many employees don't care (infoworld)
"'The person used to contribute in meetings and now no longer offers his or her views. Or that person was always ready to pitch in during an emergency, and now sits on the sidelines. Managers will see these kind of dramatic changes in behavior. Each person behaves differently. Some disengaged workers start taking long lunches or more sick time.'"

This was me, thrice at least.
(Monday, April 30, 2001)

remember the cosmos (nyt)
big heavy sigh. the cosmos.

those were the days when george best played for the san jose earthquakes. sigh.
(Friday, April 20, 2001)

"dot-gone" (bbc)
too bad i missed the opening of this. it would have been a good anti-networking event.
(Thursday, April 19, 2001)

18-year olds should not be in college (nyt)
"Most students would be better off if they were able to get some perspective on themselves, their lives, what they hope to accomplish," said Harvard's dean of admissions, William R. Fitzsimmons, an evangelist for the interim year. "The testimony from people who have done this is extraordinary. It permeates the entire way they think about using university."

I just wish I had been together enough to take time off before going to college. I would have done much better, enjoyed it more, and taken advantage of all of the resources available at Cal.
(Tuesday, April 17, 2001)

goodbye, joey (nyt)
"He was a perfect instrument of those songs and those words and that speed and that energy," Danny Fields, the manager who got the Ramones their first record contract, said last night. "He never screamed, never waved his arms around. He stood in one place and delivered. It was so tasteful."
(Monday, April 16, 2001)

krugman on power (nyt op-ed)
"In the long run this added capacity will solve the problem. But in the long run we are all dead. The question right now is how California is going to get through the summer. And shovels, no matter how energetically wielded, are not going to help."
(Sunday, April 15, 2001)

chronicle tries to boost image
"Besides amping up its editorial product, the paper has retained the services of brand-building experts at Ketchum public relations firm, which handles image maintenance for such clients as Clorox and Genentech. The Chronicle also hired publishing design guru Roger Black to assist with the makeover."

One hopes that the majority of money was spent on improvig the quality of the reporting. I mean, that's why Ben Bradlee is quoted in All the President's Men as saying that the Chronicle is only good for lining a birdcage.

I wish the Merc was more serious about taking over the San Francisco market.
(Friday, April 13, 2001)

nouvel in nyc (nyt)
"I suspect the commission's decision will have widespread repercussions, even outside New York, by identifying several fundamental principles. It points up the profound distinction between architecture and architectural history. It helps dispel the confusion between preservation and preservationism. And it demonstrates that the architectural context for great cities like New York is international as well as local. This is called leadership."

I would be very surprised if San Francisco followed New York's lead in this area. Down the street is a Peter Pfau building under construction, and the OMA Prada tower will start construction later this year (maybe), but forget about building something other than an ugly bay-windowed, garage-saddled set of flats in a residential neighborhood.
(Wednesday, April 11, 2001)

how to raise a genius (nyt magazine)
"3. Avoid calling your child a genius. 'There are three reasons the label could only be unhelpful,' says Dr. Jack Shonkoff, an expert on early childhood development. 'One, it puts an enormous burden on the kid that he or she will have trouble living up to. Two, it's a setup for other people -- relatives, teachers -- to be disappointed in the kid's future performance. And three, it serves to set the child apart from other children. Extremely talented kids are pigeonholed enough as it is; the last thing they need is a label that ostracizes them further.'"
(Saturday, April 7, 2001)

How to Solve the New York Times Crossword Puzzle (nyt)
"Mental flexibility is a great asset in solving crosswords. Let your mind wander. The clue 'Present time' might suggest nowadays, but in a different sense it might lead to the answer yuletide. Similarly, 'Life sentences' could be obit, 'Inside shot' is x-ray and my all-time favorite clue, 'It turns into a different story' (15 letters), results in the phrase SPIRAL STAIRCASE."

By Will Shortz, who edits the Times crossword.
(Saturday, April 7, 2001)

preserving the places of the manhattan project (nyt)
"Richard Rhodes, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb,' supports maintaining at least some of what he calls 'the physical reality of that time.'

"'Many people think that the Manhattan Project was 30 people building a bomb at Los Alamos,' he added, 'but it was 150,000 — an effort comparable at the time to the race to the moon. It's our past. Not to preserve it is to censor it.'"

I've always wanted to go the Trinity site. First Saturday in October is the next chance. Maybe that plus the Lightning Field and Marfa as a weird vacation this fall?
(Saturday, April 7, 2001)

dubya: energy crisis? what energy crisis? (nyt)
"The Bush administration plans to cut programs intended to make buildings and factories use less energy and to generate more power from the wind and the sun... The cuts, being proposed despite the administration's contention that the nation faces an energy crisis, would reduce the Energy Department's overall spending on energy efficiency and renewable energy by about $180 million, or 15 percent... The spending reductions reflect how the Bush administration has sought to... emphasiz[e] efforts to increase the supply of oil and gas while reviewing or canceling some programs intended to reduce demand."

So, since Dubya is an oil guy who has a lot of oil guy friends, he's going to make all of them richer while bringing his "why worry?" approach to pollution to the whole of the United States. Meanwhile, the energy crisis in California is used simply as an excuse to expand oil drilling, not as an opportunity to change our destructive habits. It's quite appropriate that the power was out for an hour or so today.

He's not acting like most people didn't vote for him, is he?
(Thursday, April 5, 2001)

modern art breaks down, too (nyt)
Now that I'm collecting art, especially considering that my taste skews towards the monochrome, articles like this one scare me, a little. Who knows how long that painting on Formica is going to last? Or the epoxy with integral dye? On some level it really doesn't matter, so long as it's still in decent condition as long as I am. (heh)
(Thursday, April 5, 2001)

terrorism 101 (nyt)
"Two traditional transgressions are not allowed, even during the stress of espionage: drinking wine and fornication. 'There is nothing that permits those,' the manual warns. But the manual says that undercover agents may forgo traditional Muslim appearance or consolidate prayers to better blend into a foreign country.

"It advises suspicion should someone suddenly excuse himself to use the restroom. (An enemy agent once came back with a pistol, it explains.)"

Though it sounds like terrorists' targets still haven't changed from the big bang school of thought. I've never understood that, quite frankly.
(Thursday, April 5, 2001)

chris ware is cool (nyt)
"In some subsequent black-and- white strips, he copied his illustrations with a photostatic camera and used them as backgrounds for other panels, creating a strange simulation of depth. In others he experimented with what he calls map strips, elaborately constructed diagrams detailing, in the space of a page, complex relationships among events, places and people. Soon some of his comics were crammed with as many as 300 panels on a single page, an attempt, he said, to create a comic that could be read like musical notes on a score."

Viva complexity!
(Wednesday, April 4, 2001)