Tuesday, June 11, 2002

Washington Post editorial on Detaining Americans. 3:55:33 PM

From Neil Gaiman's journal (although you might have to scroll down a bit to find this quote): Please don't send me chapters of your novels, your novels, ideas for your novels, your short stories, ideas for your short stories, bits of your life story that you think will make a good novels one day or just things you want me to read, give my opinion on, help you get published or fix the spelling on. I don't have time. I understand your one (idea, story, short story, novel, trilogy) is a very short (idea, story, short story, novel, trilogy) but right now I could spend my entire life doing nothing but reading other people's stuff -- and that doesn't even include the books and manuscripts, published, unpublished or soon-to-be-published, that arrive, every day, seeking blurbs or blessing -- and I'd never write another word, and I wouldn't even get all the stuff people want me to read read, let alone get the stuff I need to write written. 1:38:43 PM

I caught the dirty bomb headlines, yesterday, but didn't get a chance to read them until today. I'm not sure what to make of the whole thing, though the title of this post might serve as a decent clue. He was arrested over a month ago. Nice timing on the announcement, making sure to take extend the positive spin headlines that were started about this time last week. Not that we shouldn't extend some kudos to the government for their sleuthing, but let's be careful about trampling over the rights of US citizens. 12:54:23 PM

Since she was not born blind, Jackie understands sighted concepts like colors, and she still talks about colors with her mother in terms of things that were in her life "before". The one thing she does not talk about is the car accident that killed her father and left her blind; it is only referred to indirectly by prepositions: "before" and "after". "This is green like the walls of the living room before." "It's sort of like that pink sweater you wore before, only lighter." And so forth. Mark is two days into what looks to be a month-long effort to build a more accessible weblog. Are Jackie or Michael real people, or are they character sketches? Does it matter? The profiles are rich, detailed, and compelling, addressing how the Internet is at once enabling and limiting. This is a very Cooperesque approach, creating specific, complex people to think about when designing systems, not some ubiquitous "end user." To borrow their tagline, Mark is "humanizing technology." And that's an exceptionally good thing. 10:02:44 AM

Esmé's dance recital was last night. She was in two dances this year -- the Mickey Mouse Club Theme was her tap dance, and Tomorrow (from Annie) was her ballet. Her class is made up of four and five year olds, so expectations aren't exactly high. Of course I'll say she did great, though, as any proud parent would. Afterwards, as we were all walking back to the car, I told her that we all enjoyed watching her dance. It was a lot of fun, I said. "I had fun, too," she replied. "I had fun dancing." Which is exactly the point. 9:39:24 AM