Kim Peek, Inspiration for ‘Rain Man,’ Dies at 58

In the wake of Christmas fun, you might have missed this story that appeared on Boxing Day.

Kim Peek, who was the inspiration for the character Dustin Hoffman made famous in Rain Man, died at the age of 58.

Peek's story is fascinating and this obituary in the New York Times does a good job of telling it:

Almost all documented savants — people with an extraordinary depth of knowledge and the ability to recall it — have been restricted in their expertise to specific fields like mathematics, chess, art or music. But Mr. Peek had a wide range of interests and could instantly answer the most arcane questions on subjects as diverse as history, sports, music, geography and movies.

“He was the Mount Everest of memory,” Dr. Darold A. Treffert, an expert on savants who knew Mr. Peek for 20 years, said in an interview.

Mr. Peek had memorized so many Shakespearean plays and musical compositions and was such a stickler for accuracy, his father said, that they had to stop attending performances because he would stand up and correct the actors or the musicians.

“He’d stand up and say: ‘Wait a minute! The trombone is two notes off,’ ” Fran Peek said.

Mr. Peek had an uncanny facility with the calendar.

“When an interviewer offered that he had been born on March 31, 1956, Peek noted, in less than a second, that it was a Saturday on Easter weekend,” Dr. Treffert and Dr. Daniel D. Christensen wrote about Mr. Peek in Scientific American in 2006.

They added: “He knows all the area codes and ZIP codes in the U.S., together with the television stations serving those locales. He learns the maps in the front of phone books and can provide MapQuest-like travel directions within any major U.S. city or between any pair of them. He can identify hundreds of classical compositions, tell when and where each was composed and first performed, give the name of the composer and many biographical details, and even discuss the formal and tonal components of the music. Most intriguing of all, he appears to be developing a new skill in middle life. Whereas before he could merely talk about music, for the past two years he has been learning to play it.”

Distilling the debate on climate change

If you're like me, you might be a bit confused about what exactly is everyone arguing about when it comes to climate change?

If you watch Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, things look pretty clear. But then you read a story demanding that Gore's Academy Award should be revoked because the film is all smoke and mirrors.

For most of us, the debate becomes the story - not the facts or allegations themselves. Fortunately, there are people who like to get at the facts of the argument and present them in a way that we can understand.

Here then, from the Information is Beautiful website are the arguments for and against global warming, presented in a straightforward, well-researched and easily understood format.

UPDATE - Factcheck.org has looked closely at the "Climategate" issue in this article. Same conclusions.

- via Daring Fireball

The book is not going away but it will change

The days just after Christmas are a traditional reading time around our house. Most of us get one or more books in our stocking and it's nice to curl up and read.

This year, the e-book is the talk of the town and there are lots of predictions that the book as we know it is doomed. I don't buy it. It's way too efficient and pleasurable to ever go away. But there's no denying that the dollars and sense of the publishing business are dictating changes to come.

So it was a pleasure to find this article at FastCompany.com about what the book might become:

The first movie cameras were used to film theater productions. It took early cinematic geniuses like Sergei Eisenstein, Fritz Lang, Charlie Chaplin and Abel Gance to untether the camera from what was and transform it into what it would become: a new art form. I believe that this dynamic will soon be replayed, except it will star the book in the role of the theater production, with authors acting more like directors and production companies than straight wordsmiths. Like early filmmakers, some of us will seek new ways to express ourselves through multimedia. Instead of stagnant words on a page we will layer video throughout the text, add photos, hyperlink material, engage social networks of readers who will add their own videos, photos, and wikified information so that these multimedia books become living, breathing, works of art. They will exist on the Web and be ported over to any and all mobil devices that can handle multimedia, laptops, netbooks, and beyond. (Hey, Apple, are you listening?)

Sounds good, doesn't it?

While I still plan to be curling up with pages and ink, I am looking forward to what's to come. I've got an iPhone and I love it. And I can see the possibilities for that platform. And with all the buzz about the new tablets, etc. that are on the way, the future for readers looks very, very good.

Happy reading.

Regret the error

I am fond of warning clients that we're entering a new era - you can't lie! If you do, you will be caught - if not now then later.

I argue that rather than "spinning" an issue, just tell the truth. Getting the true story out in your own words is always better than admitting it after someone else calls you out.

That's one of the reasons I like this time of year when people start compiling their year-end lists of things. One of my favourites is Regret the Error which tracks the media's screw-ups over the past year.

See which ones you remember and think about how things could have been handled differently.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

The spam attraction

What is it about spam that keeps it coming back, time after time?

"Do people really fall for the stuff that comes across their computer screen" is a question I'm asked a lot. Anyone who uses a computer will end up seeing a lot of crap that they didn't ask for and often have no idea why they're getting it.

The simple answer is that no, the people that sent those messages don't really expect anyone to buy their organ enhancer, or the pills that will do miraculous things. They just want to grab your attention for a split second - just long enough to slip a mailicious bit of software into your machine, so they can use it without your knowledge to send other people the same messages.

Those programs are called Trojan Horses (see this Wikipedia article for an explanation) and they're the computer hackers basic building blocks.

But I didn't start this post to tell you about how malicious software might end up on your computer, although it's a fascinating area for study. What I was wondering was whether any of you are starting to see more and more spam appearing on your Skype connections?

I've been using Skype for many years and I rarely had problems with receiving unexpected contacts from people I didn't know. I'd leave the program running in the background on my computer and pretty much forget about it.

But just lately, it seems that I've been spending a lot of time blocking meaningless contact messages from companies and people that I know nothing about. Many of these messages offer to sell me something, or invite me to visit their website to register for something.

I'm not sure what's going on. I suspect that following up on any of these offers would be a bad thing, as it always is in these cases. But every so often, it seems that a spammer somewhere figures out a way to get past the usual filters and starts flooding the Internet with junk. Sooner or later, the blocking software will catch up with them and we won't see any more of that particular piece of spam. But more will take its place.

I'm noticing this increase today because I so rarely see much spam anymore. I run all of my email, both incoming and outgoing, through Google Mail, which seem to have the most efficient spam filters I've ever had the pleasure of using.

I've been using Google as a route for my email for several years now and I've gotten used to never seeing a piece of spam for weeks on end. That doesn't mean I'm not receiving them. It's just that Google's filters are good at weeding them out of my inbox. Just today, I went and checked my Spam folder. I've received over 4100 items in the last 30 days. Today, I appear to have received almost 100 new ones, many of them two or three times.

But here's what's even more impressive. I've been checking my spam folder every day for about a week and I have yet to find a single piece of legitimate mail in there. Whatever kind of magic algorithms Google has cooked up to separate the good from the bad, it's working. And I continue to be impressed.

If you're getting more spam than you'd like, you should give serious consideration to routing your mail through Google's servers. It's a good way to stop spam. And as a bonus, you always have a complete backup copy of every email you've received, sent and deleted for as long as you've been sending that mail through Google. And you can find anything in seconds by using their tremendous search function.

If you'd like to set up your own version of spam-free email but you don't know how to use Gmail, drop me a line. I'd be happy to show you how easy it is to set yourself up.

The story behind the story

If you're like me, you like to read the details about news stories after the initial fuss has died down. Walking through the whole thing with a talented guide is always interesting and usually ends up helping with your own writing.

Perhaps you came across a recent story that got a bit of buzz in the mainstream media. The story was called Volunteers Log Off as Wikipedia Ages, by Julia Angwin and Geoffrey A. Fowler. It appeared in The Wall Street Journal. The bulk of the story is behind the paywall.

The gist of the story is that according to some research done as part of a doctoral thesis, Wikipedia is losing editors at a tremendous rate. That's how the story played out in most papers that carried some version of the story.

Doc Searls is one of those media guides I mentioned. In a blog post yesterday, he looked at the initial story and then dug deeper. He also went through a lengthy analysis prepared by Wikipedia itself that put the findings into context.

He winds up his piece with a bit of a personal note by telling us about his own experience as a Wikipedia editor.

It's a great read and by the end of it, I feel like I have a better idea of how the story developed and what it really means. I like that.

Who are the people who help you find the story behind the story?

On-the-ground in Honduras

The election in Honduras is going ahead on Sunday, Nov 29, although what it will accomplish is very much up for debate.

For background on the vote from the mainstream media, here's a report from Reuters.

For a more opinionated piece, read Rick Arnold's comments. Rick is the coordinator of Common Frontiers Canada, which is one of my long-time web clients.

Over the years, I've marveled at the hard-working folk who donate their energy and time to educate the rest of us about North (and now South) American Free Trade.

Common Frontiers is part of a delegation of observers that are on the ground in Honduras right now, filing reports back to Canada. It's a scary and exciting place to be and their reports are good reading.

You can find the daily reports in a special section I've created at www.commonfrontiers.ca/Honduras.

Let me know what you think.

Peter McKay should be ashamed of himself

Canada's Minister of Defense has a serious credibility problem. If ever there was a time to keep your lip zipped, it's when a senior government official has just testified to a parliamentary committee that Canada might have been involved in war crimes.

Ironically, I spent today helping prepare for a seminar on crisis communication. My advice? Stick to the facts. Say what you know and don't speculate. It didn't occur to me that anyone needs to be told that you also don't start shooting the messenger - I thought that was a given. But apparently, Peter McKay didn't get the memo.

For those of you who missed it, here's an excerpt from a CBC.ca story about Richard Colvin's testimony to the Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday.

All detainees transferred by Canadians to Afghan prisons were likely tortured by Afghan officials and many of the prisoners were innocent, says a former senior diplomat with Canada's mission in Afghanistan.

Appearing before a House of Commons committee Wednesday, Richard Colvin blasted the detainees policies of Canada and compared them with the policies of the British and the Netherlands.

The detainees were captured by Canadian soldiers then handed over to the Afghan intelligence service, called the NDS.

Colvin said Canada was taking six times as many detainees as British troops and 20 times as many as the Dutch.

He said unlike the British and Dutch, Canada did not monitor their conditions; took days, weeks or months to notify the Red Cross; kept poor records; and to prevent scrutiny, the Canadian Forces leadership concealed this behind "walls of secrecy."

"As I learned more about our detainee practices, I came to a conclusion they were contrary to Canada's values, contrary to Canada's interests, contrary to Canada's official policies and also contrary to international law. That is, they were un-Canadian, counterproductive and probably illegal.

"According to our information, the likelihood is that all the Afghans we handed over were tortured. For interrogators in Kandahar, it was a standard operating procedure," Colvin said.

He said the most common forms of torture were beatings, whipping with power cables, the use of electricity, knives, open flames and rape.

Colvin worked in Kandahar for the Department of Foreign Affairs in 2006. He later moved to Kabul, where he was second-in-command at the Canadian Embassy. In both jobs, Colvin visited detainees transferred by Canadian soldiers to Afghan prisons. He wrote reports about those visits and sent them to Ottawa.

That seems like the kind of event that calls out for a neutral response from the Canadian government. Something like, "These are serious allegations and we want to find out everything we can before we make any further comment." You don't want to prejudice anything. And you can't prove a negative.

But instead of a reasoned response, the government immediately set out to smear Colvin and pain him as "a suspect source" and a "Taliban dupe." This is what Peter McKay said in the House of Commons the next day:

“What we’re talking about here is not only hearsay, we’re talking about basing much of his evidence on what the Taliban have been specifically instructed to lie about if captured," he said (via the Toronto Sun)

And this from the Canadian Press:

MacKay said Colvin had not provided "one scintilla of evidence" that wasn't second-or third-hand information.

He painted Colvin as a Taliban dupe and said Canadians are being asked to accept the word of prisoners "who throw acid in the face of school children, who blow up buses of civilians in their own country."

Nor was MacKay alone. According to the Ottawa Citizen,

A government that really wanted to change the way business was done would want nothing more than to look into this kind of allegation and see whether there's any truth to it. Instead:

Ontario Tory MP Cheryl Gallant said that Colvin’s allegations “would not hold up in a court of law” and British Columbian MP Jim Abbott accused Colvin of having no first-hand verification that soldiers handed anyone over to torture, given that the supposedly abused detainees he interviewed did not implicate Canada.

I don't know why the Tories let this issue derail them so completely from a fairly standard crisis response. But they've handled it badly. And what was obviously not a good situation is going to become a lot worse.

There are serious allegations being made against specific people. An inquiry is probably necessary to put the issue to rest - especially when the first response has given more credence to the allegations instead of less.

The elusive goal - death with dignity

Since I've moved to Victoria, I've had the good fortune to get to know David Cubberly. Although he was my local MLA for a couple of years, I got to know him through mutual friends and pot lucks we've been at.

After several years covering politics at the Saskatchewan legislature in the latter part of the last century - boy does that make me sound old! - I've become a bit cynical about politics and politicians. But David is what I would call one of the good ones.

He didn't run in our last provincial election and he's turned his attention to local community work. He's also become a blogger and I recommend his writings. He's a well informed, thoughtful writer with a lot of interesting things to say.

His most recent post is called simply "Dignified Goodbyes." It's an eloquent essay about why the time has come for society to seriously consider euthanasia as an option for terminally ill people.

He writes about his aunt, who died peacefully, in her sleep, and how everyone who knew her was pleased by such a gentle death. But his mother, wasting away with cancer, suffered through a long, painful decline that was a misery for her and her caregivers.

If to be unaware of passing away is deemed by most a good death, next best would be choosing the moment in a manner that mimicked, so far as possible, a gentle way of passing. That’s a scenario not currently available to most of us, a situation many feel we need to change.

Here in Victoria, I've become involved with the Victoria Hospice as a Board member. If ever there was a group whose members understand the importance of dying with dignity, the hospice workers are it. Death is a subject that most people avoid, yet it is as natural and as wondrous as birth - and as inevitable. All of us will die. We just don't know when.

David says the time has come for society to reconsider the question of a death with dignity.

I think we're coming to a time of decision with regard to personal choice for a dignified ending of life. There are signs of an emerging resolve on the public's part to see the issue addressed, especially in defined situations like terminal illness. Here on the west coast, where Sue Rodriguez was a public figure, where neighouring Oregon's Dying with Dignity Law demonstrates how safeguards can work, there's strong sentiment in favour of change.

Many believe it's ethically wrong to force someone dying slowly in great pain to simply tough it out. Yes palliative care should always be available and still isn't, as should hospice, to enable those who can to hang on until disease runs its full course. But we must face what most doctors recognize: palliation of suffering may be ineffectual at the higher reaches of pain, and the agony of lost autonomy and dignity can lead people to want to go.

It's time we recognized individual choice in the matter and ensured a humane and compassionate way to exercise it.

David's post is a lengthy look at a lot of the issues around physician-assisted death. He also talks about MP Francine Lalonde's private member's bill that is working its way through the House of Commons and he urges readers who would like to see parliament deal with the issue seriously to contact their MP and make their views known. (Judging by the volume of Google results when I searched under "bill c-384 canada news" I'd say that the anti-euthanasia lobby is very, very active and formidable, so I'm not sure that the bill has any chance of moving forward.)

Still, I urge you to read David's entire essay, and, if you agree, consider adding your voice to those who believe that the time has come to ensure that all Canadians have the right to live - and die - in dignity.

Online bookstores reveal our future

There are a lot of people that like to predict doom. It's an easy thing to do. After all, if you're wrong, that's a good thing, right?

In my lifetime, as in yours, a lot has changed. And the pace of change appears to be picking up speed. Or maybe that's another part of ageing. The more we can remember, the more items we have to compare with what we have now and it seems that more things are different. And they are.

Our information revolution has made it easier for doomsayers to operate. No matter what they're talking about, the Internet makes it easy to find evidence that just might prove their prediction. The online arguments against H1N1 vaccination stand up as evidence of that.

What's more interesting however, are online discussions that cut through the doomsayers arguments, exposing them as self-serving nonsense and opening up a more reasoned look at the issue and perhaps stimulating some honest discussion about the relative merits for and against. OK, I admit it. Deep down, I'm still an idealist.

That kind of confusing, round-about opening brings me to Clay Shirky. He's an interesting guy. He's not a glass half empty or a glass half full type. He's more of the "Hey, look at that glass," sort. He doesn't post to his blog that frequently, but when he does, people pay attention. He's one of those thinkers who people pay attention to because what he says always seems to make so much sense.

His most recent post is called Local Bookstores, Social Hubs, and Mutualization. Unlike my struggles with clarity in the opening to this post, Shirky grabs the reader's attention right from the start. Here's the first two paragraphs:

Last month, the American Booksellers Association published an open letter to the Justice Department, asking Justice to investigate Wal-Mart, Target, and Amazon after they lowered prices of best-selling books to under $10. The threat, the ABA says, is dire: “If left unchecked, these predatory pricing policies will devastate not only the book industry, but our collective ability to maintain a society where the widest range of ideas are always made available to the public, and will allow the few remaining mega booksellers to raise prices to consumers unchecked.”

Got that? Lower prices will lead to higher prices, and cheap books threaten to reduce the range of ideas in circulation. And don’t just take the ABA’s word for it. They also quote John Grisham’s agent and the owner of a book store, who both agree that cheap books are a horrible no-good very bad thing. So bad, in fact, that the Department of Justice must get involved, to shield the public from the scourge of affordable reading. (Just for the record, the ABA is also foursquare against ebooks being sold more cheaply than paper books, and thinks maybe Justice should look into that too.)

He goes on to effectively sever the arguments of the ABA, among others, that lower prices for books are a threat to knowledge. Which is the same conclusion most people will come to if they think about it for very long. From there, he speculates on the future of bookstores in the Internet age.

If you've never read Shirky's stuff, go ahead and check out this post and grab the RSS feed. I think you'll like it. He has a disconcerting habit of taking issues that I've been mulling over and talking about them in such a clear and straightforward manner that I can't remember why I was puzzled by them in the first place. And I like writing that does that.