Matins

¶ Deepwater Horizon notes: rig worker Tyrone Benton tells BBC News that one of the “pods” on the blowout preventer was known to be defective days before the disaster.

He said he did not know whether the leaking pod was turned back on before the disaster or not.

He said to repair the control pod would have meant temporarily stopping drilling work on the rig at at time when it was costing BP $500,000 (£337,000) a day to operate the Deepwater Horizon.

This is important because — as it only just occurred to us (you get what you pay for) — the relief wells currently being drilled will also have to be equipped with blowout preventers. Profit motives must have no place in evaluating their safety! We can see no reason why some sort of American military team should not be drafted to oversee the completion of the first relief well, which is still weeks away.  

Don’t miss “Boom,” Sean Flynn’s riveting countdown-to-disaster piece in GQ.

¶ Quaint old Japan: “For a variety of reasons, cultural as well as economic, the digital revolution has yet to wreak the same havoc on the news media here that it has in the United States and most other advanced countries.” Martin Fackler writes about JanJan, an alternative news site shuttered in May for lack of revenues. (NYT)

Mr. Motoki and others say that another reason for Japan’s resistance to alternative sites is the relative absence of social and political divisions. In politically polarized South Korea, OhmyNews thrived by appealing to young, liberal readers.

“It is only when the society sees itself as having conflicting interests that it will seek out new viewpoints and information,” said Toshinao Sasaki, the author of about two dozen books on the Internet in Japan.

Media experts say Japan has yet to see such critical questioning of its establishment press. They say most Japanese remain at least passively accepting of the nation’s big newspapers and television networks.

While We’re Away

¶ Which type of mobile browser are you?

A. “Repetitive now”
B. “Bored now”
C. “Urgent now”

The “repetitive now” user is someone checking for the same piece of information over and over again, like checking the same stock quotes or weather. Google uses cookies to help cater to mobile users who check and recheck the same data points.

The “bored now” are users who have time on their hands. People on trains or waiting in airports or sitting in cafes. Mobile users in this behavior group look a lot more like casual Web surfers, but mobile phones don’t offer the robust user input of a desktop, so the applications have to be tailored.

The “urgent now” is a request to find something specific fast, like the location of a bakery or directions to the airport. Since a lot of these questions are location-aware, Google tries to build location into the mobile versions of these queries.

That’s Stephen Wellman reporting on a Google presentation in April; Jason Kottke picked it up this weekend, adding his thought that this tripartion applies to the Web generally. Needless to say, we’re hoping that tablets will encourage a fourth class: “Reflective now.” (Information Week; via  kottke.org)

¶ President Obama’s heartbreaking medical secret: he suffers from antidrenalin, which leaves him “hopelessly crippled by clear, logical thinking at all times.” (The Bygone Bureau)

“My antidrenaline disorder has been tough for both me and my family,” he said at the press conference. “As a husband and father, it is something I am constantly dealing with. And that makes me frustrated.”

“No it doesn’t,” he added….

“Going into my first term as president, I knew that my antidrenaline disorder would be an obstacle,” the President concedes. “So to balance out my thoughtful, composed temperament, I brought on Rahm Emanuel.”

Kevin Nguyen’s spoof raises a question: why is it that the only alternative to Spock-like rationality that we can imagine is rage? Have the good ole’ disenfranchised white boys really hijacked the Zeitgeist? Can’t we think of some other passions? How about hope?

¶ Will memorizing poetry make a comeback in elementary schools? It’s hard to know where teachers bound to leave no children behind will find the time for recitations of whatever has replaced “Elegy in a Country Churchyard” as a classroom staple. But we’ll allow ourselves a heartening moment. (Associated Press; via  Arts Journal)

Though slow, or close reading, always has been emphasized at the college-level in literary criticism and other areas, it’s also popping up in elementary schools, Miedema said.

Mary Ellen Webb, a third-grade teacher at Mast Way Elementary School in Durham, N.H., has her students memorize poems upward of 40 lines long and then perform them for their peers and parents. She does it more for the sense of pride her students feel but said the technique does transfer to other kinds of reading — the children remember how re-reading and memorizing their poems helped them understand tricky text.

“Memorization is one of those lost things, it hasn’t been the ‘in’ thing for a while,” she said. “There’s a big focus on fluency. Some people think because you can read quickly … that’s a judge of what a great reader they are. I think fluency is important, but I think we can err too much on that side.”

¶ Deanna Fei’s ninetysomething grandmother haunted the writing of her first novel, A Thread of Sky, but that wasn’t the worst of it. (The Millions) 

Then, a few days before my book launch, my grandmother flew into town. She hadn’t said that she was coming for my book launch, only that she would be present at it. I took this to mean that the purpose of her visit was not support, but supervision.

When we spoke on the phone, she sounded benevolent, like a prison guard offering a cigarette on the eve of an execution. She said that she was eager to see me and that the book cover was pretty.

“I won’t be able to read your book. The English is too difficult,” she said. “So tell me the conclusion.”

“What do you mean?”

“What did you conclude? What is the outcome?”

I feigned a sudden inability to speak Chinese and got off the phone.

In a panic, I scanned the excerpt I’d selected for my first reading. It described ragged beggars and worldly entrepreneurs and earnest students, a sandstorm and drifting catkins and starless nights, desperate peasants and gleeful swindlers, the click-clacking of mahjong tiles in a teahouse and the serpentine stretch of the Great Wall, elderly calligraphists in Tiantan Park and young prostitutes in a karaoke club.

I imagined my grandmother jumping up in the middle of my reading with a pointed finger to denounce me: “You wrote bad things about China!”

Have a Look

¶ Weird Beards. (Dave Mead; via  MetaFilter)

¶ Neat Napkins. (Oddee)

¶ Something that did not happen to us yesterday. (FAIL)

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Monday, June 21st, 2010 at 10:00 am.