Archive for December, 2007
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The kind of intelligence a politician needs…or why I hope Barack Obama becomes the next President
In the last Democratic Presidential debate before the Iowa caucuses, there was a designated “You Tube moment”, which you can see, on You Tube:
<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/rhPxSm9Es0w&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/rhPxSm9Es0w&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>It was probably damaging for Hillary Clinton, because of her initial reaction (“I want to hear this”). It certainly wasn’t her day in general, but she should have been able to see that this was a good question for him (and a bad one for her). The easy and obvious answer (the one I would have given, I suspect), is something along the lines of “all of these people know you well and they’re supporting me”). The answer Obama gave was far better—generous and inoffensive, yet establishing himself as the dominant voice.
The ability to change the question is probably one of the most important skills a politician can have. I really fear that this election could lead to another round of the feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys. I don’t think the country can afford that.
One of the best books related to politics I’ve ever read is Doris Kearns Goodwin’s discussion of Lincoln’s cabinet,
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FTeam-Rivals-Political-Abraham-Lincoln%2Fdp%2Fproduct-description%2F0743270754&tag=timelysnow02-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325">Team of Rivals</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=timelysnow02-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" />. These words may come back to haunt me, but I see in Obama the potential to be the kind of politician who can change the nature and topic of discourse. I don’t see any of the others as even coming close. -
Recording classrooms revisited and revised — Part I: equipment
As part of our new project, we’re refreshing our equipment and revisiting decisions made at the turn of the millennium. Some of that information has been preserved by Sujai Kumar here. So far, we’ve decided to:
1. Use the
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FCanon-AVCHD-Definition-Camcorder-Optical%2Fdp%2FB000U8HBRW%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Delectronics%26qid%3D1198007997%26sr%3D8-1&tag=timelysnow02-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325">Canon HG-10 </a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=timelysnow02-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" />, which is a high definition hard-disk based camcorder that uses the AVHCD format.2. Use the
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FRODE-VideoMic-Directional-Camcorder-Microphone%2Fdp%2FB0007U9SOC%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusical-instruments%26qid%3D1198014539%26sr%3D8-1&tag=timelysnow02-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325">Rode Videomic</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=timelysnow02-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" />as a boom mike, which is more elegant and easier to assemble than what we’d used before.3. Adopt the Sennheiser Evolution system for recording sound. We have some but not enough expensive Lectrosonics transmitters/receivers from the last round. The ones we had are discontinued and their new ones are still about twice the prices of the Sennheiser ones. I’m surprised the prices haven’t dropped more than they have. actually.
All of these models use UHF frequencies, which can be interfered with by TV signals. Sennheisers come in A, B, or C sets, and it looks like from their website there’s the least interference around Detroit on the “C” band. Anyway, it ended up being cheaper to get new sets of their “Evolution” system instead of adding to what we had. I was able to get a good price on these from Road Dog Electronics...we’ll see how it works out.
...more later…
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Pretend to be a time traveler day
Very cute. Today’s the day, as you’d know if you really were from the future.
I particularly liked:
– Greet people by referring to things that don’t yet exist or haven’t existed for a long time. Example: “Have you penetrated the atmosphere lately?” “What spectrum will today’s broadcast be in?” and “Your king must be a kindly soul!” – Show extreme ignorance in operating regular technology. Pay phones should be a complete mystery (try placing the receiver in odd places). Chuckle knowingly at cell phones. – Take some trinket with you (it can be anything really), hand it to some stranger, along with a phone number and say “In thirty years dial this number. You’ll know what to do after that.” Then slip away. – Discover and become obsessed with one trivial aspect of technology, like automatic grocery doors. Stay there for hours playing with it.
from the Volokh Conspiracy.
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Fun with language
Gary Feng picks up on the “you’re number 1” story…
Shadow » Blog Archive » 幼儿难爸玩
That’s funny. It reminds me of games we used to play in English classes. It’s not hard to phonetically transcribe English in Chinese. The real fun is to make it reads like a real Chinese sentence. my version: 幼儿难爸玩 (you4 er2 nan2 ba4 wan3) which translates to “little baby challenges daddy for fun”
This reminds me of the one time I saw the infamous Da Shan ( 大山) on TV in Beijing, and he told a story about a Chinese man who wanted to travel abroad and, naturally, wanted to know how to buy stuff. So he asked his friend how to ask what something costs (多少钱?) in English. His friend told him just to say:
好妈吃? (hao3 ma3 chi1)
but when he went there, he couldn’t quite remember, and so said:
好妈吃? (hao3 chi1 ma?—does this taste good?)
and then
吃好了吗? (chi1 hao3 le ma?—has it all been eaten?)
Same basic idea…
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Divided by a common orthography….
This article provides an interesting example of the limitations of the “universality” of Chinese characters. Look at the picture; as the article notes
The characters read “You Are No. 1!”
That’s not a translation: the Cantonese pronunciation of the characters 腰呀冧吧温! (“yiu a nam ba wan!”) approximates the English sentence.
The problem for the mainland media is that most people aren’t familiar with Cantonese pronunciation, so they have no way to judge whether their interpretation is correct. The Beijing News, for example, misidentified the character 腰 as 绥, and the character 冧, which doesn’t exist in Mandarin, doesn’t show up on many newspaper websites.
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