A Chicago Tribune article explains the disappearance: it was a BigBelly “smart can,” and it was deemed a potential hazard to next month’s NATO summit.

This raised all sorts of questions for me.

Are the BigBelly cans a good idea?

Yes, I think so. They’re solar-powered, so they require no infrastructure to install: just plant and go. Their internal compactors mean that they have much greater capacity than ordinary cans, and their output will take up less space in a landfill, which is a huge issue for the city these days. Also, according to the Trib, they send an email when they get full, a system that appears to result in quick response—in addition to its labor-saving benefit to workers that only have to empty cans that need emptying. Fuel savings and reduced air pollution are other positive factors. This is a technology that works.

How much of that labor-saving benefit is now being negated by having to remove the BigBelly cans, and later re-install them?

A lot, I’ll bet. Most of it, maybe—the cans were only installed a year ago. And yes, the work is being done by city workers so we’re all paying for it. Meanwhile who knows when, if ever, the smart cans—which cost nearly $4,000 each, part of a $2.5 million deal—will return to Chicago’s downtown streets. (“When the city’s public safety departments have deemed it appropriate to do so,” says the Streets&San spokesperson. Uh-huh.)

But isn’t the city right in thinking them less easy to check “for anything dangerous”?

Well, yes, I suppose so. With their drop-box hatches it’s not all that easy to view the contents of BigBelly cans. But aside from that, they’re not all that much more opaque than old-fashioned wire baskets, as the photo at right shows—the wire baskets house solid plastic inserts. Let’s be realistic: it is, unfortunately, not that difficult to make an effective, er, “dangerous anything” that can be readily camouflaged as innocuous-looking garbage, such that any wire basket more than half-filled with trash will conceal it from all but the most thorough checks (i.e., dumping everything out and sorting through it).

So, if it’s not likely to make much of a safety difference, why do it?

Here’s the rub: if something hidden in a wire basket goes bang and hurts people, the word is that it was hidden “in a trash container.” If it goes bang in a BigBelly can, that brand name is splashed all over every headline—right above a big colour photo of mayhem and destruction. In short, this is all a matter of pre-emptive face-saving on the part of the city, which has an option to buy many more BigBelly cans in the future.

I don’t blame the city for doing this; I really think it’s in our best interest, although I’m still a little disappointed to see these neat pieces of smart tech vanish from the streets. But let’s not pretend it’s going to make anyone any safer. It’s no substitute for what’s really needed, which is for every member of the public to take personal responsibility for public safety: to maintain awareness, to report suspicious activity, to “see something, say something.”

And finally, the big question few in this town ever seem to see fit to ask…

Which of former Mayor Daley’s friends and/or family made a buck off the BigBelly deal?

Come on, you know that’s what makes this “The City That Works.”

I started with his classic The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, a paragon of the genre, then went straight into Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy—wanting to finish it before checking out the latest film adaptation starring Gary Oldman. That book was so riveting that I don’t think I’ll be able to stop at least until I finish the entire “Karla Trilogy,” and as such I am now well into The Honourable Schoolboy.

The thing that so fascinates me about these books—aside from the mere fact of their high literary quality—is this: I think we’ve all gotten used to the notion that a “spy thriller” is what we get from James Bond or Jason Bourne or Jack Ryan. To wit, a contiguous sequence of action set-pieces; squealing tires and machine gun staccato and elaborate fisticuffs and a massive explosion at the end. But le Carré uses almost none of these tropes. The Spy Who Came In from the Cold is bookended with brief moments of violence, but that’s it for “action” as we’ve come to expect.

His actors aren’t supermen, nor indestructible forces of nature; they’re real people, human, fallible, prone to doubts and fears and errors. The stakes are high, so they tread carefully—and when a colleague dies, they feel the loss deeply. They don’t steel their jaws and move on in vengeful stoicism; they cry.

What happens in these novels is, for the most part, people sitting in rooms talking. Or walking together and talking. Or just… thinking about things. Much of the action takes place off-stage, while we learn of it through someone (usually George Smiley) sitting at a desk and reading the pages of an agent dossier or case report.

And yet—it’s all so gripping. There’s tension on every page, and the build-up to the climax (albeit often a quiet, sitting-in-rooms-talking kind of climax) keeps the pages turning. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is almost a mystery novel, rather than a spy novel, as Smiley gathers the clues that allow him to expose the mole within the Circus. As a protagonist, he’s closer to Jane Marple than James Bond. When, toward the end of the novel, he carries a gun, it’s almost shocking. You don’t want him to have to be so uncouth as to have to arm himself, let alone squeeze the trigger. But you root for him all the way nevertheless.

On top of that, there’s the fact that the author himself worked for the British intelligence services for many years. The sense of reality contained in his tales is so deep that I have to remind myself that these books are not historical non-fiction; that George Smiley didn’t really exist; that MI6 was not infiltrated by Soviet moles in the 1970s and very nearly brought to its knees (at least, so far as we know).

And it’s clear to me that the real world of spycraft is much more like the world of le Carré and George Smiley, all research and information-gathering and thinking, than it is like James Bond or Jason Bourne. And that makes these novels all the more interesting and exciting.

I found his method to be dangerous and scary. Not saying it’s wrong, but it is for experts only. Grabbing ingredients on the fly, using a pan that’s “as hot as you can get it,” his inversion technique for flipping—these all need someone who knows what he or she is doing and can work at a short-order cook’s pace, not to mention a spatula that is shaped to allow you to invert a pan over it without the risk of burned fingers.

One of the How-To guys (Ian, I think) said this “high-action method” was “making [him] tense.” It did me, too. They likened it to mixing a drink à la Tom Cruise in Cocktail. But when you screw that up, you spill booze and break bottles. Screw up Marshall’s grilled cheese method, and you’re throwing around scalding hot oil and melted cheese. Next stop, burn unit.

My method takes only slightly longer, but anyone can do it with very little kitchen expertise. To paraphrase “The Tortoise and the Hare,” low and slow wins this race.

Start with your mise en place—a French chef’s way of saying “get your shit together.” Butter one side of bread, set it butter-side up on your work surface, then butter the next slice and set it on top of the first, buttered sides facing each other. This back-to-back layout keeps you from getting butter on everything, and now you have an open-faced area on which to put your cheese—grated cheese will melt better than slices—and any add-ons. (As an aside, my favorite addition is roasted green chiles from a can.)

Meanwhile, heat up your pan at a setting only one or two notches above simmer at most. I highly recommend a cast-iron pan, which does the best job of grilling and also avoids the health risk of dry-heating a non-stick pan. If you must use a non-stick pan, either put the sandwich into a cold pan, or use Marshall’s butter-in-the-pan-not-on-the-bread method.

When everything’s ready, and the pan is hot but not searing, pick up the entire back-to-back sandwich and place it into the pan as if you’re cutting a deck of cards: take the top slice with its cheese and put it on the bottom, and the bottom slice and put it on top, so your sandwich is now fully assembled as it starts to grill.

Cover the pan very loosely with a lid—enough to trap some heat and speed the cheese-melting, but not enough to trap steam and make the bread soggy. By the time the bread is nicely grilled, which will only take a few minutes, the cheese will have begun to melt—this will allow you to flip the sandwich normally. Grill the second side uncovered. While this is happening, you’ll have time to clean up without risk of overcooking the sandwich.

Ten minutes, start to finish, and with any luck no calls to the fire department.

Every year XRT runs a listener poll, which is a great way for the station both to generate listener involvement and to get feedback on its programming. The results are pretty good: of course “Best Albums” and “Best Songs” are not necessarily the best of all the year’s music—they’re the year’s best releases that XRT has been playing. Still, that’s to be expected given the responder base—XRT regular listeners—so there’s nothing inherently wrong with the results in those categories.

I have a major problem, however, with one of the other categories: “Best Concerts.”

The problem is simply one of volume: the bigger the show, the larger the potential number of voters for it, and therefore the more likely it is to make the list—regardless of quality.

Take a look at the 2011 results. I think we can take as a given that people who didn’t see a particular concert are unlikely to vote for it; but that everyone who attended a concert is a potential voter for it. If we assume that each of the top 10 concert events on the list were sold out (a safe bet), we can determine each event’s potential voter base by multiplying the capacity of the venue by the number of shows/nights in the event. When we do this, not one of the events listed has a vote potential of less than about 4,000. (Well, okay, the smallest is 3,880—the capacity of the Chicago Theatre.) The average vote potential for those ten events is over 60,000.

Multiple shows, such as Wilco’s 5-night, venue-hopping “residency,” are lumped in together as a single event, regardless of whether a voter meant the incredible first-night show with Mavis Staples at the Civic Opera House, or the intimate final-night appearance at Lincoln Hall. This is about the only way smaller venues will appear on the list. (Last year, Buddy Guy’s 16-night residency at his own Legends took 3rd place: a very small venue—550 capacity—but a lot of shows.) Meanwhile Lollapalooza has placed in the top 5 every year (except 2009, when it took 9th) since it arrived in Chicago in 2005; regardless of how terrific the Coldplay or My Morning Jacket or Foo Fighters sets might have been, Lolla’s 3rd-place finish this year was surely not harmed by having a vote potential of more than a quarter million.

“I put on shows at the Saturn so that the kids can see the stage, afford the tickets, and hear the music. So screw stadiums.” — the immortal Max Wolfe, in Get Crazy

In an interview celebrating Lin Brehmer’s twenty years with XRT (as an aside, congratulations to my “best friend in the whole world”), he stated that among his favorite places to see live music are: Metro, Park West, Old Town School, SPACE, Lincoln Hall, Schubas. As he so concisely and forthrightly put it, “Small is usually best.”

And yet, because of the vote potential of the bigger shows, not one show that played at any of those venues made the “Best Concerts” list—even though four out of Brehmer’s six made XRT’s list of “Best Venues.” That’s because these smaller venues lack vote potential. The most incredible, once-in-a-lifetime show in the history of the universe, appearing for one night at, say, Metro has at most a vote potential of 1,100—and the other venues Brehmer mentioned are smaller still. There’s simply no way for that to compete against any show, good or mediocre, at Soldier Field (65,000), or Wrigley Field (40,000), or Alpine Valley (37,000).

I think XRT should weight its “Best Concerts” results based on vote potential. That, or make it clear to its listeners: these might have been the biggest shows of the year, but they weren’t necessarily the best.

I was appalled. “If they have such a long history together,” I asked no one in particular, “why the heck doesn’t Obi-Wan recognize Artoo when he arrives on Tatooine in Episode IV?” (To quote the Car Talk guys, “Bo-o-o-o-gus!”)

Turns out I was wrong about this. The simple answer: he does.

Imagine it from Obi-Wan’s perspective. He’s been in exile on Tatooine for years, hiding from the Empire and keeping watch over young Skywalker, acting as Luke’s mostly unseen guardian and protector. Some day, he hopes, the Rebel Alliance will gain enough strength for the remaining Jedi to resurface, join the fight and, with any luck, defeat the Empire. Until that time, he’s going to lay low.

Then one day, he hears a ruckus: a landspeeder roaring through the Jundland Wastes, and Tusken Raiders coming after it to attack the driver and loot the speeder. Obi-Wan might already be on his toes, if he spotted the unlikely sight of a space battle just beyond Tatooine’s atmosphere the day before. He arrives on the scene to find his unwitting protégé—and his longtime comrade, companion, and fellow Hero of the Clone Wars, Artoo Detoo.

What’s Obi-Wan to do? Right away he knows the cat’s out of the bag, but he doesn’t yet know just how far out it is. He doesn’t know if Luke knows anything more than his uncle’s lies, and he certainly doesn’t know (though probably suspects) why Artoo is there.

So he plays it cool.

He keeps a straight face, feigning zero recognition of the droid. When he hears Luke say his real name—Obi-Wan, not Ben—he’s a little shocked, and resigns himself to telling Luke that he’s Obi-Wan… and soon Obi-Wan is giving Luke his father’s old light saber, cluing him in on the existence of the Force, and admitting to having fought in the Clone Wars. He takes it as a given that Luke will accompany him to Alderaan. The cat is well and truly out of the bag.

Even his denial of Artoo is not, in itself, a lie. Obi-Wan speaks quite truthfully when he states, “I don’t seem to remember ever owning a droid.” As far as I can tell from extensive online biographies, Obi-Wan Kenobi never did own a droid—and he definitely never owned Artoo Detoo. (I’d also like to think that Obi-Wan considers droid “ownership” to be slavery, and owning a droid to be antithetical to both his nature and theirs.)

So yes, I believe that Obi-Wan recognizes Artoo instantly, and it’s only the fact that we don’t understand what Artoo is saying that this is not revealed in the scene.

Now, had Artoo managed to reach Obi-Wan’s home without Luke catching up to him, the reception might have been different:

Obi-Wan: (Opens the door, looks only slightly surprised, as if he’d been expecting this) Hello there, my little friend. It’s been a long time. Come in, come in! May I offer you a cup of three-in-one oil? What brings you to this quiet corner of the galaxy?
R2-D2: (Beeps once or twice, then rolls Leia’s distress message)
Obi-Wan: (Frowns) Looks like we’re headed to Alderaan.
(Scene.)

(Some time later…)
Luke arrives at Obi-Wan’s home, finds the door locked and no one home.
Luke: Well, we might as well go to Anchorhead and get your memory wiped.
C-3PO: Oh, very good, sir.

• Artoo Detoo—and his comic-relief sidekick, See Threepio, because every good action hero needs a comic-relief sidekick—appears in all six Star Wars films.
• Only the principal bad guy, Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, can claim the same. (Obi-Wan Kenobi is a ghost in Episodes V and VI, so I don’t think that counts.)
• In A New Hope, the droid duo are the very first main characters to appear and to speak. That’s a standard trope of the Saturday-afternoon popcorn serials to which Star Wars is an homage: establish your hero right off the bat, so everyone knows who to root for.

I made some statements in that narrative that might seem a bit far-fetched, and not based in the “reality” of what’s on-screen. In particular: Artoo Detoo is the Death Star Destroyer. However, I can prove it.

1. The plans provided by Leia to Artoo are the Death Star’s original design specs.

When the Corellian transport Tantive IV is attacked and captured by Vader’s Star Destroyer in the opening scene, the Death Star is not yet 100% operational. It is, shall we say, still on its shakedown cruise. The Empire’s still peeling off the shrink-wrap in many parts of the battle station.

We know this because after Leia’s capture, General Tagge mentions that the Death Star is not yet fully operational. Grand Moff Tarkin refers to its use against Alderaan as “a ceremony that will make this battle station operational.” It had to have taken some time for the Rebel spies to acquire the plans and provide them to Leia; therefore, they must be plans from earlier in the construction project—most likely the original design specs, or some portion of them.

2. Artoo steals a complete set of as-built specs while aboard the Death Star.

When they arrive aboard the Death Star, the first thing Artoo does is plug into the main computer. Why? He doesn’t need to find a way to the tractor beam controls so they can get away; presumably he already has this information in the stolen plans. (And no, he doesn’t need a monitor to display the route to Kenobi—he has a freakin’ holographic projector in his dome!)

Artoo patches in because he’s an experienced soldier in enemy territory who wants to maximize his battlefield situational awareness. He immediately starts downloading all the data he can grab, including (but not limited to) construction details, disposition of troops, and the current alert status. How do we know? For this reason: he finds Leia. When last he saw Leia, she was about to be captured by a Star Destroyer near Tatooine, in an entirely different star system light-years away from a Death Star near the remains of Alderaan. Artoo has no reason to think she’d be alive, much less anywhere nearby, and thus has no reason to look for her. Yet he finds her, because a prisoner manifest happens to be among the reams of data he’s absorbing throughout their sojourn aboard the battle station.

3. Without those as-built specs, the Rebels would have had no plan of attack.

It’s highly unlikely that the Death Star’s intended design included a two-meter-wide thermal exhaust port, unshielded against projectile weapons, leading directly to the main reactor. That would be an insane Achilles’ heel.

I believe the original plans as stolen by the Rebel spies would have shown some kind of particle shielding or other defense system—heck, even a simple steel grate—covering that exhaust port. Without the as-built specs, marking that particular piece of the project as “not quite finished,” the Rebels would have thought the Death Star utterly impregnable. (Which it would have been, had it not been rushed into operational status.)

4. Artoo not only devised the plan of attack, he programmed the photon torpedoes to hit the target.

When Artoo and company arrive on Yavin 4, technicians download his massive data trove—and in just a few hours they have their plan of attack ready for dissemination to the flight crews. How did they come up with a solution so quickly? Because Artoo is not some passive hard-drive—he’s a veteran astromech droid. He had several more hours to peruse the specs (and days longer to view the original plans), analysis time that would have allowed him to find a solution on his own.

Moreover, during the attack, if hitting the exhaust port were really as easy as “bullseye[ing] womp rats in my T-16 back home,” why do several shots using the Rebel Alliance’s best targeting computers go astray, just impacting on the surface? And yet a kid with exactly zero time in the cockpit of an Incom T-65 X-wing Starfighter, with his targeting computer disabled, is able to pull the trigger at random, and “blow this thing and go home.”

Why? Because Artoo, unlike every pilot—and every other astromech droid—on the mission, has a complete understanding of the target. He knows the exhaust port’s exact location, appearance, and surroundings. He alone can direct those photon torpedoes to hit it accurately. Fortunately he’s able to do so before Luke’s novice combat-piloting skills put his dome in a TIE fighter’s crosshairs. (An idle thought: perhaps Vader, who shoots Artoo, recognizes him and is aiming for him; maybe Artoo—and not Luke—is the object of Vader’s comment, “The Force is strong with this one.”)

Meanwhile, I suspect that turning his targeting computer off is the one smart thing Luke does, as it prevents the computer from overriding Artoo’s re-programming. But that’s really a wild surmise.

At any rate, now that I’ve further defended the statement that Artoo Detoo is the real hero of Star Wars, I have another revelation about that plucky little droid.

Artoo Detoo is a sarcastic, potty-mouthed wiseacre.

By the time we meet him in ANH he’s been through decades of wars and adventures: seriously kicking ass, seldom taking names, and getting little-to-no credit for his actions. Artoo is getting pretty tired of this shit—if he were capable of anger he’d be called irascible. Plus he’s never had a memory wipe; according to one online source, “IA spent a great deal of time in the design of the R2-series astromech droid’s personality matrix. The droid was obliging, quick witted, and sincere. If the droid was not subjected to periodic memory wipes, it could develop a headstrong, self-reliant disposition.”*

Consider this: only Threepio understands everything Artoo says, and being a protocol droid he’s unlikely to repeat anything impolite or impolitic. But I believe that pretty much any time Artoo speaks, with the exception of imparting direct, factual information, he’s emitting scathing one-liners and cheerfully ripping everyone around him a new one. He’s not being a jerk, and he has no ego to be egotistical about it; he’s actually very charismatic and chipper—surprisingly so considering the rough treatment he’s received throughout his service. Besides, he has a diehard steadfastness and loyalty toward humans, even though they rarely hold up their end of the symbiotic relationship between humans and droids.

The empirical fact is that no one—heck, no one army—has done as much to save the Galaxy from the Empire as Artoo Detoo has. He’s earned himself a little snarkiness.

For illustration, here are a few excerpts, with my impressions of possible subtitles in the place of Artoo’s bleeps, bloops, and whistles.

Opening scene

C-3PO: Did you hear that?
R2-D2: [Of course I fucking heard that. I’m not deaf, you know.]
C-3PO: They’ve shut down the main reactor. We’ll be destroyed for sure. This is madness.
R2-D2: [This is war, same as it ever was. Get your bipedal ass moving. And ditch your shitbox silver twin.]
…
C-3PO: We’re doomed.
R2-D2: [How very helpful, Glass-half-full.]
C-3PO: There’ll be no escape for the princess this time.
R2-D2: [Princess schmincess, as long as she bothers to hand off the secret plans first. Where the fuck is that girl?]

Later, on Tatooine

C-3PO: Just you reconsider playing that message for him!
R2-D2: (In a disingenuous tone, feigning hopefulness) [Why? Doesn't the idiot farm boy like me?]
C-3PO: No, I don’t think he likes you at all.
R2-D2: (Still disingenuously, with added sarcasm) [Et tu, Threepio?]
C-3PO: No, I don’t like you either.
R2-D2: (A descending whistle of pure, distilled sarcasm) [Nuts.]

In Obi-Wan’s home

Obi-Wan: Which reminds me… I have something here for you.
R2-D2: [Hello? Droid with Death Star plans here!]
Obi-Wan: Your father wanted you to have it, when you were old enough, but your uncle wouldn’t allow it. He feared you might follow old Obi-Wan on some damn fool idealistic crusade like your father did.
…
Luke: What is it?
Obi-Wan: Your father’s light saber.
R2-D2: [Better stand back, old man, before that imbecile waves that thing through your head.]
…
Obi-Wan: Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force.
Luke: The Force?
Obi-Wan: The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.
R2-D2: [Hey Kenobi, if you’re done bullshitting that kid about who his father really is, maybe you’d like to take a look at the message I’m carrying before a bunch of goddamn stormtroopers show up.]
Obi-Wan: (Pretending not to understand Artoo) Now, let’s see what you are, my little friend…
R2-D2: [’Bout time.]
Obi-Wan:  …and where you come from.

Aboard the Death Star

C-3PO: I would much rather have gone with Master Luke than stay here with you. I don’t know what all this trouble is about, but I’m sure it must be your fault.
R2D2: [Oh, for fuck’s sake! Did you take another motherfucking memory wipe?]
C-3PO: You watch your language!

C-3PO is tangled up in wires after a run-in with TIE fighters

C-3PO: Help! I think I’m melting! This is all your fault!
R2-D2: (Makes a series of beeps that sound like chuckling) [IMDb]

The examples go on and on, and as much as this started out as kind of a joke, there’s an element of truth to it. There are hints throughout the films that Artoo’s not just making random chirrups of sweetness and light, such as when he calls Threepio a “mindless philosopher.”

Just imagine the rant Artoo voices when Luke, after confidently stating he’d like to pilot the X-wing for a while, crashes it into a swamp on Dagobah. “Nice landing, hot shot,” would be the mildest part of it.

My appeal, from a former editor with more than 16,000 positive contributions: don’t bother.

I have said it before—Wikipedia is a failure.

Its experiment in community knowledge-gathering is fatally flawed, and I think in the long term it will become yet another Internet graveyard, another of those interesting online concepts that people will look back on and say, “Remember that? It was cool for a while, and then it fell apart, and nobody really misses it now.”

Statistics already show a steady decline in editor activity on Wikipedia, and analysts have myriad theories as to causes. But I think it all comes down to a handful of interconnected problems:

• A naïve openness that leaves it vulnerable to troublemakers.
• A model that ignores the possibility that some contributors are more reliable than others.
• A lack of concerted oversight.

Nobody gives a thought to who might have created or edited any particular article, and yet Wikipedia’s articles carry a pervasive air of authoritativeness—an air that’s taken, if you’re smart, at arm’s length. As much as it aspires to be, Wikipedia is not Academia. And it never can be.

No bylines exist; recognition of an editor’s work is fleeting at best. Unless—you’re an editor who works to defend Wikipedia against the rampant vandalism that occurs continually, and you run afoul of one of the many sociopathic recluses that lurk there. Then you get recognition, of the unwanted kind, and plenty of it. And that’s where Wikipedia utterly fails.

More than once I’ve been the target of attacks by people (and I use the term “people” loosely) whose sole purpose in life appears to be watching the Internet burn. Since Wikipedia was the place that drew these gnats future presidents, I reported the attacks to the Wikipedia administration caste—which resulted in exactly zero attention.

Meanwhile, Wikipedia’s all-volunteer model effectively means that all editing, all policing, all administration is ad-hoc. When these same vandals and mindless pranksters returned to vandalize again, no one was paying enough attention to realize they were the same attackers, operating under new accounts. Editors went through the same nicey-nice, bullshit motions—polite notice, followed by caution, warning, and final warning—before finally blocking the vandals yet again, usually several days and many edits after their return.

Warning these douchebags does not deter them; in fact, that response is just what they want most—recognition and attention, negative though it is. Blocking their IP addresses is only a momentary solution, since for most of them a new IP address is only as far away as their modem’s power switch. They will not be appeased, and if thwarted will find other, extra-wiki (and frankly, illegal) means to cause trouble. I know this for a fact, from first-hand experience.

As a result, I have ceased all activity on Wikipedia, and will never again edit or contribute to it. My personal well-being (as well as my privacy and, I truly believe, my safety) are not worth the risk and grief. I have little doubt that many others have found themselves in a similar situation.

Unless Wikipedia decides to erect some semblance of a velvet rope, with a virtual bouncer checking for editors who are “on the list” by having demonstrated just a modicum of good faith, Wikipedia will suffer more and more from editor burnout and will soon cease to improve; it will stagnate, and the ruiners will win. Maybe they already have.

[Follow-up: This post was picked up by Hacker News on 14 Feb 2012, engendering a lively and interesting discussion.]

But it was also a dismal failure.

Why? Well, there’s the inherent difficulty of precisely aligning such a massive structure such that the balls are in a perfectly straight line and a minimum of energy is lost to sideways motion. This was what much of Adam’s and Jamie’s fine-tuning addressed—but try as they might, they couldn’t get the giant clack-clacking effect they’d hoped for.

An in-depth analysis on Wired goes into the physics of a Newton’s Cradle, and what might have gone wrong, but ultimately punts a definitive conclusion by stating that “the camera angle wasn’t the best for analysis.” Now, I am not a professional physicist, but I think a hint at the real problem may be summed up in one comment in that Wired article: “It seems that these balls are not elastic.”

Right. See, the balls they used were not the solid steel balls of an ordinary Newton’s Cradle, scaled up, which apparently would have been prohibitively expensive to acquire. Instead they were homemade: spherical steel casings, each with a thick steel disk at the equator and both hemispheres filled with concrete.

As I said, I am not a physicist, so what follows might be off-base. But my impression of the impact event in a normal Newton’s Cradle goes like this:

• When one ball strikes another, the first ball’s momentum is transferred as a force acting on a single point (ideally, that is) on the surface of the second ball.
• That force of impact radiates in all directions through the second ball. The energy can’t escape from the ball (except for the bits that become heat, and that clacking noise), so as it crosses through the interior of the ball, the energy that reaches the surface is reflected (or refracted?) back into the interior.
• Ultimately all that energy converges back at a single point on the surface of the ball, exactly antipodal to the impact point.
• That energy convergence causes the ball to react and move—and if there’s another ball touching that convergence point, the energy is transferred into that next ball, and the Newton’s Cradle does its thing.

So far, so good. Here’s the problem: as I said, the interior of the Mythbusters balls were mostly concrete, not steel. Therefore most of the energy entering each impacted ball was muddled, diffused, slowed as it moved through that medium. Only the energy passing through the steel equatorial disk—a small fraction of the whole—was transferred efficiently into the next ball. The result was as seen on TV: powerful action, anemic reaction.

I believe that, had the Mythbusters used enormous, solid, hardened steel balls for their giant Newton’s Cradle, they might have come up with the amazing visual they—and we—were all hoping to see.

My stance remains the same, at least with regard to single-purpose readers like the Kindle. But I have a sudden, tremendous, newfound respect for tablet computers, thanks to my wife who recently gave me a new iPad as an early Christmas present.

Why? Because a tablet makes an absolutely indispensable research tool.

Consider this: as I explore topics to expand my website A Brief History of East Lansing and the Michigan Agricultural College, my core research materials include History of the Michigan Agricultural College by William J. Beal, the Annual Reports of the Secretary of the Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan,* the Minutes of the Board of Agriculture/Trustees, and Semi-Centennial Celebration of Michigan State Agricultural College edited by Thomas C. Blaisdell. I own copies of the books, purchased at some expense given their age and limited printings; and I have downloaded PDF scans of the Annual Reports and Minutes.

Trouble is, Beal’s book is over 500 pages; Blaisdell’s, nearly 400. The Annual Reports are thousands of pages long, and the Minutes count to well over 10,000. I would need a duffel bag to carry it all, or maybe a rolling suitcase.

And yet every one of these is available online for free. They fit into my iPad all together, with plenty of room to spare. (It bears mentioning that cramming all the Minutes into it was a chore; iTunes choked more than a few times on my attempts to import 1,262 PDFs at once, and also when I combined them into seventeen PDFs that averaged 200+ megs each.) Plus it has a web browser, so I can find other information I might need. I can write notes in it about new discoveries. I can even update my website directly through it. And when I get tired of research, there’s always Catan, or a Ken Ken or crossword puzzle to solve.

Sure, it’s not going to replace my treasured copy of Beal, especially since the online version lacks the full-size foldout map and timeline that the hardcover included. But I now can leave Beal safely on the shelf—and read him anywhere at the same time.

I was brought up in a secular household. We almost never went to church, except on rare occasions such as Christmas Eve services with Grandma (who, I suspect, liked church more for its social aspects than its religious ones), and the first communions of my cousins, who were raised Catholic. As a kid with limited exposure to it, religion was always something alien and perplexing to me.

Nevertheless, the Chronicles were some of my favourite books in my youth. At age eight I was given a box set of paperbacks (the 1970 Collier/Macmilllan printing) and devoured them repeatedly. Even in my earliest readings I was able to spot many of the more obvious allusions, like the Crucifixion and Resurrection in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and the Creation in The Magician’s Nephew, and the Day of Judgment in The Last Battle. I saw these similarities and shrugged them off; if Lewis had borrowed some themes from the Bible and Christianity, it didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the books (although the conclusion of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, with the lamb that turns out to be Aslan, always seemed anti-climactic after the rollicking adventure that preceded it).

I outgrew the books and moved on to other reading, keeping Narnia as a fondly remembered piece of my childhood. Meanwhile, by the time I reached my teenage years, I was an avowed atheist. Partly this was a typical teenager’s know-it-all attitude: “you can’t prove nothin’ to me.” Partly it was a form of quiet rebellion against what I saw as grating and superfluous aspects of Scouting, with its Oath (“…to do my duty to God and my country…”) and Law (“a scout is… reverent”). Who needs God when you’re learning to tie a clove hitch, or finding your way to the next campsite using only a map and a compass? Intellect alone will get the job done.

Then, in my early twenties, when I was still profoundly atheistic and a stubborn know-it-all, I ran across a slim paperback in a used bookstore: Narnia Revealed by Paul A. Karkainen. It’s not a particularly good book—yet another exegesis among many, detailing every little bit of Christian symbolism and metaphor in a dry litany—but its hype-y jacket copy caught my eye: the real meaning behind the Narnia books! I skimmed it and the dawning awareness was a dope-slap to my forebrain: Clive Staples Lewis wasn’t just borrowing themes here and there, the whole thing is Christianity’s tenets, retold! He was trying to convert me! That sneaky bastard!

The feeling I had was, simply, betrayal. I turned my back on Narnia and closed off a little bit of my magical youth.

It was many years later, having found some semblance of spirituality within myself (not through organized religion, mind you) and having become a (hopefully) far more open-minded agnostic, that I returned to the Narnia books and was pleased to find that, despite their trappings, they remain quite excellent children’s stories. That magic, regardless of its putative intent, had not been lost.

Which is why Miller’s book is such a breath of fresh air: it’s a departure from most critical analyses of the Chronicles, and shares a new appreciation for the books from a secular perspective. Instead of mere exegesis, she discusses the Chronicles for their literary qualities, only delving into their Christian aspects where needed to illustrate some of Lewis’s intentions—as a writer, rather than an evangelist. As a result, The Magician’s Book is an intriguing and thoughtful look at Narnia, its place in the pantheon of children’s literature, and most of all: an insightful look at not merely how we learn to read, but how we become readers.

Meanwhile, as a lengthy aside… Like Miller, I too have a strong preference for reading the books in their publication order. This is a deeply dividing argument, and much has been written on both sides (including this excellent run-down). The present executors of Lewis’s estate have come down on the side of strict story chronology, but there are definite artistic reasons for preferring publication order—the moments of initial discovery in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe are ruined if the reader has already seen Narnia in The Magician’s Nephew. And I tend to suspect, as Miller does, that Lewis was “just being kind to his young correspondent” when he wrote, “I think I agree with your [chronological] order for reading the books.”

I remember, as I read The Magician’s Nephew for the first time, being perplexed by its disconnect from the Narnia of the previous books (just as I had been with its predecessor The Horse and His Boy, which except for a pair of talking horses doesn’t seem very “Narnian” for most of its length). When the creation of Narnia is revealed, and it becomes apparent that The Magician’s Nephew is taking place long before the events of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, little eight-year-old me had a moment of smug satisfaction: Aha! those idiot bookmakers numbered the books out of order!

I was savvy enough, even at that young age, to look at the publication dates, to see that the books were indeed numbered in order of their publication. I begrudgingly acceded to the numbering—although I might have placed them in their box in chronological order for a while.

Yet one of the reasons the Chronicles are important to me, and my development as a reader, is that they were the very first to expose me to a simple but effective narrative device: the flashback. Being able to place that entire story outside of its “normal” order was an important step in my increasing understanding of How Stories Work. Sadly, the reprints have stolen that learning moment from subsequent generations of readers, and those readers will have to find it elsewhere.

Another thing that bugs me, beyond the more important ways in which the reordering ruins certain artistic aspects of the books, is how the reordering is handled in the preface to the reprints:

“Although The Magician’s Nephew was written several years after C. S. Lewis first began The Chronicles of Narnia, he wanted it to be read as the first book in the series. Harper Collins is happy to present these books in the order which Professor Lewis preferred.”

This flat statement of fact, without qualification or context, carries the same air of smug, we-know-better, self-satisfaction that I had at age eight—and, in my opinion, is just as juvenile.