Googolplexic

I recently scored a regular writing gig for the premier brand of a major Minnesota radio empire. The ideal nature of my contribution is the requirement that I do field work for future broadcast locations, all from the comfort of my home office. That is, I create capsule geographies of distant sites. I am a zealous advocate of all things geographic, from compass, sextant, and GPS to globe and atlas. I can happily pore for hours over demographic minutiae, especially if it's attached to a map. So to glean and express the nature of a place is right up my fully explored alley.

Two exceedingly powerful tools provided free of charge by Google are making my research much easier. The first is Google Earth, probably the coolest thing readily available on the internet to someone with my peculiar obsession with images. Google recently acquired the massive Keyhole Graphics database of satellite images (previously available only by subscription) and made basic accessibility available for free--you can upgrade via subscription to finer options. But the basic version alone is an amazing tool, allowing you to get a fairly close bird's eye view of any place on the earth's surface, including highly detailed shots of the world's major cities. For instance, you can discern a person standing in Manhattan's Washington Square Park from their shadow. And you can select layers of information to add: if there's an ATM in Ulan Bator, you can feature it; in fact, you can add info yourself via something akin to a bulletin board. You can tilt the view and build in topography, including the proportions of buildings. I just completed some research of a venue in Miami, and this capability helped me to understand the context of the site. Absolutely no substitute for being there, but a tremendous aid to navigating the imagination.

Last night, as I was seeking information about bilingualism and Miami's latest census, I noticed a new search option at the bottom of the Google results page: Try searching for [insert topic here] on Google Book Search. I had heard rumblings about this project and some attendant controversy, but I had no idea the concept was reality. The basic idea is Google and a host of libraries (Stanford, Harvard, Oxford and the University of Michigan) are scanning every book they can get their hands on and making the text susceptible to the unfailing eye of the search engine. The researcher can then view sample pages to see if the content fits, and purchase the book or find a library copy via a nearby link. This is certainly more efficient than delving into a card catalog, marching off to find the book, and browsing accordingly. And for my purposes, the viewable text gave me the information I wanted. The spiraling depths of this pool of knowledge are unfathomable in the truest sense, but suddenly much less forbidding because of this tool.

The Authors Guild has decided to sue Google, alleging massive copyright infringement at the expense of the rights of individual writers. Google counters that it is engaging in what is called "fair use" under copyright doctrine. One cannot cut and paste the displayed text, attempts to print default to an informational page about the book, random pages are immune to display, and individual authors can request that their works be removed from the database. Google sells advertising on each page, thus this venture is far from a grand philanthropic gesture. Personally, on the day my name first rides the spine of a tangible volume, I will freely embrace the promotional potential of this search capability.

This dispute provides an excellent lesson in the complexities of internet law, and perhaps the best example yet of the medium's educational potency. Maybe an ASCAP-like arrangement will resolve the dispute, for I'll be the last person to deny a writer's entitlement to a few meager shekels. But shouldn't the aggrieved author focus on this question: how does this display of my work hurt me? Could it somehow hinder sales?? I don't think so. And one can't deny the revolutionary nature of this development; how a musty backshelf text on sociology can again find the light of day, if only digitally. Suddenly, I am well-equipped with anecdotes and figures about the post-Cuban-revolution transformation of Miami's Little Havana neighborhood.

Armistice Day

I sometimes go to war with squirrels. Not that it's something I'm proud of, but this conflict necessarily arises when you own an old house with flimsy soffets. I believe I finally cured the problem this summer after several weeks of high-ladder carpentry. As I replaced the final lengths of fascia, I kept an ever-baited live trap on the roof to lure the last defiant interloper from its insulated den in the attic rafters. What you do after the squirrel has entered its galvanized slammer is your business: I did the responsible thing by relocating my captives to a suitable suburban apartment and getting them all jobs at the Bloomington Wal-Mart.

I assumed that the squirrels in our south Minneapolis neighborhood were eastern grey squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis). But upon close inspection of their snouts and pelage, I learned that we were beset by fox squirrels (Sciurus niger). One clear behavioral difference is the way they build their nests: fox squirrels gather twigs and leaves into a crotch near the trunk of the tree; greys prefer nesting out on a limb. It's tough to distinguish on this basis when they've become squatters, however. Fox squirrels tend to be bigger (up to 3 pounds!) and longer and have reddish-orange to pale yellow bellies, while grey squirrels have mostly white bellies. Grey squirrels tend to favor areas with denser forests--parks rather than neighborhoods.

There is always a quiet period after the armistice, and then one day you notice a bold new rodent exploring your backyard. Our redoubt now theoretically impregnable, I don't see any need to breach the peace. Sure, they occasionally knock the feeder down, and they've managed to make our jack o'lantern even more horrid. But they are thorougly adapted to the urban forest, and as long as they aren't hitching a ride on my hard-earned utilities expenditures, they can have the run of the place. At least until we get a dog.

Putting the Crone Back in Cronyism

One must resist the ad hominem attack when criticizing the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's token conservative columnist Katherine Kersten. Both The Rake and City Pages have taken the leathery bait, but I resist. I will call her neither harpy nor hag. I would never suggest that her hair looks like a 3M byproduct nor that she appears to survive on a diet of tacks (it's hard to tell now anyway, as the Strib keeps updating her picture and making it smaller). I will not summon images of the undead and bloodletting and midnight trysts with the Beast. I will not do these things because that would give her too much satisfaction. But I will state that her dogmatic, humorless exercises are consistently diametrically opposed to my reality.

Today's column takes the cake, and I hope for her sake it has a tasty file in it. She dismisses the recent student anti-war protest, trotting out the numbnuts conservative lie that resistance to the war in this country is being orchestrated by Stalin from beyond the grave, then suggesting that these kids are only seeking a little spotlight. You know: commie tools with MTV savvy. So I tapped her a little message:

Dear Mrs. Kersten:

What a dreadful fallacy you propose in today's column. Equating legitimate protest of this country's abysmal foreign policy with communism is about as relevant as tailfins and "Leave it to Beaver" reruns.

Your column is so transparently informed by stale conservative talking points that I am amazed the Strib continues to allow you to haunt its mediocre pages with your crypto-plagiarism. Here's a column suggestion: Eric Rudolph, abortion opponent and terrorist, is hailed by white racists and neo-nazis as a hero; ergo, teenage pro-life advocates should read Mein Kampf before going back to mass and contemplate how their message would have played outside Dachau in 1939. Does that make sense? I didn't think so.

I suppose you'll get your comeuppance for your evil machinations at St. Peter's gate, malfeasor. I am a patriot and defender of free speech, but I am offended that your writings appear anywhere more prominent than a basement bathroom wall.

I'll grant her the last word, given her valiant response: "Clearly, we disagree. But thanks for taking the time to write."

One Flu Over the Cuckoo's Nest

The president's recent announcement at the National Institutes of Health of a multibillion dollar government investment to insulate us against the eventual bird flu pandemic highlights an interesting paradox for his presidency. How does an opponent of evolutionary theory (assuming, somewhat implausibly, that W has ever thought about the issue beyond its political dimensions) ignore the implications of such a rapidly adaptive pestilence? If Bigfoot doesn't exist, how do I keep him from raiding my garden?

Skeptics of evolutionary theory often attack the notion of the large shifts necessary for a species' progression from one stage to the next. For instance, advocates for intelligent design state that "evolutionary theory claims that random mutations can build very complicated biological structures over time. Yet, mutations are almost always harmful to the organism." But, according to the CDC, that's basically how the most harmful viruses become dangerous. (Viruses are typically not considered to be organisms.) Influenza viruses can change in two different ways: antigenic drift and antigenic shift. The leisurely pace of the former allows public health wizards to produce an effective vaccine ahead of each winter's contagion. The latter, which is much less common, is defined as an abrupt, major change in the influenza virus, resulting in a new virulent strain that can infect a much broader variety of humans. Pandemics sometimes occur in the wake of an antigenic shift because most people have little or no protection against the new virus, and it romps unimpeded through the public respiratory system.

Intelligent design theory is on its best footing when it attacks the ability of science to explain the origins of life on earth or of the universe itself. Of course, we are a young species, with only a few thousand years of technological advancement and a few hundred billion hours of egghead methodology yet devoted to these immense mysteries. Take my musings with a grain of NaCl, because I'm neither biologist nor theologian. And I'll readily admit that when I peer into the depths of night and try to comprehend the edges of eternity I often take refuge in the divine. Sure, theories produced via the scientific method sometimes become obsolete (perhaps this is proof enough that evolution works!). But when I get my flu shot or use a telephone or start my car, I'm thankful that I stand on the shoulders of giants wearing pocket protectors.