Category Archives: News & Reviews

A new book is just available called She’s Such a Geek: Women Write About
Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff by Annalee Newitz (Editor),
Charlie Anders (Editor).

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Seal Press (November 28, 2006)
• ISBN: 1580051901

My 17-year-old daughter Jessica is one of the essay contributors (shameless plug!).
I recently received email from Amazon that
my pre-order had shipped so the book may even show up in stores.

Here is the description from Amazon:

She’s Such a Geek is a groundbreaking anthology that celebrates women
who have flourished in the male-dominated realms of technical and
cultural arcana. Editors Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders bring
together a diverse range of critical and personal essays about the
meaning of female nerdhood by women who are in love with genomics,
obsessed with blogging, learned about sex from Dungeons and Dragons, and
aren’t afraid to match wits with men or computers. More than anything,
She’s Such a Geek is a celebration and call to arms: it’s a hopeful
book which looks forward to a day when women will invent molecular
motors, design the next ultra-tiny supercomputer, and run the
government.

I have read several versions of Jessica’s essay and I am looking forward
to reading the rest of the book when it arrives.

Jessica also had her “Why I am a Librarian” essay from last year republished in
the current issue of the Church and Synagogue
Library Association newsletter. The timing of these publications is wonderful:
she can list them on her college applications which are due at the end of next
month.

My husband and I voted early in today’s General Election here in
Santa Clara County, California. Our neighborhood polling place has
been moving around in recent years but is currently in the banquet
hall of the
Assyrian Church of the East, located a few blocks from our house.

Santa Clara County has been using electronic voting machines since the
machines became available
some years ago. There were ten machines at the church this morning (five for each
of the two voting precincts in our area). Someone I know who votes in San Mateo
County (just north of Santa Clara), said that they have just a few voting machines
and are still mostly using paper ballots. Two people I talked with at lunch who voted
in San Francisco said it took 5 paper ballots each to record their votes this morning.

The electronic voting machine usability is getting better each time.
Even though there were 21 offices (including our U.S. Senator, U.S. Representative,
California Governor, and San Jose Mayor) plus 14 measures to decide on, voting took
me just a few minutes. Of course, John and I had spent hours during the last few days
reading the candidate statements, the texts and arguments of the measures, and
the official analyses so that we could go with our sample ballots all filled in.

Each precinct at our polling place had five election officers plus there was a
supervisor to help both precincts. The election officers check in each voter
(looking up their registration and collecting a signature), then give each a plastic
card to activate the voting machine. The voters wait in line for a machine, then
feed the card into the slot. The voting machine collects a vote for each office
and measure using a touchscreen. After all selections are made, the display
screen shows the voter a summary of all of
their choices to see if anything needs to be changed. The voter can also
review a paper tape to be sure all votes were properly recorded. Then,
the machine asks the voter to confirm and submit their vote and all is done.

To further improve this system, all that is still needed is some kind of
confirmation receipt. The way the electronic voting machines work now, individual voter’s selections can not be tied to an individual record on the machine in
an accuracy audit.

I like that there are lots of people to check on each other and to help voters
who may be confused or in need of physical help or detailed instructions. Most of
the election officers seem
to be older, retired, English speakers but there is a page at the back of each
Sample Ballot titled “Democracy Needs You” calling for Election Officers, especially
those who are bilingual or High School students. High School seniors who are at
least 16 years old can serve as Election Officers. At our polling place today, I
saw no High School students but one of the Election Officers wore a badge saying
she spoke Spanish.

All in all, it seems to me that voting is easier and faster (and potentially more
accurate) since computers were introduced. However, computers have also made the pre-election scramble for votes even more intrusive and unpleasant. In addition
to many dozens of individual pieces of paper mail, we must have received
thirty recorded phone calls from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, President Bill
Clinton, former San Jose mayors, and who knows who else, all asking for our votes.
After the tenth recorded phone call in a row, last night John started taking the
phone over to the cats to let them listen to the spiel rather than hanging up.
The cats just looked confused.

My daughter and I just got home from a 5 day trip to check out colleges in
Pennsylvania and Ohio.

My peeves:

• Airport restroom faucets with “automatic” spigots which will not dispense water
  no matter how much I wave and wiggle my soapy hands under them – Cincinatti (CVG)

• Airport restroom soap which makes my hands stink like disinfectant – San Francisco (SFO)
• Airline staff who give extensive and loving descriptions of their featured alcoholic
  mixed drinks loudly and unavoidably over the intercom – Delta Air Lines

• Airline check in terminals which require a trip ID number which is none of those
  available on my e-ticket – Delta Air Lines, San Francisco and Pittsburgh

• Housekeepers who pound on my door at 8 a.m. to see if I am gone yet – Wyndham (Pittsburgh)
• Hotels which charge $9.95 for 24 hours of in-room internet access – Wyndham (Pittsburgh)
• Rental cars which have no identifiable dome light so I can’t see what I
  have dropped and have to feel around on the carpet in the dark – Budget

• No cell phone access – Cingular in parts of Oberlin, and all of Gambier, Ohio

My congratulations for a job well done:

• Rental car companies with no per-mile charge and which give regular customers
  free upgrades if a better car is available – Budget

• One parking charge per visit (not per day) – Wyndham (Pittsburgh)
• Gracious and helpful front desk staff – – Wyndham (Pittsburgh),
  Oberlin Inn (Oberlin, Ohio), Kenyon Inn (Gambier, Ohio), Crowne Plaza (Pittsburgh)

• Housekeeping staff who check the room thoroughly (and found my daughter’s cell phone before we left!) – Oberlin Inn
• Airline staff who help with baggage and even provide strapping tape to seal a box –
  Delta Air Lines, Pittsburgh

• Hotels which provide free internet access – Oberlin Inn (Oberlin, Ohio),
  Kenyon Inn (Gambier, Ohio), Crowne Plaza (Pittsburgh)

• Hotels which provide special low rates for visitors to local colleges
  – Wyndham (Pittsburgh), Oberlin Inn (Oberlin, Ohio), Kenyon Inn (Gambier, Ohio)

• Airports which display original art – San Francisco (SFO), and Cincinatti (CVG)

Our family plus two borrowed teenagers went to
Raging Waters water park
last Friday. We came home sunburnt (despite covering everyone with
sunblock), tired, and happy. My favorite “ride” is the Endless River,
a long looping stream you can float around in for as long as you like.
The kids mostly liked the wilder attractions, the Dragon’s Den and
Serpentine Slides being the favorites. We rented two tube floats at the
start of the day so that we did not have to wait in line so often – that
was money well spent.

The best part of the park is people watching. People watching in the
Bay Area is always fascinating, as you would expect in a community which
boasts of 300 languages. With everyone bouncing around in the water
with their friends and kids and wearing very little, it is even more fun.

Physical differences of size and color are particularly noticeable. Skins
are everything from plum dark to the skim milk white of my own daughter,
hair is every cut, style, and color that nature and bottles offer, and
the tattoos (both permanent and just-for-the-day) are just amazing. One
young man I first saw on a float in the Endless River was mostly notable
for his brightly dyed yellow hair and the new black tattoos on his back.
Out of the water, he drove a bright red wheelchair.

My husband (who stands close to 2 meters tall) and I were in the Wave Pool
in the middle of a crowd of folks from Tonga or Samoa and we felt very
small. We also saw just-walking kidlets at about knee height and every
size in between.

If the food weren’t so dull and expensive, we would go more often but
even so, Raging Waters is a fine
place to spend a hot summer day.

I am taking a break between reading books 9 and 10 in the
Amelia Peabody
Egyptian mystery novels* to read a delightful autobiography called
Playing with Trains – A Passion Beyond Scale by Sam
Posey (2005, Random House). Posey is a retired race car driver
and sportscaster who writes with humor about his long fascination
with model trains. Here is how the book opens:

“I’m pregnant,” my wife, Ellen, said, and right then I knew I would
be building a train layout.

I originally bought this book for my husband John for whom trains are
also a source of lifelong fascination. (We don’t have
a garage anymore, we have a 2-level HO-scale model train layout room.
Our swimming pool has recently been replaced by a 45′ 1:1 scale
train track, soon to be graced with a 1916 caboose.) John enjoyed
Posey’s book so much, I am reading it now.

Posey describes his own passion for model trains but also gives a
history of the hobby, including photos of his own layout and some of
the most famous work by legendary modellers John Allen, Ned Swigart,
Jim Hediger, Bob Hayden, Tony Koester, George Sellios, Dave Frary,
and Malcolm Furlow. Part One of the book mostly covers the
author’s research, design and construction of his own Colorado Midland,
which has been written about several times in Model Railroader
magazine. There are loving descriptions of how to create mountains
with blue foam and sheet rock patching compound. He casually mentions
using mortician’s wax to stick down the tiny people on his layout.
The rest of the book branches out to discuss operations and
different aspects of this complex and long-lived hobby.

For example, here is Posey writing about the different styles of two
famous master modellers:

It was intriguing to think that Tony Koester’s left-brain,
buttoned-down, historically unimpeachable re-creation of the Nickel
Plate was being built at the same time as the Ferrocarril de Rio
Mantanas. Tony wants to turn model railroading into a game with
rules. Malcolm, by contrast, thinks of it as a highly personal
means of expression, with no rules.

Posey’s writing is fun and easy to read. Here he is
describing Tony Koester’s own writing in Model Railroader:

The column was a pulpit, and the subjects of the sermons were the
manifold joys, the purity, and the sheer righteousness of operation.
To Tony, you were either an operator and loved operation or you
were cast into the netherworld of scenery makers, doomed to wander
the earth as a lost soul.

Even if models and trains are not your own fascination, this book is
worth reading.

* by Elizabeth Peters