On dinner
Marcus and I had dinner tonight; hummus, pomegranate chicken, and the Levantine meat tart. On the receipt? “1 Hum 1 Pom 1 MT.” Ha.
Before
A chronicle of an American lifeArchive for Random
Aviation security
I rarely do this, but I’m simply going to link to a New York Times weblog posting from a commercial pilot. While he doesn’t do a whole lot in the way of positive suggestions for security, he does kick the legs out from under several of the ridiculous security measures currently in place in the US. I was surprised to learn that while pilots and flight attendants must go through the metal detectors, ramp workers and others who have direct access to the planes undergo only sporadic security checks. It’s long, but it’s a good screed and a good read.
Oh God, I’m propagating the blogosphere echo chamber.
Yes, I really do think it’s terrible
CNN reports the Gap Corporation was shocked by reports that a subcontractor in India used child slave labor to make clothes. The report is heartbreaking, especially in 2007. However, it speaks for itself, leaving me to comment on something else I found shocking.
What on Earth is CNN reporter Alina Cho wearing??? It’s a shapeless mufti with two freaky Band-Aid/buckles haphazardly sewn over the shoulder. Didn’t she realize this was a story about clothes? Or — chillingly — is she one of the victims, too?
Count the rings
Citibank loves to send junk e-mails. Today I got one telling me, “There’s a safer way to handle your account,” and it included the picture below. Nothing else referred to safety or information security, so I assume the “safe handling” is some kind of cute joke.
Citibank says this “tree,” which almost certainly is now dead, will do wondrous things for all of us. If only I agree to switch to paperless statements, Citibank will go right ahead and plant a “tree” like the one in this person’s hand.
Well, that’s not so novel, I thought, but look what the tree does. “To put things in perspective, over a 50-year lifetime, one tree will generate $31,250 worth of oxygen, recycle $37,500 worth of water, and control $31,250 worth of soil erosion.” It adds up to exactly $100,000.
Are they serious??? First of all, if they are, I would be getting out of the banking business and right into the tree-owning business. Also, how much does oxygen cost these days? I should call down to the local Praxair, I bet you can get a whole ton of it for thirty-one thousand. Maybe they don’t know about this tree-sprig racket yet. Should I be trusting this bank with my credit rating?
P.S. Nobody told me how much CO2 Citibank’s paperless data centers put out.
The Sixth Circuit, part 1
This one is for Mr. McNeely.
Rick, did you know that our Sixth Circuit adjoins the Eighth, Seventh, Fifth, Eleventh, Fourth, and Third Circuits? That’s more neighbors than any other circuit! We really are the heart of it all.
The unbearable unnaturalness of being
The organization DC Vote has put up a documentary movie on its web site called “Un-Natural State.” It’s worth the eight minutes. (You can also get a teacher’s worksheet because the video apparently complies with Washington ninth grade history and government class standards.)
If you watch this video, you’re going to learn two shocking things.
First, that DC Vote thinks we should rewrite our Constitution so our government can be more like Venezuela’s.
Secondly, that there is a guy who is the United States Senator for the District. I think it is so cute that Washington has a Senator! And, he’s a white former New Yorker!
If you do watch it, let me know what you think. The best part is when 35 seconds in, the narrator asks, “Are things really as they seem?” It’s quite ominous; the shot of birds flying over the head is pure Hitchcock.
Boldface names IV
Here it is, the famous boldface names entry. Enjoy!
This was the first year in a long time I haven’t been able to issue my usual “Declaration of Spring” to my former counterpart Brian Foster at Nationwide in person. However, the digital version will have to do. Therefore, Brian, it is now Spring! (For the uninitiated, I always decide it’s spring ridiculously early, then complain to people that they’re still wearing their coats. This is to compensate for all the weeks where people tease me about what I’m wearing. Even when it gets back down to zero, I steadfastly maintain that spring has arrived. It’s part of my English stubbornness.)
Yesterday I re-watched The Fog of War, the Oscar-winning documentary about Robert McNamara. It’s surprising how much of that movie is applicable to today’s current Iraq conflict. Based on some of the statements, I doubt McNamara would want to be involved in our war. The most salient part, I thought, was when he told the story of meeting the North Vietnamese at a dinner in the 1990’s. McNamara explains that from the American perspective, the Vietnam War was a cold-war conflict we fought as a proxy. But the Vietnamese, he said, just saw us as the substitute for the French colonialists. The man he talked to said, “You have to think about the war from our perspective. We were never going to give up!” McNamara said that was a fundamental problem with US thinking about the war. I don’t need to spell it out for you — do today’s Iraqis think we’re colonizers rather than liberators?
Speaking of Oscars, I’m still trying to figure out what to wear to local celebrity Kevin Wood’s Oscar party this Sunday. We’ve been told to wear something from the movies, and since my mom threw out my tiara in 1996, I cannot go as The Queen. I hate these costume parties. I always was the person going to Halloween as a fifth-grader or “someone who does not celebrate Halloween.”
My whole life has changed (as previously detailed). I am no longer at Nationwide, so I have whole new adventures and stories to relate (all of which can never be told, sadly, since there’s a thing called confidentiality). I do something new and interesting every day, which I love. My days at the court are nice and contemplative; my days at the law firm are absolutely full. At both places I have baby cases that I can kind of call “mine,” although somebody with a law license actually reads, corrects, and signs everything I turn out. I’m becoming a better writer every week because I am getting constant review and feedback. My life has become so much richer and I feel very confident this was the right thing to do. It’s funny, I don’t even think about Nationwide any more. (I thought I’d be battle-scarred coming out of there, but some days it feels like it never happened.)
Finally, no entry would be complete without a shout out to Jim Fields, who gave us his old bread maker as a last resort in the carb wars. We now turn out oddly-shaped loaves of bread every week. Things are so good these days.
Kodawarisan
Why not check out this web site describing the madness surrounding the distribution of “Lucky Bags” at the Apple Store in Japan? You’ll be linked to the Google Japanese language translator, which is part of the fun. As the translation helpfully suggests, “With Lucky Bag of Apple Store, it is delightful, full New Year.” (Apple made up some grab bags full of random goodies that people could buy at a deep discount. But you don’t know what you’re getting until you’ve bought it.) Who could resist “being piled up with the queue before [paruko], hall muscle of mayhem”?
“Your rent is 78 months overdue”
Where have I been, you ask? Working! Only this time I’ve been working at, like, my job, not at school. We are putting out a major new web site and it has been a frantic push to finish the job on time. By my calculations I worked 70 hours last week. It actually is more draining than final exams, which are rapidly approaching whether I like it or not.
I’ve decided that when food rots in the fridge, it’s very psychically damaging. When food goes bad, for me it’s more like a betrayal. I look in there, I see a never-touched bag of salad greens or box of strawberries that one time held such promise — I feel such disappointment, like my children, they desert me. It hurts. It also doesn’t help that Officially De-Trucked Country Boy Arnie continues to buy these items, thusly compounding my sorrow and anguish. There are two walleye filets in there. We were informed, he says, that they would last only two days. I attempted to hide my emotions, but an arch remark escaped my lips. The walleye lie there, stillborn, markers of what never would be.
Fortunately we are seeing “eye” to “eye” on other issues — take the Pet Shop Boys, for example. So I happen to think Fundamental (and remix album Fundamentalism!) are some of the best CDs ever released in the last hundred years. I purchased about $100 of import singles through the mail — some new stuff, some old stuff. Arnie liked Flamboyant so much he had to hear it twice! Fundamental is quite the album. The first single was I’m With Stupid, about the love relationship between G. W. Bush and Tony Blair; “No one understands me / where I’m coming from / why would I be with someone who’s obviously so dumb?” The other great lines are “fly across the ocean / just to let you get your way” and “Do we really have a relationship so special in your heart?” Everything on the album is good. Buy it.
In other news, I guess I realize what a computer dork I still am, and I like it. Just today I ran into somebody in the hallway who wanted to know if I still liked IT as much as law, and I wound up teaching her AJAX in a nutshell, and actually got all excited! I also ran across an old 3.2GB drive and thought I’d put it into my ancient Pentium II Linux beater box, Passaic. (All my hardware is named after Jersey places.) Well it turned out to be the hard drive I used in college, and I found all this awesome Win98 stuff on it. “You last defragmented this drive 2,528 day(s) ago.” It has the NeoPlanet browser installed and I’ve got the horrible “Active Desktop” running now. I’m using the old “baseball” theme with the swinging bat instead of the hourglass. After I upgraded it to IE 6 I was able to run Windows Update. I need to run 25 critical updates and there are 40 more patches!
This is nothing. Last week I also decided to drag the old beloved TRS-80 Model III out of the basement and I found some of the old programs — Android Nim, computer bridge, and even CompuServe, that you had to use with the 300 baud external modem (in ANS or ORIG mode, please). Even ORCH-90 is there. It is so awesome.
And finally, last week I was also elected President of the Board of Trustees of the Connextions Lofts Homeowners’ Association. I am elated to be serving the building in this capacity! I advanced a capital plan that outlines spending almost $50,000 in improvements for our building, which should really improve the appearance and value of the units here. And, I got to meet some of my neighbors including the person who bought the unit next door. It was a great time and I look forward to a great year.