Data Janitor

They're Made Out of Meat

2011-11-06T22:58:00.000-05:00

Prior to today, I had never heard of the author Terry Bisson. I heard this dramatization of his short story "They're Made Out of Meat" at the end of Studio 360 today, and I found it hilarious and poignant. It's certainly piqued my interest in his catalog.

Welcome to Rhode Island. Now Speak English

2011-08-25T22:04:00.000-04:00

An excerpt from a conversation I recently had with a taxi driver on the way home from the airport.

Driver: "Are you from here or just visiting"

Me: "From here"

Driver: "Really? But you speak English correctly"

Me: "Well, I wasn't born here"

For the record, the driver was from Italy and spoke mildly accented English.

Greek Odyssey

2011-06-05T15:27:00.000-04:00

We went to Greece last year. I recorded a lot of observations during the trip in the hope of writing about it once we got back, but I never got around to it. Now that a year has passed, I've decided to finally follow through.

June 5-6, 2010
We left Boston on a 6 pm flight to Heathrow. The flight was scheduled to land around 6 am London time, but we made it in 45 minutes ahead of schedule due to a slightly early departure and what I can only assume was a massive tailwind. We took off out of Boston heading south and passed over the port and Castle Island before heading out across the pond. We encountered a lot of turbulence at the start of the flight and overall, it was the most turbulent transoceanic flight I've ever been on. It was also my first time flying British Airways and my first time flying across the Atlantic in a 747.

I didn't get any sleep on the flight. 6 pm turned out to be a very strange time to depart on a short transatlantic flight, since we landed in London around when I'd normally be going to bed back home. My body was nice and ready for a good night's sleep right as the day was getting started in London. Our flight was so early that hardly anything was even open in T5 upon our arrival. It did make for a very easy trip through immigration.

I finally got some sleep on the flight to Athens. My initial impression upon arrival was that it was drier and more mountainous than I had imagined. The first signs of Greece's current economic woes were visible before we even deplaned. There was an armada of mothballed Olympic Airways jets parked on the airfield, including four of their flagship Airbus A-343s

Given Olympic's long history of ineptitude, I may have been reading too much into this. On the ride into the city on the Metro, I saw a few settlements along the highway that appeared to be shanty towns. I'm guessing that they were Roma settlements, but I may just be perpetuating a stereotype.

We arrived at our hotel in the mid-afternoon. It was a basic tourist hotel not far from Syndagma Square. In addition to being one of the tourist hubs of Athens, Syndagma Square is also where the Greek Parliament is located and was the site of deadly riots a month before our arrival. When we arrived, it was fortunately playing host to a beach volleyball tournament instead.

We were pretty tired by this point so we took a nap. After about an hour, I was still tired but unable to nap any longer, so I ventured out on my own. It was a very nice day, about 23 degrees C with a nice breeze. My first stop was Kapnikarea, an 11th century Byzantine church located a few blocks from our hotel. I guess I was expecting it to be covered it colorful mosaics, so I was somewhat disappointed that this was the only one visible from the outside.

I also visited Monastiraki Square

and Hadrian's Gate.

I was surprised by how much the Acropolis looms over this part of Athens. Acropolis literally means "high city", so it shouldn't be much of surprise that it towers over ancient Athens. I was also surprised by the chaotic mix of history, splendor, and squalor in this part of Athens. I really enjoyed all of the tiny streets and alleys.

Michelle and I visited the Temple of Olympian Zeus before dinner. It was the largest temple in Ancient Greece and is still an impressive sight.

I watched an episode of Mad Men on the in-flight entertainment system on the way over where Paul Kinsey, in a failed attempt to save Penn Station, noted that most of the great Roman ruins are found outside of Rome. Perhaps the reason that Athens has so many great ancient ruins is because unlike Rome, it languished for millenia as an outpost of the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman empires. Had Athens regained its status as the seat of an empire at some point after its brief golden age, surely more of its now famous ruins would have been destroyed in the name of progress.

We sat down for dinner at a touristy taverna in the Plaka around 9pm, which is still early by Greek standards. The restaurant was barely occupied when we arrived though a reasonable crowd was starting to develop by the time we left. The food was good and hearty - moussaka, lamb and potato stew, olives, tomato and cucumber salad, and a delicious dessert of yogurt with honey and figs.

Sports' Fans

2011-05-19T22:27:00.000-04:00

Huey Lewis and the News were my first favorite band. I hopped onto their band wagon sometime around the Back to the Future Soundtrack/Fore! days and rode it for a good two years through the Small World album. In retrospect, that doesn't seem like much in the way of devotion, but when you've just barely cracked double-digits in age, giving a single artist two years on the top of your personal billboard chart is pretty significant.

Huey Lewis and the News were the first band I ever saw live in concert (Meadowbrook, 1988, Small World Tour). I don't remember the first tape that I ever purchased. I doubt it was one of Huey's, but I definitely owned all three of the aforementioned albums as well as their chart-topping 1983 album Sports. If you were never into Huey Lewis and/or the News, you might not get as much enjoyment out of this several thousand word dissection of Sports, but you will probably agree that it's the most insightful analysis of Lewis' career since American Psycho. If all of this hasn't piqued your interest because you never liked Huey Lewis and the News in particular or saxophone-heavy pop music in general, you should appreciate that the only two members of the band, past or present, that have their own Wikipedia pages are Huey Lewis, of course, and saxophonist Johnny Colla.

Paradise By The Oven Light

2011-05-15T21:33:00.000-04:00

I've probably been spending less time cooking since becoming a dad, but it feels like I've been doing it a lot more. That's probably because instead of cooking a couple times a week, I now cook once a week and attempt to make enough food in that one session to last four or five days.

That usually means making one big dish, though this week I did things differently and grilled some corn and chicken thighs and baked a meatloaf. I'm not entirely sure what happend, but I somehow managed to make the most delicious meatloaf I've ever made. I started with an old recipe and then deviated from it in several places due to a lack of ingredients, but the end result was much better than it would have been had I been able to cook it to spec. I'm going to attempt to transcribe what happened in the kitchen today so I can hopefully make it again.

1 lb ground turkey (dark meat)
1 lb ground beef (85/15)
1 medium onion, chopped
2 eggs
1/2 cup old fashioned oats
1/2 cup Italian style bread crumbs
1/4 cup pasta sauce (estimated)
1/8 cup chili sauce (estimated)
1-2 tbs barbecue sauce (estimated)
2 tsp Worcestershire Sauce
1/2 tbs garlic powder
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/8 tsp Sriracha sauce (estimated)
1/2 cup ketchup

Mix everything (except the ketchup) in a bowl, put it into a loaf pan, cover it with foil, and bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, take off the foil, reduce the heat to 350 degrees, brush the top of the loaf with the ketchup, and bake another 45-60 minutes.

Take a Swipe

2011-03-29T22:01:00.000-04:00

Swipely was featured on channel 10's Southern New England Spotlight during tonight's edition of the 7 o'clock news. If you look really closely, you can see me hard at work in the background around the 1:06 mark of the video.

The coverage is definitely more positive than the last time an employer of mine was featured in the local news.

Francis "Monk" LaValley

2011-03-27T22:19:00.000-04:00

My grandfather, Francis "Monk" LaValley, passed away peacefully on March 13, a few weeks shy of his 91st birthday. My grandfather was a quiet man. For a long time, I assumed that his nickname was a reference to his quiet demeanor. When I finally asked him about it a few years ago, I learned that it was actually a reference to a football star of his childhood, Stanford All-American Jim "Monk" Moscrip. He earned the nickname playing backyard football as a boy and it stuck with him for the rest of his life.

In many ways, his life was the story of America in the 20th century. His parents immigrated to the US from Quebec, and if I remember correctly, his mother never really learned much English. While he wasn't bilingual, he did retain a little bit of French, which he would occasionally interject into conversation. He served in the Army Air Forces during World War II. I don't know much about his war experience because I never really asked him about it and he never really talked about it. I know that he went over to Europe aboard the Queen Mary, served as a mechanic, and spent most of his time in England. After coming home, he settled into a solid blue-collar career as a tool & die maker and raised a family. He was a sports fan, a league bowler, an avid fisherman, and a lifelong Ohioan.

My favorite memories of my grandfather are from summertime visits when my parents would send my brother and me down to Columbus for a few days with Grandma and Grandpa. Their house was a wonderful place full of toys and games that we didn't have at home and the special kind of love and attention that only grandparents can provide. It was during those visits that my grandfather really shared his interests with us. He'd take us fishing and take us to the bowling alley. While I never developed into much of a fisherman and only spent a couple of years in organized bowling, I always enjoyed our trips to the lake and the lanes.

One interest that my younger self did have in common with him was an interest in drawing. He had an artistic side that he didn't often show, but he could make a pretty mean freehand sketch. He always enjoyed looking at my doodlings and would occasionally pull out his pencil and join in.

I didn't see him as often in his later years and his declining health made it impossible for him to enjoy most of his old pastimes, but he was always up for a game of cards right to the very end. I'm thankful for all of the time that we got to spend together. He never gave me much in the way of advice or guidance, but he didn't really have to, he just did what needed to be done and let his actions speak for themselves.

Make Room For Baby

2011-01-03T16:49:00.000-05:00

Repainting is probably the most universal rite of passage for first time homeowners. Nearly four and a half years into home ownership, we've finally managed to make it though that rite thanks to the impending birth of our first child. After several days of work and several coats of paint, here's the finished product.

I think it came out pretty well. Here's a gallery with some more shots from around the room.

Black Bear

2010-11-14T13:00:00.000-05:00

September 19, 2010 | 4:06 pm | Great Smoky Mountains National Park - Tennessee

False Witness

2010-11-10T23:00:00.000-05:00

I dropped my car off at the shop for some routine maintenance today. While I was settling my bill, the cashier asked if I or my wife had Facebook accounts. I didn't feel like explaining why I didn't want to "friend" or "become a fan" the service station, so I just lied and said no. I used to use this same tactic when a cashier asked if I had an e-mail address, but I've stopped since no one under the age of 75 can believably claim to not have an e-mail address anymore. I don't even know why I feel the need to lie in order to avoid having to politely refuse an offer to receive targeted marketing. I absolutely love declining to share my phone number when asked by a cashier - it makes me feel like I've just vetoed a bill in the UN Security Council.

Happy Halloween

2010-10-31T15:23:00.000-04:00

October 30, 2010 | 8:24 pm | Roger Williams Park Zoo - Providence, RI

Re: Cycle

2010-10-25T21:47:00.000-04:00

My 2010 bicycle commuting season came to an end today. Normally, it ends around Columbus Day, but a spate of uncooperative weather in early October prevented me from getting that one last ride in, so I decided to take advantage of today's unseasonably warm conditions and shift my schedule a bit so I could make it back home before sunset. As it turned out, today was a good day to stay off of the main highways since President Obama's visit this afternoon caused some major traffic tie-ups.

I managed to make 55 round trips this season, which eliminated roughly 750 car miles. This was about 150 miles more than last year, though still quite a bit shy of the 1000 mile goal that I set prior to last season. I also did a lot more riding for fitness and leisure and turned in just over 1600 total miles, my highest tally since 1997. According to Google Maps' bicycle directions, that's roughly the equivalent of biking from my house in Rhode Island to Omaha, via a route that parallels Interstate 90/80.

Social Skills

2010-10-24T20:37:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned, we went to see The Social Network last weekend. It was one of the rare films that got a good review from both of us. One of the most interesting parts of the movie was how it depicted the social stratification across the student body at Harvard. As a product of public education, it never really occurred to me that as impressive as it is to get into a school like Harvard, just being smart and/or connected enough to get in doesn't mean that much to fellow students who come from the richest and most powerful families in the world. The other thing that I really liked was how it got me to root for Mark Zuckerberg's character while not making him very likable. The AV Club's Scott Tobias said it much better than I ever could in last week's Q&A:

As for his deficiencies as a human being, Zuckerberg, as played by Jesse Eisenberg, comes across as the classic outsider, a stranger to privilege whose desperate need to fit in runs against a social ineptitude he can’t overcome. Doesn’t that make him more identifiable than a pack of Harvard bluebloods?

Highly recommended.

Indochina

2010-10-16T23:15:00.000-04:00

I've known of the culinary agglomeration known as Indian-style Chinese food for several years now. I first learned of it through Indian expats, all of whom seemed to yearn for it more than the traditional cuisine of their homeland. A few years later, I learned that Indo-Chinese food had reached American shores. More recently, I've heard about some of these dishes creeping their way onto Indian restaurant menus in the provinces. We popped into Taste of India last night for a quick bite before going to catch The Social Network, and much to our delight, found that they had added a small section of Indo-Chinese dishes to the end of their menu. I tried the Chili Chicken, which, as far as I understand, is the signature Indo-Chinese dish. I was a bit surprised to see that the chicken pieces were deep-fried. That's obviously part of what makes it Chinese, but I so rarely eat those kinds of dishes when I'm eating Chinese food that I've broken the Chinese food = deep fried association that tends to hold sway, especially in Americanized Chinese food. That's not the say that the Chili Chicken wasn't delicious. As one should probably expect when ordering a dish with the word "chili" in its name, it was quite spicy, though not overwhelmingly so. Michelle had another Indo-Chinese dish, the Chicken Hakka Noodles. Also a tasty dish, and the inclusion of noodles in an Indian-spiced dish gave it an even more exotic flavor. Our only complaint was that it was a bit too heavy on the noodles and too light on the chicken and vegetables. Take a close look at the menu the next time you visit your favorite Indian restaurant and see if they have any Indo-Chinese dishes, they're definitely worth a taste.

Smooth in Shanghai

2010-10-03T19:03:00.002-04:00

You obviously can't tell, but when this picture was taken almost three years ago on Nanjing Road in Shanghai, the smooth sounds of Kenny G were being piped out into the noise and bustle of Shanghai's most vibrant commercial streetscape.

Even in the midst of so much western cultural and commercial influence, I found the music of Kenny G blasting out into the street rather odd (and slightly nauseating, of course). Fortunately, Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! explained this phenomenon yesterday in the Not My Job segment of the show. As host Peter Sagal explained:

In China, especially in Shanghai, stores, buses and other public facilities play his beloved song "Going Home" when they want people to go home.

Wikipedia's Kenny G page corroborates this information and has some additional details about Kenny G's campaign to conquer the sonic landscape of modern China.

Night Rider

2010-09-30T22:37:00.000-04:00

I don't bike at night. I figure that drivers have enough trouble seeing me during the day. Sure, I could get a headlight and a real taillight to go with my reflective vest and by blinky red light, but I really don't have much of a need to bike at night so why risk it? I went out for a short ride today about 15 minutes prior to sunset, thinking I had more daylight to work with than I actually did. I was riding on the bike path, so cars weren't an issue, but the combination of a rapidly disappearing sun on an already heavily overcast day and the near total lack of ambient light on the parts of the bike path that are walled off from the surrounding neighborhoods and streets by a canopy of tall trees made for a ride that was both challenging and exhilarating. I would definitely like to ride it at dusk again, though I'm going to upgrade my lighting situation before I do that so I can actually see where I'm going.

Invictus

2010-09-07T22:57:00.000-04:00

We recently watched Invictus. If you see just one American movie this year that was set in South Africa and was released in 2009... see District 9 instead. Invictus managed to take an interesting event from a pivotal moment in history involving one of the most remarkable human beings of our time and make it seem boring and inconsequential. If you're looking for an interesting look at how sports helped to bring disparate peoples together during turbulent times, I'd recommend A City on Fire instead.

Get in the Ring

2010-09-06T11:50:00.000-04:00

If I may gloat just a little bit, although I was off by a season, I was correct way back in January of last year when I predicted that the first significant mention of sport on Mad Men was going to be one of the Clay/Ali vs. Liston fights. It wasn't the centerpiece of last night's episode, and it wasn't really used to broach the subject of race as I predicted it might be, but it was definitely a big part of the episode. I'm so used to big fights and sporting events taking place on a weekend that I was confused when everyone came back into the office the day after the fight. I wouldn't expect Mad Men to screw up such a easily verifiable piece of period detail, and they were correct of course. The fight in question took place on May 25th, 1965, which was a Tuesday, in Lewiston, Maine. If boxing continues its seemingly inexorable decline in popularity, perhaps there will someday be another heavyweight title fight on a weeknight in central Maine.

What Becomes of the Broken Hearted

2010-09-01T23:37:00.000-04:00

Deadspin opened today with an incongruous picture of an fan at AT&T Park in San Francisco sporting a ponytail and a Giants jersey with the name of a heavy metal band embroidered across the back of it sidling up to the wine bar on the concourse. What really caught my eye in this photo wasn't the Chardonnay-swilling metalhead, it was the Chinese food concession stand called "Edsel Ford Fong".

Edsel Ford is a name that has always stuck with me. I'll never forget how on one of my many childhood visits to The Henry Ford Museum (now known as The Henry Ford), I asked my Dad what caused the early death of Henry Ford's son Edsel, and my Dad replied that he died of a broken heart. At the time, I didn't really understand what he meant by that. I was old enough to know that a broken heart wasn't a medical condition, but too young to appreciate the toll that emotional pain can take on a person's overall well-being. I pondered my Dad's response for a long time in an attempt to understand what he was saying, but it wasn't until I reflected on it a few years later that I was able to figure out what he meant.

It turns out that the Edsel Fords of Detroit aren't the only famous people named Edsel Ford. There was also a notoriously rude waiter in San Francisco's Chinatown named Edsel Ford Fong, for whom this concession stand is named. I expect a certain level of rudeness from the staff whenever I'm dining at an authentic Chinese restaurant, but generally that rudeness is product of inattention and the push to serve as many patrons as possible. Based on the descriptions of his work, Edsel Ford Fong sounds like a waiter who tried really hard to be the world's rudest and most irritating waiter. Unfortunately, the Wikipedia biography of Edsel Ford Fong doesn't explain how he wound up with his infamous sobriquet.

Edsel Ford Fung is no longer with us, but his name lives in at the concession stand and at Sam Wo's restaurant in San Francisco, where he plied his trade. I've never eaten at Sam Wo's, but I've definitely walked past it several times. I used to work with someone named Sam Wu, so the name always jumps out at me when I see it. I ate at a restaurant very close to Sam Wo's the first time I visited Chinatown. I know where I'll be stopping the next time I'm in town.

Cool As A...

2010-08-10T22:56:00.000-04:00

If you have a couple of cucumbers that you don't know what to do with, here's a really easy and delicious salad that I made a couple days ago.

2 medium sized cucumbers, peeled and thinly sliced
1/4 cup vinegar
1/4 cup water
1 tbsp sugar
1/8 tsp salt
dash of pepper

Mix it all together and refrigerate for an hour or more. Enjoy.

Power Rankings

2010-08-09T23:32:00.001-04:00

We spent yesterday afternoon at the 56th annual Newport Jazz Festival. I was very excited about this year's lineup, which was even more adventurous than last year. The first concert that we checked out was the Dave Douglas Brass Ecstasy quintet. I saw Douglas play with his Tiny Bell Trio about 12 years ago and I was really impressed, but with the exception of a couple of Masada records, I haven't paid too much attention to his work since then. I really liked their show, and especially liked the songs where Douglas really got to shine. My favorite numbers were a couple of original compositions dedicated to and in the style of two great jazz trumpeters (Enrico Rava and Lester Bowie).

Next up was the most anticipated show of the festival, Powerhouse Sound. I wasn't sure which version of the band was going to be appearing, but I was excited to see Jeff Parker walk out on stage, as I've been an admirer of his work for years but have never had the chance to hear him perform. Ken Vandermark lead the band along with longtime collaborator Nate McBride on electric bass and John Herndon on drums. While this was my favorite show of the festival, I didn't enjoy it as much as I had hoped. The first problem was the sound. It was really hard to hear Vandermark (who played tenor exclusively for this show) over his electrified colleagues. As Vandermark tweeted earlier today, the entire set was very intense. I thought it got to be a bit much at times. They did mellow out a bit in the final third of their set and delivered a stunning rendition of the trippy dub-inspired "Coxsonne".

The crowd was sparser than last year's Vandermark 5 performance (I'm sure overlapping with the Wynton Marsalis show on the main stage this year didn't help). I was a bit disappointed that Ken didn't take any breaks between the songs to announce their titles or the band members. It also pains me a bit to admit that I wasn't a big fan of Herndon's work on the drums. Until I sat down to write this post, I didn't realize that he's the drummer for Tortoise, one of my favorite bands. His drumming took the music into a more rock-oriented direction, which I felt was unnecessary with Parker and McBride already pulling the band that way. Powerhouse's other lineup features Paal Nilssen-Love on the drums and I think I would have enjoyed his sound better.

The final show, pianist Jason Moran was most pleasant surprise. His band played a good mix of originals and reinterpretations, including a stellar rendition of Monk's "Crepuscule With Nellie" to close their set. It was good, solid jazz and Moran's work on the piano was always compelling and even a bit unconventional while still staying inside of a fairly conventional straight ahead jazz framework.

Deer Crossing

2010-07-17T17:45:00.000-04:00

Deer Tick
Lupo's - Providence, RI
July 16, 2010

I finally got a chance to hear Deer Tick play live. They play in Providence a lot, though not as much as you might expect for a band from Providence. For whatever reason, I always seem to be busy or out of town when they're in Providence. The show was hosted by Lupo's but it took place outdoors on Union St. between Washington and Worchester. The acoustics weren't the best and it was oppressively humid even at 10pm, but it gave the show a more raucous vibe. It was an all-ages show (perhaps because of the outdoor venue), which skewed the crowd to the young side and made me feel even older.

Deer Tick put on a good show. They played for almost two hours straight and it was pretty obvious that they were having a lot of fun up on stage. They played a good mix of songs from all three of their albums as well as a number of covers. Hearing a good band play covers really makes you realize how bad most cover bands are. They covered "Maybelline" by Chuck Berry, "Break Down" by Tom Petty, "Twist & Shout" by the Beetles, and "Cheap Sunglasses" by ZZ Top. Their "Break Down" cover was incredible - I liked it better than the original (and I really like the original). "Cheap Sunglasses" has always been a favorite of mine, and their uptempo, de-funkified, borderline psychobilly rendition of it was sublime.

I was also pleased to see that they recently added an organ player to the band. In my opinion, there are very few bands that wouldn't benefit from the addition of an organ player. The only real disappointment, and it was a minor one, was that the band brought a special guest on stage to sing "These Old Shoes". The guest was the author of the song, a local musician who was also part of the opening act. A magnanimous gesture no doubt, but I really missed hearing Jack McCauley's raspy vocals on one of my favorite Deer Tick songs.

Indemnity Theft

2010-07-15T18:42:00.002-04:00

I just watched Double Indemnity for the first time. I'm not sure what else I can say about a 66 year old film still rightly considered to be one of the greatest of all-time, so I'll just say that it's quite good and I recommend it highly. I don't watch a lot of movies, but a lot of the movies that I watch are the so-called classics. I'm a bit ashamed to admit that I've managed to fall asleep while watching Casablanca, Citizen Kane, and The Maltese Falcon. In my defense, I was very tired when I sat down to watch all three of those masterpieces. Still, I think my inability to stay awake shows that I didn't take to those movies as strongly as I had hoped. I'm pleased to say that I never came close to dozing off during Double Indemnity.

In the Arena

2010-07-14T22:41:00.000-04:00

While flipping through the channels on a lazy Saturday afternoon, I stumbled upon yet another arena football league. It's called the Indoor Football League, not to be confused with the American Indoor Football Association or the Arena Football League (the granddaddy of all arena football leagues, which shut down in 2008 and was re-launched this year under the same name). The game, which featured the West Texas Roughnecks verses the Amarillo Venom, was being shown on a weird channel provided by my cable system that I rarely watch but usually seems to be airing local high school sports or infomercials.

I didn't watch the game for very long. The last arena football game I had watched prior to this match was the 2008 Arena Bowl, which turned out to be the final game of the original Arena Football League's first incarnation. That broadcast was kind of interesting because the commentators apparently had access to both team's playbooks. The announcers were diagramming and calling the plays out as the coaches were sending them in from the sidelines. It was kind of weird, but it held my interest in a game and a sport that I cared little about longer than a more conventional broadcast would have. The IFL game that I saw featured no such insider information from the broadcast booth, but it did feature a stoppage of play that lasted a minute or two while Amarillo's quarterback and head coach searched for a contact lens that popped out of the QB's eye on the previous play. The IFL ain't the NFL, the XFL, the Arena League, or even the now defunct arenafootball2 league, but I'm sure that Gary Bettman is more that a little jealous that a third-tier semi-pro arena football league can get their games televised nationwide on basic cable. Check your local listings for the next IFL game in your market and start developing some allegiances so you're be ready to go when the 2011 NFL season is canceled.

Thai Basil Chicken

2010-07-08T23:45:00.000-04:00

We got some Thai basil from the farm this week, so I quickly went to the Google tonight to see what I could do with it. I found this quick and easy recipe and I was very happy with the results. I could have been convinced that it came from a restaurant, had I not prepared and cooked it myself. Try it if you have some Thai basil on hand.

Capital Gains

2010-07-06T23:26:00.000-04:00

We recently got back from Greece. We had a great time on our trip and endured almost no travel-related hassles while there or en route, which was all the more amazing given the number of things that could have gone wrong.

One of the things I discovered while roaming around the historical sites of Athens is one of the few things I still remember from what little I ever learned about ancient Greece is architectural capital identification. As it turns out, this frequently came in handy, so if you're planning a trip to Greece and want to brush up on some history before going, learning your capital styles will give you a lot of bang for your buck. I've prepared the following image as a refresher:

Feel free to use the following rules to identify your capitals. Doric comes from The Dorians, whose invasion ushered in the Greek Dark Ages, so it's safe to say that they weren't known for their cultural refinement. Therefore, it's should come as no surprise that their capital style is the most austere. Corinthian capitals are the most ornate, not unlike Corinthian Leather. I don't have a mnemonic device for identifying Ionic capitals, but you should be able to use process of elimination.

BASIC Training

2010-06-29T23:04:00.000-04:00

I was intrigued by this recent tweet from Roger Ebert for an article entitled "Why Johnny can't code". The article, which was written by science fiction author David Brin almost four years ago, is disappointing. The entire article is built on the false assumption that there are no freely available line number BASIC interpreters available for modern personal computers. The author concludes that because of this, the kids of today will never learn how computers work and therefore, as a society, we've all but guaranteed our descent into a digital dark age.

A quick Google search invalidates the author's base assumption. He's correct in that most of today's programmers cut their programming teeth on BASIC (myself included), but to argue that it's the classical Greek or Latin of computer science is highly delusional.

Of course, even if computers came loaded with an interpreter for a modern BASIC-derived programming language he still wouldn't be happy because he's completely fixated on the original line numbered version of BASIC. He seems to think that line number BASIC is closer the actual machine code than other languages or BASIC dialects that omit line numbers while at the same time being the only language that is easy enough for a beginner to grasp. Line number basic is no closer or further from the metal than any other variant of BASIC. I don't think it's any easier to learn line number BASIC than a more modern dialect, and relying on line numbers leads to really bad programming habits and obscures a lot of the mathematical elegance that he talks about.

His dismissal of widely available modern scripting languages like Perl and Python is also confusing. He claims that they are too high-level to allow you to follow the logical flow of the program. If anything, languages like Python that provide an interactive shell are even easier to experiment with than BASIC since you can execute your program one line at a time and see exactly what is happening inside the computer.

I don't know if the world is headed for a shortage of computer programmers, but if it is, the availability (or perceived lack thereof) of line number BASIC interpreters on modern personal computers is neither the solution to nor the cause of this problem.

Have A Drink On Me

2010-05-27T22:26:00.000-04:00

As I've mentioned before, I can't turn away from any story about the most outrageously unhealthy "food" items produced by America's culinary-industrial complex. This recent review of the 20 Worst Drinks in America is no exception, though it felt a little strange to see an item on the list that I actually enjoy. Sierra Nevada's Bigfoot took home the honor of America's worst beer. For those who have never tried it, a 12 oz bottle of Bigfoot weighs in at 330 calories and at 32.1 grams has the same amount of carbohydrates as an entire 12 pack of Michelob Ultra. In Bigfoot's defense, it's almost 10% ABV, which means it has more alcohol than 2 full light beers and it's so heavy that by the time you've finished one, you're ready for nap. Still, the article makes a good point, beer is not the healthiest of beverages. It's nowhere near as bad as America's worst beverage, but it's a lot easier to reach into your fridge and grab a beer or three than it is to drive to your local Cold Stone Creamery and order a 2,010 calorie shake.

Beyond the Motor City

2010-05-23T23:01:00.000-04:00

We caught a screening of the PBS documentary Blueprint America: Beyond the Motor City a couple of weeks ago (on a lovely night at the Grant's Block outdoor movie screen in downtown Providence, no less). It's a really interesting look at the history of transportation infrastructure in the US with an an emphasis on how Detroit benefited from it, contributed to it, and in a way, was destroyed by it. It's a must-watch for anyone who is interested in transportation policy or Detroit. I was really surprised to learn that as recently as the 1930s, Detroit had a commuter rail and streetcar system that was as comprehensive as any other comparable American city. Here's a link to the full video.

Where are they now?

2010-04-26T22:19:00.001-04:00

If you have or ever had even a minor interest in professional wrestling and you haven't been reading The Dead Wrestler of the Week feature on Deadspin, you really need to check it out. It's a fascinating look at the flamboyant and dangerous world of professional wrestling, especially during the heyday of the World Wrestling Federation in the mid-1980s. Even after accounting for all of the occupational hazards of pro wrestling, it's more than a little disturbing that there are enough famous dead wrestlers from the 1980s and 90s to support a weekly feature on Deadspin.

Family Matters

2010-04-22T22:25:00.000-04:00

Jeff Sharlet's book The Family is an eye-opening look inside of the secretive fundamentalist Christian organization of the same name that has intertwined itself with American power over the past 70 years, but I found the book more useful as a look inside of American Christian fundamentalism in general.

The book begins with a brief introduction to religious revival in American history before telling the story of Abraham Vereide, the founder of The Family. This section seemed a bit perfunctory and didn't really add much to the story other than establishing that American history is full of religious fervor and innovation, something that I assume anyone who picks up this book already knows.

The origins of The Family lie in the labor unrest of the Great Depression. The first of many tautologies upon which the faith of The Family and American fundamentalist Christianity rests is introduced when Vereide outlines his plan for labor-management conflict resolution. The idea is that the men in positions of power were put there by God. As long as they act in accordance with God's will, strife will disappear - and if it doesn't, it's clearly the fault of those who are resisting the will of the almighty.

The Family really got going during the Cold War. Their fundamentalism proved to be remarkably ecumenical in its search for proxies to use in the struggle against the Soviet Union and godless communism. Former Nazis and even Indonesia's murderous dictator Suharto and Somalia's Siad Barre (both Muslims) were all courted by The Family. It's no secret that the US has formed and continues to form alliances with some less than savory heads of state. The fact that fundamentalist Christianity has been used to sell national security imperatives is not all that shocking. Most shocking is how completely The Family has been able to install their narrative into the minds of politicians and citizens of all ideological stripes, not just their natural allies on the religious and authoritarian right.

Populist fundamentalism, the religion of megachurches, TV evangelists, and the common man and woman, and how it relates to and interacts with the elite fundamentalism of The Family is covered in the final chapters of the book. The elite fundamentalism of The Family is so stripped of anything that I recognize as Christianity that it does not feel cynical to conclude that its primarily mission is to exploit American civic religious traditions in order to consolidate power both at home and abroad. While I don't agree with their beliefs, I understand their lust for power. While this book taught me a lot about populist fundamentalism, I still have no idea what drives people into its embrace.

In some ways, my life experience has made me perfectly incapable of understanding this faith. I'm a secular liberal who was raised in the Catholic church. Had I not been exposed to any Christian faith tradition, I would probably only find populist fundamentalism strange instead of strange and contradictory. Contradiction may be at the heart of all religions, but it's the lifeblood of populist fundamentalism. The faith described in this book is like a game a Jeopardy! where the question for every answer is 'Who is Jesus?'. The contortions of mind that need to be maintained in order to preserve this constraint are baffling and have given rise to whole systems of knowledge, such as intelligent design, that provide revisionist explanations couched in the language of modernity for anything that threatens to undermine this axiom.

Other than showing that fundamentalism is here to stay, Sharlet doesn't speculate on what the future holds. This is wise on his part, though it's always fun to look into the future and to look back at the prognosticators of the past to see how wrong (or right) they were. The Family is an important book and well worth reading, even if you think you already understand the links between politics and religion in America.

Performance Anxiety

2010-04-11T22:19:00.000-04:00

Here's a great article from today's Wall Street Journal Sunday insert about the inanity of annual performance reviews. The author is truly a man after my own heart. I just hope he doesn't get dinged too bad for this piece in his annual performance review...

Awesome Blossom

2010-04-06T22:30:00.000-04:00

April 3, 2010 | 9:55 am | Washington, DC

Into This World We Are Thrown

2010-03-30T21:56:00.000-04:00

I remember listening to WRIU late at night a few years ago and catching the end of an hilarious uptempo, latin style cover of The Doors' Riders on the Storm. I decided to figure out who was behind this delightful piece of nonsense tonight and quickly found my answer - it's from Señor Coconut and his orchestra. Here's a homemade YouTube tribute to the song.

Jazz Hands

2010-03-24T20:58:00.000-04:00

The 2010 Newport Jazz Festival lineup was just announced. I'm pleased to see that last year's nod to the adventurous side of the genre wasn't a fluke. I'm very pleased to see that Ken Vandermark was invited back, this time with his Powerhouse Sound ensemble. I'm really looking forward to seeing them live in concert for the first time. Some other notables are Marshall Allen-Matthew Shipp-Joe Morris, the Matt Wilson quartet, and Herbie Hancock (all slated to perform on Sunday, along with Powerhouse Sound). I know where I'll be on August 8th.

The District 9!

2010-03-21T21:41:00.000-04:00

We recently watched The Informant! and District 9 on consecutive nights. Watching these very different movies in such close proximity highlighted a lot of unexpected similarities between the two movie's main characters that I doubt I would have noticed had I watched the movies even a few weeks apart. For starters, they both work for companies known by three-letter abbreviations of their full names, but I'm sure that's just a coincidence. On a deeper level, both protagonists wind up in trouble in part due to their own naivety and both put in a sincere effort to make things right in ways that don't fit into their respective society's expectations.

In the spirit of truth being stranger than fiction, The Informant!'s Mark Whitacre is less believable than District 9's Wikus Var De Merwe, even though Whitacre is a real person. Despite his intelligence (or perhaps, because of it), he seems incapable of understanding the reality of his situation. Var De Merwe, on the other hand, quickly comes to grips with his situation despite being portrayed as fairly dim-witted (though to be fair, his situation is a bit more pressing than Whitacre's). Overall, I enjoyed District 9 a little bit more than The Informant!, but they're both above average.

Recipe for Success

2010-03-18T22:44:00.000-04:00

At least half of the meals that I cook are loosely based on a recipe, if not completely improvised. The results are mixed at best, but every once in a while, I create something good. My most recent concoction came out quite while, so I've decided to record it for posterity.

Ingredients
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts, shredded
1 large eggplant, cut into bite-sized strips
2 onions, finely chopped
3 tbs oyster sauce
2 tbs rice wine
2 tsp sugar
4 cloves minced garlic
chili sauce (as much or as little as you want)
2 tbs corn starch
2 tsp water (just enough to make a paste out of the corn starch)
1 tbs soy sauce
oil

Instructions

In a large bowl, mix the eggplant with the oyster sauce, sugar, 1 tbs of rice wine, and chili sauce until all of the pieces are coated
Shred the chicken breasts and mix with the soy sauce and the rest of the rice wine
Mix the water and corn starch with some soy sauce and chili sauce and set aside
In a large wok, brown the chicken with the onions
Remove the chicken & onions and saute the eggplant
When the eggplant is almost done, add the chicken back in and mix together
Add the water & corn starch mixture and mix well, then simmer covered on low heat for about five minutes

Easier Rider

2010-03-13T10:42:00.000-05:00

Google just added bicycle routes for 150 US cities (including Providence) to Google Maps. I've played around with it a little bit, and it does a pretty good job. I plugged my commute in and one of the three routes that it gave me was very close to the route that I take when I bike to work. It's definitely worth a look, but make sure to do a sanity check before saddling up, because a lot of the so-called bike friendly roads are anything but. For example, in Providence, Google Maps seems to think Elmwood Avenue is a great bicycle thoroughfare. It may have a decent sized shoulder in many places, but in general, I find it best to avoid roads with more than two lanes or lots of traffic or lots of parallel parking and Elwood Avenue fails all three of these tests.

Spring Break!

2010-03-12T10:20:00.000-05:00

I've been enjoying the new TV show Modern Family. It's no Arrested Development, nor does it try to be, but it's still very funny. This week's episode ("Truth Be Told") was one of the best and it featured Judy Greer (Kitty from Arrested Development), who once again demonstrated her mastery of the the crazy, sex-starved woman role.

I also really enjoyed this spoof of CNN's The Situation Room from last weekend's Saturday Night Live. I never intentionally watch CNN, but every time I happen to catch it, it seems like all they're doing is reading viewer e-mails without any sort of commentary. This spoof takes that sort of behavior to its logical extreme.

hoc-key?

2010-03-11T22:40:00.002-05:00

On the topic of hockey, guess what the first Google search result for the term "hockey" is? Unlike the first results for "football", "baseball", and "basketball", it is not the official website of the North American professional sports league representing the sport, it's the Wikipedia page for ice hockey. The official NHL website is the 3rd result. For what it's worth, the NHL manages to come in first on Google.ca. This is either a case of the Google being the ultimate arbiter of the truth or the NHL focusing its search engine optimization efforts on the markets with the biggest bang for the buck.

Hockey Night

2010-03-07T23:13:00.000-05:00

After playing pond hockey for the first time last year, I finally got the chance to play on a real hockey rink last night. It wasn't real hockey (8 on 8, no positions, no line changes, no offsides, no face-offs, etc.), but it was still a lot of fun. Actually, it was a lot more fun than real hockey, since my inability to do anything other than skate in a straight line and stickhandle two or three times before losing control of the puck would be a serious handicap if I actually had to worry about pesky details like staying onside or passing or playing defense. I've played a lot of different sports at sub-amateur levels, but ice hockey is the most enjoyable sport I've ever played at such a low skill level.

Snow Picnic

2010-03-01T22:43:00.000-05:00

February 27, 2010 | 3:05 pm | Mt. Wachusett - Princeton, MA

Reading Exercises

2010-02-25T23:34:00.000-05:00

I've never understood why people bring reading material with them to the gym. I certainly can't concentrate on reading under even moderate levels of physical exertion. Ever more puzzling is people who read books while exercising, since you really need two hands free to read a book, which eliminates pretty much all gym equipment except for exercise bikes, seated leg machines, and really slow treadmill walking. One of the bookworms I noticed at the gym today was a guy who was reading a book called Fraternity Gang Rape. With a title that provocative, I was hoping that it was from the true crime genre and not the how-to section, but it turns out that it's a semi-scholarly text on this disturbing phenomenon. I'm all for literacy and reading things that address uncomfortable issues, but this has got to be one of the stranger gym reads out there.

Surge Protector

2010-02-23T08:15:00.002-05:00

Parade Magazine has yet to publish its annual list of the world's worst dictators, but it has been running an awesome advertisement for the Heat Surge space heater. Call me a cynic, but deep in my heart, I knew anyone willing to pay for a two-page advertorial in Parade had to be running some kind of a scam. This blog post does a good job explaining how much of a rip-off this product is, but I'm more intrigued by the "brains behind the beauty" section of the ad, pictured below.

Yes folks, the Heat Surge is controlled by digital circuity developed by actual Asian engineers. I also really loved that they felt the need to explain that the on-board computer wasn't developed by the Amish. Because if there's one thing the Amish are known for, it's semiconductors. People credulous enough to fall for this sales pitch are presumably the target audience for Parade's annual list of the world's worst dictators.

Snowcastle

2010-02-21T13:38:00.000-05:00

February 20, 2010 | 3:11 pm | Hyannis, MA

Governor Roger Sterling

2010-02-12T09:51:00.003-05:00

Is it just me, or do Florida Governor Charlie Crist and actor John Slatterly of Mad Men fame look the same (at least, in profile)?

For what it's worth, Roger would probably be pretty good at politics, but if the writers decide to have him run for election and win, it would completely ruin his character since he'd no longer be able to just say whatever he felt like saying all the time.

Double Fantasy

2010-02-10T10:21:00.002-05:00

As you may have heard, KFC was recently test marketing the Double Down, a bun-less chicken sandwich. Apparently, Americans still have too much dignity to eat bacon and cheese sandwiched between two pieces of boneless friend chicken, because I haven't seen any Double Down related advertising in several months. I recently saw a commercial for a very similar menu item called the Doublicious, which appears to be the same ingredients that were included in the Double Down (boneless fried chicken, bacon, and cheese) served on a sweet Hawaiian bun. The only Doublicious sighting I could find (other than the commercial that I saw) comes from Nebraska. Does this mean that the Doublicious is a retooled Double Down that is once again being test marketed in Omaha and Providence? It's hard to say, since with the exception of the aforementioned post, the Internet is blissfully unaware of the Doublicious right now. One thing is for sure - if this concoction sounds appetizing to you, you might want to get to a participating KFC before time runs out.

Crazy from the Heat

2010-02-08T22:19:00.000-05:00

We saw Crazy Heart over the weekend. It's kind of a confusing film. The folklore surrounding the decadent and depressingly short life of the stereotypical country western troubadour is so thick that I went in to this movie expecting to see awful things happening to people who in no way deserved such a fate, but that's not how Crazy Heart plays out. Instead, it focuses on redemption and tells an uplifting, but still mostly believable story. I really liked how story was told using a cast of characters as sparse as the landscapes of the American Southwest that Jeff Bridges' character traveled trying to scratch out a living. The music obviously wasn't as memorable as Walk the Line, Crazy Heart's most obvious antecedent, but it was still enjoyable.

Enhance Image

2010-02-04T23:18:00.000-05:00

I've always joked that designing the software used in movies is my dream job. You get to make software that looks really cool but doesn't actually have to do anything. NPR recently ran an interview with Mark Coleran, a user interface designer who is living the dream. It's a decent interview, but I was disappointed that doesn't discuss the ubiquitous "enhance image" feature that allows a spy to take a low resolution parking lot surveillance photograph and zoom in until he can read the VIN off of a car parked in the lot.

You Have Selected Regicide

2010-01-29T10:52:00.001-05:00

If you know the name of the king or queen being murdered, press one.

I heard this story on NPR about a group of French royalists who want to restore the monarchy. They recently held their annual gathering at the Basilica of St. Denis to mark the anniversary of the beheading of King Louis XVI and the end of the French monarchy. I mention this not because I'm a some sort of a crypto-royalist or because I have Bourbon blood coursing through my veins (or perhaps, just bourbon) but because I visited the Basilica while in Paris a couple years ago and I thought it was really interesting. As the story points out, more than 50 French monarchs are interred at St. Denis, including Pépin le Bref (Charlemagne's Dad), Clovis I, and, of course, Louis XVI. It's definitely worth a visit if you're looking for something to do in Paris that's slightly off the beaten path but still touristy.

June 11, 2008 | 3:52 pm | Saint-Denis, France

A Tablet By Any Other Name...

2010-01-27T22:51:00.000-05:00

Apple released its long-awaited tablet device today. The iPad, as it is unfortunately named, will probably satisfy some market niche that I can't quite comprehend at the moment, but that's not why I'm mentioning it. I first became acquainted with the concept behind this device at a Providence Geeks dinner in the spring of last year when a guy whom I had never seen before and haven't seen since pitched me his idea for an iPad-based multimedia book reader application. His idea and his pitch didn't inspire much confidence, especially since at the time, I had no idea such a device was even rumored to be in development. A cursory internet search later that evening revealed that his idea at least had some basis in reality. Still, I can't get over the fact that he was calling this device the iPad back then, and that he was right. I thought that Apple surely would have found a better name for this thing than any of the silly names that were being tossed around on the Apple gossip blogs.

Michael & Michael

2010-01-26T22:18:00.000-05:00

We went out to Providence College on Friday night, which has become, at least in my mind, Providence's premier comedy venue, to catch Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter. As you might expect, the show was a good mix of observational humor, meta-humor, and borderline anti-humor. They even went multimedia and played several clips of a recent interview they did with Fox 2 in Detroit. One of the clips is available online here. As they explained during the performance, they had been up all night prior to this interview and decided to have some fun with it. They also showed clips of them "helping" during the cooking demonstration segment and during the weather report, but I can't find them online.

The Pope Must Die(t)

2010-01-20T07:37:00.001-05:00

Mehmet Ali Agca, the guy who shot Pope John Paul II 29 years ago, was just released from prison. This article talks about how he's entertaining book, television, and movie deals and how he would like to meet the current Pope. Because everything in life reminds me of the Simpsons, his request for an audience with the current Pope makes me think of the scene from the Brother from the Same Planet episode where Homer goes to the Bigger Brothers office to sign up for their program.

Administrator: And what are your reasons for wanting to meet the Pope?
Mehmet's brain: Don't say so I can shoot him! Don't say so I can shoot him!
Mehmet's mouth: Uh, so I can shoot him?
Mehmet's brain: That's it, I'm gettin' outta here. [footsteps, and a door slam]

Charity Case

2010-01-18T23:05:00.000-05:00

Donations have been pouring in from around in the world in response to the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti last week. Major disasters like this really expose the paradox of charitable giving. The main reason people give money in situations like this is out of a belief that their money will help the people affected by the disaster. As it turns out, this isn't always the case. Not all organizations have the expertise, personnel, or capacity to handle every kind of disaster. Some organizations don't try all that hard to use the money they receive to help victims of the disaster and some are outright frauds. Even legitimate organizations that have established operations on location may not be able to use all of the funds that they receive for disaster relief.

Some people look at all of these issues and conclude that charitable giving is a waste of time, another example of naive do-gooders paying no attention to the laws of unintended consequences. I have something of a love-hate relationship with charitable giving, but I think that these attitudes are counter productive. I think that do-gooders have a bad reputation. Sure, they sometimes cause more problems than they solve, but at least their hearts are in the right place. We should save most of our scorn for the people who are actively trying to make things worse.

This article has some good tips on making better charitable donations in the event of a major disaster. To sum it up in a single sentence, the best charitable gifts are the ones that are the least exciting to give. Giving may be an act of charity, but the giver also receives satisfaction of helping someone in need. It's more satisfying to think that your gift is being used to help save someone's life at this very moment in Haiti, but it doesn't help anyone if the charity that you gave to already has more money than they can spend in Haiti and can't redirect your funds to another area of the world because you earmarked it for the Haitian earthquake. So go ahead and donate money, but make sure you're giving it to reputable groups who can really use it and don't worry so much about the disaster of the day; there are plenty of people around the world in need of help, many in places you're probably never heard of. A good charity will make sure that your money goes to a place where it can make a difference, as long as you give them the opportunity to do so.

(An Actual) Great Moment in Blog Commenting History

2010-01-14T23:08:00.000-05:00

I read this article about a guy who gave up driving and riding in automobiles for a year. It's an interesting story, but perhaps even more amazing than his year-long car avoidance is the comments section. As of right now, there are 31 comments, and almost every one of is well-written and civil, including the commenters who disagree with the suject's lifestyle.

h/t: Felix Salmon

Boxing Day

2010-01-12T21:37:00.006-05:00

Any guesses as to what this program prints when you run it? l = 0? l = 100? Something else?

public class Foo {
  static long e(long v) { return 0L; }

  static <T> T e(T v) { return null; }

  static void f(long l) { 
      System.out.println("l = " + l);
  }

  public static void main(String[] args) {
      Long l = 100L;
      f(e(l));
  }
}

As it turns out, this program fails with a NullPointerException. There are two version of the e() method, one that takes a primitive long and one that takes a generic Object reference. Since l is a Long instead of a primitive long, the compiler is able to resolve the overload without needing to do unbox l, so it resolves it to the e() method that takes a generic Object reference. The result of this method is then auto-unboxed when it is passed into f(), and since the Object reference version of e() returns null, it fails with a NullPointerException. The solution is pretty easy, just call l.longValue() to convert the value into a primitive long, or better yet, declare l as a primitive long instead of a Long in the first place.

While this example of auto-unboxing and overloading confusion may look contrived and frivolous I've run into this error a couple of times in real life using the EasyMock#eq() methods to set up mock object test case expectations.

Autoboxing and unboxing is a fairly controversial language feature in some circles. I think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, but, as I've illustrated above, there are definitely some drawbacks. I like the Scala approach better, but there's no way to completely get rid of primitive types at the language level in Java, so autoboxing and unboxing is as good (or as bad, depending on your opinion) as it's going to get.

This DJ

2010-01-07T22:38:00.001-05:00

The AV Club recently ran a nice feature entitled Early experiences in pop-culture dorkiness, where the writers sounded off about their earliest known experiences of turning a critical and/or obsessive eye towards the pop-culture landscape. Many of these stories rang true for me, especially the ones about taping songs off of the radio and pretending to be a disc jockey. At the height of my personal imaginary media empire, I ran a radio station with its own call letters, sponsors (with commercials), and multiple on-air personalities (keep in mind that I almost always worked alone). My station was called NRP Shock Radio, a name that I stole from a Doonesbury comic strip. I believe the strip in question featured Mark taking a page out of the so-called shock jocks playbook and rebranding his program as "NPR Shock Radio". At the time, I had no idea what NPR or shock radio were, but I thought the name sounded cool. The NRP isn't a typo, I assume that I misread the comic.

Needless to say, when I first encountered ads for Quickshot's DJ Machine in the back of my comic books and Boy's Life, I knew I needed to have it. In case you've forgotten about the DJ Machine, or, more likely, you never knew what it was in the first place - here's a link you can check out (the only reference to it I could find online). I received this wonderful machine as a Christmas present in either 1988 or 89 and got plenty of use of it. I used the sound effects to create a jingle for NRP Shock Radio (lasers blasting in the background while I stuttered the 's' in shock). Like all good things, NRP Shock Radio eventually came to an end as I left it behind for other equally dorky pursuits. I'm pretty sure my parent's gave my DJ Machine away several years ago.

I finally got the chance to be a "real" DJ when I went to college. As luck would have it, my college radio shows probably had about as many listeners as NRP Shock Radio. My dorm had its own radio station, but it didn't broadcast. Instead, it sent its signal throughout the dorm over coaxial cable. This meant that anyone who wished to tune in from their room needed to forgo the free cable TV coming into their room and plug their stereo antenna into the cable hookup instead. Needless to say, it wasn't a popular choice. Fortunately, major record labels still thought we were a real radio station and sent us all kinds of promotional materials. Our studio was full of CDs and there was a closet full of old LPs across the hall. It was a really great resource. I was just starting to get into jazz and I probably listened to just about every one of the numerous old jazz records in the library.

I don't know if the radio station still exists, though I did come across a (broken) link to the web site that I built for the station (WLAY 90.1 FM - West Lafayette's Get Lucky Radio Station) on this online radio station directory.

Nasty, Brutish, and Short

2010-01-03T18:35:00.000-05:00

I recently finished reading George Saunders' The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil. I actually read it twice, once over the span of a couple of weeks and again on a flight (it's only about 130 pages long, some of which are illustrations).

It's hard to not read the story as an allegorical critique of American foreign policy. The first time I read the story, that's about all I got out of it and I found it rather obvious and dull. The second time I read the story, I was able to put politics aside and get into the story on a more personal level. More of Saunders' trademark wit and absurdity came through when I spent more time focusing on the characters (a bizarre assortment of humanoid robots) than trying to match each one to an historical figure (the book's jacket does it no favors by proclaiming it "an Animal Farm for our times").

I was disappointed by the ending at first, but after reading it again, I found it incredibly poignant. In Persuasion Nation, a collection of short stories, is the only other work of Saunders that I've read. What impressed me most about that book was how he was able to make such witty, insightful, and devastating observations about humanity in a handful of paragraphs. The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, while short, is not a short story, but the ending really demonstrates Saunders' ability to cover a lot of ground in a few pages though his efficient but memorable use of prose.

Up With People

2009-12-31T17:54:00.001-05:00

I always manage to catch a movie or two over the holidays, and this year was no exception. Avatar and Up were this year's selections. I was pleasantly surprised by Avatar and very pleased that Up surpassed my already high expectations.

Avatar didn't blow me away, but it surpassed my admittedly meager expectations. Even though I don't get too excited about CGI effects, seeing it in 3D definitely made the experience more immersive and enjoyable. Avatar may have been the first movie I've ever seen in 3D. It's probable that I saw at least one 3D movie as a kid, but I can't think of any off of the top of my head. The story in Avatar isn't much to write home about, though it's not completely by-the-numbers. I was surprised to see how unsympathetically the paramilitary organization protecting the mining interests of the humans on Pandora was portrayed, given that they were a very thinly veiled stand-in for the American armed forces. This recent AV Club posting goes into more detail about the politics of the film. There's not much nuance, but it's a less conventional than I would have expected.

While I'm on the topic, did anyone else who saw Avatar find Sam Worthington's accent horrible? I'd never heard of the guy before seeing the movie, but an IMDB lookup confirms that he's from England and started his acting career in Australia. His Anglo and/or Aussie roots were very apparent, at least to me, during several of his dialogue sequences. You'd think for $250 million they could have gotten a decent accent coach for him so his character could have a believable middle American accent to go along with his working-class vocabulary.

Up is one of the most enjoyable movies I've seen in a while. I also liked Pixar's last outing, Wall-E, but I thought Up was even better. While Up is animated, it is not a kid's movie, but I'm sure that I would have loved it as a kid. I really enjoyed the period details and Carl, the main character, reminded me of my grandfather a little bit, but it's still a really good movie even if neither of those things hold true for you.

Dakar

2009-12-14T22:37:00.000-05:00

We tried Dakar, a new Senegalese restaurant in Central Falls last Friday before going to see The SantaLand Diaries at the Gamm Theater. There aren't a lot of dining choices near the Gamm, so Dakar is a nice addition to the area. We had the place to ourselves once the couple that was dining when we arrived left, which is never a good sign for a restaurant on Friday night (or any other night), but the food and the service was good. Our waiter (who was also the host, bus boy, and possibly, the chef) greeted us by asking if we had ever been the Senegal. It was nice that he didn't assume we had never visited his home country (though we haven't), even though it's a place that most Americans have never even heard of.

As for the food, I really liked the ginger juice. It was very strong, but I love ginger and ginger-based drinks especially. I also enjoyed the Naem appetizer that we tried. They are Senegalese-style egg rolls and according to our waiter, they were brought back to Senegal by soldiers who fought for their colonial power (France) in Vietnam. Regardless of how you feel about colonialism, we can all agree that is has given us some great fusion cuisine. I had the Lamb Yassa for dinner. The lamb was a bit on the dry side, but the dish still had a lot of flavor.

I haven't eaten much African cuisine, but my meal at Dakar was one of my favorites. Hopefully the next time we eat there, we won't be the only patrons.

Bonus

2009-12-13T23:01:00.000-05:00

I liked today's Dilbert. It reminded me of this story NPR did a few months ago.

The story looked into how people in various occupations are compensated and contrasted it with the huge bonus culture on Wall St. that has been all over the news for the past year. Most jobs don't pay out large performance-based bonuses because it would be counter-productive. I'd argue that it's also been quite counter-productive on Wall St., but that's another story. Since most people think that they are above average (I know I am), close to half the of the office would be pretty disappointed if a large percentage of their compensation was tied to individual performance. The other big problem, which this cartoon illustrates perfectly, is that if individual performance is the only thing that is considered when paying bonuses, interoffice cooperation is seriously devalued and employees start behaving like freelancers at best and competitors at worst.

Madness

2009-12-09T21:58:00.000-05:00

This ad has been up for for several months now, but it raises an important question - is Mad Men no longer cool now that's it's being referenced in a Cardi's Furniture advertisement?

Fox News

2009-12-03T23:35:00.000-05:00

We saw Fantastic Mr. Fox last weekend. Ever since watching it, I've been trying to decide if I actually like Wes Anderson movies. I've seen most of them (though this was my first since The Life Aquatic) and enjoyed all of them to a certain degree. It has become somewhat fashionable to dislike Wes Anderson's work as of late, just as it used to be fashionable to enjoy it, but I don't think I'm getting caught up in the backlash. Mr. Fox wasn't a bad movie, I just never really got into the story. Part of the problem was I felt that George Clooney (who provided the voice for the titular character) turned Mr. Fox into an animated vulpine charactiture of his stock character. I'm going through something of a George Clooney backlash right now because I feel like he always plays the same character. Perhaps I should study a foreign language so I can watch a dubbed version of Mr. Fox to see if I enjoy it more with someone other than George Clooney voicing the main character.

The Not-So-Great Wall

2009-11-09T22:41:00.000-05:00

Like many a student before me, I assume, one of my social studies assignments in September of 1989 was to take a map of Europe and color all of the Soviet bloc countries in red. Unlike my predecessors, by the time the school year was over, the map that I colored at the beginning of the term was mostly obsolete. By the time the Berlin Wall fell in November, I knew enough to understand why it was important, but the whirlwind nature of my cold war education left a lot of gaps in my knowledge. When your social studies class happens to be in sync with the most important news story in a generation (if not more), it makes the material more engaging, but being a witness to history can give you a false sense of understanding. It wasn't until I visited Berlin several years later that I started to understand the events leading up to that night 20 years ago. Former Newsweek correspondent Michael Meyer has a new book called The Year that Changed the World: The Untold Story Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall. I haven't read the book, but I heard him discuss it on On Point a few weeks ago and it brought back a lot of memories from both my social studies class and my trip to Berlin.

Eureka

2009-11-05T23:07:00.000-05:00

The AV Club featured a good interview with Jim O'Rourke yesterday. I've been aware of O'Rourke for a long time, but I never really gave any of his work a good listen until I picked up a copy of Eureka earlier this year (at Jive Time Records, a store that's joined Jazz Record Mart and Downtown Music Gallery as the record store that I visit whenever I'm in Seattle, Chicago, or New York, respectively) and I've really been enjoying it. Even though O'Rourke says in this interview that Eureka is "the one record I can’t fucking stand", I still think it's worth a listen or 20.

Where Men Win Glory

2009-11-04T08:31:00.000-05:00

I received a copy of Where Men Win Glory, Jon Krakauer's latest book, and I read the whole thing in a single day while traveling back home from the southwest. The book chronicles the life and death of Pat Tillman, the iconoclastic professional football player who enlisted in the Army shortly after 9/11 and whose death by friendly fire in 2004 was shamefully covered up by the military. The book isn't just about Tillman, it's also one of the best analyses of America's involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq that I've ever read. I never paid as much attention to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as I should have, largely because I became so disillusioned by the Bush administration's mismanagement of them. Of course, the Bush administration is gone and the wars aren't over, so I don't have any excuses now. It's only been a week or so, but I have been paying much closer attention to the news from Iraq and Afghanistan than I was before reading this book. I'm not sure if Krakauer could have covered the wars in real-time as well as he did in this book, but more insightful press coverage certainly would have been nice in the earlier days of the wars.

There wasn't a lot of new information about Tillman in this book, but it did include excerpts from various journals that he kept during most of his adult life. The book focuses on Tillman's dual natures, how he was both an extroverted elite athlete turned soldier as well as an introspective intellectual war critic. When I first learned about Tillman after his death, he immediately struck me as someone who would have been vilified by many of the people who were holding him up as a war hero had they actually known him due to his unconventional and outspoken nature. After reading the book, I get the feeling that hating Pat Tillman would be nearly impossible for all but the most myopic partisans.

Natural Log

2009-10-19T22:27:00.000-04:00

October 17 | 10:31 am | White Mountains, NH

¡hispanic!

2009-10-15T10:27:00.000-04:00

I snapped this picture at my local Shaw's supermarket. They put these helpful exclamatory signs on each door in the freezer section. It's kind of fun to walk down the aisles reading the signs with the proper emphasis (breakfast! ice cream! kosher!), but I think they should have gone all out and included an inverted exclamation point on the hispanic foods sign.

Commuted Sentence

2009-10-14T22:14:00.000-04:00

The bicycle commuting season has more or less drawn to a close. The morning temperature has dropped below my minimum riding threshold of 40 degrees. Even if we get a warm spell or I get some warmer gear, there's really not enough daylight left at the end of the day to ride home safely. Back in April, I stated that I wanted to replace the equivalent of 1000 driving miles with biking. I knew that goal was aggressive, but as the season unfolded, I realized that it was impossible. I still managed to have a successful biking season. I crossed the 1000 mile threshold and completed a century ride for the first time in a decade. Over the roughly six months I spent bicycle commuting, I completed 44 round trips and commuted a total of 735 miles, which was roughly equivalent to 600 miles of driving.

Exercise in Futility

2009-09-24T19:09:00.000-04:00

I've had stock options at four of the companies I've worked for, but I've never made any money off of them... until now. Stock options are supposed to be a great tool for aligning employee interests with the bottom line, but in reality, they're more like a lottery ticket. In my case, they were more like a scratch and win lottery ticket, because I'll be lucky if my gain after taxes is $200. I'm not complaining since these options were set to expire in a couple of weeks and they had been underwater since May.

This experience was reinforced my belief that I don't have the stomach for active stock market investing. I like to make informed decisions, but even if I studied the markets all day and knew how to decipher a balance sheet, over a two-week time span, any individual stock can tank or go though the roof for reasons that no one could have anticipated. I finally decided to just pick a price that looked reasonable but was still high enough that it made me feel like I was still making some money and submitted a limit order. It executed yesterday afternoon near the intraday high and after today's 2.3% drop, the stock is now trading just barely above my strike price, so as it stands, I'm looking like something of a Wall Street genius right now. Unlike a compulsive gambler, instead of feeling a rush from all of this, I'm just glad that it's over and that I have a little bit of extra cash in my pocket.

Broken Dreams

2009-09-22T22:36:00.000-04:00

A few months back, I raved about a newish band on the scene called Alberta Cross. I just finished listening to Broken Side of Time, their first full-length album, on lala and my enthusiasm has waned considerably. The album is thoroughly overproduced, robbing them of the hard-edged blues rock sound that drew me in to their music. Another downside of all that studio polish is that I never found their song lyrics very good, but it was pretty hard to decipher a lot of them on their debut EP. No such luck on Broken Side of Time. I still really enjoy their debut EP and I suspect that they might put on a pretty good live show.

Bad Goys

2009-09-08T21:45:00.002-04:00

I just finished reading The Yiddish Policemen's Union, and I can honestly say that it has changed my life. Not because it's a great book, because I really didn't enjoy it that much. I just couldn't really get into it. For one, I'm not a huge fan of murder mysteries. I enjoyed the dialog and I didn't really find the Chabon's use of Yiddish too distracting, I just felt that the story never really developed enough momentum. The story is organized into relatively short chapters that all end with a punchy one-liner, which was amusing at first, but by the end, it started to feel like Chabon was putting more effort into his chapter endings than the overall plot.

So how did this slightly above average alternate history murder mystery change my life? For one, it's made me finally realize that there's no point in trying to read a novel if I'm not going to be able to be able to finish it in 2-3 weeks. I lose too much of the story if I try and read a novel 10 pages at a time. The other thing it has made me realize is that it's better to seek out books that I really want to read instead of reading whatever happens to fall in my lap. I've been meaning to read Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay for a long time, but every time I look for it at the library, it's checked out. I don't tend to buy a lot of new books, and while you can often find gems at the used book stores that I love so much, you're unlikely to find specific titles. I picked up Yiddish Policemen's Union from the remaindered rack at Barnes & Noble, which can also occasionally yield gems, but if you take the money I've wasted on second-rate discount titles over the years, I could have bought a small library of decent books instead. Or better yet, I could just request the titles that I'm interested in from the library and read them free of charge.

One final note, according to this article from last year, the Coen brothers are working on a film adaptation of The Yiddish Policeman's Union.

Fantasy Island

2009-08-28T10:08:00.008-04:00

On the recommendation of a friend, I started following Rainn Wilson's Twitter feed recently. Normally, I don't have any interest in celebrity self-promotion, but Wilson's Twitter is often interesting, funny, or poignant. I loved this tweet from yesterday where he solicits advice for his upcoming fantasy football draft. It seems that the staff of The Office has an "office" fantasy football league. I'm not sure if they formed the league because they enjoy fantasy football or it's some sort of method acting technique they use to get into their average office worker characters, but either way, I love it.

Double Trouble

2009-08-27T22:47:00.000-04:00

I've seen this commercial for KFC's latest menu item a few times so I assumed that it was taking American by storm. I learned today that this new culinary creation is currently being test marketed in Providence and Omaha, so I'm one of the lucky few able to experience the deliciousness of the Double Down, which is ostensibly a bacon and cheese sandwich with a bun made out of boneless pieces of fried chicken. For the record, I have yet to try one and have no plans to do so. My lack of interest may lead directly to the Double Down not testing well enough to merit a nationwide release, but it's a chance I'm willing take.

Normally, this is where I would go into full snark mode, but after The AV Club called it "the Reichstag fire of health care reform", I don't think there's anything else that can be said. I hope that I have an opportunity to use that analogy somewhere else, though. But is the Double Down really that bad? The concept seems a little dated. The bun-less sandwich sounds like something straight out of the Atkins craze of a few years back. The bacon seems forced, and I feel like the current incarnation of the add bacon to everything craze is starting to fizzle out. Other than that, I don't see how this is much different than other items on the menus of America's fast food restaurants. Don't get me wrong, the Double Down is kind of disgusting and definitely not something you should eat on a regular basis if you care about your health, but it isn't a new low in the field of culinary arts.

Case in point, last night I dined on some deep-friend clam-infused dough balls. Clam cakes, as they're usually known in these parts, are a Southeastern New England institution and a staple of seaside seafood shacks. Clam cakes have a better name than the Double Down and a simplicity that makes the Double Down look even more thrown together by comparison, but are they really all that different? If clam cakes can be considered a classic comfort food cherished across generations, can the Double Down really be considered a harbinger of the end of the times?

Restaurants need to innovate in order to attract customers. For fast food restaurants, that means either offering more calories per dollar than their competitors or combining a limited set of ingredients in new ways. Most innovations across the food service industry will be forgotten as quickly as they appear. A select few will become part of humanity's culinary lexicon for a few years, a few generations, or, if they're really good, forever. I'm not predicting that every greasy spoon will someday serve a version of the Double Down, I'm just saying that the difference between a beloved culinary institution and an affront to good taste on a plate is smaller than we think.

City Lights

2009-08-17T21:46:00.000-04:00

July 25 | 10:36 pm | Providence, RI

Newport News

2009-08-09T21:22:00.001-04:00

More thoughts from the Newport Jazz Festival.

I was disappointed to see that RIPTA has discontinued their seasonal bus service from the Newport Visitors Center for Fort Adams. Even in these times of challenging state budgets, it's an embarrassment for city like Newport that relies so heavily on tourism to lack a public transport option from its downtown to one of its most popular attractions.

That being said, the water taxi that I wound up taking from Perrotti Park to Fort Adams was quite nice.

This was my first visit to Fort Adams, and I was really impressed with it. I'll definitely be going back some weekend when it's not playing host to a music festival to check it out.

There was no shortage of booths selling handicrafts at the festival, but I didn't see any selling recordings. Jazz fans are notorious record collectors so I was surprised to see that there wasn't even a tent selling recordings of the featured musicians.

My favorite show other than the V5 was the Christian McBride trio, which kind of surprised me. It wasn't anything earth-shattering, just really good and straight-ahead jazz. I was looking forward to Vijay Iyer's show, but with the exception of their last number, I couldn't really get into any of their tunes.

NPR music was at the festival and has made many of the concerts available for download (not the V5's set, unfortunately)

The ProJo mentioned the V5's set in their review today:

The Vandermark 5, a group of young Chicagoans, started the process with a mix of wailing horns, cello and bowed acoustic bass, completing the demolition on their final song as the second-stage crowd roared. “Some people probably hated it,” said cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, “and some people have told us it was their favorite thing of the festival so far.”

Ken's take on the V5's set, via twitter.

Here's a link to some pictures that I took of the V5 before their set.

New Thing at Newport

2009-08-08T22:04:00.000-04:00

Vandermark 5
Newport Jazz Festival - Fort Adams State Park - Newport, RI
Saturday, August 8th

I've never bothered making the trip down to Newport for its iconic jazz festival because, like most big jazz festivals, it tends to feature lowest common denominator acts that play the same old tunes year after year. Newport Jazz impresario George Wein decided to do something about that this year, as this article from the Boston Globe back explains. This year's line-up is fairly impressive, but the Vandermark 5 alone was worth the price of admission for me. Alas, I was not disappointed.

One of the great things about Vandermark is he never talks down to his audience. When I saw him play with School Days at SXSW in 2001, they played a couple of old Archie Shepp and Roswell Rudd songs and he dutifully announced the song titles and composers to the crowd despite the fact that most of them were there for the punk rock act that followed them and most certainly had never heard of Shepp or Rudd (or Vandermark, for that matter). The Vandermark 5, as far as I know, only plays original tunes, so there was no free jazz history lesson going on, but their song selection was in no way pandering to the audience in Newport.

Simply put, their set rocked - literally and figuratively. I don't think I've ever heard them play a set as hard-hitting as the one they played in Newport. The first number that they did started out on a rocking note with Fred Lonberg-Holm playing a great serpentine cello solo against the bass and drums before Vandermark and Rempis joined in on tenor and alto saxes, respectively. Vandermark played tenor for most of the set. He occasionally picked up the clarinet, but his bari was not on stage. His most impressive solo was during the most subdued number of the set, Early Color, but all of his solos were strong. The band sounded really tight. It probably helped that most of the songs were from their forthcoming album, but still, it's pretty amazing to watch a band playing music that is both highly improvised and very precise at a breakneck pace stick together as well as they did.

I was quite impressed with the crowd; at its peak, it was standing room only. Vandermark appeared to share my sentiments, as he spent most of his time between numbers thanking the crowd and George Wein himself, who was on hand for most of their set. The biggest crowd pleaser of the day was Cement, a cacophonous song that was let off by Tim Daisy and featured some devastating hooks in addition to a Vandermark-Rempis tenor sax tête-à-tête.

The few times I've seen Vandermark play in front of a so-called crossover audience, he's been incredibly well-received and this show was no exception. While it's never going to be considered mainstream, this is music that adventurous ears are ready for, even if they aren't particularly attuned to jazz. Hopefully, the Vandermark 5's first US jazz festival appearance won't be their last.

Mr. PC

2009-07-16T22:43:00.000-04:00

I recently finished reading More Information Than You Require, the second volume in John Hodgman's three-volume almanac of made-up facts. Was I unwise to start with this volume instead of going back and reading the first book? I don't really think it matters, and I've read enough of The Areas of My Expertise in bookstores to know what I was getting into.

The genius of Hodgman's books is that he doesn't just make up things for the sake of being absurd. There's a kernel of truth at the center of all good jokes and while everything nearly Hodgman describes in his books is not true, much of it is rooted in the truth.

After an outstanding start that includes a listing of all US Presidents and important details about their lives (including whether or not they had a hook for a hand), More Information Than You Require starts to drag early in the second half when Hodgman gets stuck talking about how he fell ass-backwards into fame on the success of his first book and the subsequent acting roles to which it led. It's written in a fish-out-of-water tone, but he goes on and on about it for so long that I'm not sure if all of the fame has gone to his head or he's impersonating a writer who stumbled into fame and let it go to his head.

Once he gets off that digression, the book has its moments, but it never really recovers. I was looking forward to the chapter on mole-men, but it wasn't very funny or poignant. The list of 700 mole-man names was tedious reeked of the self-indulgence of the earlier chapters about Hodgman's life as a minor celebrity.

I should go back and read The Areas of My Expertise someday, since it was written before Hodgman became a minor celebrity and probably doesn't have as many digressions into his personal life, but I'm not going to rush out to pick up volume three whenever it arrives.

All in the Family

2009-07-15T22:37:00.000-04:00

This interview with Jeff Sharlet is a couple weeks old, but it's a really interesting look at a religious right group known as The Family. I consider myself fairly well informed on matter of church/state and culture war issues, but I had never heard of them before. Their secretive, trickle-down prosperity gospel is brazen, even by religious right standards. Sharlet's book about The Family sounds like an excellent read.

Fasting

2009-07-02T15:00:00.000-04:00

Submitted without comment.

Wire Service

2009-06-26T08:04:00.000-04:00

We recently watched Man on Wire, and we both enjoyed it. During the movie, I couldn't help but think how such a feat would be nearly impossible to pull off today, even if the twin towers were still standing. Some would argue that though security and litigation, we've effectively banished from our lives the kind of wonder and beauty that people like Philipe Petit provide. I think there is some truth to this view, but I think it overly romanticizes the past and shortchanges the artists of today. All memorable art is subversive in some way, and there's never been, nor will there ever be, a shortage of beliefs and assumptions that someone will feel the need to challenge though artistic expression.

The film itself is quite beautiful, thanks to a wealth of archival photographs and video. If you're afraid of heights, you will definitely feel a bit uncomfortable watching this movie, even though most of the images of the wire walk are stills. While a wire walk between the two (at the time) tallest buildings in the world seems insane, there is a certain logic to it. You're unlikely to survive a fall from anything much taller than a two story building. Since no one would really care if you walked across a wire strung between the 8th floors of the twin towers, you might as well go all the way to the top. In either scenario, you'll be just as dead if you fall, but if you survive at the top, you'll become a legend.

Casino Royale

2009-06-24T10:20:00.003-04:00

June 20 | 1:27 pm | Providence, RI

Chinese-Americana

2009-06-22T09:47:00.002-04:00

We went to check out a small exhibit chronicling the early history of Chinese restaurants in Providence at the Johnson & Wales Culinary Arts Museum. The three restaurants profiled were all long gone before I arrived in Rhode Island, so I don't have any memories of dining at them, or any other old time Chinese-American restaurants for that matter. Still, it was an interesting exhibit. My favorite part was an old newspaper ad from one of the three restaurants (Mee Hong, I believe). There wasn't a date on the clipping but it appeared to be from the 1960s. The ad was targeting local college students and listed each of the local schools along with a selling point for the students at that institution. I don't remember each of the selling points verbatim, but they boiled down to the following:

Brown: Authenticity
RISD: Decor
URI: Value
PC: Alcohol
Bryant: American-Style Food
RIC: Highchairs

40+ years later, the ad probably still resonates pretty well with its intended audiences.

People Who Eat People (Are the Luckiest People in the World)

2009-06-21T18:02:00.000-04:00

I just finished reading Max Brooks' World War Z. It's not the kind of book that I would usually read, but I decided to give it a shot on the recommendation of my brother-in-law-in-law. It's an easy read, but it didn't do a lot for me. It's set in the not-too-distant future and chronicles the zombie war though interviews with the people who survived it.

The zombie myth is so pervasive and well-understood in modern culture that this book doesn't really need to spend much time explaining what zombies are and how they work, though I found the way that Brooks delicately examined nearly every tactical aspect of what a war against the undead would look like one of the most compelling parts of the story. I did a little research of my own after reading the book, and I was surprised to learn how modern the zombie myth is. While it's origins are somewhat unclear, it's likely derived from Haitian Vodou and was introduced into popular culture almost single-handedly by the films of George Romero.

In film and literature, zombies are generally used stand-ins for the fears that are gnawing at society at the time. I'm not sure what, if anything, the zombies are supposed to represent in this book. The war on terror is an obvious choice. I think Brooks leaves the story loose enough to allow the reader to provide his own stand-in.

Brooks applies the same precision to the geopolitical aspects of World War Z that he does to the technical aspects of zombie combat, and that's where the book really falls short. I found the politics of the story far too predictable. The nations that fared best in the war were, for the most part, fortress societies. Nations with authoritarian streaks used the war to consolidate their power. Without going into too much detail, the chapters dealing with wartime Japan were so stereotyped that it almost read like a pamphlet written by far-right Japanese nationalists as a cautionary call to arms. Brooks definitely did his homework, but there's a real lack of imagination in the geopolitical parts of the story.

I generally avoid stories built around dialogue because it's really hard to write compelling dialogue. World War Z is far from the worst book I've ever read in this department, but the dialogue isn't great. Since it's written in interview form, there really isn't any time to do much character development.

I hear that the book is being made into a movie. I think it could be pretty good as a film, especially if they can whittle the story down to a few compelling characters.

Whole Wheat

2009-06-15T23:14:00.001-04:00

I received a beer of the month club subscription for Christmas last year. So far, my two favorite selections have been wheat beers, which has come as something of a surprise since they usually aren't my thing. The first one I tried was Woody's Wheat from the Sand Creed Brewing Company in Wisconsin. It's got a lot of flavor, though it's not overpowering, and has a crisper taste than most wheat beers. The second was an orange infused wheat beer from Four+ Brewing in Utah called Rype. I was initially skeptical of an orange flavored beer, but I really shouldn't have worried, as the flavor was very subtle and I'm a fan of a number of fruit flavored ales.

Star Search

2009-05-31T17:51:00.000-04:00

We caught the new Star Trek movie this weekend. I've never been a big Star Trek fan, and this movie didn't convert me. It was enjoyable from a summer blockbuster point-of-view, but the story was pretty weak and most of the character development was devoted to laying out the back stories for Spock and Kirk and felt more perfunctory than anything else. Perhaps now that they've gotten that out of the way, the next installment of the franchise can do something a little bit more interesting.

Graffiti Bridge

2009-05-29T08:38:00.000-04:00

The ruins of the old Michigan Central Train Depot is probably one of the most iconic symbols of Detroit's decline. Still, I had to chuckle a big when I saw my family name graffito tagged in front of the buildings crumbling facade.

It caught my brother's eye while looking through this photo gallery from the Detroit Free Press. He claims to have no idea how our name wound up spray painted in front of the depot. I've looked into his alibi, and it seems to check out.

Frequently Asked Questions

2009-05-21T23:10:00.000-04:00

I feel like I've spent enough time crammed into an aluminum tube at 35,000 ft. to call myself a seasoned traveler, so I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that until a couple days ago, I had no idea how easy it is to prevent frequent flier miles from expiring without even having to go to the airport (thanks, Mahalo). I had a bunch of miles on American Airlines that were about to expire. American doesn't even fly out of Providence anymore, so the chances of me being able to use the miles or keep them active by booking an American Airlines flight were looking pretty slim. I started looking into donating the balance when I discovered that most airlines will keep your miles active as long as you do something before they expire. That could be as little as donating 500 miles to a charity or buying a $5 item from one of the airline's partners to earn yourself a couple frequent flier miles and keeping your mileage balance active in the process. I donated a pittance to American's Miles for Kids in Need program to see if it worked - and it did. I'll probably just wind up donating the rest of the miles anyway, since I'm unlikely to fly anywhere with American Airlines in the next 18 months, but it's nice to have options.

Rhododendron

2009-05-12T13:26:00.000-04:00

May 10 | 6:05 pm | My Front Yard

Beethoven's Last Symphony

2009-05-11T22:25:00.001-04:00

Taken out of context, this panel from today's Hi and Lois is probably the funniest thing that has come out of that comics page institution in decades.

h/t: The Comics Curmudgeon

In Which I Agree With Same-Sex Marriage Opponents

2009-05-09T14:47:00.000-04:00

Here's a quote from today's ProJo cover story from Christopher Plante, director of Rhode Island's chapter of the National Organization ~~for~~ against (same-sex) Marriage. It's a great quote because it works no matter how you feel about marriage equality.

“It is amazing that four centuries after Roger Williams founded this great state on liberty and individualism, Rhode Island again stands alone in New England, holding back a tide of cultural revolution and belief that would radically change our families and communities"

I agree that it is amazing that Rhode Island is honoring its heritage of liberty by denying equal marriage rights to all of its citizens - amazingly bad. I also agree that granting same-sex marriage rights would definitely change our families and communities - for the better.

Bloody Good

2009-05-07T19:39:00.000-04:00

You get a new mug for every gallon of blood you donate. I think it's kind of funny to make a drinking vessel branded with a blood donation center's logo, but maybe that's just me. I think I'll take mine to work, mix some water, corn starch, and red food coloring in it, and leave it on my desk.

Medieval Times

2009-05-06T22:46:00.000-04:00

I recently finished reading a couple of books that wound up complimenting each other pretty well. The first was Barbarians to Angels: The Dark Ages Reconsidered. I wanted to read a book about the middle ages and this one seemed well received. It's short and a quick read, but I didn't find it very enlightening. Part of the problem is that a lot of the book is dedicated to examining archaeological records, which can get really dry. My main problem with the book, however, is the author's assertion that the people of the middle ages shouldn't be considered less civilized than the Romans even though they were largely illiterate and their architectural, artistic, and engineering accomplishments paled in comparison to the Romans. I agree that these so-called barbarians have gotten something of a bad rap; their more civilized contemporaries and even their modern descendants were and are all to willing to commit acts of great brutality when it suits their purposes. That doesn't absolve them of their barbaric behavior, nor does it change the fact that they failed to achieve the level of sophistication of the Romans.

The second book, A Short History of Byzantium, is a condensed version of John Julius Norwich's three volume history of the Byzantine Empire. It covers the entire history of the Byzantine Empire, so it starts in roughly the same time period as the first book but continues all the way to the fall of Constantinople in the 15th century. It's a narrative, not an academic history, and Norwich is prone to making sensational statements without providing any real justification, but it's an interesting read. My only real complaint is that the condensed version goes for breadth instead of depth. It mentions ever single monarch to sit on the throne in Constantinople. Some of the lesser emperors only got a couple pages and the greats only got a chapter. It was difficult to follow all of the names as a casual reader. One of the few things that I remembered about the Byzantine Empire from history class was the great schism of 1054, so I naturally assumed it was a big deal. I was surprised to learn that it wasn't much different than one of the many previous doctrinal disputes between Rome and Constantinople. It's tempting to look at moments in history as sharp dividing lines where nothing in the world after that moment is the same as it was prior to it, but that's generally not how things happen.

Pear Tree Redux

2009-04-29T20:05:00.004-04:00

April 29 | 7:22 pm | My Backyard

Radio on the Big Screen

2009-04-25T21:05:00.005-04:00

We went out to see This American Life - Live! on Thursday night. I got into TAL early into its run and over the past decade, I've bounced between listening to the show religiously to barely tuning in at all, but I've always enjoyed the show immensely. My listenership is currently back on the upswing thanks to podcasts.

We both really enjoyed the movie. I was surprised by how little the movie deviated from the radio show's format. I'm sure that part of the reason was so they can air a condensed version of the movie on the radio, but I'd like to think that it had more to do with giving the fans the experience of being in the studio when the show is being recorded. Like nearly every episode I've ever heard of the radio show, the movie ended before I was ready. There was a good crowd on hand, though I don't know why the only theater in RI that screened the movie was the Showcase in Warwick. I would've thought that at least one of the art house theaters in Providence or Newport would've been all over this. If you missed the movie, there's going to be a nationwide encore screening on May 7th.

Polenta Surprise

2009-04-25T21:02:00.000-04:00

The weather was so nice today that grilling was a given. I pulled out my grilling bible and found a couple new recipes that I decided to modify and put together. Such culinary ingenuity can be a dangerous proposition, but it turned out really well today. The first recipe was for penne pasta and grilled duck breast with tomatoes and mushrooms. I took a lot of liberties with this one, substituting chicken thighs for the duck breast, nothing for the mushrooms, and the second recipe for the penne. The second recipe was for grilled parmesan polenta crostini. I did this one by the book, though I omitted the cheese since I didn't have any. This was my first time grilling polenta, and I was very impressed with the way it came out. The grilled polenta also made an excellent pasta substitute. The dish looked a little ridiculous, circular slices of grilled polenta on the bottom of the plate topped with a chunky tomato sauce and large pieces of grilled chicken thigh, but it tasted excellent.

Name Calling

2009-04-22T23:20:00.000-04:00

Ever wonder how common your name is? Here's a list of the 1000 most common surnames in the US. The sum of the total occurrences of the top 1000 surnames in this list is just under 110,000,000, or about 36% of the total US population. I've pulled the list into a spreadsheet, in case you want to crunch the numbers for yourself.

(h/t: Hermano)

The Little Engine That Could?

2009-04-19T17:42:00.000-04:00

Now that Google has added Java support to the App Engine, I decided to finally give it a try. I decided to go the Eclipse plug-in route since I already use Eclipse, but the plug-in didn't seem to include the development server (as the docs lead me to believe), so I couldn't test the sample application locally. Rather than try and figure out what was wrong, I downloaded the standalone App Engine SDK and installed that as well. I got a bunch of errors when I started the development server because it requires Java 6 and I'm running Mac OS X 10.4, which doesn't have an official Java 6 SDK (remind me again why I thought switching to Mac was a great idea for Java development?). I tried the ancient pre-release Java 6 JDK that Apple put out a few years ago but it failed with a bunch of weird XML parser errors, so I tried SoyLatte JDK 6 1.0.3 and that finally worked. I logged into App Engine to register my account (which can only be done via SMS) and entered my mobile #, but I have I yet to receive my activation code text message so I'm stuck for the time being. From what I've read, others appear to have had more luck with it, so as always YMMV.

Cross Product

2009-04-16T10:52:00.003-04:00

For those who weren't aware, the SXSW festival has been kind enough to take a ton of music from the artists who play at the festival and make it available for download (all gratis). Some kind souls have collected all of the downloads and packaged them into multi-gigabyte torrents for easy downloading. I've been slowly digesting the first torrent from this year. I was so impressed with one of the bands included in the torrent that I picked up their debut album and continue to be impressed by it. The band is Alberta Cross and they hail from Sweden and the UK. Those of you who have been burned by my music recommendations in the past take note, these guys are a serious blues rock outfit, not some kind of weird experimental noise unit. I've been making a conscious effort to listen to more accessible music recently because while I still like free improvised music, listening to it can be somewhat demanding and even I am not always in the mood to be challenged by the music I'm listening to. Check these guys out if you get a chance. They're slated to play at a number of festivals this year, including Coachella and Bonnaroo.

After the Gold Rush

2009-04-15T10:43:00.012-04:00

A lot of people have been talking about what American's spending habits are going to look like when (if?) the economy starts to improve. Some think consumers are going to back to their old habits while others think that consumers are going to be a bit more thrifty. The most persuasive argument I've seen in favor of the latter is this recent piece from the Economist.

While consumer spending habits reached ridiculously unsustainable levels or the past five years or so, it seems like people have been talking about American's propensity for living beyond their means for much longer than that. Given this, it seems kind of strange to hear people characterizing a return to mid-1980s or even mid-1990s levels of personal spending and savings as a return to fiscal discipline. Still, while the Americans of 10-20 years ago weren't exactly pinching pennies, you could still argue that their consumption habits were still within the realm of fiscal sustainability.

The magnitude of the reset is going to be determined by how much wealth is ultimately destroyed and the kinds of new financial regulations that are enacted. If, as I write this, we're closer to the end of this mess than the beginning and some new controls are added to at least address the known causes of our current financial predicament, we'll probably see a modest return to thrift once the dust settles. It would probably take another great depression and world war to turn Americans into fanatical savers. Hopefully, we can avoid that scenario.