Whenever the subject of suicide or attempted suicide comes up in conversation I can be relied upon to describe a piece of research on suicide notes that was published some years ago (even though I’ve tried, I can’t find the exact reference any more).
What the researcher had done was collect a large selection of suicide notes written by two classes of people: those who had successfully ended their own life and those who had failed for one reason or another to kill themselves (attempted suicides).
He then submitted these two sets of notes to a computer analysis in the hope that this might throw up some interesting differences in style or subject matter.
As I remember he found clear evidence that the notes written by the ‘attempted suicides’, by people who had not taken quite enough pills, or not sealed the door sufficiently well to prevent noxious gases or fumes escaping, were heavily philosophical in tone. The writers spoke at length of life no longer being worth living, of the meaningless of existence, of the impossibility of optimism.
These were in stark contrast to the suicide notes written by those who had succeeded in killing themselves. These notes tended to be much shorter and much more practical than those provided by attempted suicides. One for example simply said “You’ll find the car keys on top of the sideboard and the will in the top desk drawer.”
There are thousands of other research papers on the subject of suicide. Indeed, it could be argued that sociology first asserted itself as a distinctive subject back in 1897 when Emile Durkheim first tried to formulate a structural and cultural account of its incidence which did not rely upon any psychological understanding of individual desires and motives.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
The Sociology of Suicide Notes
From the newsletter that accompanies BBC4 Radio's Thinking Allowed program, hosted by the ebullient Laurie Taylor:
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
The Hands of an Artist
The Illustration Art blog has two wonderful posts on the great Mort Drucker. This one focuses on how Drucker drew hands, and this one focuses on how he drew and differentiated hair. Tiny tiny things that you don't notice very much as a casual reader of Mad parodies, but take them away, and the experience lessens.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Artists in Love
David Apatoff has a lovely, heartbreaking post on his Illustration Art blog about a Polish student imprisoned by the Nazis in Auschwitz, how he fell in love with a fellow prisoner, and what became of them. I don't know where he got the story, but thank the gods that the story still exists.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
"My Documents" set as read-only???
I hope I've just solved a nasty nasty problem that had me furious at my computer, myself, my life, and my prospects.
I'm working on a new hard drive with a fresh install of Windows XP and have been slowly rebuilding my apps and directories since January.
Recently, while working on a critical document for class, and after several hours of labor, Word absolutely refused to save the file to my hard drive. Had I been thinking, I might have tried saving the file to my second drive or my external drive. But you know how it is. Late at night, tired, and panic tends to cut out my higher self-management skills. It seemed as if the hard drive had suddenly become read-only but that was impossible. It seemed to be working fine otherwise. And it only seemed to happen after I'd been working on a document for about 20 minutes or so. Word otherwise behaved typically (I always avoid the use of the word "normal" with Word.)
Afterward, I ran the XP disk doctor and defrag, and even reinstalled Office 2000. I noticed that Word acted snappier than before. Surely, Shirley, my problems were o'er.
But just a few minutes ago, this infuriating behavior happened again. I printed out the document this time, so I could at least rebuild the document later. And then, because Google is your friend, I searched on "microsoft word not saving my documents!".
Scanning the results led me to this IBM page from 2004 where we discover that
I'm working on a new hard drive with a fresh install of Windows XP and have been slowly rebuilding my apps and directories since January.
Recently, while working on a critical document for class, and after several hours of labor, Word absolutely refused to save the file to my hard drive. Had I been thinking, I might have tried saving the file to my second drive or my external drive. But you know how it is. Late at night, tired, and panic tends to cut out my higher self-management skills. It seemed as if the hard drive had suddenly become read-only but that was impossible. It seemed to be working fine otherwise. And it only seemed to happen after I'd been working on a document for about 20 minutes or so. Word otherwise behaved typically (I always avoid the use of the word "normal" with Word.)
Afterward, I ran the XP disk doctor and defrag, and even reinstalled Office 2000. I noticed that Word acted snappier than before. Surely, Shirley, my problems were o'er.
But just a few minutes ago, this infuriating behavior happened again. I printed out the document this time, so I could at least rebuild the document later. And then, because Google is your friend, I searched on "microsoft word not saving my documents!".
Scanning the results led me to this IBM page from 2004 where we discover that
In Windows XP, Microsoft sets the My Documents folder as read-only...Windows XP no longer cares about the "read" state of directories, only of files. As far as the XP operating system is concerned, security permissions replaced the "read-only" folder attribute.WTF?? I checked the properties for My Documents, and sure enough, its read-only attribute was set. I turned it off for My Documents and its subdirectories. So I'm now hoping against hope that I've seen the last of this problem.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Godamighty, but can Winterson write!
The British novelist Jeanette Winterson has maintained a web presence for many years. (She even went to court to protect other writers' privileges when some wanker registered jeanettewinterson.com and refused to release it to her. She won her suit and, of course, no one thanked her for her efforts.)
Every month, she posts her latest journalism to the site, a general update column, and a poem she's read that demands to be shared.
She's one of Britain's great culture warriors and, my god, does her passion for art and culture and her disappointment and hatred of the politicians and vulgarians (on both sides of the pond) come through clearly in this month's selection of writings.
Jeanette Winterson - Journalism - The Times : Books - The Fight For Culture
"It is important to say this, because we are often fed the line that poetry and story-telling are contrived or artificial, and certainly that they are entertainment or luxury goods – in any case, stuff we don’t need. We need playstations and ready-meals of course, and cheap flights to places we don’t want to go, and two cars per family, but art? Now that’s really self-indulgent."
Jeanette Winterson - Journalism - The Times : Books - The British Library
"I can (just) hear the arguments that not everyone wants opera or experimental theatre, (myself, I do not want war, but I still have to pay for it), but I cannot accept any arguments that jeopardise a prime cultural resource that is in trust for the nation and must be passed on to future generations."
Jeanette Winterson - Column - March
"What any creative person needs – all they need – is not praise or blame, but an active and grown-up engagement with the process of making things. That process is necessarily experimental, either in part or in the whole, and sometimes things work well, and sometimes less well. Sometimes things work for a big audience, sometimes only for a few. That’s how it is, and I wish, really wish, that we had a mature culture, interested in creativity, that could understand that. "
Every month, she posts her latest journalism to the site, a general update column, and a poem she's read that demands to be shared.
She's one of Britain's great culture warriors and, my god, does her passion for art and culture and her disappointment and hatred of the politicians and vulgarians (on both sides of the pond) come through clearly in this month's selection of writings.
Jeanette Winterson - Journalism - The Times : Books - The Fight For Culture
"It is important to say this, because we are often fed the line that poetry and story-telling are contrived or artificial, and certainly that they are entertainment or luxury goods – in any case, stuff we don’t need. We need playstations and ready-meals of course, and cheap flights to places we don’t want to go, and two cars per family, but art? Now that’s really self-indulgent."
Jeanette Winterson - Journalism - The Times : Books - The British Library
"I can (just) hear the arguments that not everyone wants opera or experimental theatre, (myself, I do not want war, but I still have to pay for it), but I cannot accept any arguments that jeopardise a prime cultural resource that is in trust for the nation and must be passed on to future generations."
Jeanette Winterson - Column - March
"What any creative person needs – all they need – is not praise or blame, but an active and grown-up engagement with the process of making things. That process is necessarily experimental, either in part or in the whole, and sometimes things work well, and sometimes less well. Sometimes things work for a big audience, sometimes only for a few. That’s how it is, and I wish, really wish, that we had a mature culture, interested in creativity, that could understand that. "
Don't Fear The Creeper
Datajunkie runs a great series of scans on Steve Ditko's "Beware the Creeper!" series that he created for DC. I actually remember having the first issue but never knew others followed.
What I like about this post is the casual examination of Ditko's storytelling style over the series and how it changed when he returned to the character years later. Also, that it's liberally illustrated with scans from the issues themselves.
What I like about this post is the casual examination of Ditko's storytelling style over the series and how it changed when he returned to the character years later. Also, that it's liberally illustrated with scans from the issues themselves.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
I Can See Clearly Now...Except When I Can't
Quixotic is a blog journal I stumbled across recently and it's morbidly fascinating (and by "morbid," I mean fascinated by disease. From what I gather in my skim-reads, the blogger is a woman suffering from cancer for many years, who has relocated to Mexico to undergo more aggressive (and what would be non-legal in the US) treatments.
Her post on a tumor that is causing periods of blindness shows, I think, what I find wonderful about her blog: a sense of humor that comes through in her honest voice, pragmatism, and, on her good days, philosophy. I hope she keeps writing about it through it all.
Her post on a tumor that is causing periods of blindness shows, I think, what I find wonderful about her blog: a sense of humor that comes through in her honest voice, pragmatism, and, on her good days, philosophy. I hope she keeps writing about it through it all.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Organizing my books
We're studying classification in my Organization of Information class. One of my classmates shared a link to a posting about arranging and classifying your personal library by the color of the book's spine. The link was from the Design Observer blog (though the site has been unavailable to me recently). This spurred a lot of discussion on the mail list about our own personal methods for arranging our book collections at home. Here's my typical over-the-top response.
I remember reading a designo tract years ago suggesting you group your books by color, by size, or by the publisher's insignia, the latter of which I found most intriguing for some reason. Imagine all the O'Reilly and Penguins and Modern Library books clumped together.
Another way to arrange your personal set of books would be by autobiographical timeline--when did you acquire them? What associations and nostalgia would they bubble up in you? (I think I got that idea from "High Fidelity.")
I have 3 vertical bookshelves in my home office, 2 out in the room, 1 in a closet with the record collection. After a lifetime of grouping books by author or genre, I went a few years ago with a totally randomized approach. I just threw them on the shelves in no order, two-deep. Periodically, when I got too familiar with what was on the top 2 shelves, I'd switch them out with books from the lower shelves. I think I did this because I enjoyed being surprised by finding a book I'd forgotten or enjoying the juxtaposition of 19th-century diarists shelved next to "The Mole People." It broke down the categories in my own head so that I had to keep seeing the books anew.
But it did become too much work to find the book I was looking for and I often found myself tearing the shelves apart when hunting for a specific title. I loved browsing my shelves but hated trying to find something on them.
Inspired by Marc Brodsky, I'm purging my books so that I can only keep what I have shelf space for. (Marc purged his entire collection down to what would fit on a 2-foot shelf, but I'm not that strong.) It's an arbitrary limit, but aren't they all? It's a practical limit anyway.
Lord Peter Wimsey says in one of his stories that one's library is like a carapace, a shell we carry with us that reveals signs of our travels, interests, and philosophies over the years. I'm finding lots of categories of books that I don't need or have time for or have lost interest in, which seems kind of a shame, in a way. As a result, most of my collection is sitting in piles on the floor of my office.
As I re-shelve, the closet bookcase becomes the main Holder of The Books. I'm putting them back in rough genre/subject matter/author clumps: journals/diaries/letters, reference, essays, computer, etc. Art books tend to go on the bottom shelf, which has the most headroom, though all my Delacroix books (his journal and letters and various monographs) sit together in one place, as Hinar described. (Reminds me of how The Book Shop on Franklin Street does it; all of the biographical or other material on a writer is shelved with that writer's novels and stories, so you don't have to go all over the store to find the books dealing with an author.)
One bookshelf is devoted totally to my graphic novel collection, which are arranged by creator (all the Alan Moore stuff in one place, all the R. Crumb in one place). Anthologies are all grouped together. And then within those clumps, pretty much random. I'm not big on alphabetizing by author/title/date/etc. I know geographically about where a book should be, and if it's in that region, I'm happy. The remaining onesie-twosie books are non-clumpable, and therefore randomized. The top two shelves hold unread or unprocessed books/comics/magazines.
The 3rd bookshelf has a shelf dedicated to current schoolwork/papers/registration junk, with other shelves holding most of the fiction and poetry. I tend to group authors together, but not alphabetically. For poetry, I tend to group them on a timeline from ancient sources (Greek translations, through to India, China, Japan) to modern (Wright, Rexroth, Sexton). I never noticed that till I wrote that sentence and I have no idea why I do it.
The top shelf holds the books I'm currently reading (or was reading before school threw itself bodily into my path). When I put a book I'm reading back on the shelf, I place it on the far left. Books I've not read recently migrate to the right, over time. So when I have time to read something, I'll reach for the leftmost book first; I don't have to stop and wonder where that book I was just reading went to. (When I stop reading a book, I either stop at the end of a chapter or stop so that I start reading again on the first full paragraph of the left page.)
It would be a good idea to leave about 10-20% room on a shelf for more books, but that ain't gonna happen.
Aside: My personal book purge makes me wonder -- wouldn't it be interesting to junk a public library's classification system every 75 years or so, and start over again with a new system based on the learnings and experience gained from using the old system(s)?
Other links of interest:
Good Questions: How To Arrange My Bookshelves?
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ny/good-questions/good-questions-how-to-arrange-my-bookshelves-012749
bookshelf on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/santos/27538777/
Superpatron - Friends of the Library, for the net: Books arranged by colour
http://vielmetti.typepad.com/superpatron/2006/07/books_arranged_.html
Books arranged by colour on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/popsie/156057963/
Huddersfield Public Library Reading Area on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/organised/98972109/
Huddersfield Colour Coded on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/organised/98972115/in/photostream/
The library labeled their color-shelved books as the serendipity shelves.
I remember reading a designo tract years ago suggesting you group your books by color, by size, or by the publisher's insignia, the latter of which I found most intriguing for some reason. Imagine all the O'Reilly and Penguins and Modern Library books clumped together.
Another way to arrange your personal set of books would be by autobiographical timeline--when did you acquire them? What associations and nostalgia would they bubble up in you? (I think I got that idea from "High Fidelity.")
I have 3 vertical bookshelves in my home office, 2 out in the room, 1 in a closet with the record collection. After a lifetime of grouping books by author or genre, I went a few years ago with a totally randomized approach. I just threw them on the shelves in no order, two-deep. Periodically, when I got too familiar with what was on the top 2 shelves, I'd switch them out with books from the lower shelves. I think I did this because I enjoyed being surprised by finding a book I'd forgotten or enjoying the juxtaposition of 19th-century diarists shelved next to "The Mole People." It broke down the categories in my own head so that I had to keep seeing the books anew.
But it did become too much work to find the book I was looking for and I often found myself tearing the shelves apart when hunting for a specific title. I loved browsing my shelves but hated trying to find something on them.
Inspired by Marc Brodsky, I'm purging my books so that I can only keep what I have shelf space for. (Marc purged his entire collection down to what would fit on a 2-foot shelf, but I'm not that strong.) It's an arbitrary limit, but aren't they all? It's a practical limit anyway.
Lord Peter Wimsey says in one of his stories that one's library is like a carapace, a shell we carry with us that reveals signs of our travels, interests, and philosophies over the years. I'm finding lots of categories of books that I don't need or have time for or have lost interest in, which seems kind of a shame, in a way. As a result, most of my collection is sitting in piles on the floor of my office.
As I re-shelve, the closet bookcase becomes the main Holder of The Books. I'm putting them back in rough genre/subject matter/author clumps: journals/diaries/letters, reference, essays, computer, etc. Art books tend to go on the bottom shelf, which has the most headroom, though all my Delacroix books (his journal and letters and various monographs) sit together in one place, as Hinar described. (Reminds me of how The Book Shop on Franklin Street does it; all of the biographical or other material on a writer is shelved with that writer's novels and stories, so you don't have to go all over the store to find the books dealing with an author.)
One bookshelf is devoted totally to my graphic novel collection, which are arranged by creator (all the Alan Moore stuff in one place, all the R. Crumb in one place). Anthologies are all grouped together. And then within those clumps, pretty much random. I'm not big on alphabetizing by author/title/date/etc. I know geographically about where a book should be, and if it's in that region, I'm happy. The remaining onesie-twosie books are non-clumpable, and therefore randomized. The top two shelves hold unread or unprocessed books/comics/magazines.
The 3rd bookshelf has a shelf dedicated to current schoolwork/papers/registration junk, with other shelves holding most of the fiction and poetry. I tend to group authors together, but not alphabetically. For poetry, I tend to group them on a timeline from ancient sources (Greek translations, through to India, China, Japan) to modern (Wright, Rexroth, Sexton). I never noticed that till I wrote that sentence and I have no idea why I do it.
The top shelf holds the books I'm currently reading (or was reading before school threw itself bodily into my path). When I put a book I'm reading back on the shelf, I place it on the far left. Books I've not read recently migrate to the right, over time. So when I have time to read something, I'll reach for the leftmost book first; I don't have to stop and wonder where that book I was just reading went to. (When I stop reading a book, I either stop at the end of a chapter or stop so that I start reading again on the first full paragraph of the left page.)
It would be a good idea to leave about 10-20% room on a shelf for more books, but that ain't gonna happen.
Aside: My personal book purge makes me wonder -- wouldn't it be interesting to junk a public library's classification system every 75 years or so, and start over again with a new system based on the learnings and experience gained from using the old system(s)?
Other links of interest:
Good Questions: How To Arrange My Bookshelves?
http://www.apartmenttherapy
bookshelf on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
http://www.flickr.com/photos
Superpatron - Friends of the Library, for the net: Books arranged by colour
http://vielmetti.typepad.com
Books arranged by colour on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
http://www.flickr.com/photos
Huddersfield Public Library Reading Area on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
http://www.flickr.com/photos
Huddersfield Colour Coded on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
http://www.flickr.com/photos
The library labeled their color-shelved books as the serendipity shelves.
Saturday, March 03, 2007
Evaluating Virtual Machines for Personal Use | Altiris Juice
I've been thinking for awhile about installing a virtual machine product. I want to read this article from the Altiris site to see what they say about the different products.
Based on my reading, Msft's Virtual PC is the easiest to set up on a Windows machine, esp if I'll be installing Windows XP. VMWare is the most capable, but the most complicated. Altiris' own software virtualization product works amazingly well for virtualizing individual application installs, but I think it's more for developers who can handle the abstractions than Joe Computeruser. (My comments about Altiris' SVS program are on this thread at Donationcoders.com.)
Based on my reading, Msft's Virtual PC is the easiest to set up on a Windows machine, esp if I'll be installing Windows XP. VMWare is the most capable, but the most complicated. Altiris' own software virtualization product works amazingly well for virtualizing individual application installs, but I think it's more for developers who can handle the abstractions than Joe Computeruser. (My comments about Altiris' SVS program are on this thread at Donationcoders.com.)
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