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).