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Predicting the future must be human-kinds second oldest profession. I try to avoid falling into the trap of prognosticating anything, preferring to use a more Darwinian approach in preparing myself and my organization for what will come (flexibility, adaptability, etc.).
Whenever someone does ask me about the future of technology — "What do you think the next big thing in technology will be?" I have a ready answer. I respond with something ridiculous and humorous. "Smell-O-Vision!", I would say, trying to make the point that it is futile to try to predict the unpredictable. How anti-predictive I thought I was.
Today I learned that I'm going to need to invent a new snarky response to that question. Thanks to the innovators at the Oscar Mayer Institute for the Advancement of Bacon, a marketing campaign has just been launched to promote a real-life smell-o-vision device. They have built a hardware plug-in for the iPhone that enables an alarm clock to wake you with the smell of bacon.
At first, I thought April fools day had come early. But on checking this out, it appears that this is legit — it is a real product. Snap the device onto your iPhone, set the app for the time you want to wake and put the phone down on your night stand. At the designated hour, the device will emit puffs of vapour scented like fresh cooked bacon.
Well, it turns out the folks at Oscar Mayer are not the first to think about bringing scent to the user experience. PC Magazine has an article on 10 oderific gadgets and gizmos that you can buy today which lever what scientists believe is among the oldest of all our senses.
The Science of Smell
According to a New York Times book review of the aptly titled Smell, the nerve bundles branching backward from our nose are connected to the evolutionary ancient parts of our brain. The olfactory system also connects more or less directly with our limbic system — the part of our brains that deals with our emotions. Smelling something generally leads to emotionally nuanced and even instinctive actions. Hormone production is also triggered quite automatically through the strong connection of olfactory nerves to the pituitary gland. The upshot is that what we smell influences our general bodily function in an way that we may not be concious of. According to the book review, before we can rationalize or verbalize what we smell, but have an immediate reaction and start to act in accordance with it.
Personally, I can relate having recently spent a year suffering from anosmia . What I missed most during that year was not the joy of tucking into a fragrant glass wine nor was it wafting up the waves of scents from a bouquet of flowers. What I felt was a general feeling of missing the mini-surprises of unsought emotions. That is, I was not pleasantly distracted from my daily activities when I caught a waft of my wife's perfume as she walked by. I was not pleased by the clean smell of a freshly washed towel after my shower. I was not alerted to the state of cleanliness (or lack thereof) of the public toilet I walk into at the Hospital I work at. I could walk past a bagel shop and not know I had done so. No sensation of sweet baking. No reflexive mouth watering. No gentle hunger pangs.
Now that I can smell and taste again, I have become very attuned to the little mini-emotions that pop into my conciousness all during the day. So much richness has been restored to my every day life. I am happy to smell and to feel the emotions induced by smell — even the negative ones brought on by stinky garbage.
The Emotion of Smell
Our sense of smell is a very under appreciate human sense. Even reading about smells can induce emotion and memory. See if you can read the poem on the left by Christopher Morley without your limbic system triggering a pleasant emotion or two.
If you found yourself experiencing the warm recollections of the smell of ripe apples and camp-fire smoke, this little poem provides some subjective proof that our nose is an important part of our emotion-inducing senses.
I don't think I'll be a customer for the bacon vapour alarm clock gadget, but it's nice to know that the frequently forgotten olfactory system isn't totally ignored in today's personal technology maelstrom.
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Quick, choose one: Takati or Ulumo?
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Welcome to the world of User Interface Design. Here is your first assignment:
You are tasked with building OTN's next great telemedicine service which will be delivered on PCs, smart-phones and tablets. Thousands of users are going to click on your service. Your service consists of two different applications ('apps'). The first app is called TAKATI and the second app is called ULUMO (don't worry what these strange names mean, play along). Your job is to choose a graphical look-and-feel that will make it apparent to users which app is which.
Which of the two graphics above do you choose to be the icon for the TAKATI app and which one for ULUMO? After you have chosen, take a moment to reflect on your decision. Was choosing easy or hard? Why do you think a shape and it's colour just seems to fit a particular word? What would happen if you reversed your decision – would it make a difference to how usable our service was?
Over the last few years the Ontario Telemedicine Network (OTN) have been increasingly driving more of our service to the Internet. Our members can now get a broad swath of information about how to use telemedicine through on-line documents, check-lists, policies and member agreements. They can search and find healthcare providers and sign-up for educational opportunities on-line. They can schedule telemedicine encounters. If they need training, they can get it through a web-based multimedia at any time. They can launch videoconferencing events from the web or smart-phone. Have a videoconferencing encounter on their PCs over the public internet. We have a lot to be proud of, but we are only just beginning. In the next several months, we will be bringing all these isolated services under one web framework and one look-and-feel. Harmonizing all these services into one Telemedicine Centre will bring coherence and functionality as our users have never seen before.
As the little assignment above demonstrated, it can be important how you name things, what colour you use and what they look like. User interface design is about these issues and a lot more. Think of all the times you have been frustrated by poor user interface design on business-oriented websites or apps. Who has not had an experience an inability to find information on-line, to specify the correct product to purchase, to navigate a complex on-line form or to find out what to do when you run into trouble. Bad design leads to a bad user experience. And a bad user experience can lead to disillusionment and abandonment. Designing good graphical user interfaces is key if we want our users to adopt our services.
According to Jacob Nielsen, The distinction between user interface and user experience is subtle but important:
We design the user interface: screens, error messages, forms, commands, etc. But users experience the system as a whole, comprised of both the design and the implementation as well as many other components, such as network delays, which can ruin response times and degrade user experience as much as bad design can.
How can we ensure that our users have a positive and productive experience using our on-line services? Many of us at OTN already have aspects of the user experience at the centre of our job descriptions. However, the graphical user interface is a new thing for us. It will play in increasingly important role in user experience as we release more service through PC/Phone/Tablets and it needs its own special attention.
To this end, I have formed a User Interface working group to kick-start this work. We have been meeting and working on the user interface and user experience for our PC-based videoconference portal and the Telemedicine Centre with some great results (coming soon — be patient).
We all understand how important it is to make on-line services 'easy to use'. However, making things easy is not always easy. It takes design expertise, effort and persnickety attention to subtle but important detail. With the formation of the User Interface working group, we now have a team which focused on the User Interface aspects of our user's experience making sure our on-line services are the very best they can be.
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An Innovation Doctrine
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Lately, I have been reading a lot to better understand how my organization could respond to the rapid personalization of healthcare, mobile health computing (mHealth), social networking and ubiquitous communications.
As I was researching, I recalled an important insight in one of the books I had read by Dr. Jared Diamond. In his excellent book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail Or Succeed, Dr. Diamond outlines the major problems that societies historically have faced and how they mis-handled these problems:
• Failure to anticipate a problem before it arrives
• Failure to perceive it once it has arisen
• Failure to attempt to solve it after it has been perceived
• Failure to succeed in attempts to solve it
Dr. Diamond was discussing problems like major ecological, political or economic misteps that have brought down entire civilizations. However, I thought that his succinct 4-step failure mechanism applies equally well to other problems such as a disruptive technology or a fundamental market shift.
On thinking about this passage, it occurred to me that if we transform Dr. Diamond words in a positive way, we get a doctrine of innovation:
• Anticipate an opportunity before it arrives
• Perceive the opportunity once it has arisen
• Attempt to exploit the opportunity after it has been perceived
• Succeed in exploiting the opportunity
Jarad Diamond's history lesson is that we should not be complacent in the face of major change. My modern take-away from this is that yes, we should be ever vigilant of disruptive change. But also, we must be open to major opportunities. Once we see a strategic opportunity coming, we must energetically embrace it.
This innovation doctrine is one of the ways to ensure an organization that embraces change, is responsive and sustainable, and an active contributor to an ever-changing health system.
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Baroque Cycle – 2nd Rotation
I just finished reading the remarkable "Baroque Cycle" by Neil Stephenson.
It's a 3-volume, 8 book, 3,000 page historical fiction covering a pantheon of characters, in the late 17th and early 18th century. It's about international trade, wars, espionage, heists, slave-trade, cryptography, enlightenment, alchemy, the Newton-Leibniz calculus controversy, piracy, Cromwell, vagabonds and lords, monetary policy, the age or reason, English and French monarchies, baroque architecture and city planning, King Salomon's Gold, South-East Asian warlords, duels, unrequited love, the Plague, horology, Tzar Nicholas, buried treasure, Catholic-Protestant-Puritan battle for ascendancy, sea voyages, hand-to-hand combat with period arms, the Inquisition, the fire of London, The Royal Society, and 20 other joyously interconnected ideas.
What is more it is imbued with colorful heroes and villains, many based on unimaginably detailed research of real people living at the time. It carries on at a good pace and many sections leave you smiling and shaking your head at the vocabulary and virtuosity of this remarkable author.
The Baroque cycle is an epic masterpiece by a genius.
It is so good, that this is the second time I've read it.
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Preserving History is Not a Spectator Sport
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Yesterday, I spent the whole day copying home movies off of DVDs onto my computer hard-drive. I was doing this as an act of historical preservation, one of many that I have done over the years. As I was feeding disk after disk into the computer, I reflected on the effort needed to fight the ravages of time …
Pop Quiz: Name Your Great Grand-Mother
As my family's self-appointed archivist, I have taken it upon myself to capture my family's narrative, images and memories. Over the years I have developed an extended family tree, have recorded miles of video tape, have transcribed thousands of words of narrative, have interviewed family members on audio tape and have taken thousands of pictures. I have also documented a mission of rediscovery where I joined my father on a trip to Poland to visit the village and the people who saved him during the war.
As the child of a holocaust survivor, I know too well that the memory of people and of entire human societies easily vanish. I have made it my mission to capture and record as much personal history as I can. I now know quite a bit of my parent's story. Less of my grandparents. And sadly, still almost nothing of my great-grandparents. This is true of most people I know, and we are the poorer because of it. So, for the sake of my children (and their children), I have adopted this archivist quest so they don't suffer from historical myopia where only the last generation or so is in view at any one time.
A Menagerie of Media
Starting in the early 80's, I started taking photos on cheap point-and-shoot cameras and gathering the prints into albums. At the time, film negatives were a nuisance and sadly were never kept. Later that decade, I moved to 35mm slide film for the superior quality and the experience of viewing images up on a big screen. My grandparents and my uncle had taken beautiful B&W photos and large format colour slides, so I also gathered and cataloged these as well.
In the late 80's I bought a film camera that used state-of-the-art cassette tapes. I took hours of video of my sons growing up, family events and of goofy canoe trips with my friends. During the 1990's I upgraded to a 35mm still camera and to a move compact video camera. In the 2000's I upgraded again to digital cameras and digital video.
|Video Cassette
|Video Mini-Cassette
|Paper Photos
|35mm Slides
I also gathered old letters, official documents, postcards and other gems of the lives of my parents and grandparents.
My wife is my co-crusader in the fight against the ravages of time and memory. She keeps a daily diary, writing her life's story and the interplay of her family and friends. Every night she writes a page or two. Every year, she starts a new volume. In the basement are boxes with over 30 volumes, as she has been writing without pause since she was nine years old.
Entropy Never Sleeps
Paper letters, diaries and photographs along with magnetic tape and plastic DVDs all have life spans determined by physical forces. According to the experts, well managed, acid-free cotton or linen paper can last over 500 years. Magnetic tape has 25 years before the content is at risk. Interestingly, even DVDs are not expected to last more than 50 years. But even these numbers can be optimistic. The content stored on these physical materials are subject to local destruction; the entire Library of Alexandria went up in smoke after only 250 years in existence, even though the papyrus and vellum scrolls in it probably could have lasted much longer.
What is the best to store these historical treasures? My answer is threefold:
- digitize the material to mitigate physical degradation of the media over time
- relentlessly adapt the digital content to newer storage media as technology advances makes previous storage media obsolete
- physically disperse the content to mitigate the forces local destruction (purposeful or accidental)
So, besides the oral tradition of telling stories, the only real hope of keeping my family's history alive is to digitize it, transform it from time-to-time and to disperse it.
Network Storage and Cloud Storage
Hard disk are mechanical machines. Their parts wear and then crash. It's not a question of if, but only of when. A solution to this issue is to set up a storage scheme where two or more hard disks have mirrored content. In that way, if one of them crashes, the other has a complete copy of all the information. Then, you just replace the defective hard-disk, and the set of content is copied across. Now you are back to steady-state again. I have set this system up in my house using a consumer device called DLink DNS-323. It is a little box connected to my network with a pair of hard disk in it. Software running on all the computers in the house continually copy important files from the local hard-drives over to the DNS-323. If a computer hard-drive were to crash, we could restore the content from the DNS-323 after replacing the hard-drive. Even if a file is mistakenly erased, we can get it back from the DNS-323.
But this isn't just a disk-in-a-box. The DNS-323 is a dual-disk device. If a disk in the DNS-323 were to crash, our back-up information wouldn't be lost. That is because the other disk in the box has a perfect copy. I can simpley swap out the defective disk for a new disk and the content from the other disk will be automatically copied over.
Hard disk redundancy on the network
That's a good step to preserving important family memories, but it doesn't address the need to physically disperse content. Remember, everything in a building is at risk in a theft or fire, even dually-redundant hard-disks put in place by skilled geeks.
The current best practice in information storage is to put your content in the cloud. What this means in practice is that your content will reside on redundant and backed-up hard-disks connected to one or more servers somewhere in the USA. So, if your local copy of your content is damaged or destroyed, you can (in theory) simply download a copy from your cloud storage provider. Mind-you, all of this is contingent on keeping up your annual payments, having your provider stay in business throughout the years, and having the fabric of our society staying together so that services like these don't end up like the Library of Alexandria. Admittedly, these are a lot of assumptions. So, realists that I am, I consider the cloud to be a medium-term solution to the problem of content preservation.
There are plenty to choose from, but I ended up signing up with a service called Crash Plan. I have set up my family computers so that they all copy important content to both the DND-323 and the Crash Plan servers in the cloud.
Only 6 months to go before all my home videos are uploaded ….
You have to have some patience with this set up. The connection between our house and the Crash Plan servers (in Minnesota, they tell me) is through the family Internet DSL connection. With 400GBytes of video data queued to upload through only 400Kb/sec of upload bandwidth, this initial process is going to take over 6-months!
One thing about history is that it teaches us patience.
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eBook? eGads!
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I don't want to make too big a deal about it, but I got a Kindle for my birthday and I found the impact on me to be a little scary.
Unless you have been living under a rock, you will have noted that eReader devices and their associated eBooks are becoming quite popular. Over the last couple of years, they have emerged to become a significant element in the rapidly evolving cyborg that is modern western culture. The price had recently come down on the latest generation of these devices and thus I felt I was ready to satisfy my intellectual and geek curiosity. I let my wife know I would be interested in one. So, on the day of my birthday, she "gave" me the one I had chosen and ordered the week before.
Its a Book on a Screen. Get Over it.
So what? What's the big deal?
Reading is important to me. I read not just for the decadent escapism of a good book; I read to satisfy my need to understand who I am and how the world works. It's hard to describe, but I read for sort of the same reasons a bodybuilder works out … for the fitness it provides. I feel 'flabby' if I'm not reading — unfit intellectually and spiritually.
When I was in my teens, I read fantasy and science fiction books. Isaac Asimov, David Niven, Harry Harrison and JRR Tolkien were among my favorites . Then, in my early twenties, after reading Douglas Hofstadter's amazing Godel, Escher, Bach , my appetite changed to a craving for psychology, natural history and sciences. As I read more on these topics, I followed references and reviews and I found myself increasingly gravitating to books written by the great thinkers of our time. I sought out authors who could explain nature and human-kind through writings in science, natural & human history and philosophy. Lately I begrudgingly find myself developing a taste for well written literature that explores elements of the human condition ( such as Neal Stephenson ).
What I have read over these years has significantly molded who I am and my perspectives on how the universe works. I have steadily collected a library of hundreds of books. Scattered at home and in my office are the seminal works by Richard Dawkins, Roger Penrose, Steven J. Gould, John Keegan, Jared Diamond, Robert Wright and others. These works have shaped my understanding, have structured my thoughts and have helped to dispelled the fog of my ignorance.
Almost like a child with a security blanket, I have kept my books close to me all these years. I never borrowed books — I almost always bought them so that I could keep them. For example, I can lift my head up from this computer screen now and can see dozens of books ("my" books) on the shelves of the family room. There they sit stacked and scattered sedately on the shelf. Some have been with me for 35 years. Just glancing at them brings back into focus their key messages and the feeling of wonder I felt when I first read their pages. Once in a while, I pull one out read a passages to my sons when we are discussing a pertinent topic. Most of the time they just lay there quietly. But even so, it brings me a gentle pleasure knowing that I can walk over and take one down and once again be bathed in their knowledge.
LCD? Thou Upstart!
So, how would a cold electronic slate stand-up to the majesty of the printed book? Was it silly to assume that a skinny, inorganic doodad would somehow matching the stately presence of a well bound codex? Was I just wasting my money on a fad? There is only one way to find out. I decided that I was going to give this a fair shot, but I secretly thought it going to be a short lived experiment.
First, it is important to say that Amazon has done a decent job with their latest generation eReader. Its design and functionality has a lot going for it and it is priced reasonably ($139). Many have written reviews on the Kindle hardware and user experience ( so I won't). Suffice it to say that the reading experience is surprisingly good.
To ease my transition (and give the doohickey a fighting chance) I also ordered the nice leather cover with the integrated light. This addition nearly doubled the purchase price, but aesthetics are important. It made the glass and plastic device feel more like a 'real' book.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. eHyde
Soon after firing up the device and using it for a while, I noted a curious change in how I read.
I didn't just buy an eBook at the eStore, download it onto the eReader and start reading linearly, as I did a regular book. Combined with the power of the public Internet, the Kindle gave me access to dozens of important books I was interested in, but would have never had taken the troubled to find or to buy. It is not well known, but the copyright on many books expire about 70 years after the author's death. At that point, the intellectual property reverts to the public domain. That means there are no royalties to be paid and anyone can copy and publish the work.
Amazon provides a good number of these older public-domain books for download on their website for free or for a nominal amount (a dollar or two). But other brilliant projects such as gutenberg.org, are taking on the job with a passion — digitizing huge libraries of older books and making them available for free download. The size and diversity of their catalog is stupefying. I have downloaded (for free!) seminal scientific and literary milestones including Darwin's On the Origins of Species, Newton's Principa Mathematica, the complete works of William Shakespeare, Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, chunks of Encyclopedia Britannica, books of poetry by Robert Service, The Koran, etc. etc. Say what you will about the deleterious impact of the internet on our culture, Internet + Gutenberg Project + eReader = boon to literacy.
On the Kindle, you can search and annotate the eBook's text. You can share you annotations using social media. You can pick-up reading where you left off on your PC or your Smart Phone (it syncs everything up). You can change font size. You can highlight an unfamiliar word and get a pop-up dictionary explanation in just one second. You're not just passively reading, you're busy doing stuff.
In three months, I've downloaded more than two dozen books (and several audio books to boot). However, having a book does not mean reading a book. Since early October, I have managed to read only five eBooks cover-to-cover (note the soon-to-be arcane reference to covers):
|Einstein: His Life and Universe
|Walter Issacson
|The Einstein Theory of Relativity
|H.A. Lorentz
|Two Years Before the Mast
|Richard Henry Dana Jr.
|The Road
|Cormac McCarthy
I have started reading a dozen others (where 'started' is anything from 'skimmed a few pages' to 'read a chapter or two') .
That being said, it was easy to read the five books on the Kindle's eInk screen. I didn't suffer. I got as much out of them as I would have if I read them in paper form. I'm almost ashamed to admit that I liked it.
Now for the scary stuff. The Kindle has turned me into a distracted and impatient reader. Over the course of a few months, my reading has changed from a slow stroll down a leafy lane to a game of over-caffeinated hop-scotch. No more do I reach over to the bed table and select from a stack of 3 in-progress books, one of which I will advance a dozen or so pages before I drift off. Now, I grab my eReader, peruse the twenty or so eBooks I have downloaded and then jump into one for a little dip. If it is boring or I don't get a buzz off one, I pop back up and then dive into another one. Shampoo, rinse, repeat.
Interested in reading a bit more of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography? Hop in and scan a page or two. Are his musings too arcane? No problem, let's see what Darwin had to say about animal husbandry in 19th century England. The device remembers where you were and takes you back to the location you last left off. Had enough Victorian discourse on pigeon plumage deformation under artificial selection? Time for something a little more timely. Let's check out the front page of the New York Times (yes, the Kindle has WIFI and a web browser built in). Etc. Etc.
Reading is no Longer A Spectator Sport
So what does this all mean? What conclusions do I draw from the experiment? Is the eReader/eBook a good thing or a bad thing? It's tough to say.
As Melvin Kranzberg said, technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral. In this case, Mr. Kranzberg is right on. eReaders and eBooks are not neutral. What they are doing is changing the nature of the medium.
With almost 10% of books sales now e-books, the marketplace for the written word is just starting to feel the change. Traditional media such as newspapers and magazines have struggled to try to monetize their content on the web now have found a possible channel for electronic distribution through eReader devices (eBook readers, general purpose devices such as iPads). Venerable brands like the New York Times and the Economist may yet survive the inexorable implosion of their print businesses.
It is not just the distribution channel for books that will undergo change, but the concept of a book as a static lump of text is also up for grabs. Neal Stephenson is in the midst of a fascinating experiment of writing a book as an on-line only serial novel. Together with Greg Bear, he is writing the core story with chapters released every month or so. Readers 'subscribe' to the book and download chapters as they are published. Specialized apps are available for all the major Smart Phones, pads and eBook readers. But here is where it gets interesting. The authors are also producers in the sense that they are working with artists, film-makers, game designers and us, the end-readers, to create a rich interactive social-world where the story takes place.
Check out the Mongoliad for more information.
This and other social-media based projects may be pioneering a change to the very concept of a book. We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto.
It is trite to quote Marshall McLuhan famous aphorism, but the old man couldn't have been more right. The medium is the message.
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Old and Improved
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This week, I had an interesting exchange of emails with colleagues from the old days . We worked together on the Ontario Telepresence Project, a multi-disciplinary, multi-year, multi-million dollar research project in the area of Computer Supported Collaborative Work. The 3-year project pioneered the use of videoconferencing in group settings and explored the intersections of sociology and technology before way before it was fashionable to do so.
Gale Moore, who was a among the lead researchers on the project, started the conversation thread. She drew our attention to an article she just read about a 'new' group awareness system called myUnity.
MyUnity – dressed-up in all it's newness
MyUnity is an awareness tool which presents you with an automatically updating visual contact list. It displays your buddy's availability based on multiple sources of information about her. For example, it draws on the location of her cell phone and comparative snap-shots from her webcam. From this (and other cues) it determines if your buddy is in and/or available. Pretty Cool.
Cool indeed. However, it turns out that this idea has been around for quite a while. As a matter of fact, in 1997 a colleague and I built a product that did pretty much the same thing called Prorata.
ProRata circa 1997 – Ahhh, I was so handsome back then
Prorata grabbed a grainy, low-resolution, black & white snapshot from your buddy's webcam about once in 15-seconds. It gathered a few of these together and displayed them in a kind of buddy-grid so that you could see roughly who was in, who was out and who was busy. We purposely didn't grab real-time, high-res, colour images because we didn't want this to be surveillance, but rather awareness. The social analogy was to make it like looking down a hallway and seeing someone seated at their desk. You see just enough to know their availability, nothing else. We would know if the buddy was on the phone, sitting with a visitor, out of the office, etc. Just like peeking into an office in real-life. And the best part is the you and your buddy's didn't have to explicitly set a flag to tell people your availability from moment to moment. We could infer this simply by glancing at the grid and seeing what you were doing. Chat and click-to-call features were also part of the application.
Now, Prorata was ahead of it's time (a euphemism meaning I didn't sell many copies). However, I like to think that it anticipated many of the group awareness/collaboration tools that followed.
It would be nice to say that this buddy-grid concept was my original idea, but it wasn't. No — the concept was around and I 'borrowed' the idea from a tool called Postcards cooked up at the University of Toronto. Postcards also grabbed webcam images and displayed them on a grid. But it also took as one of it's inputs the 'door state'. Using the roller-ball mechanism of a regular PC mouse, the researchers instrumented the hinges of our office doors so that the software could sense if our doors were open, ajar or closed. These are important social signals and now we could use our doors as inputs to our PCs. Nice!
A rubber-band and a torn-apart PC mouse = door state sensor
However, the UofToronto's Postcards application was itself based on still earlier work by Paul Dourish and Sara Bly called Portholes (see the Proceedings of the ACM CHI '92 Conference pages 541-547). This tool also did the buddy-grid thing.
But wait — you guessed it, Portholes was itself based on even earlier work by Travers and Borning who presented on it at a 1991 ACM CHI conference on Human Factors in Software. I am sure the trail doesn't end there…
Anyway, as imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Gale was bemused at the apparent novelty of the myUnity product. The implied question is: can a product really claim to be 'new' if it basically the same idea that was cooked up twenty years ago?
The answer is interesting.
Bill Buxton (who was our Principal Researcher on the project) responded to Gale's email by pointing to a magazine article he wrote in which he ponders this particular innovation phenomenon. In the article, he refers to the muti-decade incubation period for ideas as "The Long Nose of Innovation". The nose being the stretched-out period of time before the adoption curve starts to take off. Bill observes that it takes a very long time for a technological idea to spin and morph and grow into a mainstream product/service. He points to a research study that traced the history of a set of core technologies in the CIT sector. The study found that it is not at all uncommon for a technology to take 20 or 30 years to mature from inception to a $ billion industry. Bill ends the thought-provoking article with this observation: "Any technology that is going to have significant impact over the next 10 years is already at least 10 years old".
So, the take away message for me from our email conversation is that the game of innovation is not just about invention. Truly new stuff is important, but it's not the whole story. Innovation is also about how you bring forward technologies that may already be invented, but in need of interconnection and clever transformation.
The technologies for the next $ billion dollar marketplace are likely close at hand.
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To see a world in a grain of sand
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I had a moment of awe during these 'days of awe' … but not the religious kind.
When I was a grad student at the Technion in the mid 80s, I designed a custom image processor on a microchip whose transistor channels were about 5 micrometers wide ( 5 x 10 ^-6 = 5 millionths of a meter). With this technology, I could line up about 15 transistors end-to-end across the width of a human hair. That seems as impressive to me now as it did then.
However a few days ago, I read a story about Intel's recent announcement that it's upcoming generation of processors will have transistors 32 nanometes wide, with a roadmap taking them to 22 and then 15 nanometers in just a couple of years. Fifteen nanometers is 15 billionths of a meter. That's almost a thousand times smaller than the technology I was working with twenty years ago.
With Intel's new fabrication technology, I could have lined up over 5,300 transistors end-to-end across the width of a human hair. In fact, fifteen nanometers is so small, that I would have had to take into consideration that I would only get about 60 atoms of silicon to work with in the transistor channel. Quantum effects start to make themselves felt at this scale. I would have paid more attention in my quantum physics classes had I known that in only a few decades designers would bouncing electrons off of only a few dozen slippery atoms.
What gave me pause when I read the article was not just that the advanced fabrication technology I used for my Master's degree had been eclipsed a thousand-fold. What I marveled at was the market pull for these ever-shrinking devices. To me, it is a complete surprise use that these ultra small, ultra cheep devices are now being used for. No one a few decades ago would dream that homes would have dozens of high-power processors in them and that middle-class teenagers would walk around with a half dozen powerful computers for their personal use (laptops, cell phones, music players, smart-chip credit cards, etc.). Today, my teen-aged kids would find it difficult to keep up their studies, their hobbies and their friendships without using personal processors and the computer networks that link them. In an incredibly short time, western economies and society have quickly adopted and become dependent on cheap CPUs, memory and networks.
In their book Connected , Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler coin an apt term for the species who's behaviour is mediated by social connections — Homo dictyous — "network man" (from the Latin Homo for "human" and the Greek Dicty for "net") . They use this idea in a slightly different context (as an alternative to economic-based analysis of human behaviour), but I think the term is apt in a more technological sense. We have become deeply dependent on our silicon devices in ways that we don't even fully understand.
With Moore's law , we can look forward to even smaller devices by the end of the decade. In fact, fifteen nanometers is just an order of magnitude larger than the size of a DNA molecule (about 2nm). So, it is not unreasonable to expect that transistors will be the size of DNA by 2020. They will also be extremely cheap, extremely low-power and extremely ubiquitous.
Imagine the possibilities.
Addendum: Things keep driving forward. In the 6-weeks since I wrote this blog. On Oct 29, 2010, Intel, Samsung, Toshiba announced a consortium aiming for 10nm chips by 2016.
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Non-Business Books About Business
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You can tell a lot about people by what they collect. For instance, when I was a teen, one of the ways that I would learn about the party host was to rummage through their stack of LPs. It said something about the guy's personality if he had B.B.King and Hendrix albums on the top of the pile, vs. Donovan and K.C. and the Sunshine Band.
As I got older, I would look through the books on the shelf. Dozens of heavily thumbed sci-fi pocket-books paints a different picture of personality than does 1000-page romantic epics (like The Thornbirds) stacked like bricks next to the bed.
Even in today's electronic world, books remain an interesting indicator of personality. Business books are among the standard fixtures on the credenza of many of the business executives I know. The giant lettering screaming at you from the glossy dust-covers seem to be the sine qua non of the mahogany set. Often, my executive colleagues are sporting the latest just-off-the-press hardcover by the guru of the moment. Smiling at us from the back-page vanity photo, these authors extol us that our mission is in REENGINEERING THE CORPORATION, but we have to take on the SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE as go IN SEARCH OF EXCELLENCE but to be careful about CROSSING THE CHASM or else we may reach the TIPPING POINT.
The Cream of the Business Press?
I read many of these kinds of popular business press books while I was studying for my MBA. As my studies were part-time and took 5-years to complete, I saw more than a few ideas come and go. New theories would contradict (or at least displace) the old ones. Firms that were highlighted for their 'excellence' were a few years later bankrupt and out of business. Authors which were lauded on talk shows for their brilliant insight were soon in the shadows of obscurity. Few of the ideas stood the test of time. I am not saying that their is nothing to learn from those that study the nature of economics and commerce. But the track-record of the popular business press is poor.
Some Non-Business Books on Business
I am a technology executive and I too do a lot of reading about business. However, I rarely read business books. In fact, I believe some of the best ideas on the subject is in the realm of evolutionary science, psychology and in human history. In my reading of evolution (through such brilliant authors as Richard Dawkins, Robert Wright and Jonathan Weiner) I have learned about game theory, competition/collaboration, the interplay of genotype/phenotype, envorionmental fit, adaptation and human psychology. Douglas Hofstadter, Roger Penrose and Steven Pinker have taught me about the fundamental building blocks of the mind and how they form culture, morals, behaviours and norms. Through my study of conflict and military history (by such authors as John Keegan, Sun Tzu, Anthony Beavor) and the history of innovation/trade/economics (by Daniel Boorstin, Mark Kurlansky, Pierre Burton) reveal the manifestation of our evolutionary and psychological makeup in the interplay of leadership, technology, passion, risk taking and the pursuit of security, status and wealth.
The ideas in these books speak to the fundamental nature of who we are, how we interact with one another and the ways we can make our living in the world. Isn't that what business is all about?
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Inputs and Outputs
Filed Under Tech
I am 'tech support' for my parents and in-laws. Whenever I travel to Winnipeg to visit them, I spend hours installing drivers, purging spam, defragmenting disks, installing printers and memory, etc. etc.
During my last visit, my mother-in-law was telling me something about her 'computer'. It took me a moment but then I realized she was actually talking about her CRT monitor. To her, the monitor was the computer. That is because that is the part that she looks at. The glowing screen is where she receives feedback on her keyboard and mouse inputs and see the resulting outputs. She doesn't interact with the grey box full of boards, wires and spinning disks — it is irrelevant to what she is trying to accomplish. To her (as to many people) the input/output transducers are the computer.
My mother-in-law's cognitive model of computing brought to mind a time in the 90's where I worked with a group of user-interface geniuses at the University of Toronto. I was a research manager funding and promoting the work of professors, students and staff working on multi-disciplinary projects within the departments of computer science, engineering, sociology and psychology. These folks were creating the intellectual framework for many of the user interfaces that we use today.
Hiroshi Ishii working the Active Desk at the Ontario Telepresence Project
I worked closely with a team that was on the forefront of what was then called Computer Supported Collaborative Work. The Ontario Telepresence Project built and experimented with numerous computing, audio and video systems to enable collaboration at a distance. It was there, years before the Internet became part of our society's fabric, that I learned about distance collaboration through videoconferencing and computing systems.
Another one of my favourite groups were the Neural Networks guys. This eclectic bunch were exploring how to create dynamic, adaptive computing systems which simulated how our brains learn. Their research accomplishments were many, but among the most evocative for me was student Sidney Fels' Glove Talk II.
Listen to the Hand (click for 30-second movie)
GloveTalkII is a system that translates hand gestures to speech through an adaptive interface. Hand gestures are mapped continuously to ten control parameters of a parallel formant speech synthesizer. The mapping allows the hand to act as an artificial vocal tract that produces speech in real time. This gives an unlimited vocabulary in addition to direct control of fundamental frequency and volume. Currently, the best version of Glove-TalkII uses several input devices (including a Cyberglove, a ContactGlove, a three space tracker, and a foot pedal), a parallel formant speech synthesizer, and three neural networks. One subject has trained to speak intelligibly with Glove-TalkII. He speaks slowly but with far more natural sounding pitch variations than a text-to-speech syntesizer.
It is incredible to think that this ground-breaking work was done 15-years ago and only now are gesture-based inputs finding their way into the marketplace. Apple's iPod with it's gesture control is only the most famous example of many new products in this field.
I believe that increased processor speeds, miniturization and mobilitiy are important factors in bringing the benefits of information technology to our society. But we will also need innovative, adaptive, intuitive user-interfaces which fit the way we work and interact.
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One of the things that I hate the most is when I am working on a document for work at home and I forget to put it Dropbox. Then I go to work and realize that I don't have the document I'd worked half the night on, and now I cannot get the document that I need because it is on my home computer. I am not sure if this happens to you or not, but man, this just frustrates me to no end.
I know there are many ways for me to not forget my document on my home computer, but I stumbled upon something a couple of weeks ago and I had no idea it even existed. This is called the Chrome Remote Desktop, and yes, it is part of Google Chrome (well, with the addition of a small extension). I thought to myself, "Google made a remote desktop app and how did I not know about this?" I just had to try it out to see it for myself.
Getting Started
If you are curious like me, one of the first things you need to do is to head over to the Chrome Web Store and get this free extension. Yes, you do need to be running the Chrome web browser if you are going to take advantage of this remote desktop app. So, if you don't have it, go and download Chrome first, then head over to the web store.
Once you download and install the extension, you now need to set it up. You will find two options that you can choose from. One, you can setup something called Remote Assistance, which we will get into later. For the remote desktop feature, you are going to want to look under the "My Computers" heading and click on "Enable remote connections". This allows you to be able to access your home computer from somewhere else.
You will then be asked to set up a pin, which will be crucial for when you want to later access your computer. You will then be lead through a series of questions asking you to allow your computer to be remotely accessed. Once this is done, your computer is now set up and ready to be remoted in to.
Remoting Into a Computer
Now, when you want to access your home computer from work, all you have to do is, first, make sure your home computer is on so that you can access it. Then you are going to want to download the Remote Desktop app on your work computer. The good thing is, if you have Chrome sync enabled on both computers, the extension should already be installed at work when you get there (or vise versa). You will then be asked to enter in your pin code so that you can access your home computer. Once you do this, you will now be able to access your home computer on your Chrome web browser. Your files are all ready to be accessed, moved to Dropbox, or whatever else you need to do. And if you want to start downloading a movie to watch tonight, hey, you could start it remotely, too. Remote desktop might sound geeky, but it can come downright handy for almost anyone sometime or other.
Another feature of this app is called Remote Assistance, where you can share your screen with someone else. This feature comes in handy if you want someone to be able to walk you through something on your computer, but they are somewhere else. Again, both of you need to have the Remote Desktop app downloaded and the one who wants to share their screen will start the process and they will get an access code to share with the person who they are trying to share their screen with. Once they put in the code, they can now see the other person's screen and talk them through what they need to do.
After testing this out on my home and work computer, I found that it worked pretty good. I have tried out my fair share of VNC clients and this works probably just as good as most others. The main thing is, is that you are going to want to make sure you have a pretty decent internet connection otherwise there will be some lag. I was able to access my home computer without a problem, and I could run apps from my work computer that were on my home computer. As with any VNC client, you are going to be limited in that, you won't be able to access your home computer and run it as if you were on it. It'll feel slower, but when you really need to get something done remotely, the great thing is that you can!
What's really intriguing about this app is that it is free, whereas most other VNC clients are at least $20 or more, depending on what you get. It is currently in beta, and it has been for a while now, so I am not sure once it comes out of it, if there will actually be a price on it. Knowing Google, though, it'll likely be free in the end. Another great thing is that it only requires Google Chrome, which means you could remote into your home or office computer from a Chromebook if you use one for mobile work.
Overall, I have to say I was impressed with the remote desktop app and really liked using it. Although I don't use a VNC app that much, this does come in handy when I need to be able to access my home computer. What is nice is that since it is running through Chrome, you can really be on any computer that has a Chrome browser and you can access your home computer. I also think that the Remote Assistance feature could definitely come in handy for businesses who could utilize a feature like that, or for the rest of us that sometimes need to help out less technical family and friends. And best of all, it is free, and the way that Google works, they usually keep things like this free.
So, what are you waiting for? Go and check this app out and try it for yourself. It will make forgetting documents on your home computer a thing of the past, at the very least!
A free Chrome extension that lets you remotely connect to your computers from any computer with Chrome installed.
- Chrome Remote Desktop Beta |
- Free |

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It seems fair to say that Twitter has truly hit the mainstream in recent months, as well as the mainstream media, especially now that it is being used as a communication and broadcasting tool by our revolutionary-minded Persian friends.
The range of Twitter uses are as broad as they are deep, despite initial concerns about the 140-character framework and those lame 'feeding the cat' or 'going to the shop' tweets. As such I thought it would be a good idea to collate a bunch of recent Slideshare presentations that explore how Twitter can be used, catering for all levels of adoption.
Hopefully these slides will prove useful if you're just starting out (see my tips for beginner's post if you are), and also if you're a more advanced Twitter user (you can skip through the basics for the meatier stuff).
Enjoy...Twitter: Who Cares What You're Doing Right Now, Anyway? By Scott Abel. How Twitter Changed My Life By Minxuan Lee. The Tao of Twitter: An intro guide By David Griner. Twitter Changes Everything Via Gravity Summit. Become A Twitter Ninja By Warren Sukernek. Twitter O Reilly Via First Last. Twitter For Business: A Step By Step By 360digitalinfluence. Twitter: A Social Web Tool for PR By Bernhard Hofer. WordPress & Twitter: It takes two to make your blog go right. By Wayne Sutton. Twitter As A Tool For Journalism By John einar Sandvand. [Image by carrotcreative via Flickr, various rights reserved]
Comments (7)
thanks for sharing this insights for us all .... invaluable
Great list and thanks for including my presentation.
Great collection. Thank you for pulling together key presentations.
Very informative post! I recommend it to anyone seeking to know more on Twitter...
Great post, very useful, thank you. It's always a struggle to explain Twitter to the uninitiated.
Wow, it's great to see different views of using twitter... I didnt realize it could make such an impact on people!
great selection, thanks ! I can't resist to put here my own presentation on Retweet : "how one person can inform all the (twitter) world".
(If you consider this comment as spam, feel free to delete it !).


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Google's Android Platform Has Over 90% Of China's Market Share
No surprise here right? Nope! Just like pretty much everywhere else, Android is completely dominating market share in China, with over 90% penetration. Comparatively, Apple's iOS platform is at 4.2%, with the remaining shares belonging to BlackBerry, Linux, Windows Mobile, and Symbian (of course others).
Check out the chart and source link below, and let us know what you think. Are you that last person that's surprise? Let us know … Oh China!
Source [TNW]


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It's the same when we venture out into the world and walk among the actively addicted as they publicly feed. Yes, after years of bondage ourselves and after developing an in-depth understanding of why we remained captive, it's very normal to notice others as their addiction forces them to elevate their falling blood serum nicotine level so as to avoid the onset of early withdrawal. NOTICING them and THINKING about their endless cycle nicotine/dopamine highs and lows is entirely different from WANTING a nico-fix yourself. It's very normal!
Our former relationship with tobacco was extremely intense and produced millions of tiny independent memories of needing, craving, finding, opening, holding, striking, lighting, sucking, tasting, inhaling, feeling, ahhhhing, exhaling, ashing, butting, dumping, cleaning, brushing, buying, trying, failing, decaying, lying, hiding and crying.
How could we possibly expect ourselves not to NOTICE others still captive to tobacco or THINK about what they're doing as we encounter them throughout our day? We can't and we shouldn't! It's very normal!
It's almost like getting a divorce on grounds of physical abuse and mental cruelty and six months later seeing your ex-spouse in a store and pretending not to notice them. Even thought the marriage was terrible, after years of being together would it be normal to see them yet not THINK about them?
But what if you saw them often? What if you saw your former abusive spouse multiple times each day? Would it soon condition you to be more relaxed around them and accept their presence? If you did stop to THINK about them, every now and then, would it necessarily mean that you WANTED them back?
We have a wonderful thread here at Freedom entitled "Tell a newbie how many seconds a day you still want a cigarette." I'd like to focus your attention on the word WANT in the thread title as we continue to play with the concept of THINKING about smoking versus WANTING to smoke. Triin made a wonderful post this morning, that inspired this post, and this is what she said -
"I have to say that the number of seconds I still want a cigarette in a day is usually zero. It doesn't cross my mind, I don't remember to remember it anymore, if that makes sence. When I think about smoking, it is usually because somebody reminds me of that, for example by smoking. But thinking about smoking does necessarily mean wanting to smoke." Triin
Listen to the WANTING vs. THINKING comments of a few others within the thread:
"I have absolutely no DESIRE to ever take another puff and it's been that way since the beginning of my quit." Linda
"I am quit 3 months (pack a day plus)and some days don't even THINK about smoking." Teeisfree
"I have had THOUGHTS about cigarettes, though not many - when I find myself staring at someone with a cig, or paying more attention to the person on TV smoking rather than the TV show itself, I've been able to tell myself "Look at them, killing themselves." Curly
"I think I still think about it, but I can't say it's the same as WANTING ONE....mostly the smell possibly makes me remember that ahhhhh feeling that I know now I cannot have...but again it's not exactly WANTING ONE...see how difficult it is to separate the two..." Cathym
"I have very few actual thoughts of WANTING a smoke." Amcanuck
There are scores of others who made similar comments. I think the distinction is fairly important for those Newbies still in the serious WANTING phase of their recovery. It's important because you're here with us - some for hours each day - and recognizing the fine distinction between THINKING about your recovery (and the fact that you are not smoking) vs. experiencing an URGE, CRAVE or WANT to put nicotine inside your body, is, in a very real sense, victory in itself!
Even brief periods of wanting new nicotine or a cigarette won't harm us at all. It's only when a quitter acts upon their WANT that they destroy their freedom, healing and glory! Thanks for sharing your wonderful insights Triin!
John : ) (Zep)


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In this segment from Looking for Lincoln, historians Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and David Blight examine the complicated historical reality behind the romanticized myth of Abraham Lincoln as the "Great Emancipator." They explore Frederick Douglas's impatience with Lincoln's reluctance to make slavery the fundamental issue of the Civil War and describe Lincoln's proposed compromise solution, in which slaves would be purchased by the government and deported to "colonies" in Panama and Liberia. Blight observes that such a "cushioned overthrow of slavery" was never truly possible, insisting that slavery "was going to have to be bludgeoned out of existence."
Learn more about Looking for Lincoln.
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For my card, I pulled out the newly released Blue Skies set and some pretty papers from The Girls' Paperie. I stamped the You Make Me Smile sentiment on the yellow gingham circle, then matted with chocolate chip and added some yellow liquid pearls for some pizazz. Some days I just feel I need a little pizazz, you know what I mean? Next I stamped the notebook paper from Blue skies in Brushed Corduroy then stamped the flourish in pink pirouette on the paper. I trimmed this out and matted on chocolate as well. I subsituted a butterfly for the star shape in the mojo sketch, and this is the larger one from Blue Skies, which I stamped directly onto patterned paper, cut out and added a few chocolate pearls for its body. I also stamped the flourish with a little Shabby Shutters ink on the green polka dot paper to balance things out.
To finish things off, I added a little punched border, some May Arts pink ruffled ribbon, more liquid pearls and hand stitched a few coordinating buttons onto the card. The finished card is 4.25" square so it'll fit inside a normal A2 envelope. Okay, that's all for me. I've got to get back to shipping orders. :) Hope you have a fantastic start to your week!
What's In It?
Stamps: Blue Skies (Verve Stamps)
Paper: The Girls' Paperie, chocolate chip, white
Ink: Brushed Corduroy, Shabby Shutters (Ranger Distress Ink), Pink Pirouette (SU!)
Accessories: Round-it-all, loop edge punch (SU!), buttons, string, ruffle ribbon (May Arts), chocolate pearls (KaiserCraft), liquid pearls (Ranger)


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A week after investors pulled out of low-grade bond funds at record levels, INGs chief investment officer Christine Hurtsellers said that the selloff is overdone.
Fearing that interest rates could jump up if the Federal Reserve tapers off its monetary easing policies, investors withdrew $4.63 billion from junk bond mutual funds and ETFs. It amounted to the second largest weekly outflow from overall taxable bond funds, but that anxiety is overblown and firms are jumping the gun on the Federal Reserve, Hurtsellers said.
The selloff we can see in some of these sectors such as agency mortgages, for example, that have been really impacted by the fear of the Fed leaving excess liquidity accommodation are overdone, Hurtsellers said at a briefing in New York on Tuesday.
Initial expectations for Federal Reserve tightening were as far off as June of 2016, but have moved up based on recent statements by officials. In a speech, the president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston said on May 29 that, it may make sense to consider a modest reduction in the pace of asset purchased if we see a few months more of gradual improvement in labor markets and improvement in the overall growth rate in the economy.
ING is expecting that any step back by the Federal Reserve will happen much later in the year or early in 2014, and that it would not be catastrophic, according to Hurtsellers. Taper does not mean that they are going from their $80-plus billion monthly accommodation in fixed income to zero, she said.
Hurtsellers said that the Federal Reserve and its chairman Ben Bernanke were focused on inflation and not just unemployment numbers. Even as the employment picture improved, slightly rising interest rates would encourage the Federal Reserve to maintain their easing, she explained.
All people are talking about is the unemployment rate, Hurtsellers said. Real interest rates are rising in the selloff, so if youre the Fed chairman and youre seeing real interest rates rising thats not something you necessarily want this early on the cycle. We think interest rates are at least fair value.
It did not mean that there was a buying opportunity in long duration bonds, but there were some buying opportunities for high-yield fixed income assets, according to Hurtsellers.
The selloff in the near term is a bit overdone and has presented some nice opportunities to reload some of your risk levers in fixed income for the latter part of the year, she said.
Still, the long-term question remained an unknown, Hurtsellers conceded.
Is the market going to have peak volatility now because they realize the combination is going to go away or is this portending of a really brutal market at some point where there is a big movement to exit? She acknowledged: Thats something I dont have the answer to, but its certainly top-most in my mind.
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Consolidated deliveries from friendly, regular driversMeet The TeamLatest NewsCompany News
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The young couple left the Social Security office with their two children, angry and frustrated by the number of obstacles hindering their attempts to get birth certificates and Social Security cards for themselves and their children.
They needed the documents to enroll the children in school, to find permanent housing and to secure employment before the end of the day.
Instead, they were continuously tripped up and detoured by bureaucracy. It must have seemed easier to just give up.
That scene played out last Sunday evening during the first stage of a game at the Mission Immersion Program held weekly at Lexington's Maxwell Street Presbyterian Church.
The simulation game is replayed dozens of times over the summer months as youth groups from throughout the country come to Lexington in search of a better understanding of people who are in need.
Although it was a game, the lessons it taught about poverty and justice were real.
The group that participated a week ago consisted of 10 high school students from First Presbyterian Church in Royal Oak, Mich. Through scenarios and characters, they were given a glimpse of the people they might work with during their week's mission program.
One young woman was a single mother of three who had to endure negative comments from people in authority. She noticed that a police officer watched her more closely than others.
The two youths who portrayed a gay couple instinctively created a story in which they were hunting buddies. The story was cover to hide their sexuality as they looked for a home together.
When their roles called for them to have children, they carried metal folding chairs wherever they had to go as a way of representing those children.
The simulation game would help the group "understand the different housing and financial situations that people in our country face. It is an opportunity for them to open their minds and try new things, and for us to get a sense of how the youth respond to things outside their comfort zone," said the Rev. Matt Nickel, associate pastor of First Presbyterian in Royal Oak.
The non-denominational program began 15 years ago and usually starts filling up a year in advance. Griffin Phillips and Garrett Moore, co-directors this year, said youth groups from as far as Wisconsin have come to Lexington for the experience.
"We get different ages and sizes," said Phillips, a seminary student on sabbatical. "Everyone seems to love it."
The groups arrive Saturday evening, staying in a renovated 19th-century house behind the church. On Sunday morning, they get up early to make sandwiches and deliver them to hungry people who wait near Rupp Arena.
On Sunday evening, they participate in the simulation game. The object is to find a place to stay on the first day, which in real time is 30 minutes. The place could be a motel or a shelter. Those with children must register the kids for school or day care, and each household must balance a budget daily.
The group is then given another 30 minutes — a second day — and a change in their circumstances.
A young man in a wheelchair, and his wife and children, discover how difficult and taxing maneuvering from one office to another can be on their first day. On the second day, he learns that he has a blood clot and that his leg must be amputated. He is overheard saying the family would be better off if he died.
Taylor Kucharski, 16, who portrayed the single mother of three, said the game is realistic.
"You don't realize how much it can impact you," she said. "I'm carrying around chairs, but it is exactly like children. You can't just sit them down and walk away, and you can't lean them against each other."
Taylor learned that the hard way when she was arrested for neglect and her children were taken away for a while. That didn't sit well with her.
"It was upsetting," she said. "I felt I didn't do anything wrong. I realized that other people may not understand another person's situation."
Douglas Ryan, 14, portrayed a man who had gotten out of prison, and Emily Heitchu, 17, portrayed his wife. A bureaucrat made fun of her name while he stood by silently.
Emily said she didn't respond because the person was in authority.
"It is not worth it," she said. "It was really difficult in there to get help. I was there to get help."
Douglas said he didn't stick up for his wife because he needed a job.
The youth learned that sometimes the poor have to bite their tongues if they want to get what they need.
"If they speak up, then they give up their right to what they are trying to apply for," Douglas said. "It is an injustice for them. There is supposed to be equality."
After Sunday's game, the youths spend the rest of the week with activities to enhance spiritual development, Moore said. They work with a variety of organizations that have included the East Seventh Street Kids Café, the Thompson-Hood Veterans Center in Wilmore, the Hope Lodge, and the International Book Project.
On Friday, they returned home, hopefully changed for life.
Nickel's group's next mission trip will be in Detroit, about 20 minutes from their church. But they needed to get away from home first.
"This program will lead us into seeing things in new ways so when we go on the mission trip next year to the city of Detroit, we can have fresh eyes in our own home," he said.
A program that can open the eyes of our youth, give them a peek into the hardships that some of their neighbors face daily, should be better known and duplicated. I hope this column will help with the former. Other churches and volunteers need to deal with the latter.


text: Information for Caregivers (Total Knee, Total Hip) Find a Location Find a Doctor Total Joint Center Total Joint Center Department Phone Numbers Total Knee FAQs Pre-op Post-op Information for Caregivers Total Hip FAQs Pre-op Post-op Information for Caregivers Patient Success Stories Total Shoulder Rotator Cuff Sparing Method FAQs Pre-op Post-op Total Ankle OrthoCincy At St. Elizabeth Healthcare, we recognize that family members play a vital role in assisting their loved ones in the recovery process. This information is being provided to assist both patient and caregiver in a smooth transition from hospital care to home. In the Hospital While your family member is still in the hospital: Remind them to do their breathing exercises, ankle pumps, coughs and deep breaths. If possible, attend a therapy session with them to learn the exercises as well. Do not allow them to get up without assistance. Always have a staff member assist them with getting out of bed and walking. Please do not hesitate to ask questions or voice concerns. Leaving the Hospital Transportation It is the responsibility of the patient/family to provide transportation from the hospital to home/rehab. Your family member should be safe to travel by private car upon discharge. Medications Your family member will have prescriptions for pain medication and a blood thinner. These should be filled immediately upon discharge, unless a rehab stay is scheduled. Rehab facilities will provide your family member with the medications needed. Equipment If your family member is recovering at home, they may need some equipment, including: Assistive device Continuous Passive Motion Machine (CPM) – knee Ice packs Hand-held breathing device Pillows for elevation If your family member has been discharged to a facility, the facility should provide them with the necessary equipment. At Home Safety Make sure your family member has adequate room to move around their home and are aware of their surroundings. Remember that bathrooms are the number one spot for home accidents, so take special care when showering. Assistance Your family member will need assistance with things such as meals, showering and dressing while using an assistive device. They should not need assistance to get up and down or move around the house. Do not apply anything to the incision area. Things to Watch For Contact your physician if your family member: Experiences any changes in the appearance of the incision area. Runs a fever of over 101° F. Complains of chest pain/shortness of breath. Sustains any type of injury to the surgical limb. Therapy/Exercise If beginning outpatient therapy, your family member should make the appointment themselves as to ensure it is at a convenient time. Please encourage your family member to maintain a balance between rest and exercise. If your family member has had knee surgery and was discharged to home, the CPM should be used three times a day for two hours at a time. Swelling will cause additional pain, so it is very important to assist your family member in elevating their extremity. The extremity should be on three pillows and ice should be applied. Have them remain in this position for 20-30 minutes several times per day. Emotional Support One of the most important things you can do for your family member is to provide support throughout their recovery period. Although your family member may be experiencing pain, it is important that you encourage them to continue with their daily exercise routine and therapy.


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Adventure Training
Adventure Training in the North Region is where cadets can experience challenges both physical & mental, at the same time as having a great time. The aim of the whole of the Region & its Wings is to expose young people to all the adventurous opportunities which are available to them in a safe but often exciting environment. All the activities which our cadets participate in, are supervised and the young people are trained by formally qualified and experienced instructors and staff.
Activities available to cadets include:Trekking & hill walking
Climbing & Abseiling both indoors and on crags
Canoeing & Kayaking
Mountain Biking
Nordic Skiing
Downhill Skiing
Sailing both offshore & inland waterways lakes & rivers
Hang Gliding


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A wonderfully fresh and robust voice, with clarion top notes and a gift for sweet phrasing …
American tenor Matthew Polenzani is one of the most gifted and distinguished lyric tenors of his generation. His elegant musicianship, innate sense of style, dramatic commitment, and timeless artistry have established his continued presence at leading operatic, concert, and recital venues worldwide.
The 2017/18 season includes a return to Lyric Opera of Chicago in two of Polenzani's signature roles – the Duke of Mantua in Verdi's Rigoletto and Nadir in Les Pêcheurs de Perles. Mr. Polenzani then travels to New York City to reprise his portrayal of Nemorino in Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore, praised by The New York Times for his "ardor, richness and power" in his previous outings of the love-struck peasant. He continues on to Switzerland to make his role debut as Rodolfo in Verdi's tragic Luisa Miller at Opernhaus Zürich. Following this engagement, he travels to the Royal Opera House to star as Rodolfo in La Bohème.
Concert appearances next season include a performance as the tenor soloist in Haydn's Creation with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival led by Maestro James Levine; "A Night at the Opera" concert with The Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin in Saratoga, NY; arias and ensemble pieces as part of "Stars of Lyric Opera" at Millenium Park in Chicago; and he will be featured as a guest artist with the annual Monteverdi Tuscany Festival in Siena, Italy.
In the 2016/17 season, Polenzani starred as an "exquisite" (Opera News) Fernand in a new production of Donizetti's La Favorite at the Bayerische Staatsoper, which is now available for purchase on DVD. He also sang Rodolfo and Tamino in the revivals of La Bohème and Die Zauberflöte in Munich. He made his greatly anticipated return to The Metropolitan Opera stage to star in three productions: Idomeneo (title role), Der Rosenkavalier (The Italian Singer) which was featured in a Live in HD broadcast, and Don Giovanni (Don Ottavio). He sang Tamino in Die Zauberföte and was a featured soloist in the "Chicago Voices" Gala Concert for his hometown company, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and was performed in concert with the New York Philharmonic, singing Händel's Messiah and Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn at the Carnegie Hall in New York.
In the 2015/2016 season, Mr. Polenzani was Don Ottavio at the Opéra National de Paris in Michael Haneke's acclaimed Don Giovanni. He sang Werther at the Bayerische Staatsoper and at the Wiener Staatsoper and he debuted at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona singing Rodolfo in Puccini's La Bohème. His role debuts at The Metropolitan Opera include Nadir in Les Pêcheurs de Perles and Roberto Devereux, in a production by Sir David McVicar, with both operas being featured on the Met's Live in HD series and released on DVD. He also essayed Die Schöne Müllerin in performance at Northwestern University. Concert appearances have included the Mostly Mozart Gala Event, a concert at the Ravinia Festival with pianist Kevin Murphy, and a Liederabend in at Oper Frankfurt with pianist Julius Drake.
Career highlights from recent Metropolitan Opera seasons include the premieres of Bartlett Sher's production of L'elisir d'amore, which opened the 2012 season and Sir David McVicar's production of Maria Stuarda (issued on DVD by Erato); Willy Decker's production of La traviata, Julie Taymor's legendary staging of Die Zauberflöte (DVD available from the Metropolitan Opera), and revivals of Les Contes d'Hoffmann, Rigoletto, Don Pasquale (Deutsche Grammophon DVD release), Don Giovanni, Roméo et Juliette, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Così fan tutte, Falstaff, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (DVD available from Deutsche Grammophon) and L'Italiana in Algeri. To date, he has starred in more than 300 performances at the Met, many conducted by his musical mentor, James Levine. His vast-ranging repertory includes La clemenza di Tito, Werther, Les Contes d'Hoffmann, La traviata, Roméo et Juliette, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Don Giovanni, Don Pasquale, Il barbiere di Siviglia and Die Zauberflöte, with performances at top houses in America including Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, and more.
Following Matthew Polenzani's debut as Gérald in Delibes's Lakmé with Opéra National de Bordeaux in France in 1998, appearances at major European theaters include productions of Don Pasquale and La Traviata at the Teatro Comunale in Florence, the Aix-en-Provence Festival (DVD available on Bel Air Classiques) and on a tour of Japan with Teatro Regio Torino; La Traviata at the Opernhaus Zurich, I Capuleti e I Montecchi at the Paris Opera; L'elisir d'amore and Die Zauberflöte at the Bayerische Staatsoper; L'elisir d'amore at the Wiener Staatsoper, Teatro San Carlo and Teatro dell'Opera di Roma; Così fan tutte and Idomeneo at Covent Garden with Sir Colin Davis and in Paris with Philippe Jordan; Lucia di Lammermoor in Paris, Vienna and Frankfurt; La Damnation de Faust at Frankfurt Opera and Berlin at the Deutsche Oper; Manon, in London, and on a tour of Japan with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Idomeneo in Torino with Gianandrea Noseda, Manon with Fabio Luisi and La traviata at La Scala; Rigoletto at the Wiener Staatsoper conducted by Jesus Lopez-Cobos, and Don Giovanni at the Salzburg Festival (DVD available on EuroArts).
Mr. Polenzani is constantly in demand for concert engagements with the world's most influential conductors, including Pierre Boulez, James Conlon, Sir Colin Davis, Riccardo Frizza, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Louis Langrée, James Levine, Jesús López-Cobos, Riccardo Muti, Sir Antonio Pappano, Sir Simon Rattle, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Leonard Slatkin, Sir Jeffrey Tate, Michael Tilson Thomas, Franz Welser-Möst, David Zinman, Riccardo Chailly, and Daniel Harding. He frequently performs with premiere ensembles in the United States and Europe, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, Orchestra del Santa Cecilia, Orchestre National de France, and the Münchner Philharmoniker.
In recital, Matthew Polenzani has appeared in numerous venues across America with pianist Julius Drake, and at Wigmore Hall (available on CD from the Wigmore Hall label). He has also appeared with noted pianist Richard Goode in a presentation of Janáček's The Diary of One Who Vanished at Carnegie's Zankel Hall, and in recital at the Verbier Festival with pianist Roger Vignoles (commercially available on CD from VAI). Mr. Polenzani was honored to have sung on all three stages of Carnegie Hall in one season: in concert with the MET Chamber Ensemble at Zankel Hall; a solo recital with James Levine at the piano in Weill Hall; and in a Schubert Liederabend on the stage of Isaac Stern Auditorium with colleagues Renée Fleming, Anne Sofie Von Otter, and René Pape, again with James Levine as pianist.
Matthew Polenzani was the recipient of the 2004 Richard Tucker Award, The Metropolitan Opera's 2008 Beverly Sills Artist Award, and a 2017 Opera News Award. An avid golfer, he makes his home in suburban New York with his wife, mezzo-soprano Rosa Maria Pascarella, and their three sons.
Occasionally singing with beautifully soft, honeyed tone, but mostly with all out romantic lyricism, he remains strong and rapturous throughout the opera. All in all, Polenzani's is a stupendous portrayal [of Hoffmann].


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In 1881, it came as a shock to the residents of the brand new Cottage City that they apparently did not own the beautiful parks built by the Oak Bluffs Land and Wharf Company. Its execution of the construction of the world's first wholly-built seaside resort was only exceeded by its ability to sell the lots of land profitably — and the company was in deep financial trouble. Hoping to stem the losses from their aggressive growth, they offered the parks (and nine streets) to the town at no charge.
Three years of inaction caused the Oak Bluffs company investors to revise the offer of a sale of Ocean, Waban, Hartford and Pennacook parks for $7,500 over 25 years, and interest-free at $300 per year. Impatient at the lack of response, a deadline of Dec. 1, 1884 was given to the town and the town did nothing. In March 1885, George C. Abbott, an attorney from Boston, and his financial backer Alvin Neal paid the $7,500 and indicated that they planned on dividing the parks into home sites and selling building lots. Taking the parks hostage, Mr. Abbott upped the ante — first offering to sell the parks back to the town for $60,000, and when that was summarily rebuffed, he offered to sell Ocean Park for $1,000 each to the 38 wealthy homeowners bordering the park, with another $7,500 from the town. In Sept. 1891, following a protracted number of lawsuits from both parties, the court decided that the parks had been dedicated to the public from the beginning and that while Mr. Abbott could continue to own them, he could not sell building lots or prevent the public from using them. The moral of the story? Public open spaces we are entitled to are entitled to be protected by us.
Last week I saw Billy Reagan up on the roof of one of the Pratt houses over on Samoset. We're both Pequot avenue kids, but Billy spends a lot more time in the old neighborhood lovingly caring for 140-year-old homes. Restoration is his specialty. He restored my family's house some years back and removed the siding our dad had put up in the 1960s to save on shingle painting. We're glad we listened to Billy. Since we had to replace the shingles anyway, it made sense to obtain them already stained the yellow color everyone liked, and we save on repainting. The Reagan family has been here for generations, Billy since infancy 56 years ago. His mom and hers before her operate the Attleboro guest house in the Camp Ground, facing Oak Bluffs Harbor. I think Billy has worked on more of the Pratt houses than anyone, but he is too humble or too shy to say for sure. If you own one of those treasured homes in the Cottage City Historic District, Billy Reagan loves them as much as you. His sister Casey is more knowledgeable about Oak Bluffs than either of us. Casey told me that there's still another park near deBettencourt's gas station where she works part-time: Orange Park, alongside Highland avenue. One of the Reagan ancestors was Joseph Farland, a former Oak Bluffs fire chief who Farland Square is named after. His wife was the one who would blow that whistle at noon — I miss that. Farland Square is at the center of town where Circuit avenue, Lake street and Oak Bluffs avenue intersect.
I was pleased to meet the Cummings at the library last week, who said they like the column. They had volunteered to help out with the voting process for the election. Thanks to all who helped out with that.
The big news from this week's special town meeting was the applause at our new financial health.
Congratulations to Entertainment Cinemas. The Edgartown movie theatres are digital as of today with the screening of the last Twilight movie. Rumor has it that the Island Theatre will go digital in the spring (yay!!), and that the Strand, to the surprise of no one, will not. I'd be happy with the 'T' and 'R' back.
Stop by for the 10th annual Holiday Gift Show preview at Featherstone this evening from 7 to 9 p.m.
Inspired by the weekly quotations on the front page of the Gazette, I thought I'd share with you some of my favorite poems. Let me know what you think.
"Don't talk to me of solemn days/ In autumn's time of splendor/ because the sun shows fewer rays/ and these grow slant and slender./ Why it's the climax of the year/ the highest time of living!/ Till naturally its bursting cheer/ Just melts into Thanksgiving." –Merry Autumn by Paul Laurence Dunbar.
Keep your foot on a rock.


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Dangerous tornado-brewing storms Friday thrashed populated areas of the same U.S. South-Midwest region pounded by deadly storm-fed tornadoes 48 hours earlier.
Hail and rain buffeted eastern Arkansas, western Tennessee and northern Mississippi in a prelude storm that forecasters said would be followed in the afternoon by a brutal storm system that could be more powerful and generate more tornadoes than the one that killed 13 people Wednesday, AccuWeather.com said.
The follow-on storm was forecast to push eastward across the Ohio and Tennessee valleys, with the most severe weather pummeling Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, southeastern Illinois, the southern two-thirds of Indiana and southwestern Ohio, weather maps reviewed by United Press International indicated.
Nashville, Louisville, Ky., Cincinnati and Indianapolis were among the cities at most risk for strong, intense and damaging tornadoes as violent hail and thunderstorms swept through the area, AccuWeather.com said.
The most likely tornado time was forecast to be between 4 p.m. and 8 pm. EST, CNN reported.
The area is part of a multistate region reporting at least 30 tornadoes responsible for 13 deaths Wednesday, from Nebraska and Kansas across southern Missouri to Illinois and Kentucky.
Six people were killed in Harrisburg, Ill., a 10,000-population city about 55 miles southwest of Evansville, Ind., when a house lifted up by a 170 mph tornado fell on them and crushed them.
The tornado's Enhanced Fujita Scale rating of EF-4 -- one notch below the strongest category -- put it on par with the devastating tornado that killed 64 people in Tuscaloosa, Ala., April 27, 2011, and a notch below the multiple-vortex EF-5 tornado that killed at least 161 people in Joplin, Mo., May 22, 2011, the National Weather Service said.
Three people were killed Wednesday in southern Missouri, three in eastern Tennessee and one in northeastern Kansas.
An EF-2 tornado, with winds of 111 mph to 135 mph, caused significant damage and three dozen injuries, but no deaths, in the country music resort city of Branson, Mo.
The city's waterfront area, 15 hotels and at least six signature theaters -- including the Americana Theater, Branson Variety Theater and Dick Clark's American Bandstand Theater -- were extensively damaged as the twister moved through the heart of the visitor district days before the start of the tourist season, officials said.
President Barack Obama spoke with the Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee and Kansas governors Thursday "to offer condolences" and federal help, the White House said.
Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn was the first state leader to ask for assistance in damage assessment, a customary step before formally requesting federal aid.
National Guard troops helped police and sheriff's deputies direct traffic and patrol streets in stricken areas of Missouri and Kentucky, CNN reported, while residents in all ravaged states began cleaning up.
Power companies restored electricity to some battered communities but had to stop in some cases Friday due to the new round of storms.
The severe weather was forecast to diminish a bit as it whipped eastward from the nation's midsection toward the Appalachians Friday night, bringing somewhat less severe weather from Georgia through North and South Carolina Saturday.
© 2012 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2012/03/02/Tornado-brewing-storms-hit-US-midsection/UPI-87271330668000/#ixzz1nyqjNThT
Related Topics:
Wicked forecast brings warnings
Rare PA tornado damages homes
Wicked weather hits NE Texas
More links on Tornadoes
More links on Severe Weather


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Fish and Chip Shop within University – Ref: 8284
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The Christian Century has this interesting article about the relationship between evolution and Christianity, written by Amy Frykholm. Interesting not because it actually resolves the question in any satisfactory way, but rather because it states the problem in a more forthright manner than is typical for writing in this genre:
But I suspect that the compatibility of evolutionary science with Christian theology is more often asserted than explored. I, for one, do most of my thinking about science out of one mental box and my thinking about religion out of another. On questions about evolution, the origin of life and the future of the planet, I look into the science box. On questions about God, salvation, theology and ethics, I turn to the religion box. While I think that the contents of the two boxes are compatible, I rarely try to work out the terms of their relationship.
Perhaps that's because the contents of the two boxes are, when mixed, still combustible. When theology faces off against the account of the world set forth by evolutionary biology, God's goodness and power and God's plans for the future seem to be called into question with new force.
For instance, knowledge of evolutionary history raises questions of theodicy in an especially disconcerting way. Evolution reveals a vast history of unfathomable waste, loss, extinction, suffering and death in the natural world. What has God been up to all these millennia? And what is God up to now? If we believe that God oversees creation, then God's way of doing it through evolution seems strange and even appalling.
Over the 4.5 billion years of our planet's existence, 98 percent of species have become extinct. Extinction is written into the pattern of life. What does it mean, then, to talk about a God who cares for "each sparrow that falls"? How can we think of God's care for the world in light of the millions of years of suffering and death that have been a feature of evolution in the natural world?
Well said! I especially like that third paragraph.
The article goes on to consider some possible answers to this objection:
But Robert Jenson, Lutheran theologian at the Center of Theological Inquiry at Princeton Seminary, suggests that such arguments are off target in that they operate with a view of God as external to the cosmos, acting on it from outside. This idea of God derives more from the Enlightenment than from Christianity. Christians, Jenson says, have traditionally conceived of the cosmos as contained in God. Holding to this conception of God, one can view natural selection not as a process separate from God but as a process that takes place in God.
Can someone tell me, please, what that means? Because right now I am picturing God as a jelly doughnut, with natural selection as the sticky, fruit-flavored filling.
The article continues in this vain, as Frykholm records the opinions of various theologians. Frykholm is impressively skeptical of all of the explanations offered, pointing out objections to each one. What becomes clear throughout the article is that reconciling evolution and Christianity requires at the very least abandoning the simple conception of God as an omnipotent and omnibenevolent designer. Here's Frykholm:
Theologies that emphasize God as deeply involved in natural, open-ended processes seem better able to make sense of evolution than do the classical accounts of an omnipotent God. On the other hand, if Jenson is right, perhaps what is needed is a richer notion of the God in whom these processes occur. At the very least, substantial interaction between Christian theology and evolutionary biology is prompting new metaphors and new ways of thinking about God.
Personally, I fail to see how the high-minded theologies described in the article even come close to addressing the real problems (and that's before moving on to the question of whether there is any reason to believe they are true.) But the article is worth reading for its forthright admission that the problem is thornier than many would like to admit.