Some independent bookstore owners and literary critics have complained that Ms. Winfrey's selections fall into predictable patterns. She has chosen more books by woman than men, and often chooses stories about dysfunctional families, about race and about women who emerge from adversity as better people.

Ok. So what? It's about time some institution/group paid more deliberate attention to writing by women, and to writing that deals w/topics that our society likes to ignore. Ok, so the way some of these books might deal with these topics might not be great, but at least the topics are getting on the radar. And they were getting on the radar in a big way:

Viewers flocked to bookstores to buy as many as 1.2 million copies of each new book as soon as it was announced, sending onto the best-seller lists each of the 46 choices, like "She's Come Undone" by Wally Lamb and "Fall on Your Knees" by Ann-Marie MacDonald. Only a handful of books sell one million copies a year, and the vast majority sell fewer than 30,000. Ms. Winfrey herself became the most powerful arbiter of literary quality in the country, and her success helped spur a boom in book groups organized in suburban living rooms and big city libraries.

What did you think of Oprah's Book Club?   11:06:40 AM      comment

I'm installing software updates (iTunes 2.0.4, DVD Player update, and Security Update 2002) so I'll have to restart soon. I've been using OS X for just over three months now and I'm still amazed whenever I type "uptime" into the terminal and get something like this -- two weeks without a shutdown or a restart, and on a laptop, no less! It's crazy. And the last time I restarted was 2 weeks ago when I was screwing around w/the battery and popped it out on accident. Ooops.  10:50:01 AM      comment

This script sounds awesome (now all we need is a ready-made form with all the questions and blanks to record the answers so we can just print out a stack and keep it by the phone), but I still think it puts too much burden on the recipients of the calls to stop them. Why should we have to work so hard to keep our phones (and mailboxes, for that matter) marketing-free?

Fwiw, one way I deal w/telemarketers is simply to remain silent when they call. I have caller ID, so when I get an "unknown caller," I answer, but don't say anything. If my number has been dialed by a computer, the computer waits until you say something before it clicks you over to a human; if you don't anything, the computer just waits, and waits, and waits. This ties up the telemarketer's phone line and reduces the "efficiency" they supposedly get out of using the computer-dialer thing in the first palce. Meanwhile, if it's a live person calling, it won't be too long before the person starts wondering why you're not saying anything -- the person will start talking to you, asking if you're there. Unfortunately, this doesn't remove you from any lists and it probably just adds you to the queue to be called again later. Nevertheless, I've gotten a small bit of satisfaction out of it, and it doesn't require the work of the script and all that. Anyhoo.... diveintomark also lists a couple of other helpful links for stopping unwanted marketing in your home. Check it out.  10:37:36 AM      comment

So, will college (or even high school) classrooms someday be wi-fi equipped? And if so, will students be talking to each other rather than listening? And if so, will this create a richer learning experience? It seems like a nice idea except for one thing: Students in a classroom will not have the same motivation to listen to their teacher as conference-goers -- who paid a great deal to attend the conference, and/or are involved with the subject matter for professional/self-interested reasons. I have this feeling that wi-fi use will be banned during class time at most schools. Maybe not. But this seems like yet another case where new technology offers great promise, but the promise could only be fulfilled if we had different people with different priorities. My experience is that students are not invested in their own education at the college level. This may be because they're not paying for it (parents or loans are), but I think it has much more to do with the larger value (or lack thereof) society places on education -- it's merely a means to an end, a roadblock to be overcome on the road to a paycheck. If there were some way to make students accountable for time spent online during class, they might be encouraged to use the opportunity for the best, but that would require a lot of time on the part of the teacher and a certain amount of honesty on the part of students. I just don't think it will happen, but I bet within five years we'll know.  10:23:52 AM      comment

This is a funny little followup to the Washington Post stories I mentioned the other day. The writer, Joshua Micah Marshall, comes to a conclusion that cuts both ways:

If the Clintonian addiction to polling is already gripping the Bush White House, that telltale symptom -- the inability to know what the definition of "is" is -- doesn't seem far behind.

As the saying goes: if the shoe fits... [via Salon.com]  9:10:20 AM      comment

If you're unsure of why this is significant, look at who is for and against the new plan: Democrats and labor leaders condemn it unconditionally, business groups "were mostly pleased." The only reason business wouldn't like this is because it raises the issue. Business wants the freedom to destroy its workers (through repetitive stress injuries, for example) with absolute impunity. Yeah, sounds like a great deal to me. Why don't people get furious about this? [New York Times: Politics]   8:57:09 AM      comment