Polenta Surprise

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

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?

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

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

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.

Unknown Legend

Rachel Getting Married is a movie that I never would have considered watching had I not read a bunch of great reviews. While I believe that truly great art is by definition accessible to almost everyone, there's a lot of good art that is only accessible to those equipped with the tools to truly understand it on multiple levels. Rachel Getting Married may fall into that category, or it may be a self-indulgent piece of trash, or it might just not be my kind of film. Roger Ebert's review, which I did not read until after watching the movie, is particularly interesting. He loved the movie, but his review barely even talks about the story. That may be because there isn't much of a story being told, and that was my biggest problem with the film. The viewers of the movie are essentially guests at Rachel's wedding weekend. We watch it unfold and get some details from the past through conversations that the characters have with each other, but that's about it.

I found it funny that B-movie legend Roger Corman played one of the guests at the wedding and that there was a thank you note to him in the credits, but after I reading his bio, I learned that in addition to making lots of cheesy movies, he also gave a ton of big-name Hollywood types their start in the show business, including Jonathan Demme, the director of Rachel Getting Married.

I also had no idea that the groom's character was played by the lead singer of the band TV on the Radio. I know little about the beyond beyond being aware of their existence, so it's not surprising that I didn't recognize their lead singer. This information does help explain his acapella rendition of Unknown Legend during the wedding vows (perhaps my favorite part of the movie). The funny thing is that had I not decided to log onto the internet and register my disgust, I never would have learned about Roger Corman's contributions to the more respectable side of Hollywood or Tunde Adebimpe's (the aforementioned groom) acting career, both of which made the appreciate the movie a little bit more.

Back in the Saddle

I biked to work for the first time this year on Friday. It turned out to be a great day to bike to work since it was sunny and relatively warm (low 40s) in the morning and there was no traffic since it was Good Friday. The ride home wasn't quite as nice since it was threatening to rain the whole way, but I made it back without getting wet. My goal for this year is to bike the equivalent of 1000 driving miles to and from work. My round-trip commute is 13.6 miles by car, but it's a bit longer by bike (between 16.5 and 17.5 miles), so I'll need to bike about 1250 miles to cover the equivalent of 1000 driving miles. It's doable, but it's a pretty aggressive goal.

All the Tea in China

As you may know, I tend to read food labels fairly thoroughly. Recently, I've come across some highly suspicious information on some food packages. For starters, I was reading the description on a box of Trader Joe's Earl Gray tea and read the following

The earliest recorded evidence of the cultivation of tea plants comes from China in the 14th century...

This is, of course, completely wrong. Tea has been an important part of Chinese culture for millenia. According to Wikipedia, records of tea consumption in China date back to the 10th century BC. The earliest record I could find for recorded evidence of tea cultivation, not just consumption, is a work from the late 8th century called The Classic of Tea by Lu Yu, so Trader Joe's is off by at least 500 years.

Keeping with the China theme, I was standing in line at my local Chinese grocery store when I noticed some good-sized bags of whole black and white peppercorns. I knew we were running low, I grabbed one of each. At $2.50 for a 7oz bag, it's at least 4 times cheaper than pepper at the regular grocery store. When I got home and cracked into one of bags, I noticed something strange on the nutrition facts label.

According to the label, one serving of pepper contains 12.3% of your daily fat allowance! I read the label a little closer and noticed that the serving size is 3.5 oz. I know the Chinese like their food a little spicier than Americans, but 3.5 oz is more than an entire grocery store-sized spice container (the bottle of Spice Islands whole white pepper that this package replaced is 2.7 oz). As if that wasn't bad enough, the 7 oz package lists that it contains four 3.5 oz servings. Still, you can't beat those prices.

Vegging Out

We dined at the Garden Grille [warning - audio link] for the first time on Friday. I was quite impressed with my meal, the Mixed Grille. I've had dinners that were entirely comprised of meat and I once had a dinner in Kyoto that was comprised almost entirely of tofu, but I think Friday was the first time I've ever had a dinner that was entirely comprised of vegetables. I had a plate asparagus, eggplant, sweet potato, onions, peppers, squash, and mushrooms all grilled to perfection. Highly recommended.

All Aboard the Dictatorship

It turns out that I was wrong, Parade Magazine did publish their annual survey of the world's worst dictators this year. This is, of course, the first worst dictators survey of the Obama administration. The whole enterprise of ranking the world's worst tyrants in a general interest newspaper insert magazine seemed to make a modicum of sense during the Bush years. I can't say that I would be surprised if it is eventually revealed that the former President used the survey when making key foreign policy decisions. We'll see if this enterprise continues as the US hopefully returns to a more nuanced approach to foreign policy.

While much has changed in Washington, not much has changed in the annual dictator rankings. Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe rocketed up to the top spot from sixth place last year. My money was on Sudan's Omar al-Bashir capturing the top spot on the strength of his recent ICC arrest warrant, but he had to settle for second place once again. The only newcomers to the top 10 list this year were Libya's Muammar Qaddafi, who moved from 11th place to 10th, and Turkmenistan's Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov, who debuted on the list in 9th place this year.

Parade cited Zimbabwe's hyperinflation, cholera epidemic, and ZANU-PF thuggery as the reasons for Mugabe's rise to the top of the list. With the exception of the cholera epidemic, all of those things were true last year when Mugabe was deemed only the sixth-worst dictator in the world (and I'm guessing that Zimbabwe was hardly a public health success story even before the cholera epidemic). If anything, Mugabe improved his behavior in 2008 by agreeing in principle to a power-sharing government (though, as Parade correctly points out, he has not honored either the spirit or the letter of the agreement).

The inclusion of Berdymuhammedov is another head-scratcher. You may remember that he took over power in 2006 after the death of Saparmurat Niazov, a fixture on any survey of the world's worst dictators. Berdymuhammedov has been in power for only a couple of years and while Turkmenistan has not become a beacon of peace and freedom in Central Asia, I can't imagine why he would be ranked higher than some of his neighbors, including Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov (11th place in this year's survey).

Cover Story

Today's Providence Journal ran a story about Rhode Island's quest to grow its knowledge-based economy and included a photo of yours truly from last week's Providence Geeks meeting on the front page. This marks the second time that my picture has shown up in a geeks-related news story. So far, I've managed to avoid letting all of this fame go to my head, but I can't guarantee that I won't turn into an insufferable prima donna if this keeps up.

Flirting with Disaster

This is a really old story, but I heard about it for the first time at tonight's geek night and thought it was interesting. It's about how young Saudi's use bluetooth discovery on their mobile devices to flirt without running afoul of the religious police. Yet another example of how technologies get used in ways their creators never dreamed of.

Baby, You Got a Stew Goin'!

I've been doing a lot of cooking this week. I made another batch of Ming Tsai's Red Rendang so I had to use it up. One of the dishes that I used it on was a lamb stew that I did in a slow cooker. When I opened up the cooker after letting it stew, I was overwhelmed by the smell of lemongrass. The lemongrass flavor was barely noticeable in the paste and I wasn't overwhelmed by it while eating the stew, only while smelling it. Lemongrass and fish sauce, both Southeast Asian standbys, are ingredients that I find tasty but can't really stand the smell of when they get too strong. I'm told that even people who enjoy the taste of the durian feel the same way about it, so maybe it's just a characteristic of Southeast Asian food.

I've also been enjoying some Trader Joe's English Cheddar with Caramelized Onions. Some friends of ours introduced us to it recently. It's probably something I never would have picked out on my own, but the two tastes go together so well that I'm surprised all cheddar cheeses (and possibly, all cheeses) aren't alloyed with caramelized onions.

Block Expressions

I discovered a weird Java collection initialization idiom whilst reading this post a couple days ago.

List<String> l = new ArrayList<String>() {{
   add("A");
   add("B");
   add("C");
}};

It took me a minute to figure out what was going on. For those who haven't seen this before, the first and last curly brace define an anonymous inner class. The inner curly braces and the code therein comprise an instance initialization block for the anonymous inner class. So this code effectively create a subclass of ArrayList that adds three elements ("A", "B", and "C") to itself upon creation. It's kind of interesting, but I'm not sure how useful it is. The only place I could see using something like this would be in a class that needs a wrapped static final collection. Using this pattern would eliminate the need to build and populate a temporary collection in a static initializer and then wrap it and assign it to the static final member.

As it turns out, one of the proposals on the table for Java 7 is something called Block Expressions, which would allow you to define temporary local variables within expressions. One of the use case given for this feature is identical to the use case I outlined above.

public static final Map<Integer,Integer> primes = (
   Map<Integer,Integer> t = new HashMap<Integer,Integer>();
   t.put(1, 2);
   t.put(2, 3);
   t.put(3, 5);
   t.put(4, 7);
   Collections.UnmodifiableMap(t));

Block expressions have other uses beyond this so it may be a good idea to add them to the language, but I'm actually partial to the anonymous inner class with instance initializer approach in this situation.

public static final Map<Integer,Integer> primes = Collections.unmodifiableMap(
   new HashMap<Integer,Integer>() {{
       put(1,2);
       put(2,3);
       put(3,5);
       put(4,7);
   }});

The Falun Gong Show

We caught the Divine Performing Arts show when it came to Providence last week. It's billed as a celebration of Chinese cultural heritage through music and dance. What's not mentioned is the Falun Gong proselytization that pervades most of the show. While I don't support the Chinese government's suppression of Falun Gong practitioners, I also don't like how the Divine Performing Arts troupe isn't upfront about their ties to Falun Gong in their promotional materials. Of course, even if you stripped all of the Falun Gong material out of the show, I still wouldn't have enjoyed it very much. The music was bland and the sets were awful. The entire show was performed in front of a giant screen that had cheesy renderings of Chinese landscapes projected onto it. The format was incredibly tedious as well, with the emcees coming on stage between every single number and talking about the next one.

America's Finest Editorial Cartoons

How is it possible that I just found out about The Onion's weekly editorial cartoon today? Here are some of my favorites.

Hangover Cure

Here's a round-up of recent chatter about one of my favorite subjects, the life and death of cities. First, there's Richard Florida's piece from The Atlantic and his discussion of that piece on On Point (listen for the Providence shout-out around the 39 minute mark). Finally, some dueling viewpoints grabbed from the NYT Op-Ed page.

I think Florida could clear up a lot of confusion about his ideas if he stopped using the words 'city' and 'suburb', because those terms are so loaded that it's easy to stop listening to him once he says something that conflicts with your interpretation of those words. Florida is often criticized by people who think he's saying that everyone needs to trade in their 4 bedroom suburban home on a 2 acre lot for a 500 sq ft apartment in a high-rise. I don't think that's what he believes and I think he finally articulates his vision at the end of the On Point interview when he says Americans need more efficient ways of living and moving around. Efficient in terms of energy, but also in terms of time and effort. Innovation requires a critical mass of human capital that can interact in seamless and chaotic ways. If everyone is stuck in traffic for an hour and a half on their way to an office park in the middle of nowhere, time is being wasted and opportunities for innovation and collaboration are being squandered (not to mention the big decrease in quality of life).

Obviously there are a lot of people who are happy with the status quo and will continue to abide by it even in the face of multi-hour car commutes and $4+ gas. That's fine, but I think what Florida is saying is that there are a lot of people who would like some saner options for balancing life and work and areas that can provide these options will likely fare better than those that don't.

Good and Bad

The first no-hitter than I experienced was the no-hitter that the Tigers' Jack Morris pitched in 1984. It was the first no-hitter pitched by a Tiger since Jim Bunning hurled a no-no in 1958. Being a young Tigers fan, I filed this piece of information somewhere in my brain and didn't think about it again for a while. At some point in my adult life, I learned Jim Bunning had gotten into politics after hanging up his spikes. More recently, I've learned that he's kind of a jerk. I don't have anything interesting to say here, it's just funny how I have a one highly positive and one highly negative data point about Jim Bunning, separated by about 25 years.

Deposed

Sadly, it appears that Parade Magazine has decided to discontinue their annual survey of the world's worst dictators. It's possible that they've decided to move the feature from its usual mid-February spot, but the World's Most Wanted cover story that they ran a couple weeks ago seems a lot like a replacement for the worst dictators feature.

Empty Bench

February 19 | 7:22 pm | Providence, RI

Stream of Consciousness

I've been taking a look at functional programming languages in general and Scala in particular as of late. Partially because I've been sucked up into the hype surrounding FP & Scala and partially because I've never really done any FP. I read this post about infinite lists in Scala a couple months ago and decided that I wanted to try and do something similar with files. My goal was to create a function that takes a directory and returns a lazily evaluated list that can be used to recurse through every file and directory under the directory. Here's what I came up with:

import java.io.File

def makeFilestream(filelist: Stream[File]) : Stream[File] = {
  if (!filelist.isEmpty) {
    val file = filelist.head
    if (file.isDirectory) {
      Stream.cons(file, makeFilestream(file.listFiles.toStream.append(filelist drop 1)))
    } else {
      Stream.cons(file, makeFilestream(filelist drop 1))
    }
  } else {
    Stream.empty
  }            
}

def filestream(root: File) : Stream[File] = {
  val filelist:Stream[File] = root.listFiles.toStream
  makeFilestream(filelist)      
}

So what's the point of all this? By using Scala's Stream class, the list is lazily evaluated so it doesn't have to scan the entire directory tree before returning the first element. Furthermore, since Stream behaves like any other Collection class, all of the normal Collection operations like foreach, map, reduceLeft/Right, etc. are supported, eliminating the need to load the directory tree into memory and storing it in a List before operating on it.

Here are some examples of the cool things you can do with a file stream

Print everything in the directory /tmp

val tmpdir = filestream(new File("/tmp"))
tmpdir.foreach(println)

Print the first 10 directories under ~

val homedir = filestream(new File("/Users/username"))
homedir.filter(f => f.isDirectory).take(10).foreach(println)

Find the largest file under ~

val homedir = filestream(new File("/Users/username"))
val biggestFile = homedir.reduceLeft(  
      (a, b) => if (a.length > b.length) a else b)

Find the first Java source file under ~

val homedir = filestream(new File("/Users/username"))
val firstJavaFile = homedir.find(f => f.getName().endsWith(".java"))

Pretty much any file searching, selecting, or transformation operation you can think of can be expressed as a one-liner or chain of one-liners and thanks to the Stream, any operation that doesn't need to scan the entire directory tree is fast and efficient.

The Roof is on Fire

We saw Fiddler on the Roof at PPAC last night. It was my first time seeing Fiddler. My family went to see the local high school's production of it when I was 13, but I had no desire to see a musical or hang out with my parents and I managed to weasel my way out. Since then, I've developed more of an appreciation for musical theater (as well as being seen in public with my family). I went into the show with high expectations and I wasn't disappointed. Compared to most musicals that I'm familiar with, Fiddler on the Roof is more understated and dark. I enjoyed that and I also enjoyed seeing Chaim Topol playing the role that he's played for the past 40 years. I've always wondered how actors can play the same role night after night. It seems like it would get boring after a while. If Topol is tired of playing Tevye, it didn't show on stage. You could really tell that he was enjoying himself up there and his performance exuded a lived-in kind of quality that an actor who has only been playing the Tevye for six months (or even six years) wouldn't have.

Who Wants to be a Best Picture?

We recently made it out to see what all the hype surrounding Slumdog Millionaire was about. It's an enjoyable film, but neither of were really blown away by it. Visually, it's quite gorgeous and the story is endearing, though predictable. It's a good movie, but we probably wouldn't have nominated it for 10 Oscars had the academy asked us.

Larger Than Life

If you're like me, this picture instantly jogs your memory back to the moment in your childhood when you first picked up a copy of the Guinness Book of World Records. I found myself wondering whatever became of the world's heaviest twins a few days ago. It turns out that one of them (Billy) died several years before I even learned of their existence from injuries sustained while performing a motorcycle stunt. It turns out the brothers were minor celebrities in the 1970s, traveling the world with their tag-team wrestling and stunt show. Benny passed away in 2001 at the age of 54 from heart failure. These guys may eventually lose their world record, but I don't know if we'll ever see another set of corpulent twins gain such widespread notoriety.

Your Window To Weight Gain

You know those articles about the worst possible things you can order while dining out? I'm as addicted to those articles as many Americans are to the artery-clogging entrees being peddled by our beloved chain restaurants. Men's Health recently did an Academy Awards-style review, giving out a worst thing to eat award in 20 different categories. Chili's and On The Border each walked away with three awards. Chili's had the Worst Starter, Worst Chicken Entree, and Worst Dessert, while On The Border had the Worst Nachos, Worst Fish Entree, and Worst Salad. Of course, as bad as some of these dishes are, none of them are anywhere near as bad for you as the Bacon Explosion (assuming you eat the entire roll yourself).

Sporting Chance

I realize that season 3 of Mad Men isn't really on anyone's radar screen yet (and yes, it looks like season 3 is happening), but I wanted to go on record with this observation now, since I haven't heard anyone say anything about it yet. I find it really interesting that the show has never dealt with professional sports in any way. No one has ever left work early to go to the ballgame (I guess they're too busy having affairs) and there has never been any idle chatter around the water cooler about last night's game or last week's fight. I'm sure that this is deliberate (since every freakin' detail of the show is deliberate) and I'm guessing it is pretty accurate since professional sports weren't as a big of a deal back then and they were probably a bit too gauche for Sterling-Cooper men anyway, but if nothing else, Mad Men is about how the times, they are a-changin', so I'm guessing the subject is eventually going to be broached. I predict that they're going to go for a two-fer and cover race and sport at the same time with a story that includes one of the Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali vs. Sonny Liston fights.

Musician

I received a copy of the documentary film Musician for Christmas and I finally got around to watching it. As I mentioned before, it profiles Ken Vandermark, my favorite musician currently on the scene. The movie is shot in a very direct style; there are no interviews or narration. It begins with Vandermark alone in his basement composing and working through some writer's block and ends with concert footage of him playing a solo show at an art museum (or possibly an art gallery). In between, it's an unvarnished look at the day-to-day life of a musician operating well outside of the mainstream of commercial music. The entire film is summarized in the final scene. It begins with a close-up of him addressing the crowd, his humility and humanity on full display, before launching into a Japp Blonk-inspired solo. As he starts to play, the camera pans back to just beyond and above the audience, revealing the modest crowd. The camera holds that shot until the song ends, and the movie fades out with the applause. It shows the loneliness, sacrifice, humility, creativity, strength, and elation that the uncompromising artist must endure, posses, and hopefully, receive.

I've always felt that Vandermark was an amazingly humble artist. Every time I've seen him play, he always seems genuinely touched that people bothered to pay money to listen to his music. That humility is on display in Musician, and while a lot of it is just his personality, the occupation that he has chosen certainly reinforces his humility. As a fan of his music, I really enjoyed the concert segments and I also enjoyed the way that they were shot. The rehearsal segments were even more interesting, both for the behind the scenes look that they offered and for the insight they offered into Vandermark as a composer and bandleader.

Musician is obviously a must-see for fans of Vandermark's music, but it's also a movie for anyone who is interested in watching the creative process in action.

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

I finally finished reading Infinite Jest. I picked it up for the first time nearly eight years ago but didn't make it very far. I bought a copy nearly seven years ago and made it about a quarter of the way through before giving up again. I finally decided to give it a third try this past September, shortly after the death of its author, David Foster Wallace. I'm not afraid to stop reading a book that I no longer find interesting, so the fact that I made it through all 981 pages (and 97 pages of footnotes) means that it at least held my interest. It's an entertaining story filled with some of the most intriguing characters that I've ever encountered in literature. While I definitely enjoyed the book on a superficial level, especially in the middle portion where most of the characters had been developed but before it became clear that the story was not going to resolve itself in the end, I never really figured out what the story is actually about. After reading the book, the blurbs on the back cover sound plausible, but I certainly wouldn't have arrived at any of those conclusions on my own. I'm sure a lot of this my on fault; I probably should have been reading the book with a dictionary in hand since it had a lot of words I've never heard or seen in print (not to mention quite a bit of Québécois), and I ideally should have tried to finish it in less than four months since it's pretty hard to keep a story fresh in your mind spreading it out over such a long time. So while I agree with the pull quote from the Seattle Times on the front cover of my copy that proclaims Infinite Jest to be "surprisingly readable", don't kid yourself into thinking that you're going to get a lot out of this book without really committing to a serious study of it.

Cran-tastic

I noticed that Taqueria Pacifica is now offering Narragansett Cranberry Ale on tap. I had never heard of this variety (it's not even mentioned on Narragansett's website), and the only evidence of it I can find online is this discussion on Beer Advocate (their servers appear to be down right now, so I haven't had a chance to read it). I didn't expect much, but I had to give it a try. It failed to live up to my admittedly low expectations. It's sort of a New England take on a Berliner Weisse mit Schuss (and tastes about as good). The cranberry flavor is so overwhelming that you can barely taste the beer. I'd advise steering clear of this brew, unless you consider yourself a connoisseur of wine coolers.

Twit

I recently decided to give Twitter a shot. In light of my recent sort-of rants against location-based meeting services and text messaging, my interest in Twitter may strike you as odd and/or hypocritical. When I first heard about Twitter, I was highly skeptical, but I've warmed up to it. Perhaps it was Shaq's Twitter account that did it for me. I don't expect to be tweeting all that often, but I thought it would be nice to have the option. Follow me if you're so inclined.

01.20.09

When all of the 01.20.09 - Bush's Last Day swag started showing up a couple years ago, I got a little worried. I wasn't worried that Bush was going to amend the Constitution and run for a third term or declare himself President-for-Life or anything like that. I was worried that by tempting fate, we'd wind up trading Bush for someone even worse (President Rush Limbaugh, anyone?). History is full of examples where one bad leader was deposed only to be replaced by someone who was even worse. To be fair, most of those examples involve revolutions and coups d'état, not orderly changes of power after free and fair elections. Still, I'm glad that we managed to dodge that bullet. I suppose it's possible for Obama to turn out to be even worse than Bush, but I feel like it would require Obama to submit himself to some sort of new brain-altering technology that is unlikely to be developed within the next four years.

On Frozen Pond

How I managed to live this long and never play pond hockey is beyond me. After playing for about three hours on a frozen lake in New Hampshire last weekend, I'm incredibly sore and still coming down from the adrenaline rush.

A True Underdog Story

I learned of Dodgeball's demise today through the esteemed Will Leitch. In case you never heard of Dodgeball, it's a mobile social networking application that allows you to tell all of your friends (and their friends) where you are at any given time. If you remember this iPhone commercial demonstrating the Loopt application, it's kind of more primitive version of the same idea. I find both applications somewhat horrifying, and I don't necessarily think it's totally a generational thing. I can't imagine that the next generation's batch of introverted nerds is all that geeked about these apps, but I guess I could be wrong. I'm sure that eventually, applications like these are going to be commonplace and I'll eventually be forced to use one of them and may even enjoy it, but I'm remaining skeptical for now.

New Zealand. Like Lord of the Rings

The Flight of the Conchords season 2 media blitz began in earnest todaty, with this spot on NPR and this interview with the A.V. Club. I'm still working through season 1 on DVD and don't have HBO, so I don't know when and if I'll get a chance to check out season 2. I like the show, but so far, I've liked the acting more than the music. Don't get me wrong, the videos are great and lyrics are hilarious, it's just that parody songs don't reach their full comedic potential until you have a chance to reference them in everyday life, and I haven't reach that point quite yet.

Glass Musuem

We went to the newly renovated RISD Museum today to check out the Dale Chihuly exhibit. Chihuly is a pioneer in the field of glass art, and most of the pieces on display in this exhibit were glass sculptures and installations. One of the challenges of modern art appreciation is dealing with all of the non-traditional media and structures used by contemporary artists. Paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts have been around forever and it's easier to comprehend modern approaches to these artistic traditions even when they veer into abstraction. When looking at works that use different forms and media, it's sometimes hard to figure out what you're looking at.

Chihuly's work seems to fall into the second category in that it's not a literal representation of the physical world and it's in a non-traditional medium (at least, for sculpture), but it's still quite accessible. All of the pieces in the exhibition were very organic; they either used or suggested natural forms, such as flowers, plants, and trees. If nothing else, his bold use of color gives most of his works a strong enough visceral appeal that a thorough study of 20th century art is not required to form an opinion about his works. In addition to the installations, the museum also had works from several of Chihuly's students and contemporaries on display. I really liked that and think it's a good idea for art exhibitions in general because it's a good way to see how artists influence each other.

Analyze This!

I installed Google Analytics on datajanitor in early 2008 because I thought it would be fun to see how many people were reading this blog, where they were coming from, and how they were getting here. Now that I have close to a year's worth of data, here are the results for 2008.

2,641 Visitors
3,797 Visits
5,378 Page Views

Most of the people who visited probably wound up here by accident, as the 80.35% bounce rate indicates. 77.93% of the visits came from the US, the remaining 22.07% of the visits were spread across 74 foreign countries. The UK came in second with 172 visits (4.53%). The most frequent non-English speaking country was Germany, who finished fourth overall with 111 visits (2.92%). 23 of the 74 foreign countries had only a single visit. Not surprisingly, Australia was the most frequent visitor in Oceania, finishing in 6th place overall with 35 visits (0.92%). The top visitor in Asia was The Philippines, who came in 8th overall with 14 visits (0.37%). In South America, Brazil was tops with 10 visits (0.26%), good enough for 14th overall. In another big shocker, South Africa was the top visitor in Africa, finishing in 32nd place overall with 4 visits (0.11%).

I had visitors from every state in the union. Three states only made a single visit (MT, MS, and WY). Excluding my home state of RI, CO was responsible for the most visits (thanks, Dusty). Once again excluding myself, the city of Boulder, CO had the most visits for any city and London, England was tops among all foreign cities.

The most viewed page in 2008 was this little gem that I posted way back in 2005, which was visited an astonishing 296 times. The most visited page that was posted in 2008 was this one, which was visited 157 times.

As far as search engine traffic goes, the top search term that brought people to this blog was alice at night, with 63 hits. A close second was joann sklarski, with 60 hits. 7 of the top 25 search terms are somehow related to the Sklarski sisters, Kirk Gibson, or Dave Rozema. It's pretty amazing that my blog has become something of a clearinghouse for information on the Sklarski sisters, seeing as I never actually wrote anything about them - all of the information about them is contained in comments on Honeymoon('s Over) in Vegas, my most viewed post.

Heavy Hitters

I've been a fan of personal injury attorney's commercials for as long as I've been familiar with the genre. It pleases me to no end that there is apparently a production agency that has used the same slogan and jingle for different law firms in the Providence and Upstate New York markets. Here's one of the commercials for Syracuse's own heavy hitters Alexander & Catalano, and here's a commercial from Providence's Heavy Hitter, Rob Levine.

Must Love Dogs

Since I've tried to at least mention all of the movies I've watched this year, I'd be remiss to not finish the job before the new year. I was disappointed with V for Vendetta, which we watched a month or so back. I didn't like how the movie felt the need to spell out every detail about the plot to the viewers (sometimes, more than once). The story and setting drew a lot of obvious parallels to George Orwell's 1984, which hurt the movie since it's pretty hard to measure up to 1984. Of course, you shouldn't really trust the words of a critic who fell asleep before the end of the movie. It did clear up some confusion I've always had about Guy Fawkes Night, but I still don't really understand why the British named the holiday after Fawkes. Isn't that sort of like the US making 9/11 a national holiday and calling it Osama bin Laden Day?

I finally got around to seeing Hot Fuzz over Christmas. I liked it, though not as much as I liked Shaun of the Dead. I think Hot Fuzz may have been a bit too over the top for me. It's possible that I haven't seen enough action & cop movies to truly appreciate the depth of the satire in Hot Fuzz.

Finally, I went with my dog-loving family to watch Marley & Me after Christmas. It's pretty much a movie about a dog with a perfunctory mid-life crisis tacked on. Don't bother seeing it unless you really like seeing dogs chew on furniture.

Hub Cap

The great jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard passed away yesterday. He hadn't been very active recently and I haven't listened to his music in a while, but he was one of my favorites back when I was first getting into jazz. I don't have any of his recordings as a leader and I thought that Out to Lunch was the only recording of Hubbard that I owned until the LAT obit reminded me that he played on Coltrane's Ascension sessions, but my old college radio station had a lot of Hubbard's recondings on vinyl and I spun them regularly. One my favorites was Live at the Northsea Jazz Festival 1980, which is the only post-Blue Note Hubbard album that I've listened to extensively. He was truly one of the last of the great hard bop players.

Out Like a Lamb

The most depressing part of the Lions amassing the NFL's first 0-16 record is the realization that I grew up during the post-merger golden age of Detroit Lions football. The reason that is depressing is because the Lions' post-merger golden age of the 1990s wasn't much of a golden age. While they made six of their nine post-merger playoff appearances during the 1990s, they still only won one of those playoff games, never even made it to the Superbowl, and only had five winning seasons. The Lions record from 1990-99 was 79-81, which is much better than the 40-104 record they've managed to amass over this decade, but it's still a losing record.

Infamous Bowls

Some people complain about how the proliferation of huge restaurant chains has destroyed America's regional diversity. What these people fail to realize is that restaurant chains don't destroy regional culture; they demarcate it. Take Bob Evans for example. That middle American dining institution has no franchises in New England and only a handful of them in the other northeastern states (unless you consider Pennsylvania part of the northeast - PA is lousy with Bob Evans franchises).

I had kind of forgotten about Bob Evans until I was back home for Thanksgiving and saw a commercial advertising their answer to KFC's Famous Bowls. It's called the Chicken Fried Deep Dish Dinner, and it takes the KFC Famous Bowl and goes a step further by adding a biscuit into the mix. I've always been fascinated by the Famous Bowl. I'm convinced that the dish was created when someone at KFC headquarters walked into the test kitchen and demanded that the chefs create a new dish that incorporated all existing KFC menu items. I'm not the only one who is fascinated by the Famous Bowl either - comedian Patton Oswalt has carved out a niche for himself in the comedy world with his Famous Bowls routine. With Bob Evans' recent shot across the bow in the Famous Bowls Wars, both of us should have plenty of material to feed our Famous Bowls obsession for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, Back in Communist Russia...

The Trans-Siberian Orchestra was in town last week. Michelle has been interested in seeing their show for a couple of years, so we decided to check it out. I went in with pretty low expectations, but I still managed to leave disappointed. The Christmas portion of their show is built around a "true meaning of Christmas" narrative that is borderline nonsensical and difficult to follow. Mixed in with the narrative are heavy metal interpretations of popular Christmas carols and original songs. The original Christmas songs, with the exception of a couple that they played near the end of the Christmas portion of the concert, were awful. I don't understand why they didn't make better use of the existing body of Christmas music and fables that are already known and loved by the majority of western world. Creating new and compelling holiday music and stories is a pretty tall order. Based on the legion of fans who go to see their show every year, I guess the TSO has created a Christmas story that resonates with some people, but it didn't do much for either of us.

WTF?

As anyone who still has a job is probably aware of by now, companies are trying to minimize the costs of doing business during these lean times. I got an e-mail from management at my job last week outlining a number of cost-cutting initiatives that have recently been put into effect. The one that caught my eye was an admonishment for employees with company-provided mobile phones (a club that I am not a member of) to stop texting so much. I've always wondered why texting is so expensive. After all, a single text message is at most a couple hundred bytes worth of data. A voice call is at least thousands of bytes per second. Based on the five minutes of research I just did, it appears that it's because texting is such a cash cow for wireless carriers. By charging ridiculously high rates for text messages, carriers basically force anyone who wants to use text messaging on regular basis to buy an unlimited plan, guaranteeing them an extra $5-10/month per customer over the life of their contract. Carriers can charge whatever the market will bear, of course, but any business that is built on constantly ripping off its customers is setting itself up for fall when someone comes in and challenges the status quo. At the very least, once Internet-connected mobile devices achieve critical mass, text messaging is going to go the way of the CB radio unless the pricing model is rationalized.

Postscript:
I've been sitting on this post for a couple of days and wouldn't you know it - Google has gone ahead and added SMS text messaging to Gmail. I don't this is going to put an end to extortionate text messaging rates, but I'm still holding out hope that Google/Android is going to finally force some sense into the US cellular phone market.

Pipe Dream

I've created a couple new Yahoo! Pipes for Michael David Smith's writing on College Football Talk and Pro Football Talk. It probably would have been more useful to put these together earlier in the football season, but I never got around to it (which was just kind of dumb on my part, since it took all of five minutes to put these feeds together). Here's the College Football Talk feed URL and here's the one for Pro Football Talk.

Walk on Water

Google Maps is a great tool and it keeps getting better. Their public transit and walking directions are nice new feature. The walking directions are really cool because Google Maps will gladly generate walking directions for any route, no matter how ridiculous it might be. Here's a nice leisurely stroll you might want to take the next time you need to go from LA to New York but aren't in a big hurry. Google estimates that it would take you 38 days to make the 2800 mile trek (assuming you don't stop anywhere along the way).

Michelle discovered an interesting routing for her trip to Falmouth. The walking directions have you hiking all the way up to Boston, hopping on a ferry to Provincetown, and then walking all the way around Cape Cod. When we first looked at it, we thought that Google was suggesting that you walk on water from Boston to Provincetown. While it may sound like Google is copping out by including a ferry ride in the walking directions, I doubt that pedestrian traffic is allowed on the bridges that span the Cape Cod Canal, so there technically is no way to walk to Falmouth. Perhaps the next release of Google Maps will include a swimming option.

Flat Earth Society

The Flatlands Collective
Lilypad - Cambridge, MA
Thursday, December 4th

The Flatlands Collective is a group of Chicago musicians and the Boston-based Dutch saxophonist Jorrit Dijkstra. I'm pretty sure that this was the first time I've ever seen Dijkstra live. I've certainly had plenty of opportunities to see him play, but for whatever reason, it never worked out until yesterday. Dijkstra impressed me more as a composer and bandleader than he did as a soloist last night. In his defense, the music was structured in a way that didn't give the musicians as much of a chance to stretch out as a normal free jazz unit and the ensemble had a tendency to drown out the soloists, which may have been due to the acoustics of the room.

I really like the sound that larger ensembles are able to produce and the pieces that I enjoyed the most at this show were the ones that really made use of the entire group, especially, the horn section. It was also great to hear Frank Rosaly play again, after being so impressed with his playing the last time I saw him. I felt he shined as an accompanist the last time, but this time, I was more impressed with his solos. He used a lot of dynamic and rhythmic contrasts, which gave his solos a real lyrical quality. I was most impressed with clarinetist James Falzone. I had never even heard of him before the show so I had no idea what to expect, but I was really blown away by both the quality of his phrasing and the consistency of his tone.

I really enjoyed some of the tunes the band played and some of them didn't do anything for me at all, there wasn't very much middle ground. Most of the time, however, it was a really good show.

College Humor

B.J. Novak (a/k/a Ryan Howard a/k/a "The Temp") was in town on Friday doing stand-up so we went and checked it out. The show was at Providence College so the audience was at least 95% college students. I still can't get over how young college students are these days, but it's nice to know that they enjoy the humor of The Office even if they haven't entered the workaday world yet.

We hit YouTube before the show to look for some examples of Novak's stand-up routine to decide if it was any good. As usual, YouTube delivered. Here's a couple of clips that we watched - both of which were included in his show on Friday.

Novak is pretty funny on stage. His humor is mostly observational and pretty nerdy, so it's right up my alley. He did bits about how pandas are endangered due to their aversion to mating(that's not the whole story, but it certainly doesn't help) and how everyone who appears in porn films is considered a porn "star". While I may never have technically told any jokes based on those ideas, I've certainly thought about it before, so we definitely have similar senses of humor.

After the show, he did a short Q&A session. The Office spoiler alert: Kevin is going to shoot up the office (with sexy results) before turning the gun on himself in the season finale. Just kidding - no juicy Office gossip was revealed. Although, he didn't say anything about Kevin not shooting up the office in the season finale...

Are You My Type?

I heard about Typealyzer today, a service that takes a blog URL, analyzes the content, and spits out a Myers-Briggs score. It's been a while since I've taken a Myers-Briggs assessment, so I don't remember exactly how I scored last time and I suppose it's possible that I have changed since then, but I'm skeptical of the ESTP score that Typealyzer assigned to this blog. I'm pretty sure that I was either an INTJ or an INTP the last time I took the test. According to Typealyzer, I am a "doer", who is active and playful, often full of energy; talking and joking. I may also be impulsive and have problems sitting still. Sounds just like me, right? This whole thing sounds kind of silly, but any business model that is based on converting the vanity of bloggers into profits probably has a halfway decent chance of being successful. Perhaps my blog is not active enough for it to deliver an accurate score, but I'm not completely sold on Typealyzer yet.

Chocolate News

Porter is my favorite beer variety, but it's not something I like to drink in warm weather. It's a bit too hearty for a day at the beach. When the leaves start to fall and days get shorter, I start getting in the mood for a nice porter, but I couldn't find any decent porter on my last trip to the liquor store. The only thing they had was Sam Adams Honey Porter, which isn't my favorite. I would up picking up some Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout. It was a bit pricey ($10 for a 6 pack), but when you consider that it has two and a half times as much alcohol by volume as Bud Light (10.6% vs. 4.2%), it's actually a pretty good deal if all you're going for is maximum amount of buzz per dollar. If you're more worried about taste, it's arguably an ever better value. It's incredibly rich, as you might imagine, but it's still very smooth and the high alcohol content is not overwhelming.

Trading Spaces

Trader Joe's recently opened their first store in the state of Rhode Island. We checked it out shortly after the grand opening and I picked up a loaf of their three seed and honey bread, and it is really good. It's the first bread that I can ever remember eating that has fennel seeds on it (the other two seeds are poppy and sesame). I think the fennel works really well, but I may not be the most objective observer, since I basically love fennel in anything.

Demographic Novel

After the 2004 election, there was a lot of talk about how Bush won 97 of the 100 fastest growing counties in America and how the Republican's fecundity spelled doom for the Democrat's chances in national elections. After last night's election, there's a lot of talk about how the Republican's lost a lot of the youth vote and the college-educated vote and how this spells doom for the Republicans. While I'm fascinated by demographic trends, I try not to put too much stock into them. Pundits mine the demographic data after every election to explain why the winning candidate won the election, then extrapolate it into the future, forgetting how fickle the American electorate tends to be.

Now that I've railed against this practice, I'm going to engage in it. Returning to the exit poll results, the 66% of the 18-29 year old vote that Obama captured is the highest percentage any candidate has captured in any age bracket over the past eight elections. Since I'm just north of the 18-29 age bracket, I find the difference between my age bracket, who supported Obama 53% of the time, and the 18-29 bracket really interesting. I can think of a few probable reasons for the youth's embrace of Obama. They were probably excited by the "newness" of Obama and the Obama campaign also probably did a good job at reaching out to the youth vote. George W. Bush's unpopularity probably gave Obama a big boost in their eyes since for most of the people in the 18-29 group, the only presidential administration of their adult lives has been Bush's. The thing that I think really separates the under 30s from the 30+s is Ronald Reagan. I doubt that very many people under the age of 30 remember much of anything about the Reagan years. The youngest voters in this year's election would have been born after Reagan left office and the oldest under 30 voters would have been just turning 10 when Reagan rode off into the sunset. The Republican party can continue to hold up Reagan as one of their standard bearers, (though I question whether this is true anymore), but it's unlikely to inspire anyone who was born after 1980.

While demographics are hardly destiny, that doesn't mean that Obama's victory isn't indicative of any sociopolitical change. I think it's important to remember that it was only 40 years ago that George Wallace ran for President as a third-party candidate on a segregationist platform and won 13.5 % of the popular vote (8.6% of the electoral college with 5 states: AR, LA, AL, MS, and GA). Wallace won 31% of North Carolina's popular vote in 1968; 40 years later, Obama won 49.67% of the popular vote, and may have won the state, though at the moment, it's still too close to call.

We should probably spend a little less time trying to figure out if America is a center-right country or a center-left country or whether or not the Republicans can appeal to voters outside of rural areas and the states of the old Confederacy. These kinds of questions assume that all voters are ideologically consistent within their chosen (or given) political caste when in fact most are anything but. The changes in America's politics are driven by the changes in American society. When politics get too far ahead of or behind society, political realignments happen. The changes that have happened in American society that made it possible to elect a black man as president have been bubbling up for a long time and yesterday, American politics finally caught up.

X-Men 4: Halloween

Happy belated Halloween, from the X-Men

I wound up on pumpkin carving detail this year. I think it was one of my better carvings. After Michelle did such a good job last year, I had to step up my game.

Perhaps even more impressive than the carving is this photo that I snapped - a hand-held 1 second exposure with no noticeable blur.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Did you hear the one about the sheep beauty pageant held for the men of Saudi Arabia?

Working Studs

I'll always remember my introduction to the works of the late Studs Terkel, who passed away yesterday at the age of 96. I was in sixth grade and browsing the stacks at my middle school library when I noticed a book called "Working Studs". Needless to say, I was surprised to see such a subversive work of non-fiction at a middle school library until I took a second look and discovered that it was the classic "Working" by Studs Terkel. This remembrance of Terkel, which aired on NPR yesterday, includes Terkel recounting a time that one of Jerry Falwell's minions called a library in Georgia to complain about a pornographic book called "Working Studs" by someone named Terkel. I guess I had the potential to be a great moralizing ignoramus from a young age. If only someone would have recognized that and nurtured me down that path.

I've never read "Working" (or "Working Studs", for that matter), though I did read this book during a lapse in employment several years ago. It's written in the same style as Working and bills itself as something of a modern day remake of the classic. I gave Michelle a copy of "Working" for Christmas last year, so I'm sure I'll get around to reading it once the statute of limitations on reclaiming a gift that you gave someone else expires and/or I ever finish "Infinite Jest".

Bohemian Rhapsody

We visited Fall River for the first time yesterday. Visited may be a bit too strong of a word, we got off the highway downtown and went to the Factory of Terror haunted house. I can't say that I was all that frightened by it, and having to evacuate at about the halfway point after all the lights had been turned on and all the actors had broken character due to a false fire alarm didn't really help. Afterwards, we had dinner at a nearby Portuguese restaurant, where I sampled Sagres Bohemia (a Portuguese beer) for the first time. I'd definitely have it again should the opportunity present itself. As the Wikipedia entry states, it's a Dunkel style beer, so it's a dark beer and slightly sweet.

Most Valuable Fan

As I've mentioned before, I don't go to very many baseball games, but when I do go to a game, chances are one of the teams will make it to the World Series. I didn't go to any ballgames in 2006 or 2007, but I went to two baseball games this season, and one of them was a Phillies game. The other one was a Red Sox game, so had the Sox managed to complete their comeback in the ALCS, I would have been two for two this year. Of course, the Phillies game that I went to was an exhibition game, but I'm still going to count it in my streak.

I Voted For President and All I Got Was This Stupid MP3

In case you weren't planning on voting in next week's election, perhaps Wilco's offer of a free song download is enough to entice you to head out to the polls. I'm not a Wilco fan per se and I was planning on voting in the election before I heard about this offer, but I like a couple of their songs and I've been meaning to listen to more of their stuff for a while so I decided to partake. I don't like the tune (a Dylan cover) as much as the couple of Wilco songs that I'm familiar with, but it's still a pretty good song.

Burn After Watching

We went to the Cable Car last night to see the latest Coen Brothers film, Burn After Reading. It's a pretty standard Coen Bros. production. I enjoyed the movie while we were watching it, but once I got home and started to think about it again, a lot of things started to bother me. The Coens tend to make movies about deeply and/or tragically flawed people who find themselves in a relatively run-of-the mill sticky situation that they somehow manage to escalate into a tragedy. Burn After Reading follows this formula, but raises the stakes by making every single character tragically flawed. Not only does no one ever really manage to do the right thing in this movie, it's not always clear why they are willing to do such dangerous/illegal/unethical things. Perhaps I'm expecting too much from a screwball black comedy, but I think this movie would have been better with a little bit more depth and a little bit less breadth in the character department.

Whole Classics

I tend not to notice the music that they play at grocery stores. Occasionally, you hear something unexpected, but it's usually so bland that you don't even realize it's playing. I was at my local Whole Foods tonight and my ears perked up when I heard "Hey Baby" by Ted Nugent. Classic rock at the grocery store is strange enough, but The Motor City Madman at Whole Foods is a whole nothing thing. I kind of doubt that The Nuge would shop with the liberal elitists at Whole Foods even if they were offering a half-off sale on all bow-hunted wild game. As it turns out, "Hey Baby" was only just the beginning of a Whole Foods classic rock block, which I have immortalized in playlist form. After the Nuge, they got proggy with Yes' "Yours is No Disgrace", a veritable deep cut, and capped it all off with the J. Geils Band and "I Must Have Got Lost". They switched back to some more Whole Foods appropriate indie folk after that, but for about 15 minutes tonight, the store was rockin'.

On The Level

Our dishwasher has been on fritz lately. I found an appliance repairman who came out and replaced the fill value. Unfortunately, that only fixed the problem for a couple of days. The repairman sent his apprentice back out to take another look at the dishwasher. Tagging along with the apprentice was another guy who looked to be about 80 years old. The older guy was quite frail and his breathing was labored even when he was laying down on the floor of our kitchen looking underneath the dishwasher (the pack of Pall Malls sticking out of his pocket probably contributed to this as much as his advanced age), but he turned out to be something of a master dishwasher repairman.

As you might expect, the dishwasher started running just fine for the first time all week when the repairmen showed up. We sat around waiting to see if the dishwasher would make it into its rinse cycle successfully. After about 20 minutes with no problems, the repairmen were getting ready to pack up their tools when the old guy, who had been intently examining the side of the dishwasher door for a few minutes, suddenly realized that the dishwasher was way off level. He checked it with a level, then, in a scene that kind of reminded me of Arrested Development's Uncle Jack, barked out commands to the younger, stronger, and somewhat dimwitted apprentice to get the dishwasher back on level.

The leveling seems to have done the trick as the dishwasher has run successfully several times since the fix. If your dishwasher ever stops filling, you might want to check the level. If that doesn't fix it and you have to bring in a repairman, don't be alarmed if a chain-smoking octogenarian shows up to fix it. Just sit back and watch him work his magic. Where does one find such repairmen? On craigslist, of course. Not having a repairman of choice, I started looking around on the web for appliance repair services, only to be horrified by the abysmal reviews of the local appliance repair businesses. I went to Craigslist on a hunch, and found a number of people advertising appliance repair services. A Craigslist advertisement is no guarantee of good service, but I feel like people who are working independently instead of for a store or an appliance repair company are more likely to try and deliver good service, since the only thing they have to trade on is their reputation.

Food

I mentioned that tapenade rubbed steak is delicious on the grill. I've come to discover that tapenade rubbed anything tastes great on the grill. I've also tried it on pork chops and hamburgers. In both cases, I didn't even bother giving it any time to set in before throwing it on the grill, but the results were still delicious.

Grilling season is coming to a close, so I'll add that my new favorite condiment is fig jam.

Rathaus

June 12 | 12:12 pm | Vienna

Men of Tomorrow

I just finished reading Men of Tomorrow, a book about the birth of the comic book industry. As usual, I stumbled upon it while wandering aimlessly though the library, though I do remember hearing good things about the book when it came out and may have even given it to a friend as a Christmas gift a few years back. While I found some of the writing a bit labored, the book presents a ton of information in a well-organized and coherent way. You don't need to be a comic book enthusiast (or former enthusiast) to enjoy the book, but it certainly would help. Still, there's enough really interesting stuff about the socioeconomic history of comics, especially in the first half of the book, to appeal to anyone who is interested in the history of mass media, business, entertainment, labor, or politics.

Thai Not?

Thai is the gateway drug of ethnic food.

I said this during a discussion about ethnic food today. I was trying to be funny, but I think it's pretty accurate.

It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

I normally don't pay much attention to the Emmys in particular and award shows in general, but I was pleased to hear that one my favorite shows, Mad Men, won the big prize last night. If you haven't been watching, you should tune in. If not for its richly developed characters and intricate plot lines, then for the influence it will soon have over everything that you wear.

Peeping Hi

Poor Hi - it looks like Lois has thwarted his favorite Saturday afternoon activity - sitting around the house "reading" his porno mags. I guess "Peeps" could be interpreted as a play on People Magazine instead of a stag rag, but sitting around the house reading People is arguably an even more depraved activity for a wholesome family man like Hi. A final possibility is that he subscribes to some sort of weird underground Mashmallow Peeps fetishist magazine, which is certainly the most depraved interpretation of them all.

Juror #47

A few weeks ago, I received a jury duty summons. I'd never been called to serve on a jury before, so I was kind of excited but, like any good American, I was also kind of dreading the whole thing. As it turned out, I didn't get called to serve on a jury. In fact, no one in the pool of potential jurors was called to serve. I was a little bummed, but I guess it was better than having to be one of the alternate jurors on a trial that spends two weeks in deliberation and ends in a mistrial.

Immaculate Reception

September 13 | 6:22 pm | Grand Rapids, MI

The Gay Nineties

I finally got around to checking out Hulu. It's pretty cool and all, but that's not why I'm mentioning it here. I wound up watching a recent episode of The Simpsons that essentially rewrote the entire history of the series. It was kind of shocking, though I've been paying so little attention to The Simpsons lately that perhaps this kind of stuff is happening on weekly basis now. In case you don't feel like watching the episode, it's a flashback to Homer and Marge's post-high school courtship, during the early 1990s. The Simpsons has often taken a fairly laid-back approach to geography and the passage of time, and the show has even pointed out its own inconsistencies for a laugh a few times, but as far as I know, the show had always treated the past as a fixed point a time. I guess that's no longer the case. I'm not angry or anything, the Simpsons is still one of the all-time great TV shows, even if it's gotten a bit long in the tooth as of late. Still, it is a little disappointing that they felt the need to upend the entire Simpsons space-time continuum just to cram in a few lame jokes about grunge rock, political correctness, and Bill Clinton.

Days of Thunder

I've seen more movies in the theaters this summer than I have in a long time. I think it has more to do with circumstances than a noticeable uptick in the quality of the films being produced in Hollywood. That being said, I did enjoy Tropic Thunder on my most recent trip to the local cineplex. It wasn't as quotable as I thought it was going to be, but it was still funny. One of my favorite characters in the star-studded cast was the special effects assistant, an actor named Dempsey Silva with a single line on his IMDB resume. If there's an Oscar for rookie of the year, he's my nomination.

Beyond Compare

I had a friend in high school who was a Dinosaur Jr. fanatic. In fact, he was such a huge fan that he refused to call them anything but their original name (Dinosaur). So while I've been familiar with Dinosaur Jr. and many of the original member's side projects for a long time, I never actually got around to listening to any of their music until recently. I recently picked up Beyond, which I later learned is result of the band's recent reunion after 19 years apart. It's a great album, and it's the first time I've really gotten excited about anything new in the rock/alt rock genre in a long time. I think that one of the reasons I've never been too big on a lot of the alt rock/indie rock bands is a lot of them don't rock all that hard. The stuff on Beyond rocks pretty hard. It's generally more of a punk influenced sound than the blues rock sound that I really dig, but I've never had a problem with punk rock, providing that it actually rocks.

As an aside, in addition to just getting around to discovering Dinosaur Jr., I'm also still getting my feet wet in the digital music world. I was considering just purchasing a single track from the album (This is All I Came To Do), since it was the only one I was familiar with before making my purchase, but I decided against it. While I like the idea of being able to pick and choose songs individually, I still think that for any reasonably serious artist, the album, while it may be a completely artificial construct in the digital music world, is still an important artistic statement.

Lucky Kitchen

We've been having some good luck in the kitchen lately. I mentioned to my Mom last week that we had a lot of eggplant and tomatoes from our farm share. As luck would have it, she came across a recipe for eggplant and tomato stacks that she sent our way. We tried it last night and it was incredible. I'm not a huge fan of eggplant, but I loved it in this dish. We made a number of modifications to the recipe, including omitting the zucchini since we didn't have any on hand, substituting dried oregano, basil, and parsley for the fresh herbs that the recipe called for, and reducing the amount of olive oil and cheese, but it was still delicious. If I ever own my own Italian restaurant, this is going on the appetizers menu. Full disclosure: I generally find Williams-Sonoma (the source of the recipe) a tad pretentious (we certainly didn't bake our stacks in a 12 in. cast iron fry pan ($120.00) as the recipe suggested), but a good recipe is a good recipe.

This morning, I decided to make omelettes. I started by sauteing some onions and fresh garlic in a little olive oil. As an aside, we've been getting fresh garlic from our farm share, and I'm completely hooked on it. It is so much better than the pre-minced garlic that we had been getting from the grocery store. I then added the eggs, some Monterrey Jack cheese, and some diced tomatoes to the onions and garlic. The end result was delicious. Omelettes are the casserole (or fried rice) of breakfast; you just throw in whatever ingredients that you can find and see what happens. The best omelettes tend to be the ones that have the least amount of planning, and this was no exception.

Jamaican Me Crazy

June 12 | 11:00 am | Vienna

Good Knight

We finally went to see The Dark Knight last weekend. It's as good as everyone says it is, for the most part. It's certainly the darkest of all the Batman films (though, oddly enough, it probably has more daylight scenes than any of the recent Batman movies). All I can add to the litany of praise heaped on the film are my own, mostly geography-related observations. For one, it appears that Gotham is both a city and a state (or perhaps a city-state) since all of the cars in the movie had Gotham licenses plates. These license plates look very similar to those of the State of Illinois, which leads me to my second observation - Gotham City looks a lot like Chicago in this movie. As it turns out, most of the movie was filmed in Chicago. I thought it was kind of strange, since I had always assumed that Gotham City was a synonym for New York City, but as it turns out, the real-life location of Gotham has been a subject of considerable debate for quite some time. This isn't a case of slopping filmmaking however, Christopher Nolan, the director of the Dark Knight, deliberately used Chicago as the prototype for the Gotham City of his movies. Finally, (mini spoiler alert) I thought that scene at the beginning of the movie where the Joker shows up at a meeting of Gotham's criminal underground was a subtle reference to the 1960s Batman movie, but I'm not sure if that's something that a director like Nolan, who has succeeded brilliantly at rescuing the Batman franchise from its descent into camp and idiocy in the late 90s, would even want to do.

Wardrobe Malfunction

I really enjoy biking to work, but scrambling to stuff my backpack with a change of clothes before heading out the door had been a bit of an issue. On Monday, I forgot to bring a change of socks, so I had to wear my loafers with my white athletic socks. Today, I remembered the socks but forgot my shoes. Thank goodness for the relaxed dress code of the 21st century office.

IZSM

I've been listening to a lot of IZSM lately, a band that I recently discovered on last.fm. I'm particularly enamored by a tune called Izmus, which you can download (legitimately) here, if you're interested. I don't really know a whole lot about the band, other than that they're from Venezuela. The have a MySpace page, of course, but it's in Spanish. Two of their MySpace friends are Living Colour and Vernon Reid, which is a strong endorsement, at least in my book.

Collective Bargaining

If nothing else, the opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics sure featured a lot of people. At the time, I joked that it was simply due to China's huge population; they have so many people that every square inch of space is occupied. My second, slightly less lame take on that joke was that it was an immense make-work project. Anyone who has ever visited China should know what I mean; transactions that usually only require a single salesperson in US seem to require two or three in China. Leave it to David Brooks to see something more sinister at work. He sees the opening ceremony as a collectivist challenge to the individualism of the west. Whether or not he saw the same threat to western values during the opening ceremonies of the 1998 Nagano Olympics, the 1972 Sapporo Olympics, or the 1964 Tokyo games, all of which took place in Japan, a country with a culture that is much more suspicious of individuality than China, he doesn't say. I suspect that you getting a better insight into what he's thinking if you replace collectivism with another -ism beginning with c, but that also doesn't really work since China wouldn't be hosting the Olympics right now if they hadn't decided to start ditching most of their communist economic system 30 years ago.

This piece, along with this rebuttal from The Economist, tie in well with the book that I just finished reading, Edward O. Wilson's On Human Nature. Wilson's thesis echoes The Economist's view that humans across all cultures generally act in their own best interest. Furthermore, Wilson argues that there is a common genetic basis that constrains the full range of human social behavior and that cultures can change quickly under the right conditions and humans can quickly adapt to different cultures. In fact, two of the examples that he used to demonstrate humanity's cultural flexibility involved Chinese immigrant populations in Jamaica and Guyana.

On Human Nature is as heavy as its title implies, but it was still a fascinating read. Had I had the proper amount of time to dedicate to it, I certainly could have read it from cover to cover in one sitting. The book is now 30 years old, but as far as I can tell, still incredibly relevant. I picked this book up because my interest in evolution and evolutionary psychology has been sparked over the past few years by all of the intelligent design nonsense that's been in the news. It has certainly motivated me to learn more about science in general and evolution in particular and I hope that it's had a similar effect on others.

Smoke of the Water

August 2 | 10:20 pm | Providence, RI

Air Supply

With the Beijing Olympics officially getting underway today, there have been plenty of stories in the news about the air quality (or the complete lack thereof) in Beijing. I certainly noticed the pollution when I visited China last fall, but it didn't really affect me physically. Had I not been able to see the haze, I don't think that I would have noticed that the air quality was any worse than a typical American city. Of course, I didn't attempt any strenuous physical activity while I was over there. The morning we left Shanghai, there was a road race going on right in front of our hotel. Although the air quality hadn't bothered me up to that point, the idea of running a 5K in the middle of Shanghai did make me feel a little queasy. In a strange way, I was almost disappointed that I didn't find breathing the air in China as uncomfortable as I thought I would. It's been such a big story for so long that it's almost become a tourist attraction.

Unleash the Beast

I've been laughing all day at this lame joke from today's installment of The Box of Paperbacks Book Club that for all intents and purposes, I shouldn't even understand. It's a recycled joke from some 1980s hack comedian whose name has been lost to the ages. Ready for it? What does HBO stand for (ca. mid 1980s)? Hey!, Beastmaster's on! Beastmaster, of course, is a 1980s sci-fi/fantasy movie that was in heavy rotation on cable during my childhood, but I've never actually seen the movie. I think I knew some people who were big fans of the movie, but I'm not even sure. For whatever reason, I've always found Beastmaster amusing, and I watched so much bad stand-up comedy on basic cable in the late 80s/early 90s that I can picture in my head the exact kind of comedian who would make a joke like this one.