Who Needs a Time Machine?

I just started reading a non-fiction book I found reviewed in The Economist, called Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier by Edward Glaeser. (Full disclosure: there is a large chapter about the decline of Detroit, but that was just more synchronocity, not the reason I picked it up.)

His argument is that cities, rather than creating poverty and crushing inhabitants -- which is, frankly, what it does feel like sometimes -- attract the poor and help inhabitants by making it easier for people to be productive. Even in a world where outsourcing is becoming the norm, we benefit so much more from personal human interaction than when we're typing on our computers at home.

That's all fine, but the reason I mention it is because I was lying in bed last night reading the following passage about the role of publishing:

[. . .] The book didn't help cities just by boosting their publishing industries. The printed word also made the world more urban in subtler, deeper ways. One direct effect of the printing press was allowing far-flung farmers to read the Bible, but indirectly the printing press helped make the world more knowledge intensive, more democratic, more commercial, and ultimately more urban.

"Yeah!" I thought to myself. "Books are awesome!"

Then I realized: here I was, feeling very proud about my profession's press and paper contribution to history and society, and yet I was reading these words off of the screen of my little e-ink Kindle.

Wow.

Makes you think, huh?

[Comic gratefully borrowed from xkcd]

Long Walk down a Short Road

I discovered this morning that the man who has been publishing for forty years on my dissertation topic, who is cited in paragraph two of my dissertation proposal as being a key scholar in my area of research, isn't based where I'd expect him to be. He's not in the UK, he's not in Brazil or Mexico, he is in . . . wait for it . . . Boston College.

So, you mean I could have just walked up Comm Ave with a cup of Dunkin' Donuts?

Sigh . . . Well, you know what they say. It's the journey that counts . . .

Imported from Detroit, Part 2

It started at the beginning of the semester, when my Iranian roommate talked about his Urban Planning and Design coursework. "You're from Detroit?" he asked. "We're studying Detroit." When I asked why, he just kind of laughed and shrugged. "Maybe because it needs to be rebuilt." OK, so we have an entire classroom of students trying to figure out how to rearrange my hometown. Good luck to them.

Now, my business module seems to be experiencing some odd syncronocity with the poor city. So far:
- In Week 1, we did a case study on Gale Cengage. I said to my workshop team, "That's in my hometown." Its headquarters is in Farmington Hills, not far from where I live. At the end of class, the professor, who is English, was running down the list of all Cengage divisions and described Gale as being "I forget where, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, where you'd never want to go." I quickly raised my hand and enlightened her. "Michigan, m'am."

- In Week 2, this same professor described a sales conference she had been to as part of the Gale Cengage team. "It was somewhere out of the way like Grand Rapids and it was just awful." I hoped she meant the conference, not Grand Rapids. GR is actually quite nice.

- In Week 3, we're reading in our textbook about international M&A. What's the case study (non-publishing related)? The "celebrated" and "successful" merger of Daimler-Benz in Germany and Chrysler in Auburn Hills, Michigan, USA. What the copyeditors didn't know when they published this edition is that Daimler would sell off most of its Chrysler holdings in 2009, Chrysler would go bankrupt and get bailed out by the US government and -- hooray! -- get bought back up by Fiat. (Fiat is an Italian automaker whose name it is often suggested is an acronym for "Fix It Again, Tony".) Though Chrysler seems to have bounced back fairly well by now, my guess is they'll be suggesting a new case study for the fifth edition.

Not one to take the news lying down, in Week 4, a defiant grassroots movement in Detroit raised $60,000 to build a Robocop statue near the abandoned Michigan Central Station. Now that's what I call "rising from the ashes". I'll bet they didn't see that one coming in Urban Design.

There's a Solution for Everything

The one area where my Kindle can't compare is in the smell department. I'm sure you'll agree that books have their own distinctive olfactory pleasure. 

What you may not know is that so does the Kindle. It smells like plastic and manufacturing.

The world is full of solution-builders. Enter Smell of Books, "An Aerosel E-Book Enhancer". From their website:

Does your Kindle leave you feeling like there’s something missing from your reading experience?

Have you been avoiding e-books because they just don’t smell right?

If you’ve been hesitant to jump on the e-book bandwagon, you’re not alone. Book lovers everywhere have resisted digital books because they still don’t compare to the experience of reading a good old fashioned paper book.

But all of that is changing thanks to Smell of Books™, a revolutionary new aerosol e-book enhancer.

Now you can finally enjoy reading e-books without giving up the smell you love so much. With Smell of Books™ you can have the best of both worlds, the convenience of an e-book and the smell of your favorite paper book. [From http://www.smellofbooks.com] 

You'll be happy to know that Smell of Books is DRM compatible-as well. But is it eco-friendly? Can you read it in sunlight? Most importantly, will it help you pick up chicks on the subway? 

Back to the Books . . .

My last few posts have been uncharacteristically free of any discussion about books, but there's a simple reason for that: I've been buried in mine. With a semester full of courses on International Publishing Management, Language Issues, and (gulp) my dissertation, my time is less structured than last semester but far more precious.

I was also involved in a terrific research project for my university in which I had to provide the top five publishers across various genres in a long list of countries. This included doing research on the Middle East, Africa, and continental Europe. It sounds fairly straightforward until your contacts start to email you in Cyrillic characters or, worse, Arabic. With Arabic, words are read left to right -- so was the name on the right the number one publisher, or the one on the left? How do you pronounce that? And for goodness' sake, how do you write it in an alphabet I can read?

Luckily, my fabulous sister in Morocco was able to help out, and the work was done with no further difficulty. Now I just need to find someone who knows someone in Brazil, Mexico, or Argentina, for my dissertation.

As a kid they tell you that reading can 'take you to far-off places', but I think they meant using your imagination. I seem to have taken that advice far too literally.

Oh the Weather Outside is . . . Weather

My favorite travel companion was in town last weekend so we did what we do best: hopped a bus for somewhere distant and got ourselves proper lost. Living in Oxford, that "somewhere distant" is usually and most easily London. So, we found ourselves strolling along St. James' Park on Saturday afternoon with the idea to take in the sights.

Before we left, I received an email from a friend who wished me a good weekend. "The weather's meant to be pants!"

This caused somewhat of a dilemma. How, exactly, does one dress for "pants"?

Crucially--and this is one of the first things they tell Americans as we get off the plane--"pants" means something very different in our separate versions of English. What we call "pants", they call "trousers". If you talk about your pants, you are being *ahem* possibly a bit *ahem* rude.

This makes idioms such as "flying by the seat of your pants" famously, famously inappropriate.

However much we debated, we had no idea what "pants" weather would look like. As a matter of fact, I still don't know. Saturday afternoon was absolutely gorgeous.

The gate of Buckingham Palace

Westminster Abbey

Sunday, on the other hand, was so grey and rainy that we spent the afternoon watching rugby in a pub.

So, which of these weather systems was "pants"? I don't know. Given my poor track record with the word, I'm not likely to adopt that particular bit of slang. I'm not keen to see what would happen if I walked into class complaining (or bragging), "I just feel pants today!"

The Seven Year Itch

A few weekends ago I was able to make my way down to London on a whim and stopped in on an old friend to catch a Six Nations rugby match. I knew this friend since the time I studied in Ireland at University College Dublin, back in 2004. Oddly enough, that was one of the years the Irish won the Six Nations trophy, but I'm sure superstition had nothing to do with him inviting me along to the match. (Probably.)

The thing I remember most about Six Nations that year was, after the Irish victory, a giant tarp with a picture of team captain Brian O'Driscoll hung very prominently along Grafton Street. When the commentators announced his name in the starting lineup, then, it was a pleasant little surprise. "I would have thought he'd retired by now," I told my friend.

"Yeah, he's getting up there," my friend admitted. "But he can't have been that old when you were in Dublin."

"Well, he was definitely already the captain," I said.

"Oh. Then he must be old," said my friend. "That was . . ." and then he calculated in his head. "Seven years ago."

I immediately flashed back to one night during that time in Dublin, when some friends and I went drinking at Foley's Pub between St. Stephen's Green and Merrion Square. We were chatting and enjoying ourselves like normal when I noticed one boy in particular across the bar who looked vaguely familiar. He seemed to have the same thought about me, so we introduced ourselves and realized we had gone to the same high school together and shared an English class in ninth grade.

Immediately, since he went to a hometown university where many of our classmates were still in touch, I pestered him with questions about other old friends. I bashfully asked about one boy who I had fostered a bit of a crush on in my tender years. "He was so cute!" I gushed.

"Really? You thought so?" he asked. "I don't know. I don't see him much anymore. That was seven years ago!"

It made me feel old to remember this (tho not as old as Brian O'Driscoll), but it made me feel a little better, too. After all, here I am seven years on with a friend I made my very first time abroad, having a beer at Covent Gardens and commiserating about our dissertations. If this is the rate I'm going, what will things look like seven years from now?

Imported From Detroit

I didn't watch the Superbowl this year, but after seeing a few intriguing posts on Facebook I went to my computer in my little flat in England and YouTube'd this:


My reaction was to start cheering like an idiot at the top of my lungs. (I probably freaked out my flatmates.) That view, right there, is what I see when I drive home from the airport. That's what I see every time I drive to a Red Wings game at Joe Louis Arena. My neighbor works for Chrysler and my Dad drives one.

It's been a while since I've felt so proud of my hometown. It's not easy to make Detroit look good. Thank God, somebody did. As someone who really is imported from Detroit can tell you, that's no small feat.

Food for Thought

This is true, but I still can't believe it's real:

The national beer of Wales is made by Brains Brewery. This isn't some small microbrew -- it sponsors their Six Nations team. In the background of each match you can see large blinking signs saying "Brains" "Brains" "Brains".

In other words, the Welsh drink Brains.

I don't know what they call that over here. In my book? That's a zombie.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Mister Mister (I Mean . . . M'am)

Here's your first lesson in international business:

When given a list of executives to contact by email who hail from foreign countries and who have complicated foreign names, Google them.  Sometimes Jan is a man and Francis is a woman (or a doctor).  Some of the names might seem fairly girly but belong actually to a gentleman in Belarus.

And for goodness' sake, if you're going to guess . . . Guess right.

I won't tell you how I came to learn this very important lesson. Just trust me.