Belles on Their Toes
Posted on March 20, 2010 at 5:57 pm by kyliu
Tags: america, bookreviews, plagiarism
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This sequel to Cheaper by the Dozen is about the Gilbreth family after the patriarch’s death. In many ways, this is a more moving book. Part of this is because we are now dealing with time periods closer to our own (the 30’s and WWII,instead of turn of the century), and part of this is because of the nature of memory. Because Frank Gilbreth died in 1924, when the youngest child was only 2, the children’s memories of him are tinged with a kind of worshipful nostalgia that anyone who has lost a parent would understand. And so the first book casts a kind of golden halo around Frank that makes him seem unreal. Lilly Gilbreth, on the other hand, had to raise 11 children while trying to make a living (to the consternation of everyone) as a woman engineer. She got to know the children as they became adults. This means that the children’s memories of her, set down in this second book, are imbued with a kind of love and respect that feels human rather than mythical.
The sort of stories told in Belles on Their Toes largely follow the same vein as the stories in the first book in tone and structure, but now that the children are older, dating, love, and marriage become recurring topics, as do the day-to-day budget worries of a large family surviving on an uncertain single mother’s income.
The book is, for the most part, sensitive, funny (in equal measures humorous and sentimental, to paraphrase a book jacket blurb) and very lovely, but it is a book written in the days when race-baiting and political correctness did not yet become two sides of the same coin, and so it may well surprise contemporary readers in places with its nonchalant treatment of common prejudices, some of which have already been touched on when I wrote about the first book. For example, the segment on Tom, the family’s Irish handyman/cook, expressing his hatred of all Englishman by striking a fat English cook on her buttocks with a board with no provocation, thus causing her to fall to the ground, was treated as a humorous anecdote.
It is curious, however, considering that this book seems to be so little constrained by modern sensibilities and that it was published in 1950, shortly after WWII, that it handles its one Japanese character — a motion-study student of Mrs. Gilbreth’s named Mr. Yoyogo — with kid gloves. The book goes out of its way to portray the Japanese student as dapper and charming and devoid of any racial stereotyping (which are liberally used in describing other characters of color). His English dialogue is written without any hint of an accent, and Tom’s disapproval of “the Jap” is quickly transformed into admiration on the strength of Mr. Yoyogo’s quick wit. What surprised me here is the very different treatment given the Japanese character as compared to, say, the Chinese cook in the first book, and other “colored” and “ethnic” characters. Japanese exceptionalism at play again in the American imagination?
Another bit that may shock contemporary readers, which I’ll excerpt at some length below:
At the high school, Ernestine’s English teacher … had discovered that Ern had turned in a book report based — in fact lifted — from the blurb on the jacket, and hadn’t bothered to read the book itself.
…
“I consider it plagiarism, plain and simple.”
“Maybe it is,” Mother said, “but thinking back I suppose I’ve done the same thing. Sometimes when I’m with a group of people who are talking about a new book, I guess I’ve given the impression that I’ve read the book, instead of reviews about it in the newspapers.”
“Why I’ve done that too, I suppose, but …”
“It’s really the same thing, isn’t it?” Mother smiled.
“No, I don’t consider it at all ….”
“Don’t reproach yourself for it,” Mother interrupted. “After all, if a person tried to read everything that comes out, he wouldn’t have time for anything else, would he?”
“I suppose not,” said Ern’s teacher, throwing in the sponge.
“There’s no reason for you to feel bad about it. It’s really laziness more than plagiarism. And all of us, whether we like to admit or not, are a little lazy sometimes, aren’t we?”
This hearty defense of plagiarism is not going to convince most of you — especially if you subscribe to Jack Shafer’s school of plagiarism absolutism. It’s really pretty shocking coming from an academic and engineer. I’m not convinced by it either — though I am probably far more sympathetic to the authors frequently accused of plagiarism by the jackals of the media than most of you. I can’t imagine what sort of names a mother would be called if she were to try to defend her child today in these terms, but I kind of admire her unconditional support of her child (even though we are told, in the book, that she would have a “heart-to-heart” with Ern later).
As a piece of Americana, this is a great book. It ought to be enjoyed by children and adults alike.
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Copyright Holders Want the Benefits of Sharing Without Sharing
Posted on March 18, 2010 at 5:17 pm by kyliu
Tags: absurd, copyright, culture, intellectualproperty, ip
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YouTube accuses Viacom of copyright hypocrisy:
For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately ‘roughed up’ the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko’s to upload clips from computers that couldn’t be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt ‘very strongly’ that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.
Viacom’s efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.”
(Via Daring Fireball.)
This is analogous to the behavior engaged in by authors like J.K. Rowling: enjoying the benefits of publicity brought about by fanfiction, fan sites, and other “copyright violations” and even encouraging such activities only to jump in and sue the secondary authors as soon as they feel threatened (either over profits or, more often, control over content).
It is both amusing and astounding to see the extent to which Viacom tried to disguise its own use of YouTube — though it is unclear whether the cloak-and-daggers stuff represented official policy from high up or creative interpretations of vague official directives by younger, low-level media employees.
However, it’s also pretty interesting that Google found out about this and traced down these “phony email addresses” and “Kinko’s computers.” One wonders whether Google managed this through simple legal discovery or through technological means alone. This ought to send chills down your spine if this is part of Google is able to find out about the activities of individual users.
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Going Rogue: An American Life
Posted on March 18, 2010 at 8:15 am by kyliu
Tags: bookreviews, election 08, patriotism, sarah palin
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I really really liked Palin’s book. It strips away a lot of the absurd layers that have been wrapped around her by the media and the intelligentsia, and restores her to the common-sense, unadorned “hockey mom” persona that so captivated people back in the summer of 2008.
This isn’t going to be much of a review, for whatever insights I might have about it were said much better and more artfully by Stanley Fish:
The questions to ask then are (1) Does Palin succeed in conveying to her readers the kind of person she is? and (2) Does she do it in a satisfying and artful way? In short, is the book a good autobiographical read? I would answer “yes” to both.
…
I find the voice undeniably authentic (yes, I know the book was written “with the help” of Lynn Vincent, but many books, including my most recent one, are put together by an editor). It is the voice of small-town America, with its folk wisdom, regional pride, common sense, distrust of rhetoric (itself a rhetorical trope), love of country and instinctive (not doctrinal) piety. It says, here are some of the great things that have happened to me, but they are not what makes my life great and American. (“An American life is an extraordinary life.”) It says, don’t you agree with me that family, freedom and the beauties of nature are what sustain us? And it also says, vote for me next time. For it is the voice of a politician, of the little girl who thought she could fly, tried it, scraped her knees, dusted herself off and “kept walking.”
I will note specifically that I completely share her disappointment and distrust with the “free press” and the “media” — most of their sins are sins of omission, and you only have to pay attention to the press coverage of any area in which you genuinely have some expertise (technology, law, medicine, science, specific countries) to see how terrible a job the press does in understanding and explaining it.
I hope she does run again. She is an extraordinary American, in the finest and most inspiring sense of that word. Not all of us who consider ourselves American patriots will agree with her — I was a Clinton supporter, remember — but all of us can love her.
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Tickling Lama
Posted on March 14, 2010 at 12:22 pm by kyliu
Tags: absurd, bizarre, tibet
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“The current Dalai Lama is a professed tickler, often using it as a handshake substitute. (He even tickled Archbishop Desmond Tutu during a procession to distract him.)”
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More Pictures of Esther
Posted on March 2, 2010 at 8:58 pm by kyliu
Tags: esther, personal, pictures
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Esther, Welcome
Posted on March 1, 2010 at 12:28 pm by kyliu
Tags: esther, personal
Filed Under seen | 5 Comments |
Esther Jieyou Liu / 刘界悠 arrived this morning, weighing in at a little over 7 pounds.
Mom and baby are both doing well.
The little tiger is born on Purim. This wasn’t planned, but it certainly fits her name well. Perhaps someone up there approves 
There’s still a lot to do, but I’m going to get some rest for now.
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The Anthrax Mailer
Posted on February 20, 2010 at 1:02 am by kyliu
Tags: absurd, america, terrorism
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F.B.I. Concludes Investigation in Fatal Anthrax Mailings:
The report disclosed for the first time the F.B.I.’s theory that Dr. Ivins embedded in the notes mailed with the anthrax a complex coded message, based on DNA biochemistry, alluding to two female former colleagues with whom he was obsessed.
The report described how an F.B.I. surveillance agent watched in 2007 as Dr. Ivins threw out a article and a book, Douglas Hofstadter’s ‘Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid,’ that could betray his interest in codes, coming out of his house in Frederick, Md., at 1 a.m. in long underwear to make certain the garbage truck had taken his trash.”
(Via NYTimes.)
The man actually wrote a message with DNA, back in 2001. We really do live in the future, and science fiction is fact.
This man frightens me far more than 9/11 ever did.
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The Tax Laws and Programming
Posted on February 19, 2010 at 9:47 pm by kyliu
Tags: america, law, programming, taxes
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It is said that the pilot who crashed into the Austin IRS building did it in part because of anger over Section 1706 of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (see here and here). In essence, that law stripped the so-called “self-employed consultants” — engineers, designers, drafters, computer programmers, systems analysts — of independent contractor status under the tax laws, and turned most of them into employees.
The measure was designed to raise revenue (through payroll taxes and reducing underreporting of taxes by programmers if they were self-employed).
Nowadays, most people (including programmers) jump to the defense of this law by arguing that it prevents employers from exploiting workers by misclassifying them as independent contractors to save on taxes. But this was not always how people saw the matter.
The law change essentially killed off the notion of programmers as independent skilled professionals, much like lawyers and doctors. Instead, the idea of the programmer evolved towards the direction of “information workers” — employees who need a lot of structure, direction, and management, and whose work, incidentally, can be commoditized and shipped overseas easily.
In a fundamental way, I do not think that computer programmers are all that different from lawyers (having worked in both professions, I think I’m qualified to make this judgment).
Both work with systems of rules (the programming language, the legal code) to produce creative solutions (the program, the contract) that follow the rules to accomplish a specific task (compute investment returns, generate investment returns). The independence, skill and judgment involved in a lawyer’s work, in most instances, is no more and no less than the independence, skill and judgment involved in a programmer’s work.
Yet, the lawyer’s profession has, so far, resisted the pressure to evolve into a subspecies of commoditized “information worker.” (It’s true that most lawyers now work as employees of law firms, but a sizable population of lawyers still work as partners in firms or as independent practitioners.) It’s unclear to me how much longer this will last though.
Years and years ago, people saw the devastating consequences of this policy decision on the technology industry. If we could do it again, should Congress still choose to go down this route?
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Kumi Yamashita
Posted on February 18, 2010 at 10:43 pm by kyliu
Tags: art, culture, japan, writing
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I first saw Kumi Yamashita’s work in Idaho.
Now I’ve written a story inspired by her work.
[Update 3/18/2010: Another link with some great pictures of her work.]
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Mousepath, 24 Hours
Posted on February 18, 2010 at 12:28 am by kyliu
Tags: mousepath, technology, webculture
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Anatoly Zenkov’s mouse movement tracking program has been making the rounds in the tech press.
Here’s my mouse path for 24 hours (from 11:30 last night to 11:30 tonight). I didn’t really use the computer that much: some edits to a story, a little web browsing, some image editing. Note that the program only recorded my movements on one of my two monitors.
You can download the program for Mac OS X here (it’s really a Java program). Windows version here.