By bluerasberry on 2012-07-05
I have been very upset since Nathan’s Hot Dogs would not allow Takeru Kobayashi, known also as Kobi the world’s greatest competitive eater, to compete in their contest. In this report Kobi talks about how unjust and cruel they are.
The Wikimania conference in DC is upcoming and many international visitors are here in Manhattan touring before the conference, and we advertised to them that if they wanted to understand American culture then they should come to one of our eating contests. The hot dog eating contest on Coney Island used to be a big deal until Kobayashi began to win too many contests. There are many rumors from trustworthy sources that people organizing the contest have unsavory prejudices of all kinds against people like Kobayashi and that they devised new contract rules to harm him.
I made protest signs to display at the event – “Eating 69 hot dogs is not a crime”, “Takeru Kobayashi you Take-ru my heart”, and “Twitter now! Support @TeamKobayashi, Protest @EatingContest, #FreeKobi”. Richard was tickled to carry one and an Italian Wikipedia developer, Marios, also helped with the protest. We protested very hard and incited fiery passion in the crowd. Most of the crowd supported us but some of them, only because of their ignorance of the issue and the hurt they felt because Kobayashi was not eating, said that Kobayashi was wrong for not attending. There is a lot of propaganda going around that Kobayashi is refusing to eat as an insult to America, when actually he is very dedicated and loves American freedom and is hurt that he is not free to eat here.
We went swimming on the beach then went on a tour of Richard’s neighborhood nearby and visited his house for a while. He has a cool book collection. We met other Wikipedians for dinner making a total of about 15 of us, and at dinner we still had the signs and everyone was shocked because most people think of America as a free country. We went and watched the fireworks. I made lots of new friends then the day was over.
I want Kobayashi to have success in everything he does and I am his fan. If I am able to attend the hot dog contest again then next time I will arrive sooner and help coordinate an even bigger protest.
Posted in festival, Japan, New York City, rights | Tagged competitive eating
By bluerasberry on 2012-06-02
Wednesday 30 May – Friday 1 June the HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN) held their summer full group meeting in DC, as they always do. This was the first time I attended the DC meeting. I had planned to attend even when I was in Seattle but then I got this job at Consumer Reports and moved to Manhattan, so instead of flying in I took the train.
The biggest news was the start of the discussion to restructure the research networks, which I think everyone feels is overdue. The situation is that there is the HVTN, the HIV Prevention Trials Network, the Microbicide Trials Network, the AIDS Clinical Trials Group, IMPAACT (a mother-child transmission study network), and perhaps other smaller groups all doing HIV research. All of them need human research subjects to volunteer, and all of them need community input to conduct their research, and all of them get funding from the same sources, but they all have a pre-Internet legacy of not having good inter-network communication and right now in some ways they compete for the same resources and everyone wants them to work more together to everyone’s mutual benefit and at loss to no one. Because of the economic crisis in the US as well as world-wide, funding will not increase anytime soon and for financial pressure the networks feel motivated to become more efficient with less money quickly and despite the short-term costs of reform.
Another way to describe this same communication problem is to say that there are too many managers who are working under capacity, and the intent of the restructuring is to centralize management so that more clinical sites report to fewer centers for coordinating their research and outreach.
My contribution to the process is that I advocate for greater access to information on the Internet. It is my assertion that in general, none of the networks have acknowledged the existence of the Internet or Internet culture to a reasonable degree. I understand why; the people who attend the conference and run the networks do not use the Internet and are not convinced that other people do either. Their attempt to modernize is to publish some limited information on certain websites, but it seems obvious to me and I assert it would be obvious to any other digital native that the organization’s concept of the utility of the Internet is as a way to replicate the uses of print media, and not as a social media tool. The people in the network continually talk about social media and I know they hire smart people who very well understand what social media is, but still the people who make decisions about social media do not even understand the concept well enough to have a conversation about it so everything they do seems very awkward to me.
I should say that I am nearly alone in saying all this, and perhaps my opinions are even unwelcome many times. Definitely the HVTN and other research networks employ many brilliant people each with a lifetime of communication experience more than I have, and undoubtedly I am as uncompromisingly biased against their way of doing things as they are against Internet culture. And I know this whole Internet thing is not for everyone in all circumstances but as time is going on I am seeing their views as increasing antiquated and starting to wonder more when the point will come when they say, “Well, this Internet thing is not going to go away, maybe we should do something about it.”
Posted in DC, health, HIV, presentation, research, rights | Tagged conference, HVTN, social media
By bluerasberry on 2012-05-26
In this post I give some background about coffee in Seattle, tell horror stories about New York Coffee, and talk about early explorations about New York City coffeehouses.
I like coffee and for years have enjoyed coffee in Seattle. I made an effort to visit Seattle coffeeshops when I heard they were fun and I talk to the baristas about coffee and sometimes I go to coffee club meetings and talk to other people about coffee, but I am not a coffee authority or too serious about coffee. But I know that I like some kinds of coffee prepared properly and other kinds of coffee and coffee not prepared properly is no fun.
In Seattle I cannot think of any place which serves espresso poorly. I took for granted that all baristas learned a little about coffee and that they would all serve coffee to the best of their ability. Espresso machines are expensive, and one might think that if a coffeehouse owner spent the large sum to buy an espresso machine then that person might take the small amount of time to teach baristas in the establishment to make acceptable espresso.
Now that I am in New York City I live in a neighborhood with a predominantly dominican population and coffee seems not to be part of this culture, which is fine, so there are not coffeehouses in this neighborhood. But I expected when I found a commercial block on the edge of most residential neighborhoods, or when I went anywhere into the city, then I would find coffeehouses serving coffee thoughtfully. The last US cities I visited – San Francisco, Portland, and Vancouver – all have plenty of coffee options so I thought it would be the same anywhere, and especially in New York City. I further imagined that since rents were high, and since people had small apartments, they might want to get out of their apartments and hang out with their laptops drinking coffee in a coffeehouse.
The first experience I had was walking into some nice-looking corporate chain coffeehouse. There were pictures of coffee on the wall and the place was quite large and they sold nothing but coffee, tea, and pastries. It was obvious that corporate funding had decorated the place to corporate standards and every comfort which can be put into a soulless space was available there. Normally I like to patronize individually owned coffeehouses, but I was desperate and the place seemed like it was designed to deliver minimal competency. There were two espresso machines and the staff was hired to look and act friendly. I ordered an espresso and the barista said, “What size?” I said a double and we were both confused. The barista pointed at some bucket sized cups and said that I should choose one, and I said that I just wanted shots and asked if they had an appropriate cup. They did not, and wanted to give me espresso in a large cup, which of course would have made the drink cold to quickly and vaporized too much of the flavor with the increased surface area. They really wanted me to have an Americano, which for some reason must be what they call espresso.
I went to this place in the East Village called Café Pick Me Up. I ordered a doppio and finally, the barista said, “Okay, that’s a double espresso.” I was so happy! I pay for the coffee, and then he pours a tea for a friend who was with me. I was excited for my coffee, and then he grabs this little pitcher which in a normal coffeehouse would be full of cream. He puts a ceramic espresso cup on the counter in front of me and starts pouring “espresso” into it from the pitcher, and as he is pouring he counts off, “Single… double.” Prior to this I had other experiences which I am not mentioning and if I had not consistently been treated bizarrely before I would have thought that this was a joke. I drank it all so that I could better understand what it is like to live in New York City, and I am sure that was the oldest espresso I have ever had.
There are a lot of lame coffeehouses in NYC which can make okay espresso. Also many coffeehouses have no wifi so it is inconvenient for me to visit them if I cannot also plan to stay a while and do some computer chores. With the rent costing what it does here I wonder why so many people would pay to open a business then do nothing to make the interior welcoming or have character. Espresso does not taste as good when one drinks it in a room with plain walls at a plain table with a boring coffee bar.
I am making a list of good coffeehouses in NYC and sharing information about them. Here are some places which I have enjoyed.
- Kaffe 1668 – great coffee and great atmosphere
- The Roasting Plant – great coffee prepared by Javabot
- Indian Road Cafe – the closest place to my home, live music, special section in the cafe for coffee drinkers with laptops
- Everyman Espresso – great coffee, needs redecorating
- Porto Rico Importing Co. – I am not sure what management is thinking at this place. They have many types of coffee and do roasting but they have no place to sit and enjoy espresso. This place is fun to visit because of all the coffeebeans lying around.
Posted in New York City, service industry | Tagged coffee
By bluerasberry on 2012-05-17
I cannot believe this place. The Frick Collection has to be one of the best representative collections in the United States of European art from 1500-1850. It is housed in a museum which used to be someone’s house, and it is right next to Central Park in the Upper East Side.
I had never seen most of the paintings in this museum but they were so clearly representative of the styles of masters which with everyone is familiar that I instantly recognized who had created a lot of the paintings there. I decided to go when I did – on Saturday 12 May – because Nancy who invited me to that opera told me that it would be the last weekend of a Renoir exhibition featuring the dance paintings, and I wanted to see them.
It is not such a big place but it is full of the best paintings. It had this painting of someone important looking, and I wondered if it was a king. I checked it out and it was Philip IV of Spain. I do not know the history of this painting but it the tour said that it was an official royal portrait and I did not know those were sold. It had the picture I recognized of Thomas More – why is that not in England? Surely there are other portraits just like these two; if they were unique they would be in their home countries. I spent about three hours in the place.
I had a nice date with a boy at Columbus Circle after the museum, and that was a nice addition to a good day for me.
Posted in art, museum, New York City | Tagged paintings
By bluerasberry on 2012-05-13
Richard Knipel ([[user:Pharos]]) took me to the Museum of Modern Art the night of Friday 11th May. On Wednesday 9 May I was at a conference at Consumer Reports for the Choosing Wisely program, and at this conference I met collaborators in the program and came to understand what the program would mean to them.
Choosing Wisely is a campaign to produce and share information about healthcare diagnostic procedures. The premise behind the program is that physicians in the United States excessively recommend certain health diagnostic tests, and that if physicians and the public had greater access to information about these tests, then doctors and patients would be less likely to use these tests when the tests were unambiguously unnecessary. One way to describe the functioning of the campaign would be to recognize the following roles of players in the effort: there are producers of information like medical societies with health experts, there are sharers of information like patient and consumer advocacy groups, there are doctors who endorse procedures, then there are patients who receive procedures. The campaign strategy is to encourage expert communities to produce information, which they would give to information sharers, and hopefully the information sharers can get that information to doctors and patients, then hopefully the doctors and patients would consider the information when making healthcare choices.
At this 9 May event I met doctors, representatives from medical societies, and various groups advocating for patients (mostly labor-organizers). My part in this would be to give any of these information about how using Wikipedia as a platform for information sharing could result in increased access to healthcare information to people who might request it. The event was lovely, I met fascinating people, I came to understand healthcare advice from a new perspective, and I made professional contacts which excited me.
Consumer Reports is partnering with a consultant, Pete Forsyth of Wikistrategies, who is helping me to connect people who want Wikipedia information to this information. He is connected with the Wikimedia Foundation and makes introductions for me and connects me with resources to do whatever I want to do. While he was here we wanted to talk with Richard together.
I had been talking with Richard since before I had any thought of moving to New York City. He is the president of Wikimedia New York City and shows up in all kinds of Wikipedia-related outreach discussions. I met him in person for the first time on 1 May when he invited me to meet with some other visiting Wikipedians, and we talked for a few hours then. He took us across the Brooklyn Bridge and we discussed the upcoming Wikimania conference. I really like his ideas and talking with him. He is a positive, inclusive, and successful community organizer.
When Pete and I met him we talked more about developing relationships among Consumer Reports, Wikimedia New York City, and perhaps other community organizations. He has lots of ideas and more understanding than me of what others have tried in the past. Pete left for San Francisco and Richard suggested that we go to MoMA, and I was happy to have his accompaniment. We walked through Times Square to get there and since that was such a trafficked area I thought that I could have a coffee there but I checked out various places and they were consistently horrible even if they were selling espresso. I wanted a coffee and found one place which served me a bad espresso in a paper cup. Richard said that he had never been in the habit of having coffee.
We got to MoMA and I was in wonder. It does not surprise me now that I think about it, but I was not expecting that the museum contained a large number of works of art which are standards for learning about Western art. I think that most images shown [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_Of_Modern_Art#Artworks|here]] would be instantly recognizable to most people who have studied Western art. I quite enjoyed myself, and Richard told me about a past Wikipedia meetup here and about Wikipedia meetups in the area.
I quite enjoy working with Richard and expect to do more with him in the future.
Posted in art, health, museum, New York City, research, Wikipedia, work | Tagged Brooklyn Bridge, Choosing Wisely, coffee, Consumer Reports, Museum of Modern Art
By bluerasberry on 2012-05-01
I like Patrick a lot. I am not sure how I first met him. I think that it was at some HIV vaccine event in Capitol Hill in late 2010. Patrick says that we only talked during that night, but I thought I had spent a lot of time talking to him since then and I had a foggy idea that somehow when I met him I had known him previously. When I met up with him again in July 2011, I had these memories of conversations with him. We started talking more then one day some weeks later Patrick later told me that we had only met the once and the other memories I had were imagined and I felt disconcerted and doubtful both of him telling me this and of what I remembered. I still feel a bit strange around him because he seems terribly familiar to me as if I have known him a long time. He is exceptionally clever and well-spoken and I often find that he is able to repeat my words to me in a way that shows he effortlessly is able to understand my actions.
He has popped up in odd ways in several things which are important to me. He is interested in access to data and particularly mapping and demographic data, he has a great sense of direction and appreciation for urban environment and architecture, he knows a lot of people, he understands volunteer management and recruitment, and he is perceptive of how people make decisions and has this natural way of convincing people of things. He is a recruiter for HVTN vaccine studies, and that job changes people but I think he has an attitude about it that is different from any of the other recruiters I have met.
His father just died and he had just recently experienced the death of his mother as well. This was in Connecticut, and he was in the city doing some things, so we met up on Sunday 29 April. Before meeting him I was for the first time at the American Museum of Natural History, and he met me at their front door.
We talked about a lot of things. He took me on a tour of the city, described neighborhoods to me, pointed out differences between NYC people’s behavior and Seattle behavior. He took me to the Stumptown on 29th and I had an espresso and it was a huge relief for me. I had been really stressed about moving so quickly and anxious about my job the next day, plus something about the enormity of the buildings and the crowds of people here take acclimating and I was not accustomed to my new surroundings. It felt good to be with a friend and have a proper cup of coffee.
We went to the World Trade Center and to the Brooklyn Bridge at night. We walked to the middle of it and looked at the city. We talked about the right to access health information and our projects. He told me stories about how to relax and Patrick knows how to relax and he knows how to tell stories.
He was going back to Seattle but expected to be returning to the area for a while. I hope that I can meet up with him again soon.
Posted in museum, New York City, personal | Tagged American Museum of Natural History, Brooklyn Bridge, coffee, Patrick
By bluerasberry on 2012-04-30
I arrived in NYC on Thursday afternoon 26 April. I would be subletting, and Marty who gave me the room also gave me transit instructions to get to it. The transit was easy for me to use and I got to my neighborhood and everything was much nicer and more convenient than I was expecting. My place is as close as possible to the 1 transit line on 225th and the Metro North Transit line. My neighborhood is Marble Hill.
I was let in by Marty’s neighbor (my neighbor now) Nancy, who gave me advice about the neighborhood and invited me to an upcoming German opera production of Beauty and the Beast – Zemire und Azor. I explored the neighborhood and later when my house mate Ed returned home and I talked with him and we determined that we had more in common than we expected, so I am happy in my home.
Friday and Saturday I took the train into the city and walked around. It was a lot to take in. I walked though some parks and walked into some stores and tried to watch people in the different neighborhoods to see what they were doing. I looked for coffee and was really surprised that there seemed to be no coffeehouses anywhere.
On Saturday night I went to that opera. It was in the Liederkranz on East 87th on a small stage with an audience of about 40. The actors were so close and I had never appreciated what opera singing was before this. It made me realize that for every opera singer who performs professionally there are many equally talented singers who perform as amateurs and enthusiasts and who may or may not someday become professionals themselves. I do not have vocabulary to describe the show, but it had me entranced and I had never before heard voices do what they were doing with their voices.
Posted in New York City, personal | Tagged concert
By bluerasberry on 2012-04-22
I soon move to New York City to work as Wikipedian in Residence for Consumer Reports. A Wikipedian in Residence is a Wikipedia ambassador to an organization. In my case, I will work at Consumer Reports and help the organization establish relationships with Wikipedia. Consumer Reports is a famous United-States based consumer advocacy group. It is located in Yonkers, which is north of the Bronx in New York City.
I had seen Pete Forsyth around on Wikipedia sometime earlier, but when I setup WikiProject Open Access in January 2010 he listed himself as a member. I tried to schedule a talk with him but we did not manage to connect until 21 March, and I made that chat appointment with him about two weeks before then. Sometime after I made the appointment and before we talked he advertised a job notice for a position which would address the problem about which I wanted to discuss with him – the issue of how research institutions should engage Wikipedia. I had that chat with him and he advised me to apply for this position. In the meantime some other friends became aware of this position and sent it to me with a note that I had been talking about this position for many months, and that now it existed. I sent in my resume. I first interviewed by phone for this job on 3 April. I had a follow-up phone interview on 12 April. Sometime after that I went to a Wikipedia editathon in Portland and met Pete in person, and somehow I had a couple of other calls about this. I actually feel like I interviewed for this job a dozen times with many organizations but this was the first time that the organization actually was ready to hire someone, and I was absolutely tickled and enthused to be the recipient of a job I had imagined but which did not exist when I conceived it. It was a huge boost to my esteem to think that an idea I had was independently developed at Consumer Reports, which was an organization I already knew and greatly respected.
I was given a hiring offer and I accepted it. I posted on some Internet forums and luckily met a Consumer Reports employee without anyone’s direction, and he gave me advice on where I should live if I was to work there. I searched for a place in Marble Hill, the northernmost part of Manhattan, and found a shared housing situation in a great location which suited me well. I have been able to videochat with housemates before I moved in, so I feel safe that we will get along and that I will like my space.
The position is temporary and they only are promising that three months is certain, but they have at least six months of work. Still, I decided to get rid of all my stuff in Seattle and not pay rent on my place. When I return I can get new stuff.
I leave the afternoon of Wednesday 25 April after I give a final presentation to Kelly Edwards’ bioethics class for which I am Wikipedia campus ambassador. A clinician from the malaria trial is meeting me at that class to draw blood for a last time. I will not be finishing that study, but they infected me three times and they got all the data they needed to use for their primary outcome so I still was able to give the most useful biospecimens.
Posted in biobanks, clinical research, Seattle, Wikipedia, work | Tagged bioethics, blood, campus ambassador, malaria
By bluerasberry on 2012-03-31
I was going to Suzzallo Library this afternoon when just outside the library a baby squirrel fell out of a tree! I did not know it was a squirrel at first, but then a crow swooped down and pecked at it. Immediately I saw a parent squirrel looking very worried coming down the tree, and I started making noise as I ran to it.
I did not know it was a parent squirrel at first and she was scared of me, but then I saw that she was concerned about her baby. The little squirrel was furry and crying because he had been pecked twice (I think not hard, but it was about to get bad) and he had just fallen and was cold and it was raining. I stepped back and the mother quickly ran over, grabbed her baby, and carried him up the tree. The baby was quite large but she still was able to carry him. I think soon he will be a healthy young adolescent squirrel and able to take care of himself, but obviously he was having a bad day.
I am glad that I was there at the time I was. If I had not been there then maybe that crow would have carried him away and I wanted that baby to be safe.
Posted in animal, Seattle | Tagged rescue, rodent
By bluerasberry on 2012-03-25
Peggy Porter spoke representing the Consortium Biospecimen Resource (CRS), which is a biobank housed at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. She said that the organization has good procedures in place to conduct informed consent, collect specimens, and manage the sharing of specimens to researchers, but in her organization and in the industry in general there is no adequate communication strategy to re-contact specimen donors or study participants after the research is complete. She offered no suggestions for fixing the problem, but said that she wanted to hear new ideas.
I think that everyone in the room had been concerned with the problem of return of results for years and that no one knows what the solution is. Most people express the problem as a lack of ability to connect to the audience, and I certainly agree that this is true, but I think the bigger problem ultimately will be a lack of ability to communicate effectively once there is a communication channel established in the future. About the first problem of no communication channel – the reason this is a problem is because researchers typically are several degrees removed from the identities of the specimen donors. Specimens come from various sources including through recruitment in clinical trials, from personal physicians, from specialty physicians, through incidental tests, and from any other situation where a person might give a biological specimen in a place where someone also has time to say, “Can we use part of your specimen for research?” Often the donor has no relationship with the person receiving the donation, and the donation itself is not a memorable incident to the donor. At minimum the donation then changes custody into a biorepository, and from the biorepository to a researcher. There could be more links in the chain, but even in this ideal chain there are four parts – donor, local collector, biobank, and researcher. The local collector is perhaps the only agent who knows the donor’s identity and contact information, and since the local collector is often a small office, they do not have technological infrastructure to take on the logistical burden of receiving information from the biobank and relaying it to a participant. The biobank necessarily will have some identifying information about the patient, which may include some phenotypic data or it may be that they convert the biospecimen into biodata and they only share biodata for research. The researcher will have the least information, or at least no more information than what comes from the biobank. Researchers will generate some result, and the return of results would mean that they send the results to the biobank which is the primary steward and trustholder. The biobank would relay the message to the local collection center, who would get the message to the donor.
The solution to solving the message transfer part of the communication problem is probably an extra secure version of an online social network platform. It would need to be extra secure because since it contains personal health information there has to be greatly reduced risk of it being accessed by a non-authorized user. Mere online password login probably would not satisfy anyone for safety concerns.
But supposing the communication channel was in place. I hear a lot of researchers talking about how they want this channel, but I have a view that they would not know what to do if they had it because they are already making horrible communication decisions in the things which are totally under their control. There are already lots of times when study participants are available and do want information and nothing is available to satisfy them. What I want to see in clinical research is more effort into providing educational materials in layman’s terms, and I feel like this is hardly done. I also feel like if this were done it would be more satisfying in most cases than setting up the complicated communication channel which would be required for personal return of results, and anyway, a layman explanation of the research is prerequisite for a donor to be able to understand their personal results.
I do not fault anyone for the problems because technology advanced so quickly and we are just becoming conscious of the change. The simplest way that I can describe the issue is that a lot of people studied and worked in science for years, and now they are finding that in fact a significant amount of the work in their industry is within the domain of entertainment media production. Research participants demand explanations which are comprehensible and interesting to them and this has more to do with documentary journalism than anything else.
Posted in biobanks, clinical research, education, health, presentation, research, rights, Seattle | Tagged net generation, social media
