Chinese Restaurants of the South

Ever since I read a New York Times article on Chinese-Americans in the Mississippi Delta, I’ve been fascinated by the idea of the Chinese-American experience away from the urban coasts. Looks like I’m not the only one: Berkeley artist Indigo Som has an ongoing project called the Chinese Restaurant Project. The latest exhibition is called Mostly Mississippi: Chinese Restaurants of the South, which is being shown at the Chinese Historical Society of America in San Francisco. Ms. Som is speaking there today at 3:00 about her project. (Too bad I can’t go.)

Also, you can contribute to her project! She is conducting a survey of Chinese restaurant experiences, and is collecting take-out menus from every Chinese restaurant in the U.S. Maybe I’ll get a few for her while I’m up in Portland next month…

More research papers should be like this

Incidence of and risk factors for nodding off at scientific sessions by Kenneth Rockwood, David B. Hogan and Christopher J. Patterson

Abstract: We conducted a surreptitious, prospective, cohort study to explore how often physicians nod off during scientific meetings and to examine risk factors for nodding off. After counting the number of heads falling forward during 2 days of lectures, we calculated the incidence density curves for nodding-off episodes per lecture (NOELs) and assessed risk factors using logistic regression analysis. In this article we report our eye-opening results and suggest ways speakers can try to avoid losing their audience.

Frederick Law Olmsted

The latest issue of National Geographic has a great article on Frederick Law Olmsted, an amazingly prolific landscape architect best known for designing Central Park with his partner, Calbert Vaux. Not mentioned in the article is his Bay Area work. For example, he drew up the first campus plan for UC Berkeley in 1866, which established the basic orientation the campus has to this day. And his 1888 master plan for Stanford is once again guiding new construction, most notably the Hewlett and Packard Quad (formerly the Science and Engineering Quad) and its sequel, SEQ 2.

9-year old African-American boy sings Chinese opera

Tyler Thompson doesn’t speak the language, but he sings it very well.

Oakland: Boy, 9, a rising star in Chinese opera • San Francisco Chronicle

Boy who sings in Chinese draws oohs, ahs • Oakland Tribune (link good until Feb. 20, 2005)

(Chronicle link added on Febrary 16, 2006)

Symbolic links and hard links in Windows

I just found out that Windows 2000 and XP have hard links and symbolic links, just like Unix. But Windows doesn’t expose those features in the user interface. Dang it, I could have been using links for the past 5 years! Thankfully, some enterprising programmers have created utilities for creating and removing symbolic links (called junction points in Windows) and hard links:

  • NTFS Link, by Michael Elsdörfer, integrates handling links into Windows Explorer
  • Junction, by Mark Russinovich, is a command-line tool

Also, take a look at the article Windows Symbolic and Hard Links to find out all about hard links and symbolic links, why they’re so nifty in the first place, and why they’re a lot better than shortcut files.

Reading the entire Encyclopædia Britannica

As someone who read the World Book Encyclopedia for fun as a kid, I find the topic of the book The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World intriguing. It’s Esquire editor A.J. Jacobs’s humorous account of his quest to read the entire 2002 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, all 33,000 pages. Time to add it to my Amazon wish list.

Caltech math professor consults for CBS

I never thought I’d see this: CBS’ new series, NUMB3RS, is a drama where a math whiz helps his detective brother solve police crime cases. To make sure the math stays realistic, the head of Caltech’s math department, Gary Lorden, is consulting for the show. Also, the fictitious school in the show, “Cal Sci,” is based on Caltech, where part of the show is taped.

Caltech dons thinking cap for CBS • Pasadena Star News • January 10, 2005

Crime and Computation • Caltech News • Vol. 39, No. 1, 2005

Psychological traffic calming

Recently there’s been a bunch of articles about “second-generation traffic calming.” The basic idea is simple, but sounds crazy: remove all signs, traffic lights, and lane markings. Eliminate the curb separating the sidewalk from the street.

This does several things. It emphasizes the street as a space to be shared between pedestrians and drivers. It encourages drivers to slow down (although the street may also need to be narrowed as well). Once the speed is down to about 20 mph, then drivers are slow enough to negotiate around other drivers and pedestrians without the need for signs. And since intersections don’t have stop signs or traffic lights anymore, total travel time actually goes down, because you no longer have to come to a complete stop at intersections.

This is already being tried in Europe with good results. Could it work here in the U.S.? I could see it working in some downtown and suburban residential neighborhoods; in fact, it’s already working in West Palm Beach, Florida, and I wouldn’t mind seeing it tried out in my neighborhood. But doing this on a 6-lane arterial surrounded by strip malls would be a bit much.

A Path to Road Safety With No Signposts • New York Times • January 22, 2005

Roads Gone Wild • Wired Magazine • December 2004

Why don’t we do it in the road? • Salon • May 20, 2004

Why Caps Lock is next to A instead of Ctrl

Recently my colleagues and I started to wonder why older PC keyboards have the Ctrl key next to the A key, while newer PC keyboards have Caps Lock there instead. It didn’t make sense: Ctrl is used more frequently than Caps Lock, so why is it now in a less prominent position?

The most likely reason is that the keyboards of most typewriters, like the IBM Selectric, have the Lock key in the same place. The Lock key was actually Shift Lock, not Caps Lock. As my friend Matt reminded me, pressing the Lock key also physically pressed down the Shift key as well, so it makes sense for the Lock key to be right next to the Shift key. Lock was used more frequently back then, because writing in all caps substituted for boldface or larger type, neither of which a typewriter can easily output.

When IBM released the PC in 1981, its keyboard had Ctrl next to A, which was similar to many other personal computer keyboards at the time. This resulted in messing up everyone who learned to touch-type on typewriters. So when IBM released its 101-key Enhanced Keyboard in 1986, it put the Caps Lock key back next to the A.

Unfortunately, this messed up everyone who learned how to touch-type on computers. Just in case anyone is wondering, all Apple II keyboards had Control next to A, but most Mac keyboards have had Caps Lock next to A. (In fact, the first Mac keyboard didn’t have Control.) I personally don’t mind where Caps Lock and Ctrl are now, because at this point, I’m used to it. Now I just wish laptop manufacturers would make up their minds where to put the Fn and Ctrl keys on their keyboards (I prefer Ctrl to the left of Fn).