Patrick Cooper: Greetings from Evanston, Ill.

My spring Serendipity hour: Dew, new and news

Patrick Cooper — Thu, 17 May 2012 11:46:52 +0000

A few times a year, everyone in Digital Media gets a day or so to work on any idea they feel might help NPR. No meetings are held. Everyone pushes themselves in different directions. There is a prize given for biggest failure. We call it Serendipity Day. For the first one, I chased new CMS ideas. [...]

Favorite quote of the day

Patrick Cooper — Wed, 16 May 2012 01:41:40 +0000

I'm fighting the onset of a cold, so maybe this is the NyQuil talking. But from tomorrow's New York Times comes Craig Breedlove talking about Bonneville Salt Flats and how John F. Kennedy's inaugural inspired him: "I knew I couldn’t go to the moon or cure cancer, but I did know how to go real fast, [...]

Anyone have a 5.25" floppy drive I can borrow?

Patrick Cooper — Tue, 15 May 2012 23:58:32 +0000

I don't know how the solicitors get into my no-solicitations apartment building. But sometimes they do. And sometimes I even like the result. Like when the solicitors leave a 5.25" floppy disk under my door. I'm talking a real, 5.25", old-school, literally floppy disk, the kind that plays Oregon Trail and Where in the World [...]

I wanted a refund, and they didn't want to give it

Patrick Cooper — Thu, 10 May 2012 12:56:02 +0000

Updated May 13 with Wesley Berry's reaction. Jump to the bottom for it. This November, I ordered flowers for Lori. I used Teleflora, and Wesley Berry Flowers made the delivery. The delivery came on time and looked as good as advertised. So, for this Valentine's Day, I tried them again. The order didn't go as [...]

Buy the child a present!

Patrick Cooper — Thu, 10 May 2012 02:50:08 +0000

For my great-aunt Cynthia's memorial service, the family assembled a book of pictures and clippings from her long life. Among them was this newspaper story about her husband, my great-uncle Ed — and her by proxy — a great thing in family lore I'd somehow never heard before:

Transforming the dirge

Patrick Cooper — Thu, 10 May 2012 02:24:40 +0000

A month and change ago, I went up to Mt. Joy, Pa., for the day for the memorial service of my great-aunt Cynthia. The matriarch of the family, Aunt Cynthia lived to be 101. She was in good physical health until the end, and a former school teacher and ed-board leader, she never lost mental [...]

Drilling vs. narrative vs. life

Patrick Cooper — Wed, 09 May 2012 05:57:10 +0000

Every two weeks at work, after every code release, our team has its retrospective. The meeting is part of the Agile software-development process. We take a half hour, recall the events of the prior two weeks and, together, list what worked well and what needed improvement. The last cycle was productive and balanced. The retrospective [...]

Minus hero, minus chronicling

Patrick Cooper — Tue, 08 May 2012 02:50:54 +0000

All the great ones, they go on a sea voyage. Take Odysseus. Aeneas. Sometimes, we read of the loved ones they left behind but not often. Glimpses we do receive aren't happy. Whether the heroes have gone adventuring on purpose or by circumstance, they aren't at home. For the beloved at home, life must go [...]

A sentence that stops you

Patrick Cooper — Tue, 08 May 2012 02:48:20 +0000

"The quaint hiss and crackle of the blunted needle as it gently rose and fell with the warp of the album sounded like the ether, through which the dead were hopelessly calling to us." — A New Yorker short.

When pies compete, we all win

Patrick Cooper — Mon, 07 May 2012 02:46:39 +0000

I like all kinds of pie. But how often do I get to eat all kinds of pie? Not often. In my family, amazing pies appear around the holidays. At work, I try to hit the pie trucks every so often. In my personal life, if I end up at a diner late at night, [...]

Who knew Arlington had its own Transformer?

Patrick Cooper — Sat, 05 May 2012 18:43:23 +0000

Spotted on my walk to the Metro yesterday morning, on the block next to Arlington Police Department headquarters, an urban assault vehicle. Click below to enlarge and marvel at its Transformer-like bad-ass-ness. I don't know what they use this beast for, but I don't want to find out. (Okay, so I do want to find [...]

How sweet it is to beat the Phillies

Patrick Cooper — Sat, 05 May 2012 18:22:37 +0000

On a corner near Nationals Ballpark after the game last night, a traffic cop repeatedly blew her whistle to stop two Phillies fans from crossing the street into traffic. "They're Phillies fans," someone on the sidewalk yelled out. "You have to go explain it to them." The Philadelphia fans, young women, glared into the crowd. [...]

I choose to believe all the dubious left-handedness science

Patrick Cooper — Sat, 05 May 2012 18:00:15 +0000

Cleaning out browser tabs, I finally got a chance to read last month's New York Times piece about left-handers. Rik Smits, a Dutch journalist, writes it. He's just written a big new book on left-handedness and has take-out stories turning up everywhere. Smits himself is left-handed. Reading this story, I feel myself disagreeing repeatedly. After [...]

Love this quote on our 'combinatorial' power

Patrick Cooper — Wed, 02 May 2012 10:16:46 +0000

In a Times story about a researcher studying how knowledge forms: Dr. Spelke is also seeking to understand how the core domains of the human mind interact to yield our uniquely restless and creative intelligence — able to master calculus, probe the cosmos and play a Bach toccata as no bonobo or New Caledonian crow [...]

Batuman, Daisey and facts

Patrick Cooper — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 04:03:59 +0000

I'm coming a few days late to it, but Elif Batuman's interview with The Rumpus over the Mike Daisey controversy is worth a read. I'm a fan of Batuman's New Yorker writing, and the interview gets your brain going, whatever you think of Daisey's work or Batuman's interpretation of the issues. Personally, I disagree with where [...]

Roller skater? I hardly know her!

Patrick Cooper — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 01:36:22 +0000

Oh, the places deal sites take you. The last time I was on roller skates, I think, was 1992, following: the in-line skate craze, the introduction of short-track speed-skating as an Olympic medal sport in Albertville, and the introduction of skating races to the Cooper basement's linoleum by myself and my brother. Today, twenty years later, [...]

Treat yourself!

Patrick Cooper — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:11:24 +0000

If one of my favorite recent TV phrases ends up on your business card, I am immediately a fan, even if I haven't yet tried your cupcakes, even if I don't know whether the TV phrase was actually your inspiration or not. But I'll take it as a food-truck win. And I will so try [...]

One last shuttle photo I took (to fix a long week)

Patrick Cooper — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 05:20:31 +0000

Did the flyover really happen 10 days ago? I'm so tired. But still — cool.

The first part of the McSweeney's writing guide

Patrick Cooper — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 04:32:55 +0000

Is the best of the parts. Published earlier this month: WRITE EVERY DAY Writing is a muscle. Smaller than a hamstring and slightly bigger than a bicep, and it needs to be exercised to get stronger. Think of your words as reps, your paragraphs as sets, your pages as daily workouts. Think of your laptop [...]

I didn't expect to buy a book about pencil-sharpening

Patrick Cooper — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 19:50:10 +0000

And now after reading this interview in The Millions with a man who wrote a book about sharpening pencils, I have, almost immediately. TM: So is there an optimum degree of sharpness for a pencil in your view? I find I get obsessed with having as sharp a tip as possible, to the point where [...]