DrHGuy Cyber-Bookmarks: 10 November 2006

November 10th, 2006 at 11:39 am · DrHGuy · No Comments

A sporadically promulgated annotated listing of arguably worthwhile, recently published online reading, new or revised websites of potential utility or ostensible interest, and other internet-accessible experiences that, were it not for the casually collected, cavalierly collated, & capriciously collocated components comprising these posts, could easily be overlooked - which would be, in some cases, a shame

Readings

Hapless on Halloween Judith Warner New York Times 2 Nov 2006
Parenting Is Not a Science Judith Warner New York Times 26 Oct 2006
Judith Warner writes a parenting blog for the NY Times that is usually by subscription only. This week provides an opportunity to check out her thinking on the topic gratis. I’ve selected two examples that are characteristically witty, thoughtful, and sardonically instructive.

What Healthcare Should Look Like Allison Arieff New York Times 9 Oct 2006
Arieff is another usually available by subscription only but free this week blogger for the Times, who writes about design. Arieff, who was the original editor of Dwell back when everyone agrees Dwell was swell (see Dwell Section of DrHGuy’s Cyber-Bookmarks: October 26, 2006), deals with the design of buildings and also the design of implements, appliances, toys, etc. I believe this short essay on design of healthcare facilities, triggered by her own experiences in these places as she accompanied her mother while she was being treated for cancer, is both pragmatic and poignant.

Cyber-Neologoliferation James Gleick New York Times 5 Nov 2006
Gleick, author of Chaos: Making a New Science, Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, and biographies of Isaac Newton and Richard Feynman, takes on the monumental task of describing the exponentially more monumental (megamonumental? gigamomumental?) task of accumulating and organizing the data that will hypothetically eventuate in the third edition of the O.E.D. (see Abecedarian & Non-Abecedarian OED Updates). My use of “hypothetically” references the seeming impossibility of drinking from the fire hose fast enough to even approximate the totality of English words in use, especially now that the online databases are officially in play. Gleick limns the situation in this elegant passage:

The third edition is a mutation. It is weightless, taking its shape in the digital realm. To keyboard it, Oxford hired a team of 150 typists in Florida for 18 months. (That was before the verb keyboard had even found its way in, as [chief editor John] Simpson points out, not to mention the verb outsource.) No one can say for sure whether O.E.D.3 will ever be published in paper and ink. By the point of decision, not before 20 years or so, it will have doubled in size yet again. In the meantime, it is materializing before the world’s eyes, bit by bit, online. It is a thoroughgoing revision of the entire text. Whereas the second edition just added new words and new usages to the original entries, the current project is researching and revising from scratch — preserving the history but aiming at a more coherent whole.

Plantmanship Jessica Francis Kane The Morning News 3 Nov 2006
Kane is an interesting creature who writes and thinks about gardening far more expertly, as she herself would agree, than she executes the skills of that avocation. Consider the opening paragraph of this piece:

I worry that being interested in gardens without tending one is like having an interest in food without eating. That’s why, four years ago, I planted a garden. I’d always been fond of garden history and design; visiting a fine garden is one of my favorite things to do. So why, looking out the window at my garden, do I find myself eager for the season’s first killing frost? The drone of summer bugs, the whole weedy, moldy mess: I won’t miss it. But this is gardening heresy, like being a chef and secretly hoping the sauce will curdle.

Who knew such intra-psychic conflicts resided in the not fully committed gardener? And who knew if could be so funny?

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