Defenestrated

'Worst' historical Britons named

The BBC History magazine has surveyed historians to find the 'worst' Britons from the last 10 centuries.

"Those who share my prejudice against [Thomas] Becket [Archbishop of Canterbury, c.1120-1170] may consider his assassination in Canterbury Cathedral on 29 December, 1170, a fittingly grisly end."

Epileptic by David B.

Epilpetic by David B. is a gloriously-illustrated book that takes on difficult subject matter with a unique approach that yields significant rewards. I'm not sure that some of those rewards are what the author intended, however.

• The author ran away from dealing with his brother's epilepsy, just as his brother retracted into the condition.
• No matter how one can articulate it as such, epilepsy can never be anyone's "muse". It's ridiculous believe that someone else's suffering can be the source of one's whole lifetime of inspiration and torment. It's callous and shallow to ignore that these outcomes are the result of one's own interpretation of the world -- all of it, and not just the part that seems most socially embarrassing -- and that ultimately it is one's self that is responsible for happiness or sorrow.
• The author is French and writes extensively about French conflicts (Algerian War, World War I, World War II, etc.) and places them in contrast to his family's war against epilepsy. In all instances, failures pile upon failures and the family runs from one skirmish to another, without much analysis or consideration for the reasons behind their actions. This mindless thrashing around for a miracle cure, into which the whole family was submerged for months at a time, seems incredibly peculiar.
• The author suggests, over and over, that all of his troubles and those of his family are caused by other people -- doctors, therapists, quack gurus, ancestors, parents, and siblings. There's little substantive self-examination, beyond the introspective pseudo-psychological mind-maulings administered like a medieval leech doctor. This unquestioning displacement of blame is, I think, the most abhorrent suggestion in the entire book.

I say all this as someone with a very close relative who has epilepsy, and who started to suffer from its effects when I was about 5 years old -- the same age as David B. How relatives deal with a loved one's epilepsy is a personal reaction, and peculiar to each of us. I believe that David B.'s reaction is very exceptional (both in its peculiarity and the art it has partly inspired) but no-one should look to this book for anything other than that: one man's peculiar interpretation of the effects of epilepsy upon him and his family.

It's Time to Start Networking

I met Eric Spiegel of XTS via Andy Glover of JNetDirect/Vanward Technologies via Shahid Shah of Netspective via Don Preuss of TCG. And all four of those people are exceptionally bright, interesting individuals who understand the art of networking. Eric's latest column at Datamation, called It's Time to Start Networking, lays out why networking is important and how you can go about doing it. A very interesting read -- for networking n00bs and l33ts alike. (For those who care, you can check out my LinkedIn profile here.)

Commodore poised for a comeback?

(Via Slashdot) If this is true, I'll be buying one of these tomorrow.

Confusion abounds among grantees re Grants.gov

Jim Hu over at Texas A&M University recently commented on a post here about NIH's strategy to enable Mac users to apply to Grants.gov using the PureEdge forms. In a post on his own blog, Jim ponders:

NIH has announced that soon all grants will have to be electronically submitted via grants.gov.  This should be no problem...after all, NSF has been doing this for years via Fastlane. You could convert your documents to pdf or upload several commonly used formats (e.g. Word files) and their server would convert them. Reviewers could download grant applications as pdfs or get the pdfs mailed as CD-ROMs.

A large fraction of the journals also have gone to electronic submission. As with Fastlane, the better systems just let you upload a pdf. Scientists are already familiar with all of these pdf-based systems, which work on Windows, Macs, Unix, Linux etc. So the logical thing would be to just import the NSF system, right? Apparently not.

He goes on to say:

I wish someone would explain why this [using PureEdge] will be better than the platform-independent alternatives

Jim is clearly not a newbie grant applicant. He's done this a few times, and understands the existing means of submitting electronic grant applications down to a good technical level. So how come he isn't aware of the benefits of Grants.gov, why it exists, and what positive effects it will have and is having?

Grants.gov has an aggressive outreach effort to communicate its value to grantees (and, incidentally, federal grant-makers), and indeed this outreach effort has been very successful. But, if Jim's post is any indication, institutions and grantees are slipping through the cracks.

This is something that Grants.gov can fix, and I'm sure they're working on it. In the meantime, here's a quick summary of why Grants.gov's approach may prove better in the long-term:

• Before Grants.gov was designed, a thorough survey of all existing federal grants management systems was conducted. This concluded that none was suitable for government-wide deployment.
• Consistent data standards, applicable government-wide, is an underpinning concept for the creation of Grants.gov. This has already reaped significant rewards: many agencies are now standardized on the SF-424 data set as their basic grant application cover sheet, and most research grant applications can use the SF-424(R+R) data set. This will significantly reduce unnecessary burden on grantees by removing the requirement to maintain several different set of data schemas per federal agency.
• There are cross-platform e-forms standards, such as XForms, but they were not widely adopted at the time of Grants.gov's inception. Northrop Grumman (the systems integrator for Grants.gov) had to choose something, and PureEdge was it. None of PureEdge's competitors had a cross-platform solution at the time. Some do now.
• Before Grants.gov, and even today (to a slightly lesser degree), applying for multiple federal grants was an invitation to the Tower of Babel: every agency did it differently, every agency required different data, and grantees were left to figure it out as best they could. Grants.gov aims to fix that: one portal for all federal grant applications. That's one place to access the $540 billion pot of federal grant money.

The fact is, getting to the nirvana that Grants.gov promises was always going to be a long and perilous road. The PureEdge/Mac platform problem is just one pothole along the way. (It happens to be a quite deep and dangerous one, in my opinion, but I'm sure the 85% of computer users that use Windows disagree!) As someone who's been involved in federal grant-amking systems for a few years, I happen to believe that the frustrations of this, the medium-term, are worth the longer-term objectives of improved efficiency and access for all citizens to federal grants funding. That probably won't make Jim Hu much happier in the meantime but it may at least give him a reason to believe in what Grants.gov has set out to achieve, and to work toward that goal...rather than being unaware of it.

Cinema sentence serendipity

Saw this in Bethesda, Maryland today. How often do you see a movie theater sign that makes such neat sentences? For those that can't see:

• Rent Harry Potter
• Just Friends Walk The Line
• Chicken Little Derailed

NCI warns users about using IE

Following up from his earlier (oddly very popular) post about NASA's rumored preference for FireFox, Dan's posted another story about the National Cancer Institute's internal warnings about the dangers of using Internet Explorer.

From TCG: Microsoft and OpenDocument

Rich Renomeron, a senior developer at Turner Consulting Group (the company for which I work) has posted some interesting narrative about Microsoft's adoption of the OpenDocument standard. I posted a little about this a while ago, and it seems that the obfuscation isn't stopping but is becoming more specific and, I would assert, less convincing. Why less convincing? Well, the argument that Rich discusses can be nullified by analysis. We just need some bright spark to demonstrate how wrong Microsoft is on this point of "OpenDocument can't support Office's complex functionality."

Slow Wave

(Via Deja Vu)  Slow Wave is a bizarre site of cartoons inspired by people's dreams. My favorite (so far) is Yoda's Underpants. And with a line like this --

[Yoda] started freaking out, saying there was no way he could fight the dark side in his underpants.

-- who can blame me?

Glad I bought a Treo

Looks like BlackBerry users may rue the day they fell for the fruit. Ruling Puts BlackBerry Maker at Crossroads.