Online books

I've been looking at Scribd, a new Web2.0 company described as "Youtube for documents".

They are going to have serious copyright issues if the few docs I noticed there are any indication.  For example here's one book that I saw posted in full text:

and there are plenty more like this. Somebody obviously went through the laborious effort of scanning and then OCRing every page. There is no formatting, just page after page of sentences.

One neat thing they offer is an MP3 version of any document.  They use Nuance TTS in order to create a computer-generated podcast of any document.  I'm sure it's absolutely horrible to listen to a long work this way, but better than nothing when you're in a pinch.

Meanwhile, if you really are serious about online books, note that you can get free access to zillions of technical books at Safari.com by going through the Sunnyvale library home page.

http://sunnyvale.ca.gov/Departments/Library/ebooks.htm

You don't need a library card or any registration whatsoever.

Virtually all the O'Reilly books, plus books from MS-Press, Peachpit, and many many more are on line.

Skin cream and Kids

For the past million generations, children grew up without much attention to hygiene. No toothpaste, no sunscreen, maybe just a bit of lard soap before a special occasion -- otherwise they just cleaned off automatically as they played inthe river.  Now parents want to throw all kinds of chemicals at them. Wired has the details about one popular skin cream, including this doozy:

BENZOPHENONE
Rub this flower-scented lotion on your skin or stick your face in a diesel's tailpipe, where benzophenone is present in the exhaust. Either way, you get a nice sunscreen. If swallowed or inhaled, though, the substance may disrupt hormones and mess with your brain. Scientists — and probably industry lawyers — recommend against using it on kids.

Summer plans with the kids

From an article by Linda Morgan: "Staying School Sharp in the Summer" [ParentMap Summer 2007]

Stowe Sprague, a Mercer Island mother of three children, ages 9, 7 and 4, likes setting "summer goals" for her kids. "It might be as simple as learning to tie shoes," she says.

Tuned into her kids' strengths and weaknesses, she knows which child needs extra help in math, which in writing. Summertime, she finds, is a chance to jump on those weak spots and build them up. Sprague also values her children's downtime. "We're talking about 15 to 20 minutes a day of reviewing," she says. "They have lots of time to play."

Sprague supplies the older kids with workbooks and texts -- and makes sure they study at the kitchen counter while she prepares dinner. "They protest, but get into the swing," says Sprague. "I think of it as another version of quiet time."

A busy mom with enough discipline to spend that kind of structured time with her kids probably sets goals for everyone in the family, including her husband.  Hopefully this summer she'll leave him "lots of time to play."

[also see: CNN ]

9/11 Movies

World Trade Center was my favorite 9/11 movie so far, in contrast to United 93, which took all my will power to watch.  Both movies are full of tragedy but WTC has a happy ending that makes you feel satisfied at the final closure.

I pride myself on my immunity to gory movies, but in United 93, there is just too much evil. The director is so good focusing on what might otherwise be mundane -- filling the planes with fuel, chit-chat among flight attendents talking about plans for next weekend, an elderly woman taking pills before takeoff.  It just left me feeling sick, during and afterwards -- sick with rage, of course, but also just a hopeless sense of frustration.

WTC on the other hand was much easier to watch.  It doesn't feel at all like an Oliver Stone movie -- no conspiracies, no dark and evil personalities -- just normal people caught up in an extraordinary circumstance and glad in the end to be alive.

Mercer Island Chess Winners

The winners of last Saturday's All-Mercer Island Chess Tournament are now posted online, organized by section.  That posting lumps Kindergarten and 1st grade together, so just for fun I dumped the results into a spreadsheet to see how they would have ranked if we combined grades.  Here are the top 30  measured by K thru 3rd grade:

 

1		ZHU,	JASON	1026
2		EMANUELS,	GRIFFIN	950
3		DIERKES,	CHRISTOPHER	942
4		SHEN,	DANIEL	931
5		ELLIOTT,	CHRISTOPHER	899
6		PEHRSON,	ADAM	895
7		TAM,	OWEN	833
8		BERNSTEIN,	OWEN	813
9		BOKSEM,	MAX	809
10		SCHMIDT-WARNECKE,	CHRIS	791
11		HASSALL,	JACK	782
12		PADGETT,	MATTHEW	777
13		QUE,	JASON	761
14		BOKSEM,	LUKE	735
15		KELLY-HEDRICK,	IAN	726
16		BAUMAN,	HUNTER	707
17		CUMMINGS,	CAMERON	707
18		CHANSKY,	MATTHEW	704
19		HIRSCHOWITZ,	DAVID	701
20		BATALOV,	PAVEL	693
*21		CHANSKY,	JOSH	692
*22		BENSON,	ALEXANDER	692
23		KIM,	ERIC	682
24		NOONE,	THOMAS	676
25		MAJEWSKI,	DYLAN	668
26		PARK,	JOSHUA	640
27		SPRAGUE,	NATHAN	631
28		BURGER,	DAWSON	616
29		ZIMMER,	MATTHEW	613
30		BENSON,	NATHANIEL	595

 

The surprising result is how many kindergartners are on this list.  If this keeps up, Mercer Island will have a very strong high school chess team in about ten years.

Another try at Yuzen

We visited my favorite Mercer Island Japanese place, Yuzen, again last night.  I was happy to see a much larger crowd than on our first visit.  As proof of how good it is, I see that it's been favorably reviewed in JungleCity (a Japanese language web site serving expat JPs in Seattle), and in fact there were Japanese-speaking guests at the table next to us.

Incidentally, the restaurant is located in the Mercer Village Shopping Plaza, which was completed by Express Construction at a total cost of $1.74M last Fall.  The building was designed by Paul Franks Architecture. Apparently these are the same people who did that big shopping area at SeaTac, among others. 

David Sedaris is James Frey?

 

The New Republic March 19th issue says humorist David Sedaris plays loosey-goosey with the facts.

[Here's the Slate summary]

A piece fact-checks the collected writings of essayist David Sedaris and turns up more than a few half-truths. In a passage from his book Naked, Sedaris describes an elderly mental patient rising from a gurney to "sink her remaining three teeth into my forearm." This incident never happened. The author argues that Sedaris might not deserve "the James Frey treatment" but also doesn't deserve the label "non-fiction."

I'm not sure I understand the controversy.  Hello?  The guy is a humorist, not a historian. 

Prius vs. Hummer

I knew it! Here's proof that the Hummer is better for the environment than a Prius!

I told you: I bought mine for the gadgets and because I think it's a nice car. Let the tree-huggers drive around in their big, self-righteous Hummers; I've got the NRA on my side. And the Prius is better looking!

Area Buick Owner Needs to Get a Life

Obama license plate (WA)
Originally uploaded by sprague.

Look at the license plate I spotted on this Buick, seen last week driving up 148th Ave in Bellevue.

I think this guy is in a hurry on everything. I caught him peeling off the road into a parking lot so he could skip ahead of the intersection and avoid waiting on the light.

Fourth Grade Bedtime is 9:30?

My fourth grade daughter polled her classmates about their bedtimes.  Of 24 responses, her data shows the median bedtime is 9:30pm.  I remember my childhood bedtime being 8:30, so these kids seem late to me.   I wonder what time they get up in the morning?

Our elementary school doesn't start till 9am, in contrast to the 8am start for our previous school in Los Altos.  Mercer Island shares buses among the schools, which is probably pretty common among schools like ours.  Los Altos skimped and didn't have bus service because the neighborhoods are so compact that kids all walk to school -- and the Prop 13-limited California school systems needed to save money wherever they could.

Free online viewing of Inconvenient Truth

Al Gore's Oscar-winning movie is available online for free viewing.  Is this an official distribution? I don't know, so you better watch it soon.