This blog written by a strip-club waitress also shows lots of promise.
[via Gawker]
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Ph.D.
I study people, technology, and the worlds they make
Month: August 2004 (page 1 of 4)
It’s no surprise, but William Saletan’s Republican Convention blog posts are really outstanding. It’ll be fun to read him for the next few days.
I turn 40 in, if I’m counting correctly, nine days. (September 8th, for those playing along at home.) It wouldn’t be accurate to say that I haven’t thought too much about it, but I’ve not been getting flipped out over it.
A good friend of mine turned 40 last week, and she reports that she doesn’t feel any different, but did note that “I may have lived half my life.” I’ve had similar thoughts, but 1) median ages aren’t correct for every age cohort (we’ll probably live longer than today’s elders), and 2) we may have lived 99.8% of our lives, or (less likely) 1% of them- you just don’t know.
Given that most of why I do for a living requires mental stamina rather than physical stamina, and a certain amount of experience is considered a good thing, I don’t think I need to worry about being on the street any time soon.
On the other hand, I’m being interviewed this afternoon by a researcher who’s doing a dissertation looking at technology use among people 40-65. In other words, it’s a project that could also include my parents. Hmmm.
But the question remains: what does turning 40 signify? Or maybe the better question is, what meaning can you put to it?
When I first went to London in 1989, I was surprised at how much of the city dated from the 1960s, rather than the 1690s. Of course, all cities are regularly rebuilt, but I thought that there’d be more material history in a city that was so rich in history. And while there’s some pretty serious modern architecture in London, a lot of it was bad New Brutalist (I still remembered a lot from David Brownlee’s magnificent courses on modern architecture that I took in college).
Modern architecture has been the subject of controversy in London at least since Prince Charles’ attacks on its legacy. Now, the New York Times
My referres log shows a bunch of hits to my entry from a few days ago about putting the kids to bed. Turns out a Google search of “little baby” places the entry at #8. It comes after “Is My Little Baby Going to Go Gay?,” a page offering advice about how to keep your toddler from turning gay.
Fortunately, the page is part of a satirical site.
And are there that many people who don’t know the words to “Hush little baby?”
Continuing my conquest of media, I also got a quote in the latest Business 2.0, at the start of a special feature on “Seven New Technologies That Change Everything“
it’s notoriously difficult to identify the great technologies of the future that are actually here today. “Breakthroughs are disruptive for a reason,” says Alex Pang, research director at the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, Calif. “They sneak up on us even when we try to prepare for them.”
I’m sure it actually means something….
Unfortunately, I don’t have accss to the Business 2.0 Web site (read: no subscription), so I don’t know what the technologies actually are.
I hate to say anything bad about any Chow Yun-Fat movie, but… really… despite the MTV-like camera work, the stereotypical Nazis with inexplicably terrible haircuts, the sadistic/sexy officer’s daughter, and a great title… Bulletproof Monk is terrible.
At least it’s easy to ignore. The danger with working with the TV on is that you run the risk of putting insomething that you end up watching, as opposed to something to drive back the existential darkness that comes from working on a Powerpoint when the rest of your family, and most of the city, is asleep.
Having noticed a proliferation of blogs written by academics, I wondered where the voices of the (so-called) faculty wives were hiding.
So begins Faculty Wife. (One later entry adds, ” Just so you know, I find the whole “faculty wife” moniker so offensive that I taste vomit in mouth every time I hear it.”) It does seem a strangely anachronistic and curiously gendered term, like “Gentleman’s C.”
Okay, let me confess at the outset that I’ve been checking the Circuits section every two hours or so since Tuesday morning, looking for this article, “International Herald Tribune.
Let’s hope that practice makes perfect.
[To the tune of Peter Gabriel, “Games Without Frontiers,” from the album Shaking The Tree.]
I’ve downed the last of my second cup of coffee, and am working at the dining room table. I expect I’ll be here into the wee hours: I have a couple make-them-or-quit deadlines this week. So I’ve got an unnatural amount of caffeine in my system (is there a natural amount?), Pirates of the Caribbean on as visual background (it’s so wonderfully absurd, yet is very finely crafted), and my Southern rock playlist on as audio background.
Wasn’t I supposed to either not have to work this way after graduate school, or get smarter? I always imagined that I would be able to keep normal hours when I got older.
Though truth be told, I’m used to working this way, and my system even seems to require a late night every couple weeks. Now back to work.
Add REST: WHY YOU GET MORE DONE WHEN YOU WORK LESS to your Goodreads shelf
My books on Goodreads
The Distraction Addiction: Getting the Information You Need and the Communication You Want, Without Enraging Your Family, Annoying Your Colleagues, and Destroying Your Soul
reviews: 78
ratings: 316 (avg rating 3.53)
ratings: 316 (avg rating 3.53)
