Anecdotes of Research

Last week, The Public Square in Chicago, along with ITVS hosted a screening of King Corn, made by Aaron Woolfe, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis. They had invited me, along with the fabulous LaDonna Redmond, to make comments after the feature length video and then take questions on the issues raised.
(For what it’s worth, after the film there was barely half an hour left for comments and discussion. Do programmers think audiences simply cannot tolerate an event longer than 2 hours? What do you think?)

The Genre
The film is another example of a growing genre, the documentation of a self-initiated investigation that combines in varying proportions personal narrative and focused research, often anchored by a gesture or act that loosely qualifies as an experiment relevant to the motive question.

a tale of (at least) two versions

Does your mom send you newspaper clippings? Has she transferred this impulse to the quicker clicker, namely email?

My mom regularly forwards various email messages that have been sent by friends or acquaintances of hers. I received this from her several months after it had made the rounds in the spheres of easy forwarding. To this one I was moved to write a response and hit “reply-all.” Here I post the original circular followed by my response.

The Forwarded Message
Subject: A TALE OF TWO HOUSES
Here’s some interesting information.
You can check this out on Snopes.com under “The Story of Two Houses”

House #1 A 20 room mansion ( not including 8 bathrooms ) heated by
natural gas. Add on a pool ( and a pool house) and a separate guest
house, all heated by gas. In one month this residence consumes more
energy than the average American household does in a year. The
average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2400. In
natural gas alone, this property consumes more than 20 times the
national average for an American home. This house is not situated
in a Northern or Midwestern “snow belt” area. It’s in the South.

House #2 Designed by an architecture professor at a
leading national university. This house incorporates every
“green” feature current home construction can provide. The house is
4,000 square feet ( 4 bedrooms ) and is nestled on a high prairie in the
American southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal
heat-pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the
ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F. ) heats the house in the winter
and cools it in the summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or
natural gas and it consumes one-quarter electricity required for a
conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected
and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from
showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then
into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land
surrounding the house. Surrounding flowers and shrubs native to the area
enable the property to blend into the surrounding rural landscape.

~~~~~
HOUSE #1 is outside of Nashville, Tennessee; it is the abode of
the “environmentalist” Al Gore.

HOUSE #2 is on a ranch near Crawford,
Texas; it is the residence the of the President of the United States,

My Two Cents on Two Houses

This definitely deserves a response:

1. Commending Mom
2. What does it change?
3. A little more information