Saturday, October 27, 2012
Why Hackathons Suck (and don’t have to)
I exaggerate. Most people don’t think they’ll save the world in a weekend, but sometimes they act as if they believe they can.
As software professionals, when was the last time we went to our bosses and said “No problem. I’ll build that brand new production system for you in 8-16hrs”? Probably never.
Certainly not as often as we’ve freaked-out when the boss came to us with some impossible deadline. “You can’t expect me to build something effective, reliable, great in N-months!” we scream. “Be reasonable!”
So why do we sell the myth of the 2-day app to non-profits and other mission driven organizations?
Maybe we like the buzz of seeing ourselves as heroes able to jump tall-buildings with our nerd super-powers.
Or maybe we just like the pizza.
Either way, there are several problems with the way a typical hackathon model that make it almost impossible for them to succeed. I list some specifics below, but first I can sum up the core issue:
Hackathons just aren’t serious. They are in no way up to the challenge of delivering effective, useful, impactful technology.
A little more detail:
by jwishnie, ThoughtWorks | Read more:
Photo: Ashely Ellis
Geoengineering: Testing the Waters
Bill Gates has funneled millions of dollars into geoengineering research. And he has invested in a company, Intellectual Ventures, that is developing at least two geoengineering tools: the “StratoShield,” a 19-mile-long hose suspended by helium balloons that would spew sun-blocking sulfur dioxide particles into the sky and a tool that can supposedly blunt the force of hurricanes.
The appeal is easy to understand. Geoengineering offers the tantalizing promise of a climate change fix that would allow us to continue our resource-exhausting way of life, indefinitely. And then there is the fear. Every week seems to bring more terrifying climate news, from reports of ice sheets melting ahead of schedule to oceans acidifying far faster than expected. At the same time, climate change has fallen so far off the political agenda that it wasn’t mentioned once during any of the three debates between the presidential candidates. Is it any wonder that many are pinning their hopes on a break-the-glass-in-case-of-emergency option that scientists have been cooking up in their labs?
But with rogue geoengineers on the loose, it is a good time to pause and ask, collectively, whether we want to go down the geoengineering road. Because the truth is that geoengineering is itself a rogue proposition. By definition, technologies that tamper with ocean and atmospheric chemistry affect everyone. Yet it is impossible to get anything like unanimous consent for these interventions. Nor could any such consent possibly be informed since we don’t — and can’t — know the full risks involved until these planet-altering technologies are actually deployed.
While the United Nations’ climate negotiations proceed from the premise that countries must agree to a joint response to an inherently communal problem, geoengineering raises a very different prospect. For well under a billion dollars, a “coalition of the willing,” a single country or even a wealthy individual could decide to take the climate into its own hands. Jim Thomas of the ETC Group, an environmental watchdog group, puts the problem like this: “Geoengineering says, ‘we’ll just do it, and you’ll live with the effects.’ ”
The scariest thing about this proposition is that models suggest that many of the people who could well be most harmed by these technologies are already disproportionately vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Imagine this: North America decides to send sulfur into the stratosphere to reduce the intensity of the sun, in the hopes of saving its corn crops — despite the real possibility of triggering droughts in Asia and Africa. In short, geoengineering would give us (or some of us) the power to exile huge swaths of humanity to sacrifice zones with a virtual flip of the switch.
by Naomi Klein, NY Times | Read more:
Illustration: Jacob Escobedo
The New Pot Barons: Businessmen Bank on Marijuana
“What’s the maximum contribution?” one of the dealers asks. “Do you take cash?” wonders another. A third man breaks into a smile. “You better,” he says, eyebrows dancing, “because the banks don’t like doing business with us.” Laughter fills the room as the envelopes are passed forward and slipped into a briefcase. “Huge thank you, everyone,” the politician says, guiding the conversation back to the next legislative session and the kinds of legal changes this group would like to see. Here again, it’s not what you’d expect: there’s talk of a youth drug-abuse-prevention program and a bill to define “drugged” driving. When the politician finally rises to leave, after more than an hour, the dealers, in their pressed shirts and suit jackets, clap heartily. The average participant looks to be about 35, white and male, and on good terms with a barber. “Thank you,” the politician says, bowing slightly. “Thank you for what you do.”
What they do is sell marijuana. And not on street corners. Colorado is the developed world’s only regulated for-profit cannabis market, and sales—to the 100,000 residents who have a thumbs up from their M.D.s—are closing in on $200 million this year, a sum that generates tens of millions of dollars in local, state, and federal taxes. (Yes, the IRS taxes marijuana operations, even as the Justice Department attempts to shut them down.) Colorado is not the world’s only experiment in free-market pot, but it’s the most sophisticated, pushing beyond the Netherlands’ confusing ban on wholesale and California’s hazy nonprofit status. Denver’s former city attorney has called it California “on steroids.”
While the cannabis market remains illegal under federal law, attitudes are changing quickly, and it’s that fact that the Colorado growers are banking on. The number of regular pot users is up by 3 million in the past five years, and the rate of high-school experimentation is at a 30-year high. When a kid first lights up at about age 16, it’s usually not with a cigarette. Twelve states now treat a personal stash like a minor traffic offense, 17 allow medical marijuana, and this Election Day, if current polls hold, voters in Washington State and Colorado will vote to legalize marijuana—not for medical purposes but, as Rolling Stone recently enthused, “for getting-high purposes.”
That would close out a 40-year fight launched by boomers and carried through by a big tent of talented reformers, growing bigger all the time. “Weed is the new gay,” says Ted Trimpa, a Democratic strategist who helped engineer Colorado’s flip from red state to blue. He’s now focused on marijuana reform. But what I saw in Colorado was something altogether new: self-described “social entrepreneurs,” the Sergey Brins and Mark Zuckerbergs of the Green Rush. They could have done almost anything with their lives—“my brother is a physician” is the kind of thing one hears from them—but they chose to enter the pot business because they see it as a boom market, miracle cure, and social movement decades in the making and suddenly, thrillingly, near.
“This is our Facebook,” says one of my hosts, Norton Arbelaez, the owner of two dispensaries and a commercial grow. “This is the same kind of environment, the same kind of setting, and the same kind of people.” He was a founding member of the Medical Marijuana Industry Group (MMIG), a powerful young lobby that’s buried the age of drum-circle activism and instead strives to partner with law enforcement and politicians. It was their board meeting in the high-rise downtown, a weekly gathering two blocks from the Capitol dome. And it is their goal to dress legal pot in a style as conservative as their own.
by Tony Dokoupil, Newsweek | Read more:
Photo: Andrew Hetherington
State of the Species
Until Margulis’s death last year, she lived in my town, and I would bump into her on the street from time to time. She knew I was interested in ecology, and she liked to needle me. Hey, Charles, she would call out, are you still all worked up about protecting endangered species?
Margulis was no apologist for unthinking destruction. Still, she couldn’t help regarding conservationists’ preoccupation with the fate of birds, mammals, and plants as evidence of their ignorance about the greatest source of evolutionary creativity: the microworld of bacteria, fungi, and protists. More than 90 percent of the living matter on earth consists of microorganisms and viruses, she liked to point out. Heck, the number of bacterial cells in our body is ten times more than the number of human cells!
Bacteria and protists can do things undreamed of by clumsy mammals like us: form giant supercolonies, reproduce either asexually or by swapping genes with others, routinely incorporate DNA from entirely unrelated species, merge into symbiotic beings—the list is as endless as it is amazing. Microorganisms have changed the face of the earth, crumbling stone and even giving rise to the oxygen we breathe. Compared to this power and diversity, Margulis liked to tell me, pandas and polar bears were biological epiphenomena—interesting and fun, perhaps, but not actually significant.
Does that apply to human beings, too? I once asked her, feeling like someone whining to Copernicus about why he couldn’t move the earth a little closer to the center of the universe. Aren’t we specialat all?
This was just chitchat on the street, so I didn’t write anything down. But as I recall it, she answered that Homo sapiens actually might be interesting—for a mammal, anyway. For one thing, she said, we’re unusually successful.
Seeing my face brighten, she added: Of course, the fate of every successful species is to wipe itself out.
by Charles C. Mann, Orion | Read more:
Photo: Miniature Worlds Digitally Assembled from Hundreds of Photographs by Catherine Nelson | Colossal
Fade to Light
“Living with,” Julie corrected me. “Some days it’s a struggle, other days not.”
That hopeful pragmatism squares nicely with the Alzheimer Society of Canada’s philosophy. In fact, early on in Lowell’s illness, Julie was asked to apply for the organization’s vacant CEO role, but she decided it would be “too much Alzheimer’s.” Increasingly, we will all feel the deluge. The prevalence in Canada of all forms of dementia—Alzheimer’s is the most common, accounting for nearly two-thirds of all cases—is projected to double from half a million this year to 1.1 million by 2038. Meanwhile, Alzheimer’s has rocketed up the list of diseases we fear most; according to recent polls, it is second only to cancer, and it sits first for those fifty-five and up.
Although Lowell is twelve years older than the oldest baby boomer (and seventeen years older than Julie), he knows he personifies the coming wave. A critical difference is that while many people with moderate, or middle-stage, Alzheimer’s have anosognosia, or impaired insight, Lowell remains alert to his plight. Still, he had trouble understanding my designs—Were we going to write a letter together? To whom?—and Julie had to warm him to the idea of being profiled. On one of my initial visits, Lowell, with a twinkle in his eye, seemed to be rehearsing first lines for a full-blown biography: “Lowell Jenkins grew up in Faucett, Missouri. His childhood was not all blue skies… Lowell Jenkins is a natural-born helper… Lowell Jenkins woke up one night and couldn’t figure out where he was…”
In the summer of 2007, Julie and Lowell moved to another condo in the same building. Not only was the new unit a disorienting mirror image of the old, with the kitchen and bedrooms to the left rather than the right, but a full renovation was under way. Carpets were torn up, the kitchen cupboards had been knocked out, and wires hung down. Lowell sat up in bed and surveyed the rubble: “Where am I? What have we done? ”
Around the same time, he was showing uncharacteristic agitation while riding the subway, and when they started planning a trip to Russia he became strangely reticent, though he had visited there many times before on cross-cultural exchanges tied to his teaching. Julie knows now that she rationalized the more subtle changes. “Things happen as you get older,” she said. “You do get older.” But Lowell’s disquiet about the new condo was of a different scale. Such was her struggle to pacify him that in the days following they booked the appropriate tests. “He asked before we knew,” Julie said: “‘Do you think I have it?’ ”
They will knock on our doors,” Dr. Serge Gauthier says about the baby boomers. “All of them, I’m sure.” He is director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Unit at the McGill Centre for Studies in Aging, in Verdun, Quebec. The question, he says, is what to tell the individual keen to know his or her risk: “Does everyone who is forgetful need a PET scan? No—but who does? ”
Age is the risk factor that encompasses the other big ones: family history and genetics, gender (twice as many women as men get Alzheimer’s), cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. Evidence is gathering to support what ought to be an intuitive leap between brain health and heart health. Alzheimer’s can cause cerebral bleeding and vice versa, and aerobic activity three times a week has been shown to slow the rate of shrinkage in the hippocampus.
“If you’re preventive about heart attacks in your fifties and strokes in your sixties, you may reduce the risk of dementia in your seventies,” Gauthier says. “That’s a lot of bang for your buck.”
Further motivation is that there is no magic bullet in the offing; not a single new Alzheimer’s drug has been approved in the past nine years. Dr. Judes Poirier, the centre’s former director, says if anything positive has come from the “miserable failure” of recent drug trials, it is the new attention being paid to the idea of “simply and humbly” keeping dementia at bay. Delaying onset by two years would drop the rate of incidence by 33 percent within a generation, and a delay of five years would cut it in half. “If we delay it by ten years, something else will kill you,” Poirier says. “This is the beauty of Alzheimer’s.”
Age is the risk factor that encompasses the other big ones: family history and genetics, gender (twice as many women as men get Alzheimer’s), cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. Evidence is gathering to support what ought to be an intuitive leap between brain health and heart health. Alzheimer’s can cause cerebral bleeding and vice versa, and aerobic activity three times a week has been shown to slow the rate of shrinkage in the hippocampus.
“If you’re preventive about heart attacks in your fifties and strokes in your sixties, you may reduce the risk of dementia in your seventies,” Gauthier says. “That’s a lot of bang for your buck.”
Further motivation is that there is no magic bullet in the offing; not a single new Alzheimer’s drug has been approved in the past nine years. Dr. Judes Poirier, the centre’s former director, says if anything positive has come from the “miserable failure” of recent drug trials, it is the new attention being paid to the idea of “simply and humbly” keeping dementia at bay. Delaying onset by two years would drop the rate of incidence by 33 percent within a generation, and a delay of five years would cut it in half. “If we delay it by ten years, something else will kill you,” Poirier says. “This is the beauty of Alzheimer’s.”
by Dave Cameron, The Walrus | Read more:
Image: Amy Friend
Friday, October 26, 2012
Remembering Moe Norman - The 'Rain Man' of Golf
People have asked me why Moe and I got along so well. I reply by noting that many have called me a champion of idiosyncrasies. I have always loved people who would come along with unusual styles and could beat your brains in. I have taught people not to change their style, but to nurture it and show how it could be an asset. I hate people who rebuild something like that and ruin individuality.
Moe had an unusual, brilliant style that I deeply admired. In turn, he also admired and respected what I did. We had a mutual respect.
Moe had some difficulty trusting and relating to people. If someone came up to Moe for an autograph, he would turn away. If I told Moe that the person was a very good player, he would sign the autograph. He only talked to people who could play — if I told him so. He knew then that they respected him and were not there to ridicule him.
When I would ask him if people should copy his swing, he would laugh. “How can anyone copy my swing? They would come and take you away,” he would say. “You can’t be me. Everyone is copying everyone else. Be yourself; don’t try to be me. You can’t be me.”
The first time I met him was during one of my free clinics. He was in the audience. After I finished what I thought was a perfect display of shotmaking and shot-shaping, he approached me. “Do you know who I am?” he asked. “Yes, Moe Norman,” I said. He replied, “How would you like me to come next week and show you how a ball should really be hit?” I told him to come on. We did clinics together for the next 18 years.
He was very comfortable hitting balls. He was uncomfortable around people he didn’t know. Hitting balls was his life; no one could do it better. After hitting balls, he would withdraw, getting lost in his own world where no one else could disturb him.
Moe never gave any credence to putting. “There’s no skill in that,” he would say. “Hitting pins in regulation — that takes skill.”
Moe once told me that during a practice round for the Canadian Open, he was playing with Canadian golf great George Knudson. Moe offered to play for $5 per pin hit in regulation. George agreed with a laugh, thinking that no one hits pins in regulation. After three holes, Moe had hit three pins, and George walked back to the clubhouse.
On the first hole of a practice round, a 230-yard par 3, the media assembled around Moe and teased him about his putting. Moe pulled a club from his bag, struck the ball perfectly, and turned to the reporters, saying, “I’m not putting today.” The ball rolled into the hole for a hole-in-one. It was one of 17 holes-in-one that Moe hit.
Moe broke all the rules of conventional golf mechanics. He held the club in the palms of his huge hands. I always said he had no wrists, only arms with hands. He used an abnormally wide stance; most players, even pros, would whiff while trying to address the ball in his footprints. He started the club at least a foot behind the ball. He reached for the ball, extending his arms as far as they would go, arms and shaft on a single axis. He faced the ball at impact, his feet flat on the ground. His arms did all the work. His body seemed to react to his powerful arm swing.
We went to Bay Hill to do a clinic for a medical company. Moe didn’t know the way from Daytona, so he said he would follow me in his car. We started onto I-95 heading for I-4 and Orlando. When I looked in my rear-view mirror, I didn’t see Moe. I slowed down to 50 mph. Finally, I spotted him in his car, going 45 max. Truck drivers were honking and yelling. But Moe had the volume turned up so high in his Cadillac that he was oblivious to the noise. When we finally got to Bay Hill, the noise from his radio was deafening. Science and math tapes were blaring from his tape player, with the volume turned up as high as it would go. He was in a world all his own.
When we got there, we went looking for the practice area where the clinic would be held. Arnold Palmer came toward us in his cart and said, “Hi. How are you, Moe?” Immediately, Moe shot back, with an obvious reference to Palmer’s lack of accuracy off the tee: “I haven’t had a thorn bush stuck up my ass for the last seven years. How about you, Arnie?” Palmer cracked up. He knew that Moe was never in the bushes.
Over 41,352 people attended our clinics. How do I know? Moe counted every person who ever attended a clinic. He knew the exact number of balls we hit and how many tees we used each time.
by Craig Shankland, Athlon Sports | Read more:
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Ask Someone Who Recently Went to Rome
What's the shortest amount of time someone could/should/would reasonably spend there? Like a really long weekend wouldn't be enough, right?
I've actually done both — the first time I stayed three nights and this time six — and I can tell you there is never too little or too much of Rome. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it is truly one of those cities that expands and contracts to fit your plan. New York is this way, where you can hop in for a 24-hour party and hop back out, but if you sit still for a minute, you start to picture yourself living there.
Okay, you could probably read this anywhere, but I'll give you my tiny synopsis of Rome: the central part of Rome — the part in this free map someone inevitably hands you almost the second you step off the plane (okay, not really, they have them at the train or bus or shuttle ticket window as you leave the airport) — that part is all walkable and made up of little tiny self-contained neighborhoods with pedestrian squares called "piazzas" that you can find just by opening your eyes. If you're only there for two days, hit a monument or two, eat some great meals, wander aimlessly, do a little shopping, and call it a perfect weekend.
On the other hand, Rome is so old that there layers upon layers of things to see. Depending on your level of interest in antiquity/the Middle Ages/the Renaissance/modern art and design/FOOD, you could be there forever and ever, amen. It was also recommended that we try a day or overnight trip to Florence or Naples or Sorrento by train. Supposedly those are very easy, but we were too lazy to be bothered.
I've actually done both — the first time I stayed three nights and this time six — and I can tell you there is never too little or too much of Rome. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it is truly one of those cities that expands and contracts to fit your plan. New York is this way, where you can hop in for a 24-hour party and hop back out, but if you sit still for a minute, you start to picture yourself living there.
Okay, you could probably read this anywhere, but I'll give you my tiny synopsis of Rome: the central part of Rome — the part in this free map someone inevitably hands you almost the second you step off the plane (okay, not really, they have them at the train or bus or shuttle ticket window as you leave the airport) — that part is all walkable and made up of little tiny self-contained neighborhoods with pedestrian squares called "piazzas" that you can find just by opening your eyes. If you're only there for two days, hit a monument or two, eat some great meals, wander aimlessly, do a little shopping, and call it a perfect weekend.On the other hand, Rome is so old that there layers upon layers of things to see. Depending on your level of interest in antiquity/the Middle Ages/the Renaissance/modern art and design/FOOD, you could be there forever and ever, amen. It was also recommended that we try a day or overnight trip to Florence or Naples or Sorrento by train. Supposedly those are very easy, but we were too lazy to be bothered.
Is everyone in Rome always wearing really great jeans? Or did I just make that up in my head?
Jeans, sure, but the suits? Oh MY god, the suits. I think my husband almost left me for about 100 men in suits and I would not have blamed him. Just gorgeous, gorgeous suits. And overcoats. And scarves. Like this, no kidding.
I noticed three stand-out looks for women, aside from suits, which many wear as well:
1. Cuffed jeans, Tod's style cool loafers or brightly-colored oxfords, button-down or silk tank, a spiffy blazer, scarf. Hair all wild and curly and bold glasses.
2. Eileen Fisher, only probably handmade by "textile artists" in Italy, so better.
3. Flowery dresses, again with a blazer and a scarf. Long, straight hair. A hat. Sunglasses. Perpetually 29 years old. Riding a bike or Vespa. These were everywhere.
I just want to hear about the food. What was the first thing you ate when you got there, and what was the last thing?
The very first thing was, haha, this croissant and espresso at the train station/bus shuttle stand at the airport. EVERYTHING IS BETTER IN ROME, did I say that yet? Everything. That is why "Made in Italy" used to mean it was special. You should see the leather gloves and hats. Anyway, even train station croissants are better. Roman croissants are a little orangey and they are topped with sugar.
Once we got into town and settled, we stumbled around and found a tiny piazza — these are every few streets, an empty block that is usually bordered by restaurants with outdoor seating and some touristy stores — for homemade pasta and a glass of wine. I had the fettucine all'Amatriciana. Standard pastas like that one, cacio e pepe (cheese and pepper), and carbonara are done decently at a lot of little restaurants, so try a bunch. The last thing I ate was pizza at 4 A.M. Hardly any place is open then, so you take what you can get.
And what was the best thing, and the worst thing?
The worst was that pizza, but that's just because it was old. There are so many "bests" in Rome. We tried a few Time Out recommendations and both were amazing: at Roscioli I got fresh burrata with local anchovies that had been caught this spring, and at Matricianella I had the best gnocchi of my life. One night we splurged and had dinner at a fancy restaurant we saw on No Reservations. The decor and service were dreamy, and the veal was out of control, but in hindsight, no more satisfying than the panino we'd share at whatever cafe in the morning. Mmm, melty cheese. And we also found some excellent food on our own just by chance. I wish I could remember the names of some places, but who cares? A lot of the fun is finding them. The streets — just the look of them, all skinny and wind-y, and cobblestoned, and closed in by three- and four-story terracotta apartment buildings with flower boxes in the windows — they draw you in against your will and you spend hours wandering, so just go with it.
Two food-related things make Rome one of my favorite places. The first is that all cafes — and there are, in my estimation, as many as two per block — are also bars. WHAT? Yes, a cafe is a bar and a bar is a cafe. And second, from roughly 4-5 P.M to 7-9 P.M., at many bars and restaurants, they have a happy hour called "aperitivo." One we went to more than once for the scene — particularly fashionable, older, local businesspeople chatting heatedly in Italian — is Ciampini. "Aperitivo" is a selection of appetizers, either brought to the table or buffet-style, that come free with a cocktail or wine purchase. Often it's just pistachios and salami and cheese and olives. Which, I don't know why I just said "it's just" because that was all awesome? But some places go all-out. At Casa & Bottega I had a Negroni with focaccia, quiche, crostini, grilled sqaush, and a barley salad. Just go door-to-door asking, "Aperitivo?"
Jeans, sure, but the suits? Oh MY god, the suits. I think my husband almost left me for about 100 men in suits and I would not have blamed him. Just gorgeous, gorgeous suits. And overcoats. And scarves. Like this, no kidding.
I noticed three stand-out looks for women, aside from suits, which many wear as well:
1. Cuffed jeans, Tod's style cool loafers or brightly-colored oxfords, button-down or silk tank, a spiffy blazer, scarf. Hair all wild and curly and bold glasses.
2. Eileen Fisher, only probably handmade by "textile artists" in Italy, so better.
3. Flowery dresses, again with a blazer and a scarf. Long, straight hair. A hat. Sunglasses. Perpetually 29 years old. Riding a bike or Vespa. These were everywhere.
I just want to hear about the food. What was the first thing you ate when you got there, and what was the last thing?
The very first thing was, haha, this croissant and espresso at the train station/bus shuttle stand at the airport. EVERYTHING IS BETTER IN ROME, did I say that yet? Everything. That is why "Made in Italy" used to mean it was special. You should see the leather gloves and hats. Anyway, even train station croissants are better. Roman croissants are a little orangey and they are topped with sugar.
Once we got into town and settled, we stumbled around and found a tiny piazza — these are every few streets, an empty block that is usually bordered by restaurants with outdoor seating and some touristy stores — for homemade pasta and a glass of wine. I had the fettucine all'Amatriciana. Standard pastas like that one, cacio e pepe (cheese and pepper), and carbonara are done decently at a lot of little restaurants, so try a bunch. The last thing I ate was pizza at 4 A.M. Hardly any place is open then, so you take what you can get.
And what was the best thing, and the worst thing?
The worst was that pizza, but that's just because it was old. There are so many "bests" in Rome. We tried a few Time Out recommendations and both were amazing: at Roscioli I got fresh burrata with local anchovies that had been caught this spring, and at Matricianella I had the best gnocchi of my life. One night we splurged and had dinner at a fancy restaurant we saw on No Reservations. The decor and service were dreamy, and the veal was out of control, but in hindsight, no more satisfying than the panino we'd share at whatever cafe in the morning. Mmm, melty cheese. And we also found some excellent food on our own just by chance. I wish I could remember the names of some places, but who cares? A lot of the fun is finding them. The streets — just the look of them, all skinny and wind-y, and cobblestoned, and closed in by three- and four-story terracotta apartment buildings with flower boxes in the windows — they draw you in against your will and you spend hours wandering, so just go with it.
Two food-related things make Rome one of my favorite places. The first is that all cafes — and there are, in my estimation, as many as two per block — are also bars. WHAT? Yes, a cafe is a bar and a bar is a cafe. And second, from roughly 4-5 P.M to 7-9 P.M., at many bars and restaurants, they have a happy hour called "aperitivo." One we went to more than once for the scene — particularly fashionable, older, local businesspeople chatting heatedly in Italian — is Ciampini. "Aperitivo" is a selection of appetizers, either brought to the table or buffet-style, that come free with a cocktail or wine purchase. Often it's just pistachios and salami and cheese and olives. Which, I don't know why I just said "it's just" because that was all awesome? But some places go all-out. At Casa & Bottega I had a Negroni with focaccia, quiche, crostini, grilled sqaush, and a barley salad. Just go door-to-door asking, "Aperitivo?"
by Jane Marie, The Awl | Read more:
Human Rights Campaign Acceptance Speech: Lana Wachowski
OK. Phew. Haven’t given a speech ever. [applause] OK, OK, I get it -- you’re very encouraging, I love you.
So I’m at my hairdresser's. [laughter] He’s gay, go figure. I say yeah, the HRC wants to give me an award. Award for what? I say, "I guess for kind of being myself." He’s like playing with my hair and looking at me and he’s like, “Yeah, I guess you make a pretty good you.” And I was like, yeah, “Yeah, well there wasn’t a lot of competition.” And ‘cause he's a catty bitch he said, “Yeah, it’s a good thing -- just imagine if you had lost.” [laughter]
I’ve been going to this hairdresser who’s this gorgeous lovely man for almost six years. He knows everything about my family, how close I was to my grandma, how I met and married the love of my life. He did the hair for our wedding three years ago, he’s seen the drunken pornographic pictures of our honeymoon in Mykonos. But he doesn’t know that I directed The Matrix trilogy with my brother Andy. [applause] So he knows all about who I am but he doesn’t know what I do.
Conversely, I was recently out to dinner with a mixture of friends and strangers who were all very excited to meet a “Hollywood” director, but all they want to do is ask about Tom Hanks, Keanu Reeves and Halle Berry, and throughout the dinner they repeatedly refer to me as “he” or one of the “Wachowski Brothers,” sometimes using half my name, “Laaaaaa,” as an awkward bridge between identities, unable or perhaps unwilling to see me as I am, but only for the things I do.
Every one of us, every person here, every human life presents a negotiation between public and private identity. For me that negotiation took a more literal form in a dialogue between me, Andy,Tom Tykwer -- our new brother by love, who’s just gorgeous -- with whom we directed our latest movie, Cloud Atlas. (Thanks for the plug; go see it.) Several months ago we were sitting in this Berlin club amid beer soaked haggardness in a space not intended to be inhabited by people and sunlight trying to decide if we should shoot this introduction to a trailer for our movie that was supposed to be posted online. Tom Hanks was supposed to do it but became unavailable.
Andy and I have not done press or made a public appearance including premieres in over 12 years. People have mistakenly assumed that this has something to do with my gender. It does not. After The Matrix was released in ‘99 we both experienced this alarming contraction of our world and thus our lives. We became acutely aware of the preciousness of anonymity -- understanding it as a form of virginity, something you only lose once. Anonymity allows you access to civic space, to a form of participation in public life, to an egalitarian invisibility that neither of us wanted to give up. We told Warner Bros. that neither one of us wanted to do press anymore. They told us, “No. Absolutely not. This is non-negotiable. Directors are essential to selling and marketing a movie.” We said, “OK, we get it. So if it’s a choice between making movies or not doing press, we decided we’re not going to not make movies.” They said, “Hang on. Maybe there’s a little room for negotiation.”
As I grew older an intense anxious isolation coupled with constant insomnia began to inculcate an inescapable depression. I have never slept much but during my sophomore year in high school, while I watched many of my male friends start to develop facial hair, I kept this strange relentless vigil staring in the mirror for hours, afraid of what one day I might see. Here in the absence of words to defend myself, without examples, without models, I began to believe voices in my head -- that I was a freak, that I am broken, that there is something wrong with me, that I will never be lovable.
After school I go to the nearby Burger King and write a suicide note. It ends up being over four pages. [laughter] I’m a little talkative. But it was addressed to my parents and I really wanted to convince them that it wasn’t their fault, it was just that I didn’t belong. I cry a lot as I write this note, but the staff at Burger King has seen it all before, and they seem immune. [laughter]
I was very used to traveling home quite late because of the theater, I know the train platform will be empty at night because it always is. I let the B train go by because I know the A train will be next and it doesn’t stop. When I see the headlight I take off my backpack and I put it on the bench. It has the note in front of it. I try not to think of anything but jumping as the train comes. Just as the platform begins to rumble suddenly I notice someone walking down the ramp. It is a skinny older old man wearing overly large, 1970s square-style glasses that remind of the ones my grandma wears. He stares at me the way animals stare at each other. I don’t know why he wouldn’t look away. All I know is that because he didn’t, I am still here.
Years later I find the courage to admit that I am transgender and this doesn’t mean that I am unlovable. I meet a woman, the first person that has made me understand that they love me not in spite of my difference but because of it. She is the first person to see me as a whole being. And every morning I get to wake up beside her I can’t begin to tell you how grateful I am for those two blue eyes in my life.
by Lana Wachowski, Holleywood Reporter | Read more:
Photo: EW.com
If Smart Is the Norm, Stupidity Gets More Interesting
Few of us are as smart as we’d like to be. You’re sharper than Jim (maybe) but dull next to Jane. Human intelligence varies. And this matters, because smarter people generally earn more money, enjoy better health, raise smarter children, feel happier and, just to rub it in, live longer as well.
But where does intelligence come from? How is it built? Researchers have tried hard to find the answer in our genes. With the rise of inexpensive genome sequencing, they’ve analyzed the genomes of thousands of people, looking for gene variants that clearly affect intelligence, and have found a grand total of two. (...)
But is the genetic cup really empty, or are we just looking for the wrong stuff? Kevin Mitchell, a developmental neurogeneticist at Trinity College Dublin, thinks the latter. In an essay he published in July on his blog, Wiring the Brain, Dr. Mitchell proposed that instead of thinking about the genetics of intelligence, we should be trying to parse “the genetics of stupidity,” as his title put it. We should look not for genetic dynamics that build intelligence but for those that erode it.
The premise for this argument is that once natural selection generated the set of genes that build our big, smart human brains, those genes became “fixed” in the human population; virtually everyone receives the same set, and precious few variants affect intelligence. This could account for the researchers’ failure to find many variants of measurable effect.
But in some other genetic realms we do differ widely, for example, mutational load — the number of mutations we carry. This tends to run in families, which means some of us generate and retain more mutations than others do. Among our 23,000 genes, you may carry 500 mutations while I carry 1,000.
Most mutations have no effect. But those that do are more likely to bring harm than good, Dr. Mitchell said in an interview, because “there are simply many more ways of screwing something up than of improving it.”
Open the hood of a smooth-running car and randomly turn a few screws, and you’ll almost certainly make the engine run worse than before. Likewise, mutations that change the brain’s normal development or operation will probably slow it down. Smart Jane may be less a custom-built, high-performance model than a standard version pulling a smaller mutational load. (...)
We also inherit — through genes yet to be identified, of course — a trait known as developmental stability. This is essentially the accuracy with which the genetic blueprint is built. Developmental stability keeps the project on track. It reveals itself most obviously in physical symmetry. The two sides of our bodies and brains are constructed separately but from the same 23,000-gene blueprint. If you have high developmental stability, you’ll turn out highly symmetrical. Your feet will be the same shoe size, and the two sides of your face will be identical.
If you’re less developmentally stable, you’ll have feet up to a half-size different and a face that’s like two faces fused together. Doubt me? Take a digital image of your face and split it down the middle. Then make a mirror-image copy of each half and attach it to its original. In the two faces you’ve just made — one your mirrored left side, the other your right — you’ll behold your own developmental stability, or lack thereof.
Both those faces might be better-looking than you are, for we generally find symmetrical faces more attractive. It also happens that symmetry and intelligence tend to run together, because both run with developmental stability. We may find symmetrical faces attractive because they imply the steadiness of genetic development, which creates valuable assets for choosing a mate, like better general fitness and, of course, intelligence — or as Dr. Mitchell might put it, a relative lack of stupidity.
But where does intelligence come from? How is it built? Researchers have tried hard to find the answer in our genes. With the rise of inexpensive genome sequencing, they’ve analyzed the genomes of thousands of people, looking for gene variants that clearly affect intelligence, and have found a grand total of two. (...)But is the genetic cup really empty, or are we just looking for the wrong stuff? Kevin Mitchell, a developmental neurogeneticist at Trinity College Dublin, thinks the latter. In an essay he published in July on his blog, Wiring the Brain, Dr. Mitchell proposed that instead of thinking about the genetics of intelligence, we should be trying to parse “the genetics of stupidity,” as his title put it. We should look not for genetic dynamics that build intelligence but for those that erode it.
The premise for this argument is that once natural selection generated the set of genes that build our big, smart human brains, those genes became “fixed” in the human population; virtually everyone receives the same set, and precious few variants affect intelligence. This could account for the researchers’ failure to find many variants of measurable effect.
But in some other genetic realms we do differ widely, for example, mutational load — the number of mutations we carry. This tends to run in families, which means some of us generate and retain more mutations than others do. Among our 23,000 genes, you may carry 500 mutations while I carry 1,000.
Most mutations have no effect. But those that do are more likely to bring harm than good, Dr. Mitchell said in an interview, because “there are simply many more ways of screwing something up than of improving it.”
Open the hood of a smooth-running car and randomly turn a few screws, and you’ll almost certainly make the engine run worse than before. Likewise, mutations that change the brain’s normal development or operation will probably slow it down. Smart Jane may be less a custom-built, high-performance model than a standard version pulling a smaller mutational load. (...)
We also inherit — through genes yet to be identified, of course — a trait known as developmental stability. This is essentially the accuracy with which the genetic blueprint is built. Developmental stability keeps the project on track. It reveals itself most obviously in physical symmetry. The two sides of our bodies and brains are constructed separately but from the same 23,000-gene blueprint. If you have high developmental stability, you’ll turn out highly symmetrical. Your feet will be the same shoe size, and the two sides of your face will be identical.
If you’re less developmentally stable, you’ll have feet up to a half-size different and a face that’s like two faces fused together. Doubt me? Take a digital image of your face and split it down the middle. Then make a mirror-image copy of each half and attach it to its original. In the two faces you’ve just made — one your mirrored left side, the other your right — you’ll behold your own developmental stability, or lack thereof.
Both those faces might be better-looking than you are, for we generally find symmetrical faces more attractive. It also happens that symmetry and intelligence tend to run together, because both run with developmental stability. We may find symmetrical faces attractive because they imply the steadiness of genetic development, which creates valuable assets for choosing a mate, like better general fitness and, of course, intelligence — or as Dr. Mitchell might put it, a relative lack of stupidity.
by David Dobbs, NY Times | Read more:
Illustration: Lars Leetaru
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