Wednesday Video: The Power of Thought. Really.

This video from Nature.com has been making the Internet rounds for the last week or so. “Impressive” is an understatement.

The star is Cathy Hutchinson, a lady who has had quadriplegia for 15 years and cannot speak, either. We see how new technology makes it possible for her to control a robotic arm with her thoughts to pick up a cup of coffee and drink from it. Look at the delight on her face! Puts many things into perspective.

Original post: Nature.com – Paralysis. Original article:  Reach and grasp by people with tetraplegia using a neurally controlled robotic arm.

Wednesday Video: Beauty and Ideas

A Bit of Fry and Laurie.

Wednesday Video: Quintessential Los Angeles

I lived in Los Angeles for many, many years. This should be the municipal anthem.

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You’re welcome.

The Road – latest addition to my Books in Brief page

I recently finished listening to The Road by Cormac McCarthy.  McCarthy won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for this book in 2007. The audio book was published in 2006 by Recorded Books, and in 2009 a film was made, starring Viggo Mortensen as “the man” and Kodi Smit-McPhee as “the boy”.

Where do I begin?

A compelling story that drew me in from the beginning. I never did figure out what happened to leave the earth scorched and devastated and turn the USA into a barren wilderness where people live alone or in tiny groups, many preying on one another to survive. It didn’t matter. A few dream sequences notwithstanding, the book is an extended present moment. It drew me into what is, not what was or will be.

This is not an easy book, not a “good” book; it is not at all pleasant to read. I think it is a great book, a book destined to become a classic. The prose echos the rhythm of the walking, walking, walking, punctuated by moments of extreme emotion: terror, tenderness, rage, delight. The descriptions are concrete and the dialogue terse, reflecting the cold, spare post-apocalyptic landscape through which the man and the boy are walking.

What is the story about? On one level it’s about survival, the kind of survival that means looking for food and shelter and safety from predators. It’s about a powerful relationship between father and son, built on love expressed in deeds. It’s about good guys and bad guys and carrying the fire. And, banal as it may sound, it’s about undying hope.

The Road is an incredible book, beyond my abilities to describe. Read it.

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My thoughts about other books I’ve been reading or listening to are on my Books in Brief page. 

Wednesday Video: Old and New and Blue

The magnificent Bonnie Raitt and the unforgettable John Lee Hooker - “In the Mood”

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Bonnie Raitt again, in the very first song I heard from her, the one that made me a lifelong fan, and Sippie Wallace, a truly great singer-songwriter, who wrote the song – “Women Be Wise”.

Meatless meals for the non-vegetarian 2

I made Moroccan carrot salad the other day – I’d forgotten how good that is! I learned the dish from the Polish-American wife of a Turkish-Israeli and because I’m an inveterate improviser when I cook, I’m sure I’ve changed the recipe by now, but I don’t actually remember. All that’s to say that this dish might more accurately be called something like

Moroccan-style carrot salad

After washing and scraping the carrots, cut them into rounds. Heat a little olive oil in a pan and cook the carrots to the desired degree of tenderness. Transfer the mixture to a heat-proof bowl.

Toss with lemon juice, then season with crushed red pepper (or hot paprika), sweet paprika, cumin, cinnamon and coriander. Use the spices in proportions of your choosing, but do use all of them. (If you are not used to Middle Eastern food, the combination might seem strange; just give it a try!) Let the salad marinate for a while. Before serving, add chopped, flat-leafed parsley and toss again.

That’s it. Quick and easy to prepare and the result is consistently deliciously. I serve it at room temperature as a salad or warmer as a side dish.

My Life in Technology

I remember…

• All telephones being big and black and having dials
• Televisions housed in beautiful wooden cabinets as a matter of course. They were black and white, of course.
• The transistor radio section at the department store. Six transistor radios were groovy.
• Feltboards in school.
• Slide rules. (Listed under “Obsolete Skills” on my CV.)
• Going on a field trip with my class to see a computer at the university. It took up a whole room, which we weren’t allowed to enter – only look in through an observation window.
• The first personal computers.
• Splicing tape for reel-to-reel tape recorders. I was brilliant at it.
• The beginning of direct dialing for long distance calls.
• Key punch cards for programming those big computers.
• Telex machines with punched tape. Another of my obsolete skills: telex operator.
• The beginning of the Internet.
• Sending my first fax and making a photocopy so I’d have one for the files. (What? It doesn’t disintegrate on this end, speed through the wire and reintegrate over there?) Also their fax had to be compatible with your fax for it to work.

That was a random list. Thinking about those things led me to wander around the interwebs until I found the 20th Century Timeline at About.com Inventors. Here is what I learned.

The year I was born is notable for the invention of tetracycline and the optic fiber. The next year, the first computer hard disk was used. More importantly, the hovercraft was invented. (I wonder how quickly it filled up with eels.) The year before my birth, however, saw at least four inventions that changed the face of world culture: birth control pills, Teflon cookware, the solar cell, and… the founding of McDonalds. Barbie dolls are several years younger than me. Sigh.

Valium was invented while I was in elementary school. Rumors of a causal relationship are exaggerated at best. Handheld calculators, the artificial heart and bar-code scanners were invented while I was in junior high.

I quit reading at about that point. Sitting at my desk I see a cordless telephone, a mobile “smartphone”, and  a desktop computer that is only about four centimeters thick and is far, far more powerful than the ones that put John Glenn into orbit around the earth on  February 20, 1962. Heck, the smartphone is, too. I’m wearing a cordless USB headset and looking at the scanner-fax-printer, also cordless, for my home network. And so on.

This is the paragraph where I should make a wry comment, but I can’t think of one. Technology changes; people don’t. What do you remember from childhood that is very different today?