Tags: computer, dc, hotel, pr0n
Posted at 10:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
September 20, 2007
Upcoming whereabouts
Next week finds me in and around the District of Columbia. Any readers local to the area who would like to assert that I am or am not a basement-dwelling, mouth-breathing introvert are invited to contact me.
I'm excited about the week, actually. I'll be presenting at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities on Tuesday. Here's all the detail. Should be a good little session at a place that is doing amazing work. Drop by if you can.
Wednesday midday I will be in Charlottesville at the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities in some meetings. I've had a bit of a crush on IATH since grad school so I'm pleased to finally be visiting it via some medium other than the web.
Later in the week I will be manning a booth at the Congressional Black Caucus back in DC. There'll be big news out of that, but right now mum's the word.
By the way, for those of you using Dopplr you can always find my current travels there. Great for serendipitous meet-ups. I have a few invites left, if you're not in on the beta.
Posted at 8:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
July 30, 2007
Soggy Olde England
Some of you are rightfully panicked that I've turned this blog into a long form writing exercise. What is this, some kind of Twitter-inspired backlash, you must be thinking. (In fact, the previous post generated some feedback which taught me a new acronym. TLDR: Too Long Didn't Read.)
But worry not! I'm just back from a week in the UK and I'd like to prove that I can summarize it in minimalist fashion.
Duration: July 23-28
Locations visited: Southampton, Locks Heath, Hursley, London, Winchester, Portsmouth
Best pint (including pints 2-4): HSB (Horndean Special Bitter)
Most authentic pub/Highest odds target for health-and-safety inspection: Newport Inn, Braishfield
Best restaurant: Wykeham Arms, Winchester
Best curry/laxative: Masala Zone, London
Quaintest lodge: King's Head, Hursley
Most frequently visited location by mistake: Marwell Zoological Park
Best thing about roundabouts: convenient u-turn opportunities for lost motorists
Worst thing about roundabouts: lost motorists
Funniest thing said to me: “Put your umbrella away. This is England.”
Most agreeable thing said to me: “Sir, we're very full today so we've upgraded you to First Class.”
Worst realization: last train out of London doesn't stop at the station I left my car at in Southampton
Near death experiences driving on left side of road while glancing at iPhone maps: 214
New factoid: trespassing is not, in itself, illegal in England
Old factoid: it rains a lot in England
Great factoid: when the US carrier fleet docks at Portsmouth for shore leave $10,000,000 is spent in a weekend (and London loses all its prostitutes temporarily)
One term that is not used in the UK: “teeter-totter”
Worst aspect of trip: the pound-to-dollar exchange rate
Strangest moment: American introducing Brits to the Utilikilt, Survival version
OK, that's it. See, I can be brief.
Posted at 5:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
June 8, 2007
Better than Information Superhighway, I suppose
Spotted at the St. Petersburg airport. I'd like to say this ad is from 1999, when the term cyberspace at least had a degree of currency. Alas, no. It is new. Someone somewhere thought this was a good idea. Cyberspace. Sheesh! The term was awful even when it didn't sound dated.
Sidenote: St. P's airport is called Pulkovo II. Like a sequel. Revenge of the Airport.
Tags: advertising, cyberspace, hermitage, museum
Posted at 10:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
June 5, 2007
Midnight in St. Petersburg
Like a light-bathed chicken I have been laying eggs around the clock.
Tags: canal, russia, saintpetersburg, whitenights
Posted at 1:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
May 12, 2007
Travelogue
Just a short note to let readers know that there's a new site section ready in advance of my trip to Italy this summer. Actually it is just a dressed up category archive, but well-dressed I must say. The Return to Barile subsite will collect all my posts on the homecoming (and there are many already queued). It also includes some background on the whole thing, an interactive map, and links to photos and such. These extras of course are only available on the site. Sorry, feedreaders! Obviously it will fill up quite a bit more as the trip nears and proceeds.
Enjoy: Return to Barile.
Tags: barile, italy, travelogue
Posted at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
May 3, 2007
Calling him out
This is classic.
From ChicagoSports.com:
The Lilly-Piniella incident was one for the books. Lilly [the pitcher] had slipped on a bunt attempt for the second time when Piniella [the coach] gave him some unsolicited advice.[Lilly recalls the walk to the mound.] “I suggested to him, almost like football, 'You better change your spikes,' ” Piniella said. “Then I went out there and he said, 'Skip, your zipper is down.' ”
A quick check by Piniella revealed Lilly was correct.
If you're gonna get yanked from the game for sucking you might as well needle the man in charge, no?
And if you're wondering where all the posts have gone of late, fear not. The Italy adventure is consuming much of my time ... and soon will yours.
Tags: chicago, cubs, dialogue, funny
Posted at 7:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
April 20, 2007
“Nice, but a little weird”
I've been in Los Alamos, New Mexico helping Steve Delahoyde from Coudal Partners on their latest short film project 72°. The original idea was to travel here to scope the Black Hole museum/junkyard/post-nuclear monument for vintage computing equipment. Scope we did, and find we did. The pieces we need are huge, dirty, and packed into a dark aisle crammed with decrepit gizmos. If we end up using them for the film we might have to do so on (or near) location. Would cost a fortune to transport.
We also decided to do a little side documentary on the town itself. The place is amazingly normal on the surface ... a little too normal. Think Pleasantville or The Truman Show. It is a company town through and through, but one in which the ties that bind are not as simple as, say, in a Ford factory town. Secrecy and security are pervasive. Perched on a hill with virtually no crime, Los Alamos also boasts a higher IQ per capita than just about anything but the smallest university town.
Steve writes:
It's a town that has seen hardly any population growth since the 1950s. It's a place where nearly everyone who goes to school here leaves. It's a place where few people are allowed to talk about what they do for a living. It's a place that has the largest average income of any town in the country, yet the retail sector is a shambles and few businesses survive.
Naturally we had to find out more. We spent two days interviewing anyone we could get our hands on. Merchants, teachers, lab employees and retirees, museum docents and even the town peace “kook”. (He's no kook.) You never quite know what you're going to get when you walk up to someone and ask to mic and video them, but almost to a person the interviews surprised and enlightened us.
- The merchant who fields angry requests from townspeople not to sell a tourist t-shirt with a mushroom cloud on it.
- The Los Alamos native who returned (a rare act) to teach geology at the high school and who sees an upside to the devastating fire in 2001 that denuded nearby mountainsides: easier access to rocks.
- The retired physicist working at the hardware store who remembers a Japanese couple thanking him at the science museum for Los Alamos' role in ending WWII.
- The irate lab employee who can't believe the rest of the country doesn't know (or care) about the fact that the laboratory is now a for-profit venture run by a consortium apart from the US government.
- The man who sees little difference between the fire that spread out of control after being deliberately set by forestry officials and the consequences of nuclear arms proliferation.
We're looking forward to sharing these amazing stories with you, as Steve works to edit the many hours into a coherent piece. For now, here are two video snippets: postcard one and postcard two. As always you can follow the main film's progress at the 72° blog.
See also: The discards of Los Alamos
Tags: computing, film, losalamos, newmexico
Posted at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
April 19, 2007
“Lots goes in, very little comes back out”
The return to The Black Hole.
Tags: losalamos, museum, newmexico, nuclear, waste
Posted at 1:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
April 11, 2007
“When possible make a legal u-turn.”
I'm a sucker for rental car GPS, even when I know pretty well where I am going. This was recently a problem.
Two nights ago I had to travel from JFK to White Plains, NY -- a trip I'd never made previously. Easy, right? Well, not so easy when the Hertz Neverlost demands that you exit on the Hutchinson expressway when that exit is closed for repairs. So I exited as soon as I could and figured I'd just find somewhere else to get on the Hutch. As I drove around sidestreets, frontage roads, and massive mall parking lots -- which are cartographic black holes to the GPS -- the unit kept recalculating, recalculating. But each time it forced me right back to the closed exit.
OK, fine. Reset. Choose “Least Use of Freeways.” Recalculating, recalculating. Right back to the !@#$% closed exit. At this point it became comical because it dawned on me that I would have to deliberately get lost. Really lost. Really far away from the right path -- all in order to force the GPS unit to calculate a path that bypassed the closed exit. And this I did. Getting lost in NYC is not particularly difficult, of course, but the sheer density of interconnected streets makes getting sufficiently, distantly lost a challenge. It worked and I travelled through some very quaint, eerily quiet towns on my way upstate. To add insult to inury the device actually started telling me to turn in the opposite direction from what the map (and logic) clearly demonstrated.
Of course, I had a printed map in the passenger seat the whole time. But I showed that GPS unit who was in charge, yessir.
Tags: directions, gps, hertz, maps
Posted at 9:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
March 27, 2007
Security perverts
An open letter to depraved male travelers who are titillated by security procedures at airports:
Sirs, I know you travel a lot. Travel is tough. Long days and nights away from your significant other. This is understood and I empathize. But this does not give you the right to turn the airport security checkpoint into a private fantasy.
Here are some tips:
- Partial disrobing in proximity to a woman doing the same does not constitute foreplay.
- The woman in front of you definitely does not find it funny or novel when you snicker "Any more clothes into the bin and this would be R rated!"
- Barefoot does not mean nude.
- There is nothing you could possibly want to see going on behind that curtain there. Just move on.
- A blouse is not an overgarment so settle down there, Sparky.
- You may not choose who gives you a patdown. Also, there is no patdown with release.
If you absolutely need your fix of TSA-inspired turn-on, I recommend the Internet. I am quite certain there is a niche fetish forum devoted to this sort of thing.
Thank you for your understanding.
Technorati Tags: airport, security, fetish
Posted at 9:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
February 18, 2007
Питер 2.0
I've been back in St. Petersburg, Russia this week, my first visit in seven years. Much has changed, nearly all for the better.
The flight over on Lufthansa was pleasant as the snowstorm in Chicago kept most of the passengers at home. Lufthansa has recently overhauled its seats, providing in-seat power without needing any special adapters. The plug universally accepts nearly all global standard plugs. Why can't more airlines do without the funky connector, I ask? There's even an in-seat Ethernet port which briefly got my hopes up, but, no, the Boeing Connexion service remains shut-off. You know, it's not like they de-orbited all the satellites. Why won't some enterprising soul purchase them and reinstate in-flight connectivity? Please?
St. Petersburg is bustling. In 2003 the city celebrated its 300th anniversary and clearly it got spruced up for the event. The colorful, stuccoed facades of nearly all city buildings, gorgeous even back in the doldrums of the 90's, are a vibrant pastel confection that contrasts wonderfully with the permagray of the sky and frozen canals. The uptick in the economy is visible nearly everywhere.
I stayed at a relatively new hotel, the Novotel, just off the arterial Nevsky Prospekt. It was adequate, if quaintly backward in its attempt to be a modern western business hotel. Internet connectivity was purchased by the byte, about a rouble per MB. I had no idea what to purchase, though I quickly learned that one eats up 100MB (the default purchase) without even thinking. I actually complained about it, thinking there's no way I used 100MB over an evening of e-mail checking and web surfing. And yet, I've probably purchased close to 3/4 GB of throughput since I've been here. (And they raised prices 50% in the middle of my stay!) The hotel gym was pathetic: two flimsy bikes, one treadmill with a tread that slipped dangerously, an elliptical (broken), and two weight machines that looked like Ivan Drago castoffs from the 1980's. Old-style Russian hotel amenities are still available, of course: prostitutes prowl the lobby bar late into the night offering “company” should you so desire.
Speaking of love for sale, I arrived on Valentine's Day. This Hallmark holiday seems to have ridden the globalization wave nicely. My colleague and I could find no place to eat due to holiday “specials” at nearly every restaurant. We were actually waved off from a few restaurants before even getting to the host. But still, there's an abundance of new places to eat. (And not a Starbucks in sight. My colleague drinks decaf coffee and was repeatedly stymied.) Fewer restaurants exhibit the once-standard pole-dancing entertainment, also a plus. No really, it is not so easy to dine with a topless waif sliding up and down a pole to throbbing Russopop. But, replacing vice-for-vice, nearly every restaurant we went to featured hookah pipes. (There's no such thing as a non-smoking section in practice.) Shisha is amazingly popular here. Not only can you order dozens of flavored tobaccos, but you get options for the liquid in the chamber: water, cognac, wine, juice and even milk.
The beauty of the city is remarkable, given how ugly winter tries to make it. Slushy black snow covers every sidewalk. Dangerous ice slicks mark regular distances between building downspouts that empty right into the public walkways. And yet, the ice can be gorgeous. The Neva river is frozen solid with a small path broken through for the occasional intrepid watercraft. Each morning the path had formed a thin layer of ice on it, a scabbed laceration down the middle of the blindingly white river.
Nightclubs power the evenings here, as they do in Moscow and, according to a Russian pal, in Kiev. (He could simply not say enough about the supermodel-caliber club-life of Kiev these days.) The music seems a touch better than it did back when I first visited. It is still clogged with House-inspired Russian cheese, but I think there's hope. We returned to an old haunt known to me only as the “Thursday club” because that's when we'd visit it in years past. I finally asked what the real name of the club was. In passable-English my friend said “it is like a whore's house.” Ah, I see. And all these years I just liked to drink Baltika beer there and dance. Only later did I learn that he said “like a horse's house.” The club occupies a former stable, you see. It is right in front of the amazing Church on the Spilled Blood. Bathed in floodlights, the traditional Russian church never fails to strike awe when you stumble from the club in the wee hours.
We had a bit of free time on Saturday so we set out for the Bolshoi Puppet Theater. Everything was in Russian. We had no idea what we were watching. But it was fun to see a full-scale production done with puppets. The skill required was considerable and it was a pleasure to hear the hall full of kids chuckle. (Also a little depressing as both my colleague and I have small children at home. If you want to be instantly homesick, go sit amongst several hundred happy children in a foreign country.) The theater itself was a fire hazard waiting to happen. When the house lights went down it was absolutely pitch black. No aisle lighting, no exit signs. Children wailing. Panic could have ignited quickly. Instead, a puppet show started.
Keeping with the kid theme, we attended the St. Peterburg Circus. This circus is the oldest in Russia. It was in a stunning but dilapidated hall off the Fontanka quay and provided a theater-in-the-round for its one-ring show. I hadn't been to a circus in many decades and yet the mixture of delight and horror as the entertainers performed death- (or least serious injury-) defying acts came right back to me, like I was eight years old. Everything was just a little bit shabby. The auditorium, the performers' outfits, the ropes and pulleys that prevented human splattering in the ring -- it all seemed a little worse for the wear. One wonders if there is any kind of circus safety review board in Russia. Most depressing of all were the animals. On the one hand it was the most diverse bestiary I've ever seen. To the typical circus menagerie were added porcupines, foxes, ostriches, rats, and at least two species of critters I could not identify. (Though no elephants and much to my chagrin no bears. C'mon, aren't Russian circuses supposed to have bears?) But the big cats, horses, and dogs were all mangy and old and a few of them looked actually injured or arthritic. I'm not saying they were abused -- at least not in the ring and at least insofar as being in a ring isn't taken to be abuse -- but clearly they were past their prime, just like the lion-tamer and his assistant, actually.
It is interesting to compare this mini-rebirth with the tempest of development going on in Beijing right now. St. Petersburg seems to be upgrading where Beijing is building an entirely new infrastructure. At least most of Питер was recognizable seven years on. I can hardly get my bearings in Beijing after even a few months away.
Of course, I was in town working with the fantastic Hermitage Museum. It too seems to be on the uptick with long-needed signage enhancements and halls packed with visitors. But more on this topic later.
A small photoset is available.
UPDATE: Yikes, maybe I spoke too soon. Just hours after I wrote this and left town a bomb went off across the street from my hotel, injuring six. Details here.
See also: Return to the Hermitage
Tags: russia, saintpetersburg
Posted at 2:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
February 17, 2007
Imperium
In the past year I've visited the seats of power of three empires -- the Russian, Chinese Qing, and Turkish Ottoman -- that all imploded in the first 25 years of the 20th century. The imperial palaces have become public museums known today as the Hermitage, Forbidden City, and Topkapi Palace, respectively.
All are struggling to make themselves relevant to the public, but almost invariably this comes from trying to make their aesthetic opulence available to a wider audience. Little energy is expended on explaining what the palaces meant in the larger sense of empire. While amazing places to visit, these sites are mostly wunderkammer tableaux, not devices for telling the tale of conquest, governance, and power that they really represent.
In all of them there exists a room with a throne carefully roped off and preserved for curious tourists to admire. Certainly it is interesting to see where heads of state sat, but it may be done for political reasons too. The throne is such a symbol of power -- autocratic power -- that its vacancy is comforting in a way, a reminder of a past to take some pride in, but not to repeat.
It is a fine line. These cultures don't necessarily seem to want to glorify the past form of government. The Forbidden City for instance was only saved from destruction during the Cultural Revolution by a forward-thinking Zhou Enlai. But there's a latent pride. An acknowledgment in the empire-as-museum that theirs was a great country once and perhaps can be again.
Of course, there's irony in the way each of these countries govern today. Two are democracies with extremely powerful heads of state, one is a communist country with imperial ambitions of a different sort. There's more continuity between what the palaces represent and how the nations wish to be viewed globally today than you might think, methinks.
Will Capitol Hill one day be subsumed into the Smithsonian megaplex on the mall? A democratic palace-museum ode to a former mode of government?
See also: This is no country for old men and Regeneration
Posted at 9:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
February 16, 2007
No, this is winter
I left town on Tuesday during an apocalyptic snowstorm for St. Petersburg, Russia -- one of the few destinations from O'Hare with less clement weather than Chicago. It's pretty damn cold.
Bungeed-comforter, makeshift paw-mittens, and some green spray-paint on the head just to make it more bizarre.
See also: Now this is winter
Posted at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
February 8, 2007
In the future we will all levitate to work
I had a chance to ride the world's only operational magnetic levitation train this week in Shanghai. It was the highlight of an otherwise awful layover. The train itself runs from Pudong airport to the terminus of one of the city subway lines (not exactly downtown Shanghai). There's some debate about how useful this is to actual travelers, but as a way of killing time it was perfect for me. I purchased a roundtrip ticket.
Actually I purchased a VIP ticket. (They love the designation VIP here. You see it everywhere on special doors, stairways, and parking spaces.) I thought, if I'm going to ride a space-age train I am certainly going to do it in first class. In a future of jet packs, flying cars, and supertrains we'll all be VIP's anyway so I better get practicing. The cost difference was $2. The actual difference? Slightly nicer seats and a completely empty car cabin.
There's a brief shudder as the train shimmies up the half-inch that the magnets levitate it above the track. Then off you go, mostly silently. Since the means of propulsion and power are embedded in the track (the magnets pull you along as well as prop you up) there's no loud onboard engine. You accelerate quickly. Not unlike an airplane takeoff without the din. Just a few minutes in you're moving at 430 km/h (270 mph) and you can feel it. The slightest jostle (and it has to be slighter than the half-inch tolerance of the magnetic “cushion”) and the train responds. You could not, for instance, play Jenga successfully on board. Still it is damn smooth for going 270 mph.
But you do wonder what would happen in the event of catastrophe. On an airplane there's room for error, approximately 30,000 feet of room for error; you can recover. On a train moving at this speed if you depart the track you're basically done. What happens if someone dumps a large chunk of metal on the track? Or a mini-cyclone blows the train over? Or a power spike into the track torus? (There actually was a fire onboard recently.) All thoughts that have nicely counteracted my recent preoccupation with air disasters.
On the return leg I was in the front car (again alone, the sole VIP of a future society). I staggered to the conductor's cabin as we hit max speed. Peering in I saw exactly what I expected -- computer screens and a panel of buttons -- and something I did not -- the conductor lounging at the desk reading the newspaper. She's likely there for show only. Or a robot. In the future, trains are conducted by robots, as you probably know.
As you pass a maglev going the other direction there's a super-brief concussive moment where too much air is being displaced from too little space. It makes you jump. Unfortunately the eight minute journey is almost half acceleration/deceleration. When you arrive at the destination station and disembark you're greeted by a strong burning smell. I can only guess it is a byproduct of the magnetism since nothing should be ablated during the journey. Nothing touches anything. This is the future, damnit.
The maglev, officially known as the Shanghai Transrapid, is usually called a demonstration line. It doesn't go anywhere very useful right now, though there are many ideas for expansion, especially in advance of the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. The whole experience, while fascinating and exciting, was a bit depressing. With the small ridership (all in non-VIP class) it all felt like a bit of a show. Sort of like the futuristic people mover underneath the Huangpu River. Fun to take, but how practical? A Disney monorail without the Disney crowds (or high ticket price to offset the cost of running such a novelty).
The future's always a novelty to the present though, isn't it?
The full image set is available.
Posted at 2:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
February 3, 2007
“All four engines have failed”
I've been obsessed with plane crashes lately. No, obsessed isn't right. Oppressed, maybe? I seem to be encountering information about air horror wherever I turn. Always nice before a series of trans-oceanic flights.
A few weeks ago I watched Superman Returns. The Man of Steel says to the passengers of a wingless jumbo jet he's just safely landed, “I hope this incident hasn't put you off flying. Statistically speaking it is still the safest way to travel.” It is a direct lift of a line Christopher Reeves also uttered in the original Superman from 1978. Certainly true, but for me it fails the truthiness test.
Then, as I babysat my computer during a marathon session of video rendering, aimlessly clicking through Wikipedia, I landed on Aviation accidents and incidents (part of the hell's-gateway-esque Disasters Portal). Browsing through the air disasters really was like rubbernecking a car accident. I couldn't turn away. I read every article in there. Airshow accidents, In-flight airliner explosions, Midair airliner crashes, Deliberate airline crashes, Fuel exhaustion on commercial airliners ... the subcategories are scarily unique and many.
What you start to realize is: Damn, there are a lot of disasters where we don't really know what happened. And then, once that's sunk in: Damn, I'm surprised this doesn't happen more often. There are some fascinating incidents. The jet that ditched in the Neva River in St. Peterburg, Russia without a single loss of life. The mentally-ill Japanese pilot who deliberately crashed on landing. And the worst of all collision of two 747's on Tenerife in 1977.
Then -- somehow, I wasn't specifically looking -- I stumbled upon this video of Boeing testing the structural limitation of the 777 wing. They found it. (And if I am ever in a plane with a wing bent like that I will have involuntarily evacuated my bowels well before structural failure, yessiree.)
Then yesterday, this story of a 747 that lost all four engines and actually landed safely. It is a terrifying tale. Again, I was not searching. I must be unconsciously sifting these things out of my feed reader or something.
And finally, gallows humor. This artwork/concept for a crash landing pillow that gives you the option of suffocating yourself before crashing. For the true control freak, you may now take charge of your own death, flaming airframe be damned. You know, it's said that the only reason you're told to put your head between your knees during a crash is so that your dental records stay as close as possible to the seat number for identification.
Anyway. Not sure what this obsession is all about. It would be one thing if I were actively hunting this information out, but I'm not. I feel like I'm in an M. Night Shyamalan flick.
I depart Monday.
Tags: airplane, crash, disaster
Posted at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
December 26, 2006
Places 2006
My travails travels this year. Defined as any place I've stayed at least a night with asterisks representing multiple visits. (Bit of a meme, isn't it?)
Albuquerque, NM
Armonk, NY*
Atlanta, GA
Austin, TX*
Beijing, China*
Chicago, IL (sweet home)
Eddyville, KY
Galena, IL*
Houston, TX
Istanbul, Turkey
New Orleans, LA
New York City, NY
Nicosia, Cyprus
Orlando, FL
Paw Paw, MI
Rockport, TX
San Jose, CA
Santa Fe, NM
Southampton, England
Washington, DC*
White Plains, NY
Tags: 2006travel
Posted at 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
December 13, 2006
Intercoastal
For Turkey Day I spent some time with the male members of my family on the now-annual fall fishing trip to coastal Texas. This was the site of last year's encounter with Larry the Fishing Guide. We hired him again. Most decent guides know where the fish are. Larry has a preternatural ability to know what the fish are doing. He reads the barely-subsurface topography of the intercoastal and can tell you why a school of drum is in this place but not 15 feet to the north. Of course, he's constantly on his cell phone with other guides so there's bit of a hive mind aspect to the local knowledge. But still. Larry's uncanny.
Larry has a great verb: “to box.” As in “Nice one, John, that'll box for sure.” As in “that fish is large enough not to get us arrested if we keep it so we can put it in our onboard freezer box.” To say “that'll box” is easier, you see.
My favorite Larry trick? He sets the drag on his poles (which we all use) to the exact tension so that if the drag lets out you know you have a fish that'll box. If the drag does not give then you'll be tossing this particular fishie back. Think about that. Drag tension varies from reel to reel and yet he is able to set the drag precisely to differentiate a 19“ redfish from a 21” redfish. It worked too.
The new experience this year was flounder gigging. You go out at night into the extreme shallows and stand at the bow of your floodlit flatboat with a trident ready to spot-and-spear the flounder. It is so primitive and, well, satisfying. There's absolutely no sport to it at all, but it is astonishing how much fun it is. It just shouldn't be, but it is. Bloody too, as the pierced, spewing flounder are arc'ed into the holding tub on the end of trident.
Actually the best part is the marine life you see. In those shallows with that much light at night you encounter herons, crabs, jellyfish, mullet, redfish, and even porpoise. In fact, for most of our evening we had a two-porpoise escort. They played off whichever side of our boat was away from shore, effectively pushing fish into even shallower water for us. Smart creatures! The flip side of this natural beauty is the clear evidence of human negligence. Propeller-scarred lanes of sand criss-cross the grassy shallows like a satellite photo of Europa. Granted, navigating the tricky waters and tides of the intercoastal is difficult*, but some of these scars were deep and suggest foolishness rather than ignorance.
It is a bit eerie too. Some people gig flounder without a boat by walking in the shallows. These die-hards trudge through the muck with a lantern powered by a car battery floating in a sytrofoam enclosure tethered to their waste. They also drag a bag of bleeding flounder. This is intrepid bordering on stupid given the sharks that patrol the same shallows. The last thing I'd want is to try to outrun a blood-crazed shark with a car battery strapped to my waist.
[*] Quote of the Trip: “John, do you know how to use a sextant?” -- father-in-law after we somehow ended up in Corpus Christi bay at night miles away from where we should have been. I am ashamed to say that I did not know how to use a sextant. But if he had an astrolabe ...
Posted at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
November 6, 2006
Fortnight
Wow, that photo of me below has been first post for way too long. Sorry about that. I suppose one could think that after the 40<40 honor I'd abandoned my blog because of the river of opportunities, mounting celebrity, and general disinterest in my long-time readers that has washed over me. But of course none of that has happened. I've just been travelling. Excuses are a dime a dozen though, so let's get on with it.
Last week I was in Cyprus -- that small island tucked into the northeast corner of the Mediterranean. Getting there was perhaps too much of the adventure. First, I could hardly find a flight. The online travel tool was at a total loss and I wasn't much help. That the country is split between a recognized entity, the Greek-dominated Republic of Cyprus, and the non-recognized Turkish region to the north, didn't help flight plans either. Add to this that the name of the capital "Nicosia" is not what Cypriots call it ("Lefkosia") and that the airport is in a different city altogether and you have a planning nightmare. But it gets better. While booking the travel agent informed me that though there were a few flights on Lufthansa coming in, there were no flights going out. Say what? Do they ship the planes off the island? While she was trying to sort this impossibility out she gladly offered up flights on a Cypriot carrier. A little voice in my head resulted in a quick googling that reminded me that, no, I'd rather not fly on a Cyprus airline. I like landing near mountains, not into them. In the end we got it all sorted out with a connection in London.
But oh the connection in London! The security procedures following on the foiled chemical explosives plot have gnarled Heathrow fiercely. The queuing clusterfuck was a thousand times worse than I've seen domestically -- and that's saying quite a lot in post-9/11 America. I ended up missing my Cyprus connection. So, I was re-routed to Frankfurt for a [pause to shudder] seven hour layover. I found a quiet corner and a reclining chair, locked my laptop to my body, and fell asleep. When it was all said and done and I was in my hotel room in Nicosia it was 5am. Just four short hours until my keynote talk at 9am. I'm told I did fine, but frankly I don't much recall it. I might as well have been drunk I was so dazed.
I didn't see much of Cyprus. Nicosia is on the interior and most of the beauty is found on the coasts, or at least that's what the throngs of Eurotourists would suggest. As a former British holding Cyprus still drives on the left, always a source of white-knuckled passenger-side terror for me. It caused me to reflect that most left-driving places in the world are actually islands, remnants of imperial road habits. This makes sense. Being islands, places like Australia, Japan, and the British Caribbean can drive however they want since their roads don't link up with right-driving roadways. But left-driving isn't only for islands. India and much of sub-Saharan Africa drive on the left. So my question is: what on earth happens when you cross the border in your car to a right-driving country? I envision a morass of confused motorists surrounded by small mountain ranges of junked vehicles that simply didn't make it. Anybody know how this works?
Part of my duties in Cyprus included meeting with prominent persons connected to cultural heritage management on the island. I had the pleasure of meeting Bishop Nikiforos of the Cypriot Church. (Greek Cyprus is Greek Orthodox, but it has a centuries-old tradition of complete autonomy from the official Greek church in Istanbul.) Nikiforos might be the next Archibishop of Cyprus depending on elections this week. It would be the equivalent of the Cypriot Pope. But he's a humble guy, really. What I didn't know is that I was supposed to kiss his hand. I didn't know because I wasn't told. I just shook his hand all American-like. Howdy, partner! My colleagues quickly did the shake-and-kiss and all I could muster was a look of complete ignorance. I couldn't even refer to him correctly. My colleagues and I spent about a half hour trying to figure out the English equivalent of the Greek honorific that is bestowed on a bishop. They kept saying I should call him "Beatitude," but I knew that didn't sound right. He wasn't a proverb. Finally we figured that I needed to address him as His Beatific, a word, yes, but not one that just rolls off the English speaker's tongue. I might have said it once, but it sounded so silly that I just mumbled and kept on talking. Frankly, I'm surprised I was let off the island for such heresy.
I missed Halloween while I was there. This was doubly bad since Halloween is one of my favorite holidays and it is the birthday of my youngest son. I mentioned this to one of my Cypriot colleagues. Clearly she felt bad about it because she secretly had the hotel create an authentic Greek toga costume for me. She even had a local florist fashion a laurel wreath from an olive plant. So, there I sat at 4am Cyprus time alone in my room waiting to videoconference with my trick-or-treating family back home hoping like hell that there was no fire emergency in the hotel. Wouldn't that have been a sight. Who's the fratboy American in the lobby?
Nicosia in many ways is a sad place. The medieval town center enclosed by beautiful Venetian walls is crudely bisected by the UN buffer zone separating the Greeks from the Turkish. The difference between the two sides is striking. Though the border is much more permeable than it used to be, the economic disparity is real and obvious. Greek Cypriot troops and the Turkish military stare each other down while UN guards maintain order. Animosity over the Turkish invasion of 1974 is so palpable and frankly stated that you'd think it happened last month. Clearly it is a wound that will take generations to heal: one of my Greek Cypriot colleagues noted that the house he grew up in in the north is now a UN depot on the first floor, a Turkish residence upstairs, and a brothel in the basement. A terrible predicament to be sure, but I couldn't shake the feeling that this was so much ado about a truly tiny place. I certainly don't have a solution, but stepping back a bit it is obvious that Cyprus is far too tiny to be split in half, especially given its historical role as a crossroad of cultures.
From Cyprus I went back to London for a few days of meetings. Turns out I showed up for Guy Fawkes Night, which is actually Guy Fawkes Weekend as far as I could tell. The country seemed to be shooting off fireworks from the moment I arrived to the moment I left. I might actually be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder the shelling was so constant. But you really must applaud a holiday based on a foiled plot to detonate parliament. One wonders what they are really celebrating -- that Guy didn't succeed or what it would have been like (BOOM!) if he had?
Waiting for my flight home I queued in back of an irate American woman demanding recompense for the $300 of cosmetics that the BAA relieved her of at Heathrow. I just shook my head and took my seat. Turns out this irate American was my seatmate. And her anger was more understandable than I had at first thought. She had all her items neatly measured and baggied, per the guidelines. When she departed Germany to make her connection in London British Airways told her that the bag was fine. Yet, in Heathrow they yanked it.
Say what you will about carrying several hundred dollars' worth of cosmetics on your person, but she had a good excuse: she was Nancy Gustafson, a professional opera singer. And not just any opera singer as I would learn over the next few hours, but one of the best, a frequent soprano collaborator with every one of the Three Tenors. My first comment was "But, but, you're not fat. Aren't you supposed to be fat?" Like she'd never heard that before. It was a fascinating conversation. Basically the top tier of opera singers have no home. They travel the world constantly. She was practicing in her seat for a Russian opera to be performed in Tokyo on Tuesday. This was made more difficult because she doesn't speak Russian and, well, belting out practice verses on an airplane is generally frowned upon. She was also suprsingly geeky, carrying a Vaio, MacBook, and Treo. And her iTunes library, whoa! Let's just say there's not a great deal of overlap with my library. She did have some pop in there, though, including the first track in the library wonderfully titled "I Don't Give a Fuck." See, even opera singers slum it sometimes. Nancy's website is down at the moment, but you can learn a bit more here.
And so, to the two of you who've made it this far: you're insane, but thanks. Must make shorter posts!
Posted at 4:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
September 16, 2006
TSA watchlist, here I come
So I'm packing for my flight to Beijing last night. I decide to wear my running shoes on the flight to Tokyo since I have a five hour layover there and can workout at a nearby gym. I get to the airport this morning and as I'm standing in line at security it hits me. These are my robo-shoes. The shoes I hacked (literally) to include the Nike+iPod pedometer. Not good.
I could see it all happening before my eyes. A vigilant TSA employee sees something odd on my shoe x-ray. He asks me to explain.
"Well, sir, see this thing in my shoe is a transmitter."
A single eyebrow raises. "Continue." He presses the silent alarm button.
"You control it from this remote here."
"OK, can you show me?"
"Sure," I say pulling out the orthotic insert. "See this is where I drilled a hole in the gel insert to put the transmitter in."
"Gel, did you say?"
Gulp.
OK so thankfully that was only a vision. But the trickier problem was finding a place in line to take my shoe off, disassemble it, and pop the transmitter out without causing a panic in the line. Hi there, excuse me, sorry to bump you -- just fishing a small device out of a hidden compartment in my shoe. Nothing to worry about.
Oh, colored terror alert scale! Is there any limit to the ways you can entertain me?
Posted at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
August 17, 2006
Mileage whore
When I was new to business travel I proudly called myself a mileage whore. I'd do just about anything for an upgrade or extra frequent flyer miles. Recently I heard a scheme from an acquaintance that puts my hijinks to shame. In fact, I think it crosses the line.
This person, let's call him FlyGuy, makes it a contractual stipulation of employment that he will use his own frequent flyer miles for normal business trips (not upgrades) if his company will reimburse him for 75% of the face ticket value. The pitch (he's a salesman) is that this saves the company 25% on every ticket. The company loves it and they do it. This is how he travels.
First things first. To me, it matters how you accumulated these miles. If they are 100% from your own out-of-pocket expenses in a way this is a fair trade. Sort of. (More on that in a second.) But the reality is that most miles are acquired through business travel, paid for by your company. FlyGuy has been with a number of companies, mostly start-ups, so his balance (I reckon) is comprised of miles originally paid for by different companies.
The point is that he is actually earning income by cashing in a "credit" obtained from money spent by an employer.
Now, you will say, this is a personal perk that is his to do with as he pleases. And if his company is willing to go along with it, what's the harm? Two things. First, FlyGuy is essentially selling a benefit given by his company back to his company. Like saying, no thanks I'll pass on the dental plan so pay me $2000 extra.
Second is the potential for abuse. Consider this scenario: You can choose between two flights to NYC. One leaves at 6AM and costs $200, the other leaves at 7AM and costs $600 (for whatever reason, discrepancies like this happen all the time). You're going to choose the $600 ticket because you'll "earn" $450 rather than $150. The frequent flyer mileage required to obtain the ticket is, presumably, identical since it is the same route. Where is the incentive to go with the lowest fare? There isn't one. The incentive now is reversed. In reality the employer may be saving 25% but paying for a more expensive base ticket than they would otherwise have to.
Airlines do offer the ability to purchase frequent flyer miles. They are pretty costly, but if you had to have a scheme like this it seems a fairer trade to have your employer pay what you'd have to pay to buy the miles rather than to buy the ticket.
I have a feeling many of the business travellers who read this blog will disagree with me. Comments welcome.
Posted at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
March 26, 2006
The discards of Los Alamos
I've spent much of the past week hearing about the latest in museum technology. There were even organized outings to the museums in and around Albuquerque for us to get a gander firsthand. Strangely none of the organized tours included The Black Hole Museum of Nuclear Waste in Los Alamos.
Run for over 50 years by a guy named Edward Grothus, the museum is more like the backlot of a Mad Max film. In fact, in an irony I am certain is not lost on Grothus the place looks exactly like some archaeology dig where future humans are uncovering the remains of a once-great society's technology after a nuclear catastrophe. He has built, in other words, that which he hopes to prevent. You might think a "museum" to the scraps of Los Alamos is some kind of reverential exercise, but there's actually a peace theme that runs throughout, as if Grothus were hoarding all this utterly useless stuff (vials of Liquid Paper!) because he doesn't want its bad karma let loose in the wild. Of course, it does get out; he sells it. But what sells can only be a tiny fraction, because most of the stuff you could simply stroll through Office Depot for. And it is reverential, in a way, as Grothus conducts a "Critical Mass" every Sunday in a huge A-frame "church" next door.
The technological gizmos are the most interesting for sure. All kinds of specialized and worrisome componentry sits amidst computers of bygone eras. It is like a library once-removed where you walk through wondering what documents, equations, and national security communiques issued from the teletypes and keyboards.
A fascinating museum, if ever there was one. Highly recommended. Bugs, I'm glad I took that left turn at Albuquerque.
Photo tour at Flickr.
Posted at 9:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Ghostface
Was the mask in the Scream trilogy inspired by a cave formation in Bandelier National Monument Park in New Mexico? It's commonly held to have been inspired by Edvard Munch's The Scream, but I'm going with the theory that Wes Craven is a hiker.
Posted at 8:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
February 4, 2006
Turkish delight
Posted at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
February 3, 2006
That is no country for old men.
Istanbul delights.
East meets West is cliche -- so how about this? If Europe and Asia were kissing, the Bosphorus would be their swapped saliva. Actually I feel less of the Asian influence and more of the Middle Eastern though certainly Westernism is dominant. I've only been here for a few days, but I have this overwhelming sense that Turkey is a key to helping the West and Islam carry on a useful conversation. Of course, as anywhere the press focuses on extremes -- at the opening today of a new anti-American Turkish film on the Iraq war a U.S. diplomat was quoted as saying it "does not purport to be a factual version of events" while an exiting moviegoer was quoted as saying it "should make Americans see why the world doesn't like them" -- but this ignores the majority between the poles. Turkey -- perhaps Istanbul only, so I generalize -- has a proud tradition of multicultural tolerance and is especially proud of its merger of Western notions of spiritual freedom and Islam. One colleague here described it to me as a "pre-secular secularism." That is, a tradition of religion being between one's self and god that pre-dates the various massive religious institutions that have called Istanbul home.
Meanwhile, the Muslim world ignites over cartoons of their prophet and the West hoists the standard of free speech. At least one member of the Turkish administration has voiced concern that freedom of speech has limits. Not having travelled extensively here and knowing that Turkey has had its share of bomb-wielding idiots I can't say I know what the populace thinks. Still, I think the mostly-happy symbiosis of occidental outlook and Muslim mores bears study as the world struggles to figure out how to to de-escalate tensions.
Two days ago I spent most of my time at the Topkapı Sarayı, palace of the Ottoman sultans from 1465 to 1853. It is an interesting complex, so much more human-scale than the Forbidden City in Beijing, though the similiarities and timeline of the twilight of the Ottoman and Qing empires is interesting to consider together. By far the most visited section of the palace is the harem. Empty, of course, the harem still captivates imagination. Almost like softcore porn, the empty rooms titillate with what might have been.
The museum halls are well done. Small selections or jewels, arms, and gifts from foreign potentates make up the majority of the collection. There is s special hall devoted to religious icons. The irony is that I had only just finished noting the Catholic obsession with saintly body part idolatry when we stumbled on the holy relics hall. There I saw pieces of the prophet Mohamed's beard, his tooth, and a foot imprint. For a religion so faithfully non-representational (see cartoon furor) this seemed all very odd to me. There was also a letter from Mohamed to the Copts (Egyptian Christians) entreating them to join his tribe and faith and, stranglely, a gold-encased severed arm of John the Baptist. In the relic room a müezzin sat in a glass-enclosure like a UN translator and sang lines from the Koran.
One of the highlights were talismanic tunics covered in the tiniest Arabic script I've ever seen. Entire books from the Koran had to be inscribed on a single shirt. An impressive and literal embodiment of the holy word. Word made flesh, so to speak.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
- WBY
Posted at 3:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
January 27, 2006
≠ Constantinople
I'm headed to Istanbul for work next week. My first time there. I've yet to meet anyone who has visited and not been bowled over by the place. Having travelled extensively in Europe and moderately in the Middle East and being a lover of nearly everything Mediterranean I am more than a little excited. I'm still trolling for tips on things to do. I'll have an entire day to myself and I plan to make the most of it. For one, I'll be searching for an authentic Turkish bath house -- a task made a little easier because of some tips I received at the Turkish consulate today.
And there you have a key difference between the Turkish consulate and its Egyptian and Chinese counterparts. The Egyptian consulate (at least in Chicago) verily prints money from travellers with their bizarre fee structure and impersonal, single bank teller-like operation. The Chinese consulate, in contrast, is massive and patrolled (currently against Falun Gong protesters). Remarkably the Chinese have brought all the splendor of Maoist architecture to the interior of their Chicago offices. By the time you reach the window you're ready to be collectivized. And do not mess with the schoolmarmish window attendant. I believe you will lose your pinky for doing so. (I wonder if consulates, like DC embassies, are technically on foreign soil and obey foreign laws?)
But the Turkish consulate was different. Open, airy, and not unlike a travel agent office. The clerk greeted me personally and led me to his office to fill out the paperwork. The detail so craved in other visa applications seemed secondary. I figured I would have to pay an expedite fee just to get my visa (and passport!) back on the day I left. But he asked if I would like it back at noon. Regular cost. Hey sure.
When I returned later in the day the clerk asked me to have a seat and tell me why I was going to Turkey. (I had no time, but I did anyway.) He was the nicest old guy, giving me tips and telling me that, unlike Chicago cops who love to ticket out-of-towners -- he specifically said people from Wisconsin -- Istanbul cops love foreigners. In retrospect I think he was either encouraging me to commit a crime in Turkey or testing to see if I was a criminal seeking asylum in his country. From this discussion came the Turkish bath recommendation. Not a tourist bath house, mind you, but where the locals go. No English spoken.
Perfect. Just what you want when surrounded by naked men.
Joey, have you ever been to a Turkish prison?
Posted at 7:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
July 6, 2005
Win Ben Stein's seat
Recently I saw Ben Stein in the airport. He looked like any other business traveller, harried, laden with luggage. Except that he was at a pay phone, which I thought was odd. Who except a philandering spouse, a scrooge, a luddite, or someone who just left their cell at security would use a pay phone? Certainly no seasoned traveller. Imagine my perplexity, then, to see that Ben Stein has written an article full of tips for business travel in the NYT. And I disagree with nearly all of them. I'll summarize.- Pay for or upgrade to first class if you can. Well, no disagreement there, except that I would say that often times the exit rows and bulkheads have just as much legroom as first class so if you're not in it for the free champagne there is often an alternative to upgrading.
- Get the aisle seat. I hate the aisle seat. Your elbows get clocked, you have to get up to let your seatmates out (stow laptop, etc.), and worst of all there's no good way to sleep since you run the risk of laterally dumping into the aisle or the stranger next to you. Better to take the window where you will be undisturbed and can nuzzle against the wall.
- Use a travel agent. I have no great experiences with travel agents to convey. Unless you are in a complete bind with no access to a computer or direct access to the airline why would you go with an intermediary? Like real estate agents, the era of travel agents having information that their customers do not is coming to an end.
- Make friends with your fellow passengers. Stein advises this so that it is less awkward when you have to ask them to stop kicking you. I disagree. The last thing I want on a plane is smalltalk. Who knows what hell you're in for on an international trip if you drill a bit too deeply and hit a motherlode of incessant chitchat? And if you have to ask someone to stop kicking you, just ask. Must you have befriended them?
See also: Stuff in my backpack, international edition | Travel tip
Posted at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
February 22, 2005
Travel tip
When the desk agent at the airport prefaces anything with "The computer says ..." you can pretty much bet that your travel plans are hosed.
An example from La Guardia:
Agent: "Your flight is delayed 20 minutes."
Me: "No problem, flight late?"
Agent: "Yeah, the inbound flight just pulled back from the gate in Chicago."
Me: "Just left? Unless it's a Concorde that's a two-hour flight."
Agent: "Well, the computer says it will be here in 20 minutes."
At this point you can:
(1) Express overt indignation attempting to rally those around you into some kind of mini-revolt by the sheer power of your expression of can-you-believe-thisedness.
(2) Pull out your calculator and present the agent with the purported actual speed of the incoming plane and expound on the physics behind the inevitable disintegration of its airframe if it continues at Mach 9.
(3) Blame the computer and ask the agent out for a drink.
(4) Sit in the gate area and quietly fume.
Posted at 7:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
