Star Trekkin'

Discovering the original Star Trek was a big moment in my childhood. It totally opened up my imagination.

I've started watching Star Trek: Enterprise on SciFi. It's the first series since the original that I've really liked. Check it out.

The next beauty craze

When the economy recovers, will navel jobs be the next "must-have" plastic surgery procedure?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28934310/

Chuck on Steele

Here is Chuck Todd's analysis of the Republican National Committee's selection of its first black leader. (My friend Scott asked, "Don't they have any of their own ideas???")

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/01/30/1775027.aspx

Bye Bye, Blagojevich

The Illinois Senate voted unanimously to give him the boot. The only winner in this whole mess is a certain Mr. Burris...

When the economy is in the toilet...

Get some Scorching Currency!

That's the name of the racehorse that my friends Jeff and Gregg bought a share in. They live in Perth... let's all wish them luck! :-)

The Nevada living will lockbox

The state of Nevada has an electronic lockbox where you can file your living will or advance directive to ensure that your wishes are carried out in the event that you become seriously ill or incapacitated. Nevada residents, check it out here.

Thank you, Lily!

Thanks to Lily Ledbetter for standing up for herself and women everywhere. And thank you Justice Ginsberg, Congress, and President Obama! The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act is now the law!

Trivial milestones

Believe it or not I'm coming to the end of the second box of 5000 staples that I've used as an adult. I've stapled roughly one item a day since graduating from college. :-)

The persistence of objects

The problem with unpacking, especially when I get to the point I'm at--dealing with memorabilia and the other flotsam of my life--is the repeated intrusions of the past. I find a photograph (of friends at a twacked pool party) or a letter (from my sister during my first year of college) or a collection of poems (saved because they mattered so much). Unpacking a box can seem to take as many years as the echoes of its contents.

One of the poems I found--a sonnet by Petrarch--is one that I've searched for on the web twice in the last couple of years, unable to find even a mention of it. I wrote one of my best college papers about his sonnets. I was struggling with issues of my sexuality, and his yearning for his Laura illuminated my own turmoil.

So now I'll put it out there (Google, please index this one right away :-).

Here is Petrarch's Sonnet 131:

Now while the wind and earth and heavens rest,
While sleep holds beast and feathered bird in fee,
And high above a calm and waveless sea
The silent stars obey the night's behest,
I lie awake and yearning, sore distressed
Tortured by thoughts of my sweet enemy;
And though her face recalled brings death to me
'Tis only with such dreams I soothe my breast.
So from one living fountain, gushing clear,
Pour forth alike the bitter and the sweet,
And one same hand can deal me good or ill;
Whence every day I die anew of fear
And live again to learn that hope's a cheat,
So peace of heart or mind escapes me still.

Words of wisdom

I am finishing unpacking and skimmed through a photo album of my 1992 Carribean cruise. I saw a picture of my friends and I arriving to board the ship and could just barely make out the message printed on my t-shirt:

Due to the change in the administration, the light at the end of the tunnel will be turned back on.

More true than ever!

AND SPEAKING OF WORDS OF WISDOM, I always say that my friend Ken taught me the wisdom of a rum & coke on that cruise... an upper and a downer in one glass! ;-)

Dreams for the week

I've been having some interesting dreams this week. Here are a couple, starting with the bad one.

Monday night I had one of my strangest nightmares ever. Most of my dreams are very visual; this one was mostly tactile.

In the dream I was sleeping, or at least trying to do so. I was in an unfamiliar house and seemed to be lying on my side underneath a staircase with just a thin blanket for warmth.

As I lay there, I began to have the sensation that there was someone behind me. The longer I lay there, the worse my anxiety got. I was trying to keep perfectly still because I knew that if I moved--and if there really was someone behind me--then I'd feel them there and know for sure.
Inevitably I did shift my position, and sure enough, I could feel the weight of another person against me. I immediately woke up, threw the covers off of myself, and whipped my head around to see who it was.

No one. Just an empty room. But terribly unsettling. Weird!

LAST NIGHT I HAD A FAR FUNNIER DREAM. My friend Scott from SF was starting a new job with me, and I was going to show him how to get there. Apparently Rube Goldberg designed the transit system we had to use.

We were each riding on what were essentially skateboards. At first we were sitting on them, and I set off on the path to work with Scott behind. We quickly arrived at the first "rough patch": a narrow, winding stone staircase without side walls to guard against a long fall to the bottom of what seemed to be a ravine. I wasn't scared; I'd bounced down those stairs on my skateboard hundreds of times. But I thought to myself, "Maybe I should have warned Scott about this part!"

When we reached the bottom we changed positions and laid down on our bellies on the skateboards. They must have been somewhat buoyant, because we now had to navigate a marsh. Right at the edge of the marsh, submerged under a few inches of crystal clear water, was my friend John. He had his usual mischievous grin on his face... he was trying to scare us!

Apparently we really wanted to get to work, so we kept going. And apparently no one wanted us to get there, because now as we inched along in just a few inches of water, we began to notice a horrible stench. And there, right under my nose, was a big chunk of a really stinky cheese. And then there were some rotting buffalo chicken wings! And on and on. My friend Jim had laid out a trail of smelly food to dissuade us from getting to work.

That's about the point where I woke up. I wish I'd found out what our job was, it must have been really important! ;-)

Two numbers: 800 billion (plus) and zero

I have been too busy this week to keep up on the details of the economic stimulus package that passed the House today... and so while I'm sure it is far from a perfect bill, it's troubling that not a single House Republican voted for it.

Some analysis of the package from the New York Times here.

The peanut butter recall

According to the FDA, none of the peanut butter that is being recalled is sold to the public at retail stores. More here.

What's wrong with Wall Street

Actually, something is very wrong there:

Despite crippling losses, multibillion-dollar bailouts and the passing of some of the most prominent names in the business, employees at financial companies in New York, the now-diminished world capital of capital, collected an estimated $18.4 billion in bonuses for the year.

That was the sixth-largest haul on record, according to a report released Wednesday by the New York State comptroller.

While the payouts paled next to the riches of recent years, Wall Street workers still took home about as much as they did in 2004, when the Dow Jones industrial average was flying above 10,000, on its way to a record high.

Some bankers took home millions last year even as their employers lost billions.

Aging

There's been some recent news on the aging front.

For decades researchers have known that restricting the caloric intake of certain animals significantly extended their average lifespans. One experiment in the 30s doubled the lifespan of rats by severely limiting the number of calories they consumed.

There have always been problems with applying this research to humans, though a lot of people have been intrigued by the idea.

A new study has determined that only mice that are likely to get fat benefit from caloric restriction. Naturally lean mice don't live any longer when fed fewer calories.

So if you don't have a weight problem, it doesn't look like skimping is going to do you much good.

MEANWHILE, researchers at Stanford have found evidence that aging isn't simply a process by which the cells of our bodies gradually break down but rather an active process in which genes associated with aging are increasingly activated as time goes on. Blocking the expression of those genes, at least in mice, results in reduced signs of aging.

"There is a genetic process that has to be on, and enforced, in order for aging to happen," said Howard Chang, MD, PhD, associate professor of dermatology and a member of Stanford's Cancer Center. "It's possible that those rare individuals who live beyond 100 years have a less-efficient version of this master pathway, just as children with progeria—a genetic aging disease—may have components of this pathway that are more active."

Note to Dr. Chang: I'm 43, hurry up with it already!!! :-)

Energy research at Stanford

A new research paper from Professor Mark Jacobson at Stanford highlights the advantages of wind, water, and solar energy over other alternatives:

Jacobson has conducted the first quantitative, scientific evaluation of the proposed, major, energy-related solutions by assessing not only their potential for delivering energy for electricity and vehicles, but also their impacts on global warming, human health, energy security, water supply, space requirements, wildlife, water pollution, reliability and sustainability. His findings indicate that the options that are getting the most attention are between 25 to 1,000 times more polluting than the best available options. The paper with his findings will be published in the next issue of Energy and Environmental Science but is available online now. Jacobson is also director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford.

"The energy alternatives that are good are not the ones that people have been talking about the most. And some options that have been proposed are just downright awful," Jacobson said. "Ethanol-based biofuels will actually cause more harm to human health, wildlife, water supply and land use than current fossil fuels." He added that ethanol may also emit more global-warming pollutants than fossil fuels, according to the latest scientific studies.

The raw energy sources that Jacobson found to be the most promising are, in order, wind, concentrated solar (the use of mirrors to heat a fluid), geothermal, tidal, solar photovoltaics (rooftop solar panels), wave and hydroelectric. He recommends against nuclear, coal with carbon capture and sequestration, corn ethanol and cellulosic ethanol, which is made of prairie grass. In fact, he found cellulosic ethanol was worse than corn ethanol because it results in more air pollution, requires more land to produce and causes more damage to wildlife.

SEPARATELY, Stanford has announced plans to spend $100 million on alternative energy technologies:

"The biggest renewable resource is the sun," said Lynn Orr, who has been named overall director of the new institute, which will function as an independent laboratory reporting to the dean of research. "But we need to lower the cost of converting sunlight into electricity and supplying it through a much improved electric grid. The new center will allow us to expand significantly our effort to develop new nanostructured materials for solar energy and energy storage and to work on the host of social, market and policy issues involved in the needed transition to energy systems with significant fractions of renewables."

Snuggie Nation

My friend James just informed me that Snuggies were featured on the cover of today's USA Today.

(Video link)

Ag welfare

Having grown up in a farming family, I'm all for the family farm. Industrial farms, on the other hand, are another thing altogether.

Consider this from Reason:

Ninety percent of all subsidies go to just five crops: corn, rice, cotton, wheat, and soybeans. Two thirds of all farm products—including perishable fruits and vegetables—receive almost no subsidies. And just 10 percent of recipients receive 75 percent of all subsidies. A program intended to be a “temporary solution” has become one of our government’s most glaring examples of corporate welfare.

U.S. taxpayers aren’t the only ones who pay the price. Cotton subsidies, for example, encourage overproduction which lowers the world price of cotton. That’s great for people who buy cotton, but it’s disastrous for already impoverished cotton farmers in places such as West Africa.

U.S. farm programs cost taxpayers billions each year, significantly raise the price of commodities such as sugar (which is protected from competition from other producers in other countries), undermine world trade agreements, and contribute to the suffering of poor farmers around the world. It’s bad public policy, especially in these troubled economic times.

I'm reminded of something I wrote about a farm that Michael Pollan described in The Omnivore's Dilemma:

The best part of the book for me was the section about Polyface Farm, a family-run and nearly self-sufficient small scale farm which produces an amazing bounty of food by operating as a "grass farm." The grass feeds cattle and chickens, which in turn fertilize the grass with their manure and support a complete and self-contained ecosystem on the farm, needing only some chicken feed as an input. This style of farming requires thought and careful planning and is far more labor intensive than large scale monoculture farming, but it actually produces more food per acre than the latter. I found myself again with that tug at the heart: call Dad and start a farm on the model of Polyface!

Original post and a link to the book here.

Obama's meeting with House Republicans

Marc Ambinder has a summary of their meeting about the economic stimulus package here.

The latest on coffee

More good news on what I'm drinking right now: coffee! A new study confirms earlier research that coffee consumption helps to lower the risk of developing dementia.

Another kind of turkey day

Apparently turkeys are terrorizing mail carriers in the town of Rockport, Massachussetts. :-)

Frost / Nixon

I saw Frost/Nixon today. Excellent!

Go see it yourself. And spend some time learning more about Watergate and the Nixon era if you're too young to remember the details.

I saw the movie with my friend James who asked me if I remembered the hearings. I do, but I was too young to understand what was going on. I was very confused by all the talk of this "watergate" since there didn't seem to be anything actually having to do with water on the TV.

:-)

An eye for an eye may not be as satisfying as it seems

Recent research finds that acting out on a desire for revenge may actually prolong your own unpleasant feelings:

The authors summarize their findings this way: “[People] underestimate the extent to which punishment will make them ruminate about the [transgressor], and they fail to realize that this is especially true if they instigate the punishment, as opposed to seeing someone else do it.” The reason for this paradoxical finding, the authors argue, is that rumination prolongs the negative emotions that punishers are trying to escape in the first place—the act of having punished someone keeps us thinking about them.

Obama's first televised interview since the inauguration

Obama has given his first interview to Al-Arabiya, an Arab television network. An excerpt:

Now, my job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language we use has to be a language of respect. I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries ... the largest one, Indonesia. And so what I want to communicate is the fact that in all my travels throughout the Muslim world, what I've come to understand is that regardless of your faith – and America is a country of Muslims, Jews, Christians, non-believers – regardless of your faith, people all have certain common hopes and common dreams.

And my job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives. My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy.

Ladies and gentleman, we do, indeed, have a new president. Watch the full interview:

(Video link)

Thank to the Daily Dish.

Vegas snapshot

Believe it or not, there are still active construction sites in las Vegas. This one is right across the street from where I live in Green Valley.

Wonders never cease

My wireless networking card on my netbook is working again.

Don't you love European commercials :-)

Put the headphones on, this one isn't safe for work!

(Video link)

More on Obama's actions on civil liberties issues

From the ACLU:

With four executive orders today, our new President:

1. Ordered Guantánamo Bay shut down
2. Banned torture
3. Ordered a full review of U.S. detention policies and procedures, and
4. Delayed the trial of Ali al-Marri, an ACLU client whose case is at the center of the Supreme Court’s review of indefinite detention policies.

You can thank Obama here.

Closing Guantanamo

I just sent Obama a "thank you" for the steps he took today to close the prison at Guantanamo.

Congratulations, Hillary

You're the new Secretary of State. :-)

Thank you, a-Lo and Adam!

One thing about taking classes at UNLV

So much youthful energy. :-)

Is it just me?

Or is it a GORGEOUS day? :-)

How wonderful to watch the morning news and see President Obama in action.

I guess I'm getting old

Our new First Lady is only two years older than me, lol.

"Former President Bush"

Now that has a ring to it. ;-)

I feel better now

No, not because Obama is back in his Cadillac. :-)

And not even because we have a new president (which, of course, is AMAZING).

But I feel reassured about Obama having just read more about how Chief Justice Roberts (such a smart guy, he gave me butterflies during his confirmation hearings) flubbed the administration of the presidential oath today.

He didn't use notes and screwed up; apparently Obama was aware that Roberts was misspeaking and tried to help him out.

More from First Read.

Frickin' computer!

Midway through the inauguration, I lost my wireless connection on my laptop. After looking at it more closely, my wireless network card disappeared from Windows! Grrrrrrrr.

Thoughts and impressions...

What a beautiful clarinet Anthony McGill was playing...

I think Obama got hit with the enormity of the moment when he took the oath... a little tongue-tied, lol! (UPDATE: NBC just reported that Chief Justice Roberts didn't use notes when he administered the oath to Obama... and got it wrong! Which might help explain why Obama fumbled.)

Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter sure are looking spry.

The Obama girls are beautiful, aren't they? And Michelle looked fabulous.

And that whole gorgeous crowd! Amazing. I wish I was there! And I don't think I've ever seen so many Washington VIPs together... actually, I can't remember the last time I watched the inauguration. I found myself thinking, "What a perfect time to attack America." :-/

Thank you, DiFi. You did well.

And the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery gave a great benediction.

As for Obama's speech, quite a bit of rebuke for George W. Bush, I thought. How strange it must have been for Bush to sit there and experience it all...

My friend Ryan, a Canadian, was my text message buddy for the experience. It was good to share the moment with you. :-)

Bush is now getting on Marine One to head back to the ranch. Don't let the door hit you on the way out! I gave you the benefit of the doubt after 9/11, Mr. Bush. You let me down.

AS FOR THE YEARS AHEAD, let us not forget what Obama spoke of today. It is a time for us to think about people others than ourselves. How can we be of service to others? What will you do to make a difference in this world we share?

The United States of America

I don't think I've ever been prouder to be an American.

THE BIG DAY

I was awoken by a barrage of text messages! :-)

I slept in an Obama t-shirt. :-)

What a gorgeous day in Washington, D.C.... and the world!

"Let freedom ring!"

1995 memories, now on DVD

In 1995 a bunch of my friends and I went on a gay cruise. We set sail from New Orleans and returned to the Big Easy on the Saturday before Mardi Gras.

Suffice to say, it was one of the craziest vacations I've ever had.

And for better or worse, my friends JJ and Jeff recorded a bunch of the funniest (and most embarassing) moments with their camcorder.

Today I used my Hauppauge WinTV to transfer the video from the original VHS tape to my computer, and then I burned it to a DVD.

Fabulous! :-)

Morning hike at Red Rock Canyon

Happy MLKjr day!

The dream is coming true

What a special Martin Luther King, Jr. day. His dream is taking a big step forward tomorrow.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood....

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Full text here.

STUFFED and satisfied

Tonight I went to a potluck dinner party with friends from school... great food (I'm stuffed!) and great conversation. :-)

I had a nice evening with Victor on Friday, a fun Saturday, and a really good evening today. Tomorrow is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and Obama is sworn in on Tuesday.

Does it get better than this?

Doubt

I saw the movie Doubt yesterday afternoon with friends. What a great movie! And Meryl Streep was as stunning as ever. Watching her, I was reminded of being taken to Kramer vs. Kramer by my parents when I was 13. It was the first time I saw Streep, and her performance has always stuck with me.

Afterwards it inspired a lot of conversation: was the priest guilty? who was gay? what had actually happened behind closed doors? what were Sister Aloysius' doubts?

Highly recommended.

American Pie

Garth Brooks just sang part of what quite possibly may be my favorite song, "American Pie." Here's Don McLean singing it:

(Video link)

And here's an annotated version that attempts to provide some background on the meaning of the song. One thing I didn't know: that Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly with His Song" was written about McLean.

Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address

Speaking at the inaugural concert, George Lopez just quoted from President Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address:

To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration: We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its few spiritual blessings. Those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibility; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; and that the sources -- scourges of poverty, disease, and ignorance will be made [to] disappear from the earth; and that in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.

This is Eisenhower's famous speech in which he warned of the military-industrial complex. It's well worth a read. The full transcript and audio can be found here.

The inaugural concert at the Lincoln Memorial

OMG wish I was there! What a great event.

I'm watching it on HBO.com because Cox Cable in Vegas didn't make it available for free as HBO requested cable operators to do. Grrrrrr. I guess beggars can't be choosers... I'm happy watching it even on my laptop. :-)

Moments in history

The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, adopted on December 6, 1865:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

A train arrives in Washington, D.C.:

What began for Obama two years ago as a long-shot presidential bid launched in Abraham Lincoln's shadow in Springfield, Ill., ended with another tribute to the 16th president, Obama's political idol. His 10-car train retraced the route Lincoln took to the capital before he assumed the presidency in 1861. Obama stopped to deliver speeches in Philadelphia, Wilmington, Del., and Baltimore, often referring to the spirit of Lincoln and the Founding Fathers.

"We are here today not simply to pay tribute to our first patriots but to take up the work that they began," Obama said.

One year ago.,..

I just realized that one year ago I was a precinct captain for Obama and busy going door-to-door canvassing. The Nevada Democratic caucus was held on January 19th. Hillary got more votes, but Obama's strength in rural counties led to him earning more delegates.

One year and one day after our caucus, Obama will be sworn in as America's 44th president.

Yes, we can!

Late adopter

I started working in Oracle's video server group in 1994. In 2000 the division was sold to nCUBE (now Arris) whose focus was selling video-on-demand solutions to cable companies. I remained in that industry until 2006, and I was always amused by how little television my co-workers and I watched. Maybe it was due to being surrounded by televisions and cable equipment all day at work; maybe it was a vague sense that what we were doing for a living was enabling people to be couch potatoes.

I continued to watch little television after I left my job and didn't even have cable the year and a half I lived in San Francisco. And for the past year I've mostly watched the debates and election news coverage.

But I needed a new television for my new apartment, and I bought a Panasonic 42" plasma screen (got a great deal on it at Sears last month!). And between my appreciation of the crystal clear picture and knowledge that the inauguration was coming up, I decided to upgrade my cable service to HD and get a Cox DVR.

It's amusing that I waited so long since I used to test interactive television technology on just this kind of a set-top box. And I'm surprised about how excited I am to be using it to schedule recording of some of the shows I like... like, duh, I was doing this at work six or seven years ago!

JUST WATCHED OBAMA IN BALTIMORE on CNN's HD channel. And programmed my DVR to record Tuesday's inauguration. :-)

Just barely...

I heard on NPR today that inflation crept up just 0.1% in 2008. And that's not much.

Quote for the day

Speaking about George W. Bush, Obama called him a "good guy." But he clarified the remark.

"I mean, I think personally he is a good man who loves his family and loves his country," Obama said in an exclusive interview with CNN's John King.

"That does not detract from my assessment that over the last several years, we have made a series of bad choices and we are now going to be inheriting the consequences of a lot of those bad choices," Obama said.

Congresswoman Dina Titus

It's good to be represented by a Democrat in the House again. :-)

Birth of a nation... and the presidency

I finished watching the John Adams miniseries on DVD this week. If you haven't seen it, you should. Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney are both outstanding. John and Abigail Adams were the first president and first lady to occupy the White House, a residence built largely with slave labor.

With the Obama inauguration is just around the corner--and in the spirit of all things presidential--here's a link to an old post on a great book about the successes and failures of Adams and the other founders, American Creation.

Garrett Epps finds fault with the founders on one particular count in this month's The Atlantic. Namely, their poorly and ambiguously defined role of the president. Read "The Founders' Great Mistake" to learn why he blames the Constitution--and not just George W. Bush--for the executive excesses of the last eight years.

Methane on Mars suggests Martians use underground feedlots

Or... maybe it justs suggests that there is, or has been, biological activity on the Red Planet. ;-)

Avoiding your first (or second) heart attack

The guidelines are changing, with less focus on low-fat intake and more attention paid to the types of fats consumed as well as reducing inflammation as measured by C-reactive protein (CRP) in the bloodstream:

“You should make most of the food yourself,” Dr. Ozner added. “When the diet is stripped of lots of processed foods, you ratchet down inflammation. Among my patients, the compliance rate — those who adopt the diet and stick with it — is greater than 90 percent.”

Among foods that help to reduce the inflammatory marker CRP are cold-water fish like salmon, tuna and mackerel; flax seed; walnuts; and canola oil and margarine based on canola oil. Fish oil capsules are also effective. Dr. Ozner recommends cooking with canola oil and using more expensive and aromatic olive oil for salads.

Other aspects of the Mediterranean diet — vegetables, fruits and red wine (or purple grape juice) — are helpful as well. Their antioxidant properties help prevent the formation of artery-damaging LDL cholesterol.

Remember this story...

The next time the flight attendant starts talking about your seat cushion acting as a life preserver ;-)

Amazing that no one was injured in this water landing on the Hudson River.

Five more days

Bush just gave his farewell address. Yawn.

On a more important note, I just removed all of my DVDs from the plastic cases they came in and put them into an album. What a bunch of junk the studios provide when all I want is the bits!

That weird moon

Sure enough, the moon (which is in an elliptical orbit) was at its closest point to the earth this past weekend, so it's not surprising that it looked particularly large last night. The full moon last weekend was about 15% larger than a typical full moon.

Still, the shape last night seemed weird...

Tell Obama what you think

His transition team has created a "Citizen's Briefing Book" website where you can share your own ideas and weigh in on the submissions that others have made.

A beautiful day

Just got out of biochem... it's a good class, I can tell I am going to like it. And it's gorgeous out... got the sunroof open! 8-)

And I only have class on Monday and Wednesday this semester. Happy "Friday"!

Mind games to play at home

And no prohibited substances required! :-)

Read about "hacking your brain."

Sigh

I just finished unloading my last load of stuff from Victor's house. Sad. I think I'll postpone unpacking until tomorrow...

On my way home...

I saw the largest, most oddly shaped moon I've ever seen. For a moment I thought it was a blimp... weird.

Brita pitchers... safe to use?

I have a few earlier posts (1, 2, 3) about the best plastics to use for water and food. As I was about to buy a Brita pitcher for my own use, I wondered about the plastics in their products. Based on what I learned, I went ahead and bought one.

Read it for yourself here and here. Note that the first article has this general guideline about reducing your exposure to bisphenol A (BPA):

The average person is probably getting more BPA by eating canned food and drinking canned soda than from drinking out of a polycarbonate beverage container. BPA is used to line the inside of metal food and soda cans and leaches from the can liner into the food. Acidic foods like tomato sauces and soda absorb more BPA. To reduce your exposure, drink less canned soda and eat less canned food, especially those that are tomato-based. These days, I buy tomato sauce in glass jars, not in cans!

Good news: beer and wine reduce carcinogens

Well... it's not quite as wonderful as it sounds!

But it does appear to be the case that marinating chicken or beef in beer or wine before frying or grilling them is an effective way to reduce the carcinogens that form during the cooking process.

An olive oil, lemon juice, and garlic marinade has the same effect for chicken, at least.

Check it out at NewScientist.

One of those images...

Which only the eye (or a good wide angle lens) can do justice to.

What you ask? The view I have of the Las Vegas Strip on my walk to and from the gym at night. From this distance, the Strip stretches across about 45 degrees of the horizon. And in the crisp air of January, it's actually a rather beguiling sight.

A young artist

In the fall of 1985, I walked into Green Library at Stanford University and applied for a job. Twenty-three years later, I still count the woman who hired me as a dear friend. I miss you, Nancy!

Somehow along the way Nancy and her husband Walter had a son who is now, gulp, graduating from high school. He's heading to the Savannah College of Art and Design this fall. Nils was kind enough to share some of his art with me with permission to post it on Torqopia.

Best of luck to you, Nils! I think you are going to do well!

And to the rest of you, enjoy. :-)

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Glad everything went well today! Love you!

I'm all atwitter

I may be becoming an old fogey... I've adopted email and chat rooms and cells phones and instant messaging and text messaging and social networking... but I just have to draw the line when it comes to Twitter.

Turns out that Torqopia is now on Twitter, however... someone has created a feed of all of Nevada's blogs and put it on Twitter.

Works for me, lol, because I still don't have to Twitter myself!

Rally at UNLV to protest proposed cuts in higher education funding

Just received this notice:

On January 22, 2009 from 6 p.m. – 7:30 p.m., Nevada’s Students of Higher Education will be rallying at UNLV’s academic mall (in front of Beam Hall) in order to oppose Governor Gibbons’ proposed budget reductions. Never have Nevada’s students been so thoroughly united in opposing cuts of the magnitude that the Governor has in mind.

The reason for the strong opposition is due to the Nevada System of Higher Education already taking numerous cuts in this biennium to help make up for Nevada’s shortfall. As students, we cannot and will not accept budget cuts from 14% and higher because we refuse to allow our academic programs to suffer any more than they already have.

As concerned citizens of this state, we are outraged at the Governor’s refusal to rework the revenue structure and to provide adequate support of Nevada’s education as mandated by Nevada’s Legislature under Article 11 of The Constitution of the State of Nevada.

On January 22 students will gather with support from the campus community and the community at large in writing letters to our State Legislature as well as (and especially) to the Governor, and we will also be reading essays collected from all three of Nevada’s southern institutions in which students voice their concerns over how the budget reductions have impacted them so far and why our institutions simply cannot stand further cuts. Currently, we are also inviting prominent leaders in the community to speak on this issue. A press release with speakers will be sent as soon as we have confirmed speakers.

This event is being co-hosted and organized by the student governments of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), College of Southern Nevada (CSN), and Nevada State College (NSC).

First day back in school

And I would have missed it if Joann hadn't Facebooked me! I am taking classes at both CSN and UNLV and made the assumption that classes started the same week like last semester. Wrong!

At least it is a beautiful day, sunny and 69 degrees.

100 years of conflict...

The Economist has a good piece on the century-old conflict that is burning bright even today in Gaza:

And Gaza, remember, is only one item in a mighty catalogue of misery, whose entries are inscribed in tears. The Jews and Arabs of Palestine have been fighting off and on for 100 years. In 1909 the mostly Russian socialist idealists of the Zionist movement set up an armed group, Hashomer, to protect their new farms and villages in Palestine from Arab marauders. Since then has come the dismal march of wars—1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 2006 and now 2009—each seared by blood and fire into the conflicting myths and memories of the two sides. The intervals between the wars have not been filled by peace but by bombs, raids, uprisings and atrocities. Israeli settlers in Hebron today still cite, as if it were yesterday, the massacre of Hebron’s Jews in 1929. The Arabs of Palestine still remember their desperate revolt in the 1930s against the British mandate and Jewish immigration from Europe, and the massacres of 1948.

The slaughter this week in Gaza, in which on one day alone some 40 civilians, many children, were killed in a single salvo of Israeli shells, will pour fresh poison into the brimming well of hate (see article). But a conflict that has lasted 100 years is not susceptible to easy solutions or glib judgments. Those who choose to reduce it to the “terrorism” of one side or the “colonialism” of the other are just stroking their own prejudices. At heart, this is a struggle of two peoples for the same patch of land. It is not the sort of dispute in which enemies push back and forth over a line until they grow tired. It is much less tractable than that, because it is also about the periodic claim of each side that the other is not a people at all—at least not a people deserving sovereign statehood in the Middle East.

They end on this note:

There is a limit, however. Taking Hamas down a peg is one thing. But even in the event of Israel “winning” in Gaza, a hundred years of war suggest that the Palestinians cannot be silenced by brute force. Hamas will survive, and with it that strain in Arab thinking which says that a Jewish state does not belong in the Middle East. To counter that view, Israel must show not only that it is too strong to be swept away but also that it is willing to give up the land—the West Bank, not just Gaza—where the promised Palestinian state must stand. Unless it starts doing that convincingly, at a minimum by freezing new settlement, it is Palestine’s zealots who will flourish and its peacemakers who will fall back into silence. All of Israel’s friends, including Barack Obama, should be telling it this.

After 9/11, I wanted to know more about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I read Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001 which is long but worth the time.

SOMEHOW this tiny strip of land has become an intersection for so much of the worst in humanity: genocide, feelings of guilt, religious extremism, colonialism, intolerance, and on and on. (The genocide and guilt references refer to the Holocaust, not anything specifically happening in Israel or the Occupied Territories... have to be clear on that lest I invite too much criticism! As Meghan McArdle recently wrote, part of the problem with this particular ongoing conflict is that "one is not allowed to have an opinion on the matter.")

The latest on the corn ethanol boondoggle...

From the Environmental Working Group; apparently the ethanol refineries are looking for a bailout:

Solar, wind and other renewable energy sources have struggled to gain significant market share with modest federal support. Meanwhile, corn-based ethanol has accounted for fully three-quarters of the tax benefits and two-thirds of all federal subsidies allotted for renewable energy sources in 2007.

A little noticed analysis buried in an April 2008 report from the federal Energy Information Administration (EIA)1 shows that the corn-based ethanol industry received $3 billion in tax credits in 2007, more than four times the $690 million in credits available to companies trying to expand all other forms of renewable energy, including solar, wind and geothermal power.

The federal bill for ethanol subsidies grows with every gallon of ethanol produced. By 2010, ethanol will cost taxpayers more than $5 billion a year -- more than is spent on all U.S. Department of Agriculture conservation programs to protect soil, water and wildlife habitat.

Now the ethanol industry wants even more. In recent weeks, the corn ethanol lobby has pushed for billions in new federal subsidies as part of the economic stimulus package. Corn growers and ethanol companies are also pressing for dramatic increases in the amount of ethanol Americans will be required to put into their gas tanks—even if it results in worse fuel economy and more engine repairs. Once touted as the energy equivalent of a free lunch, corn ethanol has proved to be an over-hyped and dubious renewable energy option. Ethanol made from corn has extremely limited potential to reduce the country’s dependence on imported oil, and current production systems likely worsen greenhouse gas emissions.

Moreover, despite billions in federal subsidies on top of a government mandate that forces motorists to buy ethanol, the industry’s financial outlook remains highly unstable. A fleeting few years of windfall profits and breakneck construction of ethanol plants gave rise to talk of “sheikdoms” springing up in the Midwest to rival those in the Middle East and a “rural renaissance" featuring hundreds of thousands of new jobs.

But that was last year. Today, a glut of ethanol, abruptly lower gasoline prices and wild swings in the corn market have caused the ethanol industry's profit margins to evaporate, hammered its stock values, triggered major bankruptcies and shredded ambitious plans to construct dozens of new plants.

Hence the latest burst of special pleadings from the ethanol lobby. Its spokesmen have floated a proposal for billions more in taxpayer handouts via the economic stimulus bill, and they want an expanded government fiat that would require drivers to use as much as twice the ethanol that Washington currently dictates.

The difficulty of surveying cellphone-only households

Some interesting facts about the difficulty of surveying cellphone users:

Federal law requires that calls to cellphones be hand-dialed; it is illegal to use automatic dialers, which are standard tools for survey and polling firms. Furthermore, a huge fraction of "owners" of cellphone numbers are children ineligible for the health surveys. Once reached, some cellphone users are reluctant to talk at length because they have to pay for incoming calls.

Consequently, it takes roughly nine calls to working cellphone numbers to get one completed survey, compared with five calls to working land-line numbers, said Scott Keeter, a polling expert at the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, an independent opinion research group. Further, an interview conducted with someone who uses a cellphone costs 2 1/2 times as much as an interview with someone on a conventional phone. In addition to higher labor costs, most surveys now reimburse cellphone users for their minutes, either in cash or through credits to online merchants such as Amazon.com.

Quotes for the day

To be nobody-but-yourself -- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

-- e.e. cummings

They faced each other at opposite ends of an illusion.

-- Dancer from the Dance, Andrew Holleran

The generation gap, pop diva style

While getting my car washed, I struck up a conversation with a woman whose daughter was wearing a Hannah Montana t-shirt. I asked how the concert was and whether she performs as Hannah or Miley Cyrus (the answer is both).

I mentioned that I had seen Madonna last November, and the woman replied that she had seen her three years ago. We compared the tours for a minute or two until we were interrupted by her daughter who asked, "Who's Madonna?"

Uh, oh. :-)

License plate watch: RXMBAJD

Seen on a Toyota Camry in Las Vegas.

Hmm... I guess they have a lot of student loans, lol.

The Wisdom Course: backed up by new research

In 2003 I took Landmark Education's Wisdom course. Over a nine month period we played with the basic premise of the course: that who we are is a network of conversations. In other words, it is what we say, what the people around us say, and what the people around them say which determines our experience of life. And if you want a new life, say new things.

I was profoundly impacted by the experience, and in 2006 I had the opportunity to act as a coach for the course in San Francisco.

I just read "Three Degrees of Contagion" in NewScientist magazine. It discusses some new research which reinforces this notion about how strongly we are influenced by our social networks:

Indeed, it is becoming clear that a whole range of phenomena are transmitted through networks of friends in ways that are not entirely understood: happiness and depression, obesity, drinking and smoking habits, ill-health, the inclination to turn out and vote in elections, a taste for certain music or food, a preference for online privacy, even the tendency to attempt or think about suicide. They ripple through networks "like pebbles thrown into a pond", says Nicholas Christakis, a medical sociologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, who has pioneered much of the new work.

At first sight, the idea that we can catch the moods, habits and state of health not only of those around us, but also those we do not even know seems alarming. It implies that rather than being in charge of where we are going in life, we are little more than back-seat drivers, since most social influence operates at a subconscious level.

But we need not be alarmed, says Duncan Watts, a sociologist at Columbia University, New York. "Social influence is mostly a good thing. We should embrace the fact that we're inherently social creatures and that much of who we are and what we do is determined by forces that are outside the little circle we draw around ourselves." What's more, by being aware of the effects of social contagion we may be able to find ways to counter it, or use it to our own benefit. "There's no doubt people can have some control over their networks and that this in turn can affect their lives," says Christakis.

And not surprisingly, two of the recommendations listed in the article (#2 and #3) are very similar to what the Wisdom course offers to those who want to transform their lives:

Five tips for a healthier social network

1. Choose your friends carefully.

2. Choose which of your existing friends you spend the most time with. For example, hang out with people who are upbeat, or avoid couch potatoes.

3. Join a club whose members you would like to emulate (running, healthy cooking), and socialise with them.

4. If you are with people whose emotional state or behaviours you could do without, try to avoid the natural inclination to mimic their facial expressions and postures.

5. Be aware at all times of your susceptibility to social influence - and remember that being a social animal is mostly a good thing.

So who are you talking to today, and what are you talking about?

Missing Ron, missing Randi

On New Year's Eve, I learned that a friend of mine in San Francisco had taken his life in late November. I had not known he was depressed, and if I had been asked whom I knew who might be at risk of suicide, his name would have been near the bottom of my list. During all the years we were friends, he was always one of the most positive and upbeat people I knew. His energy was a joy to be around.

SEVEN YEARS AGO on New Year's Day, I came home and heard a voicemail that turned my blood cold. I returned Greg's call and was heartbroken to find that one of my best friends from Stanford--and my first roommate after my graduation--had taken her life the day after Christmas.

Like Ron, Randi had a beautiful soul. She had once confided in me that she had considered suicide in high school. But at one of her lowest points, she took a hot, steamy shower and realized that if something so simple could feel so good that life was well worth living. I knew Randi longer and better than I knew Ron; I knew that she experienced occasional anxiety and sadness though more often than not she was smiling or laughing. But again, I was shocked by her suicide.

Randi loved life. We struggled through our first year Spanish courses together, but when she discovered sign language, she found her passion. She became a sign language interpreter and married a deaf man. They had two daughters together.

To this day she remains one of the best friends I've ever had. She was always there for me when I needed her, and I couldn't count how many hours we spent walking The Dish in the foothills behind Stanford. We were there together as we began to figure out our young adult lives.

I miss her dearly.

I.O.U.S.A.

CNN is broadcasting the documentary I.O.U.S.A. today with commentary from former Comptroller General David Walker and former Senator Bill Bradley.

You can watch a short 30 minute version of the film and get more information about the U.S. debt and budget deficit here.

Earlier this week the New York Times had an article about China's waning appetite for financing our debt spending (talk about a potentially devastating rude awakening).

Passive-aggressive heaven

Andrew Sullivan had a link today to this blog that is all about real world passive-aggressive notes that people give one another. Hilarious!

Of playboys and penthouses

Last night I was listening to the radio and caught an interview with Steven Watts who has just written a new biography about Hugh Hefner. During the course of the interview, Watts brought up Penthouse Magazine which became a competitor to Playboy in the 70s.

I obviously know what a penthouse is, but I realized that I had never connected the name of the magazine with the top floor of a building, or more particuarly, a high-end apartment located there.

My first association of the word "penthouse" was with the magazine (ah, puberty), and when I later learned about penthouses as somewhere where people live, I never connected it up with my earlier denotation for the term. Clearly the magazine was named after the dwelling to connote exclusivity, but since I first knew Penthouse, there was no reason to hook it up to penthouses when I later learned what they were.

And now I understand their logo (a key)!

Funny how our minds work... :-)

Here's a CNN interview with Hefner in which he discusses Watts' book, Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream.

Riding the bus in Vegas

I just dropped off my moving van and am about to ride the bus for the first time in Las Vegas.

The posted schedule is "effective August 18, 1997." Hmmm...

UPDATE

I just got home. Via a cab. I used the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada's website to map out my route home from the Budget Truck Rental location. I got on the right bus. Only problem was that particular bus didn't take me anywhere near where I needed to go to catch the next bus.

So I flagged down a cab and bribed him with a $30 tip (in advance) to get him to take me to Henderson.

Screw the bus!

The Contango

Remember when oil was $140 a barrel and there was talk about speculators driving up the price?

Well, here is some evidence that the oil markets are, indeed, gamed: investors are buying oil at today's cheap prices and parking it offshore in supertankers awaiting higher prices.

Bailout nation / Dramatic action

From Bill Gross' latest commentary:

2008 was the year when the United States led the charge of bailout nations, lending and literally guaranteeing trillions of dollars of private liabilities in an effort to avoid the advent of another Great Depression....

Still, while such a transformation is, to put it mildly, undesirable, the policies are necessary. As outlined in these pages, the U.S. and many of its G-7 counterparts over the past 25 years have become more and more dependent on asset appreciation. Under the policy-endorsed cover of technology and somewhat faux increases in financial productivity, we became a nation that specialized in the making of paper instead of things, and it fell to Wall Street to invent ever more clever ways to securitize assets, and the job of Main Street to “equitize” or, in reality, to borrow more and more money off of them. What was not well recognized was that these policies were hollowing, self-destructive, and ultimately destined to be exposed for what they always were: Ponzi schemes, whose ultimate payoffs were dependent on the inclusion of more and more players and the production of more and more paper. Bernie Madoff?

As with every financial and economic crisis, he will probably go down as this generation’s fall guy – the Samuel Insull, the Jeffrey Skilling, of 2008.

But Madoff’s scheme has a host of culpable look-alikes and one has only to begin with the mortgage market to understand the similarities. Option ARMs or Pick-A-Pay home loans allowed homeowners to make monthly payments that were so small they did not even cover their interest charges. Two million mortgagees either chose or were sold this Ponzi/Madoff form of skullduggery, believing that home prices never go down and that shoppers never drop. One can add to this the trillions in home equity/second mortgage loans that extracted “savings” in order to promote current instead of future consumption, and one begins to realize that Bernie Madoff and our cartoon’s Wimpy had company all these years.

OBAMA OUTLINED DRAMATIC ACTION today to confront the crisis:

This crisis did not happen solely by some accident of history or normal turn of the business cycle, and we won’t get out of it by simply waiting for a better day to come, or relying on the worn-out dogmas of the past. We arrived at this point due to an era of profound irresponsibility that stretched from corporate boardrooms to the halls of power in Washington, DC. For years, too many Wall Street executives made imprudent and dangerous decisions, seeking profits with too little regard for risk, too little regulatory scrutiny, and too little accountability. Banks made loans without concern for whether borrowers could repay them, and some borrowers took advantage of cheap credit to take on debt they couldn’t afford. Politicians spent taxpayer money without wisdom or discipline, and too often focused on scoring political points instead of the problems they were sent here to solve. The result has been a devastating loss of trust and confidence in our economy, our financial markets, and our government.

Now, the very fact that this crisis is largely of our own making means that it is not beyond our ability to solve. Our problems are rooted in past mistakes, not our capacity for future greatness. It will take time, perhaps many years, but we can rebuild that lost trust and confidence. We can restore opportunity and prosperity. We should never forget that our workers are still more productive than any on Earth. Our universities are still the envy of the world. We are still home to the most brilliant minds, the most creative entrepreneurs, and the most advanced technology and innovation that history has ever known. And we are still the nation that has overcome great fears and improbable odds. If we act with the urgency and seriousness that this moment requires, I know that we can do it again.

After outlining his plan, he went on to say:

Now, this recovery plan alone will not solve all the problems that led us into this crisis. We must also work with the same sense of urgency to stabilize and repair the financial system we all depend on. That means using our full arsenal of tools to get credit flowing again to families and business, while restoring confidence in our markets. It means launching a sweeping effort to address the foreclosure crisis so that we can keep responsible families in their homes. It means preventing the catastrophic failure of financial institutions whose collapse could endanger the entire economy, but only with maximum protections for taxpayers and a clear understanding that government support for any company is an extraordinary action that must come with significant restrictions on the firms that receive support. And it means reforming a weak and outdated regulatory system so that we can better withstand financial shocks and better protect consumers, investors, and businesses from the reckless greed and risk-taking that must never endanger our prosperity again.

No longer can we allow Wall Street wrongdoers to slip through regulatory cracks. No longer can we allow special interests to put their thumbs on the economic scales. No longer can we allow the unscrupulous lending and borrowing that leads only to destructive cycles of bubble and bust.

It is time to set a new course for this economy, and that change must begin now. We should have an open and honest discussion about this recovery plan in the days ahead, but I urge Congress to move as quickly as possible on behalf of the American people. For every day we wait or point fingers or drag our feet, more Americans will lose their jobs. More families will lose their savings. More dreams will be deferred and denied. And our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.

That is not the country I know, and it is not a future I will accept as President of the United States. A world that depends on the strength of our economy is now watching and waiting for America to lead once more. And that is what we will do.

It will not come easy or happen overnight, and it is altogether likely that things may get worse before they get better. But that is all the more reason for Congress to act without delay. I know the scale of this plan is unprecedented, but so is the severity of our situation. We have already tried the wait-and-see approach to our problems, and it is the same approach that helped lead us to this day of reckoning.

You can read his full remarks here.

Progress, George W. Bush-style

First Read's then and now compares the country when Bush took office to its present state...

Sign of the times

The state of Ohio had to hire additional staff to process a dramatic increase in unemployment claims...

Joe the Media Filter Correspondent

Joe the Plumber is heading to Israel as a war correspondent for a conservative website. LOL