Early this morning, I arrived home to find a smug looking cat and a another thoroughly disembowled mouse on the dining room rug. And I mean thoroughly. We're talking decapitation and mutilation, folks. I'm writing this entry as in order to avoid the task at hand, which is picking up the pieces. Ugh.
Hopefully that's the last mouse. I'm not looking forward to much more of this.
As the night wore on, one thing led to another, and I suddenly found myself coughing up the $7.50 for a ticket to Michael Moore's appearance at the GEC.
Tonight's event, sponsored by the Music Row Democrats, was kicked off by the head of the Kerry campaign in Tennessee. He introduced a theme present throughout the evening: Kerry could still win Tennessee.
This being music city, there was also a strong musical presence. MRD unveiled Takin' My Country Back a new song produced by Honky Tonkers for Truth. [MP3], and "Bob Something" of Monkey Bowl weighed in with two songs, including Al Gore, featuring a taped cameo by none other than Al Gore, who lives down the street from him in Belle Meade.
The musical headliner, however, was a short acoustic set by Steve Earle, who said he turned down a gig in Arizona to be in Nashville because "we're not giving up on winning Tennessee."
Earle then introduced Moore, who I believe had been watching the opening acts from a seat a few rows in front of mine. He donned his trademark red baseball cap and arrived onstage as disheveled as ever. The crowd, while certainly not a sellout for the arena, was surprisingly large -- and clearly in Moore's corner all the way.
I'll be up front with you about Michael Moore. I don't agree with everything he says. I think in some ways he is to the left as Rush Limbaugh is to the right -- a rabid ideologue with a tendancy to assume the worst about his opponents. That said, I think by-and-large he makes valid points about many things, especially the war in Iraq. And if nothing else he helps stir up debate important issues and balances out the culture of right-wing talk radio television.
The speech was mostly the same schtick that has already made news elsewhere (including the infamous giveaway of ramen noodles and underwear to folks who didn't vote in the last election.) There were, however, a number of interesting factoids buried in the rhetoric. For example, he drew a contrast between the $18 million or so spent by the 9/11 commission to investigate how to prevent future terror attacts and the $75 million or so spent by the Office of the Independent Council to investigate Bill Clinton's personal life. Moore also predicted that if US foreign policy doesn't change, the country will be forced to reinstate the draft simply because there will no longer be enough volunteers to sustain our military commitments abroad. A bold statement, but perhaps plausible given the manpower problems being encountered in the military as the Iraq quagmire drags on.
Moore said that his next film is going to be about the pharmaceutical industry. Word has leaked out, he said, and Pfizer -- the company that brought you primetime impotence commercials -- is worried. Moore read from a memo that he said was distributed within the company warning staff to be on the lookout for a "a bearded, heavyset man with rumpled clothing and a microphone." If Moore began asking questions, the memo continued, staffers should immediately call a hotline number to report it. This got a good laugh, and the entire arena simultaneously whipped out their cell phones to program in the number for the Pfizer "Michael Moore Hotline." (For reference, it's 212-573-1226, which a Google search reveals as the the number of one of the company's PR flacks.) Moore suggests giving them a buzz on Monday and saying in a whisper "He's heeere... Inside the house....!!!"
After the event, I wandered around downtown for a bit and then strolled back across the bridge to East Nashville. On the way I chatted with a (possibly homeless) man who was headed in the same direction. He says that he's been back in Nashville for six months and has been looking for work, but that the temp agencies and day labor places where he used to be able to get work are now mobbed with unemployed jobseekers.
During our conversation, he tossed off the standard line that Bush and Kerry are just two sides of the same coin, and that neither of them would make the economy better. I retorted that while Kerry might not be ideal, could he really do any worse than Bush? That brought a snort of agreement. Perhaps this isn't the best criteria for choosing a president, but one I'm pretty comfortable with at this point.
Unfortunately, my good digital camera is in the shop, so this weekend I was using a combination of my point and shoot Powershot S45 (gives decent results in good light, not so much with the flash), and a new EOS Rebel TI that I bought so as to be able to use my canon lenses and stuff with film. After realizing how much it's going to cost to process the 11 rolls I shot, I'm reminded why I like digital so much! :/
(Don't laugh... According to the article professional bowling now has more TV viewers than NHL hockey.)
<soapbox>Another thing that grated on me a bit were slightly snide comments by the narrator regarding "pollution tax credits" and related programs that give companies a market incentive to behave responsibly. Rather than present these as a way to charge companies for the externalities that they're responsible for, the narrator breathlessly proclaimed that "corporations even want to own the air we breathe!" This really misses the point -- that these programs reinforce the idea that the environment is a shared resource, and people should have to pay if they mess it up.</soapbox>
Anyhow... I recommend seeing this if you get a chance.
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should be taking over eight minutes to run. It's maddening! Think I need to get a copy of this.
The point of all this was that my workload tends to fluctuate depending on various cyclical news events -- at the moment, primary elections and high school sports. Plus our company has a management retreat in two weeks so we've got reports to write and powerpoints to slog through. Plus my brother is coming to visit during the same week. And at the moment one person in my department is out sick, and another is on vacation. So, yeah, things have been a bit crazy.
Anyway, in the meantime, I'll leave you with a nifty link to this story in today's paper about this guy who makes pop-art using etch-a-sketches. Very cool. There's only one photo in the article, but here's his actual website.
Somewhere near the California-Oregon border, I crossed a bridge and saw a herd of elk lounging on the banks of the river. There was a turnoff ahead, so I pulled over to see if I could get a closer look.
Several other people had the same idea. At first I followed their lead and bushwhacked my way through a grove of stinging nettles (ouch!) to get closer. The view wasn't that great, however.
On my way back to my car, I realized that there was a dirt road leading down to the gravel and sand-covered river bed. I was driving a rental car, and there was no way I was going to risk burying it. But I walked down the road to get a closer look.
Some folks, however, didn't share my prudence. One dumbass in particular drove his front-wheel drive SUV down, and then proceeded to bury it up to the axels in sand. His driving showed a remarkable lack of common sense -- he was able to back up, but rather than simply backing out of the sand onto firmer ground, he went a few feet and then zoomed forward to have another go.
After watching this little show for a few minutes, I offered to help push. The guy's wife also got out to help, and a Korean tourist pitched in. The three of us waded into the sand and began frantically pushing, eventually dislodging the underpowered SUV. Unfortunately, however, I lost my footing in the sand when the vehicle started moving and did a split -- ripping a rather noticable hole in my pants.
Not content to be a Good Samaritan/sucker once in a day, about an hour later I was driving down a road and was flagged down by two adults and about 10 kids standing in the middle of the road. A shirtless guy explained to me that they were out of gas, and asked for a ride to a gas station. I wasn't in a huge hurry, so he climbed in with one of the kids and we headed to a Chevron station about 10 miles up the road. While riding, however, it emerged that the guy didn't actually have money to pay for the gas. So I ended up subsidizing a few gallons for them. It may be they were really in trouble -- or that they have just hit on a scam for getting a few gallons of free fuel. Who knows? In any case, I'll live without the $6.
Spent the night at a Motel 6 in Medford, Oregon. Today I'm off to Crater Lake, and then heading back toward the coast.
If the laptop keeps working, I'll try to post a few pictures tonight.
In the mid 1850s bandits and desperados gave Pleasanton the title of "the Desperate Town in the West." Main Street shootouts were not uncommon. Infamous bandits, such as Joaquin Murrieta, would ambush prospectors on their way from the gold fields and seek refuge in Pleasanton.
So far all I've seen is two Interstates, a Denny's and a Home Depot. I'm going to be disappointed if I don't get to meet a few desperados while I'm here.
Not sure what the plan is tomorrow except that the rehearsal dinner is in the evening. Might try to go into San Francisco for a bit.
We already have his neighbors weighing in: "I have to be honest, we have always been afraid something was going to happen," says one.
Of course, this story is getting buried by the much more weighty material. The Titans are dropping Eddie George.
I have a tolerance for bad movies that don't purport to be anything special. For example, I'm willing to (somewhat) forgive the makers of the insanely-bad Stepford Wives remake, because it was obviously intended as summer-movie pap. But when a director goes out of his way to show off how artistic and avant-garde he is, he better have something to back it up. In this case, Guy Maddin comes up with nothing.
For what its worth, I remember having a similar reaction to this.
In their study ["Money, Sex and Happiness: An Empirical Study"], Mr. [Andrew J.] Oswald and Mr. [David G.] Blanchflower analyzed the self-reported sexual activity and levels of happiness of more than 16,000 American adults who participated in a number of social surveys since the early 1990's. (Happiness is notoriously difficult to define, and the surveys make no attempt to do so; the respondents simply record how happy they believe themselves to be on a sliding scale.) By factoring out the measurable effects of other life events, the study revealed, to no one's surprise, that, "The more sex, the happier the person."Furthermore, the economists compared the levels of happiness produced by a vigorous sex life with other activities whose economic values had been calculated in prior research, allowing them to impute, in dollars, how much happiness sex was worth. They also estimated that increasing the frequency of sexual intercourse from once a month to at least once a week provided as much happiness as putting $50,000 in the bank.
A lasting marriage, by comparison, offers about $100,000 worth of happiness a year -- that is, on average, a single person would need to receive $100,000 annually to be as happy as a married person with the same education, job status and other characteristics. Divorce, on the other hand, imposes an emotional toll of about $66,000 a year, though there may be a short-term economic gain from the immediate relief provided by leaving your spouse.
So, the way I figure it, that means that happily married folks should have to pay more income taxes!
Oswald acknowleges that there are some limitations to his statistical methodology, but he says it's difficult to carry out controlled experiments in the field. "It would be great to assign Mr. and Mrs. X a certain amount of sexual activity and a certain amount of income, and see how it impacts their happiness," he said. "But I think it would be hard to get government funding."
Here's the actual study (PDF), but be warned that it has, like, numbers and stuff! ;-) The NY Times story is now stuck behind their paid archive, but you can read a similar account over here.
When I went to Mexico City, I was able to find a family owned guesthouse in the heart of the metropolis for about $30/night. Alas, I'm quickly realizing that traveling to the high-rent district that is the Pacific Northwest is an entirely different story. In the U.S., guesthouses of the sort I've encountered in Italy or Mexico have been pushed out of the market by the the ubiquitous chain motels that spring up like mushrooms around Interstate exits. So if you're looking to stay "in town" in a place with a bit of character, you end up perusing the "Bed and Breakfast" market -- complete with antique furniture in the room, breakfast served on crystal, and a hefty price tag. Definitely overkill. But I'm really not thrilled about spending every night in a generic motel room out by the Interstate -- I want to be where I can walk around and sightsee, and where I'm likely to meet other people in the process. So that makes things a bit more complicated.
Plus, the stuff I'm interested in seeing in Oregon and Washington is less centralized than Mexico City -- I'm considering trying to see Mount Hood, Crater Lake, the falls on the Columbia River, etc. This means that to do this with any sort of speed, I'm going to need to have a car. And the cost of the car rental is probably going to dwarf the cost of my plane tickets to California.
The end result is that the trip is going to be a lot more expensive than I initially thought. Still, though, I'm looking forward to it. Now the big challenge is simply figuring out how to cram everything into 11 days.
Right now all I know for sure is that I'm arriving in Oakland on Friday night, and leaving from Seattle the following Tuesday afternoon. Everything between that is up in the air.
In addition to sightseeing around the Bay area and the actual wedding on Sunday, here's a rough list of things I may want to hit on this trip:
I have no idea how exactly I'm going to accomplish all this, however. If y'all know anything about this area and have suggestions, I'd love to hear them.
American success or failure in Iraq may well depend on whether the Iraqis ... like American soldiers or not. ... One of your jobs is to prevent Hitler's agents from getting in their dirty work. The best way you can do this is by getting along with the Iraqis and making them your friends. ... Every American soldier is an ... ambassador of good will.
and
Kerbela (and) Nejef ... are particularly sacred to the Iraqi Moslems. ... It is advisable to stay away from them.
Apparently the folks running the current occupation hadn't read this book.
The complete document is available as a PDF right here.
Guess that whole homeland security thing is paying off...
At the moment I'm in no huge rush to get out of my current job, although I'm still interested in what else is out there.
So when I was contacted by a headhunter trying to fill a job in Knoxville the other day, I didn't immediately tell him to take a hike. But I also didn't get all lovey dovey with him.
Basically, the job sounds like it would have pluses and minuses. With the biggest minus being that it's in Knoxville. I've always told myself that if I left my current job it would be to move back to the Northeast. So I'm not especially interested in this.
On the other hand, everyone has a price. <rationalization>And Knoxville is closer to the northeast by about three hours... :-) </rationalization> So I sent him a note back essentially saying that I might be interested if they were paying about 25%-35% more than I'm making now, but it would still depend a lot on the particular company (which he's being cagey about.) I'm not expecting anything to come out of this, but it makes life interesting to have it floating around out there.
Whatever is causing the pop-unders, it appears to be hidden in script being pulled from another server, since viewing source does not reveal the offending code. There is no smoking gun, but this guy has a theory that Bravenet has begun serving popunder ads with its "free" counters at random intervals.
To test this theory, we're going to expunge any bravenet-related code from our templates. Please let us know if you continue to see popunders when you visit.
Let me back up and start at the beginning:
The evening was, if anything, too short (the hotel cut off our electricity to get rid of us!) and ended with an increasingly drunken party at a local dive bar on Route 1.
I documented the thing pretty thoroughly over here. And, no, I'm not really sure what was going on right here. We'd had a few drinks, ok?
On Thursday I was supposed to join my Mom to go down to my grandfather's farm and see my grandmother in the nursing home. However, my mom was planning this little excursion, and I was shanghaied and forced to fix computers at her office. So we were off to a late start to begin with. This was followed by the two hour drive to the farm, a hurried lunch at the Stanardsville Dairy Queen, and quick visits to the farm and the nursing home.
My mom was supposed to be back for a 7:00 meeting, and I had a 9:00 flight, so we burned rubber up Route 29, only to hit massive traffic jams as we approached the city. (You would think heading into DC in rush hour would be easy, but not so much.) In an attempt to avoid the beltway traffic jam, we tried staying on I-66 toward downtown. When that didn't work, we got off, and partly due to garbled directions phoned in by my dad, ended up winding across half of northern Virginia before finally cutting through downtown and back up into Maryland. My mom was late for her meeting, and meanwhile my dad was throwing all my remaining belongings into my suitcase and rushing to meet us so that I could get to the airport on time. Needless to say this wasn't really the most relaxing day.
Takoma Park had been the subject of good-natured ribbing for delaying its festivities until Monday, but the city had the last laugh when the day dawned sunny and dry. Unfortunately my brother left that morning to meet a new group of campers. But my parents and I did our annual march over to old-town for the festivities. As always, the parade was a hoot, with various organizations and neighborhood associations turning out. As the Post pointed out,
Grant Avenue offered up a giant gray-and-yellow cardboard Humvee that was propelled Fred Flintstone-style by nearly a dozen hot and sweaty denizens of that street. Labeled "Weapon of Mass Consumption" for its figuratively unquenchable thirst for fuel, it careened wildly right and left along the route with Dan Robinson as driver."Every five seconds, we run out of gas," he explained with a grin.
The presidential campaign was never far removed, with marchers in the Sherman Avenue "Bush Country" entry chanting, tongue firmly in cheek, "Don't think -- vote Bush" as they passed by. "Billionaires for Bush" appeared a few minutes later, in tuxedos and evening gowns.
We spent part of the afternoon planning my parents' trip to Italy this fall, and then grilled again for dinner. After dinner my dad and I trekked over to Takoma Middle School for the local fireworks. And thus ended by Independece Day extravaganza -- the next morning I was back at work and trying to catch up. So this is only the second time I've spent a full day at home since the middle of June. Whew.
More of the same today. Reunion is tonight, and then off to the convention for tomorrow through Tuesday. After that, maybe a trip to the farm, and/or visiting another division of the company to see a new system in action. Back to Nashville next Friday. Whee.
I feel like all of my interactions with senior management go something like this:
Me: Here's what I need to do what you're asking.
Them: No, what we need is the absolute bare bones estimate. No frills.
Me: That's what this is.
Them: So you're saying that this is the absolute minimum your department can get by on.
Me: Yes.
Them: Ok, here's half of that. And from now on can you also have your staff wash the windows and empty the trash?
I am really freakin' tired of this. I work for a Fortune 200 company that pays regular dividends to its shareholders, yet to hear folks around here talk you'd think we're subsisting on government cheese. I mean, we ration Post-It! notes, for crying out loud. And our mileage is reimbursed at a whopping $0.24 (bumped up from $0.22 due to the gas price increases.)
At the moment I'm supposed to feel grateful because this year they only cut my laptop budget by 50%, instead of last year's 100%. Even if the budget were fully funded, we would still have 6+ year old machines in our fleet.
And I also found out today that some of my staff had simply been ignoring a public-facing voice mail box for the last three months. I can't blame them, because I've been pressuring them to do other things, and they simply don't have enough time. But I'm utterly frustrated that the company doesn't provide us with sufficient human and financial resources to do what is expected.
At some level, I know things could be worse. I mean, there are companies in our industry that are laying people off. But at the same time, I can't help wondering if things could also be better.
Disagreement is a prime engine for advancing human knowledge -- and besides, hearing boldly stated opinions is tremendous fun. For smart students to feel challenged, and for dull students to lose their cobwebs, they need to learn that academic subjects are both a matter of grave moral concern and a source of exhilaration, worth becoming overheated about. They learn this not by being invited to care, but by watching professors who manifestly do care. For the college professor, the proper pedagogic role is not as facilitator, coaxing children into thinking, but as role model, showing young men and women what a thinking mind looks like.I wonder if the same calculus applies to attempts by the news media to be "fair and balanced" (in the real sense, not the Fox sense). By trying to present every point of view equally, are journalists creating gutless prose that fails to inspire meaningful intellectual debate?My suggestion that professors are too mild, not sufficiently opinionated, may at first sound ludicrous. It is well known that professors take their fields too seriously. They are too inclined to think that second-century Roman coinage is a matter of ultimate concern, too willing to end friendships over what Willa Cather's lesbianism might mean for her depictions of wheat fields. But while professors may get contrary at conferences and in journal articles, those same professors are often profoundly milquetoast in their classrooms, so eager to get in opposing points of view and to assure students that no opinion could be wholly wrong that they forget to have opinions themselves.
Yes, some professors are known for "advancing an agenda," which is thought to be a bad thing. But for the most part, they hold to the well-meaning liberal dogma that students ought to figure things out for themselves. That leads to the kind of teaching that all of us dread and yet engage in: "Very good. I see where you're coming from. Now, does anyone have another point of view?"
Phileas Fogg had won his wager, and had made his journey around the world in eighty days. To do this he had employed every means of conveyance--steamers, railways, carriages, yachts, trading-vessels, sledges, elephants. The eccentric gentleman had throughout displayed all his marvellous qualities of coolness and exactitude. But what then? What had he really gained by all this trouble? What had he brought back from this long and weary journey?Nothing, say you? Perhaps so; nothing but a charming woman, who, strange as it may appear, made him the happiest of men!
Truly, would you not for less than that make the tour around the world?
-- The conclusion of
Around the World in
Eighty Days, by Jules
Verne, which I just
finished re-reading.
I spent most of the week doing various things related to a conference being held here in Nashville. One of the departments I supervise at work was on tour on Saturday, so we spent a lot of time frantically straghtening things up and getting ready. I think it ended up going pretty well.
Sunday I spent part of the day preparing a Powerpoint for my own presentation on Tuesday. In the evening I made an abortive attempt to meet up with someone who was supposed to give me a ticket to one of the conference events. I spent an hour wandering around Opryland, but never found him. So instead I went home, grabbed my new camera, and went down to the riverfront where a carnival was set up. (Might post a few of the pictures when I have a chance to upload them.) I ran into a couple of other amateur photographers doing the same thing.
After that I spent a fun week out at Opryland doing various conference-related things. The conference was great -- I learned a lot, and met some pretty fascinating people. (Oh, and never let it be said that librarians don't know how to throw a party.)
Since that's over, I'm trying to dig out at work, and have also moved on to the next planning crisis: the 10-year-reunion that I'm co-chairing next weekend. While I'm in D.C. for that, I'm also going to stop in at another conference for work.
Today was the first day that I've really been able to totally goof off in a few weeks, and I took advantage -- sleeping in, watching some TV, talking to one of my Boston friends, and reading. Tomorrow I guess I should try to accomplish something a little more productive.
Monday evening I went walking in Shelby Bottoms for about two hours, and brought the camera along to play with. I'm still learning how to use it, and I don't think anything I took is really that great. But it was fun to experiment. I've already decided that I need to get a longer lens than the 18-55mm it came with. (Actually more like a 28-90mm lens due to the smaller digital image sensor.)
The only problem with buying lenses is that the good ones are really expensive. Like more than the camera. I think I'm probably going to let my checkbook cool down for a bit before I send more money over to B&H.
I'm sure you're expecting a scary-sounding description of mold and decay. But the actual result of this little inadvertent science experiment was even scarier. The bread looks and feels just like it did the day it left the supermarket. No mold. No staleness. Just plain old spongy American-style mass-produced bread.
Apparently they pump this stuff so full of preservatives now that it can basically stand decades in storage with little loss of its basic bread nature. Let's contrast this to bread from the local bakery, which tastes great, but basically starts going bad after a day or two.
So obviously store-bought bread has some powerful chemical juju going on. For all we know, Harris-Teeter just made one giant batch of super-durable bread made in 1987, and they've been selling it ever since. Kind of scary, if you ask me.
I ask you, my friends, is this a great country or what?
In addition to the Grape-Nuts fiasco (see below), I am also dealing with a massive ant infestation in my kitchen. When they first showed up, they just went after some hard candy that had been sitting in a mason jar on my windowsill for a few months. I got rid of that temptation, but new they were interested, and immediately commissioned ant-explorers to forage in new areas. Like the cabinets, the toaster, the sink, and just about everywhere else.
So yesterday morning I made an emergency trip to Cumberland Hardware. If you're imagining Home Depot, think again. This is the sort of old-school hardware shop that has been exterminated by the big boxes in most places. The moment you walk into the tiny shop, one of the proprietors quizzes you about what you're looking for. They then instantly locate it from amidst the floor-to-ceiling clutter. Once I asked for a lightbulb that they didn't have, but helpfully they sent me to another shop two doors down. I'd give you a web address, but they apparently don't have one. Which figures -- their main concession to modern technology is a cash register powered by a metal crank on its side!
Anyway, they sold me this stuff called Terro. It's a little bottle filled with clear goop that looks sort of like sugar syrup. And from what I understand, that's basically what it is, albeit with a dollop or two of boric acid thrown in for good measure. The idea is that you leave this stuff laying around, the ants go into a feeding frenzy on it, take a bunch of it home to the missus, and the die a horrible death. So far they're definitely snarfing it down as fast as I can ladle it out, but I haven't noticed a marked decrease in the number of ants marching in.
Too bad there aren't more of these guys around here.
The new commenting interface seems to be headed toward the livejournal model, where commenters are either members of Blogger and post under their username, or must post as "Anonymous." I have never liked this, since I don't think it's fair that blog-less friends, Movable Type users, etc. should have to suffer the indignity of being known as "anonymous." The YACCS model allows anyone to enter contact info in on the fly, which is more democratic.
On another note, I also turned on the new "post by e-mail" feature, which sounds pretty cool. If this works, it means I should be able to blast out blog entries from my SmartPhone. (I've tried to do this before in other ways, but it's never been very reliable.) I'll give it a try in a bit.
Instead I spent today in orbit between the bed and the futon, feeling like crud warmed over. I seem to have picked up some sort of nasty head cold that is sapping my will to live. Hopefully with a lot of sleep it will blow over soon.
On the good side of the scale, the brother who was laid off back around Thanksgiving, finally found another job -- and it sounds like it's a pretty good one. Yay.
Ok, you've suffered long enough. The lyrics below were from "The Cranes," sung by Patty Larkin on the album "Red = Luck."
No Googling Allowed. Which performer performed this song on which album?On their wings they are returning.
On their wings they fly.
Shadows fade; the sun is burning... high.Every day the light stays longer.
Every day you sigh.
Shadows fade; you start to wave goodbye.If you're thinking of leaving, you're leaving at a very bad time.
''I'm drinking alcohol,'' explained Julian Casablancas, lead singer of red-hot rock band The Strokes, to the packed River Stages audience Sunday night.Charming... Now pardon me while I go and refill my Brita with premium grade Cumberland River tap water.''I'm not drinking water, I'm not drinking juice. I'm drinking liquid cocaine.''
Casablancas' explanation seemed somewhat necessary, and not entirely unexpected, given that he and guitarist Nick Valensi had urinated minutes before into the Cumberland River.
Emulating the food industries, Japanese breweries have also joined the competition to offer GM-free products. In 1998, Paarlberg said, the Kirin Brewing Company announced that starting in the year 2001 it would use only GM-free corn starch in its beer. Only one day after Kirin’s announcement, its competitor, Sapporo Breweries made similar promises that its beer would be as GM-free as its competitors. Recognizing this commendable display of health consciousness among beer drinkers, Paarlberg pointed out that even Japanese smokers made the decision some years ago to consume only non-GM tobacco leaves.
-- Robert Paarlberg, "Asia’s Response to Genetically Modified Food
It's about two miles from there to here, and there's some nice scenery along the way. The only drawback is having to allow enough time to get here, and having to do it again at the end of the day whether I feel like it or not. (There's always cabs and buses in a pinch, I guess.)
I figure the walking is an easy way to help make up for the computer screen I stare at much of the rest of the day. We'll have to see if this idea survives once the mercury tops 90, though.
The trip was fantastic. I'll try to write more about the trip the first chance I get. But I also have a group paper to work on for class, and a visit from my cousin. So no promises.
Now to be fair, I don't think she is a native English speaker. And I have a huge amount of respect for anyone who knows enough of a foreign language to attend graduate school in it. But on the other hand, when your grade is on the line, you can't help but think that it would be nice to be in a group with a few gifted wordsmiths with a remarkable command of the English language.
I should point out that I've worked with plenty of native-born Americans who were lousy writers, and I'm sure there are plenty of non-native speakers who can write circles around me. But unfortunately they aren't in my BIOT640 project group.
Oh, yeah. On top of that, I have once again summarily been elected group leader. We were playing a game of chicken. The first person to panic and suggest that maybe we should actually meet was tagged as the sucker, and henceforth appointed ruler. That was me. So it's my job to guide the group into coming up with a coherent paper in the next month. It's going to be a long month.
The body tells time with a master clock in the brain, a pinhead-sized cluster of neurons in the hypothalamus that takes cues from optic nerves that signal sunlight. By sticking people in isolation chambers, scientists discovered that most people's internal clocks run a bit longer — about a half-hour on average — than the sun's 24-hour cycle. That's why, for most people, it's easier to stay up later and compensate by sleeping in than to force yourself to sleep early and wake early, explains Dr. Eliza Sutton, an acting assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington. Morning larks are those rarer birds whose body clock is shorter than 24 hours, so they wake up raring to go.
A friend at work recently went to Mexico City, and has been giving me crib sheets for my upcoming trip. He recommended that I watch Frida, the award-winning film about Mexican artist Fridah Kahlo and her husband, muralist Diego Rivera.
So last night I rented the movie. It was shot entirely in Mexico, and was absolutely beautiful. A lot of the credit for this goes to director Julie Taymor. After listening to her director's commentary, I am a huge fan. She is amazingly articulate about how she manages to portray emotion on film, something that not all directors are able to convey. And her vision and connection to the material in the movie are apparent.
As usual, I spent a lot of time trolling through the DVD extras. The second disc included a variety of interviews with the participants in the film. One particularly fascinating one is with Chavela Vargas, a famous Mexican folk singer (in her 90s) who performed in the film and who actually knew Frida Kahlo. Through the subtitles, she almost seemed to be speaking in poetry.
Another hidden treasure was this story, relayed by Julie Taymor during an interview with Bill Moyers:
I am often interested in the story of the outsider. You know I lived in Indonesia for many years. [...] I was there for two years and I was planning to stay longer and start a theater company. I went to Bali to a remote village by a volcanic mountain on the lake. They were having a ceremony that only happens only every 10 years for the young men. I wanted to be alone.I was listening to this music and all of a sudden out of the darkness I could see glints of mirrors and 30 or 40 old men in full warrior costume-- there was nobody in this village square. I was alone. They couldn't see me in the shadows. They came out with these spears and they started to dance. They did, I don't know, it felt like an eternity but probably a half hour dance. With these voices coming out of them. And they danced to nobody. Right after that, they and I went oh, my God. The first man came out and they were performing for God. Now God can mean whatever you want it to mean. But for me, I understood it so totally. The detail on the costumes. They didn't care if someone was paying tickets, writing reviews. They didn't care if an audience was watching. They did it from the inside to the outside. And from the outside to the in. And that profoundly moved me then.
The rest of the interview is online right here.
It must be fun to work someplace where your entire job is basically to be a pain in the tobacco industry's backside. Case in point:
Shards O' Glass Freezer PopsAt Shards O' Glass, our goal is to be the most responsible, effective and respected developer of glass shard consumer products intended for adults. Our Shards O' Glass Freeze Pops are the nation's top-selling frozen treats containing glass shards. Little wonder, considering all we put into them! Enjoy your stay here. And remember, Shards O' Glass Freeze Pops are for adults only.
TobaccoDocuments.org is also pretty cool -- it's an ongoing project to index, cross-reference, OCR, and make available online the thousands millions of tobacco industry documents revealed during tobacco litigation.
Charismatic, confident, and boyishly handsome, Thomson was not a scientist who labored quietly in a lab, plying his trade in monkish isolation. When scores of able tinkerers were flummoxed by their inability to adapt overland telegraphic cables to underwater, intercontinental use, Thomson took to the high seas with new equipment that was to change the face of modern communications. And as the world’s navies were transitioning from wooden to iron ships, they looked to Thomson to devise a compass that would hold true even when surrounded by steel.But as the century drew to a close and Queen Victoria's reign ended, this legendary scientific mind began to weaken. He grudgingly gave way to others with a keener, more modern vision. But the great physicist did not go quietly. With a ready pulpit at his disposal, he publicly proclaimed his doubts over the existence of atoms. He refused to believe that radioactivity involved the transmutation of elements. And believing that the origin of life was a matter beyond the expertise of science and better left to theologians, he vehemently opposed the doctrines of evolution, repeatedly railing against Charles Darwin. Sadly, this pioneer of modern science spent his waning years arguing that the Earth and the Sun could not be more than 100 million years old. And although his early mathematical prowess had transformed our understanding of the forces of nature, he would never truly accept the revolutionary changes he had helped bring about, and it was others who took his ideas to their logical conclusion.
The catch to all this (and there's always a catch) is that you either have to read the books page-by-page online, or pay to buy a printed copy or download a complete PDF. Still, it's a pretty nifty program.
If only I had this sort of devotion to stuff I should be doing right now.
After laying on the floor and contemplating the ceiling for a minute or two, I staggered to my feet and noticed a throbbing pain whenever I moved my arm. My shoulder was definitely not a happy camper. In comparison, the head thing was virtually unnoticable.
As the day has gone on, however, the shoulder pain has mostly dissipated. But the dull ache in my head has been getting worse. ugh. Hopefully a good night's sleep will make it all better.
In other news, I've been staying busy with schoolwork, planning a high school reunion, and various other things. Oh, and reading about Mexico whenever I have a free moment. Looking forward to the trip, even if I haven't convinced anyone else to go with me...
Yup, that's pretty typical. I've never been a morning person! ;-)To: program coordinator From: Me Subject: you win: it looks like I have to fill a few credits It looks like I may take Soling next semester - it depends on how my petitions turn out, but I may have to fill 3 credits. The only stipulation is that if I do take it, I refuse to get out of bed for class before 10:00 am. (the moment that happens I am out the door signing up for basketweaving and beer appreciation!) -DD
Then a few years later, my friend and I did a week-long driving trip around the south, going from Nashville to New Orleans to Houston to Dallas/Fort Worth to Caddo Valley, Ark. where I left my transmission (long story for another time), and back to Nashville. I'm pretty sure I drove through Texarkana, which is only about a quarter inch from Oklahoma on the map.
So I had two perfectly-good opportunities to set foot in Oklahoma, and I flubbed them both. Oh, well... Next time I have an opportunity to visit, I'll snap it up. Although perhaps I should learn more about it first -- the only thing I know off the top of my head is that it's "where the wind comes sweeping down the plains."
I just filled in Vermont on my "states visited" map below. I talked to my parents, and turns out that they're pretty sure we went through Vermont on one of our Grizwold-esque New England summer vacations.
The car on the right is a near facsimile of the Chevy Malibu we drove on most of those trips, except it's a few years newer. This picture comes from the web site of a guy who apparently spent a great deal of time tripping out this 20-year-old station wagon. "The ultimate goal," he writes, "is to turn this old wagon into a sleeper, powered by 425 cubic inches of Oldsmobile V8 :o)))))))"
Everyone needs a hobby, I guess...
Now I just have to figure out where I'm staying and what I'm doing while I'm there. Finding someone else crazy enough to come along would also be a plus!
Here are pictures from my trip to DC and New Jersey last month. They are of many different things, and I haven't bothered to caption them, so you'll have to use your imagination a bit. Buried somewhere in there are pictures of George Washington's diary, a snowstorm, a map signed by Robert E. Lee, and the abandoned church in Camden where my brother is working. Like I said, kind of random.
For the last few days, I've been grooving to the beats of the Gray Album, D.J. Danger Mouse's artful mix of the Beatles' White Album and Jay-Z's Black Album. The funny thing is, if it wasn't for EMI's ridiculous attempts to sue this album out of existence, I probably never would have even heard of it, let alone downloaded it. The music industry needs to get over its insane addiction to lawyers and focus on coming up with better ways to take advantage of digital music. The EFF has an interesting proposal for "voluntary collective licensing" of music on file sharing networks. Sounds like a good plan to me -- a lot better than continually paying lawyers millions to sue grannies and grade school kids.
I finally got around to putting together my visited states map. (Thanks for the inspiration, Laura.) It was harder than I thought, because I've never really kept track. Initially, for example, I had Vermont checked off, because I've traveled all over New England and just assumed I'd been there. But when I started thinking about it, the closest I could remember being was Plattsburgh, NY, across the lake. So to be fair I took it off the list, making it the only Eastern state I may not have visited.
As you can see, there's a gaping hole in the Northwest quadrant of the country. My cousin is getting married near San Francisco this summer, so maybe I'll try to fill in a few more states on that trip. I also have another cousin in Alaska who has a four-year-old daughter I've only seen in pictures. One of these days I want to make it up that way.
I tried doing "visited countries," but it hardly seemed worth it. The complete list (other than the US) is Canada, Germany, Italy, Monaco, Vatican City, and France (but only a tiny corner of France, so it felt wrong to check off the whole country.) I think I'm going to try to expand that list this year. I was briefly considering doing a last minute trip to England in the next few weeks due to crazy-cheap fares. But I procrastinated too long and the fares disappeared. So I'll probably wait until the summer or fall for my next international trip. Anyone got any good international travel ideas?
UPDATE: I just filled in Vermont without even leaving home! See entry above for details.
create your own personalized map of the USA
or write about it on the open travel guide
If you like those things, you should make Vail and Jesse happy by buying this house from them! Hey, it has its own domain name, so you know it's gotta be good!
The excavation commenced one afternoon. I applied myself vigorously at first. It soon became clear that the people who dig real tunnels probably aren't using a six-inch square spade designed primarily for sandbox use. I think the hole ended up being about a foot deep before I tired of this game. But not before I struck what I thought was a rich coal seam. More likely it was the leavings from someone's hibachi, but I entertained brief fantasies of retiring early from Elementary school and living out my life as a coal baron.
My dad eventually dug deeper and planted an azalea in the hole. That was the end of my tunnel-digging phase.
Another time, I was playing mountain climber on our back hill using a massive claw hammer that looked like a climber's pick. I swung a little too vigorously and embedded the claw in my ankle. 20+ years later, I still have a tear-drop shaped scar to remind me of that one.
We walked around the side of the line and saw hundreds of same-sex couples in all states of dress (punk to tuxedo to family heirloom dress to just-off-the-street-in-work-attire). One couple wore yarmulkes and carried a siddur; another couple looked like ordained ministers, but I didn't know for sure of which Christian denomination. (It must be one willing to ordain gay women.) At the back of City Hall, the line was making its way through the door past a group of about half a dozen well-wishers with big pink signs. They looked like high school students. One of them was carrying an American flag with gay rights symbols in place of the stars.I think this is the most hearwarming thing I've read in quite a while, and I'm glad San Francisco is doing it. What are you waiting for, Nashville?[...]
The balcony opposite ours was set up in the same general way: officiants, couples, families. We heard frequent applause as people there were pronounced "spouses for life", and shortly the same thing happened right in front of us, perhaps three or four feet from where we stood. There was no privacy, and there was merely a basic decorum; nothing was ornate or elaboratively choreographed. The emphasis seemed to be on speed with appropriate respect. (One couple carried signs saying that they had been together for 18 years and had wanted to be married the whole time. Dan Bern says "I know how I hate to wait / Like even for a bus or something / An important phone call / So I can just imagine..." but of course I can't imagine. [...]
Zack and I applauded for the couples as they were married, and shook hands with them. The couples were as diverse in age as they were in dress: I saw a pair of women get married and was sure they were younger than I am. And I saw and was most touched by several weddings of people who had likely been waiting even longer than 18 years. Two women of my mother's age, or a little older, were married right in front of me, and they started to cry. I almost started to cry, too.
We did see history. We saw a dozen or two dozen people get married on Valentine's Day, who all very badly wanted to and who got their chance.
I've already used it to catch part of a nifty PBS documentary that I otherwise would have missed entirely. (It's now set to snap up the second half next week.)
In the process, I tried out my Christmas food processor. I wanted my onions diced, but I ended up with something more along the lines of julienned. The soup didn't seem to care, and I saved some to put on sandwiches later in the week. But I think perhaps I am in need of remedial Cuisinart training.
Last weekend I visited my youngest brother, who's spending the year in Camden, NJ with Urban Promise.
That's a quickie update -- look for pictures and more details later. Heading back to Nashville tonight.
There are so many layers of bad when it comes to the Hollywood romantic comedy, it would take the film-reviewing equivalent of a geologist to identify them precisely.Don't think I'll be lining up to see that one...So let's not waste our time divining upon which subterranean level of awfulness "Win a Date With Tad Hamilton!" should rest. Let's just say, there is no reason on God's good Earth to see this movie. Not even if your house were to burn down on the coldest night of the winter and the only place to house you and your shivering family was a theater playing this film. Hypothermia would be a thrill compared to sitting through this.
In the end, though, running the Archives has turned out to be one of the more interesting parts of my job. It definitely beats listening to users bitch about their laptops. As I've gotten more into this, I've realized how much I don't know about how to organize and preserve historical materials. So last year I applied for "employee grant" funding to attend two weeks of training at the National Archives. My request was approved, helped along by the fact that I could sponge off my parents and incur no hotel or meal expenses.
So now I'm in DC for about two weeks for the Modern Archives Institute. I'm looking forward to it.
To make things interesting, my assistant on the IT side of things is about to become a father, so he's likely to be out for a few weeks as well. That means our new part-time support person is running the show. It also means I'm probably going to be spending my afternoons on the phone after class lets out. Fun.
On a vaguely related note, I just signed up for the last class in my Technology Management degree. To mix things up a bit, I decided to take Societal Issues in Biotechnology. This ends my long history of avoiding classes in the natural sciences. But working with a biotech startup last semester got me more interested in this sort of thing. And the alternative was an E-Commerce class that probably would have bored me to tears. So this seemed like a good option -- we'll see how it goes.
Following the excellent example of Tom and Ray, Newton's Kumquat now has its own Shameless Commerce Division. It's actually run by some dude named Dave, whoever he is. In any case, we have it on good authority that more stuff will be showing up when he gets around to it.
Update: Now my cat is tossing her cookies all over the house. Apparently she didn't like the speech either.
