I just came across an interesting site called Opening Hooks, “a collection of literary beginnings”. The creator of the site explains:

Chip Kidd once said, “A good book cover makes you want to pick it up. End of story.” More often then not, however, a gripping first sentence or paragraph prevents you from putting it back down. The opening hook. It’s a simple concept, reading is linear, time is finite. What keeps a reader reading is the opening hook.

I don’t have any particular memories of special opening hooks, but browsing through the site’s data base I came across this one: “When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.” – Yup. I think this one qualifies as a good opening hook. Unfortunately, when I first read Kafka’s The Metamorphosis I attempted to do so in its original. Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt. Perhaps understandably, words such as “Ungeziefer” – or insect – are not part of one’s basic foreign language vocabulary lesson so I’m afraid I had a hard time fully appreciating some of the nuances – huh, some of the basics! – during my first attempt at the novel. Let’s just say I probably spent more time flipping through the dictionary than the book. But reading the sentence in English on that site brought it all back and I do think it qualifies as a good opening hook. I suspect others around here who are much bigger literature buffs than I am will think of candidates for their favorite opening lines without having to go to their book shelves (or browse an online data base).

Hat tip: Matt Read.

It’s taken me quite a while to transfer the various parts of my online presence (my work site, my blog site, my photos, etc.) and a good chunk of it is still in the works. There are various reasons for this, but one unfortunate aspect has been the very unfriendly and complicated services offered by Yahoo! Domains who used to host some of my site (or at least the domain names and redirection). They have been a complete nightmare to deal with this summer.

In contrast, my experiences with Dreamhost have been great. I very much recommend them! (If you decide to sign up with them and wouldn’t mind listing me “eblogle” as the referrer, that would be great.)

For now the original content from Eszter’s Blog is still residing on Princeton’s servers. I will be moving them at some point when some other things get fixed. I will keep the link on this post updated.

I have moved institutions and states, and although that doesn’t mean I’d necessarily have to move my online presence, I’m taking this transition as an opportunity to start using a new blogging software. Although Greymatter served me very well and am still happy with it, I have decided to migrate to WordPress. This is my new blog home. Welcome.

Today we celebrate Arrival Day, the 350th anniversary of the first Jewish immigrants’ arrival in New Amsterdam (today’s New York City) on September 7, 1654. The Head Heeb has been preparing for this event for over a year. He explains:

Arrival Day is a holiday of the American Jewish people rather than the Jewish religion – a celebration of the Jewish community and its contributions to the United States. As such, non-Jews as well as Jews are welcome to join in the celebration. In the wise words of Ikram Saeed, everyone is Jewish today, just as everyone is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day.

A month ago I participated in a wonderful wedding that offers the perfect story for Arrival Day. I share with you the details of this wedding as a celebration of Jews from all over the world coming together in the United States.

In early August I returned to Princeton for the wedding of two friends. I had met both the bride and the groom even before they met each other. There is something extra special about friends coming together in that way. The bride had been an undergraduate Sociology major at Princeton (the department in which I got my graduate degree) and once started talking to me in the department’s mailroom after having heard me speaking in Hungarian with someone. Although she grew up in Manhattan, her parents are Hungarian from Transylvania (now Romania) and she, too, speaks the language. The groom and I started our graduate training at Princeton the same year and hung out in the same social circles from close to the beginning of our years there. He is from Australia. The two of them met as a klezmer band was forming at Princeton. They are both music lovers and amazing musicians. Music and their Jewish cultural heritage seemed to bring them together. And now they are a wonderful Jewish couple from different ends of the globe living a life together in the United States. The wedding was marvelous with friends and family of both the groom and the bride putting on amazing musical performances the night before the ceremonies.

There are several reasons why I live in the U.S. and although no one factor is fully responsible, one contributing reason is that no matter how people try to downplay it, anti-Semitism is alive and well in Europe. I prefer to live in a country where I do not have to be on my guard all the time about being Jewish. (I realize experiences must vary across the U.S., but this is my experience having lived in seven states in rural, suburban and urban areas and I appreciate it.) At my friends’ wedding, Jews and non-Jews of numerous backgrounds came together to celebrate in the joy of two wonderful people. In my mind, this story is the perfect tribute to Arrival Day.

The Head Heeb will be linking to posts that celebrate Arrival Day through the day to be sure to hop on over to his blog for pointers.

I’m in the midst of transferring my Web site and concurrently I’ll likely start up a more active blog presence on my personal blog (as opposed to the great group blog Crooked Timber of which I’m a member). Stay tuned for information about new location and newly opened comments (with the hopes that I figure out a way to fight spam).

Thanks to Henry Farrell and Dan Drezner, those attending the American Political Science Association’s meetings in Chicago this weekend were in for quite a treat at yesterday afternoon’s session on The Power and Politics of Blogs. The session started out with two papers (one by Henry and Dan, the other by Laura McKenna formerly of Apt 11D and Antoinette Pole) followed by some interesting commentary from well-known political bloggers Mark Kleiman and Ana Marie Cox aka Wonkette and a final discussion with some good questions and thoughtful points by Cass Sunstein. The Q&A was interesting as well, congrats to Henry and Dan for putting together such a great panel! (As an additional treat, I finally got to meet (albeit way too briefly) another Timberite, Harry, so my CT number improved a bit again.)

Later in the evening, a bunch of us met up for drinks and dinner, which provided a nice oppportunity to chat with people whose blogs I’ve been reading for a while. I enjoyed discussing the topical versus ideological splits in the blogosphere with Cass Sunstein. I have a project that is attempting to test the latter (which I usually just refer to as the Sunstein thesis) empirically, and will certainly keep you posted. All-in-all, it was really fun to meet all these bloggers face-to-face and, again, thanks to Henry and Dan for organizing such a great blogger day!

I spent the last few days in Minneapolis at the Carlson School of Managements of the Univ. Minnesota participating in a great digital divide symposium. Although I have been doing research on this topic for years, I got to meet several people new to me who are working on interesting and important projects in this area. Many of them were from management and information systems/science programs, a field whose interest in the digital divide may not be obvious to some. One interesting question that came up more in the proposal to the meeting than the actual workshop was whether the existence of a digital divide is bad or, in fact, possibly good for business. This was a whole new angle on the topic, and although many would likely claim that this is not the right approach to take to the question, it is certainly an interesting one.

Kenneth Quinn has an interesting piece in WaPo about whether 9/11 was supposed to be 9/18 according to original plans. For me this is interesting because it sheds some light on the preposterous rumors that surfaced after the attacks about some Jewish conspiracy regarding the events. September 18, 2001 was Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which means that many/most Jews would not have been at work that day and would have averted the attacks. The rumor that spread had to do with about 4,000 Jews being saved thanks to having been told ahead of time about the tragedy and having stayed home to avoid it.

One serious concern I have always had about people’s inclination to even come close to considering those rumors legitimate is the idea that Jews live such a completely isolated life (not to mention one without any moral obligations) that they have no non-Jewish friends or family, nor would they have any civic obligations to worry about were they to obtain any information concerning such an event ahead of time. After all, only in such a scenario would it make sense for anyone to think that these informed Jews would, without blinking an eye, just quietly stay away from such a tragedy without alerting anyone outside of their supposed super-isolated circles. (News flash: social networks don’t work that way.) The idea that there could be people this naïve and clueless about the world is seriously disturbing. But those rumors circulated quite far and wide even in non-fundamentalist circles, it seems. And that is scary.1 Of course, the idea that anyone would have a list of Jews to call up and warn in the first place is quite silly in and of itself.

Read Quinn’s piece to see how he came up with the 9/18 idea based on all sorts of info tidbits including this rumor and details from the 9/11 commision report. (Hat tip: Harry’s Place. Go to Bugmenot if you do not have a WaPo login.)

1. On occasion, emails show up in my inbox regarding conspiracies targeted at other groups such as Arabs or Muslims. Such messages are just as disturbing and naïve. I hope no one will see my outrage regarding this issue as an invitation to send me equally ill-informed messages about people grouped according to whatever one single demographic variable.

A propos this very interesting discussion about gendered pronouns, and à propos all the babies being born in my social circles, I thought I’d post a note about the salience of gender the moment we are born. I became an aunt last week and so the following has come up a lot in the past few days. The first thing everybody wants to know about the baby is its (their?🙂 gender. At first I was not hiding this bit of information on purpose, but by now I consciously phrase announcements about the event in gender-neutral terms to see how long it takes for the other party to ask whether it is a boy or a girl. As you can imagine, it doesn’t take long. One may argue that this is because, grammatically speaking, people are unable to ask questions about the baby without knowing its gender. But I think it is more than that. Our world is so gender-based that it is hard for people to think about a person without knowing the person’s gender. But what is it exactly about a baby that makes it necessary for us to know its gender? In what ways is it going to be important? Is it so we can say whether the baby is beautiful versus handsome? Is it so we know what types of presents to get for it? If yes then we are off on the path of gendered socialization the moment the little person takes its first breath. All this shows the pressure parents must be under to choose between girl and boy when a child is born sex unknown.

I thought I should add a bit to this post drawing on some work by sociologists who actually study this stuff. Some people in the comments to the original post on Crooked Timber – and elsewhere as well, I am sure – argue that if you look at the behavior of girls and boys already at an early stage you will observe their different preferences for certain colors and activities. We should not forget, however, that it is not possible to raise children in an isolated manner and their social environments – as evidenced by the anecdote in this post – start differentiating them by gender from the start. So the fact that a girl may opt for a “girlie” toy or pink may simply be a reflection of what she has already picked up from her surroundings. It is interesting to note, however, that historically pink and blue were assigned to girls and boys in the exact reverse of today’s conventions. I quote from Padavic and Reskin, Women and Men at Work (p.4.):

Clothing for babies illustrates the creation of sex differences in appearance that have no natural basis. Disposable-diaper manufacturers, for example, market different designs for girls and boys. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, however, male and female infants were dressed alike—usually in white dresses. When Americans began to color code babies’ clothing, they dressed boys in pink and girls in blue. Not until amost 1950 did the convention reverse, with blue becoming defined as masculine and pink as feminine (Kidwell and Steele 1989:24-27). Such shifts demonstrate that what is critical for maintaining and justifying unequal treatment between the sexes is not how cultures set the sexes apart but the fact that they do it at all.

Also, for a very good look at children in their early years, read Barry Thorne’s book on Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School.

I saw the exhibition Modigliani: Beyond the Myth at The Jewish Museum in New York this week. I highly recommend it, it is a wonderful exhibit. (It|AMP|#8217;s only on until Sept 19th so don|AMP|#8217;t delay.) There was a twenty minute wait in line, apparently much more reasonable than a few months ago. The experience was definitely worth the wait.

One nice thing about shows that focus on the entire career of an artist is that you tend to learn more about an artist|AMP|#8217;s background than possible through just a few pieces mixed in with works by others. Modigliani died at the age of 34, but created quite a bit during his short life. Before learning about this exhibition, I had no idea that Modigliani was Jewish. One may wonder why that matters, but given the anti-Semitism he encountered once he moved to Paris, and given that much of his work focused exclusively on portraitures and an exploration of identities, it seems this part of his identity would be important for understanding his work.

Another thing I did not know about Modigliani is that he had worked as a sculptor as well. In fact, it sounds like had it not been for his poor health and the difficulty in obtaining the raw materials for his sculptures, he would have done more with that medium (and it’s unfortunate that he couldn’t). A propos sculptures, as I was looking at some of his sketchings of caryatids I started wondering about the influence of Brancusi on his work. Taking a few steps I was at the sculpture section of the exhibit, and learned that Modigliani had met Brancusi in 1909. Lucky for those in NYC, there is a Brancusi exhibition at the Guggenheim right now just a few blocks from The Jewish Museum also on until Sept 19th. (I cannot vouch for that show as I did not go see it having already seen a Brancusi exhibition in both Paris and Philly years ago, but I suspect this one is similar and thus worth seeing.)

I loved the way the pieces were laid out in the exhibit. I looked at the following three pieces right next to each other for several minutes taking a few steps back: The Italian Women, 1917; Lunia Czechowska (La femme a l|AMP|#8217;eventail), 1919; and Paulette Jourdain, 1919. (Unfortunately, I can|AMP|#8217;t find the middle piece online nor in the exhibition book. Otherwise I|AMP|#8217;d try to recreate the effect here. There are several variants with that name, the one I am looking for had a strong red background, which was in beautiful contrast with the other two pieces surrounding it.)

After the Modigliani show I decided to take a look at the permanent collection as well. The material is interesting and diverse with a focus on different historical periods, parts of the world and types of materials. One of my favorite sections was the collection of menorahs on the top floor (especially the modern versions).

I used to be an Apple fan (even own one of the original bondi blue iMacs) but my experience with the iPod has made me disgruntled with the company. I am among the unfortunate many (way too many!) whose iPod gave up service extremely quickly. The battery just died one day for no apparent reason. The iPod was still under warranty so I took it to an Apple store. It took some convincing for them to take a look without charging me the basic $50. Then, after several days, they confirmed that the battery had, in fact, died (brilliant!). Then, after another week or so, they let me know my new iPod was ready for pickup. Unfortunately, my new iPod gave up service soon after as well. By then I was past the warranty period (how convenient for Apple). This time I can|AMP|#8217;t even tell if it|AMP|#8217;s the battery. It just won|AMP|#8217;t recharge and won|AMP|#8217;t do anything. (It is almost as if there was something comforting about seeing something break in a physically visible manner so you have some idea behind the puzzle. I almost wish I had dropped the thing at some point so I would have something to blame.) I had not used it much, maybe about a dozen times before it gave up service. This whole experience has been quite frustrating, especially for a gadget that costs several hundred dollars.

I am now looking for diePod alternatives. Other companies have not done quite the same job in marketing their products so I am not sure what would be a good option. I am actually considering just getting a memory card for my Treo 600 (a positive review of which will follow at some point) and using that as my mp3 player.

Bottom line: to avoid frustrations, I highly recommend staying away from the iPod!¹

¹ Of course, in the grand scheme of things I realize this is not that big of a deal. But if one can avoid such annoyances then why not do so?

Just a few days short of her 92nd birthday, Julia Child died this week. You did not need to be a cooking fanatic to have watched her shows although you may have ended up as one after doing so. And a kitchen is hardly complete without one of her books. I also got quite a bit of exposure to her name while studying at Smith College as she was one of those alums such a school could be very excited about. Hat tip to ms.musings who links to all sorts of interesting sites for more background info. Here’s one nice little interview with Child last year in Ms. Magazine where Child is quoted as saying: “I was a Republican until I got to New York and had to live on $18 a week. It was then that I became a Democrat.”

I was quoted in a Washington Post article on Monday. The piece discusses a fascinating project by the One Economy Corporation that has managed to get people in low-income communities connected to the Internet. [Reading the article requires a login. You can get one at BugMeNot.] I comment on the importance of skill beyond achieving access. The One Economy Corporation certainly does more than “just” providing access. For example, they have developed a helpful portal for their users with information about jobs, government services and lots of other material that is likely of interest to users.

This short film by zefrank seemed to make it to some corners of the blogosphere in March, but I don’t think it got the type of exposure it deserves. Go behind-the-scenes to learn about the making of the yellow-orange-red alert system (Tinky Winky reference and all!:). Warning, only visit the rest of the site if you have plenty of time to spare!

Since things seem to be pretty low-key around here, you’ll excuse me if I vent a little. Last night I got a call from a kind neighbor letting me know that it seemed as though one of my windows had shattered. I was in the office finishing a paper to meet a deadline so the timing wasn’t perfect, but really, is there ever a good time for that kind of a call? I decided to head home and check things out. To my dismay I found this (or for a bit more artistic version, this). It is completely unclear what may have caused it. My best guess is a bird although there are no traces anywhere (the neighbors were on their balcony when all this happened and didn’t see anything except for the window starting to break up into pieces after a loud bang). This is definitely one downside of home ownership.. and a clear example of why one must always have some money on hand in a checking account. In addition to the lost $$ a really annoying part is the logistics of sitting around waiting for the glass company and the anxiety produced by not having any idea about the costs. Any upsides? I got to meet some nice neighbors and also learned that I have double-pane windows (a very good thing in such a situation, indeed).

So now I’m left wondering whether I should cut back on some of the fun stuff I was going to do in Princeton and NYC in the next few weeks.. to balance out the costs.. or just accept the fact that trying to save on any of what I was going to do would make not a dent in this additional expense so I should just deal with it and move on. Uhm, yeah, probably the latter.

I was playing Scattegories with some friends last night and ran into an interesting scenario. The game is about coming up with names of things/people/places/etc that begin with a particular letter. The goal is to get as many points as possible and you get a point if yours is a unique answer for the particular category. Apparently, one of the rules is that you cannot use the same response for more than one category. Initially this did not seem like a big deal. After all, what are the chances that a capital and a menu item or an insect name and a crime would be the same? But it turns out, it happens more often than one might think. I suspect this may be because you are so focused on the letter and the words you have already come up with that if one of them fits another category, you’ll make the connection relatively quickly. You have three minutes to find a dozen matches, that’s a lot of cognitive switching in a short span of time. I ended up with the same response to the following two categories: President and Product Name (which we interpreted as brand name). What was my answer? There are probably several matches depending on the letter, mine happened using the letter H. I got the product name first and then realized there had been a U.S. president by the same name. Knowing the outcome, it would make sense to figure out the match here the other way around, of course.;) Remember, no Web searches available during the game and you have about fifteen seconds to come up with a response. (Of course, from the point-of-view of the game this is a silly exercise since the goal is to avoid such overlaps, but we’re not playing that game.:)

(I promise to get around to that question in this post, albeit in a somewhat roundabout manner.)

Since Kieran has already reserved the right to ask for $50 bills here, I thought I’d ask for something else. Forget bills, they all look the same anyway. I am looking for something more random. I am still in the midst of unpacking some of my things since my move earlier this year and I recently came across my Absolut vodka ad collection. I haven’t looked at it since college when I began (and ended) gathering all the Absolut ads I could find. I have about seventy. By now there are some helpful Web sites for those of us interested in seeing the types of ads the company has featured. I found a few I had not seen before and would really like to have so I thought I’d see if anyone here can help me out.:) These mostly have to do with ads for places where I have lived (e.g. Budapest, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Illinois, Texas, Geneva, Switzerland) or visited (Paris, Brussels, Jerusalem, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, St.Louis), but also include some others just because I like them aesthetically speaking or because they are funny. I thought I would find listings on eBay, but I’ve only come across a few there and none of them of interest.

But so what’s this about cutting up a book?

There are books out there that feature Absolut ads. So if I was really desperate (which I am not, to be sure) to find some of the above ads then I could simply buy a copy of the book and then cut it up (assuming I wanted to have the pieces individually, which I do, because I want to put some of them up on my walls). But that just does not appeal to me. I cannot imagine cutting up a book. I have absolut(e)ly no problem cutting up newspapers and magazines. It is not as though some books don’t exist in numerous copies. In fact, publishers sometimes find themselves destroying books to save on storage costs, a sad reality when I am sure many schools, libraries and individuals could use additions to their collections. Many books are not a scarce resource and can actually be obtained for less than certain magazines. Thus it is not a question of scarcity. So why the aversion to cutting up books? In this particular example it may be partly that there is something about collecting ads that have appeared as ads and not simply collecting the images. But that is not fully convincing given that I am interested in some of these images purely for decorative purposes and I am not a fanatic collector. Clearly I have been socialized to consider books as something quite sacred if I am not willing to go at them with scissors. (I also won’t use pen to mark books although I will mark them using pencils.)

By the way, as a thank you to those who can contribute to my Absolut ad collection, I will be happy to send the contributor a copy of this neat book filled with great images, for free. (Just don’t tell me whether you decide to cut it up in the end.;) Send me a note for more info.

This little Flash movie by the ACLU about the loss of privacy is hilarious and, of course, scary at the same time.

Here’s a way to go on a fun and useful road trip this summer: drive to swing states to register Democrats to vote. Driving Votes provides all the necessary forms and helps you coordinate with others.