The Bulge In My Trousers

I need a new wallet. Probably a new walleting model. It's way too thick. It's uncomfortable to sit on and not particularly flattering. I probably put too much stuff in it to boot. The contents of my wallet, with money folded and all the cards aligned into a single stack, are 14mm thick. Selecting only the things I have a 50-50 chance of using in any given week, this shrinks to 9mm. Not piling the cards in a single stack would reduce this further. My wallet, fully loaded, is 24mm thick. Nearly an inch! That's 10mm empty. That's thicker than my naked iphone (the slipcase for which regrettably adds another 4mm).

I should separate daily-carry items from mission-specific items and go with a more modular wallet approach, starting with something a lot thinner and more sensible than leather for the wallet. Let's see what mr. google suggests....

Spitjack's: New Restaurant Victoria Park

Went to Spitjack's the other day, a small and welcoming place in the village above vicky park, on Lauriston up near the roundabout, on the way to the delightful Deli Downstairs and the excellent fishmonger (Jonathan Norris) . Really liked it -- very relaxing early dinner for the four of us. Service was friendly, menu was what I consider the right size -- properly focused rather than endless choice. They offer a few things grilled on the spit -- chickens, leg of lamb, beef rib, sometimes some smaller birds, plus a well-selected assortment of tapas. We got a hamburger (massive!), a quarter chicken, and 4 or 5 small plates, some chips. Everyone was happy, even our youngest (9), who never eats anything. The charcuterie and cheese selections were spot-on, while the empanadas had a lovely homemade savoriness to them. Churros w/ chocolate (I had a taste, very good) and coffee for dessert. Reasonably priced. Nice to have a dinner place in the village all four of us can enjoy. If the weather cooperates, it should do really well over the summer as it gets discovered.

Don't Forget To Wind It

Something I've wanted for years and finally got: a mechanical watch. It is less accurate than my plastic timex and a couple orders of magnitude more expensive. It is a NOMOS, a brand that is crying out for a '!' suffix. I've concluded that the sapphire crystal instead of glass makes a huge difference. I'm spoiled now. Swatches just won't be the same.

NOMOS! makes their own movements. Many watchmakers use factory movements from ETA, which are good, but there's something appealing about a watch company with its own mechanicals.

the "movement"

Iceland, Sweden, Ireland, States

Couple items in the news caught my eye recently: Iceland issuing sovereign debt for the first time since Global Financial Meltdown, and Sweden's moving "to the right" politically.

Iceland's response to their financial institutions was effectively to let them fail, defaulting on their debts, and making whole only domestic savings. There's a nice article summing it up in the wsj. Since then, Iceland's been doing really well. Economy is good, they've maintained social services and a decent standard of living. A success story. And kind of the way it should work. Why should Icelandic taxpayers have had to make good on investments sold by private-sector Icelandic banks and bought by punters in the UK and elsewhere? The US approach to bailing out banks and anyone who owed sufficiently large sums to Goldman Sachs protected shareholders and executives but royally screwed over the US public by socializing the losses.

Ireland is totally screwed since they took the polar opposite approach. They are also shackled to EUR. If Ireland's immediate response had been to wipe out shareholders, abandon the Euro, and take a more Icelandic approach, maybe we'd be seeing positive stories there, too. (And Greece should simply have defaults long ago.)

Sweden's response in the early 90s to a similar banking crisis was to bailout the banks but only in exchange for ownership. So the shareholders got hurt and the public benefited. This was suggested as a course of action for the US during GFM but it did not mesh with the paradigm of private profits, public losses, so was not even seriously considered. How's Sweden been doing? Been doing really well!

I'm curious to see if the recent "right turn" of Sweden is going to get more play in the US. It would make a good sound bite for right-wing talking heads. Be sure to leave out the part that a Sweden run by a "conservative" coalition is still the Tea Party's second-worst nightmare of social safety nets and public services. (Ranking just behind a worst nightmare of a global Caliphate that sells your guns to fund mandatory gay marriage.)

Small Government Update: Wisconsin

Where the apparent agenda is to obey corporate masters as blatantly as possible. Why bother with pretense at this point? Making conservatives nationwide puff out their chests with pride, I'm sure, Wisconsin government is going after small brewers and non-profit supplier of internet to public education. When the current crop of republicans were campaigning, I assume they announced, "we're going to fuck with your beer and your internet," right?

Alabama Outdoes Arizona: Show Me Your Papers

Down in the heart of teaparty south, the same people who still, somehow, unironically think of themselves as warriors for "small government" have unironically passed immigration law which among other things:

• requires schools to become agents of law enforcement: requires schools to verify the immigation status of both children enrolling and their parents
• requires landlords to become agents of law enforcement: landlords can be imprisoned if they rent to anyone they even "should know" are illegal immigrants
• empowers police to engage in "show me your papers" checks

Let me see if I've got this straight. Helping out someone who is sick or unemployed? Socialism! Or worse, a step closer to soviet-style totalitarianism! Police state where everyone must be prepared to prove their innocence? Freedom, American style! Got it.

Southern Poverty Law Center's Sam Brooke sums it up:

Fundamentally it's our view that this is an un-American law. It's a law that requires people to carry identification on them at all times in order to prove that they're a U.S. citizen. It's a law that is making all of us a lot less safe here in Alabama.

Braising in Coconut Milk

I made my own version of rendang the other night. Beef braised in coconut milk with chili, etc., then reduced in pan. Was easy and turned out well. Seems like a simple braising in coconut milk should work well for pork or beef, even without a particular mix of additional spices and herbs.

Baffled by Bitcoins

I am flummoxed by bitcoins. Checkout the markets. What's the catch? Are these things fungible or not? If so, why would I be able to cross bid/ask everywhere? I must be missing something, because someone with even the most rudimentary trading skills should be in there ripping everyone's faces off.

Thanks, Man in Seat 61!

Great advice from the Man in Seat Sixty-One (fascinating site, great for stirring the imagination). Looking at rail journeys and the advice for Amsterdam - London is to book via a Dutch site instead of via eurostar. So I priced in both, on the exactly the same trains -- a thalys high-speed amsterdam-Brussels, eurostar to London. For 3 of us, eurostar came  up with 488 GBP(!), whereas nshispeed quoted 385 EUR (about 345 GBP). That's huge. Again, exact same trains & times. Eurostar, you suck.

Furthermore, eurostar doesn't seem to offer a normal intercity links from amsterdam via their booking site. Why? Because eurostar sucks. nshispeed does, of course, and I see that if I wanted to leave 23 minutes earlier I can get to London at the same time and save another 83 EUR. So I can save over 200 GBP from the eurostar quote. Or, to put it another way, 90 GBP/person vs. 163/person.

Musicals Week: 2

Finished off musicals week with Legally Blonde. [I will brook no eye-rolling!] The whole family this time. Light entertainment, really well done and thoroughly enjoyable. Some great performances and the cast seemed to be having a lot of fun. Some bigger laughs than I expected. The British audience got a special kick out of the Irish mythologizing by the hairdresser character, and the exuberant "is he gay? or european?" brought down the house.

On a related note, I'm trying to figure out why it is that I can't stand Times Square but a tourist-soaked West End on a warm spring night doesn't bother me in the least.

Musicals Week: 1 PS

Seems like the gestation period for a jukebox musical is 30-50 years. I hope I live long enough to take my grandchildren to the certain west end hit, Debaser!, a geezer extravaganza featuring the music of the Pixies.

Musicals Week: 1

Went to see Million Dollar Quartet in the West End last night. This was a remote bonding experience between my oldest son and my dad. As a younger man, I might've turned my nose up at this sort of entertainment and held out for some art, but hey, one of the joys of having children is the ability to put cynicism or criticism aside and enjoy even simple entertainments with and through them. So eldest son and I clapped our hands, stomped our feet, grinned a lot and generally had a great time. Inspired by an actual studio meet-up in 1956 between Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis, the show is the jam session they should've had but didn't. The actual session has a couple fleeting special moments but overall the thought of the meeting's potential vastly exceeds the reality of the recording. The show happily is unfettered by historical accuracy and gives the audience what we want: lots of music, well played, and just enough narrative to provide a bit of context and structure. The boys can really play, and did a great job. The tunes were pounded out with joy and gusto and no small amount of panache, the characters played with farmloads of affection. And as much as the rockin' tunes jumped, the gospel tune "Down By The Riverside" was an unexpected and shockingly beautiful delight -- straight to the heart, that one.