You would think that at some point in the Paris Fashion Show, “Ready to Wear” section, someone would have called BS on this. Be sure to see the whole gallery.
January, 2010:
Building a Ferrari
Actually, I just documented it. Our 6 year old son, a LEGO fiend received has last birthday present earlier this week, a full Ferrari F1 travel and pit crew. (With Schumacher going to Mercedes, this may be their last successful outing.) You can see in the background the stacked up boxes of all of his other LEGO presents, from just last week. He finished this large set in just two days, rather impressive I think. There is a whole set of photos at flickr.
Why I won’t buy the Apple iPad (or then again I might)
The official word is out that Apple will reveal to us their “latest creation” on January 27th. All the world is atwitter with rumors and the latest has the ring of truth. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the rumor is fact, Apple will release a 10″ tablet device next week that will be focused on media, textbooks, newspapers, magazines, and TV and movies. Apparently the WSJ knows “these people” because “these people say” a lot in the article, but I am betting their surmises are correct. (There is a lot of speculation lately that “these people” whom the Journal has cited before with respect to Apple products are none other than Apple PR themselves. Think of WSJ as the official leak of Cupertino.) But if they are correct I may not be quite as eager to buy this latest lickable Apple offering.
I have mentioned before some of what I am looking for and what I am not interested in with a portable tablet device. This is clearly a portable device, so I want something that will replace, or at least be an “alternative” (as Andy Ihnatko phrased it on MBW), my MacBook Pro. And that has me thinking about how I travel.
I take two types of trips. For example, I will miss the big announcement next week because I will be in NYC for college business. Most of my time will be spent meeting with friends of the college, board members, and so on. When in the hotel I am usually not doing more than replying to emails and the odd blog post. In those circumstances the Tablet would likely be fine. In fact, on planes, it would be perfect. Able to read all my articles in PDF, text, ebooks, etc. Less bulk and awkwardness of a notebook and a backlight making it easier to read in low light situations. As good as a Kindle and more.
But two or three times a year I travel to conferences or libraries to do research. Without a keyboard (discerning pundits think it unlikely that Mr. Jobs will allow an external keyboard, I would say it is even money) and, more importantly, without being able to run “real” OSX apps like Accordance and NisusWriter Pro would make the Tablet next to useless for me. On those trips I need to do real work and, if rumors are correct, the Tablet will simply be running a form of the iPhone OS. OliveTree’s BibleReader 4 is tremendous and would replace much of what I use Accordance for, but not everything. And I need a serious text editor that allows right-to-left language support. Would the iPhone OS based Tablet? Probably not.
Finally, there is an emerging consensus that this device will be like the Kindle, always on network connection allowing immediate download of books, magazines, movies, music, etc. The Kindle uses “Whispernet” which is paid for (apparently, I don’t know for sure) through the cost of the content rather than with a monthly subscription. If Apple takes that route, all well and good. If, on the other hand, one has to have a separate data plan then that will be a deal breaker. (If, on the third hand, it is optional then we are no worse off than with a MacBook equipped with WiFi.)
Will I buy the Tablet? Whom am I kidding, I probably will. Although it would actually be a first for me, I usually do not buy first editions of any product, particularly Apple products. They are known to have 1st rev glitches. So maybe not.
“Academic and Publishing Freedom”?
That is the title of this Inside Higher Ed article about Christianity Today’s Books & Culture rejected an article questioning the past and future direction of Wheaton College. As someone with an MA from Wheaton I thought I might make various trenchant comments, but I will not. Just a couple of notes about the IHE article and a pointer to the article in question. Here is the basic info about the critique:
The author — Andrew Chignell, a Wheaton alumnus who is associate professor of philosophy at Cornell University — has just published the article online, along with “the back story” about how the piece was killed.
From a quick read of Chignell’s article it looks very fair to me, so give that a glance. But to turn to the IHE article I wanted to make two points. The first is minor, but annoying. Throughout the entire piece, aside from when they are quoting Chignell, they consistently misspell the Wheaton President’s name as “Liftin” instead of the accurate “Litfin.” Is it that hard to get someone’s name right?
Finally, their title is more than a bit misleading. While I do not agree with some of the directions in which Litfin has taken Wheaton he is no shrinking violet. He and the college did not, and Chignell affirms this, try and kill the story. The decision was made by Christianity Today International’s president. As Litfin told IHE,
“Even if I had the ability to stifle the article, I would not have done so,” he said. “It goes against the grain of everything I believe.”
He added: “I disagree with the article, but I don’t think the article is something we need protection from.”
So this was not a story about academic freedom, as implied in the title (but I note their insertion of “and publishing), rather it is simply an editorial decision by a private publisher. I don’t agree with CT’s decision, it was petty, shortsighted, and unnecessary, but that is their right. No doubt IHE was trying to generate interest in a story that would otherwise have a rather small audience. Still, I think the title is misleading.
UPDATE: There is a great comment on the IHE thread by David Wright , Provost at Indiana Wesleyan University. Well worth reading.
Which would you choose, wings or stronger claws?
I was watching the Discovery Channel’s “Wild Pacific” tonight with my son and they featured “the world’s heaviest parrot” (this is the parrot whose amorous adventures were noted here before). The narrator is Mike Rowe, but I am sure he did not write the script. At one point we were told that because of the kakapo’s great weight and small wings “it evolved strong claws in order to climb trees” in order to reach their only source of food, berries at the top of a certain tree.
Now I have said before that I have no quarrel with evolution, but I find the suppositions of evolutionary development put forward often terribly amusing, not to mention facile (like Michael Polin’s personification of corn in Omnivore’s Dilemma
I have my doubts…
