On our most recent trip to Northern California (for me just ended, for the daughter and her lovely mother continuing a few more blessed days) I left the books at home and brought Stanza on my iPhone. Among many other works available to read for free via Stanza is Cory Doctorow’s ” Little Brother .” I haven’t finished it yet, the ride from Los Angeles to Oakland being barely an hour each way, but I can already tell that you should read it . Now. Go . And when you are done, if you liked it or thought it was worth reading or know someone who ought to read it, buy a paper copy and hand it off to a friend who is less likely than yourself to read a book online or on their phone.
Category: Writing Main Categories
I need your feedback.
You loyal few RSS subscribers know that I’ve failed to post for quite a while. (I have no visitors.) Since taking my job at Belkin I’ve been struggling a bit for time and against the urge to post things that might be too Belkin-specific. So I’m toying with a few overlapping ideas; I want to know what you think of them.
- Make posting easier. Take advantage of microblogging techniques and mobile software to make quick posts possible from anywhere.
- Make my “read-later” list public. Things I find interesting enough to mark for later perusal might be of interest to others. Tagging might be useful in this data set.
- Do some sprints. Choose a topic and make short daily posts about that topic for a specified period of time, maybe 30 days or 90 days. Possibilities include “Today’s UX winner and loser,” “Would be better if…,” “GenX grows up,” etc. These topics could have different visual designs, although I’ve done a lot of visual design wheel-spinning in the past.
- Open up the topics. Hinted at above. It doesn’t have to be 100% design or user experience.
- Loosen the filter. Even half-formed thoughts are fair game, if reasonably presented in an effort to engage.
My goal is to reinvigorate my blog by allowing shorter posts and a broader range of posts. My wish is that this will foster discussion, get some things out of my head where I can refer to them later, and help me be a better observer of my surroundings and influences. What do you think? Does this seem like a good approach? Any tips or ideas?
Dear Congressman: your auto-response sucks.
Congressman Xavier Becerra’s web site was recognized as best among the house membership by the Congressional Management Foundation. Heady stuff. Mr. Becerra is proud enough of this fact to trumpet it on his quarterly (print) newsletter, so I decided to have a look, navigated to said website, and fired off a message via the handy email form (which inexplicably required my nine-digit zip; five digits wasn’t enough).
The auto-response made the wrong impression.
Dear Jon,
I appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts with me. Know that my staff and I treat your communication as effective tools to monitor the thoughts, wishes and needs of the community.
Thank for your dedication. I look forward to further communication.
Sincerely,
XAVIER BECERRA
Member of Congress
There’s a lot wrong with that “know that my staff” sentence.
- “Know that my staff and I…” : This is pretty good, but the “know that” construction is deeply affected.
- ”..treat your communication as effective tools…” : You’ve a singular communication being treated as plural tools. Neat trick. Also, treating my communication as a tool is akin to pretending. Treating it as an effective tool underscores the pretending. “We pretend that your communication matters.”
- “…to monitor the thoughts, wishes and needs of the community.” : Ah, but my one communication doesn’t represent anyone but me. Others may agree, but this is one message.
- What is unsaid : I’ll read it. I’ll get back to you. My staffers aggregate these and give me a report. Something to expect.
The law is (supposed to be) an instrument of plain language, but even in the simplest of messages we see little of it. Mr. Becerra, how about saying simply:
Dear Jon,
Thank you for our message. My staff collects these messages and I read them all every week or so. I respond to some of them personally, but I cannot attend to every message individually.
I welcome your future comments.
Sincerely,
XAVIER BECERRA
Member of Congress
For more on this topic, see the good old The Importance of Being Frequestly Fractal at Metacool.
Usage note: Tact vs. Tack
A usage error borne of misunderstanding has nearly replaced correctness with a caricature. I am not referring to rending/rendering, made popular by fresh-faced local news reporters standing before “heart-rendering” scenes of depravity and destruction (rendering a heart, of course, would involve sketching it on paper or cooking it to release any fats contained within); rather it is the unfortunate substitution of tact for tack. To review:
- tact
- Acute sensitivity to what is proper and appropriate in dealing with others, including the ability to speak or act without offending.
- tack
- (too many definitions to list here, but we are interested in the nautical:) The act of changing from one position or direction to another.
- (and:) A course of action meant to minimize opposition to the attainment of a goal.
- (also:) An approach, especially one of a series of changing approaches.
Someone once asked, “What tact should we take in our argument?” and probably didn’t mean “What sensitivity should we take,” but rather “What approach/direction should we take?” Like -rendering, tact sounds bigger, slightly more impressive, and people speaking of tact are often assumed to have it. It is important to have tact when choosing a tack, in these days of office-bound arguments and limited nautical experience. By all means, use the words together. But please, take a tack with tact, and know the difference when you do so.
Usage note: Discreet vs. Discrete
I am not a cantankerous person. While I strive to be precise, I am generally tolerant of common levels of error and imprecision. But when a mistake seems to be entering the vernacular, when it might have once been a spelling error and is fast becoming an error of thought, I must speak.
- discreet
- 1. Marked by, exercising, or showing prudence and wise self-restraint in speech and behavior; circumspect.
- 2. Free from ostentation or pretension; modest.
- discrete
- 1. Constituting a separate thing. Distinct.
- 2. Consisting of unconnected distinct parts.
All too often I have witnessed otherwise right-thinking individuals claiming that their [inanimate object | piece of code | well-defined concept | thing of some sort ] is somehow discreet, which would be admirable if that item really did have the capacity to be appropriately, carefully quiet. While you can’t hear the difference, in print this mistake sings a song of silliness as loud as the eye can see.
Galvanic Skin Response
Courtesy of the American Psychiatric Glossary, 7th Edition:
(GSR) The change in the electrical resistance of the skin following stimulation; an easily measured variable widely used in experimental studies.
The galvanic skin response, sometimes referred to as the electrodermal response (EDR), measures changes in the electrical conductivity of the skin, usually across fingers or the palm, resulting from increased sweat gland activity when presented with an emotionally arousing stimulus.
You’ll find GSR sensors in biofeedback equipment used to train people to relax; in polygraph equipment used to support interrogations; and in psychology experiments which deal with emotional state and arousal of the cerebral cortex.
