Welcome
This blog has moved,
please update your links: http://www.esztersblog.com
I started this blog in May, 2002. In September, 2003, I started blogging over at the Crooked Timber group blog. I replicate my posts here, but you should note that the exciting action is over at Crooked Timber thanks to the large traffic and sometimes-quite-lively discussions in the comments. Moreover, if you read CT you get to see writing by a bunch of other people as well. Of course, you're welcomed to visit here. But as of August 21, I have closed down comments due to the overwhelming amount of spam they generated. I very much believe in the importance of comments on blogs, CT is great at that.
Posted by eszter on Thursday, July 15, 2004
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And now onto our regular programming:
Tuesday, September 7, 2004
» This blog is moving «
I've moved institutions, I've moved states and timezones, it's time to move blogs. Well, actually, the latter doesn't necessarily follow from the former, but I'm moving my site anyway. It would be great if people could update their links to my blog's new home: http://www.esztersblog.com. I've always said that was its URL (even when on Princeton's servers), but understandably people simply copy & paste the address in the location bar, which was a different one. Anyway, hope to see you there. Comments will be back on and I plan to blog more often than in the recent past.
Posted by eszter
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Tuesday, September 7, 2004
» Happy Arrival Day! «
Today we celebrate Arrival Day, the 350th anniversary of the first Jewish immigrants’ arrival in New Amsterdam (today’s New York City) on September 7, 1654. The Head Heeb has been preparing for this event for over a year. He explains:
Arrival Day is a holiday of the American Jewish people rather than the Jewish religion - a celebration of the Jewish community and its contributions to the United States. As such, non-Jews as well as Jews are welcome to join in the celebration. In the wise words of Ikram Saeed, everyone is Jewish today, just as everyone is Irish on St. Patrick's Day.
A month ago I participated in a wonderful wedding that offers the perfect story for Arrival Day. I share with you the details of this wedding as a celebration of Jews from all over the world coming together in the United States.
In early August I returned to Princeton for the wedding of two friends. I had met both the bride and the groom even before they met each other. There is something extra special about friends coming together in that way. The bride had been an undergraduate Sociology major at Princeton (the department in which I got my graduate degree) and once started talking to me in the department’s mailroom after having heard me speaking in Hungarian with someone. Although she grew up in Manhattan, her parents are Hungarian from Transylvania (now Romania) and she, too, speaks the language. The groom and I started our graduate training at Princeton the same year and hung out in the same social circles from close to the beginning of our years there. He is from Australia. The two of them met as a klezmer band was forming at Princeton. They are both music lovers and amazing musicians. Music and their Jewish cultural heritage seemed to bring them together. And now they are a wonderful Jewish couple from different ends of the globe living a life together in the United States. The wedding was marvelous with friends and family of both the groom and the bride putting on amazing musical performances the night before the ceremonies.
There are several reasons why I live in the U.S. and although no one factor is fully responsible, one contributing reason is that no matter how people try to downplay it, anti-Semitism is alive and well in Europe. I prefer to live in a country where I do not have to be on my guard all the time about being Jewish. (I realize experiences must vary across the U.S., but this is my experience having lived in seven states in rural, suburban and urban areas and I appreciate it.) At my friends’ wedding, Jews and non-Jews of numerous backgrounds came together to celebrate in the joy of two wonderful people. In my mind, this story is the perfect tribute to Arrival Day.
The Head Heeb will be linking to posts that celebrate Arrival Day through the day to be sure to hop on over to his blog for pointers.
Posted by eszter
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Saturday, September 4, 2004
» Stay tuned for more blog «
I'm in the midst of transferring my Web site and concurrently I'll likely start up a more active blog presence on my personal blog (as opposed to the great group blog Crooked Timber of which I'm a member). Stay tuned for information about new location and newly opened comments (with the hopes that I figure out a way to fight spam).
Posted by eszter
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Saturday, September 4, 2004
» Political blogger who is who dinner «
Thanks to Henry Farrell and Dan Drezner, those attending the American Political Science Association’s meetings in Chicago this weekend were in for quite a treat at yesterday afternoon’s session on The Power and Politics of Blogs. The session started out with two papers (one by Henry and Dan, the other by Laura McKenna formerly of Apt 11D and Antoinette Pole) followed by some interesting commentary from well-known political bloggers Mark Kleiman and Ana Marie Cox aka Wonkette and a final discussion with some good questions and thoughtful points by Cass Sunstein. The Q&A was interesting as well, congrats to Henry and Dan for putting together such a great panel! (As an additional treat, I finally got to meet (albeit way too briefly) another Timberite, Harry, so my CT number improved a bit again.)
Later in the evening, a bunch of us met up for drinks and dinner, which provided a nice oppportunity to chat with people whose blogs I've been reading for a while. I enjoyed discussing the topical versus ideological splits in the blogosphere with Cass Sunstein. I have a project that is attempting to test the latter (which I usually just refer to as the Sunstein thesis) empirically, and will certainly keep you posted. All-in-all, it was really fun to meet all these bloggers face-to-face and, again, thanks to Henry and Dan for organizing such a great blogger day!
Posted by eszter
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Sunday, August 29, 2004
» Digital divide symposium «
I spent the last few days in Minneapolis at the Carlson School of Managements of the Univ. Minnesota participating in a great digital divide symposium. Although I have been doing research on this topic for years, I got to meet several people new to me who are working on interesting and important projects in this area. Many of them were from management and information systems/science programs, a field whose interest in the digital divide may not be obvious to some. One interesting question that came up more in the proposal to the meeting than the actual workshop was whether the existence of a digital divide is bad or, in fact, possibly good for business. This was a whole new angle on the topic, and although many would likely claim that this is not the right approach to take to the question, it is certainly an interesting one.
Posted by eszter
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Thursday, August 26, 2004
» Some light shed on crazy 9/11 rumors «
Kenneth Quinn has an interesting piece in WaPo about whether 9/11 was supposed to be 9/18 according to original plans. For me this is interesting because it sheds some light on the preposterous rumors that surfaced after the attacks about some Jewish conspiracy regarding the events. September 18, 2001 was Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which means that many/most Jews would not have been at work that day and would have averted the attacks. The rumor that spread had to do with about 4,000 Jews being saved thanks to having been told ahead of time about the tragedy and having stayed home to avoid it.
One serious concern I have always had about people’s inclination to even come close to considering those rumors legitimate is the idea that Jews live such a completely isolated life (not to mention one without any moral obligations) that they have no non-Jewish friends or family, nor would they have any civic obligations to worry about were they to obtain any information concerning such an event ahead of time. After all, only in such a scenario would it make sense for anyone to think that these informed Jews would, without blinking an eye, just quietly stay away from such a tragedy without alerting anyone outside of their supposed super-isolated circles. (News flash: social networks don’t work that way.) The idea that there could be people this naïve and clueless about the world is seriously disturbing. But those rumors circulated quite far and wide even in non-fundamentalist circles, it seems. And that is scary.1 Of course, the idea that anyone would have a list of Jews to call up and warn in the first place is quite silly in and of itself.
Read Quinn’s piece to see how he came up with the 9/18 idea based on all sorts of info tidbits including this rumor and details from the 9/11 commision report. (Hat tip: Harry’s Place. Go to Bugmenot if you do not have a WaPo login.)
1. On occasion, emails show up in my inbox regarding conspiracies targeted at other groups such as Arabs or Muslims. Such messages are just as disturbing and naïve. I hope no one will see my outrage regarding this issue as an invitation to send me equally ill-informed messages about people grouped according to whatever one single demographic variable.
Posted by eszter
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Saturday, August 21, 2004
» Our gendered world «
A propos this very interesting discussion about gendered pronouns, and à propos all the babies being born in my social circles, I thought I’d post a note about the salience of gender the moment we are born. I became an aunt last week and so the following has come up a lot in the past few days. The first thing everybody wants to know about the baby is its (their?:) gender. At first I was not hiding this bit of information on purpose, but by now I consciously phrase announcements about the event in gender-neutral terms to see how long it takes for the other party to ask whether it is a boy or a girl. As you can imagine, it doesn’t take long. One may argue that this is because, grammatically speaking, people are unable to ask questions about the baby without knowing its gender. But I think it is more than that. Our world is so gender-based that it is hard for people to think about a person without knowing the person’s gender. But what is it exactly about a baby that makes it necessary for us to know its gender? In what ways is it going to be important? Is it so we can say whether the baby is beautiful versus handsome? Is it so we know what types of presents to get for it? If yes then we are off on the path of gendered socialization the moment the little person takes its first breath. All this shows the pressure parents must be under to choose between girl and boy when a child is born sex unknown.
I thought I should add a bit to this post drawing on some work by sociologists who actually study this stuff. Some people in the comments to the original post on Crooked Timber – and elsewhere as well, I am sure – argue that if you look at the behavior of girls and boys already at an early stage you will observe their different preferences for certain colors and activities. We should not forget, however, that it is not possible to raise children in an isolated manner and their social environments – as evidenced by the anecdote in this post – start differentiating them by gender from the start. So the fact that a girl may opt for a “girlie” toy or pink may simply be a reflection of what she has already picked up from her surroundings. It is interesting to note, however, that historically pink and blue were assigned to girls and boys in the exact reverse of today’s conventions. I quote from Padavic and Reskin, Women and Men at Work (p.4.):
Clothing for babies illustrates the creation of sex differences in appearance that have no natural basis. Disposable-diaper manufacturers, for example, market different designs for girls and boys. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, however, male and female infants were dressed alike—usually in white dresses. When Americans began to color code babies’ clothing, they dressed boys in pink and girls in blue. Not until amost 1950 did the convention reverse, with blue becoming defined as masculine and pink as feminine (Kidwell and Steele 1989:24-27). Such shifts demonstrate that what is critical for maintaining and justifying unequal treatment between the sexes is not how cultures set the sexes apart but the fact that they do it at all.
Also, for a very good look at children in their early years, read Barry Thorne’s book on Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School.
Posted by eszter
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Saturday, August 21, 2004
» All comments closed «
As of today, I am closing the comments option on my blog. Although I very much believe in the value of comments, at this point the "comments" that get submitted on this site are 98% spam. If you would like to comment on something I post on this blog, please see the same entry on Crooked Timber where comments will continue to be turned on.
Posted by eszter
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Friday, August 13, 2004
» Extending Internet access to low-income communities «
I was quoted in a Washington Post article on Monday. The piece discusses a fascinating project by the One Economy Corporation that has managed to get people in low-income communities connected to the Internet. [Reading the article requires a login. You can get one at BugMeNot.] I comment on the importance of skill beyond achieving access. The One Economy Corporation certainly does more than "just" providing access. For example, they have developed a helpful portal for their users with information about jobs, government services and lots of other material that is likely of interest to users.
Posted by eszter
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Friday, July 30, 2004
» Shattered «
Since things seem to be pretty low-key around here, you’ll excuse me if I vent a little. Last night I got a call from a kind neighbor letting me know that it seemed as though one of my windows had shattered. I was in the office finishing a paper to meet a deadline so the timing wasn’t perfect, but really, is there ever a good time for that kind of a call? I decided to head home and check things out. To my dismay I found this (or for a bit more artistic version, this). It is completely unclear what may have caused it. My best guess is a bird although there are no traces anywhere (the neighbors were on their balcony when all this happened and didn’t see anything except for the window starting to break up into pieces after a loud bang). This is definitely one downside of home ownership.. and a clear example of why one must always have some money on hand in a checking account. In addition to the lost $$ a really annoying part is the logistics of sitting around waiting for the glass company and the anxiety produced by not having any idea about the costs. Any upsides? I got to meet some nice neighbors and also learned that I have double-pane windows (a very good thing in such a situation, indeed).
So now I’m left wondering whether I should cut back on some of the fun stuff I was going to do in Princeton and NYC in the next few weeks.. to balance out the costs.. or just accept the fact that trying to save on any of what I was going to do would make not a dent in this additional expense so I should just deal with it and move on. Uhm, yeah, probably the latter.
Posted by eszter
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Friday, July 30, 2004
» The story behind red alert «
This short film by zefrank seemed to make it to some corners of the blogosphere in March, but I don’t think it got the type of exposure it deserves. Go behind-the-scenes to learn about the making of the yellow-orange-red alert system (Tinky Winky reference and all!:). Warning, only visit the rest of the site if you have plenty of time to spare!
Posted by eszter
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Sunday, July 25, 2004
» Weekend trivia «
I was playing Scattegories with some friends last night and ran into an interesting scenario. The game is about coming up with names of things/people/places/etc that begin with a particular letter. The goal is to get as many points as possible and you get a point if yours is a unique answer for the particular category. Apparently, one of the rules is that you cannot use the same response for more than one category. Initially this did not seem like a big deal. After all, what are the chances that a capital and a menu item or an insect name and a crime would be the same? But it turns out, it happens more often than one might think. I suspect this may be because you are so focused on the letter and the words you have already come up with that if one of them fits another category, you’ll make the connection relatively quickly. You have three minutes to find a dozen matches, that’s a lot of cognitive switching in a short span of time. I ended up with the same response to the following two categories: President and Product Name (which we interpreted as brand name). What was my answer? There are probably several matches depending on the letter, mine happened using the letter H. I got the product name first and then realized there had been a U.S. president by the same name. Knowing the outcome, it would make sense to figure out the match here the other way around, of course.;) Remember, no Web searches available during the game and you have about fifteen seconds to come up with a response. (Of course, from the point-of-view of the game this is a silly exercise since the goal is to avoid such overlaps, but we’re not playing that game.:)
Posted by eszter
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Wednesday, July 21, 2004
» Would you cut up a book? «
(I promise to get around to that question in this post, albeit in a somewhat roundabout manner.)
Since Kieran has already reserved the right to ask for $50 bills here, I thought I’d ask for something else. Forget bills, they all look the same anyway. I am looking for something more random. I am still in the midst of unpacking some of my things since my move earlier this year and I recently came across my Absolut vodka ad collection. I haven’t looked at it since college when I began (and ended) gathering all the Absolut ads I could find. I have about seventy. By now there are some helpful Web sites for those of us interested in seeing the types of ads the company has featured. I found a few I had not seen before and would really like to have so I thought I’d see if anyone here can help me out.:) These mostly have to do with ads for places where I have lived (e.g. Budapest, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Illinois, Texas, Geneva, Switzerland) or visited (Paris, Brussels, Jerusalem, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, St.Louis), but also include some others just because I like them aesthetically speaking or because they are funny. I thought I would find listings on eBay, but I’ve only come across a few there and none of them of interest.
But so what’s this about cutting up a book?
There are books out there that feature Absolut ads. So if I was really desperate (which I am not, to be sure) to find some of the above ads then I could simply buy a copy of the book and then cut it up (assuming I wanted to have the pieces individually, which I do, because I want to put some of them up on my walls). But that just does not appeal to me. I cannot imagine cutting up a book. I have absolut(e)ly no problem cutting up newspapers and magazines. It is not as though some books don’t exist in numerous copies. In fact, publishers sometimes find themselves destroying books to save on storage costs, a sad reality when I am sure many schools, libraries and individuals could use additions to their collections. Many books are not a scarce resource and can actually be obtained for less than certain magazines. Thus it is not a question of scarcity. So why the aversion to cutting up books? In this particular example it may be partly that there is something about collecting ads that have appeared as ads and not simply collecting the images. But that is not fully convincing given that I am interested in some of these images purely for decorative purposes and I am not a fanatic collector. Clearly I have been socialized to consider books as something quite sacred if I am not willing to go at them with scissors. (I also won’t use pen to mark books although I will mark them using pencils.)
By the way, as a thank you to those who can contribute to my Absolut ad collection, I will be happy to send the contributor a copy of this neat book filled with great images, for free. (Just don’t tell me whether you decide to cut it up in the end.;) Send me a note for more info.
Posted by eszter
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Tuesday, July 20, 2004
» Pizza, cholesterol check, the works «
This little Flash movie by the ACLU about the loss of privacy is hilarious and, of course, scary at the same time.
Posted by eszter
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Thursday, July 15, 2004
» A different kind of road trip «
Here's a way to go on a fun and useful road trip this summer: drive to swing states to register Democrats to vote. Driving Votes provides all the necessary forms and helps you coordinate with others.
Posted by eszter
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Thursday, July 8, 2004
» Allowing comments on blogs «
The recent discussion of blogs and their democratic characteristics (or lack thereof) prompted by Laura’s comments at Apt 11D in response to critiques of her blog study’s survey instrument has gotten me thinking about the comments option on blogs yet again. It is a question I have pondered numerous times already, probably ever since I started reading blogs and certainly since I decided to start my own.
For me, the question of whether a site that calls itself a blog has comments option turned on is actually quite directly related to what constitutes a blog in the first place. I realize this is a question that is probably impossible to answer in a way that would satisfy everybody, but it is one still worth asking especially if one is to do research on the topic (as I am doing now) where a definition would be helpful.
One of Laura’s concerns is that the blogosphere is not very democratic. That’s true (she mentions some reasons and others have discussed this point at length elsewhere as well). However, blogs can have a democratic component: Comments. Why is it that certain bloggers decide to go without comments? And what makes their Web site a blog in that case? (Clearly I am showing my bias here in that I believe comments are an essential part of a blog. That said, I do realize and accept blogs as blogs even when they do not have comments turned on.. but do so mostly because the community has decided to consider them blogs. You know which ones I mean.)
Laura herself does not have comments on her Web site. This makes her blog more undemocratic than many other blogs. The only way someone can comment on an entry posted on a non-commentable blog is by posting an entry on their own blog. This already excludes those numerous readers who do not have blogs of their own, but more importantly, it also leaves the original post untouched by critical response. And that makes blogs less interesting in my view. And certainly less democratic.
Of course, I understand some of the reasons why people may not allow for comments. It can be an extra burden on the blogger. If one doesn’t want certain types of material present on a site then one must constantly monitor comments. This can become tedious in the case of blogs that attract a lot of attention and response. But comments can add a very interesting and important component to blogs. Crooked Timber would be quite different without the insightful and witty (although in some cases very frustrating) contributions of our readers. I wouldn’t have it any other way (here I only speak for myself and not the entire CT crew, but I suspect many would agree). A reader can always decide to skip reading the comments (which, of course, underscores the fact that commentators do not have the same level of input as the posters), but those who are most engaged with and interested in a post likely do read the responses from other readers. (Perhaps that idea needs to be tested, but I think it’s a reasonable assumption.)
I certainly do not mean to glorify comments too much. There are excellent and very valuable blogs that do have comments turned on yet receive little response. That does not mean that they are not being read nor that people do not have reactions to what is said on the blog. It seems to take several thousand readers to produce a few dozen comments so only a few blogs will receive lots of comments. Nonetheless, the issue here is the option to comment.
So bloggers, why no comments? And readers, do you care? (I realize it’s a bit problematic to ask that question here, but this is just for discussion, it’s obviously not a scientific poll of any sort.)
Posted by eszter
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Tuesday, July 6, 2004
» Paddling for bandwidth «
When I was in Paris I spotted a guy sitting on a corner on the ground just outside a bank with a laptop. It looked pretty random, but then it occured to me that perhaps this was the best location he could find for WiFi signals. Now I see that CTD over at ionarts blogged what he considers a possible “techno-geek historical first … ‘warboating’”. He and his brother went out on a fishing boat for signals. Not bad. I’m curious, what’s the craziest/weirdest thing people have done to find wireless connection?
Posted by eszter
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Tuesday, July 6, 2004
» The right to a soda.. at any price «
I was sitting in the St. Louis Amtrak station yesterday (huh, that would be a glorified name for a shack) and observing with curiosity people’s reaction to a soda machine that was sold out. Given the hot day and my tourist explorations of the morning that left me tired and thirsty, the soda machine was the first thing I looked for upon entry into the waiting room. The two machines I noticed at first were selling snacks and coffee. I couldn’t believe that there was no soda machine – unfathomable for this type of an establishment in the U.S. – so I circled the room. And there it was, of course. The first thing I looked for was to see how much the soda cost. However, instead of a price, I found the words SOLD and OUT flashing. Bummer. But now came the fun part: observing how other people reacted to the sold-out soda machine. At one point I was almost convinced we had a candid camera scenario. It was quite amusing to watch how few people bother to check signs. (This was second in a series that day after having watched just a few minutes earlier a woman in front of me exit – or try to do so in any case – a building through a door clearly labeled and also taped shut by a sign stating that the door was out of order. After pushing it a few times she noticed the sign at her eye-level letting her know that this was not going to work.)
Most people approached the soda machine with bills or coins in hand and started to feed (or attempted to do so) the money into the machine. The machine seemed to be configured so it would not take bills when empty (good call) and the coins fell through and came out in the coin-return section immediately. These signals did not prompt most people to look for clues about what may be going on. Rather, they continued to attempt feeding the machine with their money. The most interesting case was a young man who walked up to the machine with much confidence and tried to feed a dollar bill into it. Soon enough he noticed the SOLD OUT sign. This did not faze him, however. He decided to try again. You can guess the result: nothing. At that point he walked over to the other two machines with much confidence intent on satisfying his soda needs. His stride made it seem as though by marching with enough confidence those machines would transform themselves into selling sodas. Alas, that’s not how it works. Oh, the world is so unfair!
What seems interesting in all this (in addition to the obvious) is that people were ready to buy the soda no matter the price. After all, the SOLD OUT sign was where the price would be displayed. But other than one woman (in addition to me), no one cared to check it before starting to feed their money into the machine. Sure, it may be that all these people go to the St. Louis Amtrak station all the time and are already familiar with the price of a soda, but I doubt that that is the case. People probably have an expectation for how much the soda might cost and are willing to pay in the vicinity of that sum regardless of the specifics. Next up in the candid camera saga is a soda machine that charges $7.50 per bottle. Stay tuned for reactions.
Posted by eszter
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Tuesday, July 6, 2004
» Online communities «
It has been interesting to follow the various discussions about blogs and what types of communities and discussions they resemble. I thought I would post a note to remind people (or let people know) that the study of online communities is one of the oldest topics explored by academics about the social aspects of information technology use. There are probably hundreds of papers written about Usenet, mailing lists and bulletin board systems. Of course blogs have some distinct characteristics, but overall the existing body of literature about online communities would probably yield some interesting and helpful reading to those interested in blogs. Let’s not reinvent the wheel. One place to look for such work is the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (almost a decade old), but a simple search in a library catalog will yield numerous sources on virtual communities. Of particular interest to those pondering the social network aspects of online communities may be some of the excellent work by Warren Sack and much interesting research done on Usenet by Marc Smith. I realize mapping the blogosphere is a somewhat different issue, but some of the questions that have been raised are relevant to other online communities as well. People have worked for years to find some answers, let’s not ignore them. A piece that seems especially related to some issues that have come up is “Community without Propinquity Revisited: Communications Technology and the Transformation of the Urban Public Sphere” [pdf] by Craig Calhoun.
Posted by eszter
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Thursday, July 1, 2004
» Silly.. but we all do it «
My first reaction after reading about a Singaporean student who set a new world record for speedy text messaging was that it’s a really silly thing to bother competing over. [Thanks to LiL for the link.] But then I realized that we probably all have taken part in similarly silly games when we were young (or possibly even when we got older). My most memorable such “competition” (in quotes because it was always informal) was in middle school during breaks between classes. We used to race against each other to see who could solve Rubik’s Magic puzzle first (no, not the cube, that would have taken most of us too long to bother with during breaks). The “Magic puzzle” is much easier than the Rubik’s cube. In fact, once you know how it goes, you’ve pretty much solved it for good. Nonetheless, we just loved doing it over and over and over and over again. Last time I was at my parents’ I picked up a bunch of these logic toys I used to have and brought them with me back to the States. My place is now littered with Rubik puzzles and other similar brain teasers I can no longer solve. Maybe I just used to have more patience (and more time?) back then. I’m still working on getting the Magic puzzle right again…
Inspired to play, but don’t have a Rubik’s cube on hand? Check out this site that lets you play with the cube.. and then solves it for you in case you get stuck.
PS. Ernõ Rubik is another one in the relatively long list of Hungarian math wonders.
Posted by eszter
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Thursday, July 1, 2004
» Paris notes «
I spent part of last week in Paris. Since many readers at Crooked Timber kindly offered suggestions on what I should do while in Paris, I thought I’d post a note about my trip. I include some reflections on random things I took note of (e.g. garbage disposals, toilet fees, price checks in stores).
Cool. Fête de la Musique. If you have a choice about when you visit Paris, I highly recommend including June 21st in your travel plans. It is an all-night program of free concerts all across town. It was a blast. Just imagine, walking around Paris with various free concerts scattered all across town. Awesome. And as you can imagine, the fact that France beat Switzerland in soccer that evening only added to the celebratory mood.
Cool. Government support of the arts. Related to the above is the fact that unlike in the U.S., government support for the arts is quite common in Europe. I doubt many people took particular note of the large sign behind a stage with the words “Ministère des Affaires étrangères” on it, but for me it stood out as it’s not something one would often see in the States (maybe local government is better about this around here?).
Not cool. Closed off garbage bins in the Paris subway. Apparently, right after the bombings in Madrid, all of the garbage bins in Paris were closed off. The “solution” has been to put a flat cardboard paper container on the ground right next to them. The result: disgusting piles of trash of various sizes around the bins. Even if people aim at the paper trays, by the time the light waste makes it to the ground it scatters all over. A better solution would seem to be transparent bins or something. I did see some of these on the streets. Maybe they are getting around to introducing them in the subway. (Of course, people from some cities may respond that at least they have garbage disposals of some sort!)
Cool. Metro 6. This is one of those things that a tourist would rarely pick up on, but many may enjoy it if they knew about it. The #6 metro goes above ground for a good chunk of the way. It passes very close to the Eiffel Tower and I think offers a wonderful view of the area. I remembered this from the time when I spent a month in Paris many years ago and took this line to class every day. Taking it from the Trocadero stop going West will offer this nice view.
Cool. Photo exhibit on fence of Jardin de Luxembourg. The northern side of the Jardin features a row of large World War II photographs with captions (in both French and English). It seemed to be in honor of the 60th anniversary of D Day. I don’t know if they use this space for photo exhibits at other times, it is certainly a neat idea.
Huh? Cost of using the toilet at Notre Dame: 41c. It made no sense to me to ask for that particular sum for use of the toilets at Notre Dame. The machines only seem to take exact change. How many tourists have that kind of exact change? I would have preferred to just pay 50c then have to bother finding the exact coins. A staff member seems to have it as her full time job to make change for people lining up. This made no sense to me.
Cool. Electronic price tags in stores. It seemed to me that the price tags on the shelves of a supermarket near where I was staying (thanks, Maria!:) were electronically managed. This seems to make a lot of sense. Of course, systems can go down, which would be unfortunate in such a case, but as long as the system is up, it seems a great way to change prices centrally instead of someone having to run around the store changing the little stickers all the time.
Not cool. $5 soft drinks. I found the price of non-alcoholic drinks at sit-down places ridiculous. Wine was often cheaper. I am sure this comes as pleasant news for many, but since I’m not much of a wine fan, I didn’t like it. And paying $5 for a silly drink seemed extreme. (And thus my supermarket experience, where I bought cute little cans of drinks just perfect to quench one’s thirst instead of the regular ones that I can never finish anyway.)
Overall, the trip was great despite some of the not cool moments.;) Numerous friends happened to be in town at the same time and I enjoyed seeing them. It was also a great pleasure to meet Maria in person finally! I also spent a good chunk of my time just walking around in town, sitting on bridges or in parks and pondering things. It was quite a treat.
I’ll post about my London experience another time.
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Wednesday, June 30, 2004
» New book on Social Inequality «
Shameless plug: there is a new book out on Social Inequality edited by Kathryn Neckerman and published by the Russell Sage Foundation. The volume brings together recent research from the various social sciences on the topic of social stratification. I am often frustrated by how common it is for researchers to ignore papers by others on topics relevant to their work simply - or so it seems - because the researchers are in other fields. One nice aspect of this volume is that it features research by sociologists, political scientists, economists and demographers alike. The shameless plug has to do with the fact that I co-authored (with Paul DiMaggio, Coral Celeste and Steven Shafer) one of the chapters called “Digital Inequality: From Unequal Access to Differentiated Use”.
It is exciting to see a book on social stratification contain a chapter on digital inequality since many subfields of sociology seem to be taking quite some time in realizing and/or acknowledging that the increasing spread of IT is relevant to various areas of social scientific inquiry.
These are the five key issues we address in our piece:
1. The digital divide. Who has access to the Internet, who does not have access, and how has access changed?
2. Is access to and use of the Internet more or less unequal than access to and use of other forms of information technology?
3. Among the increasing number of Internet users, how do such factors as gender, race, and socio-economic status shape inequality in ease, effectiveness, and quality of use? What mechanisms account for links between individual attributes and technological outcomes?
4. Does access to and use of the Internet affect people’s life chances?
5. How might the changing technology, regulatory environment, and industrial organization of the Internet render obsolete the findings reported here?
See a more detailed outline of the chapter and a copy of a draft version here or send me a note if you’d like me to snail mail you a copy of the final chapter.
The book has 26 chapters on topics ranging from family and children to inequality in school and work, in health and political participation. With the index, the volume is over 1000 pages long. The paperback edition is $49.50 (the hardcover goes for $125.00). Contributors include Neil Fligstein, Richard Freeman, Bob Hauser, Mike Hout, Sandy Jencks, Theda Skocpol, Sidney Verba, Jane Waldfogel, Bruce Western and many others.
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Wednesday, June 30, 2004
» Dear Ralph «
Please get out of the presidential race.
Visit the site to support one of Nader’s causes if he leaves the race. If he doesn’t, the contributions will be diverted to organizations working directly to defeat Bush (you choose from five options).
Posted by eszter
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Wednesday, June 30, 2004
» Misc posts «
Two posts on CT while I was on the road:
Fun with IT. Fun with IT?
Tech Active
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Monday, June 14, 2004
» Internet use reports «
The Pew Internet and American Life Project has revamped its Web site making it easier than ever before to find interesting and timely reports about people’s Internet uses. They have organized the site by topic so you can jump directly to reports of particular interest. They usually do not go beyond binary analyses when writing up the findings, but it’s a helpful first cut at the material. Moreover, they are making some of their data available for secondary analysis so others can jump in and see what the deeper stories are. There are few data sets that are publicly available with this type of information so the Project has been doing a real service to this research community for quite a while. The Pew Project is run by a group of great folks, do hop on over and check out their work! (Check here for some additional data sources on the topic.)
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Friday, June 11, 2004
» The Creation of the Media «
I have been meaning to blog about this forever, but have not found the kind of time a post about this deserves. Since there will be a CSPAN2 airing of a related talk tomorrow, I thought I would pass on the longer serious post and just mention the book and speech so people have the opportunity to take advantage of the broadcast.
A new book that should be of interest to many readers of CT is Paul Starr’s The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications. I should say up front that Paul was one of my advisors in graduate school so I am not a completely objective observer here. In fact, Paul has influenced my thinking about IT quite a bit. First, he is great at conveying the idea that studying communication media without a historical context is extremely problematic. Ignoring history is the best way to make unrealistically optimistic or pessimistic assumptions about the potential implications of a new technology. Second, he convincingly argues – as he lays out in great detail in his book – that ignoring the role of political decisions in the evolution of a communication medium misses a major part of the picture. There was a review of the book in The New York Times Book Review last weekend and the New Yorker had a piece a few weeks ago as well.
Paul Starr gave this year’s Van Zelst Lecture at the School of Communication at Northwestern last month. His talk will be aired on CPAN2 tomorrow, June 12th at 10:59am (EST). Paul is a great speaker and extremely careful and engaged scholar so viewers are in for a treat. I highly recommend catching the broadcast and reading the book!
Posted by eszter
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Friday, June 11, 2004
» Upcoming travel «
Since hopping across continents seems to be the CT way of life these days, I thought I’d join in on the fun. Next week I will be in London giving a talk at a conference at LSE on how people search for jobs online (the daylong workshop is on online recruitment in general). A few days later I will move on to Paris to meet Maria in person, finally! We already have tickets to the P.J. Harvey concert thanks to a friend of mine who is much more on top of these things than I am. I will give a seminar talk in an R&D group at France Télécom, but otherwise this will be my summer vacation.
Question: for someone who has pretty much seen all the touristy musts in London and Paris, what are less obvious things not to be missed? I realize entire book collections must exist on this, but I thought I’d throw it out there anyway.
In Paris in particular, there is a museum I visited years ago that I am having a hard time locating again. It is not one of the really famous ones. It featured contemporary art at the time and I think that is its theme in general. I recall that it was on a corner and possibly close to the river, although I am not sure (this was waaay too many years ago). If any of this rings a bell to anyone, please advise, although I realize my description is too vague to be of much help.
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Monday, June 7, 2004
» Middle school orals «
A post about exams? Not quite. Belle already blogged about this NYTimes Magazine article a few days ago, but I thought it was worth some more discussion. The piece is about how widespread oral sex seems to be among high school students and how casually teens approach the topic. (I should note that it’s not clear how representative the sample on which the author draws is of high school students in general, but the topic is worthy of consideration even if it represents only a fraction of students, I think.) I am certainly not in favor of abstinence-only education and am all in favor of teaching teens about safe sex. My concern is about the one-way approach many teens seem to be taking. In the following sentence, Belle addresses the problem of girls performing oral sex on guys without any reciprocity: “If letting some guy just show up at your house so you can suck his dick is empowering, then I’m Henry Kissinger.” In case that doesn’t make that much sense out of context, be sure to read Belle’s post with a relevant quote from the article. By the way, for an additional reality check, note that this is not only a high school phenomenon, it seems to start in middle school for some. Also, for those (including a commentator on Ogged’s blog) who think that you can’t get STDs through oral sex, this may be worth reading.
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Monday, June 7, 2004
» Celebrity sightings «
I spent the beginning of last week at my graduation at Princeton. (Although I defended almost exactly a year ago, I had missed the deadline for marching in the ceremonies last year.) I am really glad I went back. I had always envisioned graduation from grad school as a fairly anonymous event where I would be hooded amongst lots of people I did not know. This was not at all the case. It turns out that I knew many of the people finishing at the same time and that made the ceremonies all that much more special. (And as usual, I was hanging out mostly with economists.. go figure.)
Princeton usually does not have a Commencement speaker although the President of the University does say a few words. However, the senior class has a Class Day the day before Commencement to which they do invite a speaker. Last year I got to see Seinfeld this way and this year Jon Stewart gave quite a funny speech kindly sprinkled with local references as he is from that area. The unexpected celebrity sighting had come during Reunions on the Friday before though. I was waiting for the green light to cross Washington Road just in front of the Woodrow Wilson School when I spotted a security guard right next to me. I knew it was Reunions weekend and there are enough big deal Princeton alums that there could be all sorts of reasons for this so I was not that surprised. Nonetheless, it is not too common to see such obvious out-of-a-movie security personnel. So I thought I would glance to his right to see if I could spot someone famous. I did. Donald Rumsfeld was waiting for the green light as well (not something he is necessarily known to do…), back for his 50th I guess. Although Jon Stewart did mention in his Class Day speech that no matter who wins the presidential elections this year we can blame Yale, I’m afraid that doesn’t leave all Princetonians exempt from related responsibilities…
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Tuesday, May 25, 2004
» Free stickers «
Since I’ve been blogging about political stickers and T-shirts, I thought I would post a pointer to the free stickers MoveOn is giving away. (One could actually argue that saying “Mission Nothing Accomplished” actually understates the myriad of problems that have been “accomplished”.)
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Tuesday, May 25, 2004
» The population of political blogs «
I resisted temptation for a while, but have finally launched into a project on blogs with two graduate students in our Media, Technology and Society PhD program, Jason Gallo and Sean Zehnder. We are focusing on political blogs in particular. This raises a whole set of methodological questions. A big one has to do with sampling. We have decided that we would not focus on a random sample of blogs, not only because that is just about impossible to achieve, but more importantly because that is not our focus. We are interested in the most widely read political blogs. (Yes, there remains the question as to what counts as a political blog in the first place, that is just one of the many questions we are grappling with.)
One way of finding prominent political blogs (or prominent blogs of any type) is to look through the links of prominent blogs we already know about. However, since linking is one of the questions we are interested in, it seems problematic to rely only on that method to find blogs relevant for our study. The same concern applies to using Technorati as a method for finding prominent political blogs. Another idea is to run searches on certain political topics and “blog” or “weblog” and see what we find. Of course, in such cases we are left wondering how widely read the particular blogs are, especially if they do not have comments turned on (and in any case, number of comments is a very limited measure of how widely read a blog may be). Other methods we have thought of is to look at directory listings (such as Yahoo!’s) of political blogs for ones we may have missed using the other methods.
So to sum up: What other approaches should we be using to identify political blogs? What methods do people recommend for identifying “top” political blogs?Also, if people know of political blogs that don’t seem to get mentioned here much, please feel free to post away. I realize this method of collecting information mirrors many of the shortcomings mentioned above, but hopefully by using all these approaches, we can get a reasonable sample (or dare I say population) of the most widely read political blogs. Thanks!
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Tuesday, May 25, 2004
» Taking the subway? «
You better have a good reason.. and be able to produce identification as well. [Via IP.]
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Tuesday, May 25, 2004
» Ooops «
Remember our discussion of the Erdõs number and the eBay bid that followed? The Chronicle is on the story, sort of. There is not one word about humor in that whole piece.. or that it all started out with a light-hearted discussion on blogs. Talk about taking a story out of context. I realize Bill may have posted the bid in all seriousness, but I think a better coverage would have included a mention of how it all came about, which is perfectly clear from his initial post. One interesting point gets no mention in the piece: John’s suggestion that offering co-authorship for free and no labor may be an even better deal for those with a high Erdõs number. (He meant it as a joke! I better add that again before John gets accused of wanting to undercut the system.) I guess in the context of The Chronicle piece that’s less scandelous.. and thus not worthy of coverage. I think I’ll go read The Onion now. [Thanks to my friend Gabriel for pointing me to The Chronicle piece.]
UPDATE: Read about Bill Tozier’s reactions here. Also, to clarify, the article does say in the beginning “The auction began as a bit of fun,” but if you read the whole piece, that part is soon forgotten.
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Friday, May 21, 2004
» Design for Kerry «
A propos election designs, check out Designs on the White House. Their goal is to generate great T-shirt designs for the Kerry campaign and then sell them to support the campaign. There will be some public voting and then voting by a list of judges (which for some curious reason does not include any Timberites;). They have sevaral themes: Best Pro-Kerry Shirt (positive spin, no mention of Bush), Best Anti-Bush Shirt (negative spin, must mention Bush), Best Issue Shirt - Domestic, Best Issue Shirt - Foreign, Funniest Shirt, Best Retro Shirt, Best Get Out The Vote Shirt and Most stylish. Be sure to check it out and also get those creative juices flowing and submit your own designs/quotes!!
I noticed the W has made it on to their list. Great minds think alike. (Hey, I can say that, it wasn’t my idea, it was a friend’s.) Oh, and for those interested in some W wearables immediately, here they are. I have added some circular Ws and some baby options in response to commentators’ requests.
UPDATE: As expected, others had thought of and implemented the W design a while ago. Take your pick: one, two, three, four. Thanks to a reader for pointing me to these sites.
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Friday, May 21, 2004
» Phone numbers «
Obviously there are tons of ways in which one can study memory and recall from the trivial to the immensely important. This morning I was wondering about a tiny corner of this area: how do people remember numbers, and in particular, phone numbers? I wish I had a better reason than the following for bothering with all this. I was woken up, for the nth time, by a phone call from a number that looked much like mine. What gives?
When I answered, the caller hung up. This had gone on for a while. At first I thought I would just ignore it and it would go away. But clearly it didn’t. So I decided to call back the number. The person had no idea what I was talking about (i.e. that someone from that number kept calling me), told me his was a new number (seemingly irrelevant since they were the ones making the call not receiving it) and eventually hung up on me. However, a few minutes later he called back to say that the owner of the number was checking his voicemail and had dialed the wrong number, thus the stray calls. Aha, of course. There are providers that allow you to check your voicemail by calling your own number. Ideally in this case the person would just add a speed dial, but of course that would not help me in cases when they would try to access voicemail from another phone… so I decided to get my number changed. (Other reasons follow below.)
But so why the frequent mistakes? My number looked like this: XAY-BBXA. The number from which I was getting calls was XAY-BBYA. Add to this that X and Y are located in somewhat similar positions on the dial pad (just across from each other) and I guess it is not so crazy that someone would keep getting it wrong. I don’t know much about how we remember numbers, but it seemed such a confusion was within the realm of possibilities (too much so, in fact, as evidenced by the frequently made mistake in this case). I am extremely visual when remembering phone numbers so I just dial them on the pad. In fact, at times even just to remember a number to give it to someone I have to “type it out” on an imaginary pad. I just wish this person would have remembered the right sequence. In any case, the idea that I would have to depend on this person remembering their own number correctly was not appealing so I moved on.
Other reasons I had been annoyed by the number included text messages and phone calls aimed at perhaps the previous user of the number. Her friends had a hard time understanding I was not her and just kept calling.. and sending text messages. This is especially annoying since the receiving end (here: me) pays for such call minutes and text messages (the latter do not even require any action on your part so you cannot just ignore them, the charge is automatic). Add to that the tone of some of those text messages, and I was far from amused.
Lesson learned: when getting a new number, ask for one that is new or has not been in use for a while.
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Friday, May 21, 2004
» W «
We’ve discussed bumper stickers here before. A friend of mine recently said she’d like to find a sticker that is simply a W crossed out. I picture one of those country letter stickers, but with a strikethrough. By the way, no need to search aimlessly for your preferred fender decoration, there are services that allow you to make customized ones. I used one such service to create a Crooked Timber sticker:) and was happy with the outcome.
UPDATE: I couldn’t resist. Get your W oval bumper sticker, T-shirt, baseball cap and many other goodies here.
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Friday, May 21, 2004
» In other news... «
Some issues get a lot of play in the media while others go completely ignored. The UN has a site devoted to “10 Stories the world should hear more about”. Of course, one could probably compile an endless list of stories we shouldn’t be ignoring, but it’s certainly one place to start. You can read about child soldiers in Uganda, the role of women in negotiating piece and rebuilding societies (did you know that in Rwanda women hold 49% of seats in the legislature?), and the disappearance of some peoples and languages (did you know that there are languages out there spoken by less than 100 people?). These snapshots of stories are very short and the descriptions of the issues seem a bit simplistic at times, but it’s an interesting place to start for coverage of important topics that don’t seem to get much mass media attention. Alternatively, you can always head over to The Head Heeb who manages to cover a lot of issues from certain parts of the world that seem to go ignored by many. (Thanks to Neat New Stuff for the pointer to the UN site.)
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Friday, May 21, 2004
» WWW conference «
[Originally posted on Crooked Timber on May 18th.]
Today, I will be attending a conference workshop in New York on Measuring Search Effectiveness: The User Perspective. I will be presenting some findings about What Makes an Expert Searcher? Evidence from User Studies. (That paper is not ready for distribution, but I will take this opportunity to link again:) to the paper that presents the coding scheme I used to analyze most of the data.) The workshop is being held in conjunction with WWW2004, the Thirteenth International World Wide Web Conference.
I am reminded of my attendance at The 4th International World Wide Web Conference in Boston in 1995. I was a senior in college writing a thesis on the unequal international spread of the Internet. I went to this conference with the hopes of learning what research was being done about the social implications of the Internet. There were very few sessions on the program that were about any aspects other than technical. After one of the few sessions where panelists discussed some philosophical questions related to the Internet, I walked up to someone to ask whether they thought the government was doing anything about the Web. His response: “Yes, I think they have a Web page now.” This wasn’t exactly what I was getting at. I had hoped to see some sessions discussing policy implications. But this was still the era when many people thought the medium was somehow going to evolve in a vacuum, in isolation from existing social institutions.
Looking at this year’s program, it is clear that technical questions are still the overwhelming topic of this particular conference so perhaps it was a mistake to look for other types of content at WWW4. But this is easy to say today when the conference scene is littered with meetings discussing all aspects of IT. Back in 1995, there weren’t too many meetings you could go to where people would care to discuss any aspects of the Web.
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Monday, May 10, 2004
» Blogiversary «
I started blogging two years ago as an extension of/complement to my mailing list, which had been running since December, 2001. It’s funny that in that first post I describe blogging as “an online forum usually with one main author/contributor” and now here I am on a group blog. I did not see the benefits of the latter until I joined CT, which has been a delight, so thanks!
I wish I knew who were the first few dozen readers of “Eszter’s Blog” so I could express my appreciation to them. (Perhaps they are still with me in which case saying thank you here should work.:-) Those visits encouraged me to keep going and make this exciting and interesting – albeit at times quite frustrating – activity part of my daily routine. Writing blog entries has definitely pushed me to think about certain issues and ideas in the sort of detail that an occasional random thought would not require of me. It has also helped me meet some wonderful people. Thank you!
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Friday, May 7, 2004
» Staying the course.. or not «
The debate I went to last week (Resolved: That John Kerry should replace George Bush in the White House) was quite interesting and had some especially good tid-bits. Here is one: The Negative suggested that at other times when the country was at war during the presidential elections the country stayed the course and it should do so this time around as well. The Affirmative responded that had people realized in 1864 that there was no slavery or had people noted in 1944 that there were no concentration camps then perhaps the results of the elections would have been different.
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Friday, May 7, 2004
» FDA rejects Plan B «
The Food and Drug Administration has rejected over-the-counter availability of the morning-after pill. As I have mentioned here before, easier access to such emergency contraception could reduce significantly the millions of unwanted pregnancies in the US. In case anyone is wondering whether the decision was political, consider the following:
The decision was an unusual repudiation of the lopsided recommendation of the agency’s own expert advisory panel, which voted 23 to 4 late last year that the drug should be sold over the counter and then, that same day, 27 to 0 that the drug could be safely sold as an over-the-counter medication.
[..]
The “not approvable” letter was signed by acting director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, Steven K. Galson, not by members of the FDA review team, as is usual. Former officials of the FDA said that generally means that the review team had made a different recommendation.
Posted by eszter
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Thursday, May 6, 2004
» Women in science.. at the top «
This is a more personal note although certainly related to topics discussed on CT and I’ll add some stats to give it some context. Congrats to my Mom for being elected a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences this week! The Academy has been around since 1825 and in all that time has had a total of eighteen women elected to its membership. The three women elected this week boosted the number up from fifteen. My Mom is only the second female chemist ever to become a member. The Academy altogether has no more than 200 members younger than 70 years old at any one time. (Members 70 or older do not count toward the 200 so there are just less than 300 current living members.)
Apparently the gender ratio is similarly abysmal in the science academies of other countries. Tabulations have shown that although in a few countries (e.g. Norway, Finland) the percentages are a bit higher around a whopping ten percent, among many other countries such as the UK, Germany, Israel, Denmark, France the figure is around four percent. The state of things is especially striking given that nowadays women often make up more than fifty percent of those getting college degrees (although that’s distributed quite unevenly across fields). Sure, it takes time for people to go through the ranks, but a significant number of women have been getting degrees in science for a while yet the pipeline narrows for women at every step of the way from college degrees to graduate degrees to post-docs to assistant professorships to full professorships to membership in science academies.. all the way to the Nobel Prize.
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Thursday, May 6, 2004
» Weekend celebrations «
[This post refers to last weekend, it appeared on Crooked Timber on May 1st.]
This is an eventful weekend. From a distance, I’m following the festivities surrounding Hungary’s EU membership. Locally, I’m taking part in the 125th anniversary celebrations of my School and look forward to the debate in a couple of hours by alum members of our dozen national championship winning Debate Team on “Resolved: That John Kerry should replace George Bush in the White House.”. (By School I mean the School of Communication, the University is older than that.)
John has already mentioned the significance of this day for the EU, but I had to comment myself given that in the CT crowd, I’m the one most immediately affected by this event. I remember back in the early nineties hearing that perhaps Hungary would join the EU by 2004 or 2005 and thinking that those years seemed so immensely distant they would never come. It is hard to believe that we are finally here.
I started writing a much longer more reflective post on all this, but I have decided to table that for another day. I am happy to remain in celebratory mood for the day and postpone some more critical comments for another time.
Those in Chicagoland should come join in on the School of Communication birthday events this weekend!
Posted by eszter
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Friday, April 30, 2004
» Nem tudhatom... «
Via Liliputian Lilith (who realized this via many others among them weez) I noticed that today is Poem In Your Pocket Day, which bloggers are converting into a Poem On Your Blog Day. Although my high school literature teacher did everything in her power to make me hate poetry, I’m happy to say she didn’t succeed. So I share with you here one of my favorite poems, “I Cannot Know” by the Hungarian poet Miklós Radnóti.
I will first post the original Hungarian version. However, recognizing that few CT readers will know what to make of that after the original version I copy one English translation. There have been several, but this is the only one I can find online. This particular translation gives it a different title: “How Others See”.. which yet again reminds us that translating poetry is not an easy or straight-forward task.
Radnóti Miklós: Nem Tudhatom…
Nem tudhatom, hogy másnak e tájék mit jelent,
nekem szülõhazám itt e lángoktól ölelt
kis ország, messzeringó gyerekkorom világa.
Belõle nõttem én, mint fatörzsbõl gyönge ága
s remélem, testem is majd e földbe süpped el.
Itthon vagyok. S ha néha lábamhoz térdepel
egy-egy bokor, nevét is, virágát is tudom,
tudom, hogy merre mennek, kik mennek az úton,
s tudom, hogy mit jelenthet egy nyári alkonyon
a házfalakról csorgó, vöröslõ fájdalom.
Ki gépen száll fölebe, annak térkép e táj,
s nem tudja, hol lakott itt Vörösmarty Mihály;
annak mit rejt e térkép? gyárat s vad laktanyát,
de nekem szöcskét, ökröt, tornyot, szelíd tanyát;
az gyárat lát a látcson és szántóföldeket,
míg én a dolgozót is, ki dolgáért remeg,
erdõt, füttyös gyümölcsöst, szöllõt és sírokat,
a sírok közt anyókát, ki halkan sírogat,
s mi föntrõl pusztítandó vasút, vagy gyárüzem,
az bakterház s a bakter elõ;tte áll s üzen,
piros zászlo kezében, körötte sok gyerek,
s a gyárak udvarában komondor hempereg;
és ott a park, a régi szerelmek lábnyoma,
a csókok íze számban hol méz, hol áfonya,
s az iskolába menvén, a járda peremén,
hogy ne feleljek aznap, egy kõre léptem én,
ím itt e kõ, de föntrõl e kõ se látható,
nincs mùszer, mellyel mindez jól megmutatható
Hisz bùnösök vagyunk mi, akár a többi nép,
s tudjuk miben vétkeztünk, mikor, hol és mikép,
de élnek dolgozók itt, költõk is büntelen,
és csecsszopók, akikben megnõ az értelem,
világít bennük, õrzik, sötét pincékbe bújva,
míg jelt nem ír hazánkra újbol a béke ujja,
s fojtott szavunkra majdan friss szóval õk felelnek.
Nagy szárnyadat borítsd ránk virrasztó éji felleg.
1944. január 17.
====>> ENGLISH version from here:
Miklos Radnoti: How Others See
How others see this region, I cannot understand:
to me, this little country is menaced motherland
with flames around, the world of my childhood swaying far,
and I am grown from this land as tender branches are
from trees. And may my body sink into this soil in the end.
When plants reach out towards me, I greet them as a friend
and know their names and flowers. I am at home here, knowing
the people on the road and why and where they are going-
and how I know the meaning when by a summer lane
the sunset paints the walls with a liquid flame of pain!
The pilot can’t help seeing a war map from the sky,
can’t tell below the home of Vörösmarty Mihály;
what can he identify there? grim barracks and factories,
but I see steeples,oxen, farms, grasshoppers and bees;
his lens spies out the vital production plants, the fields,
but I can see the worker, afraid below, who shields
his labour, a singing orchard, a vinyard and a wood,
among the graves a granny mourning her widowhood,
and what may seem a plant or rail line that must be wrecked
is just a signalhouse with the keeper standing erect
and waving his red flag, lots of children around the guard,
a shepherd dog might roll in the dust in a factory yard,
and there’s the park with the footprints of past loves
and the flavour
of childhood kisses- the honey, the cranberry I still savour;
and on my way to school, by the kerbside to postpone
a spot-test one certain morning, I stepped upon a stone:
look! there’s the stone whose magic the pilot cannot see,
no instrument would merge it in his topography.
True, guilty are we all here, our people as the rest,
we know our faults, we know how and when we have
transgressed,
but there are blameless lives here of toil and poetry and passion,
and infants also, with growing capacity for compassion-
they will protect its glow while in gloomy shelters till
once more our land is marked by the finger of peace:
then they will
respond to our muffled words with new voices fresh and bright.
Spread your great wings above us, protective cloud of night.
January 17 , 1944
Posted by eszter
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Friday, April 30, 2004
» More in Google news «
Crooked Timber is filled with Google commentary these days, I can’t be left out!:) But since my fellow co-bloggers have provided plenty of interesting reading, I’ll just point to a clip. I used up ten minutes of my 15 yesterday in a live interview on CNNfn’s The Flip Side. Those of you who have been following my related posts and work won’t be surprised to learn that my comments had to do with seach skills and how commercial considerations may influence what people see online. It was a neat experience. And seeing www.Eszter.com splashed on CNNfn with me on the screen was pretty cool.:)
I thought I’d post some details about the experience below the fold for those who may be curious about how something like this works. I went to CNN’s Chicago studio in the Tribune building. The show is hosted in New York. There is a bit of a time lag in the interview, which makes it a bit awkward at times, but not too clunky. I did not know this until one of the anchors mentioned it.. and then of course noticed it when I watched the show afterwards. However, while in the studio, I did not see anything. There were no monitors present (except for the person operating the camera). I was in a dark room with some bright lights beaming down at me and the camera right in front of me. I was wearing an ear piece in which I heard the show’s anchors. But I couldn’t see anything. It is an interesting experience.
For those still wondering whether there are people left on the planet who do not use Google (despite the data that suggest so), the following anecdotal evidence was well timed. I asked the car driver who took me to the studio and back whether he’s an Internet user and what search engine he uses. He said Yahoo even though he certainly knows about Google and said he sometimes uses that after he’s done with trying things on Yahoo.
Additionally, it has been interesting to see in my referral logs that several people have gotten to my Web site in the last 24 hours by typing eszter.com into Google’s search box. I’ll reiterate, nonetheless, that my evidence for claiming that lots of people do not know much about online searching is based on in-person observations and interviews with a random sample of Internet users and not simply on anecdotal evidence. Lots of people out there don’t know the difference between a search box and the location or address bar, nor do they know the difference between .com and .gov. And if you are one of these people (that would be possibly .1% of CT readers) then the Web cannot function for you as the kind of resource it may be for many others. If you are interested in more about this, my academic papers give lots more detail.
For more Google blurbs by others, see this list.
Posted by eszter
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Wednesday, April 28, 2004
» What can you not find online? «
There has been much hype about how the Internet and especially search engines (need I name the one in particular?;) are giving everyone everywhere access to anything and everything. I’ve already commented previously about why this simplifies matters (even beyond controlling for mere access issues), but let’s limit our discussion to people who are quite skilled at online information-seeking. What remains – or may increasingly become – hard to access?
Here are some examples. I’d be curious in what other instances people have encountered or perhaps expect to encounter roadblocks at some point.
I have previously discussed the problem of closed systems with respect to course syllabi. Increasingly they are posted on password-protected sites making them hard to access on the open Web. I also continue to be amazed at how few academics post e-copies of their publications on their Web sites. Is it wrong of me to be especially surprised when the academics in question study the Internet in particular? Sure, my academic institution subscribes to many of the publications (although certainly not all) in which academic articles get published, but such subscriptions are only available to a tiny fraction of Web users. (I know, I know, probably only a tiny fraction of Web users are interested in academic publications in the first place, but still, these are examples of gated content.) Many magazines also do not make their articles available to users who are not subscribers.
How about controversial materials? With increasing pressure from various actors (e.g. groups representing commercial or political interests) will we see more material censored or made harder to access? Already Web sites about certain topics are less directly accessible than one might think. (Is it really mere popularity and linking structure that leads to safersex.org as the first hit when you search for sex on Google? Granted, a search for porn seems to lead to more general sites at the top of the list, although I didn’t click through to verify.) And remember the Google vs Church of Scientology case?
I also find it harder to search for some things in other languages. Sometimes it is difficult because it is unclear whether the content is included with or without language-specific characters and so you have to search using both accented and unaccented letters, a practice that can get tedious.
People who have unique names - a good chunk of Timberites, for example - are much easier to pin down on the Web than people who share names with hundreds if not thousands of others. If you are looking for information about a person from the latter group it may be more difficult, even if you do know where the person works or in what town he or she lives. Much information about people seems to be on sites that require registration. Sure, membership is often open to anyone, but the contents of sites like Friendster are not indexed by search engines as far as I know (and people likely use all sorts of nicknames anyway).
Google – to name just one search engine – has some code-dependent limitations built in that makes certain searches difficult. For example, it only allows for a maximum of ten terms in a search query. If you are looking for exact phrases, this can be limiting at times.
In what other cases have you faced search challenges or expect things to get more difficult as time goes on and more materials become proprietary or get hidden due to contoversial status? Do you think I am exaggerating the difficulty of the cases mentioned above?
Posted by eszter
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Wednesday, April 28, 2004
» Where do you go first? «
Ted’s recent post [over at Crooked Timber] reminds me of a question I have been pondering recently due to a change in my media use habits. Where do you go first in the morning for an update on current events? I don’t necessarily mean just online, but in general? If online, what site(s) or lists? It used to be that I would just go to nytimes.com as a starting point and then take it from there often clicking on to some blogs (like some of the precursors of CT) to see what other items of news people found of interest. But starting with the New York Times doesn’t quite do it for me anymore. I haven’t developed a new system yet. For now, I often just start at whatever site I visited the night before. A friend of mine recently told me that he always starts at Talking Points Memo then he looks at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and finally checks out the BBC. That sounded like a good way to start the day. I’m curious, where do others go first?
Posted by eszter
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Wednesday, April 21, 2004
» Liliputian Lilith «
I really enjoy seeing friends take up blogging because I find it helps us keep connected and it usually means more interesting reading. (I guess one could see that as a bad thing, but I’m working on honing my time-management skills.) The latest arrival is Liliputian Lilith who is a friend from graduate school. She, like me, grew up in Hungary interspersed with years in the U.S. thanks to our academic parents who rarely stayed put for more than a few years. Related to other Timberites’ experience (and I suspect many readers’) are her thoughts about the choice some of us make to live in a country other than the one in which we grew up. She has only been blogging for a few days but already has interesting posts about “mother-books” and air travel, cities, Barbie and beauty queens, and the origin of the Hungarians (related to this post on Crooked Timber earlier). Today she took on John Holbo’s recent comments about Academic blogging and literary studies. Welcome to blog writing, LL! (I know you’ve been a reader for a while.;)
Posted by eszter
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Tuesday, April 20, 2004
» Degrees of separation «
[This was originally posted on Crooked Timber by John Quiggin on behalf of the two of us.]
Following up the links on Eszter's last post, I discovered that she shares with me an Erdos number of 3 (Eszter via Aronov and O'Rourke, mine via Fishburn and Wakker). This is pretty good for social science academics.
We thought this was worth a CT post, and came up with another issue. Although Movable Type and other systems encourage group blogging, they don't, as far as I'm aware
