Blog Archives 050509 to 050414

Old pointless chatter instead of new pointless chatter.

 

050509 København, Danmark
I have been here only two months and yet I already feel the time-pressure like a physical thing. Little delays; having to delay an experiment for a day due to a lack of incubator space, another day pasing with no progree on the paperwork for Danish lessons, etc., all have me thinking "Ahrgh! I don't have time for this!". I know that this tour will be over in a flash.

050508 København, Danmark
OK. This is an attempt to do a non-ranting discussion of teaching evolution in schools. It was inspired by recent happenings in Kansas, which have demonstrated they don't have a flipping clue about science.

Update. After having posted my discussion here for about 2 weeks, I have decided that the text was bloating the blog unnecessarily and I have moved the discussion to this link, Evolution in schools. It's not that it is too long poorly written or anything; it is simply that I have been trying to move any long text pieces to their own sections so that the blog itself will load quickly and not be a pain in the butt to read.

050506 København, Danmark
I go through phases where I write entries and do not post them, so even if you have been strangely addicted to reading these entries, new material will sometimes appear at old entry dates. Today I put in entries at 050312, 050417, 050420, 050421, 050501, and 050505. What can I say? It probably pays to simply skim things once a month or so.

I figured finally putting up a few old pieces was a better idea than posting a phone-book sized rant about the foolishness going on in Kansas right now. Yes, I'm talking about them putting the teaching of evolution on trial. Grr. I'll stop typing now, the urge to rant is too big.

050505 København, Danmark
It is yet another Danish vacation day. Because this vacation day falls on a Thursday, many people will be taking Friday off, to have a four-day weekend. Between the tendency to work early and leave early, the many scattered holidays, and the large (compared to the US) vacation time allotment, it appears that the Danes do their best to make sure that work does not get in the way of life. I can't help but compare this with the US professional's life, where it is implicitly assumed that life will simply have to be fit into the time gaps that work does not claim. In considering the Danish way of doing things, I am split between an appreciation of the increased quality of life and a frustration at the pace of things.

050504 København, Danmark
Recent discoveries:
1) No matter how fast you are going on a bicycle, you will be passed as some point by a fourteen year-old, making you feel slow and fat. This is not really because you are slow and fat, but because the fourteen year-old has the two advantages of a high metabolic rate and the fact that he or she has not yet learned a healthy fear of traffic, wandering pedestrians who don't look where they are going, or the idea that they might not hit that curb just right.
2) Cobblestone streets are pretty, but a literal pain in the ass to ride on.
3) You will discover the above after descending a long hill to find yourself in a section of town entirely paved in all directions by cobblestones.
4) I like making numbered lists.

050503 København, Danmark
I'm happy now for two reasons. First and formost, I now have a reliable internet connection at home, so my ability to make posts and send emails and generally keep in contact with people has vastly improved. Second, I used my new connection to check out the preview of Serenity, the movie that has come out of the cancelled Firefly series. If you have not seen Firefly, it was a darn good and original sci-fi show from Joss Whedon (who also did the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series). The Firefly episodes are out on DVD and well worth taking a look at. Anyway, the movie, Serenity, will be released in theaters September 30th. I'm looking forward to seeing this.
Hmm. That reminds me, the the latest emasculated, overproduced, effects-heavy, poorly storylined flick from George Lucas is due out soon, I think... Whatever. He did much better when he had Alan Dean Foster ghostwriting the plot.

050501 København, Danmark
A relaxing thing to do on weekends here is to just sort of wander around downtown on the long pedestrian-only shopping streets, like Købermangergade. It's always a zoo, with street performers, street venders selling sugar-roasted almonds, and random events. Today I saw a costumed unicycle parade and a 'Michael Jackson is Innocent' protest (with very nordic-looking people dressed up like Michael Jackson and waiving big american flags with Michael Jackson's face silk-screened across it), amongst other semi-surreal events.

050430 København, Danmark
It is random observation time! Random observation number one: I like Schweppes Lemon. It is a soft drink that (shockingly) tastes like what it is supposed to taste like. It has a pleasant, strong lemon flavor. The drink is cloudy and the taste is strong enough that I suspect it may have actual lemon juice in it. Almost unheard of that a soft drink contains a natural product which hasn't been purified and reconstituted a dozen times... I must be wrong about it containing real lemon juice, but it seems like it. Anyway, I like the stuff. I don't know if it is sold in the US, or if it is sold in the US as the same formulation (sometimes the same product has been adapted to local tastes and expectations to a surprising degree).
Random observation number two: "Oh Death" by Doc Boggs on The Folkways Recordings is an absolutely chilling version of the song. It is worth checking out. Yeah the song was done decently by a different artist on the soundtrack to "Oh Brother Where Art Thou", but that version didn't do much for me. The Doc Boggs version raises the hair on the back of your neck because you get the feeling he really means it, that he really is talking to Death and pleading with it. I heard it at my friend Eric Bracey's house a long long time ago. This gem of a track was in amidst other very authentic folk music tracks on the Folkways recordings... Uh, by the way, when I say "very authentic" what I mean is music that sounds like it is being produced by drunken, inbred hilbillies who have never studied music and are just sort of slapping away on the sort of instruments you can make out of mud, a warped pine board, and some roadkill.
I was happily mocking Eric's music until the Doc Boggs track came on and forced me to respect some of the music.

050429 København, Danmark
I'm not sure how I have managed to not mention this yet... I currently have the impression that Denmark is an entire country made up of morning people. At work, a whole bunch of the techs get in at 6:30-7:00 AM. Yep; they got up, puttered around, made breakfast, had their morning coffee and did the commute to work by the time I'm just getting up. This means that the lab starts looking pretty empty by 3 in the afternoon.
Don't get me wrong; I like the morning. I really enjoy watching the sun rise. I just happen to believe that morning is when the dream fariy visits and that watching the sun rise is what happens when you stay up a little later than usual.

050428 København, Danmark
I have been waiting for the nice Danish spring to arrive, but it looks like it is going to be sweaters weather for a while longer... This is Danish spring. Anyway, I have bought a bike and started biking around the area, but it's either going to have to warm up a bit more or I'm going to have to buy some gloves before the bicycle ride to and from Bagsværd becomes comfortable. I like the bike; it is one of those very typical Danish city bikes, black, with the big curved handlebars, a bell, full fenders, a rack on the rear, only 3 gears, and brakes controlled by reversing the pedals. I feel like a big kid when I'm riding around because, although this style is common here, in the US these features are really only present on little kid's bikes.

050421 København, Danmark
There have been a series of days off. Various national holidays have granted a day here or there, often a Monday or a Friday. At work, it is the end of an accounting year, so people are using up the vacation days that would not roll over. At first, this was kind of cool; I used the time off to visit parks, sightsee, and get acquainted with the city.

Of late, however, I'm finding the time off to be a pain in the ass. I have a few issues where I'm waiting on paperwork to be processed, but everything is delayed as Denmark vacations. Even if the people I need to talk to are at work, the people they need to talk with are on vacation. When those people are back, the first set have gone on vacation. It can take weeks just to have the most simple of matters dealt with.

Part of the problem for me is the nature of my position. On this wandering tour, it is often unclear who is taking care of what issues related to my work and housing. This means that there is lots of transferring the buck around while they are trying to figure out where it ought to stop. I knew when I took on the position that part of the deal that things would be a bit rough at the start, as the administration of this sort of position was still being developed. So you take a bit of organizational non-clarity, add in the vacation situation and you can see how a month can fly by while it is being decided whether or not I can get a code to let me into my work building on weekends. It can be a little frustrating at times but, when viewed on the grand scale of things, it is a very minor thing.

050420 København, Danmark
Between the occasional article Eric (my bro') sends me on the oil and energy industry, and my readings on the BioEnergy (fuel ethanol production) industry, I am regularly reminded of the fact that humanity has dodged Malthus's predictions through technology. This has not truly dodged Malthus's predictions so much as shifted the limiting demands from food to energy. For how long can we continue to do this and at what cost?

No matter whether you believe global warming is a concern or not, the fact is that human activity has significantly perturbed a system which is not well understood and the ramifications of this perturbation are not yet known. The fossil record has a number of examples of organisms which influenced their environment in a way that turned out to be detrimental for that organism's success. I hope humanity is smart enough to avoid that fate.

Anyway, it is clear that humanity is having a large impact on their environment. Doesn't it seem prudent to minimize that impact when we can? Shifting to cleaner, renewable energy sources and attempting to recycle and minimize waste production just seems logical to me. Various US interests have lobbied against stricter environmental controls, claiming that it is not economically feasible or that it would damage the competitiveness of the US companies.

This may be correct in the very short run, but the reverse it true in the long run. In the chemical industry, the German companies have been forced to meet some very strict standards due to the power of the German Green movement. After years of needing to comply with these strict standards, the German chemical companies now have some of the world's cleanest production plants. In order to avoid pollution and waste, the plants are often built with small additional reactor plants on site, with these smaller plants taking the waste from the main plant and converting it to energy, converting it to additional side-products, or purifying it and returning it as recovered input materials for the main plant. The entire process is more efficient and more productive. Chemical and Engineering News had an article on this a few years ago. Bids were put in by US and German firms to build a chemical plant in Taiwan. Taiwan doesn't have much of a Green movement, so waste levels were not much of an influence on their decision of which company's bit to accept. Due to the higher efficiency of the German plant, they were able to put in a lower bid than the US company, as well as promising more products, a faster time-to-investment-payoff, much cleaner facilities, and almost no waste disposal costs. The US company's response was to (successfully) lobby the US government for funding to allow the US company to slightly underbid the Germans. The German plant was still given the contract, due to all the other advantages they offered.

So even if you want to ignore the global warming situation, clean, efficient, and nonpoluting is simply a better strategy than the short-sighted cheap and dirty strategy. The US is technologically advanced, so I am at a loss to explain why it has failed to back the better strategy. Some analysts have blamed the enforced short-term thinking generated by the importance of quarterly financial reports, but that seems too simplistic an answer.

I the above paragraph, I was forced to call the US "technologically advanced" rather than what I wanted to type, which was "the world leader in research". We had been the world leader in science and research, but two decades of emphasis on applied rather than basic research has had it's inevitable outcome. The number of big patents has fallen off and a large number of US patants are now piddly "me too" twists on someone else's idea. This shift to heavily fund applied rather than basic research was based on the Japanese model of emphasizing products over novel models.

What I simply don't understand is why the US has chosen to follow this model when it has been known for decades that this strategy has not paid off for the Japanese. Analysts predicted over six years ago that this choice would cost the US it's leadership in science and research, therby costing the US it's lead in patents. I suppose you could claim that applied research is easier to explain to the congressmen who control the funding, but this ignores the fact that basic research was emphasized in funding choices for many preceeding decades.

I am left wondering why the US is not learning from these examples. I'd like to be proud of my nation, but it has been doing a number of really stupid things of late.

050418 København, Danmark
Sometimes I wonder about the US postal service employees in Utah. When I was there, I had the occasional "interesting" experience where I would suddenly stop receiving mail and discover that my mail was being returned to sender stamped "Adressee unknown". There was never any explaination as to why this might happen. Just recently, I received a summons to Jury Duty from the Third District Court in Utah. Clearly writting in bold all capitols print on the envelope is the instruction
"If the addressee does not live at this address or is deceased please indicate and return to sender"
However, the postal service went to the effort of not only forwarding the mail on to California, but then reforwarded it from my old home address to the work address. Work remailed it to me. The envelope is completely covered in those yellow forwarding stickers, but the instructions
"If the addressee does not live at this address or is deceased please indicate and return to sender"
are still completely visible. Sigh. Hey, on the bright side, at least I am getting my mail. This is distinctly preferrable to having random mail get returned to sender, even if I am receiving the rare piece that should have been returned to sender.

050417 København, Danmark
Perhaps, were I a different person, it would be possible for me to stay here and speak only English. But I'm not. I am constitutionally unable to try English first when I'm in Denmark. It just seems wrong. This is despite the fact that I have not started Danish classes yet, my pronunciation is terrible, and by attempting it I am only slowing down communication and increasing the probability of miscommunication. When I'm out with others, it would be rude to make them suffer for my poor language skills, so I give in and just speak English for the sake of speed. However, when I'm alone, I tend to abuse the Danish language with my attempts, since when I'm alone I'm only wasting time for myself and the unfortunate waiter/serviceperson who has to attempt to understand me.

050416 København, Danmark
I picked up a bottle of Lyseholm Linie Aquavit. A friend in the US (Eric B.) had told me about it before I moved to Denmark, describing it as a really good potato-liquer that gets shipped across the equator and back. I just sort of tucked the name away and mostly forgot about the stuff; I had mentally filed it under "vodka", which I'm not that wild about. Still, it was recommended as something worth trying. So, when I spotted a bottle right by the grocery store checkout, I decided to give it a try.
This 83 proof firewater is a very smooth and pleasant drink with a predominant caraway flavor. Linie ("Line") is a really fine Aquavit, with the equator being the line of reference in it's name. Since the accidental discovery of the effect on the alcohol, in the 1880s, Aquavit has put in oak sherry casks, then been loaded on a ship and sent from Norway on a months long round trip journey to someplace in the southern hemisphere and back. Aquavit that has made the trip is reputed to be smoother and richer in flavor, and is given the appelation "Linie".
Tell ya what; you come visit and I'll gladly split a few shots with you while you are here.

Page Last Modified: 2006 04 21, 08:26:14

 

 

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