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ballot for Primary Election on June 5, 2012

Sun, 20 May 2012 22:15:45 GMT

President: Barack Obama. I think he has taken much weaker positions in many negotitations than he could have, failing to grasp just how radical and intractable his opponents are. And I am mystified and disappointed by his Justice Department's failure to uproot Bush policies on torture and spying. But side from those two things, I think he's been an excellent president, and his record of achievments in his first term arguably is far longer and more impressive than Clinton's was in his first term. (For starters, Clinton failed at healthcare reform, and for all that the Affordable Care Act could stand to be improved, it passed, and will do tremendous good for millions of Americans.)

US Senator: I still kinda hate DiFi. The Bay Guardian put it well: "She's a moderate Democrat, at best, was weak-to-terrible on the war, is hawkish on Pentagon spending (particularly Star Wars and the B-1 bomber), has supported more North Coast logging, and attempts to meddle in local politics with ridiculous ideas like promoting unknown Michael Breyer for District Five supervisor. She supported the Obama health-care bill but isn't a fan of single-payer, referring to supporters of Medicare for all as 'the far left.' But she's strong on choice and is embarrassing the GOP with her push for reauthorization of an expanded Violence Against Women Act." I'd also add that she's bad on progressive taxation -- back in '06 one of her friends / fundraisers / advisors made some public remarks in favor of Schwarzenegger over Angelides on the basis of the idea that rich people are over-taxed, and DiFi didn't make a peep to contradict her. However, there doesn't seem to be any credible Dem running against her in the primary (I considered Mike Strimling, but he seems kinda over-wrought), and she'll certainly go along with the party line on the most important bills (even if, unlike Barbara Boxer, she'll never actually be a champion of them), so, meh, I guess I'll vote for her.

US Rep, CD 14: Jackie Speier. Speier has a long and admirable history in state and national politics; repeating it here would be redundant.

State Senator, SD 13: This is a tough one for me, because I really like both Sally Lieber and Jerry Hill. Sally has a great history of work on legislation dealing with poverty issues, especially at the intersection with childhood development, education, single motherhood, etc. Jerry served on the California Air Resources Board, and has been an advocate for our region's cleantech industry. After some consideration, I've decided to go with Jerry, because, as I've remarked before, I think the legislature needs people who have his kind of technical expertise. Also, just in general, I have more direct experience with Jerry, who has been my Assemblyman for the last couple years; I've had very positive interactions with him and his staff. I have nothing bad to say about Sally, and every time I've talked with her I've liked what she had to say, but I haven't actually been a constituent, though Xta was before we moved in together. In any case, if she wins, I'll still be happy with the outcome.

State Assembly, AD 22: Kevin Mullin, who's the only Dem running.

County of San Mateo Board of Supervisors, District 4: Shelly Masur. This was another difficult one. There are two other candidates I seriously considered. One is Warren Slocum, who served for many years as the head of the county's staff (clerk / assessor / recorder), and as far as I know is widely seen as having done a competent job in that role; however I'm really not impressed with his campaign for the supervisor office; he doesn't seem to have done a lot to stake out clear positions, and hasn't collected any notable endorsements that I can see. The other is Memo Morantes, who did a much better job than Masur at laying out his positions on his website, and specifically mentioned in his statement for the voter guide one of the local policies I care most about (support for electrifying the CalTrain corridor and ultimately bringing through a high-speed rail route to SF, even if there's a Palo Alto / Menlo Park / Atherton crowd who insist on being whiny NIMBYs about it). OTOH, Masur also does support the "blended option" for high-speed rail (which is to say, use of the CalTrain corridor -- this seems to be the consensus position except among local politicians in a few of our wealthier towns), and she has a list of very strong endorsements, including the local party (which I've been involved with before, and generally like, and their endorsement works pretty well as a proxy for "she must largely agree with me on the stuff where Morantes has done a better job publishing his takes on issues like the local jail, high speed rail, etc"). Morantes got Speier's endorsement, which is certainly important as well. Ultimately, I'm deciding on the basis of the fact that Morantes is opposing Measures T, U, and X (he says he's in favor of finding new revenue, but dislikes these particular measures). I am in favor of them, and I worry that he is trying to court votes from anti-tax voters in general (which is a dangerous road to go down, because if you're dependent on those people, you can basically never vote for any revenue). I understand his arguments against, but disagree, and I'm having trouble finding any stronger way to differentiate between him and Masur.

Prop 28: Yes. This changes the term limit structure for the legislature from "six years in the Assembly, eight in the Senate" to "up to twelve years total across the two houses". I'm opposed to term limits in general. As President Bartlett put it: The Constitution already gave us term limits; they're called elections. Legislating -- especially leading a push for major reforms -- is a difficult, complicated job. It takes a long time to learn to do it well, and to build up the relationships and alliances that are necessary to get a complex bill passed. If you believe that big issues sometimes require big solutions, not just small, piecemeal, uncomplicated adjustments, then you pretty much need to have at least some legislators who will work on those issues over the course of many years. Under our current system, by the time a legislator has learned the ropes enough to even start working on such things, he has maybe four more years to get stuff done. Furthermore, the constant churn through the Capitol enhances the position of the lobbyists, who are a permanent long-term presence. So: I'd much rather see us scrap term limits altogether. But still, this changes the system so that people go from the "farm team" of lower offices to a longer period in one house rather than to a really short stint in the Assembly and then maybe the Senate. It also should reduce the problem of feuds between Assembly members who are eyeing the same Senate seat.

Prop 29: Yes. Raises the tax on cigarettes from $0.87 to $1.87 per pack, to fund cancer research conducted in CA. This will move us from being one of the lowest-tax states on tobacco, to kind of the low end of the middle of the pack. It will still put us far short of the level where I'd expect to develop a major black market / tax evasion problems. (New York, at $4.35 a pack, has serious problems with people buying cigs in other states and then bringing them to NY for illegal resale.) I'd prefer it if they let the money go into the general fund, b/c I'm not a fan of ballot-box budgeting, but frankly, even if they were going to take all the money collected from this, pile up the cash, and have a nice bonfire, I'd vote for it solely for the Pigovian benefits.

Measures T, U, and X: Yes. These impose taxes on businesses operating in unincorporated San Mateo County -- vehicle rental, hotels, and commercial parking, respectively. These are all taxes that cities can and do take advantage of, but which currently you can mostly avoid if you operate in an unincorporated area. These taxes are more about restoring parity between the cities and unincorporated areas than really about "new" taxes. Furthermore, the usual crowd of anti-taxers have been particularly disingenuous in their campaign against these measures, e.g. trying to mislead people into thinking that T is a general "car tax" that would affect personal vehicles.

Xta's birfday dinner!

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 01:11:51 GMT

Benu.

Mitt Romney just wants to get into America's pants.

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 19:00:53 GMT

You've seen clips of Mitt Romney's big Michigan speech, right? The one where he's going on in a faux-emotional voice about how much he luhrvs Michigan, because "the trees are the right height", and he loves cars, and so on.

It struck me that the tone of the speech is a dead-on match for the tone of a guy who is dating a woman who has kids, and doesn't particularly like them, but is trying to fake it, because he really wants to get into mom's pants. "Do ya like baseball son? I love baseball!" The desperation to find some point at which he can at least fake a connection is palpable. Even little kids can detect that kind of fakeness. So the question is: are Republicans smarter than a five-year-old?

Gratuitous Icon Post

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 06:29:40 GMT

Because I needed a Keiun icon.

We got collars for the cats today; will have to post a link when Xta uploads the photos. We hadn't been doing collars for quite a while, but decided that really they ought to have tags, especially the ones that certify their vaccinations, so folks know they're safe. We got little engraved things with my cell number, as well. I hope it will never matter. Also, I hope Keiun will get used to hers; so far she doesn't like it. Hoshi, surprisingly, has been totally OK with hers. She hated the one she wore for roughly ages 0-3.

Las Cascadas del Río Cuervo

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 17:38:15 GMT

A photo of this waterfall, in more or less this same condition, was part of how I originally pitched the idea of going to Spain for our honeymoon. As I recall, Xta asked me whether there would be any snow in Spain, so I went googling for photos with "Spain ice", "Spain snow", and "Spain winter"...

Obviously the person is included in this photo solely to give you a sense of scale, not because it was totally awesome to creep out and touch the giant 9-foot-long icicles.

When we were starting the hike, there was a family (British?) coming back down. Their daughter, who was probably about 10 or 12, was carrying a javelin-length icicle in her mitten. Now that's parenting I approve of.

Full honeymoon trip report...

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:21:28 GMT

I'm pirating this from stuff I originally wrote up for our travel agent, then adding more detail that may be more of interest to friends, especially if you might be visiting some of the same cities...

Edited to Add: Xta added a few good thoughts down in the comments. Also, since I mentioned I was writing this for our agent, I should mention her: Laurie Valdez of Peak Travel was extremely helpful in planning the trip, even working through the last few itinerary details outside regular work hours so Xta and I could sit in our living room and talk things through with her directly rather than going back and forth in email. We found her through the Better World Club. (Which I also recommend in general -- it's like AAA, except not evil. AAA funds lobbying against public transit, cleaner cars, etc. If you join BWC, get our member number, I believe there's a referral credit.)

We've had a busy week since we got home, re-acclimating to work, the 9-hour time shift, etc. You can find a lot of photos and commentary on our Flickr accounts (mostly Christa's -- on mine I've just been doing commentary on the restaurants):

One general warning, if you're trying to think through scheduling for a trip to Spain: a LOT of things either close early, or entirely, on Sunday, Monday, and in some cases Tuesday. We narrowly missed driving out to Cardona only to find everything shut down, because fortunately I checked scheduling / reservation stuff online, and we adjusted our car reservation schedule to make it work. (We also, on our last day in Madrid, ended up not getting to go to a restaurant we'd been interested in -- Arola, in the Reina Sofia Museum -- b/c it was closed Sunday, which is actually a change from the hours reported for them on Google Local and some local newspaper reviews; I guess maybe they reduced hours for the winter. n.b.: Don't try to Google the restaurant; their web registration apparently expired and got hijacked by some annoying domain squatter, who posted rather unpleasant porn. If my Spanish were better, I might've tried to explain that to the woman I got on the phone when I tried to call for a reservation. As it was, just understanding that she was telling me their hours had changed and they were totally closed on Sunday was about my limit. I really wish restaurants would be smarter about their websites.)

Getting from the Madrid airport to Atocha to Barcelona was a bit of a chore, with the bus connection and then the vastness of Atocha station, but the AVE ride itself was really neat. We desperately need intercity high speed rail in the US.

Barcelona: Barcelona House was very pleasant, if a bit spare. Nifty modern decor. The elevator was a bit cramped, but that seems to be the norm throughout Spain. My only complaint would be that we had simply could not persuade the damn maids to not to change our towels out every day. Like all hotels these days, they had one of those little signs saying that if you wanted to be water efficient you should hang your towels on the rack, and they wouldn't change them, but the maids paid no attention to that rule. This would only be a mild annoyance from an environmental point of view in any case, but for us it's a functional issue: we both have very long hair, and really NEED an extra towel or two in order to dry off after showering. And every time they'd change the towels, they would not replace the extras. So we'd have to call down for extras every morning, and have one of us wait to shower until they'd been delivered. After the first two days, this got kind of irritating. Only on the very last day of our stay did our extra towels survive the maid visit. :-P

There's a quite nice and affordable restaurant, The Grill Room, right across the street from Barcelona House, and it's also very close to a location of a Spanish chain called Nostrum, which was convenient for breakfast or healthy snacks. We also had awesome meals at two places in the Gothic Quarter recommended to us by Elizabeth Falkner: Espai Sucre (expensive but amazing), and BubóBar (much less expensive, with innovative takes on traditional tapas, and situated right next door to Bubó, a world-renowned sweet shop).

Sagrada Familia was fabulous, and Parc Güell and the Gaudi House. If people are going to stay down near Las Ramblas, they should be prepared to use the Metro to get over there, as it would be a quite long walk. (On the bright side, the Metro is not difficult, and all the routes we used had cars roughly every three minutes. The Madrid Metro is similar, with cars as frequent as every 2 minutes in some parts.) I found Las Ramblas itself mostly kind of depressing -- totally overrun with tourists, students, and slackers. On the bright side, you can walk northeast from there into the Gothic Quarter, which is great (we probably could've spent another whole day checking out the various churches and little museums back there, and every time you'd turn a corner you'd come across some little plaza with a neat sculpture). Also, Plaça de Colom (at the end of Las Ramblas) and the piers were pretty. You can walk from there (or take the Metro from the Lyceum) over to Montjüic, which is gorgeous. We spent basically two whole days wandering around up there, and there were still parts we didn't see. Our first visit, we went past the art museum and through the Olympic campus to the cemetery. Unfortunately, the visit there got cut a bit short because I was coming down with a cold. Fortunately, there is at least a convenient bus that runs from the bottom of the hill back around to the harbor end of Avinguda del Paral·lel, a block from Plaça de Colom. Possibly we should've just taken that around to visit, since it's the lower parts of the cemetery that have most of the older, more elaborate stonework, anyways.

We took a whole day to go out to Girona for El Celler, and it was entirely worthwhile. The city of Girona is not much to look at, though the river park is pleasant. But the restaurant completely deserves its reputation, and for its quality was quite decently priced. (€155 per person for the longer "festival" menu, including VAT, and of course you don't really have to tip in Europe. I was recently reading about a place in SF that has just been awarded two Michelin stars, and looked at their website; their full menu is $250 per person, and I'm assuming that's before tax and tip, so you'd have to call it more like $325 by the time you're done, even if you're going cheap on drinks. The value comparison there tilts heavily in favor of El Celler.)

We also did the day trip to Cardona, which I highly recommend, for both the castle (which isn't huge, but is worth a couple hours of wandering, especially the sanctuary and crypt) and the salt mine (which is completely unlike any other caves I've seen -- though I'd recommend people try to schedule a visit where the tour guide is at least using Castilian, rather than Catalunyan; they'll give you some materials in English, but I suspect I would've gotten more out of the trip if I'd at least been able to pick up a little of the guide's talk). I kind of wish we'd been able to stay in the Parador, inside the castle; it's just gorgeous, and the restaurant looked very nice as well. The central "old town" area was interesting, but small, and the gothic church was closed for renovations, so I can't say much about that. Cardona wasn't really a tourist attraction until just the last 5-6 years or so; it's starting to have good infrastructure for visitors (though still a bit short on English translations), but hasn't become at all crowded yet; even our friends in Guadalajara, who have travelled around the country a lot, hadn't heard of it.

I will digress, here, to mention that National / ATESA "upgraded" us from the compact we'd reserved to a midsize Peugeot (bigger than my Saturn ION at home). It handled like a nauseated cow, gave me terrible visibility to the sides and rear so I was constantly nervous, and had a turning radius that may have been worse than the Astro minivan my mother used to own. I hated that car with fiery intensity of a thousand burning suns. Somebody needs to explain to those morons that given the narrow streets (especially in the old town areas -- it's a miracle I never gashed the side of the car taking some turn in Granada or Cuenca, where our hotels were right smack in the medieval parts of town), and Spanish drivers' tendency to regard things like signs and traffic lights more as suggestions than actual laws, a small nimble car is an absolute necessity, and they clearly ought to be stocking a lot more of them. Oh, and speaking of: Anyone who's going to drive in Spain ought to be warned about just how nuts the drivers are, and the signage. They put all their traffic lights on the side of the intersection that's closer to you, so once you're at the stop line, it's quite difficult to see the light. Most drivers, I suspect, are actually watching the pedestrian walk light, and will start driving again as soon as that turns red (even though that's several seconds before the proper traffic light goes green). Also, you get many situations, especially at the (numerous!) circles, where there are two or three lights stacked up practically on top of each other, and it can be quite difficult to tell which one is intended for you. And then there are the highway signs, that will give you a dozen different things that a given exit is taking you "towards", which makes it tricky to figure out what the exit is actually going onto. Generally the exits before and after the one you actually want will end up sharing several of the labels. It was a good thing we had both an in-car GPS and the iPhone -- each of them had some failings (in particular, the data on the in-car system was about two years out of date relative to major construction that had been happening on the A-4, on our trip from Granada to Cuenca) but between the two we got by mostly OK. The signage around Madrid is particularly egregious -- we managed to miss the same exit on two different days, first when we were returning the rental car, and then again driving the car we borrowed from our friends in Guadalajara (actually Cabanillas del Campo, a little suburb on the edge of Guadalajara, on the Madrid side of town).

Tarragona: The AC Hotel was pleasant, though I wish they offered free in-room WiFi. They had free WiFi only in the lobby, and the in-room price was a bit unreasonable. Their hotel restaurant look OK, but overpriced, so we went elsewhere to eat. (We found two really great places near the Plaça de la Font, Crêperie Kenavo and Degvsta. The plaza itself is kind of a tourist trap, but there's great stuff hidden in the blocks just around it.) It was a bit of a walk from the hotel to where most of the interesting sights were; not a huge distance, but at least 20 minutes. Depending on how people feel about walking around an unfamiliar city, that could be an issue for some travelers. (We definitely were referring to my iPhone map a lot.) There's a great walking tour of the ruins that we kind of stumbled our way into, that begins on the Via de l'Imperi Romà. The visitor center, with various pamphlets, and a set of really cool models of the Roman city, is through the door to the right, on Plaza del Pallol; the walking tour of the old walls starts through the door on the left. If you follow the walls all the way around, you can then kind of make a u-turn into the section of the city that has the Cathedral, Seminary, Arquesbisbat (the seat of the local archbishop), and University Rovira (which has some neat architecture from more recent periods -- say, 100 to 200 years old, instead of 500 to 2000 years *g*). From there it's another short walk to the Museo Nacional Arqueológico de Tarragona, which is spectacular -- it includes a visit to a roof deck with a truly amazing view, and the back exit takes you through the ruins of the Roman Circus. When you get to the end of that, you can either turn right and head over to Plaça de la Font for a meal, or make a left and walk two blocks down to the amphitheater. We also took a detour from there down to the beach. We managed to do all of that in one (very busy!) day, including lunch at Degvsta and a very brief visit to the acqueduct on the way out of town... I think we could've easily spent two days there instead of one. I would've liked more time to see more of the sights in the park around the acqueduct. The acqueduct itself is really amazing -- it's incredible to see this structure that's lasted for literally milennia. You're allowed to just walk out across it, all the way to the other end of the valley if you want. (It was already getting towards sunset already when we were there, unfortunately, so we didn't take the time -- needed to get on the road to Valencia.)

Valencia: The Barcelo is nice in some ways -- pleasant staff, decent rooms. A few issues: Their parking is useless for any but the very smallest cars. Fortunately, there's a fair bit of unmetered street parking in the area, but still; I would not even count them as "having parking" unless you're going to be driving a subcompact. (You could get away with something bigger than a Smart ForTwo... but only barely. We certainly could not park the odious Peugeot there.) Their in-house restaurant is kind of terrible, and it's a bit of a walk to get to anyplace good (though I highly recommend going over to Café Infinito, which is maybe a 15-20 minute walk or a very short bus ride). The whole building is black, and not terribly well ventilated, which means that the sunny side gets really warm during the day unless you want to just leave your window open (and with winter weather it can be tricky getting the balance between too warm and too cold). The amount of stuff in the old town of Valencia is almost a bit overwhelming. We definitely could've spent an entire second day there. The tourist card is a great value in here -- makes many things free, and gets discounts on many more. I think the coolest thing we saw in there was the museum of the Almoïna, where you walk down below street level into some preserved excavations, and see how all the layers of history are literally piled up on each other, with pieces of Roman, Visigothic, Cailphate, and Gothic settlements all layerd onto the same site. The anthropological museum was also pretty neat, with artifacts from the pre-Roman Iberians, among other things. We also went up into both of the remaining pairs of gate towers along the old city walls, and in between stopped for an Agua de Valencia cocktail (kind of an alcoholic orange-ade, using the local Valencia oranges, which are superb, some local cava, and possibly some sort of orange liquer -- anyways, it's very tasty, and it's the city's signature drink, so if you tipple, you're sort of required to have one).

We had a quite nice dinner that evening at La Lola, which is apparently known well enough locally that when we mentioned it to our waiter at Infinito the next night he knew it. It's not cheap, but not super-expensive either, and it's nice for a romantic dinner. The chef (at least I think he was the chef) is a young, energetic, long-haired guy, probably around the same age as us, very hands on about greeting and serving customers, and speaks quite good English. When we were leaving lunch (at Creperie Breton Annaick, which was also quite good, and inexpensive) he attempted to invite us in; we demurred for obvious reasons, but ended up coming back later, b/c the place did sound good, and our Valencia card was good for a free drink. :-)

For the City of Arts and Sciences, I think the one day we allotted was probably enough; maybe you could do two days if you wanted to take things slower, and have a half-day to relax after all the walking around. (By the end of our visit there, Christa was starting to get a bit of travel burnout. Also, I kinda wish we'd spent more time either walking the river park, or visiting the art museum, or even just seeing a show at the Hemisferic, instead of visiting the science museum, which was OK, but not that much better than any other science center. A lot of exhibits were copies of San Francisco's Exploratorium, and acknowledged as such in the displays.) The Oceanografic is definitely a must-see, with its various underground chambers. Also, we never walked down to the marina district at all, so there's another day we easily could've spent... (I think maybe there's a maritime museum down there, with stuff about the history of seafaring? Sounded interesting...)

Heading south from Valencia, we went through the Parque de la Albufera, which was neat. We also drove by some cities that have amazing landscapes. Calp, in particular, has this amazing rock over it that reminded me a bit of pictures you see of Rio de Janeiro. I could've seen spending half a day in the park, and half getting up to the top of the rock in Calp and then staying overnight there, if we'd had infinite time...

Granada: I think the 2 to 2.5 days we were here was about right. The Reina Cristina was OK, but a bit antiquated. You had to call down to the desk to get your heat turned on. Also, the in-house café didn't look very good, and the actual restaurant looked so expensive we didn't try it. On the bright side, they did have cheap network access. The parking lot is a two block walk away, and requires staff to help you access it. Also, it's another place where things get very narrow and windy; parking the Peugeot was harrowing, though we ultimately did manage.

The night we got to town we finally did appropriate research and realized that we should buy tix in advance for Alhambra, so we got them for the latter day we were there. You can buy online then get the tix from any La Caixa ATM. The first day we walked up the mountain past the Alhambra, to go see a cemetery that's grand enough to be on an official EU registry / tour of scenic and historic cemeteries. There's also a lot of open parkland up there, and seemingly-abandoned olive groves. Very pretty. We also walked by some of the historic buildings in the old town, and had a nice meal at Cafe Botánico, near University Plaza. (There was also a little creperie right on that plaza, that we kind of stumbled into our first night after the first place we tried to go was overcrowded and the second was closed). The Alhambra itself was gorgeous, and soaked up the morning and early afternoon -- we made sure to get there on the early side of our window, since you have to pick only a half-day, for your ticket... We had lunch at an awesome little taginery where the owner, a former history student, spent a year re-creating the look and feel of an Andalucían palace. After that we visited the Royal Crypt and Cathedral (both spectacular, though they have stupid no-photo rules, which most people actually ignore, and I wish we'd started ignoring sooner, since we missed getting shots of the crypt), and walked up the hill to San Nicolas.

Cuenca: On the drive up, there was the minor adventure of the GPS becoming very confused because the road we were on had not existed when its data was loaded. Also, we saw ALL THE OLIVES IN SPAIN. I jest, but really, you'd come to the top of some ridgeline, and look around and see olives out to the horizon in every direction. There must have been millions of trees, maybe tens of millions.

Finally we got to Cuenca itself, which was gorgeous, if a bit small. I think our one day visit to the city was mostly sufficient. We saw the cathedral and the modern art museum in the hanging house, walked down through the ravine over to the Convent of Saint Paul and then back across the bridge, and then out to the highest point. I do wish we'd been there on a day when the restaurant in the other hanging house was open. If we'd stayed a second day, we could've hiked down the north side of the mountain, to the scenic path along the Júcar. The Posada San Jose was beautiful -- in some ways the most luxurious of the hotels we stayed in, certainly in terms of how spacious the room was and the quality of the view out the window. On the downside, there was no network, and although breakfast was nice, their restaurant wasn't even open for the winter. We ate dinner both nights at El Aljibe, the restaurant attached to the Hotel Convento del Giraldo, because they had free wi-fi for patrons, and the food was tasty and reasonably priced. (Though ordering there was a little tricky -- the local accent is kind of hard to understand.)

The latter day we were there, when we were planning to end the day in Guadalajara, we drove through El Parque Natural Serranía de Cuenca. I simply cannot emphasize enough that this is a place more people should see. The landscape is as unique as any of the great parks in the US, like the Grand Canyon, or Arches in Utah. Driving through, almost every curve brings you to some insanely beautiful vista point. You see vast cliffs in which the striations of the different layers of rock are distinctly visible, with stripes of all kinds of colors -- beige, and gold, but also the occasional greenish streak, and reds, some of which are so dark they're shading into purple. The river is gorgeous, and the lake / reservoir that's just east of Uña. We stopped for lunch at a place in Tragacete called El Gamo, where we had an absolutely superb meal. The owner spoke very little English, but was extremely friendly. We talked a bit about how difficult business is currently (especially with winter being bad for tourism, even though the park is still absolutely gorgeous then, and we were getting by fine with our US-east-coast-appropriate layers). I told him that I would mention his place to our friends, so here's the contact info from his card:

Hostelería El Gamo Gestión, S.L.
Fco. Javier de la Hoz del Pozo (javier@elgamo.org)
Teléfonos: 687-76-92-63 y 969-28-90-08
16150 Tragacete (Cuenca)
www.elgamo.org / info@elgamo.org

We didn't stay in a room there, but the restaurant part was very comfortable. We got a table right by the fire, which was nice, since it was a cold enough day that by the time we left the park in the evening it was snowing. If you're going through the area and you're remotely into hiking and nature, I highly recommend staying a day or two, to get a full visit to some of the various sights. We went through Ciudad Encantada and did the shortest part of the Nacimiento del Río Cuervo hike, just up to the Cascadas hillside, which with the cold weather was an amazing curtain of icicles. We didn't go the full 40-minute hike up to the springs. There also was apparently a nifty hike to the springs for the Júcar, with some cool waterfalls; I really wish we'd had an extra day, to see more of that stuff, as well as going back over to the area around Uña.

When we finally got to the Madrid area, the weather had turned so cold and snowy that we ended up giving up entirely on going out to Toledo and Segovia. (Segovia, in particular, was suffering a blizzard.) We spent one day just relaxing at our friends' house, and the rest of the days we went into Madrid, and saw various things -- the Royal Palace and Cathedral, various plazas, El Prado, the Royal Gardens and Parque del Retiro... We also visited the Cemetery of the Almudena, which was amazing. We also went up to the fashion district around Chueca, partly just to visit the New Rock Store -- we both have boots from them, and they're a Spanish brand. We also got Christa some new leather gloves b/c her old ones tore, and went to a goth club in that neighborhood, Club 666 at La Sala Wind on Plaza del Carmen, which was amusing; goth clubs in Spain turn out to be pretty similar to those in the US, including where we originally met. *g*

We didn't end up going to any really fancy meals in Madrid, though we did really enjoy Pui's Thai Tapas, which is in the same neighborhood as the Reina Sofia. They had a couple dishes I've never seen in the US. The Pad Bameen was particularly good. It's almost like a Thai version of Spaghetti Carbonara (which I'd seen in several tapas bars, and enjoyed thoroughly at Grill Room; apparently large swathes of Europe have adopted that dish with enthusiasm). The Bameen has some ground pork and vegetables with a bit of yellow curry, tossed over stir-fried noodles with a whole fried egg on top) -- and some really good cocktails. We also had some more traditional tapas at a place simply called La Tapería, on the Plaza Platería de Martínez, just off the Paseo del Prado, across the street from the Royal Gardens.

For getting into Madrid after we'd returned the rental car, one day we just went with our friends from Guadalajara (who were wonderful hosts in general -- their house is gorgeous, and they fed us very well the whole time we were there, and refused to let me pick up the tab for the meals we had when they came into town with us), and the other couple times we drove a borrowed car that was, shall we say, interesting. Since it was stick, Xta had to drive, and finally gained an appreciation for the difficulties I'd been having tracking everything going on around me when I was driving, for earlier parts of the trip. :-P

We ended up using three of our four rail pass days -- Madrid to Barcelona, Barcelona to Girona, and then we used them a final time going from Guadalajara to the airport. Oh well. I think we still got either most or all of the value on that, because just that first AVE trip, by itself, was a huge chunk of the value.

I think that about covers everything. :-)

Next time (probably at least ten years out, sigh), we want to get back to see the progress on Sagrada Familia, then visit the Euskal Herria, and San Sebastian and Bilbao -- there are no less than four of the World 50 up that way -- Mugaritz, Arzak, Martín Berasategui, and Asador Etxebarri -- as well as of course the Guggenheim Bilbao. Then maybe we could go back south and actually see Segovia and Toledo (and I could also add that I'm interested in getting to Salamanca and Zaragoza), then go down south for Seville, Cordova, Málaga, and Cadiz... And of course we still wouldn't have gotten to the northwesternmost area, with places like Gijón, and all of Galicia, which has its own dialect and culture (Gallego) like Catalunya... It turns out that Spain is kinda big.

Nomz.

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 07:55:12 GMT

I've finished annotating the photos from El Celler de Can Roca, which placed second on last year's World's 50 Best list. And I can see why.

Interestingly, although it's certainly expensive -- the most we've ever paid for a meal, by a substantial margin -- while we were in Madrid, I had an email from one of the coupon services offering a discounted seating at some up-and-coming place in the Mission that just got awarded two Michelin stars. The price for this place, even after the discount, would be more than what we paid for El Celler; and I'm not even accounting for tax and tip. This place is clearly commanding a premium simply for being the hot new thing; there is no way it can possibly justify such a stratospheric cost, solely based on food quality. In any case, after running those numbers in my head, I decided there was no reason to go, and so I forgot the actual name.

Woo, photos from two-ish weeks ago!

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:32:04 GMT

I have finally finished writing in descriptions on photos from Espai Sucre, the "dessert restaurant" that Elizabeth Falkner told us we needed to try. It was awesome, and I can see why she's into it. We are kind of taking today "off" from running around seeing sights, and just chilling out at our friends' house in a suburb of Guadalajara, the city with too many As.

One of the more puzzling constructions in Spanish...

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 23:10:41 GMT

...at least to my mind, is "hace [tiempo]". (Incidentally, "tiempo" can translate as "time" or "weather". I'm thinking about time here, even though you also can ask "¿Qué tiempo hace?" to ask what the weather is.) You get things like: "¿Cuánto hace que está construyendo esta valla? Hace una semana que él lo construye." Literally, this translates to something like, "How much does it make, that he is building this fence? It makes one week that he builds it." Idiomatically, it's more like, "How long has it been since he started building the fence? It has been one week since he started constructing it."

What gets me is the fact that both verbs involved are in present tense. My understanding is that the nature of the "hace [tiempo]" construction does require that whatever you're asking about continue to be true into the present time; you're attaching an earlier starting date to something that can be thought of in present tense. So, you can say, "Hace tres mil años que el Rey Tutankhamun lleva muerto." It has been three thousand years that King Tut carries* deadness. This conception sorta helps make it work in my head, but I still find the construction strange. Even stranger than subjunctive, and don't get me started on how bizarre I find the use of subjunctive. (In particular, how come I don't use subjunctive with "creer"? When I say, "I think that X", I almost always mean that I believe it, but am not certain of it. If I were certain of it, I would simply state proposition X. So why do we get indicative with "creo que X", but subjunctive with "espero que X", I hope that X.)

If you want to talk about something that isn't true anymore, I'm pretty sure you have to use something else, like "[tiempo] atrás", which you might translate as an amount of time aft; "X está detrás de Y" says that X is located in a place behind Y, whereas the "a" particle in "atrás" gives a sense of movement and directionality, towards the back. To say "I spoke Spanish pretty well fifteen years ago, but I've forgotten a lot," I use, "Hablaba español bastante bien quince años atrás, pero he olvidado mucho." I think this is pretty good idiom, but I'm not entirely sure. I don't suppose anyone out there is a fluent enough speaker to comment on this? (Maybe kragen and paisleychick?)

* "Llevar" can mean "to carry" or "to wear", but it can also be used with adjectives like "muerto", dead, and "casado", married -- although that one almost always gets used in the plural, casados, for obvious reasons. These days some of y'all might even be llevando casadas. Hooray for diversity! :-)

ETA: Rosetta stone gives some examples where they use a preterite verb with "hace [tiempo]", and they appear to mean ago. ("Mis abuelos se casaron en África hace cien años," appears to be "My grandparents married each other in Africa one hundred years ago.") So maybe at least in European Spanish that's the correct form? Blargh. I got taught kind of a mix of European and American Spanishes, because I had teachers who'd learned different ways, over different years of school. And then I forgot most of it, so it's all a bit of a muddle... :-/

El mejor frase de todos en la Piedra Rosetta.

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 07:05:20 GMT

El gato está en el lavabo.

Complete with adorable picture. Like these. Very cute, if a bit bittersweet.

Yo tenía una gata a quien le gustó mucho estar en el lavabo.

spoiler alert

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 03:23:39 GMT

ARRRGH! :-(

Elizabeth Falkner does not win Next Iron Chef. :-(

The competition between Mehta and Garces came down to a very similar call between creativity and potential, versus technique and control. They made the same call last time. I still think that one was an epically bad call.

I at least am actually really impressed with Zakarian. I find Garces boring. Zakarian doesn't take the kind of risks or come up with the kind of absolutely off-the-wall genius dishes that Elizabeth does, but he has incredible subtlety, and he can take the essence of a traditional dish and refine it into something surprising.

I do think, though, that when you hear the judges saying stuff like that Zakarian is "like an athlete at his peak", while Falkner is exceeding her reputation and still developing -- even though for this competition she was only a hair behind him -- doesn't that mean you want the person who's still growing, rather than the one who's peaked? Again, this is the same way I felt about the judgement on Mehta. OK, maybe he arguably did not deliver quite as good a meal that day; but who do you want on the show? The guy who's predictable, or the one who will maybe take a few episodes to learn to manage the time better, but ultimately will deliver things that are surprising and innovative?

Anyways. I have to respect Zakarian; the meal he delivered looked and sounded amazing. I'm at least glad Elizabeth made him work hard for that victory.

Random revelation: the brussel sprout leaves that turned up integrated into the butternut squash ravioli at our wedding? That was a flourish from Elizabeth's Next Iron Chef finale meal. Very cool.

Orson - Next Iron Chef ep05

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 02:35:19 GMT

Pics are up on Flickr now.

I figure, if you want to read about it, you can read the text there.

I was so stuffed after this one. Really, really good food.

Orson - Next Iron Chef ep04

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 23:08:44 GMT

Oh look, a new icon!

I don't feel like taking the time to properly edit a table-formatted entry to post the pix from ep04, so I'm just putting them on Flickr. You can see the pix here.

Xta took some shots as well, and may've put some up on her Flickr account.

Orson - Next Iron Chef ep03

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 07:36:25 GMT

Best episode yet. Both the main challenge, and the secret ingredient elimination, had some very tight competition. Elizabeth emerged with a well-deserved victory; the other two folks in the top three had ingredients that were significantly easier to work with. (A cinnamon syrup is not that hard to work into a savory -- you can get that into a variety of European, Moroccan, or even Chinese dishes -- and for the root beer, heck, folks in the South braise or marinate meat in soda-based liquids all the time. If you haven't had Coca-Cola based bbq sauce, you don't know what you're missing.)

For this week's event, Elizabeth got ambitious, and made stuff with almost all the other chefs' ingredients, as well as replicating her own dishes. I believe her phrasing was, "We took the other ingredients and made better things with them." *g*

They're probably going to skip next week (because of Thanksgiving), and then do a double-header the week after. This week was actually less crowded than last, which surprised me. Maybe Falkner fans tend to be people for whom coming after work is convenient. I had a pleasant conversation with a Japanese woman who came here a few years ago to go to architecture school, and I finally got to meet Esther, who runs the main kitchen at Orson. And Elizabeth says she'll see what she can do about getting us a table at Tickets, and I sent her the list of evenings we could potentially go, so yay.

		My boots are on fire! Wore these, along with the pants from the wedding and the shirt from the engagement shoot. These were considered for the wedding, but I decided to go with the Italian loafers, b/c the color matched better, and they were more comfortable. (I was standing for about 8-9 hours that day. Plus dancing.)
		Entrance I loved the jars of malt balls at the entrance. Also, a friend of Elizabeth's who does magic hung out at a front table and delighted onlookers with assorted card tricks, coin tricks, etc.
		Raisinet Tapenade Diced Raisinets, with roasted red peppers, eggplant, capers, possibly some other stuff. (Kalamata olives, maybe?) Surprisingly... unsurprising. But very pleasant. The choco-raisins add a hit of sweetness, without overpowering the more usual flavors.
		Cocktail Fixings Note the labels. They melted down the gummi bears and sour-patch kids. Yum. I stole several of the garnish bears.
		The Gummi Bear and The Sour-Patch Kid Each made with its respective syrup. The Gummi Bear also contains vodka and a dry muscat. The Sour-Patch kid has rum and Canton ginger liqeur.
		Spare Ribs Braised in Root Beer and Soy A hybrid of American South and China. (If you've ever had a cola-braised bbq... this was better.) Elizabeth said she would've enjoyed getting the root-beer as her ingredient, b/c she's played with those sorts of flavors in both savory and sweet dishes before. (We had a dessert named Sassafrass Leaves at the rehearsal dinner.)
		Hot Tamale Buffalo Chicken A basic buffalo wing sauce, with an extra hit of heat from a syrup of melted-down Hot Tamales cinnamon capsules. You can see the bleu cheese dressing in the photo of the ribs. This photo was of some breast-meat nuggets. Later, they brought out some whole bone-in wings, which were even better -- the rougher surface held the batter and sauce more effectively. (And they're just fun to eat.)
		Popcorn Soup The soup was not all that distinguishable from a basic corn chowder, though it was pleasantly buttery. The garnishes are truffle-oil sauteed mushrooms, and cocoa nibs mixed into some kind of mildly peppery paste. (Maybe a play on mole?)
		Fry Station Oil heating up on an induction plate. Fresh-made potato chips, dusted with cocoa and malt-vinegar powder. Sweet malt aioli, with flecks of chocolate visible. It was much tastier than it sounds. (Bear in mind that this is the dish that won the episode.)
		Feeeeeesh! (before) Fillets of black bass, swimming in barleywine / malt-vinegar marinade, awaiting a very hot bath.
		Feeeeeesh! (after) The first golden-brown, crispy piece of fish emerges from the hot oil.
		Q&A Time Elizabeth answers questions from the crowd. Q: Which chef was the most cutthroat? A: I was! Q: So who was the nicest? A: I was! Q: Who was the sexiest? A: No comment.
		Popcorn Ice-Cream Sandwich Buttered popcorn ice cream, between popcorn sugar cookies. This was really, really good.
		Hot Tamale Macarons and Raisinet Phyllo Wraps The meringue was infused with hot cinnamon oil, and the filling was a cinnamon gel. The phyllo wraps had a flavor quite similar to cocoa-raisin ruggelach.
		Victorious Cake! Basic vanilla chiffon, with barley ice cream (surprisingly bittersweet and complex), and a malt-ball / cocoa nib crumble.
		Elizabeth and staff assembling plates of cake.

So, yeah. That was awesome. And any of you who can should come next time. And if you're not watching the show, it has been, thus far, the best season of NIC that they've aired. (Season Two was pretty good, but I have never forgiven them for making such an egregiously stupid call at the end.) If you like Iron Chef at all, or the concept of competitive cooking, you should check it out. Tomorrow night: cooking mad libs. SRSLY.

another metaphor for coraline

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 20:55:47 GMT

The experience of planning a wedding is, apparently, very much like falling into a black hole. The passage of time slows asymptotically towards a halt, and you get stretched thin by unimaginably powerful tidal forces.

Hair appointment today. Meeting with Elizabeth tomorrow. Rehearsal Friday. Wedding Saturday.

Must remember to take Obama's advice.

Hee.

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:47:22 GMT

Go to this page.

Download the MP3 or launch it in a separate window so you'll have a wide slider to work with.

Jump to 48:40 or so. (Or, hey, if you have an hour, listen to the whole podcast. Subscribe, even!)

Be amused.

The item he mentions, that I told him he was wrong about, was from late September. In the course of talking out the Perry / Bachmann / HPV vaccine kerfuffle, he was radically underestimating the prevalance of HPV; something on the order of a quarter of all American women get exposed at some point, and the strains in question are responsible for a large proportion of all cases of cervical cancer. The public-health case in favor of mass-distributing the vaccine, and administering it before sexual debut, is quite solid. It's been laid out in Slate, in the DoubleX blog. I had to scold him for not reading his own employees' work thoroughly enough. :-)

I'm still about two weeks behind. This podcast was from 10/13, so, 12 days ago... :-/

more opera tickets

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 19:31:31 GMT

One person expressed interest in the Magic Flute tickets (Sun Jun 24 at 2pm, preceded by lecture at 1pm) when I first advertised them, but then stopped responding to emails before we could arrange a transaction, so I guess those tickets are still available, at $215 for the pair.

Additionally, I somehow ended up with a single extra ticket to Heart of a Soldier, the brand new opera based on the true story of a 9/11 hero. The ticket is for Sat Sep 24 at 2pm (lecture at 1pm), Dress Circle C2, which is the first seat on the outer side of the first aisle out from the center. I didn't mention it in my earlier post because I was trying to figure out whether I might have bought it for a friend, or because I was thinking that my parents might come into town to see the show on that weekend (in which case I would've swapped my two subscription seats to that day as well), or whether there was just some kind of glitch in the SF Opera purchasing system, or what. After checking around, it remains a mystery. I don't seem to have any threads in my email about getting an extra, and none of the folks on my opera mailing list asked me about it. Anyways, it's available for sale at $107.50.

If you're reading this and you recall asking me to use my discount to get you a ticket, please speak up. :-)

And, as usual, if you have any friends who might be interested, feel free to forward this to them.

Opera tix

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 22:11:35 GMT

I've just received my subscription package for the upcoming season, and looked through it to decide which ones I really want to go to, and which ones I'd be happy to sell. The tickets immediately available for sale are:

~~Turandot, Sun 9/25 2pm~~
~~Don Giovanni, Sun 10/23 2pm~~
~~Carmen, Sun 11/6 2pm~~
The Magic Flute, Sun 6/24 2pm

For the first time in several years, my seats improved when my subscription renewed (though only by one row). I now have Dress Circle D126 and D128 -- fourth row, on the inner side of the first aisle out from the center. (Seating chart available here.)

The Series M package was $959 per seat plus shipping and handling. (Click on the Full Series "Packages and Prices" link on this page for a PDF with details.) Including S&H, it works out to around $107.50 per ticket (i.e. $215 per pair), so that's what I'm asking. Official face value on the ticket is $135, though I was just poking at the website and it looks like they've taken a cue from the airline industry and started using dynamic pricing based on demand. I found Dress Circle seats for different weekend shows priced as low as $129, and as high as $169. I definitely didn't see any for as little as I'm charging.

OSX Lion iCal is b0rked.

Sat, 23 Jul 2011 00:34:48 GMT

One change I am really disliking in OSX 10.7 is what they've done to iCal. It appears that it's no longer possible to get a view similar to GCal in which you have a small monthly calendar in the sidebar, and an arbitrary number of days displayed in the main body of the app by click-dragging across those days in the monthly calendar.

I frequently want to view 2-5 days at a time, rather than a full week (which causes events to pile up, when you have seven or eight calendars -- I have a couple of my own, Xta's, social group cals, etc) or a single day. I understand why this doesn't work on the iPhone, but in the iPad or desktop versions of this application, viewing a few days at a time is a Good Thing. When I'm trying to plan some kind of weekend socializing, I almost always want to be able to view Fri-Sun; and for thinking through how to schedule some weekday-specific errand around work, I frequently want to show just the weekdays.

Anybody know if I'm wrong about the loss of this feature? :-/

foodpr0n: Astaria, for Xtauroversary VII

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 22:49:22 GMT

Now with more Roman numerals, and only about a hundred days until our wedding. Christa posted some silliness from our dinner conversation. (If you're unable to read it, well, how do you even know me without having gotten on her f-list? It's been seven years!)

wine: (we would've gotten cocktails instead, but the TravelZoo coupon thing we'd gotten specified two glasses of wine for up to $12 each, and even though the cocktails we wanted were less, they wouldn't let us make a substitution; which seems kinda dumb on their part)
Three Rivers Riesling, 2007, Walla Walla, WA (pleasantly sweet, very floral, maybe jasmine-y)
Hannah Nicole Viognier, 2009, Contra Costa, CA (Xta said it was tarter / sharper than she was expecting from a Viognier, but good as a crisp, palate cleansing kind of drink)

Ahi Tartare: Xta said this was a particularly good rendition; it came with what I'm pretty sure were Japanese yam chips (with pretty purple stripes and flecks), and the tartare had a spicy soy sauce that she liked, and some black sesame seeds and scallions.

Steak Salad: spinach and arugala, bits of grilled skirt steak, basil-balsamic strawberries, pickled red onion, feta, spiced pecans, strawberry vinaigrette (very tasty; the vinaigrette was a really good sweet/savory combination)

Lobster Ravioli with Summer Corn Sauce: Christa really liked this, and I liked the bite I tried a fair bit. I like both corn and lobster, but neither is a particular favorite; but the way the earthy, savory, and sweet notes that show up in each of them played off each other was really interesting.

Cordon Bleu Pappardelle: Kind of an inside-out chicken cordon bleu; noodles topped with a gruyere cream sauce and prosciutto (and asparagus -- though I think the vegetable may be a seasonal thing, since I noticed they were serving asparagus as a side with a lot of dishes at the tables around us, and it wasn't specified on the menu), with a crispy-breaded chicken breast on top. The thing with this dish is it seemed like they'd taken a truly spectacular pasta dish, and then dropped on a chicken breast that was... OK. The breading was really pleasantly crunchy, and there was nothing objectionable about the chicken, but it wasn't particularly flavorful or interesting. I feel like they ought to at least cut down to half as much of it, if they're not going to do something more interesting (maybe marinate it in something, or spice up the breading a bit more). Or just give me the pasta and skip the checken entirely -- it would've been plenty of food, and the prosciutto was already enough meat for me in an entree. (Actually, just the steak from the salad would've been enough meat for one meal.)

Buttermilk Beigneits with three sauces (raspberry, chocolate, caramel): All three of the sauces were excellent; but the beignets themselves were not quite what I expected. I've had beignets in New Orleans; the dough style was a bit more similar to a raised donut than these, which were very cake-y. That would've been OK, except that they also did not seem to have the balance of buttermilk to baking soda right; it tasted to me like there was just a smidgen of unreacted baking soda left in them, which left just a hint of an unpleasant bitter/chemical aftertaste. :-/

Overall, a bit hit-or-miss; if we'd been paying their rather exorbitant full price, I would've been pretty annoyed. That said, the stuff that was good, was good enough that I still think I might like to go back some time. I'd kinda like to try a different dessert (there were some other things that sounded interesting), and the cocktails. I'd probably just order appetizers next time, or we could split an entree. The entrees were gigantic, and IMHO overly meaty, though I guess most people like that. I could just try one of their other salads (the caesar with smoked trout, or the beet salad), and get the pizza with goat cheese, cherries, bacon, and caramelized onion. (The couple at the next table had the basic Margherita, and it looked and smelled good. And their pizzas appear to cost roughly the same as a comparably sized multi-topping pizza from Amici's.)

creative ways to empty the fridge

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 15:57:39 GMT

I was trying to decide what to make for dinner, last night, and nothing was particularly catching my fancy, when I realized we had some slightly stale herbed breadsticks from some previous takeout, as well as the heels from a loaf of cheese bread we'd gotten from Whole Foods at least two weeks ago. It seemed like a shame to waste them, so I thought, what could I do with stale bread? The traditional way to rescue stale bread is to soak it in a custard and cook it. I suppose I could've gone with something like a savory french toast, and topped it with veggies. But instead, I cubed the bread (roughly 1-2cm), tossed it with some sauteed veggies (with some sweet balsamic and additional herbs and spices) and grated aged asiago, poured over the custard (five eggs thoroughly beaten, with a roughly equal volume of whole milk whisked in) and then baked the whole thing at 350F for 40 minutes. Basically a savory trifle, or a hybrid between a quiche and frittata (using the bread where we'd usually use potato).

It was really quite good -- the bread in the bottom was all soft and custardy, while the cubes that stuck out the top were lightly browned and crunchy.

Still need to get to the DC office.

Sat, 14 May 2011 05:19:08 GMT

Finally, six months after this, got around to grabbing lunch with Farhad Manjoo, Slate's tech writer and author of the excellent True Enough (which is in some ways a lengthier meditation on the problem articulated by Harry Frankfurt's On Bullshit). Discussed everything from how automation of increasingly complicated symbolic tasks is changing the employment landscape for highly educated professionals, to politics and the various complex catastrophes our society seems to be setting itself up for, to general personal stuff and kidlets.

I think possibly I was over-caffeinated, and thus even a little more energetic than normal. I'd had my morning coffee, and then also got a quite strong black tea when I got to University Cafe. I was there rather early because I'd already come up to Palo Alto for an earlier appointment, and since I was getting onto their WiFi to do some work, I figured I ought to buy something...

tickets for Rheingold and Walküre on 6/14-15

Fri, 06 May 2011 18:30:01 GMT

The SF Opera Ring Cycle is opening in June, and from a quick check on the ticket purchase system it looks like tickets of the quality I'm selling are almost impossible to get, at this point, and even remotely similar ones are much more expensive than what I'm charging -- I found exactly one remaining Dress Circle seat for one of the performances of Rheingold, literally in the back-stageleft corner, priced at $180. I'm charging the face value at my subscriber price, $135, and I have a few rows forward, on the first aisle out.

More details:
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/tix/2366194538.html

Feel free to share with anyone who might be into opera. I'll consider a friend or friend-of-friend discount if you ask nicely and pay promptly. ;-)

House ad...

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 18:46:53 GMT

No inside pics yet, but the lease is signed and we're expecting to get keys within the next couple of days...

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/roo/2347413716.html

Please share with any nifty people who might be looking for mid-peninsula housing.

David Foster Wallace

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 16:28:07 GMT

It is so deeply, achingly tragic that a man who at times saw the world so clearly, came to find it so unbearable that he felt he had to leave it. He seems to have had compassion for, and understanding of, everyone but himself.

I've been looking back at his essays and short stories a bit recently, because of the release of The Pale King, his unfinished novel, patched together by an editor who was close to him in life. It's about IRS tax analysts, and about the way that these people's tolerance for doing work that is, fundamentally, routine and boring, underpins the good, civilized life we all share. At a time when there is such vitriol against the kind of people who do this work -- work that is of the mind, but numbing to the same faculties it demands -- it is strange and sad to remember that somebody in our culture at least tried to point out, eloquently, its necessity and beauty.

And in case it isn't totally obvious, yes, I very much identify with his comments about the experience of doing this kind of work, and about the dangers of letting your most authentic, integrated self become subservient to a purely intellectualized self. And even more-so, the way he generalizes the idea of worship, and of freedom. I so frequently feel like nothing more than the "lord of my tiny, skull-sized kingdom, alone at the center of all creation." Free, but trivially so. "[T]he really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people, and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day."

Something I aspire to, but so rarely achieve.