Marcus' World

Obama, Libya, and Flip Flopping

The current kerfuffle about whether President Obama his violated the War Powers Act with respect to our operations in Libya brings back memories of his 2007 statements that appear to be a direct contradiction of the way he is acting now.

Back then, Obama was concerned that the President not act unilaterally.  Now he appears to be doing exactly this.  Meanwhile the political parties have switched roles.  Republicans are demanding a level of accountability they never required from George W. Bush, and Democrats (never as united as Republicans) are relatively muted in their criticism of President Obama.  That is, relative to their full-throated criticisms of President Bush.

And so it goes.  We all pretend that the parties actually have differences, but the imperatives of the President's office narrow how any President behaves.  Obama was speaking as a constitutional lawyer in 2007, now he speaks as President.  So it is no wonder that his viewpoint has changed, even if this is "flip flopping." 

That whole flip flopping critique is stupid anyway. The premise is that people are never permitted to have life experiences that would cause them to change their minds. What a lame life that would be.

I like the fact that our Libyan operation has been framed in humanitarian terms. The Iraq operation was framed as a vital security matter, but this was so obviously a lie that eventually humanitarian concerns became the rationale. Let's lead with humanitariasm, as Leon Wieseltier has argued for years.

That said, Obama is playing a semantic game in arguing that we are not engaged in hostilities in Libya and thus he is not bound by the War Powers Act. Congress has a right to be miffed, even if the outrage is theatrical more than principled.  There are real Constitutional issues at stake here, but nobody should get huffy about "flip flopping." Changing one's mind remains the best evidence that you actually thinking.

Cities, Suburbs, Northern California and New York

This past week my brother Jeremy was in town from Phoenix, affording an opportunity to explore parts of the region that we otherwise would not be likely to visit.  And so on Saturday we found ourselves up in Sonoma County, for a visit to the little town of Healdsburg, where Pi Wen and I enjoyed wine, cheese, and crackers as Jeremy observed our upscale stylings with bemusement.

Healdsburg is in Sonoma County, Northern California's slice of wine country that has not (yet) been overly commercialized like the Napa Valley.  Lunch was also in Sonoma, just over the line from Marin, at Blu in Petaluma.  Sonoma is definitely part of the nine county Bay Area region, but it feels a world away from San Francisco or Alameda counties.

SF and Alameda are the "inner core" of the region.  San Francisco is the region's anchor, culturally if not economically.  Oakland and Berkeley (both in Alameda) are major cities in their own right, within easy proximity to SF.  Unsurprisingly, as you get further into Alameda or the other counties things feel more suburban.

Is that such a bad thing?  Nicholas Lemann says no, using the New York metropolitan region as his example.  In the most recent issue of the New Yorker, Lemann describes his family's move from Manhattan to Pelham (a Westchester County suburb) and then back to Manhattan.  Despite everyone in Pelham claiming they'd only left the city because of the kids, the truth was that most people liked it.  The pace was slower, kids could play in the street, and it was easier to know your neighbors.  And the responsibiliity of raising kids in the city would have made many of the joys of city life--the late nights, the dining at obscure and fabulous restaurants--impossible anyway.

And so...there is a place for the suburbs.  They are not just the land of white flight and mindless conformity. As Lemann also points out, the sharp categories we tend to draw between cities and suburbs--high rise living in the cities, single family homes in the burbs--fail to withstand scrutiny.  Tbis is true for Pi Wen and myself, in our current home of Oakland.  On one hand, Oakland is a city of 400,000 people.  On the other hand, it's a suburb of San Francisco (sort of, as the two cities don't touch.) Our neighborhood contains a mixture of apartment buildings and single family homes.  You can easily walk to restaurants and shops on Piedmont Avenue, which is a quintessentially urban experience.  And yet, it is far easier to drive to do errands like grocery shopping, which places us in the burbs. Lemann argues that there is a continuum between urban and suburban rather than a sharp dichotomy, and I agree.

In my New York days I glorified the urban (even though I enjoyed occasional excursions to Long Island or Westchester.)  Manhattan was the epicenter, the beating heart of all thriving civilization.  I loved the jostling, the balletic grace required to walk through a crowded subway station, and the fact that I could walk across midtown after work to catch a show on and then--if I' had the stamina--actually walk home. Every time I'm back I feel that jolt of New York energy again, and I still know the subway routes in my bones.

And yet, now I'm feeling more pastoral.  My cup at the Flying Goat Coffee in Healdsburg was pretty damn awesome the other day, even if it required a long drive to obtain it. Up in Healdsburg you could "feel yourself think," as they say.  It doesn't hurt that the town has a famous jazz festival...talk about blending urban and suburban.  We'll definitely take that in next year, and my guess is we'll return to Healdsburg sooner than that.

Perhaps I'm just romanticizing the valley life and would quickly grow bored if we actually lived there. I do feel bad about the carbon footprint of all that driving, leavened with apathy that car-dependence seems unlikely to end anytime soon.  At least we drove there in a Prius.

New York was when I grew to embrace the urban, and perhaps now is the time to enjoy the pleasures of the far-out burbs. Life's too short to constrain yourself to the rigors of living in just one type of place.

From the Better Late than Never Division: Summary of 2010 Research About Social Networking and Open Access

In March 2010 Anneliese Taylor and I presented a research paper at the Evidence-Based Scholarly Communication conference in Albuquerque, NM. On a personal level, I enjoyed the trip because I'd never been to Albuquerque (or Santa Fe, where I ventured afterwards.)  Also, Mom and Bob came along from Phoenix and attended the session where I presented the research.

Professionally, it was an interesting opportunity to expore whether scholars utilize social networking tools as part of their research, and also to gauge whether an open access journal receives more exposure than a traditional journal in the same field.  Anneliese and I wrote up our findings for the official conference proceedings, but then edits became due just as I started the job at Samuel Merritt. So the official publication never occurred, although our conference presentation is available.  Recently Jon Eldredge, one of the conference organizers, sent us a gentle nudge about the need to publish our results; herewith is an attempt to do so.

Questions: Does opening up access to scholarly literature increase the reach of individual articles beyond what can be expected of traditional, toll-access literature?  If publishers allow readers to share articles via social networking sites, does it enhance readership? 

Methods: We did a small study comparing articles from an open access journal and a subscription journal on similar topics in the field of translational medicine, in an effort to address these questions.   Journal of Translational Medicine (JTM) is published open access by BioMed Central, and Science Translational Medicine (STM) is a subscription journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

We studied ten articles from each journal, looking up their citation counts, sharing via blog and social bookmarking sites, as well as coverage in news stories. 

Results: Our findings revealed that the open access articles from JTM had more citations, possibly because of age compared to the more recently founded STM.   The STM articles were more frequently cited in news stories, despite being so recent.  The fact that STM is published by a high-profile organization may explain why its papers got more coverage than an open access journal.  Neither publication resulted in a significant number of social sharing via blogs or bookmarking sites, which suggest that readers of scholarly literature do not use these services for this particular kind of literature. The one exception was an article on sleep loss that got picked up by several news outlets and was widely shared on social media sites.

Discussion: This study was conducted in the beginning days of “Article-Level Metrics” (ALM).  The open access publisher Public Library of Science introduced ALM in 2009 as a way to measure the impact of an individual article by counting article-level downloads, citations, social bookmarks, and blog postings about the article.  ALM will be an important tool for improving the ability to evaluate the impact of individual articles regardless of where they are published.  This was a small study undertaken at just one moment in time. Further studies using these metrics will help us see how the landscape is being transformed by the finer level of detail than was previously possible with just the journal’s impact factor and the number of citations to the article.

That is all. But don't forget that the conference presentation is here.

Adventures in Cooking

For most of my life I've observed an arms-length relationship with food.  When dining alone--as I often did when Helen traveled for work--food was for sustenance more than enjoyment.  In New York the idea of whipping something up when cheap and yummy Chinese awaited around the corner, or the charms of Taco Taco were just a block away, seemed silly.  When dining with friends it's always easier to go out, and in that situation the point is the conversation more than the food. So my cooking adventures have been sporadic, with others doing the heavy lifting while I played the part of the lovable but hapless sous chef.

After Helen and I split I vowed to become a better cook and even took some cooking classes.  But soon I reverted to form; living in the Mission offered numerous tempting and affordable culinary options.  Who wants to do all that prep work and cleaning?  And who has the time when a film festival is rumbling through the Roxie?

Meanwhile, Pi Wen had been honing her repertoire and becoming an excellent chef.  She believes, with reason, that cooking at home is both healthier and cheaper.  Eating out should be a special occasion, not an everyday grind.  And the prep work and cleanup is part of the fun, not a tiresome chore.

That said, we did eat out a lot while planning for the wedding.  There were vendors to interview and details to determine, all while both of us were working.  Whatever the joys of a home cooked meal, it was generally easiest to eat out.  This was just dandy by me, but hard on Pi Wen.

Now we've moved to a new place and are slowly settling in.  There will always be the time and money debate about whether to eat in or go out.  But in consequence of our (somewhat) more relaxed pace I've finally made the shift towards wanting to cook at home and taste the pleasures of food created by my own hands. 

This in part due to the excellent example of Pi Wen, and in part to the slow moving seduction of the Bay Area's vibrant home-cooking scene.  It's only taken four years to get through to me.  No doubt there is some amazing cooking going on in NYC home kitchens.  But the pleasures of home cooking seem deeper in the bone here, in the land that gave us the slow food movement and is the home of so much amazing produce. 

I digress. This post was supposed to be about what I cooked this evening--roasted rock cod crusted with corn nuts and vegetable ribbons.  For a cold dish I included leftover quinoa salad we made recently, and washed it all down with a pinot grigio (California is wine country too, so maybe the love of wine will eventually pierce my psyche too.)  Pi Wen is away for a short business trip, so it was all up to me and there was no way to fall back on sous chef status. Thanks to Lynne Char Bennett of the San Francisco Chronicle for the recipe.

It came out well, although there is definitely room for improvement.  Most distressingly, I didn't crush the corn nuts nearly enough--this despite the fact that Char Bennett advises readers to "Use a small skillet or meat pounder to break them up finely."  And so the nuts didn't crust the fish, but rather lay there annoyingly on top.  In my defense...there was something absurd about banging the omelette skillet against an airtight bag of popcorn kernels, so I didn't persist long enough.  This speaks to a gentleness (laziness?) that serves well in life, but not always so well in the kitchen.

On the other hand, the cod fish was flavorful and I really enjoyed the fennel's contribution to the vegetable medley.  I even had to improvise a bit due to the lack of spicy brown mustard in the fridge--thank goodness for IKEA and gravlaxsas (yes, gravlaxsas is supposed to be for salmon but what's a boy to do.) 

I'd give myself an A for effort and a B- for execution--not ready to invite friends over just yet, but there's hope! Someday I will no longer believe that it's always easier to go out with friends, and when they come over it will be about the conversation, sure, but also the food. 

 

On Blog Posts and Essays

More than three years ago I wrote about my efforts to write an essay called "On the Perch."  It morphed through a few versions, eventually becoming "The Perch."  My hope was to publish "The Perch"--about the perils and benefits of seeing most issues from multiple perspectives--in a literary journal. Although I developed some momentum to shop it around right after finishing it, in reality I wasn't satisfied with it even after several revisions.  So it never saw daylight.

Three years later I'm not so drawn to writing about that particular topic.  Nonetheless I do still see the difference between offering up these blog posts (which I've done for six years and plan to keep doing for many more) and having a piece accepted for publication in an edited journal. 

The blog offers immedicacy, and during my divorce period also a very real sense of connection. There's something amazing, still, about the ability to string together words and see those words appear online.  But--although I try to write useful and interesting things--the fact is that garbage appears online just as easily.

Hence the need for validation in an edited journal.  I've achieved this feat with one personal essay, several book reviews, and for a while a regular newspaper column in New York City. But now I want more! As much as I care about the future of libraries, or my career as a jovial 1/2 marathon runner, the truth remains that writing is my passion.

Careful readers might note a discrepancy between my faith in the wisdom of crowds in Wikipedia, and my respect for a very traditional gatekeeper  role like journal editor.  Here's the diff: knowledge creation/extension/refinement can indeed be democratic (a la Wikipedia).  But determining literary sensibility remains an elite and highly subjective affair (a la journal editing), because it's not about building knowledge but about how to express an insight once you have it. This is why rejection feels so capricious--something dear to the writer just doesn't "speak" to the editor.  And so, once I start sending around essays, there will be far more no's than yesses and usually without any explanation.

But I know this.  And I also know that some of what I write will pass through the sieve and make its way out to the world.  Once the first piece appears more will follow. I may not be able to make a living at writing, but I am able to make a life.

At the Movies: "Midnight in Paris"

Woody Allen--whom I knew in my New York days as a clarinetist who performed concerts at prices too rich for my blood--is in fine fettle with his latest film Midnight in Paris.  Pi Wen and I like it so much we saw it twice! Although, to be honest, the second time was because we had to use a 2-for-1 movie ticket from LivingSocial before it expired. Online daily deals are growing like kudzu, and they bring their own headaches.

Then again, we could have used the 2-for-1 ticket on other movies, since we'd already seen Midnight.  But no Source Code or Thor for us! Give us Woody, especially when he offers a love letter to Paris. 

Owen Wilson plays Gil Pender, an aspiring novelist/current screenwriter on a vacation in Paris with his fiancee Inez (Rachel McAdams).  Their relationship is weak and flat, which is obvious to everyone but Gil.  On a walk one night Gil slips through a wrinkle in time and finds himself transported to 1920s Paris, at a dinner party where Cole Porter sings his own songs and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald keep him company.

Now that's cool. Gil attempts to transport Inez to this paradise the next night, but it turns out the time wrinkle only unravels at the stroke of midnight; Inez had already gone home.  Eventually Gil is making excuses to leave around midnight every night, ostensibly to gather his thoughts for his novel.  Really it's in order to have his manuscript critiqued by Gertrude Stein and to fall in love with Picasso's fetching mistress Adriana. But it doesn't hurt that 1920s Paris is Gil's favorite historical era.

Midnight reminded me of Zelig, Allen's 1983 film about a man who could change his appearance to resemble whomever he was near.  (I saw Zelig growing up in Columbus, Ohio, on the late night movie series hosted by Fritz the Night Owl on Channel 10.) In Zelig F. Scott Fitzgerald also appears, and the ability to change one's appearance on a moment's notice is as fantastical as the opportunity to slide through time. In both cases Allen is playing to our desire to change our given circumstances, with the belief that just one little tweak will bring happiness.

Of course, it doesn't.  Towards the end of Midnight Gil and Adriana slip through time again, back to the 1890s and the Belle Epoque.  Turns out that this is Adriana's favorite period; for her, the present-day 1920s are boring although they are fantastic from Gil's 2010 perspective.  And so it goes. In theory, everyone could keep hopskotching through time forever, always seeking the era that's just so. But eventually the cares of the world would intervene whenever you live.  So you might as well make the best with whatever time you're born into.

And that's just what Gil does.  SPOILER ALERT!!:  At the end of the film Gil finally accepts that he and Inez are not right for each other, and decides to make his home in Paris.  And in present day Paris to boot.