Michael Henley

I was reading an article in the Guardian today about the seemingly highly controversial selection of Judge Sotomayor as Obama’s new Supreme Court Justice. Personally I don’t know enough or care enough to have an opinion, but what has really struck me is the reasoning that the Republicans are currently running with against her.

The first one is that she is racist. From the evidence this seems to be a bit of a stretch, but take a look at the passage in question, an excerpt from a speech she gave in 2001:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” she said. “Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.”

To be honest, I can totally see where they are coming from in that if a white male suggested that he was likely to give fairer rulings just because of who and indeed what he was than a Latina woman, he would be branded a sexist, a racist, and hounded out of the race.

The second, and to me much more telling and amusing, argument is that she is un-American for the pronunciation of her name. Apparently for pronouncing it so-to-my-ORE instead of whatever the American equivalent would be (I am thinking something along the lines of sodom-AY-er) she is un-American. I have to say that until I read this latest accusation I had been pronouncing her name as she does. I know it is a Hispanic name and so would assume it would be pronounced like that. This whole ridiculous thing did bring back to me a great clip from 30 Rock. Tina Fey’s character is in a meeting for sexual harassment, and is attempting to reason with the very typical HR guy running it: (click image to play – requires QuickTime)

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Enough said…

I am sat in Caffè Nero on the High St in Oxford. Having paid in a cheque and been fitted for a ball suit I have popped in for a spot of brunch. While eating my meatball and mozzarella panini and drinking my latté I am keeping up to date with the news on my iPod touch. The guy at the next table is from college and is doing much the same but he is reading the dead tree Times. Over the past few days I have been fairly heavily revising for my prelim exams in a week and a half’s time and so I have been spending large portions of time in the Radliffe Science library. V easy place to work with the advantage of being undergroud and so there is no mobile reception. I periodically check Twitter on my iPod using their Wifi or access the online book database to find the Dewey reference of a text book to supplement my notes. It works perfectly.

Were I carrying around my laptop I would probably be crippled by the weight by now, but I can’t justify buying a netbook yet because my laptop is (kinda) portable and does more than I need despite being 2 years old. Looking at the new Asus Seashell I find myself very tempted but I keep thinking ‘it would be nice if it ran OS X’ (though I’m not sure how much that would change). This isn’t fanboyism, but more that I have a routine established there. I know how to make drive imaging work perfectly and jungledisk backs up my homefolder hourly to S3. Despite how beautiful Windows 7 is, and it really is. You know it’s good when @alexmuller with all his MS hating bile says it is the best netbook OS.

So what am I trying to say in all this. Something, and nothing. Partly I just really wanted to write something that wasn’t related to Biochemistry or Organic chemistry, but I also realized just how little I need something netbook- or even tablet-esque. The iPod is doing everything. It isn’t powerful enough and the frequentish keyboard hangs are getting a bit frustrating but if this had more power and a much bigger battery of would be the perfect computer in my pocket. If I am spending the day writing an essay then I will bring out the MacBook Pro if for no other reason than staring at this for prolonged amounts of time strains my eyes and 15″ screen is easier.

Would an OS X tablet/netbook be nice? Hell yes. Would I buy one? Honestly? probably not… I am not sure I am happy with the middle ground at the moment. My MBP may be heavy, but I bought it for some good reasons which still hold true and so if I am using a laptop I want that. A netbook or tablet won’t fit in my pocket for me to pull out, look up a reference, and then slip it away to dash off to the shelves. Make this iPod/ iPhone better or indeed bring out a competitor that has a similar app infrastructure and availability and then maybe we can talk. Until then the money is staying in NatWest, even if the eye candy is tempting.

I know, I know, I am *so* late to the game on this one, the game has in fact finished and the stadium is in darkness.. but despite that, I have decided to post a little something about Nike+ and an iPod. As I mentioned yesterday, my big gripe with this system is that Apple have decided to totally skip out the iPod touch 1st gen from supporting it. It frustrates me that I have to have and manage two iPods. As @hotdogsladies would say, totally a first world problem, but still a bit annoying.

This term I decided to try out the whole ‘being a bit healthy’ thing, and it isn’t too bad, but exercise truly is the most stultifyingly boring portion of my life. It is right up there with Statistics lectures. Yes. *That* boring. Therefore any little bit of shiny technology to distract me from this might just do the trick. What’s more, I have also learned something from looking at the past few days of records:

Screencapture of Nike+ site for last run

The info is uploaded the the website, and from there you can track progress over the past few days, weeks, months or years. Turns out that I can keep up a decent pace for ~1mile, but then start to drop and fluctuate my pace wildly. Something to work on perhaps.

Is the Nike+ a neccessity? Nope. Is it quite nice to have and use? Definitely. If you have a nano or touch 2nd gen then I would recommend spending the £15. You’re out in the rain if you have an iPhone or touch 1st gen though. While I was reading before buying one I found some great apps for the iPhone 3G which use the GPS to achieve a similar thing. Seemed quite useful so maybe I’ll give them a go in October.

Just installed the wordpress for iPod application. Looks like it works really well, but would be even better on an iPhone with camera etc. Really beginning to find the useful applications now. Still find it quite irritating that I can’t use Nike+ with my touch and the plug in transmitter. Don’t want a 2nd gen as I am waiting for the possible new iPhone in June. Also I was surprised to discover that the iPhone doesn’t have a receiver for Nike+ either. Surely if this device is meant to be *the* all-in-one device then making people need something else for excercising is non-sensical. Anti-Apple rant over so back to Molecular Biology Techniques lecture.