David Shenk : The Atlantic

A Thank You Note to Steve Jobs

2011-08-25T17:37:52-04:00

Steve Jobs announced yesterday that he has stepped down as Apple CEO. Here's a letter I just emailed to him:

TO: sjobs@apple.com
FROM: ds@davidshenk.com
SUBJECT: Thank you
Dear Steve,
Thank you. One afternoon in 1981, my father brought home an Apple II Plus for his three sons to marvel at, play with, learn from, imagine on. Thank you for that. In 1984, I was a freshman in college and my not-rich-but-indulgent Dad didn't think twice about sending me a check to buy the first Mac so that I could write my school papers on it. I was annoyingly self-righteous and entitled, and I shouted that day at a bank manager who explained that Daddy's check would take a week or more to clear; this made no sense to me and was not ok because my Mac was waiting for me that day at the university computer store. (I was wrong to be so rude, but right about the check-clearing nonsense.) That first Mac was a thing of wonder, a word and graphic sandbox, a brain extender. I wrote on it furiously, many hours every day, and learned to correct and improve my ideas. I could backspace over my third-rate thoughts and turn them into second-rate thoughts. Thank you for that extraordinary tool.
After that came the upgrades and I cursed you for the first time for cleverly planning my machine's obsolescence. But did I hesitate to buy a Mac 512K? Or a Mac Plus after that? Or an SE/30 after that? Or a Classic after that? Of course not. You were gone from Apple then, I know, but these machines were all your children. Thank you for all of them.
When I was earning about eight or nine thousand bucks a year in my early 20s, I spent about three thousand for the Powerbook 140. I wrote my first book on a 180, my second and third on a 2400c -- loved that machine. You killed it when you came back to Apple and I cursed you again. But I was still damned glad to see you back.
In the late '90s, everyone was dumping Apple. I tried Windows for a few weeks and couldn't stand it. Ugh. I stayed, and wrote my fourth book on a Lombard G3 -- a bit inelegant in my view, and also it spontaneously caught fire in front of me in the summer of 2000. But the book was saved, you replaced the machine, and all was quickly forgiven. What's a small desk fire among old friends?
We don't know each other personally and that's probably for the best. You've been pretty tough on some people over the years -- obviously an extension of your extraordinarily high standards. In a sense, you've become *the* icon of high standards. I suspect I'm far from the only Steve Jobs fan who has wondered whether the brashness is necessary for the boldness. My guess is that you've wrestled with this yourself. I think that's one of the core challenges we all face as human beings: demand excellence of ourselves and one another, but try to forgive the many stumbles along the way.
Thank you, and thank you again. In my own unchurchy way, I'll be praying, along with millions of others, for your health and comfort in the coming months.
Your admiring customer,
David Shenk

Qaddafi's Love of Chess

2011-08-23T13:12:18-04:00

What's "deja vu" in Arabic? The video footage below of Qaddafi playing chess as Libyan rebel troops advance from all sides is an eerie (and presumably unintended) recreation of an ancient Arabic war scene from ancient Baghdad in A.D. 762. Though the video is from June, it's been making the rounds today with the news that Qaddafi's opponent in that game, World Chess Federation Head Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, spoke to the Libyan leader this morning. Here's the story of that eighth century battle as retold in my book The Immortal Game, a history of chess:

Large rocks, severed heads, and ﬂaming pots of oil rained down on Baghdad, capital of the vast Islamic Empire, as its weary defenders scrambled to reinforce gates, ditches, and the massive stone walls surrounding the fortress city's many brick and teak palaces. Giant wooden manjaniq catapults bombarded distant structures while the smaller, more precise arradah catapult guns pelted individuals with grapefruit-sized rocks. Arrows ﬂew thickly and elite horsemen assaulted footmen with swords and spears. "The horses . . . trample the livers of courageous young men," lamented the poet al-Khuraymi, "and their hooves split their skulls." Outside the circular city's main wall--100 feet high, 145 feet thick, and six miles in circumference--soldiers pressed forward with battering rams while other squads choked off supply lines of food and reinforcements. Amid sinking boats and burning rafts, bodies drifted down the Tigris River.

The impenetrable "City of Peace" was crumbling. In the ﬁfty years since its creation in A.D. 762, young Baghdad had rivaled Constantinople and Rome in its prestige and inﬂuence. It was a wildly fertile axis of art, science, and religion, and a bustling commercial hub for trade routes reaching deep into Central Asia, Africa, and Europe. But by the late summer of A.D. 813, after nearly two years of civil war (be¬tween brothers, no less), the enlightened Islamic capital was a smoldering, starving, bloody heap.

In the face of disorder, any human being desperately needs order -- some way to manage, if not the material world, at least one's understanding of the world. In that light, perhaps it's no real surprise that, as the stones and arrows and horses' hooves thundered down on Baghdad, the protected core of the city hosted a different sort of battle. Within the round city's imperial inner sanctum, secure behind three thick, circular walls and many layers of gate and guard, under the luminescent green dome of the Golden Gate Palace, Muhammad al-Amin, the sixth caliph of the Abbasid Empire, spiritual descendant of (and distant blood relation to) the Prophet Muhammad, sovereign of one of the largest do¬minions in the history of the world, was playing chess against his favorite eunuch Kauthar.

A trusted messenger burst into the royal apartment with urgently bad news. More inglorious defeats in and around the city were to be re¬ported to the caliph. In fact, his own safety was now in jeopardy.

But al-Amin would not hear of it. He waved off his panicked emissary.

"O Commander of the faithful," implored the messenger, according to the medieval Islamic historian Jirjis al-Makin. "This is not the time to play. Pray arise and attend to matters of more serious moment."

It was no use. The caliph was absorbed in the board. A chess game in progress is--as every chess spouse quickly learns--a cosmos unto itself, fully insulated from an infant's cry, an erotic invitation, or war. The board may have only thirty-two pieces and sixty-four squares, but within that conﬁned space the game has near-inﬁnite depth and possibility. An outsider looking on casually might ﬁnd the intensity incomprehensible. But anyone who has played the game a few times understands how it can be engrossing in the extreme. Quite often, in the middle of an interesting game, it's almost as if reality has been ﬂipped inside out: the chess game in motion seems to be the only matter of substance, while any hint of the outside world feels like an annoying irrelevance.

The messier the external world, the more powerful this inverted dynamic can be. Perhaps that is why Caliph al-Amin, who sensed that his hours were numbered, preferred to soak in the details of his chess battleﬁeld rather than reports of the calamitous siege of his city. On the board he could see the whole action. On the board he could neatly make sense of significant past events and carefully plan his future. On the board he still might win.

"Patience my friend," the caliph calmly replied to his messenger standing only a few feet away and yet a world apart. "I see that in a few moves I shall give Kauthar checkmate."

Not long after this, al-Amin and his men were captured. The sixth Abbasid caliph, victor in his ﬁnal chess game, was swiftly beheaded.

Alzheimer's: What the New York Times Missed

2011-02-22T12:14:00-05:00

Lawrence Altman is an excellent medical reporter for the New York Times, with a long and distinguished history. Yesterday, he added to his considerable body of work with a story clarifying the issue of when President Reagan's Alzheimer's disease first became apparent. The article comes in the wake of recent suggestions from Reagan's son Ron that the president may have had the Alzheimer's in the White House. (Short answer: he didn't).

Altman's piece is solid. But it also made me cringe three times as it glossed over dated descriptions of the disease, passing up easy opportunities to improve basic public understanding.

Altman's three misses:

1. Diagnosis.

Altman writes:

The disease occurs most frequently after 70, but it can strike younger people...diagnosing it with certainty requires a brain biopsy, rarely done while a patient is still alive.

This is still technically true, but it's so dated that it is like writing about car safety without mentioning seat belts or air bags. The public needs to understand that there have been enormous clinical advances in non-biopsy diagnosis over the last fifteen years: experienced Alzheimer's professionals can now diagnose the disease with more than 90% accuracy through a variety of mental status tests and brain scans. Further, though there is currently no cure for Alzheimer's, there are good reasons to get diagnosed as early as possible.

2. Stages.

Altman writes about Reagan:

The disease's course undulated as it progressed...Soon after the diagnosis, Mr. Reagan was told to give up horseback riding, one of his favorite hobbies. A strong swimmer in his youth -- credited with 77 rescues as a lifeguard in Illinois -- he now had to wear water wings while a nurse and security agent propped him up in the shallow end of a pool at home. He picked up magnolia leaves that fell from an overhanging tree or that a security agent tossed his way.

As the fog of Alzheimer's thickened, the father no longer recognized the son.

This, again, is like a 1950s description of Alzheimer's; it leaves giant, confusing gaps and some inaccuracies. Alzheimer's does not undulate; it steadily progresses. The stages are very predictable (if not clearly demarcated), because they result from the plaques and tangles proliferating through more and more regions of the brain. Alzheimer's does not transform strong athletes into clumsy weaklings in the early stages; such physical decline occurs (slowly and steadily) toward the later phases.

If caregivers and families are able to understand Alzheimer's as a series of rather predictable stages, they can be much better prepared.

3. Heredity.

Altman writes:

Alzheimer's hereditary patterns are not precisely known. Ron Reagan said he is aware that he is at risk for the disease.

Again, this is is technically true, but there's so much more to convey, even in the space of a few sentences, because so much is now known about the genetics of Alzheimer's. Only a handful of families carry a very rare gene that will guarantee the onset of Alzheimer's. The Reagans are very unlikely to be in this group. The other 99.9% of us face murkier risks associated with a number of other genes. And as far as we can tell, no person carries a guaranteed genetic immunity to the disease. In recent years, geneticists have identified several specific genes that seem to raise people's risk of getting Alzheimer's -- genes which are turned on and off by external factors, which then helps bring on the disease. Getting tested for these genes, as of now, confers no practical benefit. It won't tell you that you're immune; nor will it tell you that you will probably get the disease. It also won't tell you how to lower your risks. No matter your genetic profile, the best known way to lower your risk of Alzheimer's is the same for everyone: eat a heart-healthy diet, try to reduce stress, and regularly exercise your body and your mind.

Obama and Clinton on Egypt

2011-01-28T12:23:27-05:00

UPDATE: 1/28/11 2:20 p.m.

Is anyone else ashamed so far by the U.S. response to the protests in Egypt? So far, we have Secretary Clinton making a statement about Egypt's stability, and -- just a few minutes ago -- a tweet from Press Secretary Gibbs asking the Egyptian government to reverse their restrictions on Internet and cell phone service.

Very concerned about violence in Egypt - government must respect the rights of the Egyptian people & turn on social networking and internet

A tweet from the Press Secretary ... could they be any quieter about it? How about a on-camera denunciation of violence, house arrests, etc.? How about a denunciation of the British company Vodaphone for complying with the order to shut down cell service?

Update: Clinton has now made a reasonably strong statement on camera -- still not quite enough for my tastes. She went with "deeply concerned." Seems to me that "disturbed" is more appropriate. I don't hear them denouncing. I don't hear any anger or sadness. I understand that they have to walk a fine line, and I'm not blind to the complex politics involved. But violent suppression is to be denounced, period.

Dollars for Laughs: 4 Outstanding Comedy DVD Sets

2010-12-15T11:15:17-05:00

Does anyone still think comedy is trivial? Humans need laughter almost as much as sleep and food, and from Aristophanes to Jon Stewart, comedians have been consistently among our most profound thinkers and communicators. They expose deep emotional truths, dissect critical social issues, and deflate the rich and powerful. Comedy also quite literally trains people how to think.

And it feels good. In case you're looking for a last-minute gift of laughter, here are four favorites.

The Newsroom: The Complete Series

$44.99

The funniest TV you've never heard of. Ken Finkleman is the Canadian Garry Shandling. Narcissism, cynicism, and best bran muffin scene ever.

The Larry Sanders Show: The Complete Series

$98

If you don't know about Larry Sanders, you are one lucky s.o.b. Hours and hours of hilarity await you. Finally, the whole thing has been released.

Newsradio

$31.49

Phil Hartman was truly one of the greats. He did some terrific work on SNL, but this series really allowed him to flex his muscles. And the rest of the ensemble cast--Dave Foley, Maura Tierney, Khandi Alexander, Stephen Root, Vicki Lewis, Andy Dick, Joe Rogan--not a weak link. These guys are operating on a lot of levels, and it's no wonder that it didn't really attract a wide following on network TV. It was too damned smart.

You might want to forego the complete series here, for two reasons. First Hartman never made it to the last season. He was killed in May 1998. Second, people complain that the "slim" packaging is literally discs without cases, easily scratched. So here are seasons 1-4, individually: Seasons 1&2, Season 3, Season 4.

Mary Tyler Moore: The Complete Series

$161.99

It's odd, but this extraordinary show is both dated and timeless. Almost everything about the dialogue, plots, costumes, and sets are superglued to the early 1970s. The jokes too. Humor is contextual, and additive. In general, today's sitcoms are, in many ways, several layers more sophisticated than sitcoms from the '70s* because they are constructed on top of them, like floors of a building. But sometimes the simpler versions are done so well, with so much intelligence and humanity, that it's like breathing in the freshest air or drinking the cleanest glass of water. That's what watching MTM feels like in 2010.

__________

* This doesn't mean the new ones are better than the old ones. You can build a crappy version of a sophisticated edifice.

How to Make Your MacBook Air Loud Enough

2010-12-09T12:43:57-05:00

I don't imagine this comes as news to many, but Apple's newish aluminum unibody laptops are magnificent machines. I used a 13-inch MacBook Pro for a while, and would have been delighted to stay with that forever had they not rolled out the tiny new 11-inch MacBook Air -- a nearly perfect little word-making, idea-sharing, and media consumption device. (Full disclosure: I own Apple stock.)

There are so few real flaws left in these machines that the faults really stick out. My biggest pet peeve, by far, now that I watch a lot of Hulu and Netflix, is how low the sound is. Not the speakers -- the speakers are fine. But Apple has for some reason put a strict limit on the volume.

Now I've discovered an easy fix. For $32, you can buy Audio Hijack Pro. (Download it as a free demo first.) Then follow these steps:

1. For whatever application you want to boost (browser, DVD player, etc), you add it as a source on the left-hand side.

2. Once added, highlight that source, go to the "effects" tab, click on "Click here to insert effect," choose 4FX Effect>10 Band EQ.

3. Crank the EQ up nearly to the top.

4. Click on the "Hijack" button on the top left corner.

5. Go to your application and start playing your movie. You'll notice the sound is much louder than before. And yet, it still doesn't distort at all. Very impressive. Volume problem solved.

The Problem With the Times' Decision to Publish the Latest WikiLeaks Report

2010-11-29T12:55:13-05:00

As with many others, I'm still trying to figure out what I think about the New York Times' very difficult decision to publish excerpts from the latest WikiLeaks trove. The editors there have clearly behaved so responsibly in so many ways that it, firstly, serves as a great reminder about the Times' vital importance in this chaotic information world.

I do, though, think there is some sloppy thinking in their published justification. At its core:

Editors try to balance the value of the material to public understanding against potential dangers to the national interest. As a general rule we withhold secret information that would expose confidential sources to reprisals or that would reveal operational intelligence that might be useful to adversaries in war. We excise material that might lead terrorists to unsecured weapons material, compromise intelligence-gathering programs aimed at hostile countries, or disclose information about the capabilities of American weapons that could be helpful to an enemy.

On the other hand, we are less likely to censor candid remarks simply because they might cause a diplomatic controversy or embarrass officials.

It sounds measured and thoughtful, but let's dig a little deeper.

First, what is the public interest here? The editors seem to indicate that it is synonymous with the public's right-to-know—which, of course, is crucial to ultimate democratic accountability. But is accountability the most immediate concern? Chronologically, accountability must take a back seat to function. The public first needs a government that works. And a functioning government, like any functioning system, requires discretion. Diplomats simply cannot be diplomats without the ability to choose their words carefully. What the Times shrugs off as "diplomatic controversy" and "embarrass[ed] officials" is actually central to what diplomats do. Private communication is the lifeblood of diplomacy. It shouldn't stay private forever, but in real time, diplomats have to be able to do their jobs—for the sake of the people.

The second mistake, I think, comes in how the Times very narrowly defines "dangers to the national interest." They seem mostly concerned with short-term physical dangers—the lives of individual sources, loose nukes, ongoing military operations, etc. These are very worthy concerns, but what about other gigantic dangers around the corner:

Of Pakistan becoming a rogue state.

Of Iran obtaining nukes.

Of renewed chaos in Baghdad.

Of full-scale war in and around Israel.

Preventing these events all requires cohesive diplomacy, which is clearly compromised by some of these disclosures.

I respectfully suggest that, next time, they consider a slightly wider definition: not "danger" but "harm to the national interest." Does it harm our vital interests by compromising ongoing discussions with key leaders? If so, what is the specific value of immediate public knowledge that may override that recognized harm?

Of course, all of this must also be considered in the context of WikiLeaks publishing anyway. As the Times says:

Of course, most of these documents will be made public regardless of what The Times decides....For The Times to ignore this material would be to deny its own readers the careful reporting and thoughtful analysis they expect when this kind of information becomes public.

Does WikiLeaks actions render these publication considerations moot? I don't think so. I admire the Times' efforts to redact certain explosive elements, and their urging others to do the same. But beyond that, the main question facing the Times is whether to give certain revelations particular prominence. Without defending WikiLeaks in any way (I think they are highly irresponsible), it is important to recognize that there is an enormous difference between dumping tens of thousands of pages of material on the Internet and shining a bright light on specific revelations.

Very difficult considerations in uncharted information waters. I commend the Times for acting so thoughtfully, and urge it to clarify some of the basic public interest issues for the inevitable next episode.

What Is Talent?

2010-11-17T12:15:10-05:00

Thanks to Edward Tenner for alerting us to a new WSJ piece by Terry Teachout that attacks Anders Ericsson's so-called "10,000-hour rule." Teachout summarizes the Ericsson rule in the following way:

To become successful at anything, you must spend 10 years working at it for 20 hours each week. Do so, however, and success is all but inevitable.

A superb straw man. So simple to understand, so easy to knock down. But think about it for a moment: Would anyone with half a brain actually argue that a simple *amount* of practice time could *guarantee* success? Of course not, and that's not even remotely what Anders Ericsson does.

The real Anders Ericsson is one of the leaders of a fascinating new academic field called "expertise studies" which carefully deconstructs the longstanding notion of innate talent by looking for hidden components that might actually help to explain success.

This is what science does. It seeks to understand how things actually work rather than settle for mysterious formulations like "gifted," "natural-born," and "genius."

Teachout also writes that "The problem with the 10,000-hour rule is that many of its most ardent proponents are political ideologues who see the existence of genius as an affront to their vision of human equality, and will do anything to explain it away."

I honestly do not know which proponents Teachout is referring to. The writers that I'm most familiar with on the subject of understanding talent and success -- Malcolm Gladwell, Daniel Coyle, Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, Geoff Colvin, Carol Dweck -- are all actually trying to understand what goes into talent and success.

He might be referring to the title of my book, The Genius in All of Us, which some non-readers have misinterpreted as a blank-slate argument of pure egalitarianism. But, again, that's a straw man. No one here is arguing that we're all equal or equally capable of the exact same achievements. We all have differences, and are therefore assured of becoming different people.

When it comes to the question of individual potential, though, it's important to avoid what neuroscientist and musicologist Daniel J. Levitin calls "the circular logic of talent." "When we say that someone is talented," he says, "we think we mean that they have some innate predisposition to excel, but in the end, we only apply the term retrospectively, after they have made significant achievements."

So what is "talent"? Is it some magic or genetic stuff that gives some of us a springboard to success? The closer we look at the building blocks of success, the more we understand that talent is not a thing; rather, it is the process itself.

Part of this new understanding requires a new insight into genetics that helps us get past the myth of genetic-giftedness. Genes influence our traits, but in a dynamic way. They do not directly determine our traits. In fact, it turns out that while it is correct to say that "genes influence us," it's just as correct to say that "we influence our genes."

Everything about our lives is a process, and we are indebted to Anders Ericsson and others for helping us to obtain a richer understanding of that process.

It's interesting that Teachout pounds so hard on (nameless) obstinate ideologues who refuse to open their minds to evidence. Blind ideology is exactly what I'm seeing in his confident (and factless) assertion that Wolfgang Mozart's success as a composer (as opposed to his sister Nannerl's lack-of-success) is simply due to this: "He had something to say and she didn't. Or, to put it even more bluntly, he was a genius and she wasn't." Twenty minutes of reading about their early lives and the cultural context provides a much richer understanding than that. Why rush to enshrine a myth when we have so many rich facts and observations to help us come closer to a true understanding?

Teachout also writes that any suggestion of genius as a process "fails to account for the impenetrable mystery that enshrouds such birds of paradise as Bobby Fischer, who started playing chess at the age of 6. Nine years later, he became the U.S. chess champion." Again, why leap to "impenetrable mystery" when we can actually understand these things better? There are some terrific books out there now that help us closely examine talent and success. Why is Teachout trying to convince us not to examine the evidence and not to think about these things more deeply?

In his 1878 book Menschliches, Allzumenschliches (Human, All-Too-Human), Friedrich Nietzsche described greatness as being steeped in a process, and of great artists being tireless participants in that process:

"Artists have a vested interest in our believing in the flash of revelation, the so-called inspiration . . . [shining] down from heavens as a ray of grace. In reality, the imagination of the good artist or thinker produces continuously good, mediocre, and bad things, but his judgment, trained and sharpened to a fine point, rejects, selects, connects . . . All great artists and thinkers [are] great workers, indefatigable not only in inventing, but also in rejecting, sifting, transforming, ordering."

As a vivid illustration, Nietzsche cited Beethoven's sketchbooks, which reveal the composer's slow, painstaking process of testing and tinkering with melody fragments like a chemist constantly pouring different concoctions into an assortment of beakers. Beethoven would sometimes run through as many as sixty or seventy different drafts of a phrase before settling on the final one. "I make many changes, and reject and try again, until I am satisfied," the composer once remarked to a friend. "Only then do I begin the working-out in breadth, length, height and depth in my head."

Alas, neither Nietzsche's nuanced articulation nor Beethoven's candid admission caught on with the general public. Instead, the simpler and more alluring idea of "giftedness" and "genius" prevailed and has since been carelessly and breathlessly reinforced by ideologues. But we can do better. We have the tools and the evidence now to go beyond "genius," beyond "gifted," beyond "innate," and beyond "impenetrable."

Who knows, maybe someday we can even catch up to Nietzsche.

Critiquing a Critique of 'La Bête'

2010-10-18T16:00:31-04:00

Critics ought to be critiqued. Respectfully, Ben Brantley's recent NYT review of La Bête seems to fundamentally misunderstand the play.

(Quick plot summary: The exalted 17th Century French playwright Elomire—a stand-in for Moliere—is being forced by his royal patron the Princess to admit into his small royal theater company a narcissistic buffoon named Valere. Elomire is horrified and won't stand for it. After an extended introduction to Valere's hilarious idiocy, the action of the play moves to a confrontation between Elomire and the Princess.)

In his review, Brantley seems to interpret David Hirson's play as a straightforward indictment of the fool Valere. With that in mind, the problem is that Mark Rylance's portrayal of Valere is so preposterously entertaining that the audience can't help but sympathize with him. "[Rylance's] performance," Brantley bluntly declares, "turns out to be the undoing of the play's argument." Brantley continues:

As Mr. Rylance presents him, this grotesque buffoon is also touchingly human, and when he puts on a silly, pretentious play (at the Princess's insistence), you feel the presence of an artist's anxious heart. Combine that aspect of his performance with its throbbing inexhaustibility, and how can you not root for him?

He's right about Rylance's astonishing performance. But I think he's dead wrong that it exposes a fatal flaw in the script. Rather, this uneasy shift in sympathy toward Valere appears to me to be precisely the subversive point of the play.

Brantey also writes: "The essential problem with 'La Bête,' and this seems even truer now than it did in 1991, is that Mr. Hirson never makes much of a case for Elomire's side."

I'm blown away by this reaction. To me, the first 30 minutes of the play are an overwhelming endorsement of Elomire's point of view. Valere's buffoonery makes Elomire's case for him. In fact, La Bête begins by stacking the deck against Valere. It's impossible not to agree with the serious playwright Elomire as the fool makes a fool of himself.

By the end, though, we have had our sympathies gently manipulated and Elomire's firm convictions seem more tragic than high-minded. The subtle case for Valere's is made by the Princess, the supporting cast, and—as Brantley correctly states—Valere's own humanity.

In the end, what Hirson delivers is a powerful case for synthesis of high and lowbrow. Brantley criticizes the second half of the play as drifting. What he calls drift, I interpret as a nuanced shift. What he thinks is flawed writing, I read as Hirson's highly sophisticated case for the Princess's point of view: We needn't see the world in black and white terms of highbrow vs. lowbrow. Great entertainment ought to be smart and punchy.

My Favorite iPad Accessories

2010-10-16T15:18:54-04:00

The iPad is a terrific tool, but it is also fragile and somewhat limited on its own. For the past few months, I've been seeking out the most useful accessories that can help to maximize the iPad's mobility and minimize its vulnerability. Here are my personal favorites:

Cases

The perfect iPad case would protect it all around, give easy access to its ports and buttons, provide a full range of built-in stands for typing and viewing, and look as elegant as the iPad itself. That case does not yet exist. Here are the cases that come the closest so far:

Quirky Cloak - $54.95. A grippy silicon case with a front cover and built-in stands for both portrait and landscape views. The initial design of this case called for the hinge to lock in different viewing angle positions, which would have been wonderful -- didn't happen. Also, the two built-in stands are flimsy plastic -- my landscape stand busted right off after a few weeks. Still, this may be my favorite case for functionality, and I give Quirky big points for at least trying to do it all.

Incase Convertible Book Jacket - $59.95. A thick, leatherish case that seriously protects the iPad from bumps or falls, and tries to provide different landscape viewing angles. The problem is that the most useful angle doesn't work -- it keeps slipping out of the groove intended to hold it in place. No portrait view stand.

ModulR - $99 for starter kit (more for complete system). Very inventive modular system that protects the back and sides of the iPad, offers a removable cover, and, most interestingly, offers slide-to-fit stands and mounts for desk viewing/typing, wall viewing, underneath kitchen cabinets, and car seat viewing. For people constantly shifting between two or more of these locations, this is close to ideal.

Griffin Elan Passport - $49.99. Simple and somewhat clumsy faux-leather case whose elastic straps actually get in the way of the screen rotation lock button. Still, this case is very simple, lightweight and the most attractive faux-leather case around.

DodoCase - $59.95. The clear winner for aesthetics. This simple bamboo and faux-leather case resembles the classic Moleskine notebooks. The case folds to allow for a slight typing tilt in landscape mode. No portrait stand option. But it works nicely with the Compass stand (below). Bottom line: This is the only case you can imagine Steve Jobs using.

Stands

Since there is no perfect case/stand combo, external stands are necessary. I've seen them all, and used some, and am sorry to say only two stick out as worthwhile:

Compass - $39.99. Utterly brilliant. A compact aluminum stand that can go anywhere, is practically weightless, and can handle portrait, landscape, and typing. Aside from the Dodocase, this is the only iPad accessory as elegant as the iPad itself.

GroovyStands - $9.95 to $14.95. Simple, affordable wooden stands that accommodate the iPad in different angles and orientations, with or without a case. Choose your specific GroovyStand carefully.

Power adapters

Incase Combo Charger - $39.95. Terrifically convenient to have car and wall charging in one unit.

Macally Dual Port Wall Charger - $29.99. Charges iPad and iPhone simultaneously.

Macally Dual Port USB Car Charger - $29.99 - Charges iPad and iPhone simultaneously in the car.

Scosche Revive II Dual USB Home Charger - $29.99. Charges iPad and iPhone simultaneously.

Scosche Revive II Dual USB Car Charger for iPad - $24.99 -- Charges iPad and iPhone simultaneously in the car.

Scosche flipSync USB Charge & Sync Cable - As compact as it gets, and will (slowly) charge the iPad from a USB port in a pinch.

Waterproofing

WaterGuard Plus - $23.99. Sounds silly, but the perfect thing for reading on the beach or in the tub.

Remote Access

LogMeIn Ignition - $29.99. Inevitably, you'll be using the iPad somewhere and realize you need a file from your home computer. This app allows you to gain secure and easy access to your entire home machine. Very impressive.

I'll keep my eye out for worthy additions to this list.

'La Bete' C'est Magnifique

2010-10-12T16:20:15-04:00

David Hirson's magnificent play La Bete opens on Broadway Thursday night in a production that is everything his brilliant script deserves. I've been lucky enough to see it twice--first in London over the summer and just recently again in previews here in New York. Quite simply, this play does it all. The writing is exquisite, the performances hilarious (and moving), and the staging smart and powerful. Honestly, anyone who has the means would be a fool to miss this production. They'll be talking about it for years.

There's also a meta drama at work here. La Bete was on Broadway once before, in a now infamous 1991 production that Frank Rich quickly put out of its misery. That older production, Rich wrote, "deteriorate[d] into an almost insufferably smug example of the exact middlebrow fluff it wants to attack."

I dare predict Rich will have a very different reaction to this revival. Director Matthew Warchus nimbly weaves together Mark Rylance's sublime buffoonery, Joanna Lumley's wounded ferocity, and David Hyde Pierce's tragic (and comic) indignance into a fabric so complex that the audience laughs hard as it wrestles with big and terrible questions about artistic integrity, personal sacrifice, and the marketplace of ideas. I suppose the main reason I am so full of superlatives here is that the play spoke to me personally. It resonated with my own inner dialogue as a writer wanting to make a unique contribution but also wanting to please, needing to say what I have to say but also needing to earn a living. La Bete is a beautiful piece of art about the existential traps built into making beautiful art.

David Simon and Brian Lehrer

2010-09-20T14:33:14-04:00

A remarkable conversation this morning between The Wire's David Simon and WNYC's Brian Lehrer on Brian's show. I recommend listening to the entire 16 minutes (below), but here's a small taste:

David Simon: Somewhere along the line, we mistook capitalism, which is a remarkable economic engine, and something we can't do without [for] a social compact, for a manner in which you build a just society. If the profit motive determines the rationale for a just society, we're in a lot of trouble, because when capital triumphs unequivocally...what you're going to end up with is someone stepping on someone else's throat...

Total Surveillance, the Home Version

2010-09-16T15:11:26-04:00

A few years ago, National Geographic asked me to look into the world of surveillance. We set out to document how Big Brothery the world was becoming.

We certainly confirmed everyone's suspicion that governments and big corporations are increasing their surveillance on employees and citizens. But we also found that surveillance is becoming a mass consumer phenomenon. Individuals are now able to record almost everything in their lives, and are doing it more and more -- as we see every day on YouTube. We are tracking ourselves.

It seemed obvious then that it was only a matter of time before recording technologies would get so portable and cheap that all of life everywhere would be recorded: total surveillance.

Today, we are one step closer. Meet the Looxcie, a tiny, $200 wearable camera that literally never stops recording. In fact, it doesn't even have a record button. It simply records all the time, storing hours of footage and continuously replacing the oldest footage with the newest footage. Press a button when something noteworthy happens and it will save the last 30 seconds automatically. It's also a Bluetooth earpiece for a phone.

I'm guessing that this will not be as big as the iPhone in 2010 or 2011, but it seems pretty clear that we are inching toward the moment where always-recording will be so easy and cheap that it will become the default. Always-on cameras will be built into street-lamps, car bumpers, wall-clocks, even hats and sunglasses. There will be a big creep factor to this, but also a social benefit. I think certain types of pre-meditated crime could become a thing of the past. Crimes of passion will still happen, but things like muggings, car theft and even rape could become obsolete. Are you going to consciously attack someone who is almost certainly recording you?

The Genius in Two of Us

2010-09-14T12:05:02-04:00

Anyone interested in the source of creativity will want to check out my brother Joshua Wolf Shenk's new series on creative pairs in Slate. He brilliantly and boldly takes on the overpowering myth of solo accomplishment that so much of our culture is built upon.

For hundreds of years, science and culture have focused on the self. We talk of self-expression, self-realization. Popular culture celebrates the hero. Schools test intelligence and learning through solo exams. Biographies shape our view of history.

And yet:

Collaboration yields so much of what is novel, useful, and beautiful.

The series, and the book that will eventually follow, is going to weave together biology, psychology, history, and popular culture in an effort to ferret out why collaborations happen and how they work.

Needless to say, he welcomes your input.

Read the full story at Slate.

The iWrist

2010-09-10T15:07:37-04:00

Is the new iPod Nano actually much, much more than it seems? Apple is selling it as a tiny touch-screen iPod. But could it be one tick away from a powerful, integrated mobile information device?

Once upon a time, the iPhone was supposed to be just a great combination of a phone, camera, iPod, and ordinary web browser. Then Apple opened it up to third party apps and it took off as a gamer, tracker, library, shopper, and on and on. Third-party customization turned it into a truly astounding piece of equipment.

Another such opportunity may soon be upon us. It seems to me that, with the addition of Bluetooth and iPhone-like appification, the new iPod nano could easily soon become quite an extraordinary device. In conjunction with the iPhone in your pocket, it could bring you texts, emails, messages, calendar updates, and any other customized media imaginable. I imagine businesses and consumers could find innumerable uses for a tiny hands-free interface that has all the connectedness of the iPhone but doesn't actually require any holding.

_______________

Usual disclosure: Yes, I am an Apple spaz. Yes, I own Apple stock.

How to Run a Book Festival

2010-08-21T13:00:50-04:00

If you wanted to create the perfect book festival...

You'd choose a beautiful, ancient city with a spectacular summer climate and plenty of hotel rooms, restaurants, and pubs within short walking distance.

You'd pair it with other festivals running locally at the same time, so that you could collectively draw visitors from all over the world.

You'd install it in a roomy but cozy enclosed space, like a small park, where everything--venues, cafe, restrooms, grassy central lawn--are all adjacent to one another. You'd make access to the common areas free and encourage people to linger all day long.

You'd train the staff to be ultra-friendly and ultra-efficient. You'd have high technical standards for the venues and presentations.

You'd invite a wide range of authors. You'd have a terrific photographer on hand to liven up the campus with large, exhuberant author portraits (I'm light-bulb eyes, top-right; top-left is novelist Nora Chassler).

You'd create a great bookstore right on your temporary campus.

You'd call it the Edinburgh International Book Festival. I had a terrific time here this week discussing my new book at three (sold-out!) events. I thank the staff, sponsors, the attendees, the photographer Chris Close, and the University of Edinburgh's ESRC Genomics Forum for hosting me.

The Lewis Chessmen, Up Close

2010-08-19T10:55:21-04:00

David Shenk

Today, for the first time, I got to see some of the magnificent Lewis chess pieces first-hand, in Edinburgh's National Museum of Scotland. I wrote about them in my book The Immortal Game (excerpt below) but until today had not yet seen them in person. Most of them usually reside at the British Museum in London.

They are 78 ﬁgurines, comprising four not-quite-complete chess sets, hand-carved from walrus tusk and whale teeth near Trondheim, Norway around 1150, but discovered seven hundred miles away in 1831 in the Bay of Uig on the Scottish Isle of Lewis.

They are spectacular.

Excerpt from The Immortal Game

Despite appearances to the contrary, the rolling, uneven dunes on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis, about ﬁfty miles west of the Scottish mainland, are not ancient burial mounds. They're natural formations, conﬁgured over thousands of years by the shifting water table and the terriﬁc sea winds howling off the Atlantic.

But the dunes do have their powerful secrets, as an unsuspecting is¬land peasant learned one day in the spring of 1831. At the base of a ﬁfteen-foot sandbank near the south shore of the Bay of Uig, the inte¬rior was somehow exposed, and with it a nearly seven-hundred-year-old crypt. Our unwitting archaeologist stumbled into an ancient and cramped drystone room, six feet or so long and shaped like a beehive, with ashes strewn on the ﬂoor. The tiny room was ﬁlled, impossibly, with dozens of shrunken people: tiny lifelike statuettes, three to four and a half inches high, some stained beet-red and the rest left a natural off-white. The long hair, contoured faces, and proportionate bodies were eerily vivid, even animated, with wide-eyed, expectant expressions, battle-ready stances, and a full complement of medieval combat equipment and apparel. Hand-carved from walrus tusk and whale teeth, they wore tiny crowns, mitres, and helmets; held miniature swords, shields, spears, and bishop's crosiers; some rode warhorses.

They were chess pieces, a total of seventy-eight ﬁgurines comprising four not-quite-complete sets:

• eight Kings (complete)

• eight Queens (complete)

• sixteen Bishops (complete)

• ﬁfteen Knights (one missing)

• twelve Warders (as Rooks, four missing)

• nineteen Pawns (forty-ﬁve missing)

No one living at the time had ever seen anything like them. The ornamentation had a medieval gothic quality that lent the pieces an ancient and even mythic aura. Experts pronounced them Scandinavian, probably mid-twelfth century, probably carved near the Norwegian capital Trondheim some seven hundred miles away by sea, where a drawing of a strikingly similar chess Queen was later discovered. Norway was a long way off, but the link did make historical sense. The Isle of Lewis had been politically subject to the Kingdom of Norway up to 1266, and the local bishop held allegiance to the powerful Archbishop of Trondheim.

These weren't nearly the oldest chessmen discovered--1150 put them somewhere in the middle of the chess chronology. But their abun¬dance, origins, artistry, and superb condition made them among the most important cache of ancient pieces yet found. The modestly en¬dowed Society of Antiquaries of Scotland tried immediately to buy them for display in Edinburgh, but before they could raise the funds, bigger ﬁsh swam in. A wealthy Scottish collector somehow plundered eleven of them for his private collection, and the British Museum in London bought the rest--sixty-seven pieces for eighty guineas (equivalent to £3,000 or roughly U.S. $5,000 in today's currency).

The museum immediately recognized not only the pieces' unique importance in the history of chess, but more importantly their profoundly palpable connection to life in the Middle Ages. "There are not in the museum any objects so interesting to a native Antiquary as the objects now offered to the trustees," wrote the museum's keeper of antiquities, Edward Hawkins, as he presented the pieces for the ﬁrst time. The Lewis Chessmen were a priceless link to the past, and would become a signature draw at the museum.

"When you look at them," suggests curator Irving Finkel, "kneel down or crouch in such a way that you can look through the glass straight into their faces and look them in the eye. You will see human beings across the passage of time. They have a remarkable quality. They speak to you."

What do they say? The story of how chess migrated from the Golden Gate Palace in Baghdad to the remote Isle of Lewis, and how the pieces morphed from abstracted Persian-Indian war ﬁgurines to evocative European Christian war ﬁgurines, is an epic that underscores the enormous transfer of culture and knowledge in the Middle Ages from the East to the West. It also heralds an important shift in chess's role as a thought tool. In medieval Europe, chess was used less to con¬vey abstract ideas and more as a mirror for individuals to examine their own roles in society. As Europe developed a new code of social morality, chess helped society understand its new identity.

Will Apple Fill in the Size Gaps?

2010-08-18T15:03:19-04:00

Obsessive Apple-followers like myself can now detect an intriguing near-term scenario for its mobile portfolio. As of now, Apple offers these portable internet devices:

- 2.5" iPhone

- 9.7" iPad

- 13.3" Macbook Air

- 13.3" MacBook and MacBook Pro

Sorting through rumors, it seems quite plausible that Apple will, over the next 6-12 months, introduce some machines that fill in the size gaps quite nicely:

- 2.5" iPhone

- new 7" iPad jr.

- the 9.7" iPad

- new 11.6" Macbook Air

- the 13.3" MacBook and MacBook Pro

Some will roll their eyes, or not care at all. But finding just the right size machine for just the right lifestyle and task choice is a part of how tools improve our lives. I, for one, have been using both the iPhone and iPad as fairly serious research and writing tools, and I look forward to seeing how new sizes will enhance that effort.

________

Sources:

7" iPad rumor: http://9to5mac.com/big_profit_in_big_china

11.6" inch Macbook Air rumors:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20010657-1.html

http://www.cultofmac.com/what-the-11-6-inch-macbook-air-could-look-like/54779

Disclosure: I own Apple stock.

Reverse Engineering the Brain

2010-08-17T15:19:31-04:00

While I don't endorse his personally hostile rhetoric, biologist P.Z. Myers does a nice job of critiquing Ray Kurzweil's new claim that we may be only a decade or so from reverse engineering the human brain. Kurzweil is apparently basing his claim on the assumption that the design of the brain is encoded in the genome. Myers explains how wrong that assumption is:

[The brain's] design is not encoded in the genome: what's in the genome is a collection of molecular tools wrapped up in bits of conditional logic, the regulatory part of the genome, that makes cells responsive to interactions with a complex environment. The brain unfolds during development, by means of essential cell: cell interactions, of which we understand only a tiny fraction. The end result is a brain that is much, much more than simply the sum of the nucleotides that encode a few thousand proteins...

We cannot derive the brain from the protein sequences underlying it; the sequences are insufficient, as well, because the nature of their expression is dependent on the environment and the history of a few hundred billion cells, each plugging along interdependently....we have absolutely no way to calculate in principle all the possible interactions and functions of a single protein with the tens of thousands of other proteins in the cell!

I like Myers' description of genes: "A collection of molecular tools wrapped up in bits of conditional logic." It's not quite ready for a grade school text book, but it does nicely convey how dependent genes are on the outside world to produce anything of substance. We need more scientists suggesting more inventive new metaphors for genes and developmental biology.

The Logic of Newt

2010-08-17T12:24:28-04:00

Newt Gingrich actually said this recently on Fox:

"Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor. There's no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center."

I'm confused. Nazis murdered Jews. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Is Gingrich implying that Islam or *the Islamic people* attacked America? Do mosques in general represent anti-western jihad? I know some ignorant people think that they do, but I don't think Gingrich thinks that. So what he's really saying is that we should cater to the widespread misunderstanding about Islam. We should validate and embrace the jihadists' lies about Islam.

It's an interesting idea: Cultures and institutions should be publicly and permanently branded by the behavior of their most vile members. I wonder how personally comfortable Gingrich would be living in such a world.

Elected to the University of Iowa's Delta Center

2010-08-08T12:38:41-04:00

I was honored to recently be elected an affiliate member of the University of Iowa's Delta Center, which is a loose-knit collection of scientists and other researchers dedicated to a more nuanced understanding of genetics and human development. To quote the center's website:

The Delta Center does not abide the "nativist" vs. "empiricist" (or "nature" vs. "nurture") debate. We reject traditional concepts of "origin" and "cause and effect"-- eschewing both the concept of a "blank slate" at the time of birth, as well as the modern fixation on "hard-wired" brain functions or genetic building blocks.
You will not find us publishing nativist-oriented papers with titles such as "How Brain Region X Controls Human Function Y." Although this type of research is mainstream and media-friendly, it ultimately turns a deaf ear to the real story.
We favor a new model of exploring learning and development--one that embraces complexity, employs a "systems theory" approach and listens in on fascinating dialogues among the myriad forces of change.

They're Replaying My Tavis Smiley PBS Appearance Tonight

2010-08-06T10:34:44-04:00

http://to.pbs.org/bc0r7P

Awfully Nice Praise for 'The Forgetting'

2010-08-05T21:33:15-04:00

"Among nonfiction accounts [of Alzheimer's disease], David Shenk's beautiful, harrowing 'The Forgetting/Alzheimer's: Portrait of an Epidemic' (2001) remains the standard. It is one of those rare books that lifts journalism -- the gathering and dissemination of topical facts -- to the level of literature."

-- Julia Keller, in the Chicago Tribune, 8/5/2010

Too Close to the Madding Crowd

2010-08-04T08:25:24-04:00

A Freakonomics piece from Jeff Wise this week about the crowd stampede phenomenon caught my eye and brought back some difficult memories.

On December 3, 1979, my rock and roll dad took me (13) and my two younger brothers (10, 8) to the Who concert at Riverfront Coliseum. We went out to Chinese food before the show, and arrived not long before the concert was starting. We had reserved seats, and used a less-popular side entrance. Nothing bad happened to us, and we enjoyed the (ultra-loud) show, which was halted several times by the fire marshal because of the density and intensity of the crowd standing near the stage. A physician friend of ours was with us; a few songs into the show, his beeper went off and he disappeared for a while. When he returned, he whispered something in my father's ear. Only after the show did we kids learn that eleven people had been trampled to death at the Coliseum's main entrance. One of them was an 18 year-old from our local school.

The details are gruesome and heartbreaking. Needless to say, the tragedy was entirely preventable. The band did a late sound check; the arena opened the doors way too late, etc. There are plenty of simple lessons to take from this and other similar events.

It's shocking, then, that humans have actually gotten worse at preventing such disasters. Jeff Wise writes:

For years...engineers and psychologists have been working to model crowd behavior and to figure out how to design spaces so that stampedes are prevented. Yet every year lethal stampedes become more common. In the '80s, there were 24 incidents reported in the media; in the '90s, 62; in the 2000s, up to 2007, there were 129.

I was never in any physical danger that night in 1979, but the event was traumatic on a certain level for the entire city, and of course for anyone who'd been at the show. Since that night, the lethal potential of a festival crowd has never been far from my consciousness. Several times I've been somewhere in the middle of a large throng and thought, "I'm really not safe here."

****

Some particulars on the recent Love Parade tragedy in Germany

A decent play-by-play of the Who concert tragedy

A report on the lessons learned, and ignored, from the Who concert tragedy

For Those Who Still Need Proof That Great Teachers Matter

2010-07-28T16:37:49-04:00

For those who still need proof that great teachers matter, the NYTimes has an excellent piece today by the economics columnist David Leonhardt about an "explosive" new study showing great kindergarten teachers have huge effects on future success and well-being. Leonhardt quotes one economist as estimating that a top-notch kindergarten teacher is worth $320,000 per year.

Early development matters. Parenting matters. Schools and teachers matter.