... good comics. In case you haven't already heard, Gene Yang's new graphic novel, American Born Chinese, has been nominated for a National Book Award. Cue the shock and awe of a book with drawings getting an award for Literature (OMG UFB LMAO!1!11!1!1!1!!)

Sadly, you actually will find people making that point. Even at Wired News, Tony Long is insisting that:

as literature, the comic book does not deserve equal status with real novels, or short stories. It's apples and oranges. If you've ever tried writing a real novel, you'll know where I'm coming from. To do it, and especially to do it well enough to be nominated for this award, the American equivalent of France's Prix Goncourt or Britain's Booker Prize, is exceedingly difficult.

Whereas writing a book with drawings in it, of course, is not difficult. That's why we all do it so often, and so well.

Tony hasn't read the book, as he admits, but he goes on to acknowledge that's it "probably damned good" -- so it's not about the quality, it's just that having pictures prevents it from being Literature. Plot, character, dialogue, nuance and depth all come easily if you have pictures. That's why it's so easy for Hollywood to produce such brilliant and deeply moving cinema all the time.

Happily (and amusingly), the webcomics world has already taken issue with Long's pointless prejudice, so I'm going to hope this one is an isolated instance of an ill-considered rant. It's also fun to read the comments on Long's own post to see the reactions.

I mention all this because A) I found the Wired article this morning (via Jeph Jacques), and B) I got my copy of ABC yesterday and finished it last night. It's great - no wonder it's nominated! Now I might be biased; Yang himself is a teacher in Oakland, so he's already my hero. But the book should have no trouble winning you all over, and it's one of those perfect examples for showing people the difference between using the comic book format and just drawing a superhero slugfest. It's a wonderful work and you should all buy it, read it, and show it to anyone who doubts a comic book can be literature.

And, in case you're interested: Mr. Yang's point of view.

My colleague Eric Siry has a fun roundup of the current market in urns and other post-funeral ashware.

If you're the kind of person who thought Billy Bob wearing Angelina's blood around his neck was sweet, then you might like a mini-urn that you wear around yours. This crystal is a good one because one can actually see the ashes in it, but if you're more circumspect than that, you can opt for a dolphin or sea turtle (unless, of course, your loved one was mauled to death by one of these playful creatures).

Holi is the Indian Spring Festival of Color, when people toss colored dye and powder onto each other. Apparently in Sony Marketing land, buildings celebrate it in Autumn. Watch the Video.

I don't think I'm going to buy a Sony TV any time soon, so thanks for making me a fun commercial! Via Phill Ryu's blog.

Four years ago came the awful news that Paul Wellstone had died in a plane crash with his wife, daughter, and three campaign staffers. It was a rough campaign season, the first midterm elections after Bush vs. Gore and 9/11, and he had been the only Democrat Senator in a close election to vote against the Iraq war resolution. For that alone he deserves to be remembered, but I am afraid sometimes of how thoroughly he seems forgotten. For all that I was pretty upset when he died, I must admit I have slowly stopped thinking of much of his work.

I first learned about Wellstone my freshman year at Berkeley, from my classmate Paul Hogarth. Paul is so devoted to his progressive ideology that he sometimes makes me feel like a stodgy conservative, and while I have disagreed with him on many occasions, I greatly admire the dedication with which he pursues his ideals--it's pretty astonishing to look back on our ten-year acquaintance and see how clearly he has stuck to his path compared to the rest of us. He ran the Paul Wellstone for President website, and when I heard the news of Wellstone's death, my first thought was to offer my condolences to Hogarth. Here he offers some of his memories of that day and the Senator.

So sayeth Ennis, who sent me this amazing post from the Dilbert author's blog:

As regular readers of my blog know, I lost my voice about 18 months ago. Permanently. It’s something exotic called Spasmodic Dysphonia. Essentially a part of the brain that controls speech just shuts down in some people, usually after you strain your voice during a bout with allergies (in my case) or some other sort of normal laryngitis. It happens to people in my age bracket.
. . .
To state the obvious, much of life’s pleasure is diminished when you can’t speak. It has been tough.

But have I mentioned I’m an optimist?

Just because no one has ever gotten better from Spasmodic Dysphonia before doesn’t mean I can’t be the first. So every day for months and months I tried new tricks to regain my voice. I visualized speaking correctly and repeatedly told myself I could (affirmations). I used self hypnosis. I used voice therapy exercises. I spoke in higher pitches, or changing pitches. I observed when my voice worked best and when it was worst and looked for patterns. I tried speaking in foreign accents. I tried “singing” some words that were especially hard.

My theory was that the part of my brain responsible for normal speech was still intact, but for some reason had become disconnected from the neural pathways to my vocal cords. (That’s consistent with any expert’s best guess of what’s happening with Spasmodic Dysphonia. It’s somewhat mysterious.) And so I reasoned that there was some way to remap that connection. All I needed to do was find the type of speaking or context most similar – but still different enough – from normal speech that still worked. Once I could speak in that slightly different context, I would continue to close the gap between the different-context speech and normal speech until my neural pathways remapped. Well, that was my theory. But I’m no brain surgeon.

The day before yesterday, while helping on a homework assignment, I noticed I could speak perfectly in rhyme. Rhyme was a context I hadn’t considered. A poem isn’t singing and it isn’t regular talking. But for some reason the context is just different enough from normal speech that my brain handled it fine.

Read the whole post, and then go tell him about the happiest day of your life, if you can--I can't really think of a standout candidate in mine. (The theme seems to be having children so far, so I guess that's why.) He wants only good news to celebrate today.

I got a kick out of seeing the little block of mini-India on University Ave decked out with "Happy Diwali!" signs today

and an even bigger kick when the coffee-starved yet chipper cashier at Bombay Market gave me a discount on buckets of ghee and boxes of diyas, while Aunties around me clamored for bargain prices on their lamp selections. The cashier never lost her cool, and called out, "Happy Diwali!" to all who came and went, without fail. So to you, as well, dear readers--may the new year bring you prosperity, joy and accomplishment. Fiat lux!

Update: And now it really has been a Happy Diwali:

Manish has some pictures of Bombay firecrackers. Hope everyone had a lovely holiday!

While I was driving, I caught a glimpse of this Gap ad in a bus shelter. "DESI(RED)." I immediately assumed it was pun on the words "desired" and "desi". I only got a brief look as I sped by, so I figured it was a Desi model in the picture. ("Was that Aishwarya Rai?")

"Hm," I thought. "I didn't realize the word 'Desi' was so mainstream now. Maybe they're trying to project a multicultural marketing message or something?" But I didn't really think that hard about it.

A few days later, I was perusing Apple rumors sites, and I came upon this article about the naming of the new "iPod nano (PRODUCT) RED Special Edition". Apparently, Bono has a new AIDS charity effort where companies co-brand their products as Motorola RAZR RED, American Express RED, etc. and donate some of the proceeds to AIDS relief.

I browsed around the (PRODUCT) RED website, I saw the Gap ads there, and it suddenly hit me: I was being too literal. I had assumed that parenthesized words were less important, but Gap's graphic designers actually intended the parentheses to emphasize the word "red"! (Well, that, and the parentheses themselves are part of the (PRODUCT) RED branding.)

So the pun was actually "desired" vs. "red", and not "desired" vs. "desi". And, upon closer inspection, the model turned out to be Penelope Cruz, who's not at all Desi. :P

Like I said, I clearly hang out with Indian-Americans a lot. :)

P.S.: For those who don't know me, I'm Chinese, which is what makes this amusing. :)

Awesome. How could I have missed this? Goodness Gracious Me offered up a music video: "Hindi People," their take on the Jarvis Cocker/Pulp classic Common People, which Toasty turned me onto as a prelude to his favorite William Shatner album, Has Been. (The album version of the Shatner cover is excellent, this live version seems slightly less so.) Via Ennis.

After Cyrus sent me this story about how North Korea's leader is sorry for the nuclear test, I have stuck in my head a new version of the infamous Team America song (here, on YouTube), with the obvious substitution.

I remember chatting up a Clinique counter-woman at Macy's when I was 16. She was a New York transplant, who shared a flat in Presidio Heights with her husband, and she lamented the fact that San Francisco was no New York -- it had no theatre, so how would we ever compare?

As I settled into my 20s, I caught my share of plays and musicals and decided, hm, perhaps that was not a huge deal. I can live without theatre, just as I can live without ballet, and not feel as though I'm at a cultural loss.

Similarly, I find myself so amazed by my beautiful surroundings in the Bay Area, that I wonder, does it really matter if our architecture isn't on the map? When I'm in a new big city, I tend to be the type of person who makes it a point to stumble upon grand buildings ("Oh, can we stop at the Disney Symphony Hall designed by Gehry?" "Oh, Koolhaas's library in Seattle looks like that Italian convention center profiled in the New Yorker.") Back at home, however, I do not feel the need to be dazzled and wowed.

Unlike me, Slate's architecture critic seems to think this is a problem for SF, and describes our dearth of good architecture in this way:

Architecturally speaking, San Francisco has been like a beautiful, rich woman who has never developed an interest in cooking and serves TV dinners to her family, then occasionally—somewhat frantically—hires caterers whenever she has company for dinner.

He admits that this is not the "perfect analogy," but I would go a step further and say that it is completely wrong. I think that one reason why buildings in SF do not stand out is that they are not meant to stand out -- they are designed to be unobstrusive to our natural beauty. For instance, people point to the B of A building as a particular black hole that sucks in all the energy of bankers who toil there and that casts a pall with its dark facade. To combat this, the city demands that all new skyscraper construction be of light materials, and if you take a look at the newer elements of our skyline, there is a sea of pale green and ivory, which tends to compliment the sunlight we do receive.

Finally, I could care less about attracting superstars to build here, and rather see the time and energy devoted to such projects instead devoted to expanding the base of affordable, middle class housing in San Francisco, so that it is less of a boutique "glamour city," and more liveable for all.

UMass engineers have built a vest that hugs you through air pressure. It's for people with anxiety issues who like the physical pressure of hugs. They're going to use it to do a scientific study on whether it actually works. Okay, so maybe it's not quite a robot, but it's still an artificial hugging device.

People always make jokes about robot love, but what about robot friendship? This is one small step toward a robot friend! Now they just need to hook it up to a speech synthesizer that says, "There there..."

Update: For your comfort, here are speech synthesizer versions of "There There" in MP3 format. Your robotic friends, always ready to be there for you, are: Vicki, Bruce, and Zarvox.

From a Reuters article:

U.S. technology stocks gained on Monday ahead of an announcement by Web search company Google Inc. (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) that it will acquire online video service YouTube Inc., offsetting concerns surrounding North Korea's nuclear test.

Glad we don't have to worry about that any more. If only Kim Jong-Il had known about the imminent acquisition!

Since election season is in full swing, wouldn't it be fun if the make up people on Meet the Press (or perhaps the Daily Show) pulled off this little trick?

I'm in upstate New York and western Massachusetts this week, to visit Union College and Williams College, two fine liberal arts institutions (full disclosure: the latter is my alma mater). I gave a physics colloquium today at Union on some recent work in my lab, and was struck by the differences between doing -- and presenting -- research at major research institutions versus small liberal arts colleges. Back in my teaching days I always used to pride myself on being able to see things from students' point of view, meaning I could present material in a clear and cogent way in class. Now, after time at a research lab (yesterday was my two-year anniversary at NIST) I have lost that habit, and I'm finding I have to struggle to revise my thinking about what is obvious and what isn't. I suppose that makes me more forgiving of former professors of mine who completely failed to clearly convey material -- many of them (at least in grad school) had been in primarily research positions for years and years.

I was invited to Union by Chad Orzel, a physics professor and the author of an excellent science blog. On the campus tour he gave me, Chad pointed out the architectural centerpiece of the college, the Nott Memorial (see photo) and explained that it has been compared to liberal arts education: we're not really sure what good it is, but it costs a hell of a lot of money. Point taken. But all in all I'm a great defender of liberal arts colleges; they train young minds to think well and clearly, to be creative and adventurous, and to seek intellectual rather than pure material satisfaction. Those are the facets one needs for success in any field -- certainly they're critical for experimental physics! -- and while it's important to come out of one's undergrad education with some specific knowledge about the world, society is overall better off with people who can think, rather than who just know.

I went out to get soup for lunch with a couple of colleagues, and we griped mightily about the mist as we pulled on our coats and toyed with our umbrellas. It was really wet so much as dreary, and we were in quite the rush to get back to our warm, dry offices.

First we noticed the motorbike cops, a solid wall made significantly less intimidating by their duck-yellow ponchos. Sidra asked what they were out for--a rally. I thought it might be some little thing over at Justin Herman Plaza, maybe they were just leaving it now? And then the din started to approach us, coming up Market from the Embarcadero.

I'm no expert at crowd counting, but that was a lot of people that just marched by, led in rhythmic chants by an impressive guy on a flat bed truck. Especially impressive was the fairly unified signage protesting the loss of Habeas Corpus, the fact that it must have been recently organized, and the fact that so many people cared to march in the rain on a Thursday afternoon. Some of my colleagues, toiling away and already ailing, were annoyed at the noise, but I must admit I found it rather heart warming that people cared enough to brave the rain.

Out in front of the crowd some people were ploughing ahead, sporting V for Vendetta style masques. One had a sign that says "Torture is Evil."

Agreed.

Crikey, I need to hunt down the trashbin that to which this is affixed (Link by way of Boing Boing).

I'm convinced that the tentacles of clery abuse stretch everywhere. During the bar exam, I sat next to an attorney in New Jersey, who was taking the Cal Bar so that his firm could bring claims against the Catholic Church is California. And today, after months of not calling my mom's friends, a couple who specializes in clergy abuse cases, the husband called me. It turns out that his private investigator uncovered claims of abuse at my elementary school during the years that I was there. I told him that I had nothing to report and had not heard any of the rumors, so that was the end of the discussion.

Oddly, it has come up in conjunction with disgraced Congressman, Mark Foley, who Colin blogged about below. I guess his press secretary decided that alcohol rehab wasn't a decent enough sympathy generator, and has now brought out the nuclear weapon of excuses, by pointing the finger at the Catholic Church. What's worse than a predatory Congressman? A pedophilic priest. Sheish. A new low in using victimhood as a shield.

In the continuing saga of Foleygate, we learned today that the FBI knew in late July about Republican Congressman Mark Foley's inappropriate emails to a 16-year-old former House page, but decided not to investigate. However, the G-men showed no such reluctance in investigating and raiding the offices of Democratic Congressman William Jefferson two months earlier. As far as I can tell, both men are probably guilty as hell and deserve the full censure of the law. But why did the FBI go so far as to send over a dozen plain-clothes agents to search Jefferson's office, while not lifting a finger to even look into the Foley case?

At least one thing is clear from all this: many people watching the Jefferson scandal unfold were surprised by how vigorously the Republican leadership contested the FBI's right to search Congressional offices -- separation of powers, and all that. Now we seem to have the answer. If the Republican leadership knew months ago about Foley's corruption -- before the news reached the FBI -- they sure wouldn't be very eager for FBI attention of any kind.

As it turns out, they needn't have worried; the Feds know who runs the show.