How I use a Kindle (e-book reader)

I got the Kindle in September 2010. The timing was based on the fact that I had a baby on the way (more on that later). Because one of my hobbies is reading, and I realized that I was going to soon have considerable amount of time that I would be stationary, with only one hand available.

I already had a fairly large collection of e-books, mostly Adobe Acrobat files that are the daily nourishment of an academic. But I was also exposed to ebooks on my mobile phone and my long dead Palm Pilot. So I was used to the concept.

So what have I found? Like other data devices, the Kindle is an adjunct to my computer, not a replacement. Where it shines is in it's ability to sync with my computer, in particular I probably use the Kindle to read news as much as to read books (through pulling in news feeds in Calibre).

For books, I like the fact that there are lots of inexpensive books. One of the first books I bought for the Kindle was Sears' The Baby Book, which was a $5 special right around the time my son was born. I regularly check Amazon's discount section for similar gems. But the shining jewels are the free book depositories. Project Gutenberg with it's vast collection of older works, with the better offering conveniently arranged into topical bookshelves and the Baen Books Free Library and their many CDs of books available.

I am a particular fan of Project Gutenberg Children's Picture Books which have provided a fine introduction to the tales of Peter Rabbit and many friends.

The place I really appreciate the Kindle is when I'm holding my son, when he is sleeping Because my son likes to be held when sleeping. And reading is a good way to use the time. The Kindle is light enough and small enough to hold in one hand, or prop it up on my son without waking him up. And I can work its controls while doing so.

The other way to get something on the Kindle is email. Every Kindle has a name@free.kindle.com email address and you can send a file to yourself (after setting up your account so that it will accept the email). I do this to send notes (e.g. shopping lists) or documents to myself so I can look at them online.

Some issues:

PDF is awful. Because PDF is a fixed size, and the Kindle has no easy way of moving around the page or zooming arbitrarily.

Wifi works, but it is slow. Use sites that are optimized for mobile use is available. When the page is loaded, use the Kindle menu to switch to 'Article mode', which strips it down to the article itself (i.e. takes out all the navigation and advertising columns)

Final verdict: Very handy. I would recommend it to any parent who reads, because this will help keep you sane when you are trying to do anything else when with a baby. Also very handy for carrying around documents without carrying lots of paper.

Resources for Kindle

Calibre - Library manager for your ebooks. Manage all your ebooks that you do not buy from Amazon here , it has a RSS feeds and it will automatically load to the Kindle when you sync. That means you can automatically download stories from news sites, blogs about any topic of interest.

Send to Kindle - Chrome plugin that automatically takes any web page and emails it to your Kindle (assuming you have set it up with your email address)

ReKindleit - Plugin for Firefox. Same idea, when you are looking at a web page, email it directly to the Kindle.

Why I write reviews

Near the beginning of the year, the New York Times Sunday Book Review had several literary critics right about the purpose of serious book reviews. And the explicit background is the web, with many blogs where anyone with an interest can write reviews (e.g. yours truly), sites which invite reviews (such as Amazon.com). And in a world where anyone can say anything, what is the value of serious reviews (or what makes a review 'serious')?

What is not available in the crowdsourced review? Renee Fleming when she was in Pittsburgh last fall made the comment that the popular review had one flaw, that it tended to be gladitorial style, thumbs up or thumbs down. And as criticism goes, it was shallow and useless.

And there is the place for good criticism. The purpose of criticism is not to state a like or dislike, it it to describe and evaluate. There are a few things that you should be able to know after a well done review or criticism.

1. Where the work fits in its environment
2. What the work was trying to do
3. How well the work expresses its intent
4. The intended audience of the work
5. Who is not the intended audience of the work

And presumably, the reader of the review can identify if he is in 4 or 5, and if this is something he would want to read/attend/eat.

Why should I do such a thing? One, because this way I remember what I've done before. But also because every one of us is different. And these differences should result in differences in how we view a work. So when I have reviewed books, concerts, camping gear, movies, etc., the reader should be reading them with an eye for what makes us similar or different, and how would those similarities and differences change the way we would view the subject. And how does the object of the review fit into a larger whole (whether it be a set of experiences, gear taken on a backpacking trip, or a as part of a library.)

Do I do this every time? Probably not. Like many things, this is an ideal, to be followed when I am in the mood to do this, and the work is worthy of the attention. But having this ideal is a guard against a shallowness that contributes more noise than substance.

Why I am Asian-American

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. - Amendment XIV, Section 1, United States Constitution

This is another badly worded post. I am asian as both parents are of asian descent. And I am American based on the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution as my parents were under the jurisdiction of the laws of the United States at the time of my birth. But it is also important to remember that nothing in the U.S. Constitution has to be the way it is. And like many aspects, this is one that has been challenged in the past, present, and will be in the future (Heritage Foundation brief about the granting of citizenship to those born while parents where in the U.S. under legal visas). And certainly, few countries follow this rule. Most countries define citizenship to follow from the parents. And few countries will allow the children of immigrants to be full citizens, with the rights to vote, hold office, and serve in its defense. In the United States at various point in time many groups were viewed with suspicion, and much resistance to viewing them as worthy of citizenship (obvious historical examples are Catholics, Irish, Italians, Germans, Chinese, Japanese, as well as Blacks, which prompted the amendment in the first place. A list of current examples is not much shorter.)

Where is my place in this? For several years, I have been on the board of a local asian american professional organization. (this causes amusement on people who knew me before I moved to Pittsburgh, as I am not the type who usually does such things.) As such, this is something other then asian (other groups are comprised of mostly asian immigrants), and not completely just another professional group (the Pittsburgh region distinctly lacks diversity compared to other urban areas of the United States.)

Other countries view the idea that the children of immigrants can be full citizens just as those who have been in the U.S. for several generations to be impossible. I suspect that most countries do not have provision for someone to desire full citizenship who did not have local ancestry by blood. The alternative is the view that purity of blood is paramount. An example was the view in the early days of the U.S. that one drop of blood was enough to make someone viewed as black, regardless of how much of his ancestry was white. In Germany, Chanceler Merkel has declared that multiculturalism has 'utterly failed'. France is in the process for making it easier to strip people of their citizenship.

Why should the U.S. not follow the path of Germany, France, or Japan? Why should the U.S. continue too put itself up as a place where those who have ambition and goals and drive can go and work to succede? Why should the U.S. be a place where the children of immigrants who work with their hands can gain the education to succede and thrive?

The U.S. has a myth of American Exceptionalism. But if the myth is true, then it must be because there is a characteristic of the U.S. that is exceptional. It is not the racial stock of its people, because that racial stock is found in the lands of its origin. It is not the ties to the land. Others in other places have just as strong ties to the same types of land that we have. It is not a natural industriousness of its people, many lands claim industriousness and even education better then the U.S. But none have told the world that there is a place for those who have ambition, drive and desire to create in the way the U.S. has over the decades. And none have been therefore attractive for those without social status, where the children of parents with no special status of title, social class or privilege can begin working on the street, in garages, with their hands and rise to become captains of industry or even a President. And because all these things are true, I believe in the myth of American Exceptionalism.

Does it have to be this way? No, it does not. There are many calls that say that those who 'do not look like us' should not have the privileges of a citizen. That it is not possible for people to change from the citizenship or religion of their parents. That people should not be able to rise in the world through effort, drive and education. That people who are different should not be allowed to serve in this countries defense or in public service.

Are there places like this? Yes. And they are dying, stagnant, fully aware that their best days are past and will not return. Realizing that they are in a spiral of destruction, feeding off the assets built in the past, and not renewing the future. And should America turn its back on the things that make it exceptional, I will mourn the end of America's greatness.

Why I am a Red Cross Volunteer

ERVs in Louisiana

At my University there has been a Red Cross Club for a few years. And our local American Red Cross chapter finally discovered them. So I was there today at their second meeting of the year to talk about the Red Cross and the VA and volunteering off campus. I spoke about the things we do as emergency services volunteers, responding to fires, floods, hurricanes, storms, and so forth. Of Health & Safety, teaching classes. Of Service to the Armed Forces, of having others in my unit who were deployed who got the calls that they should come home while there was time. I suppose that this audience probably were more interested in this talk then my students in class are.

I started volunteering for the Red Cross when I was in college. I was a volunteer EMT, and since I was learning CPR, I also became an instructor. Our EMS organization taught classes on campus to university staff and to students (it was how the organization raised funds). And I taught classes in the community as an instructor for the Red Cross chapter.

I left that behind when I graduated and started work. Work and grad school just squeezed that out of my life for a while. Then when I went back to grad school for a PhD I started volunteering again, this time in emergency services. My degree was in modeling operations. The Red Cross gave me the opportunity to take part in operations.

It is not just that the Red Cross conducts operations. It conducts them under some of the most difficult constraints for operations. In disaster response, we do not choose the time, place or scale, and we do not get to choose who responds. Those who plan and run the operation work with the resources and personnel available at the time and place. The current classical situation is a hurricane. And to work in that setting competently, with the chaos of an unknown and uncertain situation where the pressure of people whose lives are at stake is a stress and challenge only matched by combat against a willful and capable opponent.

What to tell these college undergraduates that perhaps volunteering with the Red Cross or with Veterans Affairs is worthy of their time? I had three areas for them.

1. This was good and meaningful tasks. Granted, there were other opportunities for good and meaningful things that they will be provided on a college campus. With the Red Cross and VA staff and volunteers where people who have done things. At both, everyone there has had the experience of being in high stress situations and having to act and make decisions. Whether it is a Red Cross volunteer who is the team lead at a house fire where the family has no where to go, no food and only the clothes on their back, or the nurse who has had a patient crash, they would be with people who have experienced life and can get things done.

2. The Red Cross and the VA trains their volunteers. For those who volunteer over years, they will be trained to do their tasks, but also about dealing with people and dealing with life in all its aspects, both the good and bad. To recognize what is important and what is not.

3. I also told them that I was a professor. And that this semester, there is a group in my department whose senior design project is with the local Red Cross Chapter. Because the Red Cross and the VA are not just another charity or hospital, but they are organizations that reach out into their communities and interact with them in complex ways. And because of this someone with a little curiosity will quickly see there are many questions to be asked, ways of handling difficult issues to develop, and resource limitations that need to be dealt with. So I told them that I would like to see members of this club who volunteer with the Red Cross and the VA over the course of their college years to be doing senior projects, senior thesis and class papers based what they observed and did with the Red Cross and VA. So they can take what they are learning and put it in context with real problems effecting real people.

This fall, the first Pitt students have started volunteering at the VA under the Red Cross Veterans Affairs Voluntary Services partnership, after going through orientations in spring. This year, they are being introduced to the Red Cross and VA at the beginning of the year before they have settled into their routines. And these students will see a part of life greater then what they would get if they did not leave their campus.

Why I enjoy classical/concert music

This is, obviously, a badly titled post. Because 'enjoy' is not the proper word. Not that there is anything wrong with merely enjoying something. I believe that there is a place in life for things that can be enjoyed as they are. But I don't think that 'enjoy' or 'appreciate' conveys how I experience concert music. There is a cliche that those with mathematical backgrounds should enjoy classical music because music, like math, deals with patterns. But that does not get you very far. By the end of chapter 2 of his Critical and Historical Essays (lectures on music at Columbia University), Edward MacDowell shows examples of what happens when you take mathematics as the means of analysis of music, and each historical case of cultures that try it leads to dead ends.

When I was in high school, the smart kids, the ones in the honors program, took Art Appreciation. I was not one of those kids. To this day, I say I know almost nothing about art/music history or theory. My experience with music was playing in the high school marching and symphonic bands. While I was good enough to be first chair my senior year, and being part of the Chicago All-Catholic Band, our ambitions were suitably limited (the bandmaster considered part of his job to be dissuading students from the profession.) The goal there was an appreciation of music, and perhaps a life-long hobby (e.g. community ensembles or playing in private). This is where I was when I lived around Washington DC, where I took advantage of a wealth of performances in public spaces (museums, parks, public buildings, university) and the occasional concert. And I continued my practice from when I was an undergraduate of going to performances of friends who were in music programs at the local universities.

In graduate school this began to transform. I had friends in the music program, but now I was at a school with a decent music program, where students there had aspirations of professional careers in classical music. I was going to recitals, concerts, and programs where my friends were performing on a regular basis. And, since I was taking my time in a Ph.D. program, I could follow them throughout their time in school, and I could watch how they developed both in performances and sitting in on practice time. (I had one friend comment that having me in the room while she was practicing was like a studio session. My wife thanks everyone for the training as she is the current beneficiary of all of those sessions.) Over time I stopped merely hearing the music to listening for the interpretation. Instead of appreciating the music being played, I could observe how an ensemble interact with each other and it became a conversation between people, not only the genius of the composer putting notes on a page.

What do I gain? Like all of the other fine arts, classical music is an abstract way of asking what it means to experience being human. At times composers use it to respond to a historical context. Most composers chose to create a tension by using a format to constrain themselves as they desired to emote or to present a story. (I tend to not get many of the more free form moderns). And I take it as a privilege to observe the result.

I am looking forward to another season of blogging for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. I have always maintained that my blog is not a concert review. The Post-Gazette has someone who does that as well as people associated with the schools of music and conservatories. Many with backgrounds in the humanities can discuss what a piece means. And I know little about the mechanics or history or philosophy of music. What I can do is pay attention to the concert and react to it. At a book discussion prior to last weeks opening gala, Renee Fleming stated that her performances where a collaboration between the creator (composer) and the performer. But she is missing an actor. Aaron Copeland stated that art is a collaboration between the composer, the interpreter, and the listener. Copeland tells the listener his job is to be aware of the personalities and functions of the composer and interpreter, to distinguish between them. And it is not sufficient (or maybe not even necessary) to be educated and trained, but the listener must love music. And not just particular styles or forms or schools of music, but across a wide range. And then react to it. Otherwise the efforts of composer and interpreter do not have meaning. I do my part.

Why I run

(and hike and camp and . . .)

"Short cut this way" - spectator sign at 2004 Chicago Marathon

"No short cuts" - 2004 Chicago Marathoners cry on seeing the sign

There are lots of reasons to promote running. Fitness. Competition. Glory. Euphoria. Myself, after 20 years of running I'm not going to turn heads by my fitness. The only races where I've gotten prizes are races where noone serious shows up (don't laugh, it has happened. The funny thing, I was teasing the eventual winner about it before the race). And I don't get euphoria from just running any more (ok, maybe if there is a real good hill. Note: my idea of a real good hill is one that a car cannot drive up.)

But what I do get is connect to reality. My profession is one of abstraction. How to make an abstraction of our world so we can understand it better. But, as I had to explain to one of my students, when you are faced with an actual instance, there is no need for abstraction. In running, hiking, camping the road, trail, hill, stream, field is present with you, and you have to deal with it as it is. Heat, water, cold, ice, rain, snow, hazards, obstacles, are things you face. The constraints of fuel, food, water and the limits of your body, skill, knowledge and training have to be considered before you start, and their effects have to be dealt with. Preparation matters, and you pay a price if you skimp. There are real hazards. I've written journal entries for the purpose of informing whoever discovered them. I've given reports that a trail was hazardous and should have been closed.

I think we live in a society that likes to ignore reality, preferring to view perception as more important. And they can use power derived from fait, moral righteousness or power to enforce their views. But that does not count when it is you, your fitness, skill, training and nature. And I like having one part of my life where that is unambiguously true.

Why I am a photographer

I have had a wide range of hobbies, as does most people over the course of their lives. And like most, many have gone by the wayside. I think one aspect of maturity in a hobby or an activity is that you are no longer merely an actor performing techniques, but you either guide others (through teaching or through organizing a community) or you are pushing yourself in the practice of the art. In photography, this observation comes through in the form of commentary on digital cameras, especially digital SLRs. One big criticism is that the advertising around cameras fosters a view that being a good photographer was only a matter of a big (and expensive) camera and big (and expensive) lenses, completely neglecting the elements of skill and practice and understanding of light.





I started photography with a manual SLR. Center-weighted meter, manual focus, manual aperture, manual shutter speed. After that was a point and shoot. An Olympus Epic known for its good 35mm f/2.8 lens and being a hockey puck (indestructible). It was a few years before I even bought my first auto focus/auto exposure camera. Continuing my ways, my favorite camera was a manual focus, manual exposure rangefinder (i.e. what cameras were like before SLR was invented). This was characterized by fast (wide aperture) prime (non-zoom) lenses and frequent use of black & white film. Also known as "this is how Cartier-Breeson and Capa did it"







Part of being good is taking time to learn the fundamentals. Learning the ways of light and shadow. The limits of the sensor (film or digital). How to see relationships in a scene. How to see a relationship unfold so you can be ready at the decisive moment.






My investment in equipment pales in comparison to the investment in study and practice, and I like to think that it shows.

For my involvement in the arts, photography is my only practice of it. So to improve means to find ways of improving your skill. And one of the classical ways of developing creativity is to put in place boundaries that force creativity in other ways. Thus my preference for using prime lenses and black & white. It becomes the frame in which I develop. And the expectation is that when I do use color and zoom lenses, the skills and ability to see that is developed carry over.







Like many things, I have adapted as the technology behind photography has changed. My rangefinder is now rarely used, since the chromonegative film I had always used is no longer available. I now have a digital SLR and a set of zooms. But the manual focus primes are still what I take most of the time and that goes well with one of the smallest APS digital SLRs on the market. Most of my photography is not intended to push my abilities, but to record the events of life.

Why I read

Ruined by Reading: A Life in Books by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

View all my reviews

I recently went to my first meeting of a book club. The last one I was with slowly faded away, as such enterprises do. For the new one, this was its second meeting of its existence. Which is a milestone. If nothing else it means that one group of strangers did not repulse each other away and they thought it was worth meeting again. It does seem odd that less than two months before a baby arrives I am meeting new people. But I was not alone, as one guy there is a new father as well. The book we read this month was fairly unremarkable. But its subject is the place reading has played in the life of the author. Most of the book focuses on the author as a young girl. And for an author to examine the place of reading in her life is a bit of navel gazing.

So, why read? There are many arguments not to. I know many people who state that they do not read fiction, only non-fiction, viewing all fiction as fantasy and a waste of time. Various books get branded as out of bounds or satanic. Of course, many of these same people invest time in video games, shopping, and other arguably non-productive hobbies and pursuits which I do not. I also can say, as my wife would put it, I have actually done a lot of these things in real life, so living vicariously through reading is not strictly necessary.

What reading provides is a way of making my world larger. I joke that the reason I listen to people telling stories and lessons learned is that I want to hear others talk about how things went wrong. Because I am a very creative person and I want to make mistakes that are unique. Mark Twain in "Taming the bicycle" discusses learning through one's experiences only as misleading, since you don't know if what aspect of your experience provided the right lesson.

Fiction does the same. What good fiction should do (and I hold movies to the same standard) is develop a world, and provide situations for its characters to engage in the three major conflicts: man against nature, man against man and man against self. Given the setting (I always give authors and writers great leeway in how they make their setting, since real life is pretty varied as well), do the choices and consequences of the characters make sense. (again, realizing the wide range of responses people in the real world use, there is a certain amount of range available here too.) Every (good) book adds to my world, and provides a base that I take with me in engaging my world, in all of its messiness and occasional perversity. And ways of describing my experiences to others (I write a lot of after action reports and meeting notes)

Is it worth reading and talking about it with other people? Like many things, reading is a skill. There is a benefit to testing your ability to observe and synthesize with other people who also had the same experience (reading the same book). It is a given that everyone will take away different things from a book (which is not to say that the takeaway needs to be anything profound or deep), but you should at least recognize each others observations of action, character, and motivations.

But the main reason I read is that it makes my world larger. And richer. And we look forward to our son doing the same.

Why I am a researcher

I was asked yesterday about the value of a Ph.D. It is a fair question. When I was in graduate school, occasionally a first year student would say something to the effect that he was in grad school because he wanted to make money. We all informed him that he assuredly had the skills to do very well, with an MBA (equivalent) from the excellent business school down the block at our university. And that he would make more money for considerably effort then the road that he was starting on. I did not start my professional life as an academic, so this is a question that in a sense has an answer.

After I finished college I went to D.C. to a policy school for a professional master's degree and to work. (because all Master's in policy students usually work while in school). Over the next four years I worked for a legislature, a non-profit, a government agency and at a government contractor. I did this as a quantitative analyst and as a logistician. And it was fun. I worked on environmental studies and projects that were at the cutting edge of applied economics and modeling. There is work I did that I could see in the news over a decade later as they came to fruition or the issues they addressed began to be considered by commercial enterprises. I had few projects that were routine. There was always the sense that you were developing something new, and while there may be ways to do that, what you would find along the way was not always obvious in foresight.

But I also realized that the only reason I was working on these projects was because of my boss(es) along the way. And this is not what work would always be like. Looking ahead, I realize that there were really two ways to have a career doing new things like this. One was to work for twenty years and establish yourself at the top of your field (like my last boss). The other was to get a Ph.D.

And this was the value of the Ph.D. Not the knowledge gained along the way, but the opportunities to work on things that were new and hard. At one meeting with non-researchers I've explained I do not want to be working on problems unless someone else has examined it and failed to find a resolution. And at this time, I can say I have this. Will this continue? As a non-tenure track academic I have a good place working on difficult applied problems, where there are both technical and social issues that need to be solved (as I've commented to one doctor, if the social issue is what is preventing the situation from being resolved, it is an issue that needs to be solved.) Is there a place long term for this? One of the criticism of academia is that it focuses on problems that are theoretically hard rather then hard in practice, even when the reason it is hard in practice is because of the lack of development in theory. In Operations Research, there is pride in working on hard problems, but the definition of hard is based on the technical difficulty of the math, while I tend to use the definition that smart and talented people have tried and failed as my benchmark. Whether there is a place for that remains to be seen.

Why I ____

I remember an article and conversations some time ago asking the question which is harder: Marriage or Motherhood? Replacing 'Motherhood' with 'Parenting', I think both of us have the conclusion that given how easy Marriage has been, we are going to come on the 'Parenting is harder' side of the argument. Even though we are not among those people who knew each other for many years, joining lives was not a big adjustment, partly because our lives were (and are) in the midst of ongoing changes so it was more of merging of two moving highways then big changes. And we both have well exercised sharp elbows. At least neither of us ever picked up the habit of hiding sharp elbows until the worst possible time. (or hiding them at all)

People who rhapsodize over marriage or parenting have tended to make both sound very unattractive. Both criticize those who have not yet joined them as selfish (I sometimes wonder if my friends who criticize their unmarried peers as selfish but do not have kids hear the criticism that those who are married without kids are being selfish.) Both describe the life post-marriage/parenthood as a dying of self and life and the parts of life that are interesting. And the wonderful alternative presented is often something unappetizing. A life without flavor. We've been glad that this has not come to pass in marriage, but parenting looks a little more problematic. To use vocabulary one mother used, working with the things that come in marriage involved skills and attitudes that were already part of our operating systems. We're not sure that Parenting is. One person who was ready to provide wisdom asked us the question "Are you ready? Most people are not sure they know how to raise a child before their first" Our answer was "Of course not! We're pretty sure that after our first child we still won't know how to raise a child."

The other problematic side is the reality that some aspects of our lives will fall away or change markedly. We are fortunate that we have many examples of people who did not disappear off the face of the earth when they had children, and so we think there is hope.

But, as I tell my graduate students and the post-docs I work with, the reason I write such detailed messages is because I have no memory. And while I still have a nice record of photographs, I do not live life through a viewfinder (and I never will). So to remember, I have to write it down. And so I won't loose it, I am putting my faith in Google (and maybe a printout) as a place of record. So begins a series of notes on the various aspects of my life now. And in a few years, I may look back on it fondly (or not) as we bring a child into this world and all that is before us.