Remains of the Day

Cubs win! Cubs win!

Ah, if only Harry were around to exaggerate the importance of today's Cubs victory. Well, he isn't, so I will.

Let's see. Kerry Wood fought some of his control problems and had filthy stuff. Working exclusively with his fastball and a nasty overhand curve, when he was around the strike zone he was filthy. Looks like he might finally have command of that curve, and he got a few called 3rd strikes on it. When that pitch is on and Wood drops it on a batter after they've seen a few 95mph heaters, it's unfair. If he can work in command of the slider and changeup later this year...ooh baby.

Hee Seop Choi showed his patience at the plate, drawing two walks and smacking a double deep into left center. Patterson showed he can go get the ball in center field, and he'll have to surrounded by the two old horses Alou and Sosa.

Patterson of course had a career day with the two homers and 7 RBIs. I'm still not convinced he's mastered an approach at the plate. He still swings at everything. Still, when he connects, even when hitting off of his front foot, the ball flies off of his bat. If he had some of Choi's patience and pitch selection...

Juan Cruz was filthy in striking out the side two innings in a row. He looks like he has some attitude on the mound this year, and that's a good thing. His stats have always been better from the bullpen, but I still hope he beats out Estes for the fifth starter's job.

Alou looked very comfortable at the plate. The Cubs need a big year out of him batting behind Sosa.

Sosa was, as usual, Sosa. Patient at the plate, not chasing pitches out of the zone, he drew three walks and was content to go to the opposite field since they were pitching him that way.

And somehow Grudzielanek got on base four consecutive at-bats from the leadoff spot. Probably too good to last, but it makes Bobby Hill's demotion easier to stomach for one day, at least.

Should be, at the least, a competitive team.

Ouch! That pricks!

Went for my travel immunizations today and ended up $122 lighter! Sheesh. Who would think that a typhoid fever vaccine and my second Hepatitis-A booster and a few printouts from the Internet would cost that much? Is that the usual going rate? It cots $40 just to have the lady lecture me from notes I could have printed off of the government advisory web pages myself. Oh well.

You read enough before any trip and it's enough to scare you into staying home. In Rio de Janeiro it was the street gangs, carjackings, kidnappings, and riots. In my upcoming destinations I run the risk of yellow fever, malaria, typhoid fever, altitude sickness, Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Filariasis, Leishmaniasis, River Blindness, CHAGAS Disease, and rabies. Let's see, if I avoid swimming in any water, drinking any unbottled water, approaching any animals, and sleeping with any of the locals, and if I apply a toxic coating of DEET-rich insect repellent each day, I'll be safe.

Of course, it sounds safer than Asia, the epicenter of the SARS outbreak, or Europe, where some anti-American Frenchman might hurt beat me with a baguette.

Also saw the doctor this morning and was diagnosed with a sinus infection. No wonder I've been feeling so fatigued and miserable. Could barely keep my eyes open today, and a short spin on the bike left me utterly spent. Need to get my hands on some antibiotics tomorrow and try to nip this in the bud before I have to hike at altitude in frigid Patagonia.

Matrix Reloaded soundtrack, and Peter Jackson's next project

AICN had the track listing. Dave Matthews?!?

Disc 1
01. Linkin Park - Session
02. Marilyn Manson - This Is the New S**t
03. Rob Zombie - Reload
04. Rob D - Furious Angels
05. Deftones - Lucky You
06. Team Sleep - Passportal
07. P.O.D. - Sleeping Awake
08. UnLoco - Bruises
09. Rage Against The Machine - Calm Like A Bomb
10. Oakenfold - Dread Rock
11. Fluke - Zion
12. Dave Matthews - When The World Ends

Disc 2
01. Don Davis - Main Title
02. Don Davis - Trinity Dream
03. Juno Reactor - Tea House
04. Rob D - Chateau
05. Juno Reactor - Mona Lisa Overdrive
06. Don Davis vs. Juno Reactor - Burly Brawl
07. Don Davis - Reloaded Suite

As for Peter Jackson, his next project is a remake of King Kong for Universal. Probably more along the Harryhausen King Kong than the Guillermin version, which would be a good thing.

E-mail patterns

Interesting study on e-mail traffic patterns. Would love to see myself charted on e-mail traffic network charts.

Billy Beane

Looks like Michael Lewis (Liar's Poker) has excerpted his book Moneyball, the Art of Winning an Unfair Game on Billy Beane and the Oakland A's in this week's NYTimes Magazine. Can't wait for the book, and the article just whets the appetite more. Beane is the personal hero of sabermetric statheads everywhere because he's living proof that the theories they have obsessively constructed actually work in practice. In a perfect world, he'd be the Cubs general manager.

As well-run as the Oakland A's are as an organization, someone should also do an article on the Mariners as the model economic organization. Got taxpayers to foot the bill for their stadium so they barely pay anything to use it to line their wallets, built their own team store so they could keep all the margins for themselves, signed Ichiro not just as a fine ballplayer but as a tourist attraction, and have wisely parted ways with huge stars like Randy Johnson and Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex Rodriguez when they knew they couldn't absorb the economic hit. As outrageously profitable as the Mariners were last year, they should have signed someone for the stretch run last year. Their window may have closed.

Tony Blair

Out of this whole impassioned debate, I've come out quite intrigued with Tony Blair, who I knew nothing about before.

Scatter plot

Have been spending time with friends who are moving away from Seattle. Lunch with Peter on Friday, just before he caught a flight to London to search for housing. The next time I see him and Klara will be in London. Aaron, who's moving to Germany. The next time I see him and Roswitha will likely be at their wedding outside Nuremberg. Attended two going away parties for Greg and Kristin. The next time I see them will also be in London. Spent an afternoon with Bean, who I'll see again, though by year end I suspect she'll be settling into a new city I know well.

This still feels like an inflection point of a year to me. Close friends and family quitting jobs, changing jobs, starting jobs, moving out of town, getting married, having kids, buying houses, selling houses...you might think the rate of change is always this great and I've been too busy to notice, but you'd be wrong. This is more than usual.

Incidentally, everyone who sees me remarks on how healthy I look. Makes me suspect that while I was working at Amazon my appearance was sickly.

Cheap long distance

Bigzoo is the type of company I always suspected existed, but had never bothered to research. Karen suggested I check it out, though, and the rates are amazing! I can call Europe, Asia, and Australia for less than I currently pay to dial long-distance in the U.S.

I purchased some credit, and I'll give it a try tonight.

Prep for Patagonia

Went to REI as today was the last day to spend my 2002 dividend and get 10% off of one item in the store. Patagonia's going to be cold, and I needed some clothing and trekking gear.

Have to hand it to REI--all of the staff there know their stuff. Most are serious mountaineers themselves, and they had me set up with a multi-day pack in no time, and with my dividend and 10% discount it was a steal. The bonus was coming across an Arc'Teryx Gore-Tex shell on sale for $100 off. I'd seen it in the store before and love given up hope of ever seeing it discounted.

Also grabbed some short story collections from Twice Told Tales on Saturday, and now I just need some film and I'll be set for South America. Lots of solo time in the remote wilderness awaits. Emotionally I'm not necessarily ready to head off. Everything here at home feels comfortable right now and there's plenty to do. Still, it's always better to be out ahead of these curves. The day after I return from South America is the first day I'm due back at the office!!!

We'll ignore that for now.

Pics from New Zealand and Australia

Yes, I'm behind on these. Scanning is laborious, and I've been trying to jot down my memories to go with the photos, and it's all taking much longer than expected. So much to recall. But I promise, it will be up before I leave for South America.

Warm weather, not so hot on the bike

Yesterday and today were the two warmest days of the year thus far in Seattle. 60's, slightly overcast. Woke up exhausted this morning--not sure why. Couldn't keep my eyes open all afternoon, and didn't want to follow through on a promised bike ride with Laura. Neither did she, I suspected. A movie would have been the easy way out.

But thankfully I censored my inner wuss and pushed for a loop around Magnolia. The warm spring air woke me up (it's good to sweat), as did the ride. I'm still as slow as a cow on the bike. Usually I've gotten a few hundred miles in on the bike by this time of year, and I think I just broke 150 today. It will take more than these occasional 30 mile spins to get in shape for the Alps of France in July. Oh, it's humbling in the saddle.

13.7 megapixel digital SLR

First comprehensive review I've seen of the Kodak Pro 14n, a 13.7 megapixel digital SLR. This one's a big deal for Nikon SLR users since it's the first 10+ megapixel SLR compatible with Nikon F-mount lenses and the first obvious Nikon-compatible competitor to Canon's EOS-1DS 11.4 megapixel SLR (the Kodak's $3000 cheaper, too, at $4999).

I'm still holding out for Nikon to come out with its own 10+ megapixel digital SLR. A year away? Let's hope so.

Until then, though, I think I'm going to give in and get an ultracompact digital camera, for those times when carrying a giant SLR body and lens is uncool and/or inconvenient. Like a night out at a club in Rio de Janeiro, or something like that. Does anyone have any recommendations? I'm looking for something compact, that will fit in a pocket, with good low-light performance, but with enough manual exposure controls that I don't feel at the mercy of the camera's automatic exposure software. Also, exposure bracketing at preferably .3EV stops.

This Minolta Dimage F300 looks pretty sweet.

By the way, if you have a digital camera that uses AA batteries, you have to get one of these MAHA MH-C204F200 Smart Charger Combo Kits including four 2000mAH POWEREX AA batteries. Don't ask, just do it.

Mobile mobile numbers, imagine that

May be a reality in November. Very cool. Power to the people. This and the national no-call list in one year--at least we've got that going for us.

If you use an iPod when working out, you really need one of these Marware iPod cases. I just received one of the Convertible cases and it's a huge upgrade over the Apple supplied iPod holder. With the Marware, you can actually still get at the ports, buttons, and front dial.

Tiny!

B-Day

Top 10 properties in baseball, as determined by Baseball Prospectus. Interesting.

The past three days I've been neck-deep in baseball statistics, prognostications, and commentary, preparing for two rotisserie baseball drafts. Tuesday was round two of three of bidding in my sabermetric league, and soon as all the fast and furious bidding ended at 6pm I had to completely change my thought process for my rotisserie 5x5 league which was operating using a snaking straight draft. The players are valued differently in each instance, and the draft strategy is radically different because of the formats. Both are fun in their own ways--they're all just games which appeal to gamblers, stat-heads, numbers guys, and not least of all baseball fans. It's similar in appeal to playing the stock market, but more enjoyable because your financial future isn't in play. For those who think they know more about baseball than the next guy, it's a way to put a minor wad of money where your mouth is.

Preparing for all these drafts is mentally straining. The amount of information available is overwhelming, and absorbing it all can be maddening and also strangely enjoyable. Every next tidbit of information catches your eye, and you hoard it all away in the hopes of having that one insight which none of your fellow owners have caught onto. Today was the last round of the sabermetric league, and I'm glad it's over. I'm too competitive to take things like this lightly and it's mentally taxing.

Of course, it helps when you think you'll win.

Decision markets

It's interesting to follow the decision markets in general, but especially in turbulent times like these. The financial page of the Mar. 24 issue of The New Yorker highlights sites like Newsfutures, Iowa Electronic Markets, Hollywood Stock Exchange, and Tradesports, sites which allow you to buy and sell derivatives on just about any outcome imaginable, from how much a movie will make in theaters (traders give Head of State the edge over Basic this weekend, despite the fact that Head of State is opening in hundreds fewer theaters) to whether or not the U.S. will catch Osama Bin Laden in 2003 (currently trades at 35% probability).

Interesting, and accurate. The Iowa Electronic Markets routinely beats national polls in predicting presidential elections. The principles is the same as that governing the efficient markets theory: decision markets channel the collective energy and resources of a group of people with intense knowledge of and interest in a particular area of interest. That's why it's so difficult to beat the stock market.

Of course, when everyone is so wrong about something, that's also worth examining. Look at IMDb's poll or Entertainment Weekly's issue on who would win Oscars and you realize how big an upset Adrien Brody and Roman Polanski pulled off.

How we came to war

Someday soon, a whole series of politicians and journalists will rush books to the market analyzing the leadup to this war with Iraq. Until then, here's one interesting account in this week's New Yorker. Among the intriguing points noted is the now self-evident realization that the United Nations is really only empowered when the great powers of the world are in agreement (by the way, how did France get a spot on the Security Council? is it the same reason old golfers still get to play in The Masters?).

And the somewhat sobering thought that the current administration could care less what protestors are saying in the streets. They've filtered it out like so much low-decibel noise.

Strange

I can access every website from my Macintosh except for anything related to my own website, eugenewei.com. I can't grab my e-mail, can't ftp anything to my directories, can't even find the website through a browser. I have no such problems on my Windows desktop, and my Mac can surf to every other website. Anyone have any idea why that might be and, better yet, how to fix it? Winner definitely gets a nice dinner on me.

South America

Have just about put the finishing touches on a trip to South America to depart late next week. Planning multi-week travels can be hard work, especially given the wealth of information available on the Internet and the overwhelming number of permutations of airplane flights and itineraries one can assemble in a country as vast as South America. Having a budget to enforce helped to narrow things down, and I left one just completely open week in Cuzco in the middle of the schedule to give myself the freedom to just follow my whims while there in person. Should be fun. Will hike through frigid Patagonia, tour the Galapagos Islands, and trace the steps of the Incas to Machu Picchu, among other things.

Still, before I've even left a black cloud has appeared in the distance. Two days after I return from South America my leave of absence will come to an end. Three months hardly feels like enough time for a leave.

Still an assassin

Thanks to Sang, I got to see Jordan in his last game in Seattle the other night. Jordan's 40 years old but still a dangerous, effective player. He played tough, physical defense on Rashard Lewis, and despite not having the stamina to sustain an effort for the full 44 minutes he was on the floor, he paced himself as best as he could, and when the game was on the line he came through with an alley-oop layup and two fade-away jumpers that hit nothing but net to ice the game for the Wizards. Here's hoping he gets one last chance to work some magic in the playoffs.

Not the prettiest of games--the Sonics, who basically conceded they were going into rebuilding mode when they traded Payton and Mason, shot something like 37%. The basketball was bruised and battered from encountering so much rim, so little net.

Where's Marshall?

The Oscars lost some of their luster this year, given the context of war. I wasn't fired up enough to throw a party, and if I had missed them it wouldn't have been a great loss. You won't hear me say that often--I live for the show. Still, Steve Martin set a proper tone by poking fun of the sacrifice of the stars in his opening monologue ("The red carpet ceremony was cancelled this year. That'll show them."). What else are the movie stars going to do, anyway? No other major entertainers are canceling their regularly scheduled events, so why blame movie stars for holding their annual backslap?

Anyway, it was an excuse to visit Jason's new pad. I wanted to wear a prosthetic nose to his party, inspired by the success of Nicole Kidman and her schnozz in The Hours, but ran out of time.

Happily, there were a few signs that Hollywood has some good taste:

• The excellent Spirited Away won best animated feature over a mediocre set of competition (Lilo & Stitch, Cimarron: Spirit of the Stallion, Treasure Planet, Ice Age), despite rumors that Ice Age would triumph due to its box office. Basically, any animated film that came out besides The Wild Thornberrys Movie got a nomination for best animated feature last year. Thanfully the one nominee worthy of an Oscar took it home.


• Eminem and two other people I've never heard of won in the category of best song for "Lose Yourself." Whatever your opinions on Eminem, that was definitely the best song of the group. Besides, Daniel Day-Lewis prepared for his role as the Butcher in Gangs of New York by listening to that Eminem tune, among others. Inspired by Day-Lewis' subsequent performance in that movie, I've adopted the same regimen in the gym. It's working. I feel like kicking Leonardo Dicrapio's scrawny butt. Why didn't Eminem perform? Was he not invited? There aren't any expletives in "Lose Yourself." That was a missed moment.


• Chris Cooper took home the best supporting actor Oscar for his comical transformation in the otherwise inconsistent Adaptation.


• Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers captured a well-deserved best visual effects award. Gollum is more emotive than Brendan Fraser, who introduced The Two Towers as a best picture nominee.

On the other hand, the show handed out its usual dose of injustice:

• Daniel Day-Lewis was robbed in the most competitive category of the night, Best Actor. Hopefully this loss won't drive him back into cobblerhood. Still, it wasn't a total loss. Adrien Brody planting a long, wet, sloppy, back-bender of a kiss on Halle Berry? Brilliant, a page right out of Colin Farrell's playbook. If I was Eric Benet I would have run on stage and kicked that scrawny Brody's ass. Thank god this wasn't the year Roberto Benigni won for best actor--the sight of Pinocchio jumping Halle would have been ugly.


• Chicago for best picture? Years from now we'll all wonder why and how this light, fluffy music video won a best picture award. At least Renee Zellwegger didn't win a best actress award. I'm sorry, I love Renee as much as the next guy, and she put forth a more than credible effort, but she wasn't right for that role.


• Peter Jackson and The Two Towers didn't get any consideration in any major category, despite being superior to Chicago in so many ways. The Oscars continued bias against sci-fi and fantasy movies is more than a blind spot. It's a prejudice similar to racism; call it genrism.

A few other notes:

• Steve Martin is a good host. His zany, intellectual humor allows him to zing a whole range of subjects without making it too personal, and though he seemed to tone it down given the war, he should receive a return invitation next year. His best quip? "It was so sweet backstage. The Teamsters are helping Michael Moore into the trunk of his limo."


• Did you watch the commercials? Whoa! That isn't like any J.C. Penney's I've ever visited. "It's all inside" indeed.


• Michael Moore somehow manages to come off as a redneck even though he isn't one. He could use a speech coach. The anti-war movement probably would prefer a more eloquent and dignified spokesperson.


• Catherine Zeta-Jones (it's pronounced "zee-tah") annoys me to no end. Zeta rhymes with diva.


• A retracting mike to cut off speeches that run long! Brilliant. I notice it doesn't seem to function when movie stars are on stage, only when crew members, like the visual effects guys, show up.

If Jack Nicholson and Harvey Weinstein faced off a la Count Dooku and Yoda, who would win?

A day in the life

Today was a balanced day, and representative of most my days back here in Seattle while on sabbatical.

Morning: Up at 8am. Breakfast of cereal. Read from Atonement for about forty-five minutes. Spent half hour on phone with travel agent, cycling through permutations of a South America trip which would last a month starting next weekend. Managed to get the cost down several notches, and it's looking like a near-reality.

Next I popped in the DVD of Hero, rented from Scarecrow Video, the coolest video store in the world. I couldn't wait for the copy I ordered to show up.

Hero was somewhat of a disappointment, given the talent involved. Gorgeous cinematography, attractive leads, solid soundtrack, but the movie suffers from a gravity of acting that borders on grim melodrama. The movie lacks passion. Yimou inserts one too many shots of water dripping in slow motion, Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung have little romantic chemistry (I thought Chow-Yun Fat and Michelle Yoh had the same problem in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), and the martial arts is of the flying, choreographed dance variety rather than the hyper-realistic, forceful hand-to-hand combat of a move like Fist of Legend. While some of that imagery is gorgous, as when Jet Li and Tony Leung bounce off of the surface of a lake as if it is rubber, it's so ethereal and choreographed as to be symbolic, like a Chinese Opera dance, and without physical impact. When people are stabbed they don't even bleed. I recognize some of these as symptoms of Asian martial arts dramas in general, so perhaps my distaste is a cultural preference.

The colors and cinematography of Christopher Doyle deserve special recognition, though. Stunning.

Next I met Kate for lunch downtown. It's healthy to see at least one other human being everyday. Unfortunately, Salumi was closed (Armandino Batali's Italian shop Salumi is my favorite eatery in all of Seattle, offering incredibly tasty and affordable cured meats, but its hours are terrible) so we grabbed some Creole cuisine in Pioneer Square. I laid off of the Tabasco sauce, however.

Last week Jodie took me to Dixie's BBQ on the Eastside where I encountered The Man. There is actually a man, Gene Porter, who owns the place, and then there's The Man, the hot sauce which Porter encourages you to slather on your BBQ. Well, I've had a bit of that sauce before, but for some reason Porter spooned a more than healthy dose of The Man on my ribs. That is the hottest of hot sauces I've ever sampled, and it led to a coughing fit that lasted four days. I think one of those peppers lodged in my esophagus and burned a hole through it. No more hot stuff for me for a while.

Anyway, back to today. After lunch I dropped off a roll of slide film at Ivey Imaging and picked up some negatives. I also stopped at Glazer's and bought a remote cord for my Nikon, since I seem to have lost my last one (argh!). I shot some tripod long-exposure shots at Jason's last night, but given that I didn't have a remote cord on me I'm not optimistic that they'll turn out sharp. Gotta have one, though they aren't cheap given their size.

Then I headed home, and, since it wasn't raining, I jumped on my bike and headed for Mercer Island. Last week I jumped on a scale at the gym and screamed in horror. The number that came up was the largest I'd ever encountered. Many grueling sessions at the gym ensued, and the extra weight is especially brutal on the bike. Getting around Mercer is as painful as it's ever been, and today was no exception. Went counter-clockwise and then clockwise back for roughly a 30 mile ride. Felt like I was pulling an open parachute the whole way. The only consolation is that sore, achy feeling in my legs. Love that feeling.

Back home for a shower, then off to Ivey to pick up my slides. Ah, a few winning shots of Sadie Sutton in that batch. Will post a few tomorrow if I get the time.

Then I headed off to Pacific Place to see about using a free movie voucher I received for earning a gazillion Moviewatcher credits. But nothing there interested me, so I spent the next several hours in Barnes and Noble "library", perusing travel books and photography magazines. Digital photography and Photoshop magazines are my current vice, but since I'm not working I just read them in the store and jot down any useful tips in my notebook.

And then back home to cook some dinner and scan some slides with the TV on in the background.

Adam Osborne dead

Adam Osborne, inventor of the portable computer, passed away at the age of 64. The first computer I ever used was my dad's Osborne-1 with its miniscule, monochrome screen. I'd write papers using Wordstar and then print them out on a daisywheel printer. Ah, happy memories.

That monitor was ridiculous, though. 5 inches!?!

T-Mac

John Hollinger is right. Tracy McGrady should be MVP this year. Check out the current PER ratings. This whole bias against players with teams with lousy records is ridiculous. Penalizing players for being on lousy teams is some arbitrary rule that sportswriters made up and has nothing to do with "most valuable." Michael Jordan played for years without any supporting cast. You mean to tell me he wasn't the most valuable player every one of those years?

Go Paul

Paul Shaffer was the guest host for David Letterman tonight. Funny monologue! Good writers over there.

On the late finish of the Oscars for East coasters: "I had as much trouble staying up as Queen Latifah's dress."
On the new Monica Lewinsky reality show on Fox: "Every week a different guy gets voted off her."
On Michael Moore's speech at the Oscars: "To give you an idea how unpopular Michael Moore was, after giving his speech he showed up just ten minutes later in the dead person's montage."

Spokane II

Nak and I drove out to Spokane again today to watch Stanford in round two. I woke up exhausted so Nak drove, and that proved a wise decision later.

There isn't a whole lot to see on the drive out from Seattle. Open farm fields. The weather was gloomy this time for most of the ride out. Low-hanging, menacing clouds covered the entire sky.

Stanford was up 44-40 at halftime, then couldn't score in the second half and couldn't stop Ben Gordon or Emeka Okafor. That was all she wrote. We watched a half of the second game between Tulsa and Wisconsin before hitting the road.

The trip back was like the trailer for Gerry. We hit a snowstorm crossing the Pass and had to slow down to 30 mph because it was dark and there were no reflectors or street lights. It was like driving into pitch black nothingness with simply snow flying into your windshield. They really need to put streetlights or more reflectors on the side of the road or both there. Better we were in Nak's AWD station wagon then my car, though I've done that before.

The highlight was stopping at Arby's, which reminded me of my youth in Palatine. Taking road trips, one encounters occasional instances of these fast food restaurants from one's youth, located in the most random and desolate stretches of America, marked by neon signs hoisted high in the air like flags, shimmering mirages in otherwise barren farm fields. Perhaps the corporate headquarters simply forgot that some of these franchises existed in these remote locations and they go on operating, oblivious to the fact that the parent corporation has folded or gone bankrupt, like Boston Market.

Now that Stanford is out and since I didn't fill out a bracket this year, I couldn't care less what happens the rest of the tourney. Forget what I wrote before. March Madness is overrated.

The life less ordinary

Everyone asks what I do while on sabbatical, as if curious if I'm overwhelmed by idle time. Nothing could be further from the truth. Every night I lament the end of my reservoir of waking hours, for there still aren't enough of them.

The days are full, but balanced. It's easier to get up immediately when not working. I'm not sure why, but it is. I always wake up at 7:15am these days even though I don't set my alarm, and I immediately turn on a light and start reading. Something about that hazy, dreamlike state I'm in when I've just awoken and the cocoon of silence in the morning is conducive to absorbing fiction deep into my mind. Just finished Part One of Ian McEwan's Atonement...wow! It was incredibly well written. His Amsterdam won the Booker Prize while Atonement fell just short. If Amsterdam is better than Atonement...well, I'll just have to read both and find out for myself.

Then I get up and grab some breakfast and catch up with CNN on the latest news (i.e. all things Iraq) to depress the hell out of myself. I long for a return to the halcyon days of irrational exuberance, when everything was overvalued and it was safe to fly to Turkey.

Then I work out. Normally that would mean a ride on my bike, but the weather has been shit here in Seattle so that's happened all of two times since I've been back from Rio. So I have to hit a gym and lift weights and ride some machine like a prisoner for two hours.

Then it's home for a shower and lunch, and then some optional afternoon activities. One, I can scan some of my slides into my computer and archive the resulting TIFF files on CD-ROMs. Alternatively, I can spend an hour listening to my language instruction CDs. Or I can watch a DVD. I'm trying to watch one classic movie every other day. Or I spend an hour writing. Or flipping through one additional chapter in one of the numerous instruction books I have lying about. There's one on producing beautiful inkjet prints, and a few on photography. Yet another is on digital movie making. And of late I've been flipping through travel books on South America and surfing the web, trying to pull another trip together. Given the SARS outbreak in Asia and the war in Iraq, South America seems a safer choice than Asia or Europe.

Then I'll cook or meet someone out for dinner and perhaps a drink afterwards. The evenings are always different. A movie, or a visit to one of the many families with newborns. A trip to a bookstore to flip through more travel books. A night home to practice editing photos in Photoshop. Doing my taxes, reluctantly. Preparing for my rotisserie baseball draft. Phoning friends and family, here and abroad. Staring sadly out at the rain (I just spend months telling everyone that it doesn't really rain that much in Seattle, and now I'm home and being punished for my impudence). Jotting in my journal.

And with the early starts and the morning workouts, I'm usually too tired to stay up much past midnight. The days go by quickly. It's hardly even a routine considering it's only been my schedule for two weeks out of the past two months off. I do schedule activities for myself in Outlook, just to ensure I cover lots of ground each day.

The only real change since I've been back here in Seattle is that more of my time is spent in my own company. Everyone's working and busy and I don't feel like being the nuisance who's always knocking on doors seeing if so and so can come out and play. I'll try and make time to see folks, but if there's any resistance I'll stay out of the way. The solo time is good preparation or rehabilitation of my days as a writer. Most writers I know have that solitary streak, and I'm indulging mine for a bit.

It hasn't been boring. It reminds me a bit of being a student.

My voice is my passport

I got my Jabra headset and linked it up to my cellphone via Bluetooth. Nifty. I look like an alien with that headset on, but now I can leave my cellphone and its radiation farm from my body, and I can dial people using voice commands through my headset. You simply say a person's name and then the number you want to dial (home, work, or mobile) and the phone dials the number for you.

Amazon has the Sony Ericsson T68i for free after rebates, though only with T-Mobile service which is odd. I've heard nothing but bad things about T-Mobile, and the cloying Catherine Zeta Jones commercials don't do them any favors. My AT&T service has been decent thus far. As with other compact phones, the T68i's buttons are too close together for my tastes, but otherwise I've been pleased. Unlike other phones, instead of having to record multiple entries for a person to cover their various phone numbers, the Ericsson stores up to three phone numbers (work, mobile, home) for each contact, a much more sensible information architecture.

One man sitcom

For some reason that is beyond the comprehension of mortal minds, ESPN.com has given Bill Walton a column. The result is pure comedy for hoops fans everywhere.

Someone who tries so hard to be funny and hip and culturally in-the-know (memo to Bill: it's spelled Salma Hayek) should deserve some kudos for effort, but when a guy his age sprinkles his columns with references to Avril Lavigne, Beyonce Knowles, and Jay-Z, he deserves a reprimand. It's just unseemly, like seeing one's mother come downstairs in the morning with her navel pierced in an effort to relate to her kids.

Road trip into Madness (March)

Lauri and I road tripped out at 7 this morning to Spokane, WA, to watch the Stanford Cardinal in the first round of the NCAA tourney. It took about four hours to drive out there, covering about 260 miles. This all began when Lauri replied to an e-mail of mine on Monday, giving me some ideas on what to do in South America and ending with an innocent question about what I was doing Thursday. It hit me just then. Stanford was probably playing somewhere out West. A quick glance online confirmed they'd be in Spokane. Had to jump on it. Bid on some tickets on eBay and lost. Spokane Arena was sold out. Stanford's ticket office was all out. Rich could get tickets from friends at Dayton, but only for Session II. Stanford was in Session I.

Then I noticed that UConn was also in the bracket, also in Session I, playing BYU. UConn to Spokane. Very far. A quick call to UConn's ticket office confirmed plenty of availability. We were on our way.

About an hour into the journey I realized I had left my drivers license, car insurance, and main credit card back at home so I slowed myself way down to about 75mph. Later that morning, Dan, cruising past Ellensburg, got pulled over for speeding after getting clocked by an airplane. Dan had a rough day in store for him.

There isn't a whole lot to see on the drive through Central and Eastern Washington. In fact, it was almost comic because the occasional tumbleweed would roll across the highway, as in a bad western. I wondered, why do tumbleweeds roll around like that? Are they dead? Lauri, being the sharp girl she is, theorized that they were spreading their seeds. Turns out she was right. Tumbleweeds form a break at their stem when their seeds are nearly mature, and then they blow off in the wind, scattering their seeds everywhere. That's pretty cool, huh? I'll never look at another tumbleweed the same.

The drive didn't feel so bad having someone to talk to. 4 hours was plenty of time for us to catch up on all the crazy places we had traveled while in consulting, our trips to New Zealand and Australia, past years at Amazon, the sorry condition of Buffy episodes this season (please just end the show quickly), Iraq, fun undergraduate days at Stanford, our Oscar predictions and picks, future career goals, etc. Plus, snagging tickets from the UConn ticket office at the last minute and driving out to Spokane on a moment's notice felt like the kind of spontaneous fun which you had to seize while on sabbatical.

Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena holds about 12,000 people and is home of the Gonzaga Bulldogs basketball team (until they build a new arena for themselves), among other things. Parking in the lots outside was only $4.

I walked up to the UConn ticket window to pick up my tickets and they asked for photo I.D. Hmmmm. I had my wallet, but not much in it. I keep my drivers license and main credit cards in a small card holder which I had left at home in another pair of jeans. Then, I found my Costco card and it had a tiny black and white image of me on it. The guy gave me a look but accepted it and we were in. Everything seems more precious when claimed by such tenuous serendipity.

Not only that, but our seats were in the eighth row, behind the UConn bench. We could hear Jim Calhoun cussing out players on the bench or starters on the floor the whole game. That was excellent. We spent the entire game rooting for this guy on BYU who looked like Eminem. In fact, it wasn't until late in the game that we learned his real name, Travis Hansen. We spent nearly as much time shaking our heads at the terrible play of BYU's #55, Rafael Araujo, who had about eighty turnovers on several traveling calls and just missed passes. He'd post on the right block, back in, dribbling slowly, and because he was right-handed you knew he'd turn into the lane with a jump hook or jump shot. Emeka Okafor would just wait, wait, wait, and then as soon as Araujo went up Okafor would just swat the shot away. It happened so many times it was a running joke. The game was 26-26 at halftime, but by the time I got back from a food break at halftime UConn had a comfortable lead and held off a late surge to win. It was an odd college game because they shot so few three pointers.

By the way, I had a great cellphone coverage on AT&T's GSM network all the way to Spokane. Goodness.

Then Stanford was up, and Lauri and I were in hostile territory b/c UConn desperately wanted the University of San Diego to pull the 4-13 seed upset so they'd have an easier game in round two. The game started great for us. Before you could blink Stanford was up 9-0 and then 18-2 and 29-10. Life looked good, but PF Justin Davis and C Rob Little just can't stay out of foul trouble and as soon as they left the game, which was soon, USD's Jasons, huge center Jason Keep and forward Jason Blair, went to work on us inside. Stanford was in huge foul trouble both halves, putting San Diego on the free throw line over and over. And when Keep did get into foul trouble early in the second half, somehow we still couldn't defend Blair even though he was the only scorer left on the floor for them. They gradually pulled back, with the entire arena behind them as the underdog, and then took the lead with under four minutes to go in the game. Stanford looked nervous, tentative, afraid to lose. Lauri and I were losing our hair.

The refereeing in college hoops is terrible, at least based on the calls in this game. I thought pro NBA officiating was weak, but this was ridiculously inconsistent. The officiating is better in the corporate league I play in. A few bad calls helped Davis foul out with plenty of time left, and we had bad memories of the Gonzaga upset at Key Arena about four years ago replaying in our heads.

But give the boys credit, they pulled it out with a few clutch few throws from Julius Barnes, some tough defense and rebounding underneath against Keep, and a clutch three pointer by Matt Lottich from the corner. The great thing about March Madness? Almost every game except the 1-16 seed game is competitive, regardless of seeding. Admittedly, that's not always the result of great skill, but that doesn't detract from the drama of the desperation on both sides in this single elimination scrum. Survive and advance.

After the game we met Dan and Rich for beers and dinner at the Ram before heading home. It would have been a long, depressing ride home following a loss, much like the ride facing Dan and Rich tomorrow since their fourth seeded Dayton Flyers were an upset victim of Tulsa's Green Wave in the day's last game. This is after paying $179 to stay overnight at the Spokane Doubletree. Costly, painful day, Danny boy. Every hoops fan has been there at one point or another, and for every heartbroken fan there's another, equally elated fan somewhere across the arena.

Now I have a date with Lauri's husband Nak on Saturday for round two, versus the UConn Huskies. Another long drive out to Spokane, but I can't complain. You get an invite to the big dance, you just keep dancing until the judge taps your shoulder and directs you to the sidelines.

Global roaming

This announcement by AT&T sounds promising, though I'll reserve hope for a bit. I just bought a new global cellphone, an Ericsson T68i, and my service is with AT&T. Given the amount of overseas travel I'm doing this year, being able to just pop in a new sim card into my cellphone like all the Aussies were doing in New Zealand would be awesome and preferable to renting a cellphone. The U.S. doesn't just stand alone in its desire to run over Iraq with military force, it stands alone in the wireless standards arena and thus we marvel over features our international brethren have enjoyed for years.

The main reason I bought the new phone, though, is to allow use of a Bluetooth headset. Rumor has it that everyone at Motorola uses headsets, and until more conclusive results are in, I'd just as soon stop radiating my brain or groin.

The T68i is a pretty nice phone. Reception on AT&T's GSM network has been fine thus far, though I have yet to test its limits. Perhaps this Thursday if I head out to Spokane to see Stanford in the first round of the NCAA's. The phone's buttons are a bit small, a problem with most such compact phones, but so far everything else has worked like a charm. I'm anxious to get voice dialing set up and to try out my Bluetooth headset, though I'll hold off on WAP and the digital camera attachment functionality until it proves economical.

The sad state of HD

Another area where the U.S. lags the rest of the world is in HDTV standards and programming. I finally got my HD (high definition) dish installed and it added a whopping three DirecTV HD channels to my lineup, Mark Cuban's HDNet, a pay-per-view HD channel, and an HBO HD channel.

That's not enough of a reason to buy an HD receiver. A few other reasons I upgraded: one, the availability of a moderate amount of HD programming from the majors, including NBC, Fox, ABC, and CBS, all accessible by connecting a $25 terrestrial antenna like one from Winegard to your HD receiver. The Oscars will be broadcast in HD this year, and quite a few sporting events as well. Some of the major sitcoms are in HD, and on a widescreen HDTV set the A/V experience in HD is a huge improvement. Secondly, now I can watch a program while taping another on my Tivo, an option which would have saved me some difficult choices during the past several months.

Relative to the rest of the world and what it could be, the options are sparse, disappointing. Until the U.S. can agree on a standard and push it, we'll be limited to the slim pickings out there. It's a shame, because HD done right is gorgeous.

True digital darkroom

On a more positive technological note, I've finally had the chance to try out the Epson Stylus 2200, generating some prints based on scans of slides from my trips to New Zealand.

Wow.

I have no idea what I'm doing, and I still managed a few gorgeous prints at 8 x 10. Even at that size the print quality rivals that you'd get from a photo lab, and the inks in the Stylus 2200 are archival, meaning they'll last long after you're dead. The digital workflow isn't exactly fast, given that each high quality scan takes me about 15 minutes, including image adjustments in Photoshop. Still, the control you have in Photoshop to manipulate photos is intoxicating. You can easily change color photos to black and white, or vice versa. You can sharpen or soften photos, turn them into watercolors, correct exposure errors, and so much more. I still don't own a digital camera, but most of the other elements of my digital darkroom are falling into place.

I have a lot to learn about color management and Photoshop, but the book Mastering Digital Printing promises to move me far along the learning curve.

Animatrix

This is going to be cool. Can't wait.

Can't wait?

Notes on attending Carnaval in Rio

Some notes for folks who may attend Carnaval in Rio in the future. Most are observations based on Phil, Elijah, and my experience in Rio. We were given some misinformation by various people during our trip (lots of good information, too). In no particular order:

• If you attend the Samba Parade in the Sambadrome (and you should for at least one night), try heading out the first night and scalping tickets near the entrance of whichever section you'd like to be seated in. We were told it was very difficult to scalp tickets, that it couldn't be done. Well, if you buy tickets from the hotel, expect to pay a huge markup. If you scalp tickets near the entrance, just first make sure you've seen a legitimate ticket before scalping so you know what you're looking for. Tickets have a magnetic strip that needs to be scanned by machines like those you find in your typical urban subway. Most scalpers with tickets from a certain section hover just outside the entrance to that section, and you can only enter a section through a specific gate. We scalped a ticket for Elijah at half the price we paid the hotel (Elijah's tickets was pickpocketed), and that was with minimal negotiation. Anyhow, if you can't scalp a ticket the first night, go ahead and buy one from the hotel the next night if you want to guarantee yourself a spot.


• Order only 1 entree per two people while at restaurants. The portions are humongous in Brazil, and the three of us refused to believe and continually ended up with copious leftovers that went to waste. In fact, if you wanted a real live case study for the Atkins Diet, few subjects would be more suitable than the citizens of Rio.
• If you're traveling to Rio on short notice, don't try and pick up Portuguese if you already know some Spanish. Brush up on the Spanish. Portuguese is difficult to learn, and it is most similar to Spanish which should help to get you around. We all found Portuguese extremely obtuse.


• Check with your bank to ensure your ATM card will work down there. Mine, from Bank of America, didn't. To make matters worse, almost none of the ATMs down there accept American debit cards. We had to hike some two miles to a Citibank ATM and the line was long with everyone else in the same boat. It was the only sure thing.
• At that time of year, if you want to see the sights and get good photographs, go in the morning for front-lit shots. In the afternoon the sun is at the wrong angle for popular sights like Corcovado.


• Find the Banda de Ipanema and march with them in the late afternoon on Fat Tuesday. They'll be somewhere near the street running along Ipanema beach. Once you're in the jetstream, other bodies will propel you along. You'll sweat, be sweated on, sing and dance, get covered in foam which people will spray on you from all directions, kiss and be kissed by strangers ranging from beautiful Brazilian men and women to drag queens, and have an incredible time.


• Carnaval goes from the Friday to the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday so the dates vary each year. Use this rule of thumb to get your tickets ahead of time. Plan on arriving in time for festivities on Friday, perhaps after a night of rest, and stay through at least Wednesday morning. If you can come earlier or stay later, do so and take a side trip to Buzios.
• If you're coming from anywhere in the U.S., you never have to change time zones. U.S. time zones will put you slightly behind Brazilian time, and that's okay, because your schedule during Carnaval will consist of waking up at around noon or just after, rolling out to the beach, and having your first meal around 2pm. And, if all goes well, you won't get to bed until just after sunrise, around 7am or so. Thus the U.S. time zones actually put you on Rio Carnaval party standard time right from the time you set foot on Brazilian soil.


• If you have to choose between staying just off of Ipanema beach or just off of Copacabana beach, I recommend the former. It's a slightly nicer beach and has better views of the sunrise.
• No need for lots of dress clothes unless you plan on attending hte Copacabana Palace Ball or some other fancy affair. A pair of light fabric long pants of some sort and a collared shirt is all you need to look and stay cool and look cool in most clubs in Rio, and we all got into all the clubs in our sandals, though I recommend close-toed shoes for busting your best dance moves.
• Street food is really safe in Brazil. We all had plenty, and we weren't sprinting for the toilet in our hotel room. If anything, our problem was getting enough fiber in the meat-rich Brazilian diet.


• Stay hydrated. It's hot, it's humid, you're sweating like beer can banished from the fridge into the direct glare of the summer sun. You're always in a state of becoming dehydrated. Remember, cervejas contain water, too.


• To avoid spending your evening in the company of prostitutes, frequent clubs where the local young crowds congregate. A taxi driver will be happy to help.
• Think twice before setting foot in any bar where they give you a paper bar tab when you enter. Waitresses are bartenders mark your drinks on that piece of paper, and before you can leave the bar you'll have to wait in a long line to pay the cashier. Inevitably, the line will move glacially, and you'll be hot, sweaty, and anxious to move on to the next place. We spent about half an hour, on average, waiting in these ridiculous lines, and at the end you'll be greeted by some snippy, stone-faced cashier who barks at you in incomprehensible Portuguese instead of simply writing the total on the paper for you to read.
• This note may not be relevant in a few years, but it bears stating. This is a great time to travel to Rio from the U.S. The U.S. dollar is incredibly strong, and the exchange rate from Brazilian Real$ (pronounced "hey-Al") to U.S. dollars was 3.8 to 1. Without inflation. We were eating and drinking like kings at very low prices.

Show us the money

Hey, it looks like that lawsuit against the studios will pay out $12.60 to each claimant. I hope you went here to sign up back when I posted about this, sometime in January, because the deadline for submitting a claim has passed.

The sad thing is that $12.60 still falls just shy of the price, tax and/or shipping included, of a new CD. Also, I want to know who will compensate me for that Ace of Base album I bought in college.

Michael Lewis on the A's

According to Joe Sheehan of Baseball Prospectus, Michael Lewis, author of Liar's Poker and The New New Thing, spent much of 2002 with the Oakland A's, trying to understand how Billy Beane and company manage to stay competitive despite their meager budget of $45 million. The book is tentatively titled Money Ball.

Statheads have been worshipping Beane for years. His secrets aren't so secret, but other teams just are too conservative or close-minded to accept his ideas. They make the tough decisions, like realizing they can't resign last year's MVP Miguel Tejada to a long-term contract because it would blow their budget. They made the same decision with Jason Giambi and they were fine. A small but merry band of like-Beane-minded general managers is taking control of teams around the League. Epstein in Boston, Ricciardi in Toronto. The Yankees are going to be in trouble in a few years, or maybe even this year, because the Red Sox and Blue Jays are moving in the right direction.

This new breed of GMs subscribes to unconventional ideas which will give them several years of advantage, at a minimum, while the rest of the league sleeps. Sports Illustrated dedicated an entire article to the odd idea that the Red Sox would go with a closer by committee, an idea which statheads have been pushing for years. You have Cubs manager Dusty Baker saying things like this: "[Mark Bellhorn] was programmed by the (Oakland) A's before we got him (in 2001)," Baker said. "Their philosophy is to take a lot of pitches and to get deep in the count. We're trying to get him to be more aggressive. But it's going to take time to change your mindset. We also have to let him be himself."

Hmm, Dusty. Here's a guy who hit 27 home runs as a utility infielder last year, at a position where the Cubs haven't had a decent player since Ron Santo. If he's got some Oakland discipline in him, leave it alone.

Still, Dusty Baker has been a huge improvement over Don Baylor. Baker proves to be a good modern manager. Handles the press well, doesn't abuse his players through the press like Baylor loved to do. Hey, if Baker gets the Cubs to the World Series, he'll be the second most powerful man in Chicago, behind Mayor Daley.

This one went the distance

Congrats to Jamie and Jason on their new baby girl. Since Jason called me as they were heading to the hospital late Wednesday night, I've been wringing my hands, wondering what was going on. I can't even imagine the stress levels in the Kilar clan.

Nearly 3 days and 12 rounds later, that little fighter Jamie came through. I'm exhausted just thinking about it, but not as tired as 3 people currently passed out at Swedish. Yeeee-haaaa!

This one's just beginning

And congrats to you, too, Beantown Jenny Brown and hubby Adam, on the bun in the oven. Jenny must have had so much fun two weekends ago, thinking of random ways to drop the news into conversation casually. I almost wish I was pregnant so I had such material to work with.

Okay, no I don't.

I heard on Friday, just as I was ready to head out to Rio, and only the act of getting on a plane kept that secret from burning a hole in my skull that weekend.

Let me tell you, there are babies sprouting and popping out left and right. This is the instant popcorn bag hitting the tipping point in the microwave, when all you hear is the sounds of exploding kernels. I still need to visit Toni and Michelle's new bambinas (but I'm wearing gloves, in case it's contagious). Until then, I'm headed for the trenches to take cover. Someone give me covering fire!

The boy from Ipanema

That would be me last week. Right now I'm the really sick boy lying in bed in Seattle. I was up most of last night coughing like an alcoholic in his death throes.

On the one hand, vacation has reminded me that my body needs less sleep than I think. At the same time, a combination of sleep deprivation, dancing the samba, heat exhaustion, sun stroke, about ten pounds of beef at Brazil's most famous churrascaria Porcao (how do you write an "a" with a little squiggly over it?), and heavy alcohol consumption has weakened my immune system. I am checking myself into a detox institution in a brave, pre-emptive strike against alcoholism, obesity, and skin cancer.

On a side note, I love that the Brazilian lack of inhibitions extends to their food. Naming an all-you-can-eat meat buffet restaurant Porcao and placing a giant neon pig above the entrance tells customers to leave their guilt at home. It reminds me of Star Wars. Remember the overweight X-wing pilot who was part of the rebel assault on the Death Star? He was named Porkins, and yes, he was the first to die. Even as a youth this subtle yet open discrimination against the obese struck me as unjust.

Ah yes, Rio. A week of paradise. Rio during Carnaval is an American fantasy of what Brazil is like all the time, just as Brian de Palma's The Untouchables presents a glorified vision of what a 1920's gangland Chicago would be like in our imaginations. If Mardi Gras in New Orleans is the drunken frat party where usually pent-up Puritans release their inhibitions in a disgusting display of lewd behavior, Carnaval in Rio is the party you attend wearing your smartest tuxedo, but your bow-tie is hanging around your neck, undone, and underneath you've got a swimsuit on, or a feathered skirt, or a thong. Everyone in Rio is uninhibited year round anyway, so they don't need to go overboard a few days out of the year. They simply crank the knob up a few notches.

I'll have to jot down a few notes and memories in a bit, especially because I've decided that all of you need to attend Carnaval in Rio once. It's that much fun, and you can learn from my experience. You don't have to be some young, single swinger; it's fun for all ages, and couple-friendly. Unfortunately, a torrential downpour at the start of day two of the Samba Parade killed my Leica, so all I have in the way of photos are one (as of yet) undeveloped roll from some cheap disposable. Since Elijah's camera also malfunctioned, I'm taking it as a sign that no incriminating evidence was to be recorded. After all, Christ the Redeemer was looking down on us the whole time so I already felt guilty enough about the whole affair.

Hero

One could wait until November or December, or whenever Miramax decides to release Hero here in the United States. Or you could just buy the all-region DVD and watch it next week.

Party at my place.

Homework

It's a good sign when I'm travelling so much I can't even keep up with all the photos to scan and the journal entries to record. I still haven't finished posting my recollections and photos from my trip last year to the Tour de France, let alone New Zealand and Australia and Rio. I did finally finish scanning pics from Christmas 2002, and I added my memories as well.

My family is awesome, and Christmas 2002 was perhaps our best yet. If you ever get the chance to go on vacation with me and my huge extended family of siblings, I highly recommend it. You will have ridiculous amounts of fun, and we may adopt you.

Next let's get the spammers

Dubya has done one thing which the majority of America will approve of. He signed legislation creating a national do-not-call list. Telemarketers calling someone on this list can be fined up to $11K for calling someone on the list. It should go into service this summer, and citizens can put their name on the list over the Internet or by dialing a toll-free number.

Telemarketers complain it will devastate their business and have sued the FTC, claiming the legislation restricts free speech. My heart goes out to them. Plus, I'll have fewer chances to practice Chinese with the telemarketing reps from the long-distance companies who are hoping, because of last name, that I'm a middle-aged Asian who immigrated to the U.S., speak English as a second language, and will do anything when it's offered to me in my native tongue.

Don't get too high on our politicians, though

Of course, at the same time, many of our senators are spending time pushing through name changes for food in the House cafeterias. Upset with the French refusal to support the U.S.-proposed U.N. resolution, a few legislators led the change in names from french fries and french toast to freedom fries and freedom toast. That sounds like a great use of time.

Let's hope this doesn't ruin my trip to France in July for the Tour de France. I'll need some of those French citizens to help push me up Alpe D'Huez.

George

It's fascinating to watch Bush and his administration in this whole confrontation with Iraq. Oh, to be a bug on the line during some of the phone calls from Washington D.C. to the heads of state of all the other members of the Security Council.

Give Bush credit for one thing. He's not exactly taking the most popular route (though perhaps a majority of American are pro-war; it's hard to tell since the anti-war camp is so much louder). As Phil mentioned while we were sunning on Copacabana Beach, the traditional rule of politics is to hoard political capital to generate more of it for elections. Bush is just burning through it and using it to push his rather unpopular agenda.

I watched Journeys With George on HBO about two months ago, and in it I saw a Bush who wants to be liked. I saw someone who might have been president of his fraternity, chummy, joking around, a charmy smarmy jock-turned-investment banker type. Now Bush is angry, frustrated, irritated, and he's on an island. How un-political of him.

It must be frustrating for Bush, Rice, Powell, Rumsefeld, and all those folks, watching Iraq dilly dallying on compliance with resolutions that were passed over 10 years ago, hiding behind the U.N. Saddam is a lunatic for goading the U.S. like this, but he probably enjoys it. Of course, if you're the playground bully, the big man around the block, it's not exactly sporting to let some scrawny punk goad you into pummeling him. And when your fists consist of the world's greatest military, it's not humane, either.

No reasonable person really ever wants war, especially when alternatives exist. But I'd like to see Saddam stripped of his power a year from now. When some crazy dictator in North Korea is testing nuclear delivery mechanisms and when Seattle is the biggest U.S. city within theoretical range of those mechanisms, more than the usual grey clouds are casting a pall in the skies overhead. I'm ready to head back to the Southern hemisphere to work on my tan.

Malcolm Gladwell is a prophet

Longtime readers know I love Malcolm Gladwell (I find myself writing that a lot now..."if you've read my blog before you all know I love this or that"). Well, thanks to a cancellation of one leg of my three leg journey to Rio de Janeiro, I'm stuck in Seattle an extra day, and so I went back and read an article from Gladwell's New Yorker archives.

It's a short article, and in the wake of the Columbia disaster, eerily prescient and relevant. As is his norm, Gladwell assimilates a number of related current ideas from a group of thinkers and pulls them together to shed light on a topic or event, in this case the Challenger explosion which had occurred 10 years earlier. In this case Gladwell tackles risk theory.

One of the ideas is that in complex systems, such as modern technological systems, many accidents are "normal." That means that they occur not because of one egregious error or failure but because of the interaction of a series of undetectable, minor breakdowns. These are often easy to diagnose and blame in hindsight, but for all practical matters nearly impossible to prevent.

The second idea is that of risk homeostasis, the idea that improvements in safety or changes that seem to reduce risk actually do not. They fail to do so because humans react to reduced risk in one area by taking greater risks in another. Gladwell cites the famous experiment in Germany in which the installation of antilock brake systems in a fleet of taxicabs in Munich actually led to more wreckless driving by the drivers of that fleet, giving them a poorer safety record than cabs lacking the new technology.

Risk homeostasis works in the other direction as well. When Sweden switched from driving on the left-hand side of the road to the right-hand side of the road in the late 1960's (scroll down this page for a somewhat humorous account of the day they switched over and a list of all the countries of the world and their drive-sidedness), traffic fatalities dropped 17% for the first year because everyone drove much more carefully to compensate for their unfamiliar surroundings. I can vouch that I was extremely careful crossing the road in New Zealand and Australia because I had no idea which side of the road the cars were coming from. Maybe I should have rented a car and drove around the country there after all.

This is the last paragraph of Gladwell's article, which I highly recommend as it's only 7 pages and a quick read:

What accidents like the Challenger should teach us is that we have constructed a world in which the potential for high-tech catastrophe is embedded in the fabric of day-to-day life. At some point in the future-for the most mundane of reasons, and with the very best of intentions-a NASA spacecraft will again go down in flames. We should at least admit this to ourselves now. And if we cannot--if the possibility is too much to bear--then our only option is to start thinking about getting rid of things like space shuttles altogether.

He wrote that on Jan. 22, 1996. As Roger Ebert concludes in his review of The Right Stuff as part of his Great Movies series:

That a man could walk on the moon is one of the great achievements of the last century. But after seeing "The Right Stuff" it is hard to argue that manned flights should be at the center of the space program. In recent weeks the Hubble Space Telescope has been able to glimpse the dawning of the first days of the universe. Then we lost seven brave men and women who could do absolutely nothing to save themselves. To risk them while putting Hubble into orbit is one thing. To risk them for high school science fair projects is another.

Amateur

Now that I've had time to really examine my photos (when it takes about 10 minutes to scan a slide using 16 passes, at 12 bit resolution, time is all you have), I find myself less and less satisfied. Part of it is that I dropped my lens and cracked two of my filters, and without a polarizing filter and a neutral density filter it's difficult to get proper exposures when you have so much bright blue sky, bright white glaciers, and shimmering azure lake and ocean water to shoot. That's my punishment for being careless, and no amount of spot metering or center weighted metering would save me from lots of photos with some under or over exposure.

But my composition needs work. Too many of my photos from this trip are by the book, and framed for maximum boredom. Maybe it's because for once, photography was third or fourth on my list of priorities while traveling. Or perhaps I'm out of practice. Or perhaps I need lots more practice, and some time studying theory. Probably all of the above.

The third place

Joel on Software writes about the erosion of the third place, a place besides work and home to gather with friends to socialize. Examples of a third place include bars, pubs, dance clubs, coffee shops. He notes:

Over the last 25 years, Americans "belong to fewer organizations that meet, know our neighbors less, meet with friends less frequently, and even socialize with our families less often." [2000] For too many people, life consists of going to work, then going home and watching TV. Work-TV-Sleep-Work-TV-Sleep. It seems to me that the phenomenon is far more acute among software developers, especially in places like Silicon Valley and the suburbs of Seattle. People graduate from college, move across country to a new place where they don't know anyone, and end up working 12 hour days basically out of loneliness.

Sheesh. He even knows where I live.

Based on this, if one were to work out of one's home, it would be critical to have multiple rooms. One for work, one for sleep, one for TV, etc.

Feeling my age

Perhaps the only downside of my travels to NZ, and traveling in general in your late twenties, is that everyone around you tends to be younger. All my life I've usually been the youngest of the group, and the tables turned as soon as I arrived in NZ. Boy, did my new travel companions love reminding me of it, too.

Now I know how it feels to feel old. It will take some getting used to.

Young at heart, young at heart...

This chemical we call love

Reading a magazine on my flight back to the States from Australia, I came across a reference to a study on love, concluded in 1999. Basically, the conclusion of the study is that giddy feeling we call love, the feeling we have when we first fall for someone, is nothing more than a chemical reaction in our bodies. The catch is that this reaction is designed to last for only 18 to 30 months, and then it wears off. It's biologically set to that duraction as it's just enough time to meet, mate, and bear offspring.

By the time the feeling wears off, force of habit, or the children, keep the couple together in marriage.

Perhaps that explains the phenomenon of starter marriages. Because more couples these days hold off on having kids, they pass through this chemical giddiness with no responsibilities to bind them. With the low barriers to divorce in modern society, they move on to the next person, seeking to rekindle the chemical sparks.

Other interesting notes: men are more likely to fall quickly and deeply into love, and lovesickness is biochemically similar to obsessive compulsive disorder. On the basis of my own personal experience, all of this smacks of some truth, unromantic as it may be. I look back on girls I've been head over heels about, and in many cases I don't feel anything for them just a few years later. And love does feel like an illness, and has been equated with such by poets down through history.

Then there's the idea that we've found our soul mate through the workings of fate. The author of the research pooh poohs it: "Thanks to the intensity and tunnel vision of romantic infatuation, we enjoy the illusion that we choose our mate. The reality is known to zookeepers - the most certain way to get members of any species to mate is to house them in the same cage." I've often thought we could marry many people in this world, and that it was unlikely we'd meet all of them in a lifetime. Perhaps someone can take the population of the earth, calculate the average number of people we meet in during our courtship years, and calculate the % chance that we'll meet the one person who theoretically is the best match for us.

I'm tempted to draw some conclusions from these findings. One, date a person for at least 30 months before considering marriage, because you need to see how you feel after the chemical fog in your head clears up. Don't base marriage on that dizzy happy feeling of attraction when you first meet. It's the selfish gene talking. Two, find someone that makes you laugh, because it's one quality which has nothing to do with how good looking the other person is.

And while the idea that love is just a biological reaction may not seem like the stuff of romantic comedies, we need not concern ourselves with what causes the feeling, only that it's a lot of fun to experience. And those relationships that do last for life deserve our wonder, for in some ways they are wholly unnatural, a unique social phenomenon created by committed human beings.

I found an archived copy of an article (no longer available for free on the London Sunday Times website) which discusses the findings in more detail. Fascinating stuff:

SCIENCE has now proved what the band Roxy Music knew long ago - that love is a drug. The giddy excitements of mutual attraction are nothing more than a chemical reaction in the brains of courting couples, according to the results of research conducted in laboratory conditions.

Mercifully, though, the chemically induced insanity is temporary, as Roxy Music singer Brian Ferry discovered more than 20 years ago when girlfriend Jerry Hall dumped him for Mick Jagger.

Men and women are biologically designed to be in love for 18 to 30 months, says the author of the research, Professor Cindy Hazan of New York's Cornell University. She interviewed and medically tested 5 000 people from 37 cultures and found that love's limited lifespan is just long enough for a couple to meet, mate and produce a child - there is no evolutionary need for the beating heart and sweaty palms associated with high passion.

Hazen has identified dopamine, phenylethylamine and oxytocin as the chemicals which 'produce what Elvis Presley famously described as "that loving feeling".

These substances, though relatively common in the human body, are found together only during the early stages of courtship, Hazan says.

But, "like a drunk grows immune to a single glass of alcohol, the effect of these chemicals wears off, returning people to a relatively relaxed state of mind within two years.

'By that time, couples have either parted or decided that they are easy enough with each other to stay together. Love then becomes a habit, especially if children are in the frame. But those chemicals rarely return in the relationship' even 11 further children are required.'

Some lucky people become, addicted to the love cocktail, Hazan found, and they are usually men.

They fall in love more quickly and easily than women, who are also more likely to end a relationship.

"These kind of people [love- potion addicts] are not in the love-rat category,' Hazan says. "[Men] are genuinely in love, 'Or at least the chemicals make them think they are, which amounts to the same thing."

She also found that most people learn to fall in love because they feel the other person is in love with them.

'Thanks to the intensity and tunnel vision of romantic infatuation, we enjoy the illusion that we choose our mate. The reality is known to zookeepers - the most certain way to get members of any species to mate is to house them in the same cage.'

Hazan's findings offer a scientific explanation for many famous bust-ups, Including that of the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, who fell out of love soon after the birth of their second son. Another celebrity cited as proving Hazan's theories is golfer Nick Faido, 42, who dumped Brenna Cepelak, 24, bang on 30 months after their adulterous affair began.
Gwyneth Paltrow, who recently is won an Oscar for her role in the romantic comedy Shakespeare in Love, said of her failed three-year relationship with actor Brad Pitt: 'I was sure that Brad was the love of my life, and then suddenly one day 1 did not feel the same. Nothing happened, but doubt set in.'

The Cornell findings coincide with an Italian study published this week in Psychological Medicine and in New Scientist. It confirms the view that the feeling of failing in love is 'actually an illness indistinguishable from a common clinical psychiatric disorder'.

Donatella Marazziti, a psychiatrist at the University of Pisa, found that lovesick people are actually suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder, which is characterised by "obsessive, intrusive thoughts'.

Mairazziti writes that she was struck by the fact that 'the persistent, one-track thoughts of OCD sufferers mirrored the musings of people in love'.

She found that the two conditions were biochemically similar. Along with the love additives identified by Hazan, Marazziti found that the two states were linked by low levels in the brain of serotonin, a chemical the body produces to deal with stress.

In tests carried out on students since the early '90s, Marazziti found that serotonin levels recovered at least a year after courtship began, with subjects reporting that initial giddy feelings were replaced with more subtle emotions.

Marazziti's study also offered an explanation for the attraction often experienced between drinking couples.

'One of the effects of drinking is to depress serotonin in the brain, creating a passionate haze that lures you into thinking the person at the other end of the bar is incrediblv attractive ' she writes.

Off to Rio

See you all on the other side of Carnaval, Carnival, Mardi Gras, whatever you call it. I call it "The biggest party in the world held in Rio de Janeiro, the one I hope I come back alive from".

Creepy

This Flash Mind Reader was creeping me out. I'm up late at night packing for Rio, and I stumble on this through Memepool so I pay a visit.

I finally figured it out and could sleep easy again. I don't like being creeped out late at night.