Snowball (also called a Chaterism): A poem in which each line is a single word, and each successive word is one letter longer. One of the constrained writing techniques utilised by the Oulipo (Workshop of Potential Literature).

This, I thought, makes haiku seem trite.

I 
am  
the  
only  
idiot  
trying  
hardest  
flailing  
oblivious  
gesundheit

Well, maybe in difficulty. It starts off with not many choices beside I and A, perhaps O if you’re feeling lyrical, or some other letter if that’s what the poem is about. Then it gets easier for a bit then really really hard.

You could up the ante and go geometric, at least for a while but the options in 32-letter words are scant outside of scientific compounds. If you’re bored with starting with “I” you might borrow a constant.

π
to
math 
geometer 
counterbalancing

A Fibbonacci series of lengths (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13…) lets you get Walt Whitmanesque

O
I
am
the
earth
sunburnt
onomatopoetic

OK, I had to get some help to finish that one. Too much, or not enough? I think a decent computer program could write better snowballs than I can. I’ll stick with my imperfect English haiku attempts at evoking the seasons.

The 54 foot high duck brought its usual brand of whimsy and good will to the people of Hong Kong, but apparently caused some alarm when a scheduled maintenance deflation caused some concern to duck viewers. Quoth the BBC,

The giant bird, … was found lying on its side on Tuesday night and was completely flat by Wednesday, reports say.

The Wall Street Journal gets extra points for making a hedcut of the duck and quotes a source close to the collapsed canard:

Harbour City said the duck was being deflated for a routine inspection and repairs after exposure to heavy waves in the harbor.

The photos of the deflation are too much to bear posting here so I’ll let you click through above if you must. If this is anything other than scheduled maintenance, to the duck deflators I say: you’ll take away my inflatable duck when you dredge it from the cold dead harbor floor. The duck lives on inside of everybody who’s ever seen it, even just in pictures.

A popover, for those unfamiliar, is a hollow muffinesque confection of egg batter. The name seems to have something to do with the gusto with which a popover overflows its muffin tin. At $2, it’s a nicely affordable (and surprisingly filling for being hollow) inflatable comfort food.

there are these skeuy treats for anxious cats.

palimpsest |ˈpalimpˌsest|

noun
a manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain.
• something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form: Sutton Place is a palimpsest of the taste of successive owners.

Now that’s my kind of infographic. It’s too bad you typically only get this sort of diagram with German or Japanese candy. To my mind, it should be as required as the nutrition information or the candy guide for the perplexed. Via Steve Almond’s CandyFreak, you can also test your ability to identify candy bars by their cross sections, and there’s a whole load of cross-sectional chocolate fun at Edible Cartography. It should go without saying that I really like that name.

so I’m happy to file these billboards under real-life glitch art.

I parked myself on the bench and ate my lunch. I would happily have fed the meter if that were necessary, but the good folks at Stantec had done their permitting homework and the park was free and clear all day. And, they were giving away little pine tree seedlings!

This is not an isolated incident. There is a movement of a sort called park(ing) that temporarily (re)claims parking spaces as parks, and there’s even park(ing) day on the third Friday in September, so mark your calendar for 9/20/13 and stock up on quarters and astroturf.

Notice, by the way, what’s in this park, designed by landscape architects, that’s not in the North End pocket park I noted not too long ago: seating. Just a thought.

Are we allowed to just fill in a number? It’s got to be soon, I can see the LevelUp terminal is already in place.

In a year that’s seen the almost unprecedented resignation of a pope and violent ends to the reigns if not the lives of some long-running despots, I have to wonder why more leaders – in business as well as politics – don’t make graceful, controlled exits and enjoy some retirement. Yeah, I’m looking at you, Mrs. Windsor.

In this post, Felix Salmon opines that Artnet’s desire to legitimize fine art as an investible asset class has gotten ahead of their ability to build a usable, meaningful index, which is unfortunately the showpiece of said legitimization strategy.  Artnet has released the C50 index of contemporary artists, which they say “combines performance data from 50 leading Contemporary artists, who best represent the Contemporary Art auction market.” They proudly display a chart of this index beating the snot out of the S&P 500 since 1988. Salmon cuts it down to size quickly:

The performance of the C50, then, is largely a function of the fact that hot artists keep on getting added — after they’ve become hot. It’s a classic case of investing with hindsight: if you only bought things which performed extremely well, then you would have made lots of money. Well, thanks for that.

…

Finally, it’s no coincidence that Artnet’s first public index is its contemporary art index — the one part of the art world which has been on fire of late. It’s the third level of survivorship bias: if and when Artnet starts publishing its Old Masters index, say, you can be sure the numbers won’t look nearly as impressive.

The whole idea of an index is that it boils down a whole universe of stuff into a single figure that you can use, over time, to compare the performance of that universe to itself, and ideally, to other indices. We all know that the components of the S&P 500 change, but it’s still a petty good benchmark on big business in the USA. In fact, it’s pretty highly correlated with many stock indices around the world. Artnet chooses a new list of top 50 artists every year and adjusts the divisor much like the S&P does. To its credit, Artnet’s selection of artists for the C50 is purely rules-based, while the S&P 500 has some subjectivity that a committee works out.

So what’s the big deal? Salmon says it’s selection bias, and he shows a few layers of it, from the backward-looking selection of artists to the selection of contemporary artists as a period of focus to the weighting of each artist and each kind of work for each artist. For me, the big deal is that you can’t invest in art the way you can invest in markets, so the whole idea of comparing the C50 to the S&P is dangerous.

Artnet’s data come from auction sales (I wonder if the buyer’s premium is taken into account), and that’s not the only way to buy art, especially the art of living (contemporary) artists. Artnet is aggregating (and I’m not saying that their method is good or bad as method) the prices of many works of art by a given artist, each of which could be quite different. By contrast, a share of IBM is a share of IBM, so the market cap or share price of IBM is a figure equally meaningful to all investors. Shares of stock are fungible financial assets, works of art are frequently unique.

Sure, a record-setting auction sale of a piece by a given artist can boost the value of other works by that artist, but the only way you can expect to achieve the chart of the C50 is to buy – and sell – all the works by all the artists in the index at all the auctions.  Maybe the law of averages would be on your side if you could afford just one (properly-weighted) piece by each of the 50 artists, but the easiest way to achieve results very similar to those of the S&P is to buy a share of an index fund or ETF, and you can do that for $160 or so today, plus a modest commission. There is no C50 index security to buy, and while some stocks pay dividends and none have storage costs, buying actual art has substantial transaction, storage and preservation costs, and unless you charge admission to see the work, it will not bring any dividends.

I sure don’t mean to say that the stock market as embodied by the S&P 500 is the best of all possible investments, I just mean to say that somebody with a point to make and a thing to sell can probably craft an “index” that outperforms by using hindsight, selection bias, and an artful disregard for the different mechanics of the markets and assets.

So the next time somebody shows you a chart that shows that contemporary art – or Boston real estate, 2000 vintage Bordeaux, action figures from the 1970s, or any other not so liquid commodity – has outperformed the stock market, think hard about how they figured that out, and just as importantly, how you as an investor could reasonably hope to achieve those returns without either an infinite amount of money or a time machine.

I think every phone has some kind of wake/sleep/on/off kind of button and a rocker or pair of buttons for volume.  After that, physical buttons get scarce. Except for the iPhone most have gone with capacitive “buttons” little patches of touchscreen with little or no tactile identity, and some of which, annoyingly, only light up and reveal their function when you touch them.

For clean design and let’s face it, cost control and durability, you want the fewest physical switches you can get away with. So what’s critical?  In my view, what critical for a physical button is whatever you want to be able to do quickly or without looking at the phone – either stuff you might do while on a call (does anybody still do that?) or stuff you want to do fast.  Here’s my list:

- STFU button: because you need a way to make your phone stop making noise as fast as possible.  A volume down button that you keep jabbing while your inappropriate ringtone ruins your best friend’s wedding is just not fast enough. This should be a mute button plain and simple. All sounds and vibration off at one press. I think the iPhone has this next to the (two!) volume buttons. I usually set my phone to use vibrate for all alerts rather than play a sound, but there always seems to be some app that wants to make a noise at the wrong time.

- Snapshot button: because when your baby/pet/sunset/accident/celebrity sighting/wardrobe malfunction moment happens, you need to snap it quickly.  I’d prefer this button to turn on the phone in camera mode and immediately take a shot.  Most camera buttons I’ve seen put you into camera mode if your phone is already on and unlocked, and also work as a shutter button once you’re there.  Not fast enough, I say. They’re just starting to get acceptably quick shutter lag, but that’s no help if it takes two taps and a swipe just to be able to start shooting. My now retired HTC Glacier / MyTouch had a camera button, but you still had to turn press the power button to wake the phone up and swipe to unlock it before you could even try to take a shot.  My new HTC One lets you get to the camer with a single swipe from the lock screen, but again, you have to press the wake up button and once in camera mode you have to hit the shutter.

That’s it, just two buttons that I wish my phone had that I could find in the dark or in a pocket or without looking, and access immediately without going through menus or steps. Also nice to have but really I could live without if there was a reasonable way to do it in the software: volume controls and wake/sleep.  In the why bother column, though I have to say they were useful for figuring out which end of the phone was up, home, back, windows, genius, whatever those three lines mean, etc.

After some research, I figured out that I couldn’t have my chosen buttons, at least not on the set of phones I was considering. I chose the HTC One because T-Mobile offered me a free car dock with it. This device has just two (arguably three) buttons: a barely raised black rectangle on the top left of the phone that turns it on and off and wakes it up and puts it to sleep, and a rocker switch for volume control on the right edge.  If you grab your phone with your left hand, you can hit the power button with your thumb and the volume with your index finger. With your right hand, the opposite.  Either way, you’re then going to have to use your other hand or your dextrous thumb to do stuff on the phone.  I’d argue that it’s almost unavoidably a two-handed job given the size of the phone. At the bottom of the phone (by the way, I haven’t yet figured out how to tell top from bottom without looking at it, and even then the power button on top looks a lot like the micro-usb port on the bottom) the HTC logo looks like a button but does nothing. To its left is the back “button” and to its right the home “button” – while you can see which is which on sight even unlit, neither one (or the HTC logo for that matter) has any feel other than smooth glass.

Maybe I’ll get used to this as I got used to on-screen keyboards, largely due to good software engineering (swype), but for now it feels like the smooth monolith of design bas bulldozed this monkey’s pattern of tool usage.

A commercial real estate source familiar with the deal said Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX) is planning to open in the former book stall space at about $500 per square foot. Barliant was paying about $100 per square foot or $4,000 a month, not including maintenance, real estate taxes and marketing, on a lease that was signed many years ago. The store had been at South Station since 1994.

You’re probably thinking that I’m going to deliver a teary eulogy for a dearly-departed brick and mortar bookseller, as I have done for a stationery store. Well, yes, I will miss it in a nostalgic kind of way, but the truth is that I haven’t browsed or even been tempted to buy anything there for years. My reasons for not patronizing the South Station book stall are probably not so unusual and will furnish some clues to why Barbara’s can’t or won’t pay as much rent as Starbucks seems to.

The bookstores of the 1990s called, they want their business model back.

I think the book market has simply passed shops like this by. Barbara’s had pretty much one thing going for it: location. Location in a place where people are waiting around before being stuck in a metal tube for a while is pretty sweet – until everybody has a bookstore in their pocket and can download ebooks in seconds. This was not a discount bookstore, it wasn’t an antiquarian bookstore, it didn’t have a nice cafe or a friendly bookstore cat or comfy seating to make it a nice retreat from the bustle of the train station (sadly, the whole of South Station has neither a nice cafe nor comfy seating), it didn’t offer author events like readings or book signings. The busy business traveler waiting for the Acela to New York is most likely packing a smartphone, tablet, e-reader or laptop computer, if not all four, and despite the crappy wifi in South Station proper, these travelers are probably hooked up to the mobile network and they know there will be free wifi on the train, too. By and large, they just don’t want paper books anymore.

Just as all the traditional comforts of a bookstore are absent in a kiosk in a train station, all the traditional comforts are reading are nullified by having to read on the train. It turns out that poor lighting and crowded or cramped conditions make reading on a device a better choice than a paper book on many trains.

Know when to hold em, know when to fold em

A business closing is generally a sad thing, but I’d rather that this one realizes that times and preferences have changed and either closes down or changes. It appears that they’ll reopen in a smaller and less well-located kiosk in the station, and that is probably the start of protracted and painful exit. Could they reinvent themselves and sell ereaders and the sort of travel accessories today’s Acela and commuter rail traveler want? Perhaps, but that sounds more like those Brookstone outposts in the airport that charge you $25 for a USB cable. Few businesses shrink to greatness and I think it might be best for this one to see the writing on the wall and move along.

I’d rather have some decent food (your best bet now is to go across the street to the Dewey Square food trucks) or decent seating in South Station than a Starbucks, but I’m pretty sure that Starbucks will provide something that commuters really want - charging stations for their precious mobile devices.

All ImagineNations™ are handmade to order on vintage globes. Remember, they’ve all had prior lives, so expect to see some “character”. Also, because of their age, many of the globes are no longer geographically accurate.

I’m of two minds here. These are charming objects but it’s hard for me to see vintage maps and globes used as raw material – my deep-seated cultural veneration for books as objects seems to have extended to maps and globes. Don’t get me wrong, I do like map-based art, I’m just a little squeamish about destroying old maps - especially those that are “no longer geographically accurate” – even if they are being reborn as new art objects. Maybe I wish the new art had more to do with the “prior lives” of these globes, not just their formal properties.

Enough griping. As long as nobody’s destroying priceless antiques, more globes in more homes makes me more happy. If you feel guilty about using an old globe for art, maybe you could clear your conscience by donating new globes to classrooms that need them.

We will be bringing together investors, sustainable food entrepreneurs and leaders working together to rebuild our local food system. Learn about investment opportunities and how you can participate in rebuilding local economies based on the principles of soil fertility, sense of place, care of the commons and economic, cultural and biological diversity.

And deliver on that they did.  Six businesses in various states of startupness presented, each allotted five minutes and five slides to present, and five more minutes for audience Q&A.

Culticycle
OK, not the sexiest name, but this contraption, described as a “…pedal powered tractor for cultivation and seeding, built from lawn tractor, ATV, and bicycle parts” apparently does the job cheaper and not all that much slower than a diesel tractor does, and it’s better for the health of the operator and the environment, too.

Mei Mei Street Kitchen
I’ve kvelled about the Mei Mei food truck here before, but at the showcase they unveiled their plan for an immobile restaurant, and also showed how they could use this restaurant as a base of operations for the food truck business and increase its efficiency in the bargain.

Full Sun Company
Did you know that they grow sunflower seeds in Vermont? I had no idea. I also had no idea that most of the oil seed grown in this country is exported for processing and then we re-import the stuff as oil and meal and other finished products. Full Sun aims to process seeds locally and sell the oil and meal locally, reducing costs and greening the process along the way.

Fresh Truck
I briefly met the Fresh Truckers at Mass Innovation Nights Foodie Edition.  They are setting up a retrofitted school bus as a mobile farmers market to try and green some of the fresh food deserts of the Boston area.

Fresh Food Generation
Starting with some sobering information about obesity and diabetes in Boston’s neighborhoods and following up with a map of the food options nearest a community pool (three fast food chain outlets and a liquor store), FFG’s pitch for a “farm-to-plate food truck enterprise that serves healthy cooked foods in low income communities” had real impact.

CERO (Cooperative Energy, Recycling & Organics)
This team of employee owners, multicultural and multilingual, is trying to bring the trash hauling and recycling business in Boston out of its “wild west” state by shifting the economics from favoring tonnage to landfills to favoring source separation for recycling and re-use in the community.

These capsules just scratch the surface.  You can read a bit more at the event’s hashtag #SMESbos and of course from each firm’s site. What’s even more inspiring to me than each individual business plan is that these entrepreneurs are so supportive of one another and are already sharing information, mentoring one another, even working together at this early stage.

If you care about the food system in Boston and New England, these are people and companies well worth getting to know.

I’m not sure about the idea that riders who know they aren’t getting off soon are any more likely to pack in to the ends of the cars – I often see people standing right in front of the door for many stops even on half-empty trains. But I do like the designs where (at least some of) the doors are staggered rather than opposite. On lines where the doors open on each side of the train at about the same number of stops, this should help move people in and away from the doors at least a little more often.

Until the science is complete and new cars are in place, just remember that blocking the door slows down the train at every stop and that’s a lousy tradeoff for getting out a tiny bit faster when it’s finally yours. Similar logic applies to those waiting behind the yellow line to board the train.