The Lexicographer's Rules

There’s some yapping on the Internets about “cool” touch screens.

That cool factor is outweighed by history: touch screens failed as the primary interface for desktop computers and similar constant-use devices because of gorilla arm. This is the heavy, dragged-down feeling arms get when they are held forward or upward for extended periods of time. Short interactions with touch screens, such as those used in automatic teller machines, are not a problem. Nor are very small screens, like those on PDAs. Making the monitor angled backward in a more horizontal position, as shown in this video, can alleviate the problem somewhat.

Gorilla arm is also part of the reason why we have speed ratios on mice and trackpads, where the slightest movement of the hand moves the cursor a much larger distance across the computer screen. If it was a 1:1 ratio, repetitive stress injuries and the like would be far more prevalent.

Tip: you can ease the strain on your mouse hand by setting your mouse as fast as possible. For further tweaking, on OS X you used to be able to, and perhaps still can, install the Kensington MouseWorks software. Even when I haven’t had a Kensington pointer device, it let me set my mouse settings hyper-fast and hyper-sensitive. It takes a day or two to get used to, but after that you’ll need only to barely budge your finger to get the cursor to go exactly where you want it. Your tight tendons will eventually relax. 

I enjoy browsing book stores and sales in hopes of the random score for something readable—I’m not looking for valuable first editions. I’ve never been one to festishize books for their dollar value, just their informational, emotional, or intellectual value. The most money comes into it is when I calculate cost per idea. Something like the Norton Anthology of American Literature scores very well, especially when I can get it on the dollar shelves at the Strand, where I’ve found both the first and second volumes for exactly that price.

So you can imagine how depressing it is to me to read about people bringing bar code scanners to book sales to buy only those books with a high resale value. Dealers have to make a living, I guess, but they’re not buying books, they’re buying product. Widgets.

(Source Link)

Weatherdudes and weatherdolls across the eastern U.S. are smacking their smug little lips in satisfaction this morning at their accurate predictions of a big snow dump overnight. It’s only the second substantial snow we’ve had this winter; the other happened while I was out of town.

Incredibly, there was lightning and thunder with this storm. I woke to it and watched it for a while out the window—lightning reflected by this much powdered ice is luminescent and primeval.

This is what it looks like now in my back garden in Astoria, Queens, New York City. Click for a bigger picture. It’s hard to tell, but at 9 a.m., it’s still snowing.

“In the early 1990s, when the mites first struck hives in the United States, Utah’s etymologist announced that after a single infected colony had been destroyed, the state was free of the infestation.” (Source Link)

Banning plays like Grease and The Crucible in my home state of Missouri is one more incident in a series going back decades that make it difficult to tell people that yes, indeed, that’s where I was born and that’s where I’m from.

This case, like the others that have happened in Missouri, is shameful. In many of these incidents soul-blind and life-ignorant cells of squinty-eyed butter-eaters consider everyday evidence of gender or sexuality to be harmful. In others, teens and children have their rights withheld.

The cases run the gamut: banned books (lots of these), interference with consenting sexual relations between adults, banned video games, prejudice against homosexuals disguised as law, bans on skating and skateboarding, bans on supposedly sexual billboards, bans on certain clothing in schools.

If you think Harry S Truman is evidence that Missouri can be salvaged, just remember that the political machine that put Truman in power is exactly the same sort of sly old-boy machine that put Roy Blunt in Congress and his son Matt Blunt in the Missouri governor’s mansion.

Besides, Truman being a Missourian is far outweighed by both John Ashcroft and Rush Limbaugh also being from Missouri.