Metaphor Police: Walled Gardens

It is fashionable amongst the technoliterate to use the metaphor of "Walled Gardens" for any "closed" or "controlled" system or environment they don't like. Crying out in anguish, "it's a walled garden!" is supposed be not only meaningful but also critical. This confuses the hell out of me, because walled gardens are great.

I'd wager most people who use the term have never seen an actual walled garden. They are lovely, functional, useful, productive. They help keep rabbits out (sometimes). They protect from the elements. They allow a really efficient use of space in a low-tech way. They are attractive and can produce more, longer, than an unwalled garden. If you had a country home that had one you would probably never want to go back to not having one.

So here's the odd thing: I've never heard anyone talk about actual walled gardens as if they were bad things. Yet when people talk about technology the metaphor is used as an unequivocal evil. As a counterexample, here's a simple metaphor that works great because its metaphorical use matches its literal use: "piece of shit". Generally, not always, but generally, a literal piece of shit is not a good thing. Likewise, if you describe your car as "a piece of shit", people get that you are making an unambiguous judgment. It works fine as a metaphor. With literal walled gardens, my experience of them is as a good thing. Every time I hear the metaphorical used in disgust, I think, "what's wrong with that?"

"But it's a walled garden!" Uh... great, more lettuce/broccoli/apples for us!

Ok, I get that we need a shorthand criticism for closed/controlled/no-user-serviceable-parts environments, so *some* metaphor would be handy. I think we can do much better than wrongly maligning poor walled gardens.

Goofing Off With The Camera (longer exposures)

As mentioned earlier this week, went out Christmas night with the camera. The photos weren't especially good, but the fun was in the taking. Here are a couple samples.

See the blue & white sign in the middle of the roundabout? That's where we later setup the camera for the shot below.

The shot from the sign in the roundabout.

State of the Village

Another fine year for South Hackney, aka Victoria Park Village. Family-friendly cafes are doing well, with several more opening in the past year. Elbows continues to be a favourite, but recent addition Amandine is nice as well, joining Loafing and the latest, Tipico. Plenty of coffee yet not a chain in sight. Good! The butcher (Ginger Pig) and fishmonger (Jonathan Norris) are doing well, and The Deli Downstairs is doing great business at its location on the roundabout. I still consider it the "new" location for the deli but I guess it's been there a while now. Bottle Apostle continues to win accolades and custom. I suspect it's drawing folks in from a broader area than the local Hackney and Tower Hamlets neighbourhoods, deservedly so. SpitJack's continues as a favourite of the restaurants. We keep going back. If anything, it's gotten better -- e.g. the hamburgers have been cooked just as requested recently (I nearly weep with joy when I find a restaurant that doesn't overcook hamburgers). The Fish House continues a strong run. The Empress of India has changed hands and has dropped "of India". I've not yet been in this incarnation but Timeout reviewed it favourably. Su Sazzagoni also looks to be going well, but Chilliz restaurant, in between the Empress and Su Sazzagoni but open for years prior to each, has gone out of business and its replacement, Chambers, has just opened. Standard Tandoori, across the street, is our go-to curry vendor, and will hopefully continue its long residence.

Pub-wise, Lauriston holds steady as a firm local favourite and the Royal Inn on the Park has revamped its garden a bit. A ways along the north side of the park, The Brittania to the east continues its apparent mission to be all things to everyone while to the west the pub on the corner of Skipworth Road has changed yet again. Must be a cursed spot. Looks nice but I've not yet stopped in. South through the middle of the park, good to see The Crown keeping pace (nice pub, good food, the people at Geronimo Inns seem to know what they're doing), after the site hosted a well-intentioned but poorly executed organic gastropub followed by a doomed tapas restaurant.

Sad news up on Well Street: Izzy bid farewell to the kebab business, leaving by choice at the end of summer. Sadly, Izzy's has been replaced by a "we buy gold" shop. We are still well-covered for kebabs on Well Street, though, panic averted.

Christmas Cooking Notes

Geese from the butcher, "medium" but quite large, 5.5 kg min each. Removed legs for confit. Roasted crown of -- started 220 for 15-20 minutes, reduced to 200, did not take very long -- removed when breast was 70C outer, closer to 65C near the bone. Was very nice. Served the four of us well, with not much leftover. For the other one, removed the breasts and wrapped them together for the freezer, for a boneless roast later in the winter. Rendered all the fat out of everything and made the confit. Great yield of fat this year. Full large jar with the 4 legs, plus another sizeable jar of the pure stuff.

Chestnut dressing: poor chestnuts, kind of dry and low yield, very tedious to peel, so not nearly as many as for Thanksgiving. But overall the dressing was better. I attribute this entirely to the stock used. This one was made with roast turkey stock (from the thanksgiving turkeys) rather than chicken stock. Turkey stock is liquid gold. I don't know why, but it's always the best bird for stock. So next thanksgiving I need to get turkeys early just to make stock. I hope I remember this plan in time.

Green bean casserole and mashed potatoes were fine. Used King Edwards for the spuds. No complaints.

Cranberry relish was really good, and an excellent counter to the rich goose. I think it goes even better with goose than it does with turkey. Unfortunately we likely won't be able to get fresh cranberries whenever we get around to eating the goose legs.

Dessert involved "cake fountains", which are essentially fireworks you stick into your cake. Unusually for us, this did not lead to any fires, injuries, or property destruction.

A Nice Non-Encounter

The older youngster and I went out for a walk tonight and brought my camera and gorillapod. We were goofing off with some longer exposures in the village and at one point scampered to the raised garden in the middle of the roundabout for an interesting point of view. As we were setting up the gorillapod around the top of a lit street sign in the roundabout, a police car eased right by us. There was no questioning or stopping. The shot didn't turn out especially great, but it was very cool that we got to enjoy taking it hassle-free.

Last-Minute Christmas Cooking Tips

Probably too late, but if you're fretting about a turkey, my top tip is to cook the legs separately. Turkey is not an easy bird to cook, even less forgiving than chicken. The breasts are at their best a shade undercooked, while the legs are better well (or very well) done. I've heard of an interesting method to put ice packs on the breasts for an hour or so prior to roasting if you want to cook the bird whole. This would give the legs a head start, the breasts a handicap. Another method, which I sometimes use on chickens, is to make deep slashes across the legs & thighs -- rub in butter, salt, pepper, whatever else *after* the slashing. This exposes a lot more surface area and lets the legs cook quicker. You also get more crispy edges and pieces are a little easier to pull off the bone if you don't mind kids eating with their fingers. For turkeys now, I always cook the legs separately, roasting the breasts on the bone, breast side down on high heat for a while (220C for about 45minutes), then breast side up at lower heat (200C), until done (I take it out when it's 65C near the bone, or sooner). When you flip it, rub a new coating of butter over the bird to encourage the skin to get lovely deep golden brown and crispy. No matter how you roast it, let it rest after the oven. Thirty minutes is fine, or even longer. Fifteen minutes minimum if you're super impatient.

I'm cooking goose as (now) usual for Christmas. Goose is much easier to cook than turkey. Even so, I cook the legs separately, just because having confit of goose leg later in the year is one of the delayed delights of christmas. Plus, goose fat! Down to the very last nutella-jar full of last year's bonanza.

Thanks For All The Cash, Suckers!

So Citibank (recipient of huge piles of save-us cash from the taxpaying public) recently changed terms on some of their entry-level checking accounts. Flat fee if you don't maintain a certain deposit level across any and all "linked" products. Reasonable in general? Sure. But that particulars? Fee is $15 a month (seems high!) unless you maintain net deposit balances of... $6000. Wow! I may be out of touch, but that seems like an awful lot of money to have on hand to park into accounts effectively bearing no interest whatsoever. That's some brass, Citibank -- congrats!

"Live" Bus Departures from TFL

Nice concept: each bus stop in London has a unique number on it. Text it or enter it onto a web page and get ostensibly realtime information on when buses will be swooping in to pick you up. Unlike the system NYC is trialling, there is no realtime map information. Which would be useful. But ETAs all by themselves would be useful. Except they're not because they are way too inaccurate. So they can't be relied on to judge when you should leave your house or leave work or duck out of a shop and into the rain. The system kind of works as a comedic diversion. We've been trying it every day this week. One day I checked every minute or two between 07:11 and when the bus actually arrived. According to the estimated time remaining, we should have expected a bus at 07:21, then 07:20, then 07:25. It eventually arrived at 07:27. I was mystified as to what happened between the 7:20 and 7:25 estimated times of arrival, as within a span of 2 minutes the bus got 5 minutes farther away. Was it going backwards?

Today was arguably funnier. If you're not familiar with London transit you might not realize how ludicrous this is, but you'll have to trust me -- seven #26 buses arriving within a 25-minute window is about as likely as the Queen giving me a lift to work in her Rover.

Not to worry, a few minutes later, a couple of those buses had vanished. And no, not by virtue of having arrived and then departed from the stop in question. Sigh. I hope I never find out how much it all cost.

Debt, Money, the Bartering Myth

Read a fascinating interview with an economic anthropologist who's written a book on the history of debt. I've not yet read the book but have ordered it. The interview, though, just by itself is well worth reading. Sample quote:

Since antiquity the worst-case scenario that everyone felt would lead to total social breakdown was a major debt crisis; ordinary people would become so indebted to the top one or two percent of the population that they would start selling family members into slavery, or eventually, even themselves.

Well, what happened this time around? Instead of creating some sort of overarching institution to protect debtors, they create these grandiose, world-scale institutions like the IMF or S&P to protect creditors. They essentially declare (in defiance of all traditional economic logic) that no debtor should ever be allowed to default. Needless to say the result is catastrophic. We are experiencing something that to me, at least, looks exactly like what the ancients were most afraid of: a population of debtors skating at the edge of disaster.

Indian Hotel Security

Oh yeah. Now this is more like it.

Get Your Cold Fusion On

E-Cat, anyone? Both Forbes and Wired have been covering the latest cold fusion gambit, Italian Andrea Rossi's "e-cat" power generator. A couple days ago he "demonstrated" the device for a supposed US buyer. Comically labelled a "success", the demonstration consisted of some water being heated up, while his devices remained hooked up to a *running* (and somewhat loud) power generator. Unknown people from the undisclosed "buyer" were said to "verify" the thing a success. Attendees at the glorious event were allowed to witness, sort of, but only one at a time. This is not even a good magic trick. Seriously, "Penn and Teller Do Cold Fusion" would be mind-bogglingly convincing, but you'd know it was a trick. So what's the play here? Is the idea that it is so obviously dodgy that people will believe it?

Contrast with the gents who thought they might have convinced some neutrinos to go faster than the speed of light (no word on whether the neutrinos immediately started plotting to kill their own grandparents). They made a public appeal to the rest of the particle physics world to find their mistake. They were highly reluctant to declare victory, and very eager to have tests repeated. That's good science. (Bit of a shame Gary Taubes isn't still writing about this kind of thing.)

In any case, Steven Krivit is recommended reading, e.g. this one from earlier in the week. One of Krivit's earlier hypotheses on the matter might be the most accurate one in play: “I believe [Rossi] doesn’t have what he claims. I believe he knows it. I believe he’s hoping that, if he can just get enough money, he can eventually make it work.”

Business Travel Notes

Done a few business trips lately. Flown longhaul on BA, AA, Cathay, Sing Air. My brush with greatness was seeing Gordon Ramsay in the AA first class lounge at JFK. I did not bother him, although if I had to say anything I would have mentioned that his Plane Food is one of the saving graces to Heathrow T5 (second best thing behind BA lounges). The AA flight was interesting. I luckily got upgraded to first class. The first class lounge was pleasant, no, not quite as nice as the BA business class lounge at JFK, but no complaints. From what I could tell, the AA business class lounge, like the United one, does the embarrassing thing of issuing travelers a couple of drink coupons and then nickel-and-diming you after that. Cheap. The AA in-flight service was really pleasant. I'd flown AA over the atlantic a few times in the late 90s and the service usually mediocre, so it was a nice surprise to be treated so well and cheerfully. Just one data point, but kudos to AA flight attendants.

BA flights were good as always. Onboard service almost always really nice. And I love the LHR T5 first class lounge. Sadly, looks like I've not quite flown enough this membership year to retain my coveted "gold" status, so no more first class lounge for me. Oh well. In related news, T5 still sucks. Although arriving in T3 was crazy -- that terminal's a bit of a madhouse now. I hear good things about T4 now, but of course it's difficult to get there because the express train doesn't stop. Maybe it's easier to say that LHR is pants.

In Tokyo I used both Narita and Haneda. Haneda is approximately 1700 miles closer to Tokyo than is Narita. Quick little international terminal there, great stuff. Everything about HKG is as good as I remember. I did get to use the Cathay lounge for the first time, which was actually kind of dull. It was smallish, and all table service (or chair services I suppose). I prefer self-serve, but if the waiters want to keep grabbing me glasses of fizzy water, I guess that's fine. I left the lounge early and wandered around the airport a bit. One shop I liked was sponsored by the local trade association and featured solely Hong Kong designers. Lots of phone cases but some interesting other things as well.

Cathay flights were predictably really nice. One feature I loved: an outside camera view (underside of plane, facing forward). Very cool while landing.

Singapore's Changi airport takes the cake. Just fabulous. Bustling and efficient yet somehow calm and quiet. No constant blaring noise that especially fouls US airports. Carpeted walkways, lots of space and air, good shops, good looking choice of restaurants (food standards are high in Singapore by default). Live koi! Free video games. Free internet. Gardens. Free movie viewing. A gym. And a bunch of other stuff I've already forgotten. Damn.

Mumbai airport. Well, not sure I can describe it accurately. Waited on the tarmac a while after parking, after a flight in Sing Air that was of course super nice. Exited onto bus. Immediately (seriously, fewer than 10 meters away) upon going through passport control, had to queue up again to have someone verify that my passport was stamped. Why? Do they not trust the people who just stamped them? That sets the tone. More queues, scans, checks. Leaving was even worse. New form and long queues just for immigration control while leaving. Why? Why do they care who leaves? Then umpteen security checks. Noisy place. At the boarding gate, between queuing up to get on the plane and actually getting on the plane, the security tag on my carryon and my boarding pass were checked no fewer than 5 times (5, *after* arriving at the gate), including a rescan and search. In one of the earlier security lines, I did accidentally bodycheck a soldier with an interesting-looking automatic weapon. He was very polite and apologetic, even. I shudder to think what would have happened I'd done the same in a US airport. So in general, despite a very, very short time, there, the thing I noticed about anything, such as the airport, less than pleasant about Mumbai: it would be a thousand times worse except most everyone is so darned good natured. So mostly it's just fine and I end up chastising myself not to be an asshole.

Food on the trip to Asia was excellent all around. Great food in Tokyo. The bar is high. Expensive but baseline quality even at average place is extremely high. Fantastic stuff. Hong Kong I love kind of all around. Food there can be excellent, or can be a bit dodgy, but I enjoyed plenty of the good stuff, including an epic dim sum lunch that had about 5 more courses of food than I was expecting. Singapore very nice, although the whole city is a bit like a grown-up warm-weather canary wharf. That much nicer but so overly controlled and curated it doesn't have the pizazz and buzz of, say, Hong Kong. But stunning at night. In Mumbai I had a couple great meals. One more local, lots of vegetarian dishes that were quite tasty along with a minority of meatier fare. The second was meat-heavy northern cuisine. I ate about 5 pounds of perfectly cooked and beautifully spiced lamb shank. Yum.

Hotels? Stereotypically, the standard of service at hotels in each leg of my Asia trip was just fantastic. As with airports, really puts western experience to shame. Mumbai hotels take security very seriously, as you might guess. (Is there some rule about having a really impressive-looking Sikh manning the final security check at the front door of every hotel there? Seriously, each hotel I went to had a large, super-relaxed-and-friendly-because-he's-probably-a-stupendous-badass smiling arrivals into the metal detector.) In any case, every hotel on my trip seemed to take service very seriously. Although the Tokyo Hotel could have done with less bowing, more wifi. And let's just say the Hong Kong Mandarin Oriental won the overall prize for awesomeness.

Confirmation Bias: A Dominant Factor In Nutrition Blogging

I had a lot to say on this topic, but can't quite pull it together into coherent writing yet, and haven't had time to do so. Didn't want the title to go to waste. The tempest in a teapot nature of subject-specific blogscape is sometimes amusing, sometimes just silly and tedious. But hey, I loves me some confirmation bias as next as the next guys, so party on, Garth.

Anyway, on a somewhat unrelated subject, I'm more recently on a mission to get some folks I know to stop taking statins. But I don't want to succumb to confirmation bias and am willing to admit I might be wrong. Anyone have a pubmed reference to a study actually showing all-causes mortality benefits of statin use for men in their seventies? Anyone?  Bueller...? Didn't think so. (What about life expectancy for men over 70 with really low total cholesterol? Whoops....)

Butchering Half A Pig

I recently had a go at butchering half of a dressed pig carcass. Various relatives-in-law had raised 3 pigs this year. They got up to slaughtering weight while I was there on holiday. They were taken to a small processing place to get turned from live pigs into frozen packages of various cuts and sausage, but my father-in-law was kind enough to have them reserve half a carcass for me to work on.

It was fun. Quite gratifying. Harder than it looks but easier than you think. I first separated the tenderloin (and the kidney), then cut the ham off. Then split the remainder of the carcass lengthwise, leaving the belly side and the loin side. Cut the front shoulder & spareribs off and split that up into smaller cuts. Cut the hock off the ham. Separated some ribs from the belly to leave a bacon-ready cut. Cut a stack of chops then separated the rest of the loin into ribs and a boneless loin.

Rendered a couple big jars of beautiful, pure, white lard from various fat bits I cut off. Trimmed the loin and the chops to yield quite a lot of lovely, firm back fat. Made a nice pate out of the liver. The sausage turned out well. The pork chops were great. Lots of folks sampling quality pork for perhaps the first time. It's supposed to have flavor! These were happy pigs, well raised in a good-sized outdoor foresty pen, fed organic meal with lots of supplemental offcuts from the large vegetable garden.

Day 1: butchered the carcass, including some rough cuts for sausage, rendered some lard, made a rustic pate out of the liver. Pork chops for dinner.

Day 2: made 9 lbs of sausage, started the belly curing into bacon

2 Wallet Strategy

As noted a few months ago, I gave up on carrying my old leather wallet. I've been using a vastly thinner wallet for a while now and it's great. I use the Big Skinny "World bifold" wallet. Love it. Holds 7 cards, one of which in a clear pocket (for ID if desired) and money, plus you can tuck addl cards into it if needed. I rarely use all 7 individual card slots so not an issue. Even fully loaded, it is almost 2D compared to the old beast. I still use the old wallet as a storage wallet. It holds the cards and such that I don't need on a given day. I generally don't need to switch on a daily basis. This mostly comes into play on international trips, on which I may need a different set of cards and IDs than I normally would need with me. So I pack the storage-wallet and wear the carry-wallet. Overall, much more comfortable, lighter, flatter, more flexible, looks better. Recommended.

Gulf Coast SPFathon

I get sunburned if a single photon lands on exposed skin. Spending a week at 30 degrees north in August not the best environment for me, but I didn't want to spend all day indoors, so I tried an extensive range of sunscreens. Least favorite: nutragena spf 110. I forget the exact name, but it was supposedly sweatproof, but that was not my experience. Coppertone Sport Ultra Sweatproof lotion was the reliable go-to product -- worked well even in the water and sweating. Generally I used spf 50. They make an spf100 spray that is basically like coating yourself with a layer of polyurethane or really good furniture wax. Weird and hard to get off later, but seemed to work ok. My overall favourite, although not nearly as cost effective as the coppertone sport, was Bullfrog Marathon Mist Continuous Spray (spf 50). I would go through half a bottle in a single application, but it went on quick and easy, worked well, felt ok going on and smelled ok as well. Expensive but good.

Gulf Coast

Down in the redneck riviera. Very encouraging: loads of life in the water. Lots of big blue crabs (surprisingly scuttling around in the water on the gulf side, normally they are more likely to be found in the bay side), fish of all shapes and sizes -- catfish, ladyfish, spanish mackerel, and many others. Even some dolphins.

UPDATE: also swam with a southern stingray, shovelnose guitarfish, and some bigger fish that looked like sheepshead. Plus a bunch of smaller ones I couldn't identify.

UPDATE2: the bad news: conspicuously absent are the donax, little clams that always used to be everywhere here. They are supposedly quite sensitive to pollution.

Brew Britainnia: Better Late Than Never

British brewing is about 20 years behind the US. In the past few decades, the US has witnessed a thriving and maturing brewing scene. The enthusiasm has been both broad and deep. The canonical brew, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, is what I'd call an APA, an American Pale Ale. But the market has not limited itself to even a narrow range of styles. Everything's been fair game -- from Belgianesque ales to wheat beers to fruit beers to light lagers to all manner of porter and stout. Beers invented in Britain but not brewed here for a long time were revitalized in the US and are finally being picked back up by British brewers (thanks to Will Hawkes for excellent coverage).

Seems to me that cheap lagers have been eating the lunch of the brit bitter brewers. Why so much complacency? Hard to say. I was astonished in the 90s to see so much budweiser in the isles. Would it have killed the breweries to put out some decent lagers, properly chilled? They really only have themselves to blame. And CAMRA needs to share the blame. Cask-conditioned "real" ales are a fine thing and worthy of preservation, but all that enthusiasm so narrowly directed, while opportunity after opportunity passed by ungrasped.... The same enthusiasm in the US translated into support of the whole craft of brewing, even for the "unreal" avenues. The brewers were slow to adapt. The enthusiasts too dogmatic. The decline of the pub has been well-documented, but beermakers were way too slow to respond to competition from bars and slow to push into the home market. Craft brewing sells well in the US. Is this because there's been a craze for "pubs" sweeping the states? Err, no. Not at all.

Fortunately, the long idiotic slumber of the British Brewer seems to be ending. Inspired by their American Cousins, they are churning out new beers, new types, new marketing efforts. And small brewers are popping up! Not regional ones that simply churn out a localized bitter (yawn), but ones showing a bit of wit and creativity. As with the US in the early 90s, it won't all work. Some will be in it for marketing rather than for the craft (long ago famously labelled "markebrewers" as opposed to "microbrewers" by my friend Zim, no shabby homebrewer himself). But many are diving in for love of the craft and it's about time!

First, please bring on the APAs! They are good cold. I hear that refrigeration is sweeping the nation here in the UK, and many homes hope to have these new-fangled devices before too long. Beer is good with food. You can buy beer in bottles, put these in your "fridge", and have them at hour leisure. You don't have to belly up to the pub rail with bearded blokes and tedious dipsticks like James May to enjoy a good beer. Uncap your cold, carbonated ales, pour your ports, let loose your lagers, stock up on your stouts! "Were they the sons of tea-sippers, who won the fields of Cressy and Agincourt, or dyed the Danube's streams with Gallic blood?" Hell no, they were beer drinkers!

Some signs of the change

Sign from a nice little boozer on Goldsmith Row, in Hackney. Not a posh pub, not a posh area, but SNPA! Even more surprising, Brooklyn Brown!! British breweries should be embarrassed.

Brodies -- an East End brewer in Leyton. Their Seven Hop IPA is nearly great. It's hopped to American levels, would make Three Floyds proud, but the big flaw is that it's well over 7%, halfway to a barley wine! Too strong. Keep the hops but dial it down a couple notches and this could be remarkable.

Camden beers are solid. I'm also enjoying Meantime Pale Ale from, you guessed it, a Greenwich brewer that seems to make consistently good beers.

Small brewer from Bermondsey. To be honest, this tasted like a so-so homebrew effort, bit sour and flat but with potential. Happy to support them because London needs more brewers.

Proof that the beerpocalypse is upon us. Yes, an "American Double IPA"... with a TESCO label! Holy mother of hops. I prefer my APA term, but "American Double IPA" works. Or, it would work if this weren't completely undrinkable. It's 9.2%! Seriously, it's undrinkable. Good hops but if you actually make a barleywine you need to round it off a bit. How did they brew this? Or did they just pour vodka into a stolen case of Anchor Liberty Ale and rebottle it? But hey, if this isn't a kick up the backside to the big British brewers, nothing is. Get on with it!

Bacon #2

Simple cure with maple, hot-smoked over hickory. Success! Curious now about cold-smoking. But even after hot-smoking, was nice sliced and fried.

Holy Smokes

Rural South in the US displays vast diversity of quality of food on offer. On the one hand the cheapest, most horrid, engineered, factory-extruded not-really-food food is available in abundance. On the other hand, I found a really nice unpasteurised organic cheddar at a regular grocery store. On the third hand, some of the finest fresh produce, fish, game, etc. can be easily and cheaply gotten. Had some freshly caught bluegill the other night. Loads of homegrown tomatoes. And a fantastic hickory-smoked chicken that was organically raised by our relatives here.

Speaking of hickory smoke, we also just finished a successful canadian bacon experiment, using a huge (and cheap, this was not a high-quality piece of meat) pork loin that we brine-cured (with, among other things, bunches of fresh sage and thyme from the garden) and then smoked. Turned out great. Disappeared quickly. Next up: a maple cured and hot-smoked bacon. Procuring the pork belly was harder than I expected, doesn't seem to be a common cut here for some reason, but we got one and it's curing now.

Amsterdam Travel Report

Thanks (again) to seat61.com, had a successful mission to Amsterdam in which getting there was part of the fun instead of something to dread. Took the train from London to Harwich -- relatively fast train from liverpool street station to manningtree, then an easy switch to Harwich International. We arrived a few minutes before boarding opened for the Stena Line ferry. A bit after 20:30 we were onboard, for a 23:15 sailing. The cabin was great. Comfy beds with nice bedding -- better than many hotels I've stayed at. Good sized window plus an en suite with a good shower. Another hit: TV with satellite channels plus some onboard cams -- fore & aft along with a puppy cam on the pet kennel. Cute.

We had a late dinner in the a la carte restaurant. The food wasn't all that good but miles better than airplane food and a lot more pleasant. Might've been better in one of the other restaurants on board. Had a really good sleep and then a buffet breakfast, which was much better far then the dinner. It's an early breakfast. Next time we'll eat dinner before boarding and get to sleep earlier, still going for the breakfast.

Exiting into the Netherlands was really easy, and moments later we were on a short train towards Rotterdam. Switched to a train into Amsterdam, walked to the hotel but it was quite early in the day still. Stayed at the Ambassade Hotel. The staff were friendly and welcoming, the room spacious and comfortable, and the breakfast the next morning was great. Lovely place.

Had a really nice time in Amsterdam. Sunday went home by ICE train from Amsterdam to Brussels, and eurostar from there. The ICE train was great -- good a/c, roomy, comfortable seats. Eurostar was annoying as always. The only good thing about the eurostar is the journey time. Checking in as if it were an airplane is pointless and infuriating. You end up stuck in a shitty waiting area with overpriced crappy choices for food. Train travel should be about walking up to the thing moments before it leaves, having wandered around a hopping train station or local neighbourhood to dine or amuse yourself prior to your departure time. Instead you get a little waiting room hell experience. Then the train itself is unfailingly stuffy and cramped. Bleh. It's a lot better than flying still, but we decided we'd much rather spend a few more hours on the return trip and go back by the boat again (the day boat, even).

Shabby HVAC

The British seem oddly incompetent when it comes to getting air the right temperature. My office building, not even 30 years old, is routinely too hot or too cold. This despite an external temperature range that is not excessively broad over the course of a year. Tubes are notoriously stuffy. There are brand new buses on the route I take to work and they come with ventilation in the upper deck. Not air conditioning, just powered ventilation. It seems to make no difference whatsoever, except to be really loud. 78 decibels! For no benefit. This would be unacceptable in Germany, but maybe somebody here is proud of this great advancement in bus riding discomfort (there's also a curved rail on the stairs, which makes no sense, but I might save that rant for another post).

Fireplaces are done well here, but anything involving forced air ends up a bit of a crapshoot.

Apps Update: Evernote, Omnifocus

I'm still really liking Evernote. Well worth the price for the premium edition. Glad to see they are doing well and raising more money. Maybe with that warchest they can buy Omni Group, if for no other reason than to integrate (the excellent on iPad) Omni Focus with Evernote. That seems to be a much-requested feature that's more down to Evernote's not providing easy (e.g. URI) access to notes than to any shortcoming of Omni Focus.

Virtual Planespotting

My new favorite app: planefinder/planefinder HD. Immensely gratifying geek credibility enhancement moment: displaying type, heading, speed, altitude, route, airline, recent path, and, if available, some snapped photos of the actual plane that's just interrupted your conversation by flying overhead.

Book Reviewing

I am well calibrated to some movie reviewers, e.g. Roger Ebert, to the extent that I can usually predict my rating of a movie based on the review. I've not found the same with book reviewers. In fact I seem to be get a bum steer every time I buy something on the back of keen reviews.

The most recent example is Robopocalypse (robocalypse?) by Daniel Wilson, which we bought after a gushing pre-publication nod from Corey Doctorow (usually spot-on, will give him a pass on this one). Got that sinking feeling not long into it. As someone who loved Max Brooks' World War Z, I expected to enjoy it, but it seems way more contrived (yes, I know, more contrived than zombiegeddon) and excessively derivative. Not only did he follow the pattern by first publishing an analog of The Zombie Survival Guide in the form of How To Survive A Robot Uprising, but he goes on to seemingly replicate some of the World War Z characters as well (e.g. old Japanese social outcast who defends solitary kingdom, selfish teen who discovers bravery). The recurring characters seem crafted to sell movie rights (well, should have known, but at least this has potential to be quite an entertaining film). There is way too much "telling" and not enough "showing" -- that is, too much of the narrator telling me that something was really important or influential or that someone was a great leader, rather than letting the story show me someone demonstring leadersheip, or show me the impact of events or actions. (Even the overrated but not bad Philip Pullman "Northern Lights" trilogy suffers from this, with almost every character randomly ejaculating love and praise for the awesomeness of that "little girl".)

Another problem is the premise. Here's where I kick myself for listening to recommendations. Thirty years ago I remember the publications that would accept sci-fi stories practically begging for no more "computer-gone-crazy" stories. And appliances turning on people was an old gag even then. And, seriously, robots suck. I recently watched a demonstration of some robots making breakfast. It was sped up to keep people from falling asleep watching it, and the robots were crap at every skill. Industrial assembly robots are awesome, sure, but compared to advances in computing, robotics is young and stilted. The computer on my phone is powerful enough to kick my ass at chess, but the world's most sophisticated robots can get an egg out of the fridge and fry it about as well as a trained dog. So when Doctorow calls the book "gripping, utterly plausible, often terrifying" I'm left baffled in disagreement on all counts. Premise aside, even the dumbest premise can make for a good read, but this book just didn't work for me.

Justin Cronin's The Passage was a widely gushed-over book that I got upon reading reviews. The prose was solid, definitely good craftsmanship on display in the writing. But, again, there was a big outtrade between the recommendations and my reading. It was... ok. It badly needed editing (real editing, I'm not talking about proofreading). And much of it that seemed to be building up to really big plot points or big moments for characters that either never really happened or turned out to be disappointing or kind of nonsensical. Lots of comparisons to Stephen King. Maybe that should have been a tipoff. If you want an imagined Stephen King experience without reading Stephen King, I'd try The Unquiet by John Connolly.

So either I find a book reviewer I can calibrate to or just ignore book reviews in general and solely taking recommendations from people I know. In that vein, the book I just finished that I'd recommend (although it's almost written like a play): Explorers Of The New Century by Magnus Mills.

English History for Americans

In 1066, Norman invaded England and forced King Arthur to sign the Magna Carta, which is latin for "molten card". Three generations later came Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth. The Shakespearian Age lasted until King George and the American Revolution, which to this day is the single most important event in all of English history and is still widely discussed and even mined for rhetoric in political speeches. Immediately after the abject failure of the Revolution, the Victorians came into power and ruled for 150 years, until Winston Churchill and WWII happened. After the war, England invented soccer, Churchill retired to be replaced by Margaret Thatcher, and Princess Di sat on the throne. More recently, England was admitted as 9th State of the European Union.



Fun Facts:
London comes from the Roman word "Londinium", their name for the element Lithium [Li] which was abundant in the brackish silt of the Thames marshes around the area now known as "Limehouse".


Although Victorians invented the stick-frame house, this was only ever widely constructed in America, as resource constraints meant English builders had to use bricks.

England's chief exports are sonnets, actors, and sarcasm.

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.

Mac vs. Windows

Seriously, this never gets old. It's been like this for many years and many products, but I still chuckle every single time.

Living Up to Stereotype

Weeks ago I ordered some music gear from an online UK retailer I'd used before. After 3 weeks with neither the goods nor an explanation, I asked what was up and they apologized that they'd gone bankrupt or were being bought out or something. But of course. I cancelled the order and placed the same thing at a German retailer I'd also used before. The Germans shipped the order the same day I ordered it (free shipping) and it arrived less than 48 hours later.

Rail De-civilized

What we wanted: air travel more like rail
What we got: rail travel more like air

Behold the vanishing dining cars. We're poorer for their loss. Radio 5 summed it up best: "Now it's back to cardboard cups, plastic wrapped sandwiches and the rattle of the refreshment trolley."

Powerline Ethernet vs. Wifi

Testing out my LAN performance when on wifi, I was only getting 4.5 - 8 Mbps. It's certainly a crowded field. Must take extra time for those radio packets to elbow through the neighborhood scrum. Today my powerline ethernet adapters arrived (D-Link 307AV, £50 for a pair). Does it work? Oh yes: 78 Mbps, even though one is plugged into a shared power strip (suboptimal) instead of a wall socket. Take that, wifi.

Bathing in WiFi

Newest computer at home typically sees about 16 wifi networks. Briefly set a new record tonight by seeing, including my own, twenty-nine networks. The powerline ethernet adapters have been dispatched....

Spring Theatre

The whole family recently enjoyed a charming and thoroughly enjoyable The 39 Steps (very funny, played with panache and gusto, heartily recommended), now looking forward to some Stoppard and might try out an evening as a groundling later in the summer.

Getting Data to the iPad

A while ago I was disappointed that bluetooth tethering (for internet) was not available on iPad. I was considering jailbreaking the thing to try this out but never got around to it. I did end up using a little 3g mywi thingy to create a small personal wifi hotspot for my iPad at work, and that's been fine. But I just noticed that since one of the recent updates, bluetooth tethering is now available. Thanks, Apple! So on my iphone, I'm vending the internet via bluetooth, consuming via iPad. Working fine! Since I tend to underuse the data I purchase on the mywi thing, and underuse the data I'm entitled to on my iPhone plan, this could allow me to stop using the mywi if it works out well. So far so good.

Chattanooga++

I've mentioned before that I really like Chattanooga. I've been visiting there annually for at least a decade now, and it seems to keep just doing the right things in terms of investment, community building, diversifying the economny, public & private investment, focused and meaningful renewal efforts. It's got lots of local crafts, a tidy campus in UTC, a kid-friendly downtown, interesting old neighborhoods, and a lot more. Here's a nice article about the revitalized southside.

And I'm not sure how I missed it, but Nooga has gigabit internet available (at a super-high premium, but still) over the entire city. Been thinking about the state of fiber and broadband, inspired by an excellent PBS piece on the subject, so it's great to see Chattanooga actually leading the charge. As Ars Technica observed when 1Gb was rolled out in the fall, "Thanks to its aggressive buildout, solid management, and willingness to work with researchers, entrepreneurs, and big business, Chattanooga has become a model deployment for muni-fiber backers." And Ars has written a recent followup that not only makes a nice tie-in to the past (electricity to the Tennessee Valley), but talks about the possibilities when people start to "take advantage of abundance rather than conform to scarcity". Well said.

P.S. It's symmetrical!

Mo' Better Money Blogging

A Forbes blogger is turning out to be a goldmine of good explanations. The latest is clear, concise, and well worth a read: Money Growth Does Not Cause Inflation

Commute In Land-Speeders

While the USA stumbles ineptly towards a dream of 100mph rail travel (golly!), Japan is working on flying robot trains.

Bring back the ekranoplan!

Yet Another Reason To Love London

Westbound central line train for Ealing Broadway: next stop, Shepherd's Pie! I love charming and goofy stuff such as this.

This Concludes Bratwurst Week

Stunning spring day today in London. The youngest and I went to Broadway Market, which was abuzz with cheer. The upside of mostly mediocre weather most of the time is that when a breezy, sunny, blue-skied, 21C day comes along, everyone's in a great mood. Got some flowers, some garlic-stuffed olives, 4 different salamis (duck, venison, garlic, extra-hot chorizo), and stopped by the bratwurst stand. The prices have increased to £3.80, but the sausages are still properly hefts brats -- still great value for money.

 

Professor John T. Harvey, TCU, on Govt Spending

I'm surprised to see it spelled out this clearly in Forbes of all places! Highly recommend: this great, easy-to-read post covering the basics of GDP and the relationship between private investment and government spending. I might carry around hardcopies of this and demand it be read and understood before agreeing to even discuss the economy socially. (Yes, I am well on my way to curmudgeonhood.)

Some choice excerpts:

The government’s plan? More layoffs and wage reductions. This is supposed to encourage entrepreneurs to take the risks about which they are reluctant at the moment. If that seems illogical to you, it’s because it is. It’s sheer lunacy.

OR

Since investment is a major driver of the business cycle, look at what happens:

fall in investment => fall in GDP => increase in government spending

The last entry at least partially compensates for the first, which makes recessions less severe and lengthy. This has dampened, if not eliminated, the effect of the private sector’s instability since WWII. And it works in reverse, too:

rise in investment => rise in GDP => decrease in government spending

Hence, as the economy grows, so the government budget tends toward balance (as it did at the end of our longest peacetime expansion in the 1990s).

But, and this is terribly important for today, the line of causation does not run in the opposite direction!!! It is not true that lowering government spending has a tendency to increase investment. Unfortunately, this appears to be the basis of a great deal of policy in Washington today (assuming there is any economic logic to it at all). Taking discretionary action to cut spending now will be an absolute disaster. We haven’t even started doing that with any gusto yet, and look at the results from 2011Q1. And, just today, President Obama signed a bill that cut $38 billion from the government budget, while the house passed one reducing government spending by $6.2 trillion over the next decade. This is absolute insanity.

What do these people think is going to happen?

Now *This* Is An Honest Brat

Which reminds me, I have enjoyed these bratwurst from the stand Broadway market, about double the size of "the bratwurst" in broadgate, and slightly cheaper to boot!

You Call That a Currywurst?

City lunches: In Broadgate Circle a new vendor, "the Bratwurst" has taken residence in a stand sadly vacated by what had been a decent place for burgers. But hey, bratwurst! Should be good! And that's really all they sell: plain or run through a nifty overengineered automatic sausage slicer and slathered with curry sauce. I tried the latter. The taste is fine, but it's terrible value for money, costing £4 for a meager bit of meat. Currywurst makes great train station food in Germany, and should really fill you up for not much money. For £4 they should be serving up about double their surprisingly small portion. In fact, not far away, nice little chip shop Alexander's (on Christopher Street, EC2) will server you a couple cumberland sausages for £4, each one of which looks heartier than the brat's brat. And it's not just me -- a few smaller, less American guys in the office had the same reaction. "That's it?" Hopefully they'll wise up because it would be nice to get some bratwurst outside over the summer.

Anyway, if you go to Alexander's (recommended!), get the fish -- really nice cod. Or go to Damascu Bite (on Shoreditch High Street, E1) for some satisfying shawerma. Or go to Fernando's (Devonshire Row, EC2), or K10 (Copthall Ave, EC2), or ....



[update 28th April:] Either I have tremendous influence, and possibly time-travel powers, or The Bratwurst has wised up a little. They are now offering a double portion of currywurst for £5.95. Not fabulous value by any stretch, but at least in the realm of reasonable.

Apple Is Not Tracking Your Every Move

Your iPhone might be. Apple isn't. Is the difference pedantic? I don't think so. Even ZDNet, whose writers should know better, made this mistake, claiming

Apple is not the first company to collect data without users knowing. Google fell in hot water in 2010 after admitting that it was collecting data from non password-protected Wi-Fi networks for three years as part of its Street View project.

Wrong. Apple is not collecting your data. Google was.


Every reporter who breathlessly repeated the story should have done a bit of fact-checking first. Anyone interested should read this.

1) Apple is not collecting this data
2) This hidden file is neither new nor secret
3) This "discovery" was published months ago.

 So what should Apple do? I believe Apple should do two things.

1. release a free app that wipes the log data on your iphone/ipad with a single button push
2. add a setting that allows you to disable tracking entirely

P.S. If everyone could just calm the fuck down, I'd appreciate it.

Non-Disposable Furniture

As I age, gracefully, into a transcendent state of wisdom and grace, I find comfort in the idea of things outlasting me. It's getting harder and harder for me to buy furniture that probably won't outlast me. I hate disposable furniture. Good furniture is expensive, even really simple pieces, if they are solid and built with joinery rather than hex bolts and staples. So pulling the trigger today on a couple of small tables and chairs was painful, but I feel better for having done it. I'll feel even better if they're still on active duty into their second or third decade.

Final PS on S&P BS

(I promise)

The Kansas City crowd writes it up much better than I ever could (well worth the read): You have more chance to be hit by lightening twice during your life than to experience a default of dollar-denominated sovereign US debt. The only really worrisome variable is the stupidity of US congress and its willingness to try to fix something that is not broken.

S&P P.S.

LOL Business Insider for the perfect summary

S&P

Perhaps inspired by Jesse Jackson, Jr.,  S&P issued a warning about US sovereign credit rating. This is the same ratings agency that gave AAA stamps of approval to toxic pools of subprime-backed crap that turned out to be worthless. But that's not the half of it. Does S&P think it's possible for the US to default? S&P should spend more time over at TC.

Keen Insight & Serious Thinking from Jesse Jackson Jr

March 2011

"Let me be clear about a few things. [iPads and Kindles] are revolutionizing our country — and they will fundamentally alter how we will educate our children."

April 2011

"[the Ipad is] probably responsible for eliminating thousands of American jobs"

I can suggest some other targets if he wants to talk about destruction of wealth and jobs, but why bother? This is bafflingly daft stuff even by congressional standards of stupid.

George RR Martin: A Lack of Edits

I've just finished a stolen draft of book six of George RR Martin's "A Song of Endless Characters" series, A Lack of Edits. The first five books are: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and... I forget the fifth one... A Dance with Draco? A Maiming of Malfoys? Something like that.

This is exactly what I'm talking about when I go mental about the value of professional editing. The first book was great. By the second book, a feeling of dread set in... things were going nowhere, slowly. What had been delightful unpredictably in the first book now revealed itself to be a tiresome formula (find anyone sympathetic? prepare for the horrible maiming, or death, or series of unfortunate events). Dread at the appearance of new characters: please, no, not another point-of-view character to waste 300 pages on! The realization that almost no time is passing, and taking thousands of pages to do it. It's written like an open-ended TV series, which is probably fitting, given his background. So a soap opera, then. It seemed like a lot more at first. And I thought the third book was great, but by the end I'd lost all trust in the author, that he would finish it well or that he would finish it at all. So I haven't gone beyond the third. It's hard for me to stay with an author I no longer trust. Which is a shame, because he's got chops. There are some great characters and some excellent stories. Lock GRRM in a room with a zealous editor wielding a riding crop in one hand, a cattle prod in the other, and instructions to let him out only upon death or upon culling of, say, 1000 pages from the first 3 books and all of the fourth book.

Epic is not about the number of pages or the number of characters. Epic must yield catharsis, not just exhaustion.

An HBO series adaptation of the first book starts this week. From the previews, it looks great, and I will definitely be watching it. But I'm not sure I'll be reading any more.

Another Nice Flight on BA

Recently flew from ORD-LHR on BA on a brand-new Boeing 777-300. Sat in economy+ in seat designs I'd not experienced before. They were really nice. The screens were nicer than I've had before on any BA flight. The seat also had a couple full-plug power outlets, 2 powered USB ports [I should've brought more devices to recharge!], and a set of RCA video inputs in case you wanted to view your own content on the screen. How cool is that? The chair was pretty comfortable, actually. And the trays came out of the armrests (always better than folding down from the seat ahead). Very nicely done.

Shawafel!

Had an excellent lunch the other week in Stamford, CT, at Layla's.  I've been there before and always enjoyed the jovial feel of the place and the satisfying shawerma. A popular take-out place, it also has a casual dining room. This time, 3 of us sat down later in the lunch hour. The waiter suggested we just let him take care of us, so we put away the menus and before too long the food started covering the table top: a giant bowl of freshly made salad, some tabouleh, some baba ghanoush, really nice hummus, a bowl of mixed pickles, a bowl of homemade chili sauce, a mound of hot, freshly cooked falafel, a mound of mujadara, and then the meat: a giant platter of grilled lamb, marinated grilled chicken, and a heap of lamb shawerma with grilled onions. Family style and friendly, served with justified pride. A single, overly reasonable price was given for the whole thing, and we walked away full and happy. I wish more restaurants were like that.

Buckwheat

I tried Stephan Guyenet's buckwheat suggestion. It worked out well, very easy. I soaked it for 24 hours (including some "rice water" in the soak), rinsed, and pureed it with just a little bit of water to get the consistency of hummus. I did not wait for any fermentation at this point, just fried up some thick pancakes in plenty of butter and a bit of salt. They were good. Had some plain and some with chunks of unpasteurized stichelton. I also took a small amount of it, and whipped it with an egg and a bit of cream to make a very thin batter. For these I used less butter and cooked them much thinner to make something a bit like primitive galettes. I had one with ham and melted cheese. Good and savory. Someone else in the family may have had hers with honey.

All That Exercise

The other comments I get tend to be along the lines of "you really must be hitting the gym". I like exercising, when I have free time I tend to do more of it, but it is not at all required for weight loss nor for maintaining stable weight. I've got the data to prove it my own case. I think exercise has many virtues (keeping me the right side of sane is top of the list), but keeping me thin(ish) is not one of them. Most folks can't seem to get their heads around that. The only way for a fat guy to get and then stay less fat must be through obsessive "cardio", right?