Blog Archives 051114 to 051017

Old pointless chatter instead of new pointless chatter.

 

051114 Raleigh, NC, USA
Lots to tell, but very little time in which to tell it. I'm in the middle of my November trip, then trip, then trip, then trip schedule. I just got back from a trip to Davis CA, then a trip to High Point NC, and now I'm about to go on a trip to LA CA. There was discussion at work of sending me on a follow-up visit to Davis CA again in about two weeks, but a coworker volunteered to go in my place. Anyway, while riding on the plane, I wrote a bunch of thoughts down and I'll eventually have the time to type them in and post 'em. For now, sleep is much more important. Oh, the trips were productive and reasonably fun.

051109 On a plane NC, USA
I'm often slightly disappointed to see a safety video instead of watching the flight attendants do the safety drill. It didn't used to be this way; I (like most people) had been in the habit of ignoring them. Then I saw a performance by Laurie Anderson (a performance artist). She pointed out that the flight safety drill could be considered to be the most widespread form of publicly-funded performance art. After that, I would put away my things and pay close attention to the safety drills. Some attendants would include little jokes, others would add "flare" moves to the demonstration and gestures, still others would crack through it in a series of precise, almost robotic moves. Rarely, I'd get a double-take as the attendant suddenly realized someone was actually paying attention to the demonstration. Most of the time, it is a fast, sloppy demo by a bored attendant; not worth paying attention to. Still, pay attention to the start of the demonstration to decide if it is worth watching the rest and you may find yourself watching an OK piece of accidental public performance art.

051108 On plane to CA, USA
Random thought assortment:
"Validation" may be a pop psychology term, but it is still a useful concept for describing many social phenomena. Ex. Mensa
I don't like isolated first world communities. Sometimes good things grow in isolation, but sometimes bad things do as well. My specific problem is that isolation often brings ignorance and ignorant people voting brings poor decisions.
Imagine how popular clean-running cars would be if there was a requirement that 2% of the exhaust from a vehicle be passed through the passenger compartment. Big issues like pollution need to me made local somehow, so that people really understand the impact of their decisions.
I read USAToday on the plane. The entertainment section was by far the "meatiest" containing a better fact:assertion ration than the front page section. Sad.
SkyMall magazine carries something new in the world of massive magnetic stupidity; the "Vintage Express" "aging accelerator" claims to age wines and other alcohols by using magnet to "align liquid particles". The "Shooter Buddy" is claimed to "duplicate the taste of ten years of slow aging" in ten seconds.
Logical fallacy: "Finally, a laptop bag for women!"

051108 On a plane to CA, USA
As I've been looking at China more closely, in preparation for my upcoming posting, I've been finding a few things that sort of surprised me. Although it has not been discussed much, China still has government minders, internal travel restrictions and a number of other police-state trappings. In the business world's rush to join the Chinese market, we have seen lots of stories about the market potential of China, with the very occasional coverage of intellectual property rights and censorship, but the news has not covered the corrupt courts, the covered-up industrial disasters, or the agricultural unrest due to pesticide-poisoning cases. The information is there, if you dig for it, by why is there not more coverage of some of the scary side of China? I think a lot of the reason for the relatively low coverage about this emerging world power is the fact that the news media is far more concerned about a highly active rogue nation. This rogue nation has declared that it need not obey the Geneva Conventions, that it will follow a first-strike ideology, that it intends to use techniques recognized world-wide as torture, and that it has the right to kidnap foreign nationals for jury-free "trials" by military judges. The world will not act against this rogue nation for many reasons, but one of the reasons it this nation's massive stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological weapons rejected by the rest of the world as unethical even in war. As you've probably guessed, I'm talking about the US, not North Korea. It is no wonder a Chinese friend recently told me she was frightened of the US and worried about coming here. At least the Chinese are mostly scary only to their own people.

051107 Raleigh, NC, USA
I was at a coffee shop recently (this past Saturday) and I chose to sit outside in the sun to read the paper, the inside being rendered positively arctic by the air conditioning. After enjoying the sunshine and birdsong for maybe 10 minutes, a mammoth SUV pulls up and parks right next to me. The fat man in shorts driving this leviathan hops out, leaving the engine running and the AC on full blast for the comfort of his wife, sitting in the vehicle. Great. I'm hoping the massive whirring from the truck's AC will shut down at some point, but then I notice that the vehicles' windows are open. Fine. They parked in front of the only occupied table outside (despite dozens of other available parking spaces), but I can move. I move a few tables down, to where the rumble is merely annoying, not mind-bendingly loud. A few minutes later, fat man still has not reappeared with the coffee, so the bored wife decides to crank up the radio. I look in the coffee shop to see that fat man is in no particular hurry to board his land leviathan and drive away with all the noise. After a few more minutes (which I spend by wondering whether to ask the wife if she was born rude and insensitive or if she and her husband have been actively working to perfect rudeness) I had to give up and leave. Oh well. It had been such a nice morning.

I can tell I'm stressed at work these days; my hands are falling apart. When stressed, for some reason, I develop dry patches on my palms. Odd, but sort of handy; when I get a bunch of dry, cracked patches, I know it is time to relax a little and stop pushing myself so hard. The trick is remembering to do that when I see the evidence of stress.

051106 Raleigh, NC, USA
One slight bummer about my current location; I'm in the middle of nowhere. A number of my coworkers live here as a way of splitting the difference between work in Franklinton (30 min away), where there is really nothing other than the plant, and the shops and restaurants of Raleigh (30 min away). Out here at the north edge of Raleigh, there is nothing other than suburban houses, apartment complexes, and the occasional rinky-dink strip mall. To get to Chapel Hill, with it's farmer's markets, good cafes, specialty breakfast places, etc., it is a 50 minute drive one way. This morning, I wanted to meet a local friend for breakfast. However, the replacement tire for my car is on backorder and I have the little tiny spare on the car, making it unwise to go for long drives at highway speeds. I tried convincing him and his girlfriend to come out to visit me, but it was a hard sell; leaving the variety of great breakfast places around Chapel Hill for a nearly 2-hour round trip to eat at one of the cruddy places near me... I'll be eating breakfast alone today. Sigh.

051102 Raleigh, NC, USA
Today was a good day. I went out this morning and found that my car had a flat tire. However, just as I noticed the flat, a coworker drove by and offered me a lift. I had a pile of meetings suck away the afternoon, but upon getting home I had the "manly" and productive-feeling work of changing a tire. The rental car had a good, well equipped trunk; big spare, well designed tools, and clear jack points under the car. I got my hands dirty and it felt good. Attitude really makes a difference, don't it.

051030 Raleigh, NC, USA
Not much to report today. I spent the day in a meaningless exercise; putting some old recovered pages into modern HTML and CSS. So, up for your viewing pleasure are my rather old Water Stupidity and Beyond Credible pages. I also slapped together a page on logical fallacies. It is pretty much verbatim Stephen Downes's text: http://www.datanation.com/fallacies/index.htm, but I am planning on (at some point) clarifying the definitions and adding examples from newspaper articles and political speeches. Either that or I will get lazy and abandon the idea.

The other thing I did this weekend was read. A lot. A local friend had pressed two books on me to read and, after having them for a few weeks, I finally decided to finish them to return them. It wasn't thrilling reading. M. was happy to have another left-leaning person around and had pressed on my two of Michael Moore's latest offerings. I found them uninformative, muddled, and sort of dull. Perhaps, if I were one of the many people in this country who doesn't pay attention to politics, I could have found something of interest, but I have been paying attention and I didn't find anything new there. Oh, well. At least now I can give the books back.

I also did a little fun reading; Culture Shock Denmark. My bro' had mentioned that Denmark was known for having had for a long time what is known here as "co-housing". Mostly, Denmark's homes are kind of like the homes here; individual house lots separated by big hedges or fences. However, Denmark is a place where the hippy 60s came and then never quite left. One example of that is the "Free State of Christiania", an unregulated hippie enclave near the center of Copenhagen. Another example of that is that Andelsboliger (shared community house-estates,) are still popular after having gotten their start in the 1960s. The houses are small but there are shared communal areas, shared cooking, and shared community maintenance. Culture Shock Denmark said that moving into an Andelsboliger, rather than a traditional house, is a really good way to rapidly integrate into Danish society.

Oh, it was also today that I wrote up Friday's dinner, but then I moved it to the proper date's location: 051028

051029 Raleigh, NC, USA
I am now sitting here sipping a little 10 yr.-old Aberlour Single Malt Highland Scotch Whiskey... to celebrate the fact that I found some. You see, North Carolina is a state with alcohol control laws mandating that hard alcohol is sold only in state-run liquor stores, called ABC Package stores. There are the typical prohibitions in place; there is no advertising and the stores are set back from the road and are often nondescript and hard to find. I wanted to buy a bottle of whiskey. I'm slowly tasting my way through the different kinds and a single bottle will last me a very long time. So, I convinced a local friend to act as a native guide to show me where the ABC stores. We went to one in Franklinton, and found that they mostly carried gigantic cheap bottles of the sort of white lighting I might use as paint thinner. We continued south into a ritzy section of Wake County to locate another ABC store. That one carried a more diverse selection, ranging from paint-thinner for alcoholics all the way up to overpriced "party packs" for the college crowd; you know the sort of stuff like margarita mix packages which even contained little paper umbrellas. We had to continue down into Raleigh before finding the best-stocked ABC store around. They even had single malt whiskeys. I will list them all here: 10 yr. old Aberlour, 10 yr. old Glenmorangie, 12 yr. old Glenmorangie (port wine cask finish), and 12 yr. old Glenmorangie (sherry cask finish). That's right; after a long search taking me through three different counties, I discovered that there were only four things worth buying. I can't help but compare this with California where many of the grocery stores had a more impressive selection than the best ABC store here. Sigh. I went with the Aberlour, since I had previously tried some at my brother's place but I had not ever had a bottle of my own.

Anyway, I have to wonder what is the point of these restrictions. It can not be to discourage consumption/overconsumption; the ABC stores are scattered all over and they seem to mostly specialize in selling big jugs of cheap strong booze. If it is a form of extra income for the state, it is also a failure; the prices are pretty low and the corruption and mismanagement of the ABC stores is so high that, every half dozen years or so, there are news reports pointing out that the state controlled stores have not turned a profit in years. The whole thing seems pointless unless the point of the exercise is to make it hard to get a decent selection of high quality distilled drinks. Why the government would want to limit access to the high-end very expensive liquors is a question I can't answer.

051028 Raleigh, NC, USA
On Friday evening I went over to a coworker's house for a "sild og snaps" (herring and Aquavit) dinner. There are five coworkers in the same apartment complex, two are transfers from Denmark (rotating here for a year), two are Danes who are permanent hires in Franklinton (one new and one here for several years), and then there is me. I didn't touch the various pickled herring dishes (the Danes were happy; more for them), but I enjoyed the company and other dishes. The only bummer was how badly I messed up in what I was bringing. You see, after several attempts to find something "Danish friendly" to bring (danish-style rye bread, Aquavit, etc.) I'd found nothing suitable. So I decided to bring something very typically American. I knew that none of the Danes had bought Halloween candy yet, so I brought a pile of Halloween candy for everyone, figuring that they could eat it or at least have some around to give to kids who may come by at Halloween. Sounds reasonable, right?

I had forgotten that most Danes hate American candy. Peanut butter is thought to be a horror invented in the 9th circle of hell, whole peanuts can only be grudgingly tolerated by a few, and American milk chocolate has a very distinctive flavor because it is made with soured milk (which many europeans think is gross and nasty tasting). Even if you manage to find a candy with no peanut contamination, and not made with American milk chocolate, then you are typically dealing with a sugar candy which (in the US) is made with a high fructose ratio making it far, far too sweet for european tastes. I handed out the "goodies" and the table was suddenly made up of people who were "much too full to try any" or people who had tried the candy and were now attempting to rinse their mouths out with grain alcohol in a desperate effort to rid themselves of the taste. Oops!

051026 Raleigh, NC, USA
OK. Temperatures dove and I decided that it was perhaps not that thrilling to let the temperatures hit the 38-41 F range in my bedroom when I only have a thin coverlet on the bed. The windows are shut and the heat is on, bringing the temperature up to a balmy 66 F.

At least, while I was shivering, I was able to listen to some more rather twisted pop songs by Jonathan Coulton, they guy who did the song "Skullcrusher Mountain". Well, he has produced more songs about cyborgs, depressed clowns, and DNA, so I finally got off my butt and bought a whole pile of his songs. Yeah, I had previously downloaded a bunch of his freely availible tracks and, yeah, his new stuff was written as a soundtrack to the September 2005 issue of Popular Science ("The Future of the Body") and could be downloaded from their site, so I didn't really need to pay for it, but I figure it is worth it to put my money behind the stuff I like, especially when it is as oddball as Jonathan Coulton.

Speaking of free music, various friends have sent me pointers to free songs by anti-war lefties. One is James McMurtry's "We Can't Make It Here" off of his album "Childish Things" and another is Dar Williams' "Empire" off of her album "My Better Self". They are both decent songs that seem rooted in the 60s protest folk rock school of music. Not bad. In my opinion, it is a bit late to be anti-war, but it can never be to late for "let's do the smart thing". I say we should ignore the politicians on both side and get scenario evalutations from the US Army War College and sociologists who've specialized in Mid-East politics. Both groups have been studying the heck out of the situation and probable outcomes from various decisions. Let's ignore the talking heads and hear from the experts.

In other news, my bro' read my post on 051016 where I bemoaned the fact that I'd lost my "water stupidity" page and he had a solution: the internet archive's "wayback machine", an archive of previously existing web pages. I can't even think about how much hardrive space they must need to have captured "snapshots" of large hunks of the internet over time. Still, with a little searching, I found the last existing version of my "water stupidity" page and a few other things for which I was looking. I'll eventually be cleaning up the code, switching it over to CSS styling, and reposting some of the old stuff. The wayback machine is way cool.

051025 Raleigh, NC, USA
When I arrived here, the apartment was set up in the typical manner of the South; sealed up tight with the AC running to maintain a perfect 70 F. After a day or two in the hermetically sealed box, I shut off the air conditioning and opened the windows, using an overhead fan to help the air circulate. Sure, some days it has been a bit too warm and some nights a bit chilly, but I like feeling the seasons change. We've had a cold snap and it is finally starting to feel like late October. I've not shut the windows yet, but I can feel Jack Frost coming to test my resolve.

Oh, as an aside, a friend of mine sent me a link to York Daily Record columnist Mike Argento's coverage of the Dover Panda Trial. If you are interested, it is another case of "Intelligent Design" vs. Evolution.

051024 Raleigh, NC, USA
Chatted by email with a friend from Denmark today. We did a trip to visit "Sweden's Stonehedge" one weekend when I was in Denmark... Our timing was unfortunate and we were there, at this gorgeously scenic spot at the southern tip of Sweden, during a period of rain squalls and cloud-cover. The timing was ironic enough to be funny; the rain started just as we were arriving and it stopped maybe a half hour after we left. We were there quite a while, too, hoping the rain and wind would let up at some point. Anyway, here is a link to a site showing pictures of the scene we had hoped to see: Ale stenar. Go there and you'll see a picture of the standing stones in the center column. If you click on the "Besök skeppssättningen digitalt" link which is just above the picture, you will have a new little window open with a bit of java script letting you pan a view around to see a little more. Really, though, there is not much to see by picture; the stones are on a hill that is at the edge of a cliff. Pictures have a hard time capturing the wind-swept expanse of rolling hills dropping off into roiling sea as the breeze blows eternally. Even in the rain, the location was quite something.

051022 Raleigh, NC, USA
It is quite mild here, still. It is late October and still T-shirt weather. This is pleasant, but just not right for late October. The area is nice, but I miss the bicycle lanes of Denmark. Here, there are no bicycle lanes, almost no sidewalks, and the cars are not very aware of bicycles. Despite the fact that I have had to give up bicycling, I've been getting my exercise. There is a nice gym on-site at my workplace and a big group of us get together once a week to play soccer on a nearby field. I'm saving my badminton racket for China, where I'm sure there will be plenty of players.

As an aside, I have decided that I like sidewalks and porches/balconies. These are indicative of a willingness to be seen in your neighborhood and walk about in your neighborhood. Neighborhoods without sidewalks or porches seem much more isolationist and it is harder to just bump into your neighbors to get to know them.

051021 Raleigh, NC, USA
On the prompting of a local friend of mine (Beth) I went and checked out a blog site she was posting on. She apparently was in the middle of a long-running debate with some guy who was claiming that AIDS was not really caused by HIV, but was some sort of made-up thing designed to profit the pharmaceutical industry. Anyway, she wanted me to take a look at this debate on www.deanesmay.com. Man, that guy must not have a job other than maintaining his blog site. After looking at the vastly self-referential time-wasting world of the public blogs, I had no urge to post anything again. It was a clear example of what a valueless waste of time blogging can be.

Anyway, in a phone conversation with my bro', he pointed out that where the public bloggers were often pontificating just to hear themselves speak, my little posts have a purpose: staying in contact with friends and family and letting people I know know what I'm up to and what's on my mind. Good point. So, I'm back to doing these entries.

051017 Raleigh, NC, USA
For today, I just have a few items in the "hey, did they really just do that?!?" category. First up is this little news item: In the wake of the hurricanes, with more people needy at any other time in recent history, the Bush administration has decided to push for cuts in food stamp programs and farm subsidies. Sen. Saxby Chambliss and Rep. Bob Goodlatte answered the Administration's call and put forward bills in the Senate and House, respectively, attempting to exclude people from food stamp programs and reduce agricultural subsidies. The bulk of the cuts are in food stamp programs, but those cuts in agriculture are targeting farmland conservation programs. However, don't think that they are not compassionate just because they are proposing taking food assistance away from the poor and hungry (as well as mocking ideas about stewardship of the land); they have both defended their proposed cuts to food stamp programs by saying that the cuts they were proposing were smaller than what Bush wanted.

Sigh. I mentioned in the past my rule of thumb that if you have to add something to the name, then it isn't in the facts (Ex, the old East Germany was the "Democratic" Republic of Germany). Well, I guess we can add "Compassionate" Conservatives to my list of examples of that rule of thumb. Keep in mind here, I'm not painting all Conservatives with the same brush; I'm just pointing out that if they have to announce that they are Compassionate Conservatives, then you'd better look twice at what deeds they are trying to disguise with that claim.

Item two under the heading "hey, did they really just do that?!?" is the fact that our glorious President has introduced a new energy conservation program, an awareness campaign staring a cartoon pig, the Energy Hog... Apparently, the administration believes that the American people have not noticed that fuel prices have gone up and they need a cartoon pig to advise them to save gas.

Either that, or they belive this campaign will distract people as the administration moves to close regional DOE energy-efficiency offices, including one in Chicago. Perhaps the cartoon pig will prevent people from realizing that this administration is the same people who fought against the automatic increases in the CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) standards every time it has come up since 1986. Other than the cartoon pig, the closest thing this administration has to an energy conservation policy was voiced when Vice President Dick Cheney went on record in 2001 saying "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy."

To be fair, I should point out that the administration has announced a new initiative (on January 9, 2002), called Freedom CAR, pushing for fuel cell research. To be totally fair, I should point out that "Freedom CAR" was announced at the same time that Bush announced the cancelation of Clinton's program (started in 1993), called "Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles" (PNGV). Research on fuel cells had been the biggest focus area of PNGV. Er, cancelling one program and starting a "new" program with the same goals and a smaller budget doesn't really seem like that great a contribution.

Sorry for the aside... Back to President Bush's new icon, the "Energy Hog". I think it is important that symbols have a catchy name, not just a title. How about we take a page from George Orwell's "Animal Farm"? We can name the Energy Hog "Napoleon" and have him be the "President of Wastfulness", constantly jetting around wasting fuel. Like in Animal farm, we can introduce "Squealer", a fat older pig who is "Napoleon the Energy Hog's" constant companion. We can call him the "Vice President of Wastefulness". I think it would be great if President Bush kept these symbols with him from now on, you know, to remind the public that he cares about energy conservation.

Page Last Modified: 2006 04 21, 08:26:35

 

 

Blog archives

• 071211 to 071123 
• 071111 to 071005 
• 070929 to 070802 
• 070728 to 070603 
• 070520 to 070323 
• 070320 to 070228 
• 070218 to 070122 
• 070121 to 061219 
• 061217 to 061119 
• 061114 to 061020 
• 061017 to 060917 
• 060916 to 060817 
• 060816 to 060717 
• 060716 to 060617 
• 060610 to 060518 
• 060515 to 060418 
• 060417 to 060218 
• 060218 to 051228 
• 051222 to 051124 
• 051114 to 051017 
• 051016 to 050918 
• 050914 to 050819 
• 050815 to 050717 
• 050717 to 050612 
• 050612 to 050509 
• 050509 to 050414 
• 050414 to 050313 
• 050313 to 041231 
• 041231 to 040612 
• 040612 to Start