Publishers Weekly gives Dan Falk's new book a Starred Review:

Beginning with a 5000-year-old tomb in Drogheda, Ireland, illuminated only at the winter solstice, Dan Falk asks the question, "What is time?... the stuff that flows... or a dimension, like space?"

Falk explores the origins of calendar time, from primitive astronomical observatories to the precision clocks of today. Though the movement of the heavens provided the basis for years, months, days and even the seven-day week, it wasn't until the Catholic Church needed to date important events like Easter that reconciling the lunar and solar calendars became a major concern; as such, the Church became "one of the strongest supporters of precision astronomy and timekeeping."

Falk seamlessly combines science with literary and philosophical observations ("Chaucer had no notion of the length of a minute; Shakespeare did but nowhere does he mention the second") and digresses to fascinating topics like root notions of past and future, the vagaries of memory and the behavior of birds at breakfast time. Rounding out his multi-course feast, Falk contrasts Newton's notion of "absolute, true, and mathematical" time with Einstein's final words in 1955, "the distinction of past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion," to present modern speculations on black holes and the universe's future.

In Search of Time: The Science of a Curious Dimension

Fred Ritchin's new book earns a Starred Review from Publishers Weekly:

Ritchen offers a supple, politically astute and fascinating account of the dizzying impact of the digital revolution on the trajectory of the photographic image that, like all new media, changes the world in the very act of observing it.

The myth of photographic objectivity has concealed fakery as old as the medium itself, he notes, but in the digital era, concealment and manipulation come to shape the very experience of the image as sui generis: The lens has dimmed and a distorting mirror has been added. All is not lost for photography as a truth-telling medium, however: the author suggests methods for verifying the authenticity and provenance of images through footnoting and labeling.

Moreover, Ritchen stresses how digital media, linked through the Web, offer an appropriative and hypertextual approach to photography that promises to reinvent the embattled authorial image into an evolving collaboration, conversation and investigation among an infinite number of ordinary people.

Cautiously optimistic, the author poses provocative questions throughout, including whether digital technology and Web 2.0 together provide a means for regaining a sense of the actual from deep within a virtual world.

After Photography

This study examines how conversing with passengers in a vehicle differs from conversing on a cell phone while driving.

We compared how well drivers were able to deal with the demands of driving when conversing on a cell phone, conversing with a passenger, and when driving without any distraction. In the conversation conditions, participants were instructed to converse with a friend about past experiences in which their life was threatened.

The results show that the number of driving errors was highest in the cell phone condition; in passenger conversations more references were made to traffic, and the production rate of the driver and the complexity of speech of both interlocutors dropped in response to an increase in the demand of the traffic.

The results indicate that passenger conversations differ from cell phone conversations because the surrounding traffic not only becomes a topic of the conversation, helping driver and passenger to share situation awareness, but the driving condition also has a direct influence on the complexity of the conversation, thereby mitigating the potential negative effects of a conversation on driving.

Recently, Decius wrote:

The National Safety Council is all over the press calling for an immediate ban on the use of cellphones while driving.

Passenger and Cell Phone Conversations in Simulated Driving

4. Do not destroy what you cannot create.

From the archive:

"Ten Things I Hate About Commandments" is a mash-up trailer for a John Hughes style teen comedy, using footage from the Charlton Heston version of The Ten Commandments.

Your Daily Friedman:

Imagine if you could offset the whole Ten Commandments.

Finally:

He laughed, and added, "Good thing I’m not an idealist -- I'm just here for the money."

The Ten Commandments of Leo Szilard

Joe Stiglitz:

This year will be bleak.

The question we need to be asking now is, how can we enhance the likelihood that we will eventually emerge into a robust recovery?

From the archive:

It never occurred to me that lamb shanks might be refreshing.

Finally:

He laughed, and added, "Good thing I’m not an idealist -- I'm just here for the money."

The Rocky Road to Recovery

You see them everywhere -- nurses, doctors and medical technicians in scrubs or lab coats. They shop in them, take buses and trains in them, go to restaurants in them, and wear them home. What you can't see on these garments are the bacteria that could kill you.

In a hospital, C. diff contaminates virtually every surface.

Imagine sliding into a restaurant booth after a nurse has left the germ on the table or seat. You could easily pick it up on your hands and then swallow it with your sandwich.

From 2004:

Who wants to eat at a chain where the food has almost no character?

From 2007:

"I might have had the hefeweizen," he said. "But I’m not going to kill them for it."

From 2008:

Those that died of kuru were highly regarded as sources of food, because they had layers of fat which resembled pork. It was primarily the Fore women who took part in this ritual. Often they would feed morsels of brain to young children and elderly relatives. Among the tribe, it was, therefore, women, children and the elderly who most often became infected.

Recall:

Worry about the wrong things puts us at greater risk of the diseases that should be concerning us in the first place.

You see:

That's not grime you're seeing, it's historical charm.

Finally:

Hi. Um, I'm just wondering, have you got any kind of like, sort of punky, electronica, kind of grime, kind of like, new wave grime, kind of maybe like more broken beats, like kinda dubby broken beats, but a little bit kind of soulful ...? but kinda drum and bassy, but kinda more broken drum and bass, like sort of broken beats, like break-beat broken kind of drum and bass ... do you know what I mean? No?

Hospital Scrubs Are a Germy, Deadly Mess

To think about how remarkable this is, imagine an American news anchor simply reading article after article from newspapers in Tehran, or Mosul, or even Paris.

In a way, that's the paradox of Al-Jazeera's war journalism: It is flagrantly political, but accompanied by a real curiosity about other perspectives.

From 2004:

"You can't talk sense to them," Bush said, referring to terrorists.

"Nooooo!" the audience roared.

From 2005:

I'm not signing anything until I read it, or someone gives me the gist of it.

From this week:

He seemed curiously incurious about vital details, such as the conduct of the war in Iraq.

Think Differently

"There is nothing like a deadline to clarify the issues."

-- Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive

From the archive, Decius:

These things usually make me angry. This just makes me sad.

Ha-Ha!

Court Orders Search of White House Computers

“I don’t think it’s going to exist,” said Mark Sue, an analyst.

From the archive:

Just a few short months ago, it seemed that humanity stood on the edge of a communications revolution. Now a grim face replaces yesterday's optimism.

Optimism? Yesterday? Really? (No.)

Here's Andrew Odlyzko, from six years ago:

In any case, there is likely to be considerable turmoil in the telecom industry over the next few years.

Here's NYT, also from six years ago:

The telecommunications equipment industry is quietly pinning its hopes on a quick Iraqi war that would be followed by an American-led effort to rebuild the country after the ouster of Saddam Hussein.

How'd that work out for you?

A final thought, from 2004:

"Our business continues to be impacted by industry-related conditions."

Ha-Ha!

A Giant Falls

"Bling is over."

-- Karl Lagerfeld

From the archive:

Those who loved the dignity and the sporadic secrecy and the sudden intimacies of traditional French civilization are bound to long for the days when President Mitterrand would go on long walks alone to old bookstores, and then make love to his mistress on the way home to his wife, patting his love children on the head while making sonorous pronouncements about life and destiny.

Also:

And what's with all these sayings? Emo, Metrosexual, Bling-Bling. No wonder the English Language is going to hell in a handbasket, the younger generations are slaughtering it!

What now?

We need to return to the culture of thrift that my mother and her generation learned the hard way through years of hardship and deprivation.

Fun!

The sheer amount of sewing done by gentlewomen in those days sometimes takes us moderns aback, but it would probably generally be a mistake to view it either as merely constant joyless toiling, or as young ladies turning out highly embroidered ornamental knicknacks to show off their elegant but meaningless accomplishments.

Look your best.

Most of us, of course, think we know what a depression looks like.

In the Lap of Luxury, Paris Squirms