Information flow audit

Over the last year I've become increasingly interested in intentionally shaping my information intake. We have access to much more material than we can ever process, from breaking news, blogs, books and magazines. That's been true since the advent of the printing press, but the internet has accelerated that process exponentially.  Just randomly clicking on whatever catches my eye isn't enough; I want a process that helps me prioritize so that I have both a solid grounding in what's going on in the world -- news, politics, science, international development -- but still gives me time to get more in-depth. It's a constant struggle where intellectual curiosity is both your friend and your enemy. This post is my first attempt to audit my personal information flow. For the most part, I'm excluding things my friends recommend (by email or through Facebook), which typically go to the top of my reading queue. And I don't yet have a very systematic process for selecting which books to read. I do keep a list of books I want to read in a Google doc. When someone recommends a book, I add it to this list, and then when I want to buy or borrow a book, I'll usually scan the list to ensure I'm not forgetting something that I want to read more. Also, since I'm a grad student, readings for school - classes, seminars, and a work-study project - are taking an increasing amount of my brainspace, but I don't have much control over that.

That excludes a good deal of reading, but still leaves a lot in, mostly websites and blogs. My RSS reader of choice is Google Reader, and I use it a lot. Some stats for the last 30 days:

That's a lot of reading! Of course, not everything "read" was covered very thoroughly -- it's more likely an indication that I either read it, or saw enough of it to deem in uninteresting and worth of being marked read. Reader also informs me that since June 19, 2007, when I started using Reader, I've read a total of 61,602 items.

Over time I've tried to get more organized and disciplined, so that now I prioritize items as follows:

1. Highest priority: friends' shared items. Google Reader tells me I currently follow 80 people, which means any items they choose to "share" in Reader will show up in my feed. However, only about a third of those people post regularly (more than monthly?) and I think on average I have about 10-15 items shared by friends in any given day. Maybe a third of these items are from feeds that I'm already subscribed too. The others give me a healthy - though small - dose of freshness (because I wouldn't normally find those items), especially in terms of pop culture.

2. Next priority: aggregators. This has been the most important and difficult category to refine. I'm trying to locate RSS feeds that give an extremely broad overview of news and commentary, but keeping the total number of items to be read reasonable. In other words, if I read the aggregators category and nothing else, I feel satisfied that I'm getting a good overview of everything that's going on. Right now this includes Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, NYTime's home page feed, Long Form, and Jason Kottke. Sullivan writes original content and has an army of blogger underlings who help him highlight other memes; they also helpfully highlight and summarize debates raging within the blogosphere. I used to have the NYTimes, Washington Post, BBC, and Al Jazeera, but I found that a) it was impossible to cover all of that material on a regular basis, b) there was substantial, non-helpful overlap, and c) if something is really important, it will likely be mentioned by Sullivan or Kottke (or other blogs listed below). Long Form aggregates great long-form journalism, a genre I really enjoy; for more on how it got started, the Observer has a feature. And finally, Kottke is a true aggregator, writing little original material but linking to what he describes as "the liberal arts 2.0."

As you can see, I spend the bulk of my Reader time on the aggregators, reading 952 + 738 + 98 + 89 = 1877 articles from those four feeds, out of a total of 3659 articles (51.3% of my online reading).

3. Lower priority: specifics. I have a number of folders for more specific interests, listed in bold below. With few exceptions, these folders have one or two feeds that are popular and frequently updated and a long tail of rarely updated, more obscure items. I won't list the contents of each folder here, but if you're interested just ask. My Rocketry folder illustrates one of the wonders of RSS feeds is that you can keep track of websites and blogs that may only update weekly, or monthly, or annually, without worrying about looking up all of their URL's. This lets me keep up with general rocketry news through Rocketry Planet as well as the very high quality but infrequently-updated rocket blog by Greg Smith. Friends and Trumans contains personal and travel blogs by and about friends of mine or Truman Scholars. Hopkins and Public Health includes public health blogs (there are surprisingly few that I find very compelling, especially compared to fields like international development or politics) and job listings. Some good ones include Aetiology and Karen Grepin.  Other categories include: Grad Students and Research, Baltimore (I had a DC folder when I lived there, but follow DC local news mostly through my friends' shared items now), Gender (including the always-great Sociological Images), Humor, Science, Politics, Uncategorizable, Arkansas and Harding (my alma mater), Atheism and Religion, Bloggers, Development, International Relations, and Tech. I can and probably should re-categorize the blogs from scratch, as many of those categories used to have more items but have been cut down recently.

Pros and Cons

My current "information flow" has several pros: I get a wide swath of internet news and writing, even if I just read my top few items. I've gotten the aggregators down to a level where I can read all of them 90% of the time, which feels about right. I also rarely see something in the news, or hear about a debate or trend in a magazine, that slipped through this primary filter.

On the downside, the longer tail of information is more difficult to handle. Even after months of working to eliminate it, there's a lot of overlap -- especially in certain categories like international development, where a few bloggers link to and post about the same things -- that I think I can eliminate.

And then there's confirmation bias. I follow one or two conservative friends on Reader, and find their shared items (especially a friend named Adam's) to be a breath of fresh air, even though I often disagree. How to go about finding more high-quality material to challenge myself with is an ongoing problem -- suggestions welcome.

I'd love to hear about how you organize and prioritize your online (or offline) reading. What solutions have you come up with? What did you try that didn't work? I'm sure there are other as obsessed with this as I am.

Reading room

The fourth floor of my school has two beautiful reading rooms with natural lighting. This week is midterms (the term system moves fast - midterms after just four weeks) and I already have my first paper (for Intro to International Health) and midterm (Biostats) out of the way. Tomorrow is a test for Epidemiology of HIV/AIDS, and Friday is the Epidemiologic Methods midterm. So I've been spending a lot of time enjoying the reading rooms, and not much blogging... Looking up from inside one of the rooms:

And students learning stuff:

Thanks Uncle Mike.

Grad school is...

Grad school is a battle between curiosity and productivity. Coursework can be conducive to learning -- and especially to skill acquisition. Most students in international health programs -- and all in my GDEC program -- are currently taking Introduction to International Health with Prof. James Tielsch. The class has been excellent so far, with compelling (if sometimes controversial) lectures offering a broad overview of everything in global health. The grades for the course come exclusively from two papers, which are described in an exquisitely detailed 29-page section of the syllabus. The more I work on my paper, which focused on the Guatemalan health system, the more convinced I am that it's excellent preparation for working on grant proposals. That doesn't mean it's fun -- fitting your ideas into someone else's boxes never quite approaches that level of enjoyment -- but it's a great skill to have. But even the best considered assignment pails in comparison to the learning that occurs outside of class, and it feels like the requirement to be productive is always digging into my ability to actively feed my curiosity. During orientation, several professors said that they wished Hopkins would do abolish grades entirely; that worrying about grades was a detriment to their education, and it doesn't really predict who will do well in public health. I can see how this would be true, as the times that I've felt that I'm absorbing the most have been when reading something inspired -- but not required by -- a class, usually something that grew out of a discussion question or a casual aside in a lecture. That, and the conversations and debates we're having amongst ourselves...

Should male circumcision be the default in the US? In Africa? Is it OK to make different policy recommendations for different countries?  If so, how do you explain it to the shafted? Why do people care about maternal mortality more than other types of mortality? How do we think about causality? Are some lives worth more than other? Can a sense of humor survive in a morbid (and mortal) field like public health?

Monday Miscellany

Stuff I like:

Monday Miscellany

Happy Labor Day:

Reboot

As should be obvious now, I got a bit behind on blogging while in Guatemala. I was hopeful that this blog would serve as a reminder to myself to write more regularly, as well as a convenient conduit for sharing travel stories and photos with friends and families. But as I fell more and more behind, I started emailing those stories and photos directly to the friends I felt the greatest need to share them with, and the blog fell behind. I hope to post some photos and additional travel stories from Guatemala in the coming weeks, but mostly I'll try not to make promises I can't keep. So sometimes I'll write about public health and epidemiology, sometimes about politics, about rockets, etc.

I moved to Baltimore about 3 1/2 weeks ago, and a little over a week ago I started classes for a Master in Health Science (MHS) in Global Disease Epidemiology and Control (GDEC) through the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. That's the longest name for a program ever, so we mostly just call it an "MHS in GDEC." Basically, it's an intensive program in international health, especially the epidemiology of infectious diseases and vaccine development and testing. I'll take classes in Baltimore for 4 terms (one academic year), take comprehensive exams in June of 2011, and then head somewhere overseas for 4-12 months for my practicum. I can come back and take additional classes if I want to, but that's optional. GDEC--the program, the people, the pace--is already awesome, and I expect that it will only get more awesome and intense as it goes.

Arrival, part 2

I changed a bit of money* and then headed to the taxis. Guatemala City is divided into 27 zonas, with the airport in Zona 3 and my destination – and most of the stuff worth seeing – in Zona 10. At the taxi queue I asked a Guatemalan passenger what he thought a fair taxi price was to Zona 10 – the taxi drivers within earshot were unhappy with him for quoting a price when he wasn’t giving rides – and then I was putting my bags in a car, climbing in, buckling up, and locking the doors. Travel – and the stories that come from it – only makes sense in context. New York City would be tame to someone from Beijing, but to a city boy it’s a brilliant cacophony. I tried to imagine what it would have felt like to experience Guatemala City if I’d never traveled. And it’s impossible – everything is comparison:

Good major roads. Well, not good, but better than a lot of places. Fast drivers. A bit crazy. Well, not that crazy. Dull buildings – kind of like Athens, but not that dull. Hilly too, and surrounded my mountains – also kind of like Athens. But green, green everywhere, like Accra. Maybe a bit like Los Angeles, if a map of LA were wadded up so that all the empty spaces in between were filled in with city, and then drenched with ten times as much rain for half the year.

My first stay was a hostel called Quetzalroo, a hostel started by a Guatemalan, Manuel, and an Australian, Jodi, just three months ago. I found them through CouchSurfing.com (more on that later). Quetzalroo is named for the quetzal – the national bird of Guatemala, and the kangaroo, the national whatever of Australia. The hostel was comfy, with dorm rooms – mostly empty the night I was there – a kitchen, a small, sunny eating room, and a computer on which I could email a sure-to-be-worried madre (love you, Mom!).

When I arrived Jodi was about to leave to meet Manuel for his lunch break – he works at the Canadian embassy, doing something regarding Guatemalans who want to move to Canada – so I tagged along. We got Spanish food at a small restaurant (where, like with 90% of the other businesses I’ve patronized in Guatemala, had a TV playing the World Cup) and Manuel introduced me to Guatemala by drawing a map on a napkin, outlining the regions of the country and the must-see attractions. The flip side of the napkin produced a mini-map of Zona 10, also known as a Zona Viva – the “lively zone” and soon – within three hours of landing – I was on my own, walking up a street in the city. A bus belched black smoke on me. Horns blared. Rain clouds threatened. And yet, I couldn’t help but feel great sense of freedom.

I stopped into the massive, immaculate Oakland Mall, which I’m told is one of the largest malls in Central America. Four levels, hundreds of stores, dozens of restaurants, fountains – including one with a constant laser light show – and brands from around the world, but mostly from the US, and to a lesser extent, Europe. Then it was up the road past the hostel towards a few museums inside the grounds of the libertarian university Manuel attended [in our first hour he asked if I’d read Atlas Shrugged]. On the way the threatening clouds starting delivering on their promises and I ducked into a fast food joint to sit out the rain and pour over my Lonely Planet Guatemala section on Zona Viva. Lesson: you brought an umbrella, keep it with you; they don’t call it the rainy season for nothing.

After the rain I hiked down a steep hill to the Museum Ixchel, which presents traditional textiles from throughout Guatemala. I’m not much of a fabric guy, but this was pretty cool. Guatemalan indigenous (ie, Mayan) culture is known for its brightly colored fabrics, which vary from region to region, sometimes with such specificity that Maya can recognize what town someone is from by their clothing. To the outside eye there’s less information to it, and more dazzle.

I didn’t have enough quetzales on me (oops!) to get into Museo Popol Vuh – with archaeological finds from throughout Guatemala, so that one will have to wait until I’m back in the City.

Back at Quetzalroo, I discovered that they had an acoustic guitar, which is (along with alcohol) an important social catalyst at hostels the world over. Turns out Jodi can sing, so we went down the list of 90s classics. The night ended with Manuel and I watching City of God, an incredibly violent and compelling Brazilian film (with subtitles) about the cocaine trade in an impoverished slum of Rio de Janeiro.

What a long day. En manana, necesito tomar un camioneta (“chicken bus”) a Lago de Antitlan.

*A note on money: The current exchange rate is about 8 queztales to the US dollar, which means a 20q bill is about $2.50, and the wad of 100q bills I had were worth $12.50 each. Like the rest of the world, Guatemala is now plastered with ATMs, so getting money isn’t a problem, as long as you have it.

Arrival, part 1

I took the Super Shuttle to Reagan National Airport at about 3:30 in the morning. Since I’d been up late packing, that meant I only slept for an hour or two. That’s OK – I hate flying, so I like to sleep on the plane. [I like to think that my fear of flying comes in part from a vivid, sometimes morbid imagination. While the rational side of me knows the flight is the single safest part of any trip abroad, the imaginative side of me knows that NTSB investigators can determine whether a plane was downed by a bomb in part by analyzing the remains of passengers from different parts of the planes and making a map of their varying degrees of “intactness.”] One of the other Super Shuttle passengers was a brawny guy in his mid to late 30’s. We talked about where we were going; him to Miami, me to Guatemala. He said he worked in retail and it was basically a dead-end job, so he admired my balls (his words) at being able to quit my job, travel and go to grad school for what I’m passionate about. A little bit of travel talk and affirmation makes a 4 AM bus ride go much smoother.

The lines moved fine at Reagan, though in the luggage one I was stuck behind a big church group. You can often tell these groups because they wear obnoxiously colored matching t-shirts, seemed unused to travel in general, and are led by a guy named Pastor Bob (es la verdad!). They were headed to Kingston, Jamaica, for what I’m sure will be an extremely arduous one to three weeks spreading the gospel. I can’t be too negative though – I cut my teeth traveling with mission groups, and it’s a great way to get to environs that most non-church people of similar means rarely reach.

My flight to Atlanta and the transfer were uneventful, and soon I was boarding my plane for Guatemala City. There’s a certain psychological shift when you board an international flight; especially to a new country. Suddenly you’re on a plane that is half Guatemalans and half Americans. Or rather, 50% Guatemalans with lots of things they bought in the US, 30% mission groups in matching shirts, and 20% nondescript persons or soon-to-be mangy backpackers. And then you’re wheels up and there’s no turning back – just a few hours of napping and an optional $8 crummy airplane sandwich (no thanks) away from something completely new.

As we descended into Guatemala City the view from the windows was grand. The clouds only covered half of the sky, and the rest was mountains. Green, rolling mountains, not snow-capped peaks.

Touchdown, and the passengers break into scattered applause. That part never gets old.

(to be continued…)

Packing

Packing for this trip wasn’t too difficult. It’s always easier to pack for a trip where you’ll be in one place for a while. Had I been planning to backpack through Guatemala or elsewhere in Central America for six weeks, the weight and volume of my things would have been a larger concern. Still, I wanted to be able to carry everything fairly easily. So, I packed in my medium-sized North Face backpack – the one I’ve been traveling with for years now – and a duffel bag. I also brought along a smaller backpack (I picked it up at a thrift store) that’s perfect for day trips. My clothes are good for layering, from a swimsuit and running clothes to a few long sleeve shirts and a heavier sweater. Xela is at 7,800 feet and it’s the rainy season, so the weather is cold (but not freezing) and a lot of water falls from the sky. Then there are toiletries and snacks – for the trips and for when I’m just tired of tortillas. I also brought a few notebooks and a Spanish dictionary and a phrasebook. Books I brought included Rigoberta Menchu’s autobiography (about Guatemala), the Bourne Supremacy, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (about the former Yugoslavia), In the Wake of the Plague (about Europe), and of course, Lonely Planet’s Guatemala guide book. At the bottom of my duffel bag is my epidemiology textbook, in case I get tired of studying Spanish and want some stats for a change.

The largest single item I packed is a used Dell laptop I picked up for $100 on Craigslist. I figure if it gets stolen, it’s no great loss, but it will allow me to write about my travels as I go. And if I get through the trip with it in one piece, I can sell it in Xela or Guatemala City or back in the states on Craiglist, likely for as much as I bought it for. It’s much nicer to write at a relaxed pace when I get the chance, save the documents to a tiny thumb drive I carry in my money pouch, and transfer it to a computer at an Internet café.

I’ve got two digital cameras – one a point-and-shoot that fits in a front pocket, the other a slightly nicer point-and-shoot with a more rounded profile and a decent zoom. I decided to leave the larger one at home for two reasons: the larger camera is more likely to get stolen since it’s harder to conceal by slipping into a pocket, and it eats up AA batteries at a steady clip.

As I travel, I keep a small notebook with me - it’s about 8 inches tall and 4 inches wide. It’s the perfect size to keep handy and jot down observations: the way the mist came over that mountain, the way the cobrador swings in the back of the chicken bus...

I finished packing, sewing up a few holes in my backpacks, and sending final emails at about 1:00 in the morning the night before my flight...

Numbers - Week One

I think I will finally have time to write more this evening, and I plan to post about my travels mostly in chronological order. But here´s a summary of my first week: Methods of transportation taken and iterations thereof: planes (2), taxis (2), boat (6), decent bus (1, in DC), chicken buses (7)

People a chicken bus is designed to transport: 40 (10 double rows of seats for 2 people each)

Most people seen on one chicken bus: 67

US dollars paid for a Guatemalan cell phone: 19

Children in my host family: 3

Family members at the house the evening I arrived: 9

Nationalities met so far: 9 (Guatemalan, American, Canadian, Danish, Swedish, Australian, Italian, British, Irish... and I´m sure I´m missing some!)

Here

I arrived in Guatemala City on Tuesday afternoon, spent Tuesday night there, and then took the chicken bus up to Lago de Antitlan. I spent the last two nights in San Marcos la Laguna on the lake. I don´t have a lot of time to write at the moment, but I thought I should share a few photos from the trip so far:

More soon...

Guatemala

I'll be traveling in Guatemala from June 15 until July 29 this summer -- primarily studying Spanish in Xela, but also hiking volcanoes, enjoying a little beach time, and exploring Mayan ruins. I also hope to write a bit. Not too much, not too little -- just enough to enhance the experience of being there. After all, a big part of the appeal of traveling and experience other cultures is the act of sharing that knowledge and experience with others. Forty-four days in Guatemala. It one sense, it's really not that long. At most, I'll get in five weeks of classes at Celas Maya. Even with five hours of one-on-one instruction five days a week and a homestay with a Guatemalan family, that's hardly enough time to reach any reasonable level of competency in Spanish -- though it can't hurt either.

In another sense, 44 days is a long time. It will be the longest trip I've done by myself. When I finished studying abroad near Athens, Greece in 2005, the ticket home I bought was from Moscow to Arkansas (via New York), and the flight out was 40 days after the end of my school term. It was a pretty exhausting 40 days; a whirlwind tour from Greece through Southern Europe to Portugal, back across to Croatia, up through eastern Europe to Poland, and through Scandinavia to Finland, Estonia, and Russia, all without seeing anyone I knew. Looking back, it was an amazing experience, but the pace was a bit crazy.

This trip to Guatemala will also be the longest period of time I've spent in a developing country. I was in Ghana for five weeks (as a "missionary intern"), South Africa for three, Zambia for two, and Mexico, Guyana, and Egypt each for about 7-10 days. Needless to say, my experience is relatively broad but not very deep. 6 weeks in Guatemala won't exactly fix that, but being based in one place for that long will be a step in the right direction. And being rooted in Xela will allow me to make friends with other students and Guatemalans in a way I wouldn't be able to if I were just backpacking through.

In August I'll start graduate studies in international health, and this time next year I'll be preparing for either a 4+ month practicum experience in the developing world, or Peace Corps service. So in that sense, Guatemala is really just a warm-up. Compared to the internationally-oriented career I'm planning, the time I've spent overseas feels fairly insignificant -- but you have to start somewhere!