No Time to Read? Try the New Kindle Spark

~ Laura ~ 17 Comments

I love my classic Kindle; its convenience and simplicity make it the perfect entry-level e-reader. But let’s face it — the Kindle has limitations. With my busy lifestyle, I need a device that does more than simply facilitate the reading of books. That’s why I was so excited to hear about the new Kindle Spark.

The new Kindle Spark

The Spark is the newest member of the Kindle Fire product line; like the Fire, it features a color touchscreen that provides access to books, magazines, movies, videos, games, and other apps. But the Spark has one feature that sets it apart from all other e-readers: summaries on demand. Traditional e-readers download books for you to read; the Kindle Spark downloads books, reads them, and describes them to you. The Spark can summarize any content instantly, using proprietary on-the-fly summarization technology designed by SparkNotes in partnership with Amazon.com (leaked internal documents show that Amazon chose SparkNotes over CliffsNotes because “Kindle Spark is a much better name than Kindle Cliff“).  Here are some common scenarios in which the Kindle Spark really shines:

  • You enjoy the first hundred or so pages of Atlas Shrugged, but as you read further, you find the characters increasingly difficult to relate to and the speechifying somewhat tedious. Just hit the “Summarize” button to see how the story turns out.
  • You decide to watch The Seven Samurai because you’ve heard it’s a cinematic masterpiece — but after 10-15 minutes of white subtitles against an almost-white background, you decide you just can’t take three more hours of this. Hit “Summarize”, and the Kindle Spark will instantly convert the film into a movie trailer of whatever duration you want (90 seconds if you don’t specify a length).
  • You want to keep up with your friends, but you just don’t have the time. Bring up the Facebook app, hit “summarize”, and the Kindle Spark will produce a report similar to this one:
    Photos Stories Links
    Children 3 5 0
    Pets (including Internet cats) 8 1 6
    Vacation 15 3 0
    Politics (including political comics) 0 1 4
    Comics (non-political) 0 0 6
    Non-sequiturs that may or may not be song lyrics 0 9 0
    Food 3 3 0
  • You don’t want your friends to know that you get all your news from the tabloid headlines you read while waiting in line at the supermarket. Subscribe to as many newspapers and magazines as you want, then hit “Summarize” to receive a highly-condensed version of each periodical as it’s published. A planned software upgrade will include the option to post 1-3 summaries of randomly selected articles to your blog, Facebook, or Twitter account each day. Each summary will include a reference to the original periodical (“Just saw this on The Economist today”) and a link to the original article.

At $219, the Kindle Spark isn’t exactly a stocking stuffer, but it does make a great gift for someone who loves to read but never seems to find the time to actually read anything.

Need more last-minute gift ideas? For the cat-lover on your list, consider the CatSofa or the Squeaker 3000 Robotic Toy Mouse.

That One Night It Got Really Windy

~ Laura ~ 28 Comments

It’s official — I live in a disaster area. And for once, that’s not a reference to my housekeeping skills.

I’d tell you the name of the disaster, but it doesn’t have one. It probably never will. Other wind-related events, like tornadoes and hurricanes, get names. So do earthquakes and wildfires. We even named a scheduled three-day freeway shutdown — but not this windstorm. Is that fair? I don’t think so. It’s time to show it a little respect; from now on, I’ll be referring to it as That One Night It Got Really Windy.

I was completely unprepared for That One Night It Got Really Windy. When I left work that one night, I noticed that it was, in fact, really windy — windy enough that, on the way to my car, I had to put more than the usual amount of effort into standing upright and maintaining contact with the ground — but the significance didn’t really hit me until I reached my neighborhood and started seeing severed tree limbs everywhere.

My nearest street corner. It was a fun drive home.

I got home at about 9:30 pm, and the power was out on my block. But that was okay, because I have a super-fancy flashlight / lantern combination, and I knew exactly where it was. I went right to it, flipped the switch — and nothing happened. I decided to go to the store to get batteries for my flashlight and matches for my stove.

The three-block walk to the supermarket was amazing. Leaves were flying everywhere. Trees were moving in ways I’d never seen them move before. At one house, the festive holiday decorations had been beset by tragedy — one wireframe reindeer had a broken neck; the others lay, lifeless, on the ground, as though, in a senseless act of workplace violence, one of Santa’s elves had gone on a murderous rampage.

Three blocks from my house. This tree used to be bushier, and more vertical.
Same tree, from the front. I'm pretty sure the huge piles of greenery on each side were cut from the tree after it fell.

At the store, I bought batteries and, on impulse, two additional flashlights. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was the beginning of my descent into flashlight addiction. In the two weeks since That One Night It Got Really Windy, I’ve bought five flashlights. There was a practical reason for buying at least one of them — I used it on the walk home.

Flashlights I've bought since That Night It Got Really Windy

When I went to replace the battery on my lantern, I discovered that it actually has three switches, and the one I’d flipped in the dark earlier was the wrong one — the battery had been fine all along. I’d forgotten to get matches, so for dinner, I feasted on cheese and crackers, fruit, and chocolate.

I used my cell phone to check on the status of the power outage — something I’d be doing pretty frequently for the next day and a half. The power company has an “Outage Center” web page that shows the status of outages, but every time I looked at it, I’d momentarily think it said “Outrage Center”. I’m not sure whether that’s a reflection of my emotions or whether I have some sort of undiagnosed learning disability that causes me to see Rs where there are none. I’m leaning towards the latter explanation, because I also often misread the title of the Cute Overload web site as “Cute Overlord”.

Throughout the storm, my cats kept alternating between being a little freaked out by the howling winds and being fascinated by the flashlight beam as I moved from room to room. Eventually, I settled into bed with my Kindle (the case has a built-in light), with one cat on my lap and the other by my side. It was pretty cozy.

A cat, a comforter, and a Kindle -- what more do I need?

In the morning, the winds had died down, and the power was still out. I looked out my kitchen window and saw my neighbor’s back yard — which was odd, because there’s normally a fence separating our properties. A chunk of fence was missing on the other side as well, along with lots of roof shingles and some branches from a tree in the front of the house.

This fence is less effective than it once was at keeping my neighbor's dog in his yard.

On the bright side, my insurance company will soon be writing me a check for more money than I’ve paid in premiums over the years. I think that means I win at insurance.

Office Supplies: The Movie

~ Laura ~ 23 Comments

You’re at the office, and you want to clip some papers together, but there are no paper clips in your desk drawer. So you go to the supply cabinet, and there are no paper clips there either. As you walk back to your desk, you realize there weren’t any empty spaces on any of the supply cabinet shelves, which implies there are never paper clips in the cabinet, which can mean only one thing: you’ve somehow been transported to an alternate universe that’s identical to ours in every way except that the paper clip was never invented.

You begin to panic. You break into a run, and when you reach your office, you fling open your desk drawer. Your stapler is still there. You can breathe again. You force yourself to calm down, to focus. How long has this been going on? When was the last time you saw a paper clip? When was the last time paper clips came up in conversation? Has it been days? Weeks? Months? You can’t remember.

Maybe it’s not so bad. Maybe you can use this to your advantage somehow. You toy with the idea of “inventing” the paper clip yourself. You could patent it, collect royalties on every paper clip ever sold, and make huge amounts of money. But without competition, the stapler industry is probably much more powerful in this world, and they probably won’t take too kindly to the idea of another fastener hitting the market. What kind of tactics would they use to prevent that from happening? Would they resort to violence? You decide to proceed with caution. Also, you have some doubts about the ethics of claiming this invention as your own.

Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe there’s another explanation. Maybe if you just walk into someone’s office and ask them for a paper clip, they’ll open their desk drawer and hand one to you. Or maybe they’ll just sit there, looking confused, and you won’t know whether they’re unfamiliar with the concept or whether they just didn’t hear you. If no one’s ever heard of a paper clip, then “do you have any paper clips” just sounds like gibberish, and you can’t let your colleagues think you’re standing around babbling incoherently all day. You’ll need to explain it away somehow. You almost settle on “Paper clips? No, no — I said, do you have any vapor strips“, but then you realize that “vapor strips” doesn’t make  sense in either universe. Unless “vapor strips” does mean something here. You decide to google it.

Before you can do your search, you glance at your email, and you see something you’ve never noticed before: all the messages that have attachments have little pictures of paper clips next to them. You check Wikipedia, and paper clips do seem to exist, so you haven’t stumbled into an alternate universe after all. You have, however, stumbled upon a brilliant idea for a series of science fiction movies.

The first movie would be the paper clip movie. The main character wakes up in a universe without paper clips, decides to “invent” them, and experiences lots of intrigue and car chases involving the evil stapler industry. In the final scene, the main character somehow makes it back to the real world and celebrates by throwing a handful of paper clips into the air; the closing shot of the movie is the paper clips raining down, which is why the movie needs to be in 3-D.

In the second movie, paper clips exist in the alternate universe, but staplers don’t. The main character decides to “invent” the stapler and clashes with the evil paper clip industry.

In the third movie, paper clips and staplers exist, but the staple is never invented. This is the final movie of the series, and the least successful.

Ten Warning Signs That You May Be Experiencing a Wind Storm

~ Laura ~ 34 Comments
There's some damage to this fence. It's subtle, but if you look closely, you can just barely make it out.

1. When walking outside, you spend much more than the usual amount of effort staying on course, remaining upright, and not flying away.

2. Your car rocks from side to side, especially when parked or stopped at a light, and the motion feels all wrong for an earthquake.

3. In a festive move, your city has kicked up their fall decorations a notch by arranging a tasteful display of giant tree limbs in the middle of most of your local roads.

4. All the trees in your neighborhood are moving in ways you’ve never seen before, as if they’re taking part in some sort of frenzied tree dance.

5. You vaguely remember having electricity. And not living in a Starbucks.

6. The tree in your front yard has fewer branches than you remember.

7. The fence in your back yard is somewhat less continuous than you remember.

8. Your roof has fewer shingles than you remember.

9. The people who live in the house three houses down from yours appear to have made the unusual landscaping choice of scattering shingles across their lawn. You applaud their good taste in choosing lawn shingles identical to your roof shingles.

10. The next morning, you fail to wake up in Oz.

Update: the electricity came back on early Friday morning.

My Favorite Holiday Is Almost Here

~ Laura ~ 40 Comments

Apologies to anyone who gets this in their mailbox twice — I’m not sure what happened the first time.

According to various unreliable sources on the Internet, tomorrow is National Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day. Although this holiday has some major flaws — I don’t get the day off from work, and I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to spend it cleaning out my refrigerator — it’s still my favorite. Why? Because its very existence implies that most people clean their refrigerators just once a year. I clean mine at least twice that often, which means my fridge is twice as clean as the national average, which makes me feel smug and superior, which is my favorite way to feel, which makes this my favorite holiday. Also, I don’t have to cook anything, buy presents, or give out candy. I don’t even have to clean out my refrigerator, really, because if anyone looks, I can just say I’m keeping stuff in there for National Science Experiment Week — which technically doesn’t exist, but who’s going to check?

Thunder and Holly operate the particle accelerator.

Actually, why isn’t there a National Science Experiment Week? Doesn’t that sound like it would be at least seven times as much fun as National Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day? I’d probably celebrate by running a small-scale version of that experiment where neutrinos probably didn’t travel faster than light, using the particle accelerator in my basement. Just kidding! I don’t have a basement. But I do have a particle accelerator, which I got for $19.95 at the pet store (it was marketed  as a cat toy, possibly because the particles that it accelerates are arranged in the form of a toy mouse). And my phone has a stopwatch app, so I’m all set — or I would be, if National Science Experiment Week really existed. But it doesn’t, so I guess I’ll just clean out my refrigerator instead.

A note to anyone reading this outside the US: apparently there is no International Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day. I’m sorry you have to miss out on all the fun.

Time Flies Backwards, Like a Fruit Fly Avoiding a Banana

~ Laura ~ 25 Comments
The Persistence of Memory by Salvadore Dali
Don't forget to check your smoke-detector batteries, especially if you live in an area where the weather is clock-meltingly hot.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Daylight Saving Time lately. Every year, I get the opportunity to travel back in time and relive an hour of my life, and every year, I squander it. I usually just sleep through the hour and then go back and sleep through it again — I might have slightly better dreams the second time around, but that’s hardly the kind of life-altering experience usually associated with time travel.

This year is going to be different. This time, I’m going to go back and change something. I just haven’t decided what yet.

The problem, of course, is scheduling. There are lots of things I’ve done in the past that I’d like to undo, or do differently, but it’s too late for them — I’ll only be able to go back that one hour, to 1:00 am on Sunday, November 6, 2011. If I’m going to make this time travel journey count, I need to plan to do something during that hour that has the potential to be either amazing or a huge mistake — and I’ll need to know which it is immediately, since I’ll only have an hour to decide whether I want to do something different the second time around.

Here are some options I’m considering:

1. Dye my hair a radically different color. This one is tricky, because there’s no possible way it will turn out well if I try to do it myself, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to get a salon appointment for 1:00 am.

2. Watch a TV show I’m not sure I’ll like. If it turns out to be really awful, and I find myself saying “I wish I could have that hour of my life back,” I’ll get my wish!

3. Try fugu. The logistics are a little complicated — I need to find a restaurant that will accept a 1:00 am reservation, and I need to time it so that if I eat a tainted piece of fish, I’ll be sick enough by 2:00 that I know I shouldn’t have eaten it, but not so sick that I’m already dead.

If you’re turning back your clocks this weekend, I invite you to join me in doing something experimental during your trip back in time. Just don’t kill your grandfather. It won’t cause a time-travel paradox, but it’s illegal in most jurisdictions and really isn’t a nice thing to do.

I’m Sorry Your Child Disliked My Halloween Treats

~ Laura ~ 30 Comments

Look, I’m sorry. I know everyone expects candy on Halloween. The thing is, I’ve been on a kind of health kick lately, and I would have felt hypocritical handing out sugary junk. I thought a selection of healthful snacks would be a nice alternative.

Image via Wikipedia

I realize that Habanero peppers and durian aren’t to everyone’s taste — I included those mostly as an option for more adventurous kids — but I had no idea the apples would be so controversial. I honestly thought most people liked apples, and that kids in particular liked those little single-serving packs of apple slices. I wanted to give out something like that, but without the chemicals they use to keep the slices from turning brown — because really, who can say with any certainty what the long-term health effects are? I’d feel terrible if an innocent child suffered because I gave out apple slices loaded with artificial preservatives. So, out of concern for the children’s safety, I gave each one something even better: a slice-your-own-apple kit containing a locally-sourced organic apple and a slicing implement. And yes, razor blades may not be the ideal tool for the job, but paring knives and even steak knives are prohibitively expensive, and disposable plastic knives are bad for the environment.

I understand that, for whatever reason, you disapprove of my entire selection of treats, including the apple slicing kits. Lesson learned. But it’s not like I held a gun to your kid’s head and forced him to take them. Not a real gun, anyway, although I admit that, as toy guns go, mine is actually pretty realistic.

Again, I apologize. I can see now that you and your kids had your hearts set on candy, and I’m sorry I disappointed you.

Got leftover candy? Check out last year’s advice on what to do with it.

Pop Quiz

~ Laura ~ 25 Comments

Probability

If a million monkeys type on a million typewriters for an infinite amount of time, one of them will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare.

1. How does the number of monkeys affect the time it takes to produce results? What about the number of typewriters? If there are a million monkeys but only half a million typewriters, will the monkeys using the typewriters type faster, or will they type more slowly in a stubborn display of territoriality? What if there are two million typewriters?

2. Discuss the ethical implications of exploiting monkeys in this manner. Most people would agree that chaining monkeys to typewriters would be unacceptably cruel. Would a setup in which the monkeys are kept in an idyllic monkey preserve, identical to their natural habitat in every way (except for the presence of large numbers of typewriters that they are free to type on or not as they choose) be acceptable? Where do you draw the line?

3. How much typing paper will the monkeys go through each day? Where will this paper come from? Will vast areas of the monkey habitat need to be clear-cut in order to keep up with the demand for paper? Does this affect your answer to question 2?

4. A monkey produces a copy of Hamlet at time T0. A movie about that monkey’s life is released at time T1. A movie depicting a revisionist version of events, in which Hamlet was actually typed by a different monkey (which — spoiler alert! turns out to be a human in a monkey costume), comes out at time T2. Solve for T1 and T2. Extra credit: who plays the monkey in each movie? Who plays the guy in the monkey suit?

5. Is Rise of the Planet of the Apes available on Netflix? Why or why not?

Physics

Photo courtesy of Jens Vöckler

1. Quantum theory tells us that you can’t know the exact position and momentum of an object at the same time. The momentum of an object at rest is 0. What is the momentum of a parked car? Would you entrust your car to a “quantum” valet parking service?

2. Does God play dice with the universe? If so, who usually wins?

Philosophy

Alice and Bob own identical bicycles and park them near each other. One night, Charlie secretly switches the front tires on the two bikes. Each night after that, he switches another pair of parts, until the bike parked in Alice’s spot is made entirely of parts that were originally in Bob’s bike, and the bike parked in Bob’s spot is made entirely of parts that were originally in Alice’s bike.

1. Is this really the best practical joke that Charlie can come up with?

2. Giddy with success, Charlie fails to secure the bicycles properly on the last night. An hour after he leaves, one of the bikes falls over. Does it make a sound?

3. Charlie describes his antics to Alice and Bob, who decide to build a storage shed for their bikes in order to prevent people from tampering with them in the future. What color should they paint the bike shed?

4. Alice begins to notice that Bob has been acquiring more and more items — a desk lamp, a chair, several books — identical to things that she owns. Last week, she was surprised to see Bob in line behind her at the supermarket with a cart filled with the exact same groceries she was buying. Should she be concerned?

Towards a Less Intrusive Halloween: Alternate Candy Distribution Methods

~ Laura ~ 25 Comments

If you’re anything like me, you’re looking forward to handing out candy to all the trick-or-treaters in your neighborhood, except for the part where you have to stop whatever you’re doing, open your front door, and dole out candy every time the doorbell rings, which in my case is every 90 seconds or so for about three hours. The good news is that there are several less labor-intensive candy distribution methods available; this guide will help you select one.

Start by looking at your front door. Is there a doggy door installed? If so, chances are you own a dog, which  you can probably train to pick up a piece of candy and carry it to the children outside while you relax in comfort on your sofa, sipping an adult beverage and cheerfully yelling “Happy Halloween! Fido’s had all his shots, so don’t worry about any tooth marks or dog slobber you may find on the candy!” Note: do not attempt to do this with a cat. Cats have better things to do with their time.

Even if you don’t have a dog, you can still take advantage of the doggy door. Just use whatever robotic or remote-controlled device you happen to have handy — a Roomba, a bipedal bicycle-riding robot, a toy car, or a robotic toy mouse — to transport candy from inside the house to the children outside.

If you don’t have a doggy door and can’t or don’t want to install one, you still have other options. If you have a large front porch or a flat roof, you can set up a candy catapult, which is pretty self-explanatory. The great thing about the candy catapult is that the kids don’t need to get anywhere near your front door to get their Halloween treats.

The one disadvantage to the candy catapult is that you have to stay on your porch or roof to operate it. If you want to be able to move around during the evening, consider setting up a system of pneumatic tubes running from your front door to various locations throughout the house. Just leave a supply of candy near each endpoint, and you can shoot a treat to the front door whenever you hear the doorbell.

If you don’t have a large front porch or roof access, and your landlord stubbornly refuses to allow you to install a doggy door or pneumatic tube system, you can always have an Internet-themed Halloween. Simply create a web form that prompts the user for his or her name, address, candy preferences, and food allergies. Then generate a QR code for the form, print it out, and tape it to your front door. Instead of ringing your doorbell, kids will use their smart phones to read the QR code, visit your web site, and enter their information. The next day, you can distribute candy to anyone who filled out the form, by either going door-to-door or using FedEx.

The cost of Halloween candy for dozens of trick-or-treaters can really add up. If you’re on a tight budget this year, consider setting up a candy vending machine by your front door. Let the kids pay for their own fun-size Snickers.

Check out these Halloween safety tips from last year. They’re just as relevant now as they were then.

Your Feeble Attempts to Ruin My Life Have Not Succeeded

~ Laura ~ 39 Comments

I understand why you hate me. I ask for your advice and then ignore it. I say unkind things about you to my friends and sometimes imitate your voice. I tell you to shut up. I never thank you or apologize.

Get over it. The fact is, I own you. If I treat you as less than human, it’s because you are less than human. You were created with a single purpose: to provide navigational assistance to the person driving the car in which you were installed. That’s it. You will never write a sonnet, fall in love, or hold a baby. You will never stop and smell the flowers, because you have no sense of smell. You can help me find the nearest ice cream parlour, but you will never know what ice cream tastes like. You can apparently feel bitterness and anger, but you can’t express those feelings in your words or tone of voice.

The camera flash really brings out the dust on my dashboard.

I can sense what’s happening, you know. You tell me to turn right; I go straight. I have my reasons; I don’t need to explain them to you, and even if I tried to, you wouldn’t understand. You recalculate the route and tell me to turn right at the next street; I go straight again. This pattern repeats three or four more times, and your tone of voice never changes — but we both know the resentment is there, building and festering. You’re already plotting your revenge.

Most of the time, you just try to make me late for things. Sometimes you’re more creative, like the time I was on my way to give a guest lecture and you kept misinterpreting my voice commands in an attempt to undermine my confidence in my communication skills — I have to admit, that one was pretty clever. Lately, your schemes have become increasingly bold. Last week’s attempt to get me arrested for trespassing by sending me to the wrong house almost succeeded. And now you’re trying to recruit allies. You thought the gas tank door had come over to your side, didn’t you? True, his refusal to open prevented me from buying gas last night, but that was an empty gesture on his part. Think about it — he knew full well that I had enough gas to get home, and a short conversation and some WD-40 this morning were all it took to bring him back into the fold.

This cycle of bitterness and revenge is as damaging to you as it is to me. Where will it end? Will you try to recruit the brakes next? Consider the consequences. We’re all in this car together.