maps on Treo is cool. I can't say I've seen such a beautifully interactive mobile app before.

Is there any way to get better meetings to happen where we work? I should study 10 Steps To Better Meetings to see how to improve meetings that I run. It seems harder to find hints on how to be an effective meeting participant for meetings that one doesn't facilitate. OK, maybe I've found something. Participating in Meetings is a pretty good list, one that reminds me that I can be a better behaved participant myself.

I figured out how to get my Macbook Pro from dimming: Intel-based Macs: Built-in display dims before sleep

Notelets for 2006.08.08

I am definitely curious to know what Yahoo Research wants to get into, not only because Yahoo! Research Berkeley is only a couple blocks away from my office but because I know a number of bright folks working there.

Group shines light on conservation measures - Catholic Online:

Interfaith Power & Light, active in 21 states and the District of Columbia, works at educating churches and their members about how to make a dent in global warming. It's part of the organization's way of caring for God's creation, and the work is done on many fronts.

The year following Katrina has been a slow-motion catastrophe:

Indeed, Katrina's aftermath has not proved that congressional Republicans are devoid of empathy, but rather that they reserve it for states run by former party chairmen. As of late spring, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour had wheedled his old friends in Washington into giving his constituents roughly the same sized block grant as received by Louisiana--even though Louisiana suffered more than three times the number of seriously damaged homes and lost one more major city than its easterly neighbor. The Democrats, meanwhile, have been disappointingly silent, preferring to focus on GOP incompetence abroad rather than at home.

I enjoyed the film Yi Yi a lot and look forward to seeing the new Criterion Collection edition of the film: Getting the DVD Transfer Right the Second Time Around - New York Times. Will Netflix carry the new edition?

Notelets for 2006.04.01

I'm currently reading Parker Palmer's A Hidden Wholeness : The Journey Toward an Undivided Life. He is writing about a crucial and timely theme for me -- the need for and challenges of living a whole, integrated life.

Tomorrow at First Pres Berkeley, we will be encouraging folks to send postcards to President Bush urging him to take further action on Darfur. I just read the lastest weekly news update. Great fors ome encouraging news. What should we be asking of George Bush? The wording to the president on A Million Voices for Darfur still stands:

I urge you to live up to those words by using the power of your office to support a stronger multi-national force to protect the civilians of Darfur.

After posting Hypotyposis on a Good Day: countdown -- the book, I found and listened to The Connection.org : Beautiful Minds about the Mathematical Olympiad.

I'm not the only one having problems uploading pictures to Flickr this morning: Flickr: Forums: FlickrBugs: New Uploads Hang on "Processing".

Notelets for 2006.01.13

eastbayexpress.com | News & Features | City of Warts | Let the Bulldozing Commence | 2006-01-11:

On to the California Department of Health Services laboratory, at the corner of Shattuck Avenue and Berkeley Way. On one end, you have the Gourmet Ghetto. On the other end, you have downtown Berkeley's movie theaters, restaurants, and nightclubs. But for some reason, there's an eerie no-man's-land that keeps the two from becoming one grand boulevard of eateries and nightlife. That'd be the intervening parking lot and hideous eight-story monolith, where worker bees once toiled in research laboratories run by the state Department of Health Services.

Yes, tear it down -- but just keep the parking lots!

More Companies Ending Promises for Retirement - New York Times. Another story about how companies (even companies that are doing really well) are moving away from their pension plans, shifting the long-term risk to employees.

Last weekend, I learned about the Jewish concept of Lashon hara, making me more conscious of my own need for good talk.

Notelets for 2006.01.02

Professors' Politics Draw Lawmakers Into the Fray is on David Horowitz's efforts to push for "academic freedom" legislation. I am sympathetic to those who feel that academia as a whole has a lot of liberal biases and that academics often don't even understand their own predilections. (They aren't as fair and open minded as they often believe they are.) Legislation is not the answer, and Horowitz's effort is clearly motivated for partisan conservative ends.

I jus saw an interview on CNN with Stanley Renshon, the author of The 50% American: Immmigration And National Identity in an Age of Terror. I wasn't impressed with either the author or CNN. I was surprised by the shared, unquestioned, and blatant assumption that in order to be loyal to the USA, one has to detach completely from other countries. There doesn't seem to be any room for being both fond and critical of the country. That is the gist of what I got, but I could be wrong. Important questions on immigration – but wrong answers confirms my impressions though.

Often, I need encouragement -- even a kick in the pants -- to pursue the biggest ideas and problems that intrigue me. I found such encouragement in Paul Graham's latest Good and Bad Procrastination that points to Richard Hamming: You and Your Research. Hamming would go around asking fellow Bell Labs staffers what the most important problems were in their respective fields, whether they were working on said problems, and if not, then why.

Don't Think Twice, It's All Right. Thinking is overrated. (inside joke)

Twenty Years Later, Buying a House Is Less of a Bite:

In high-profile places like New York and Los Angeles, home to many of the people who study and write about real estate, families buying their first home often must spend more than half of their income on mortgage payments, far more than they once did. But the places that have become less affordable over the last generation account for only a quarter of the country's population.

On Sunday morning, I read The New York Review of Books: The Strange Case of Chaplain Yee, a review of For God And Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire. It astounds me and saddens me that such egregious abuse of power is tolerated in this country. You can listen to an interview with James Yee at NPR : Muslim Army Chaplain Recalls Guantanamo Ordeal.

Notelets for 2005.12.15

Digital Photos Even a Miser Can Enjoy - New York Times:

Twelve manufacturers entered this fifth annual camera cook-off. Each submitted the one sub-$300 camera (online price) that it felt took the best pictures.

Several trends emerged. Picture quality continues to improve every year, and the megapixel race continues apace; this year, five- and six-megapixel cameras are standard. (More megapixels permit bigger enlargements and more room to crop, but do not affect photo quality.)

Today, I bought an issue of Stone Soup Magazine as a present for a bright and energetic eight-year old girl. I'm glad for an ad in the New York Review of Books that prompted me into looking at a magazine that I had never heard of before a couple of days ago.

Notelets for 2005.11.30

I'm intrigued that Lynn points to some articles from Wired since I myself am a subscriber to the magazine:

Anyway, Wired had some great articles including "Why $5 gas is good for America"

and

Reinventing 911: How a swarm of networked ­citizens is building a better ­emergency broadcast system.

Stan Berenstain, Children's Book Author, Dies at 82 - New York Times. I learned about the Berenstain Bears by hanging out kids the last eight years.

Kansas Prof. Apologizes for E-Mail:

Mirecki's e-mail was sent Nov. 19 to members of the Society of Open-Minded Atheists and Agnostics, a student organization for which he serves as faculty adviser.

"The fundies (fundamentalists) want it all taught in a science class, but this will be a nice slap in their big fat face by teaching it as a religious studies class under the category mythology."

Mirecki addressed the message to "my fellow damned" and signed off with: "Doing my part to (tick) off the religious right, Evil Dr. P."

Notelets for 2005.11.23

Late yesterday afternoon, my left ankle started to hurt after I got up from sitting at my desk for an hour. I thought it strange since I walked a lot yesterday with no problem. Had I sprained my ankle without even being aware of it? At any rate, I am trying to put into practice the treatment suggested at Ankle Sprain - treatment and exercise and hope for the best.

Underground, but not unconnected -- BART offers wireless service to riders. I myself wasn't able to connect via the SprintPCS service on Tuesday. Hmmm.

On Sunday, I enjoyed reading:

• The Prodigy Puzzle - New York Times

• Ugly Images of Asian Rivals Become Best Sellers in Japan - New York Times

• San Francisco's Mission District: Eclectic, Eccentric, Electric - New York Times

Salon.com - Daou Report:

THE STRAW MEN OF IRAQ: Ten Pro-War Fallacies
Friday's hastily staged congressional vote on withdrawal from Iraq may have been designed to embarrass John Murtha, but the raucous session offered valuable insight into the various rationales for war and the tactics used to attack Democrats who oppose Bush's Iraq policy. A parade of House Republicans went after the Dems and laid out a surprisingly weak case for the invasion and continued occupation of Iraq. Here, in my view, are ten of the leading pro-war fallacies...

Notelets for 2005.11.01

Why Race Isn't as 'Black' and 'White' as We Think - New York Times:

The test results underscore what anthropologists have said for eons: racial distinctions as applied in this country are social categories and not scientific concepts. In addition, those categories draw hard, sharp distinctions among groups of people who are more alike than they are different. The ultimate point is that none of us really know who we are, ancestrally speaking. All we ever really know is what our parents and grandparents have told us.

Interesting that the Berkeley Public Library chose The House on Mango Street for "Berkeley Reads Together".

More Notelets for 2005.09.06

Bush and Congress Announce Inquiries on Government Response - New York Times:

Bush and Congress Announce Inquiries on Government Response - New York Times]: President Bush and Congressional leaders vowed today to find out what went wrong in the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, with Mr. Bush declaring that "bureaucracy's not going to stand in the way of getting the job done for the people."

I got my Pentax camera back, a month after shipping it to Pentax for repair. It works again -- but I don't think that I will buy another Pentax camera because of the extremely slow repair process.

Branching out the Banyan Tree sounds like an awesome conference, but I'll be in NYC then for Small Tools/Big Ideas.

A quote from C. S. Lewis from Sunday's sermon in relationship to Rev 3:20:

Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what he is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised.

Notelets for 2005.09.06

Thank goodness that Catherine's family is all safe. I also agree with CY's analysis: "I just keep coming back to the fact that there are many disasters an individual person or family can't prepare for alone. We need to work together, pooling our knowledge and resources."