5 Intriguing Things
1. The New York Daily News takes a happy traipse through the NYPD's surveillance technologies.
"He recounted a recent CompStat session where bullet cartridges found at several crime scenes over the prior two months were matched to one gun. Surveillance cameras at multiple crime scenes revealed the same vehicle present at each scene. From there they tied the vehicle to an owner, and soon enough to a suspect. All types of technology are now in play. In the last few years, the NYPD has discussed the introduction of infrared technology that can detect weapons on a person. They also bought two pairs of Google glasses — as yet unused."
2. Double X, a feminist hackerspace in San Francisco.
"Resting on a counter inside Double Union is a copy of Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In. The words 'edit me' are written on its cover in black Sharpie, and the first chapter or so is filled with red markings challenging Sandberg's 'corporate feminism.' The edits begin on the title page, which reads 'Lean In: (rich, white, straight, able-bodied) women, work, and the will to lead.'"
3. A dense, but pleasantly mindbending article about design as computation.
"Consider this: a building, when complete, is every bit a representational artifact as it is a gadget for keeping off the rain. It encodes a set of constraints and affordances that literally program how human beings interact with one another."
"When you work with a computer, the 'interface' -- these days called the 'graphical user interface,' or GUI -- is the room you're in. Yet many people, software developers as well as users, can't quite bring themselves to believe in the fundamental importance of interface design. The interface is just the superficial, merely cosmetic 'look' of things, isn't it? Were Nabokov with us today and writing with a computer (not to mention playing computer chess and maintaining his butterfly database), I suspect he would consider such 'superficial' elements very important indeed."
+ "Today Krause lives and works in the 1000-year-old castle Burg Rheineck near Bonn in Germany."
5. Dungeons and Dragons as literary inspiration, with choice quotes from Junot Díaz.
Playing D&D and spinning tales of heroic quests, 'we welfare kids could travel,' Mr. Díaz, 45, said in an email interview, 'have adventures, succeed, be powerful, triumph, fail and be in ways that would have been impossible in the larger real world.' 'For nerds like us, D&D hit like an extra horizon,' he added. The game functioned as 'a sort of storytelling apprenticeship.'"
Today's 1957 American English Language Tip
capitol. The temple of Jupiter; US, the house of congressional meetings in Washington, DC; in many states, the state house. All other uses are capital.
House note! I have, thus far, been very ad hoc in keeping track of the links that go into this newsletter. While I've thought about building an app, etc, for the time-being, I've started a Facebook page that tracks what I'm looking at for the day's edition. Obviously you can follow the feed there (there will be more than five per day, just FYI), or just stay here in the glorious confines of email. And as always, suggest links to me in whatever medium is most convenient.
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