Song of the day: "Maybe this time" by John Kander and Fred Ebb

I saw Kristin Chenoweth perform this song on an episode of the new TV series Glee. It was originally written for the film version of the musical Cabaret. I suppose Liza Minelli's version didn't leave much of an impression on me. But Kristin's rendition is great!

From Cabaret (film)

Maybe this time, I'll be lucky
Maybe this time, he'll stay
Maybe this time
For the first time
Love won't hurry away

He will hold me fast
I'll be home at last
Not a loser anymore
Like the last time
And the time before

Everybody loves a winner
So nobody loved me;
'Lady Peaceful,' 'Lady Happy,'
That's what I long to be
All the odds are in my favor
Something's bound to begin
It's got to happen, happen sometime
Maybe this time I'll win

Ed Kashi and photojournalism

I went to an amazing talk by Ed Kashi, a well-known American photojournalist. He came to a) promote socialdocumentary.net and b) show some of his latest work.

The website socialdocumentary.net is designed to be a low-cost online exhibition for photography that emphasizes social problems around the global. Anyone can submit their photography. Kashi said that he was honored to have his work appear in prestigious publications like the National Geographic but it wasn't good enough for him. That's why he helped start the website.

Kashi also showed us some of his work. He uses a Canon 5D Mark II, which allows him to also record video. Kashi is well-known for being one of the first photographers to pioneer multi-media photojournalism. The first piece was about oil and poverty in Nigeria. Despite the millions of dollars being made by oil companies in Nigeria, the people there still have no running water or electricity. In the 1990s, Ken Saro-Wiwa led a non-violent protest against oil companies. He was found dead, hung. Now the Nigerians are arming themselves and trying to chase the oil companies away.

Kashi spoke of a terrifying experience when he was captured by the Nigerian military. An unspoken rule of photojournalism is that you don't photograph the Nigerian military. The boat guide Kashi hired lied and told him that the buildings he was photographing were not military. Then the military showed up and hauled him away. Fortunately, he had his cell phone with him, there was reception, and he managed to make one phone call back to the US. Since Americans (journalists, National Geographic, his wife) were aware of his situation, he was released within the week. Of course, he had no idea how long he would be detained. It could have been years. Kashi remarked that at least, in Nigeria, he didn't have to worry about suicide bombers. Nigerians only want your money. They don't trust outsiders, so even if you say that you are a photojournalist, they still want to be paid.

The second project Kashi showed was a piece on rapid modernization of India. The traditional energy sources are not enough to sustain growth in India and China. Yet, they have the right to first world conveniences like cars, refrigerators, air conditioning, etc. Kashi presented a short video clip of the Tata auto company taking over some land in rural India to build a car factory. The villagers claimed that their land was taken from them unfairly.

The third project Kashi showed us was about the dwindling Christian population in the Middle East. Even though most outsiders think that all Middle Easterners are Muslim, there used to be a large Christian population there. In fact, the Christians and Muslims lived in peace for a long time. Kashi told us that everywhere he went, the Christians said the same thing, "Every time you [outsiders] do something stupid like the infidel cartoon, the Muslims take it out on us." Now, most of the Christians are leaving the Middle East, leaving behind a very small, aging group.

I knew that photojournalism can be dangerous, but it was fascinating to hear it first-person. One of Kashi's most memorable photographs is a woman walking through her village, holding a colorful Shell (yes, the oil company!) umbrella. She's stepping over oil pipes that are running through her village. Kashi told us that even though the photograph looked peaceful, there were all sorts of things going on around him. People would yell at him "hey, white man, what are you doing?". After taking that particular photo, some people drove up in a car and told him to get in. Kashi had just been released from detention five days earlier and he went into a frenzy, screaming "No f***ing way!" Not all experiences are so intense. Kashi talked about trying to photograph a Christian family leaving the Middle East. It was a lot of work just to get a family to agree. Then he showed up at the house to find them packing. It was so "visually boring" and he didn't know what to do. Suddenly, one of the children crawled into a suitcase and curled up on the lid. Kashi snapped the photo, relieved. "It was like the photo gods smiled on me."

I was especially struck by one of Kashi's statements (paraphrased from my memory):

I'm so glad I grew up in America. People carry so much baggage. People all over the world are victimized by their history.

Nigerians hate white people for exploiting them for their oil. Koreans hate the Japanese for invading their country and raping their women during World War II. Then there's Palestine and Israel. It goes on and on. As much as we complain about America, there is something to be said for having a place where you can literally throw away your baggage.

Aside from his work, Kashi offered his views on the digital revolution. He said that the availability of information was a wonderful thing, but that compensation was a huge problem. He was having a hard time getting paid for his projects, and even self-financed them sometimes or had his wife to some of the video editing. Kashi said that we still need reporters and photographers to physically go gather information, interview people, or else a fundamental support for democracy will be lost. Something to think about.

Link of the day: The Pomodoro Technique

I can't remember where I found out about this technique (Lifehacker?), but the Pomodoro Technique seems like a very nice time management system. It was invented by Italian Francesco Cirillo, but his book on the system was only translated into English two years ago. From my speed reading of the text, the system has been tested with real subjects and shown to be effective. The main idea is to quantize time into 25-min chunks. During each chunk or "pomodoro", one focuses on a single task. The word pomodoro is Italian for tomato and comes from the fact that the first timer the author used was made to look like a tomato. The goal is to finish a certain number of pomodoros each day, say 8. I haven't tried the system, but the system seems to make time more manageable because you only have to keep track of 8 pomodoros instead of worrying about how much time you spent on each task, or losing sense of time and spending wrong amount time on a task (or worse wasting time on an unplanned activity). Cirillo claims that quantization changes our perception of time (which we normally think of as a continuum) and allows us to relax and focus on our work.

Dave Pritchard on physics education

I've always found the topic of teaching and learning fascinating. Yesterday, I went to a talk by Professor David Pritchard of MIT. He helped develop the Mastering Physics software that is used in many American universities today. Back in the early 2000s, it wasn't called Mastering Physics, rather it was Cyber Tutor and piloted in the MIT freshman physics classes. I took notes during Prof. Pritchard's talk.

• Students spend the most time and learn most from homework (education experts and parents agree on this point!). However, homework is the bottom priority for most professors.
  
• Cyber Tutor acts like an expert physics tutor. Prof. Pritchard showed statistical data that proves the software is as effective as a real-person tutor. If a student is completely lost on a problem, he or she can ask for a hint. If a student answers incorrectly, the software can provide feedback such as "check your units."
  
• A goal of software like Cyber Tutor is to teach students multiple representations of information and multiple approaches to solving problems. Experts know all of this, but they usually don't communicate this knowledge. Rather, they focus on the one fastest way to the answer.
  
• Cyber Tutor can track learning trajectories. Each action can be logged: FA = first attempt, SA = second attempt, NF = no feedback to wrong answer, F = feedback to specific error, H = hint, S = subtasks, FS = failed subtasks. An example trajectory would be H → FA → F → SA.
  
• The software is a treasure trove for data mining. In addition to assessing a student's skill, data can also be used to fix badly written problems.
  
• Prof. Pritchard posted his "cheaters never prosper" plot. I didn't understand any of the statistics terminology, but the graph proved that students who copy the most do the worst on the exams. The cheaters are detected with the following criteria -- 1) Response is under one minute, 2) Response is correct.
  
• Interestingly, copying had very little effect on conceptual learning. This is probably due to the fact that class attendance was required and the majority of class time was spent on conceptual learning. Of course, copying had a huge negative effect on analytical learning.
  
• In another example of how detailed data mining can get, Prof. Pritchard showed a plot of percentage of homework completed vs time before homework's due date. As one would expect, the copiers did very little work until close to the deadline.
  
• Men cheated more than women, and business majors cheated more than other majors. I didn't get the exact statistics unfortunately.
  
• Conclusion: It is clear that copying has a large negative effect on learning outcomes. Therefore, professors should discourage copying. This has in fact happened at MIT, partly through eliminating second semester pass/no record grading.
  
• The last part of the talk was called "what should we teach?" Unfortunately, I had to leave and go to another talk, so I didn't find out the answer.
  

Why the New York subway has no recycling bins

I was wondering why the New York subway had no recycling bins, so I wrote to the MTA and asked. This was their response.

Response (Melissa Glasgow) - 10/26/2009 01:34 PM
This is in response to your recent e-mail to MTA New York City Transit suggesting recycling bins in the subway system.

We appreciate your interest in improving mass transit. You may be interested to know that all subway refuse is recycled on a post-collection basis. This method of post-collection recycling achieves the aim of totally recycled refuse from the subway system at a moderate cost, and eliminates the need for recycling receptacles in stations. Nevertheless, your suggestion has been referred to supervision in our Department of Subways for review.

If you have any further suggestions, you may contact Customer Services at (718) 330-3322, from 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., daily, or write to Customer Services at 2 Broadway, Room A11.146, New York, NY 10004.

We take the concerns of our customers very seriously and thank you for having taken the time to contact us.

Pedro M. Mojica
Associate Transit Customer Service Specialist
Know before you go, use Trip Planner
www.tripplanner.mta.info

Japanese kanji vs Chinese characters

I was going through my receipts from Tokyo tonight. I found this mysterious receipt from 領収証書 which had a line item for 70円普通切手. I couldn't figure out what this 切手 was. It means "cut hand" in Chinese, but thanks to my new Besta CD-863 electronic dictionary with 13 languages, I eventually figured out that 切手 means postage stamp in Japanese!

Photography tip: Use an ExpoDisc to set white balance on your point-and-shoot camera

One of the ubiquitous hassles in digital photography is achieving the correct white balance. I bought an ExpoDisc originally to do quick white balancing for my hockey dSLR shots.

A few months later, I was getting sick and tired of crappy white balance on my point-and-shoot camera (a Canon SD870 IS Powershot). I tried a gray card but it didn't work at all. Then I decided to put the ExpoDisc over the camera lens and use that to set white balance, using the camera's custom white balance function. Lo and behold -- perfect white balance!

What I learned:

• You use the ExpoDisc to do white balancing for both dSLR and point-and-shoot cameras. All you need is the ability to set up a custom white balance profile in your particular point-and-shoot camera.
  
• Getting the white balance correct is especially crucial for point-and-shoots since most point-and-shoot cameras can only save photos in JPEG and not RAW. It is very difficult to adjust the white balance in a JPEG.
  
• Since the lens of the point-and-shoot camera is so small, you can use the smallest and cheapest ExpoDisc (52 mm filter size).
  
• Unless you have special needs, use the neutral ExpoDisc.
  
• The ExpoDisc is so small and light that you can bring it anywhere. Plus, it's much more durable than a gray card. Not quite as small as a gray card, but that's no big deal unless you're one of those people who likes to count grams.
  

Canon SD870 IS little-known features

• If you press "display" while in playback mode, you can see a histogram and "blinkies" for overblown highlights.
  
• There is a panning mode for the image stabilizer.
  
• There is a slow synchro flash mode.
  
• Holding the shutter button halfway and pressing the macro/landscape button locks autofocus (AFL).
  
• Holding the shutter button halfway and pressing the ISO button locks exposure (AEL).
  
• You can register the useless print button to a useful function like exposure compensation.
  
• It's possible to set custom white balance. I tried the Expodisc with the camera and it worked! You just have to hold the Expodisc over the lens, which is a bit awkward but not too bad.
  

I didn't realize it but many of the Canon dSLR features (e.g. histogram, AEL, AFL, custom white balance) are built into this little Powershot camera! I just didn't know about these advanced features until I started doing SLR photography.

Social sports

I was reading a New York Times article which mentioned a multiple-sport complex in Brooklyn called Aviator Sports. The Aviator Sports website had a link to dodgeball and I started searching for dodgeball which brought me to the New York Social Sports Club. They offer kickball, inner-tube water polo, broomball, and ultimate in addition to dodgeball. It sounds like an awesome concept. Playground sports and drinking/hanging-out afterwards. I wish there was something like that around where I live.

Link of the day: Yahoo search pad

This looks like a fantastic way to compile research and share it with others, especially for travel plans. To see what I mean, check out the demo video. Great job, Yahoo.