if the devil equals money equals war

M.I.A. and Blaqstarr do a cover of "Way Down in the Hole" (a.k.a. the theme from The Wire).
So, pretty good. But it can't really hold a candle to the truly demented original...

(via.)

New Years in Sarayaku (Part 1)

The morning we entered the rain forest we stopped first at a vista point to gaze and take pictures. Geographically speaking we were at the far western edge of the Amazon watershed, still in the shadow of the Andes Mountains, some two-thousand miles away from the mouth of the river. I remember being struck by the vast wilderness we could see, and the realization that an even greater vastness stretched on over the horizon. The forest seemed so mighty, and yet we had just seen evidence of its fragility too.
The previous day we had driven from Quito to Puyo (via Banos); today our destination was the village of Sarayaku - a five to seven hour canoe ride from the end of a gravel road. Apart from an airstrip (which was under construction) the Rio Bobonaza is the only road to Sarayaku. We were very privileged to travel on canoes with outboard motors; almost all the people we met traveled via pole-power, which lengthens the trip from five hours to two days.
The canoe ride was long and uncomfortable, but mostly totally amazing. As we went downstream the trees got taller and the forest got denser. There were occasional houses, but mostly just the river, the trees and us. The water-level was fairly low, so the canoe ran aground at most bends in the river and we made slow progress. After about four hours we reached the (largish) village of Pacayaku, and that's where things started to get unusual.

First, we were accosted by new year's eve revelers: two teenage boys dressed in drag and waving naked barbie dolls charged out to greet the boat. They shouted at us to give them some spare change (apparently this is a common Ecuadorian new years tradition) and anyone who didn't got splashed.

Second, we stopped for gasoline at the driver's brother's house and we were invited up to drink some chicha, a (pretty alcoholic) drink made of fermented yuca. A new year's eve party was in full swing - they had a CD player and people made a point to ask the gringas and gringos to dance. At a certain point they turned the CD player off and the whole party walked over to the next house for the next round. The whole thing was fun and pretty raucous (and a little disorienting) and of course, we still hadn't made it to our final destination. So after an hour of dancing and a significant buzz, we piled back into the canoes.

When we finally made it to Sarayacu we heard the news that the other boat (the one with all our bags and our guide) might not make it that night due to a mixup. Despite realizing that we were in the middle of the jungle with only the clothes on our back we weren't stressed, mainly because our hosts were extremely welcoming - they set us up in tents and invited us to join them for the evening's celebrations. (The second boat eventually did arrive shortly after nightfall.)

So we partied and danced and drank chicha and generally had a terrific new year's eve. Once the sun went down it got intensely dark out, and we tromped from house to house (over rusty bridges and down treacherous muddy slopes, etc. etc.) following the music and the crowd. The music was a mix of more mainstream latin dance music with a few CDs worth of Kichwa pop music (which I would love to find a CD of).

At midnight they burned effigies representing bad things from the year past. And then we (exhausted) tumbled into our tent. More to come in another post, but here's the picasa slideshow from this leg of the trip.

Statement of the Problem

This post by Yglesias about the Israel-Palestine conflict made sense to me:

Israel’s Palestinian problem is fairly simple to define—there are millions of Palestinians living in Israeli-controlled territory. To preserve its Jewish character, Israel doesn’t want to give these Palestinians the rights of Israeli citizens. And so the Palestinians live, stateless and without rights, and they’re not happy about it. Exactly what to do about this situation is a somewhat thorny issue, but Israeli leaders have spent a distressing amount of time over the past ten years trying to convince themselves that their Palestinian problem is about something other than this. That it’s “really” about Syria or “really” about Iraq or “really” about Iran.

Yes. Exactly. This is why some form of negotiated two-state solution is really the only road forward. (Apologies to those idealists pushing for a one-state solution: it's a lovely vision but I'm skeptical that it could be negotiated at this point.)

This is also why I've become impatient when people begin discussing the conflict by providing their take on the region's history. There is sufficient (I won't say 'evenly distributed', but 'sufficient') pain and suffering on each side that partisans can construct histories to justify their cause. But the cold hard fact remains that there are roughly equal numbers of arabs and jews living in close quarters in the holy land, and Israel will never have true security without a prosperous, sovereign Palestinian nation as its neighbor. And vice versa.

More and more, the only way to be pro-Israel is to also be pro-Palestinian. That doesn't make it easy, or even possible in the current climate, and I'm leaving out the nasty details (of course) but let's keep our eyes on the prize here, people.

Better E-Government

Rumor has it that Obama will name Vivek Kundra to be his administrator for E-Government. This position (which is different than the long-rumored federal Chief Technology Officer) lives inside OMB and is responsible for coming up with cool ways of using the internet to make the government work better.

Kundra is currently the CTO for the District of Columbia where he recently ran a really nifty contest called Apps for Democracy. The contest allowed regular citizens access to DC's information databases -- everything from real-time information about which parking meters are in use to census and building permit information. The city then gave out prizes for the most innovative web application that makes that information available to the public.

The winners can be found here. The gold-medalist is a website called www.ilive.at that allows you to enter a street address (currently DC only) and it pulls up a ton of information about the surrounding area. It's pretty nicely done and the benefits of doing this sort of thing with federal data would be, of course, enormous. (h/t Emily.)

Coraline

We snuck out to the movies last night and saw Coraline (in 3D!) - directed in stop-motion animation by Henry Selick (who did the Nightmare Before Christmas) and based on a children's novella by Neil Gaiman.

I want to see it again (and re-read the book) but my first impression was that it was great. The original book is slim and has the disarming simplicity of an old fable or fairy-tale, so obviously the movie needed to expand the storyline a bit. There are a few overly-obvious points, but mostly the added material fits well with the spooky tone of the book, and sets the movie up for some great animated set-pieces. For example, the opening scene was new and, I thought, really grabbed your attention.

The movie theater was full of young kids - and for the length of the film they were eerily quiet. No one had to leave the theater in tears that I saw, but the film does maintain the fairly intense creepiness of the story and its almost harsh take on leaving childhood behind and entering the adult world. Of course, kids these days are pretty tough. At any rate: definitely recommended.

ps- the 3D version we saw was very well-done, although I wouldn't say it was a necessary ingredient of the film.

This ain't no disco

Among the awesome things you can find on youtube are almost all the songs from the 1984 Talking Heads concert film, Stop Making Sense. Here's Life During Wartime:

You can also find Burning Down the House, Once In A Lifetime, Psycho Killer, etc. etc. Not sure why this hasn't fallen afoul of the lawyers; the whole film is very definitely worth watching since the band is completely on fire.

Top 8 in 08: Movies

Since Quinn was born we've gone to an actual movie theater maybe 3 or 4 times. These days we catch all the hip new movies about a year late via Netflix. By the time she is a teenager I imagine we'll have decoupled entirely from pop culture. Anyway, here are my faves:

1. Dark Knight -- Christopher Nolan's movies keep getting awesomer. In addition to Heath Ledger's trippy performance, I enjoyed the movie's intellectual take on terrorism and how (not) to fight it - plus its literal reenactment of the Prisoner's Dilemma. I prefer it when my supervillains have done some advanced reading in game theory.
   
   
2. The Simpson's Movie -- See here.
   
   
3. Sweeney Todd -- I'm a big Sondheim fan so I was naturally worried that Hollywood might screw this one up somehow. In the end it skips merrily along the fine line between broadway kitsch and horror film dread - grisly, anti-social and highly entertaining. It's nice to have Tim Burton firing on all cylinders again, and hey, Johnny Depp can sing! Someone should file that away for future use.
   
   
4. No Country for Old Men -- It doesn't really need repeating at this point, but the Coen Brothers sure do know how to make them some movies. Javier Bardem's character is so creepy and iconic that he's destined to be a sitcom punchline for decades to come.
   
   
5. Eastern Promises -- David Cronenberg is often obsessed with the messy, fleshy biology of his characters and this movie is no exception: full-body tattoos, corpse disposal, enough slit throats to make Sweeney proud, and some hand-to-hand combat that makes those Bourne movie fight scenes look about as dangerous as beginning judo. Still despite the grimness, the movie has a beating heart and a sharp plot about human trafficking and the London underworld. Viggo Mortensen is terrific in this.
   
   
6. Michael Clayton
   
7. Persepolis
   
8. There Will Be Blood
   

Honorable Mention: Gone Baby Gone, Hellboy, Superbad, Iron Man, Into the Wild, Chung King Express, I'm Not There

Oldies/Goodies: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The French Connection

Python would be proud

I am not too mature to pretend that I didn't laugh my ass bottom off while reading this NYT article about English town names - particularly the accompanying map. (via Scalzi.)

Inauguration

Original photo: NYT

This was our view of Obama's inauguration

We were standing in the freezing cold about 1.5 miles away from the actual swearing-in, watching a jumbotron with a smaller angular diameter than your average iPod - and still it was awesome! From the video you can tell that Obama and Roberts flubbed the actual oath, but at the time I didn't notice, mostly because we couldn't hear all that well.

We bundled up the baby and left the house a little before 10 am. Metro was (of course) having a complete meltdown and train stoppage when we got to the station, but miraculously they cleared it up with not too long a delay (apparently someone fell onto the tracks at Gallery Place, but was uninjured). The train cars were ridiculously crowded.

Our first thought was just to get off at Union Station (which is right by the Capitol), but the Post text bulletins warned us not to try to enter the Mall anywhere east of 14th street because the crowd was already backed up. So we took the train all the way to Farragut and walked down 18th street (i.e. on the other side of the White House) and got pretty close to the Washington Monument with really no trouble at all. People as far as the eye could see.


You could tell the crowd was excited but too freezing cold to relax. Thank god the sun was shining. Everyone had that 'waiting for the bus' look to them - happy, but restless. There were boos and cheers as various politicians filed in. The sound was iffy from where we were standing, which is too bad because I wanted to hear Aretha and the piano quartet.


And then the big moment and the crowd went wild. Very cool.

Quinn was getting cold and cranky so we decided to skip out in the middle of Obama's address, and miss the crowds on the train back home. All in all, pretty painless compared to some of the crazy stories we heard later. One other thought: the Obama memorabilia sector of the economy is pretty strong. Here's the picasa album with some more photos.

Inauguration liveblog 1

Cold but sunny. Standing at the wash mon. Can see a jumbotron, and can sorta hear. Big cheer for Hillary! Quinn is being very good, all things considered. Crowd is backed up this far already.

Long Goodbye, Almost Gone

Well there's less than 24 hours left in President Bush's term. Seems like a good time for one last peek at the good ole Bush approval rating chart, doncha think?
Data compiled by Prof. Pollkatz
A long slow slide with a few punctuation marks here and there. Man, doesn't it seem like Bush has been a lame duck forever? At least since the 2006 elections (and maybe since Katrina) it seems like the country's just been waiting around for someone - anyone! - else to take over. Even Bush himself seems to have a massive case of senioritis.

At any rate: good riddance. Torture, wiretapping, lies about WMD, the Iraq war, Guantanamo, politicizing the Justice Department, the war on science, gutting the Clean Air Act, eight years of nothing on climate change, tax cuts for the rich, and the worst recession since the Great Depression. I hope he enjoys his retirement.

Chevron-Toxico

Our second full day in Ecuador we took a short flight to the town of Coca (known as Puerto Francisco de Orellana on maps) to see firsthand the contamination caused by oil exploration. Before oil was discovered in the 1960s, Ecuador's eastern rain forest was home to indigenous people, a handful of Christian missionaries and not much else. In the northern oriente, oil companies cut down the forest to build roads and towns, and settlers flooded into the area. From what we saw of Coca, oil wealth hasn't brought much prosperity to the people, but has resulted in shocking pollution.

Our guide in Coca was an organizer with the Amazon Defense Front - a community group that has brought a lawsuit against Texaco (now owned by Chevron) to force them to pay for a clean-up. We drove around the area and saw stuff like this:This is a pit where waste oil and produced water were dumped by Texaco in the early '70s. We found this pit about 50 feet behind this family's house. The family relied on a well for water and livestock and fruit trees for food -- it was hard to imagine that all were not horribly contaminated. Apparently they had complained for stomach aches for years (anecdotally we heard a lot about elevated rates of cancer and miscarriage). The Correa government is now paying to clean-up this site.

Starting in the '60s Texaco (in a consortium with Petroecuador) drilled more than 300 oil wells and created more than 1,000 pools like this one. Standard practice in the U.S. at the time was to re-inject the waste products into the well after pumping; in Ecuador (because no one was watching) they just dumped it in the jungle. In 1990 Texaco sold their stake in the oil field to Petroecuador and left the country. A few years later they paid to remediate some of the waste pools and the government of Ecuador agreed to absolve them of all future liability.

Except that the locals didn't think Texaco had done a very good clean-up job and filed a lawsuit in the U.S. courts alleging that Texaco dumped nearly 17 million gallons of oil into the rivers and forests (more than the Exxon Valdez), and left behind hundreds of unlined open waste pits. If you read their website (or their defenders in the WSJ) Chevron's defense seems to be something along these lines:

• the jungle really isn't contaminated at all, we cleaned it up in the 90s
• if it seems like the jungle is contaminated, it totally isn't our fault, we blame Petroecuador
• and if it is our fault, the waste oil and produced water aren't even bad for you (trust us!)

After years of delay and stupid lawyer tricks the case was moved to the Ecuadorean courts, and now it kind of looks like Chevron might actually lose and have to pay the community upwards of $16 *billion* in damages.

We visited 3 other waste pools. The first was in the process of being cleaned up by the government, the second had an outlet pipe that flowed into a nearby stream (!) and the final one was one of the pools that had been "remediated" Texaco in the '90s. A family home had been built on top of the site in the meantime, but our guide took a post-hole digger and a mere six inches below the surface dug up contaminated soil. He mentioned that Texaco had simply bulldozed earth on top of many of the waste pits - and that this shoddy work was one of the reasons they might lose the case. Anyway, here are the pictures. They don't really do justice to the visceral sense of outrage I think we all felt while we were there.

Quito and Yunguilla

Happy New Year! We're back from an amazing 10 day trip to Ecuador. It was the first significant amount of time away from Quinn for both of us (she stayed with my parents and picked up several new words!) And while it didn't kill us, the last few days were tough. At any rate we are all happily reunited and have pictures! This post is the first of three -- the next two will have much more about the Amazon rain forest.

We went on a trip organized by Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based group that does socially responsible tourism among other activisty things. The goal was to learn about social and environmental justice issues in Ecuador, particularly around the issues of fair trade, oil extraction and indigenous rights.

We flew into Quito, perched at 9,300 feet above sea level (you definitely feel the altitude). The city is hilly and sprawled across a long narrow valley (in the shadow of an active volcano) and reminds me at least a little of San Francisco. Quito used to be one of the Incan capitals, although they burned it to the ground to prevent the Spaniards from taking it. As a result it doesn't have the astounding architectural history that you see in Mexico City or Rome, but the people, the descendants of the Incas and others, are still there and still holding tightly to their culture.

Our first morning in Quito we had breakfast at a coffee shop run by the Kallari cooperative. In addition to handicrafts and coffee, the Quichua-run cooperative makes particularly delicious chocolate bars which they have begun directly marketing to Whole Foods in the U.S. The filtered coffee they served was also a rarity -- in Ecuador the good coffee typically leaves on boats and the locals mostly drink instant.

That afternoon we visited Yunguilla, a rural community north of Quito overlooking a dramatically beautiful valley, that decided in the 90s to move toward ecotourism and away from logging as a means of making a living. Gallindo, a young community leader, gave us the story of their project, as well as a tour of their community projects and the lush cloud forest that draws in visitors. Ecotourism seems to have brought the community some level of self-sufficiency, although from Gallindo's story it was apparent that the path was not always easy. On the ride back to Quito we stopped to take photos at the Mitad del Mundo - the monument marking the (approximate) location of the equator.

After many adventures (stay tuned), we returned to Quito for one last day before our flight out. In the morning we visited the Capilla del Hombre, a museum featuring the work of Oswaldo Guayasamin, one of Ecuador's most famous and influential modern artists, and spent the afternoon wandering around the Old Town.

Anyway, here are the pictures:

Aaand we're off...

on our vacation travels. But before we go, here's a quick video of Quinn taking her first steps (oh, yes she is very much walking now).

This video is from early November, right after she figured out the whole walking thing. She's scooting around with much more assurance and speed these days.

Science: Especially When Inconvenient

Barack Obama roled out his science team this week:

"Because the truth is that promoting science isn't just about providing resources -- it's about protecting free and open inquiry. It's about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It's about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it's inconvenient -- especially when it's inconvenient."

(Also this week UCS released recommendations for the president-elect and the new Congress for restoring scientific integrity.)

Ecuador Reading List

Laura Jean and I are heading off to Ecuador for 10 days right after Christmas (Quinn is staying with my parents). We're going as part of a Global Exchange trip to learn about environmental and social justice issues in that country - particularly involving disputes between Amazonian communities and foreign oil companies. Should be an interesting trip.

To prepare for the trip, I've been doing some reading on the issues and the country in general. (A good intro to the Chevron dispute is here; a defense of Chevron is here.) Here are some links:

Biodiversity and Conservation

• Finer et al. Oil and Gas Projects in the Western Amazon: Threats to Wilderness, Biodiversity, and Indigenous Peoples. PLoS ONE. 3(8), 2008. (see also westernamazon.org)
  
• Kraft et al. Functional traits reveal niche-based community assembly in an Amazonian Forest. Science. 24 October, 2008.
• Ecuador's Choco under siege, but hope remains: An interview with UCLA conservationist Dr. Jordan Karubian (mongabay.com)
• The Harpy Eagle - King of the Canopy (Childrens Tropical Forests)
• Mangroves of Majagual, Ecuador are dying (Mangrove Action Project)
• Yasuni Scientific Research Station
• Research in Yasuni National Park
• Ecuador's plan to protect rainforest from oil drilling looks doomed (mongabay.com)
• Ecuador seeks to commercialize rainforest (Spiegel), 11/20/08
• Center on Ecotourism and Sustainable Development
• When chocolate is a way of life (NY Times, 11/4/08)
  

Oil Company Disputes

• Crude Reflections - Photo Exhibit (review here)
  
• Amazon Defense Coalition :: texacotoxico.org
• Clean Up Ecuador Campaign :: chevrontoxico.org
• Amazon Watch
  
• Texaco in Ecuador official site
  
• Jungle Law (Vanity Fair)
  
• A $16 billion problem (Newsweek)
• Ecuador keeps up oil cleanup fight against Chevron (Los Angeles Times)
• Ecuador ordered to pay $1.6B to Chevron (Economic Times)
  
• Amazonian Swindle (Wall Street Journal)
  
• Soy defensor de la selva [part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - short - via]
  
• Oil Exploration in Yasuni National Park
• Texaco goes on trial in Ecuador pollution case (NY Times)
• Seeking Balance: Growth vs. Culture in Amazon (NY Times, 12/10/03)
  
• Texaco in Ecuador (Oxfam America)
• Amazon activists win Goldman Environmental Prize (LA Times)
• Drilling for Oil Way, Way Offshore (Time, 8/18/08)
  
• 'Crude' forthcoming documentary by Joe Berlinger
• Chevron urges U.S. to revoke Ecuador trade (Washington Times, 2/5/09)
• Ecuador's Tribes Fight Big Oil (useful maps! Mariri Magazine, 6/4/07)
  

Recent Ecuador Politics

• Voters in Ecuador Approve Constitution (Washington Post, 11/29/08)
• Ecuador constitution would grant inalienable rights to nature (includes text; CS Monitor, 9/3/08)
  
• Rights of nature news links via CELDF
• Ecuador Rising blog
  
• Ecuador maintains bond default threat (Financial Times, 12/11/08)
• How green is the Latin American left? A look at Ecuador, Venezuela and Bolivia (Upside Down World, 4/3/08)

[Updated 3/1/09]

Rubik

This is pretty impressive:
It kind of looks like it's been sped up, but of course, it hasn't. Saw this via an interesting NY Times article about Jessica Fridrich, the inventor of a common speedcubing method. I confess I've never solved a Rubik's Cube. Sure, I've picked them up and fiddled around, but I've never really thought it through (do I have to turn in my geek credentials now?). I'm pretty sure I would feel good about myself if I solved it in several hours, much less 10 seconds.

Top 8 in 08: Books

'Tis that time of year again to engage in the ultimate blog activity: making lists of stuff! Being a new parent greatly cuts back on the time available to consume popular culture -- this year I got most of my reading done in bits while riding the train to work. Here are my top eight books this year; click-through to read my goodreads review for each:

1. The Yiddish Policeman's Union, by Michael Chabon
   
2. The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan
   
3. Dubliners, by James Joyce
   
4. Coyotes, by Ted Conover
   
5. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
   
6. A Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin
   
7. Peddling Prosperity, by Paul Krugman
   
8. Speaking with the Angel, short story collection edited by Nick Hornby
   

I also wanted to give a shout-out for a book I haven't finished reading yet -- Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity. Co-written/edited by my friend Ari, it's a hybrid textbook/coffee table book packed with the latest science on a really interesting and timely topic.

Sign of the Coming Apocalypse #4401

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, 19% of all the world's coral reefs have died over the past few decades -- mostly due to climate change threats like acidification and rising sea temperatures. Although there are apparently some hopeful signs, climate change will continue to be bad news for corals unless significant emissions reductions happen.

So that sucks. Particularly because it turns out that corals are really fascinating. For example, corals usually grow asexually, but also reproduce sexually via massive, synchronized spawning events triggered by the lunar cycle (coral apparently have primitive photoreceptor eyes) that spread fertilized eggs over large distances to form new colonies.

Stuff like this makes me wish I knew the first thing about biology. Biology is kind of awesome.

51 Quarters

Fifty state quarters (plus a stand-in for D.C. which doesn't get its own) arranged in rough geographic order:

I started collecting them as soon as we moved somewhere that didn't have coin-operated washers and dryers. Yes, I am a dork.

Social Change

Kevin Drum has a pointed article on what Barack Obama needs to do to actually pass the ambitious progressive agenda he campaigned on. In short, Obama needs to use his considerable rhetorical gifts to convince the nation not just to vote for him (check), but also to support him. The public still needs convincing that his specific policies will indeed bring about peace, prosperity, justice and sustainability. I bet this part will be harder.

Capping greenhouse gas emissions and securing universal health coverage won't come easy - the entrenched interests aren't just going to lay down. It's going to be a fight. Leaving Iraq won't be a cakewalk either. Interestingly, Drum dredges up an old story about Franklin Roosevelt that nicely illustrates the other side of the policy change equation.

In a possibly apocryphal story told by I.F. Stone, FDR once met with a group of reformers who explained at length why he should support their cause. "Okay, you've convinced me," he told them. "Now go on out and bring pressure on me."

Janinsanfran is thinking along the same lines:

One the hardest truths for people in power to remember is that having a noisy, demanding, outsider grassroots constituency helps them govern. This is so even when they are getting jacked up and called names. This is something Obama should understand from his days as an organizer. Pushy people give cover to a progressive politician to get things done.

Having been in DC for over two years now this seems correct to me. Politicians are not leaders; they are followers. Watching the U.S. Senate (and to a lesser extent, the House) deliberate on various topics, I am constantly struck by how slow, conservative, incremental it is ... and how important agitated constituents are in providing cover for wavering politicians.

No successful social movement ever succeeds thanks to elected officials. Rather, the demands of social movements are institutionalized by politicians once they have built enough strength to be undeniable. That said, I think Obama understands this dynamic and his role in it. Here's hoping his supporters do too -- and don't let up after he's sworn in. There are great opportunities here, but still lots of work to do.

In the skies over Canada...

Here's a beautiful video of a small meteor that lit up the skies over Edmonton, Alberta last week. I feel like I've seen the CGI version of this scene numerous times - but this is real!

Apparently folks are using this and other videos to triangulate likely locations for any remains. It would be very cool to see an analysis of that. (via APOD.)

Might be time to pull over...

(late night driving somewhere in Delaware)

Geeky Public Service Announcement

I found a way to link my various status updates together (Gmail Chat/AIM >> Twitter >> Facebook) and thought I would post it here in case anyone else might find it useful.

1. Set up an account on friendfeed.com. You can use this site to grab a feed of your Gtalk/AIM status messages and export it as an RSS feed.
2. Set up an account on twitterfeed.com (login using OpenID). Feed the above RSS to this site, and it will automatically update your twitter account.
3. Finally you can use the twitter app to automatically update your Facebook status message.
   

Now you never have to think about it again! Might not be the most elegant method, but it works. Improvement suggestions welcome!

One bummer is that this only works in one direction. This is fine with me since I'm constantly logged in to Gmail, but only periodically check Facebook. Second bummer is that Google status messages are stamped with "(via Gmail/Google Talk)"

This post mentions you can use Yahoo Pipes to edit your friendfeed and strip out the message stamp (among other things). And this works fine, but for some dumb reason, Yahoo Pipes is currently blocking twitterfeed's IP (at least according to the help page). So that's unhelpful. But if that problem ever gets solved, it would make the whole project a bit more nifty.

Two Presidents

Yesterday's meeting between Bush and Obama reminds me of my favorite Obama anecdote. Back before the 2004 election -- when Obama was running for the U.S. Senate -- Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-Illinois) visited the White House for a meeting with the president:

On her way out, she said, President Bush noticed her “obama” button. “He jumped back, almost literally,” she said. “And I knew what he was thinking. So I reassured him it was Obama, with a ‘b.’ And I explained who he was. The President said, ‘Well, I don’t know him.’ So I just said, ‘You will.’ ”

Pumpkins and Goats

Pictures are from cousin Grace's birthday party last month.

Election-y Thoughts

I was watching election returns in Arlington, Virginia -- just a two hour drive from the capital of the confederacy -- when a black man (with a hugely unlikely name) won the votes of that state and then the presidency of the United States. It was a great and hopeful moment. I think Abraham Lincoln must have looked down and smiled.

Anyway, here are some random election thoughts:

• Barack the President. Poor guy has to be president now and deal with two wars, a crappy economy and still find a way to press a progressive agenda. Honestly, I have no idea why anyone would want this job, but I'm glad we have such a savvy and accomplished person to fill it.
  
  
• John McCain sure gave a gracious, classy concession speech didn't he? It reminded me why I used to like him. I think that the final result wasn't so much a repudiation of McCain as of Bush. McCain ran away from his straight-talking, moderate Republican brand and let Karl Rove's henchmen talk him into a negative, 2004-style, get-out-the-base campaign. He shoulda stuck to his guns, picked Joe Lieberman as a running-mate and ran for the center. He still might have lost, but I bet he would have had more fun doing it.
  
  
• On Wednesday I thought maybe I would pick up the dead-tree version of the Washington Post as a souvenir. Except that the vendors sold long before I got out of the house and there were no copies to be had for love or money anywhere that I could see. Everyday the Newseum displays front pages from around the world -- here are the headlines from Tuesday.
  
  
• I didn't actually tear-up about Obama's victory until I read this article about the celebrations in Kenya and elsewhere and realized that this really does matter hugely to the rest of the world.
  
  
• The gloomy lining to the silver cloud is the passage of Prop. 8 in California -- just the latest in a long line of terrible propositions to come out of my home state. What the hell!? I seriously cannot understand the motivations of people who want to take away human rights from their neighbors, but that's a rant for another time. In the long run I have faith that justice will be done, but for now it's just depressing.
  
  
• Apparently Alaska may have elected a convicted felon back to the Senate and Minnesota may end up sending a comedian. Good times, good times.

Survey Says

Now no one knows who will win tomorrow until the actual votes are counted ... I certainly won't believe Obama wins until Fox News admits it. But if Obama doesn't win tomorrow, there will be a lot of pollsters out of work come Wednesday. Just sayin...

As of right now:

• fivethirtyeight.com has Obama 346.5 - McCain 191.5 in the electoral college and Obama +5.9 in the popular vote. They give McCain a 1.9% chance of becoming the 44th president.
  
• pollster.com has Obama 311 - McCain 142 in the electoral college (with 85 as tossups) and Obama +7.0.
• realclearpolitics.com has Obama 278 - McCain 132 (with 128 tossups) and Obama +7.3.
  
• electoral-vote.com has Obama 353 - McCain 185.
  

(Chart courtesy of Charles Franklin.)

As John Scalzi says, it will be nice once this election is over so I'm not constantly "refreshing FiveThirtyEight.com like a rat at a feeder bar." That said, we're off to VA tomorrow morning for GOTV.

Exhuming McCarthy

Kevin Drum runs down all the various names that Republicans have called Obama over the past few months: anti-semitic, anti-American, Marxist, socialist, extreme afrocentrist, who pals around with terrorists. (Update: also, traitor.) Terrorist fist jab. There's a lot of 'guilt by association' here, and not a little bit of nudging innuendo about the guy with the foreign sounding name. At least the socialist stuff is marginally topical (if absurd). I'm reminded of this great R.E.M. song, Exhuming McCarthy:

"You're honorable, more honorable than me
Loyal to the Bank of America."

The sleaziest attack has to be this latest one on the respected middle-east historian Rashid Khalidi. I heard Khalidi talk a few times at U of C -- he's very thoughtful and obviously knows his stuff. Of course, he's a vocal (some would say militant) advocate for Palestinian independence, which is apparently a hugely controversial stance for a Palestinian-American to take. Indeed, John McCain compared Khalidi to a neo-Nazi.

At any rate, it is not Obama's position we're talking about here. This collegial connection with a fellow faculty member is supposed to "raise questions" about Obama in the minds of voters. (It is honestly hard to believe there are questions about either candidate left to be raised. After 18 months of non-stop campaigning I feel like I know more than enough about both of 'em. "Raising questions" is code for "making slimy, unsubstantiated claims about my opponent without coming right out and saying anything directly.")

I'd say the same thing about Jeremiah Wright (and even William Ayers). We shouldn't penalize public figures for listening to or befriending people with views outside the mainstream. For eight years we've had a president who has surrounded himself with yes-men and lives in a bubble free from any criticism. It hasn't worked out. The Washington Post editorial on the whole affair states, "Our sense is that Mr. Obama is a man of considerable intellectual curiosity who can hear out a smart, if militant, advocate for the Palestinians without compromising his own position."

Its been fairly depressing to watch the descent of John McCain into negativity. Before this whole election started I had a fair bit of respect for McCain. I didn't agree with him on much, but I felt that he stood above some of the lamer aspects of modern politics, like its obsession with soundbites, talking points, "message of the day," as well as the smears and negative campaigning. I guess that's all gone now, maybe it was never there to begin with. A big election made of small things.

Early Voting

We voted yesterday at lunch. The only hitch was we had to go through security to get into the DC government building, but the lines weren't bad. I'm about ready to be done with this election already - how about you all?

Russian Dance

by Tom Waits. Music from the play, The Black Rider.

(In college I had a small part in a staging of Gogol's The Inspector General where this song was used for the surreal, dream-like climax of the play. It worked really, really well in that context. I have no idea where the video is from--Russia, perhaps?--but it's kind of awesome.)

Theoretical Maximum

We were playing Scrabble tonight and Laura Jean mentioned that you can score something like 1,500 points on a single turn if you play your tiles right. This blew my tiny, tiny mind, but it's true!

In the right context, playing the word "BENZOXYCAMPHORS" will net you a cool 1,962 points. Thank you, triple-word-scores. If you want to be a stickler and restrict yourself to words found in the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, you can play "DEMYTHOLOGIZERS" for 1,682 points. And back in the real world, these two guys netted a total of 1,320 points in one actual game.

Blog Traffic

So this is odd. This blog normally gets somewhere around 10 visitors per day -- mostly friends and family plus a few other folks (hi yall). But then last month I got a sudden upsurge of visitors -- 185 on September 8 -- before it tapered back down to the normal level.

What's more, all of these new visitors were looking at one page (this post from 2006 on the seasonal distribution of birthdays) and had been directed from a website called ravelry.com--which is apparently an online 'knit and crochet community' (and how awesome is that!). Perhaps this is the knitting equivalent of getting farked? I have no idea why knitters are suddenly interested in birthdays, but welcome!

[Actually that birthdays post has popped up a few places on teh internets - for example, here. Also: not to completely geek out, but I spent far too much time in grad school staring at plots like the one above (or this one) not to instinctively calculate the signal-to-noise ratio (it's 20.6). HETE-2 would totally get a decent localization on this one.]

You have your vice...

... I have mine.

Quote 'o' the Day

From Alan Greenspan, testifying before Congress:

“I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms,” Mr. Greenspan said.

Referring to his free-market ideology, Mr. Greenspan added: “I have found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I have been very distressed by that fact.”

Mr. Waxman pressed the former Fed chair to clarify his words. “In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working,” Mr. Waxman said.

“Absolutely, precisely,” Mr. Greenspan replied. “You know, that’s precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.”

Lord knows it's hard to admit you're wrong, particularly in the midst of an economic meltdown. It's hard to place love of truth ahead of ego and long-held ideology. So, kudos to Mr. Greenspan for his intellectual honesty. I suppose not everyone will be happy to accept his apologies, but at least they will set Ayn Rand spinning in her grave. Strange times...

Chicago Tribune Endorses Obama

The Chicago Tribune endorsed Barack Obama last week, saying "We have known Obama since he entered politics a dozen years ago ... He is ready."

For Chicagoans this is kind of a big deal since the Trib is such a staunchly Republican paper. Dating back to Abraham Lincoln in 1860 the paper has never endorsed a Democrat for President. Indeed, during WWII, a nasty feud between editor Robert McCormick and Franklin Roosevelt nearly resulted in charges of treason. And lest you think this is just hometown favoritism, Adlai Stevenson has a freeway in Chicago named after him, but Eisenhower got the endorsement. Perhaps the times they are a changing...

I always think of the Chicago Tribune when people talk about the "liberal" media. I grew up in an area where the local paper was probably more liberal than most of its readers. In contrast, Chicago is a big city that voted strongly for both Gore and Kerry, but the Tribune backed Bush twice. (The more populist Chicago Sun-Times went with Bush in 2000 and switched to Kerry in 2004.) Which is not to say that I think the Tribune is a bad paper for being editorially conservative - just that bias is relative and hard to measure objectively. In the end, media outlets are primarily interested in maximizing profits.

Fingerpaint

Quinn has been finger (and toe!) painting at day care. Here are some of her first masterpieces. I think I can see the beginnings of a distinctive and revolutionary style... but then I might be biased.

Today in Real America

According to Sarah Palin, Washington DC isn't "real America" and she likes visiting "pro-America areas of this great nation." And then we have a McCain spokesperson saying that Northern Virginia isn't the "real Virginia."

As a current resident of DC and a former resident of NoVa, I have to say: Thanks a lot, jerks. Now, Palin's spokesperson says she didn't intend to insult DC per se, which would be a lot easier to believe if the McCain campaign hadn't been waving the bloody shirt of cultural division for months now.

I remember when the GOP used to talk about itself as the 'big tent party,' home to a diversity of types of people and points of view. Now they seem to be drawing smaller and smaller circles around what they consider to be the "real America." I guess we'll all see how that works out for them...

Land's End

(overseen in Cambria, CA)

Here There Be Dragons

When I was a kid I used to draw my own maps of imaginary worlds, mostly inspired by Tolkien and the other fantasy novels I devoured. I especially remember the upside-down V's I used for the mountain ranges.
(With luck, those maps have been burned, along with any and all teenage attempts at poetry.) Yet even today, a map adorning the inner cover of a novel is an exciting thing. In addition to being helpful for keeping those fantasy place names straight ("Now where/what exactly is Grobulor...?") maps are instrumental in preserving some of the mystery that draws us in to fantasy in the first place.

The twin hearts of fantasy (and science-fiction, too) are deciphering the ideas that make the book work and exploring the worlds created by those ideas. In the beginning, all is mysterious--names and places and concepts are tossed around with little explanation--and gradually the pieces fit together and become clear. But a smart fantasist will always leave a whiff of mystery hanging in the air, a feeling that there are still frontiers to be explored (the better to set the stage for an infinite number of sequels, of course).

With Tolkien, I was always fascinated by the parts of the map that didn't enter into the storyline: Far Harad, the Northern Waste, Rhûn. As I got older, I also realized that a lot of fantasy never really dragged itself out from under Tolkien's shadow (trolls! swords! Old English diction!). But there are a lot of younger writers who are taking deliberate aim at the cliches of the past and I was thrilled to discover that some of them like maps too.

China Mieville's Perdido Street Station is a fantasy novel for urban planning majors. Instead of farmboys and fair maidens, Mieville gives us the teeming metropolis of New Crobuzon where five or six species coexist uneasily with a corrupt police state, organized crime, street gangs, vigilantes and all manner of religious cults, political movements, labor unions. Fittingly, the inner cover map delineates neighborhoods and provides a helpful overview of New Crobuzon's subway system.
The city itself is a tangible character in the story and Mieville delights in describing its streets and hoods and regaling us with stories from its past. (In one corner of the city, life goes on beneath the towering bones and ribcage of a prehistoric beast.) Of course, nothing warms the heart of an urbanite quite like a tube map, but the book as a lot more to recommend it than geography. Mieville also writes terrific, grown-up characters and has a smart nose for science and politics (in real life, he's a committed socialist). Like a lot of genre novels, the ending is lame, but the road there is terrific (full review here, he's also written two further novels in this world which I haven't read yet).

To Mieville I would also add Neil Gaiman. Gaiman is famous for reworking ancient myths into a modern context, and in his first non-graphic novel Neverwhere he constructs a netherworld (London Below) out of the 40 odd abandoned Tube stations on the London Underground.


Ultimately, Neverwhere is not Gaiman's strongest book, but it is quite charming in how it weaves magic into the everyday of grit of London. Gaiman treads lightly -- I could easily imagine a series of books inhabiting this world, but many of his most promising ideas are given only a glance. In this sense, Neverwhere is a little sketchier and less ambitious than PSS -- but I thoroughly enjoyed its merging of fantasy and modernity.

Pronunciation

I've always loved my last name - Donaghy - partly because it's not all that common (rogue NBA refs notwithstanding). But, I can count on one hand the number of school teachers or other people who pronounced it correctly the first time. Everyone assumes it's 'Don-a-hee' when really we say it 'Don-a-gee' ('g' as in 'geologist' -- not 'g' as in 'geek').

So, I was amused to learn from a colleague that this pronunciation conundrum popped up as a gag on '30 Rock' (the 'Fighting Irish' episode), where Alec Baldwin's character is named Jack Donaghy.

Liz Lemon: Can I help you?
Eddie Donaghy: Yeah, sweetheart: I'm looking for Jack Donaghy.
Liz Lemon: And you are?
Eddie Donaghy: Eddie Donaghy - Jack's brother.
Liz Lemon: Really? 'Cause Jack never mentioned a brother, and his name is "Donagee," not "Donahee."

I couldn't find a video clip online (probably because the first season is out on DVD), but apparently Jack changed his name in order to succeed in business. From what I can tell, the 'Don-a-hee' pronunciation is more common in Ireland, and given the number of times I've had to correct people, it would almost be easier to change it back the other direction. But, what can I say? We're Irish-American - may as well own it.

F-U-N!

Here's Quinn enjoying life during our trip to California...

Data Blogging: the Electoral College

Defenders of the Electoral College claim that it serves to amplify the popular vote margin of victory and therefore (theoretically) enhances the legitimacy of the elected president. I was curious what the data looked like so I plotted it up. (Data courtesy of wikipedia - god help me caveat emptor - here and here.)

This is a plot of percentage of electoral votes vs. the popular vote margin for presidential elections in the past 100 years. Sure enough, the trend shows that the electoral college 'saturates' at somewhere around a 20 percent margin. That is, a 60-40 split in the popular vote will more or less win you a landslide, although there is a fair amount of scatter in the data.

Which is all well and good if you're Reagan in '84 or FDR in '36 (the two largest electoral college landslides on the right end of the trendline), but some of the outliers are pretty interesting too. The two largest popular vote margins (Harding and Coolidge) didn't exactly run away with the electoral college. And for the really close elections (the ones where the winner might want some legitimacy amplification) the effect tends to be pretty small.

And then of course there's poor Al Gore - the only datapoint, in this century, to fall below the x-axis.

[Update: Barack Obama beat John McCain by 6.5% and received 365 electoral votes, which puts him right on the trendline (red dot), and quite close to Bill Clinton's first election.]

Golden Age

TV on the Radio has a new album out called Dear Science. I can't say I was blown away by the first single ('Golden Age') or its goofy 'cops turn into Care Bears' video, but it's growing on me. It reminds me of Prince or early Michael Jackson filtered through Peter Gabriel. Anyway, here it is - enjoy.

Half the appeal of TVOTR are the beautiful soundscapes they create, so I imagine the actual CD track sounds better than the youtube version. Another track (the raucous 'Dancing Choose') is available streaming from their website.

Strategy and Tactics Redux

James Fallows has some interesting thoughts on the subject, following last night's debate. Worth a read.

Has John McCain lost his mind?

Some things that happened today in the campaign:

• Obama is up by as much as +9 points in some national polls
  
• The NY Times reports that McCain campaign manager was, until recently, receiving $15,000 a month to provide Freddie/Fannie execs with "access" to McCain
• McCain decides to "suspend his campaign" to focus on the financial crisis and calls for postponing Friday's debate (and the VP debate!)
  

It really is fascinating to watch these two campaigns because they are total mirror images of each other. The McCain campaign is all tactics, no strategy. They focus on winning the news cycle, attacking and scoring points--which makes perfect sense for an underdog. On the other hand, Obama (the front-runner) is pure strategy. They've got their plan for victory mapped out to the precinct. They keep their head when crises rear up and rarely change course. Sometimes it seems they could care less about the news cycle.

So: a few weeks of bad news and McCain hits the panic button. I'm sure McCain's advisers are high-fiving each other over their latest brilliant move. But I'll bet your average swing voter will see this as McCain trying to get out of turning in his homework. We'll see.

Random Thought about the LHC

So the Large Hadron Collider has turned on, and weirdly, every time I read something about it I am reminded of this exchange between Gandalf and Saruman:

"For I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman the Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colours!"

I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colours, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered.

"I liked white better," I said.

"White!" he sneered. "It serves as a beginning. White cloth may be dyed. The white page can be overwritten; and the white light can be broken."

"In which case it is no longer white," said I. "And he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom."

[J.R.R. Tolkien, Fellowship of the Ring, p. 252]

It always struck me as a weird thing for Gandalf to say. Is he really worried about "breaking" white light to understand how it works? Does it count if you learn enough to put it back together again? Still, I guess it fits with the platonic and pre-scientific feel of Tolkien's universe.

So, anyway, let's raise a flagon of mead, smash some atoms and give a toast to reductionism! Good luck to the LHC - it would be cool if they found the Higgs, but even cooler if they found supersymmetry, or something even wackier.

Oh Boy...

(overseen in Hyattsville, MD)

Palindromes

I thought Barack Obama's response to the Sarah Palin family craziness was typically classy:

“Let me be as clear as possible,” said Obama, “I think people’s families are off-limits and people's children are especially off-limits. This shouldn't be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin’s performance as governor, or her potential performance as a vice president.”

Obama said reporters should “back off these kinds of stories” and noted that he was born to an 18 year-old mother.

Hell of a lot classier than John McCain's ugly joke about Chelsea Clinton from back in the 90s, that's for sure (to be fair McCain did apologize, but that's a lot to apologize for).

I've been meaning to post something about Obama's awesome speech last week, but the unrelenting nuttiness of McCain's veep selection process has really been too distracting. Did he seriously just pick someone with a pending ethics investigation and ties to a party advocating for Alaska's secession from the union? Did his team know about this stuff and just think it was no big deal? Or did they - as has been reported - just wing it and go with a clever pick figuring the time had come to take a chance? I mean, she seems like a genuine person, but still. Just. Weird.

As for how this will play out politically, pundit-y types are split on whether it is a bold, game-changing moment from the original maverick ... or a desperate, Hail-Mary ploy from a losing campaign. I'm gonna say that Palin, like virtually all VP picks, will make very little difference in the eventual outcome. Most people vote the top of the ticket. She'll play well to the religious right, but her extreme social conservatism will cost McCain with moderates and her thin resume will blunt his attacks on Obama's experience. I seriously doubt she'll have much appeal to grumpy Hillary voters.

But, honestly, I have no idea how it will play out. This presidential race continues to be exciting and bizarre.

The Words Creep Up Inside

In the last week or so Quinn has started talking. Her first real word is "bye" and she loves to repeat it whenever someone leaves the house, or the room, or just looks like they might be going somewhere. She pronounces it "bah," which according to a co-worker is a very southern pronunciation.

The other word she has been saying is "daddy." A few days ago she pointed to me and very clearly said "da-ee." Then she pointed to me in our wedding photo and repeated it.

I was of course totally blown away by this! But since then there has been some evidence that she has a more expansive definition of the word than others do. A variety of other things sometimes get called "da-ee" as well (e.g. Mama, the doorframe, a candle, random other pictures, etc.).

There are other words on the cusp too, like "mama" and "baby." This is just another reminder that there is no bright line between speaking and non-speaking and that we evolve into it gradually. But there is no doubt that Quinn absolutely wants to communicate and will probably be talking up a storm before we know it.

Gustav Approaches

Since they just decided to evacuate New Orleans in front of the approaching Category 4 Hurricane Gustav, here's another vignette from our trip to the Gulf Coast:

During our work trip we took one afternoon off to go to the beach in Biloxi, hoping that there might be a cool breeze off the Gulf. No such luck. The beach was deserted in the early afternoon (local Biloxians knew better) and hot as the Sahara. The sea water was literally the temperature of a warm bath and there were no waves or wind. After less than hour we were thoroughly boiled and retreated to our air-conditioned trailer. I remember thinking as I waded out into the soup kettle: warmer sea-surface temperatures lead to stronger hurricanes.

(Now I have no idea whether sea-shore temperatures actually really count for much of anything when it comes to hurricanes, but still, it was kind of scary to contemplate.)

(For more hurricane-blogging, check out Chris Mooney and Jeff Masters, and read this plea for not-forgetting from the good folks at Common Ground Relief.)

Lower Ninth Ward

I plan to post more on our trip to Biloxi, but for now--on the 3rd anniversary of Katrina's landfall and another hurricane about to swing into the Gulf--I wanted to briefly mention our brief experience in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans last week.

Since we flew into New Orleans and rented a car, we decided to drive through some of the flooded neighborhoods on our way back to the airport. We came into the city from the east along Claiborne Road, and there were clear signs of devastation and rebuilding. We saw entire shopping malls boarded up, but also new and refurbished homes and stores. Maybe one in three buildings still looked badly damaged. As we drew closer to the Canal separating the Lower Ninth from the city center, we decided to take a turn off the main drag onto a side street, and...

I think Laura Jean and I might have both gasped audibly at what we saw. The entire neighborhood was just ... gone. What had once been a full neighborhood of small family homes was now returning to bayou. The grass was four feet tall. Only every twentieth home was still standing and most of those looked like they had been bombed. There were few attempts at rebuilding and even the roads were destroyed--giant potholes and standing water everywhere. It felt like driving through an Iowa cornfield, or a township. Laura Jean described it as being under the ocean.

I'm not entirely sure what I expected--perhaps more like the 'back to life' feeling from the main road--but not this field of bulldozed foundations. In a word, it was shocking.

No photos to share since our camera had stopped working by that point, but this flickr set captures some of the feel of being there. Also after poking around a bit, I found this map showing the depth of the flood waters throughout the city and you can see that these houses were totally destroyed by 1-5 feet of water -- other parts of NOLA were submerged by more than 11 feet!

You can also see some of the destruction in the current google map images of the neighborhood (zoom in), although I think since these pictures were taken many of these houses have been razed to the ground.


View Larger Map

This Does Not Bode Well...

We're back from our trip to the Gulf Coast, and I have to say, flying sure has become more annoying in the past year. The second leg of our journey was on US Airways and they:

• charged us $55 to check our bags,
• tried to charge us $2 for water and $1 for coffee on the in-flight beverage service (no thanks), and, worst of all,
• we had to listen to an advertisement for a credit card offer, announced over the PA right after they completed the usual safety instructions.

I guess all that brings the face-value of the ticket down a few bucks, but still ... yuk. And all this after the flight was delayed by an electrical problem and they needed time to "reboot" the aircraft by hitting "Ctrl-Alt-Del." Maybe not the best choice of words, is all I'm saying...

At any rate, the flight back was uneventful and we got out just before tropical storm Fay swung through the area.

withdrawal?

The internet went down at work today ... for the entire day. After the trauma subsided, I was actually fairly productive! It seems that when it comes to the internet, distraction and usefulness fight each other to a standstill. Hmm.

Anyway, we're off on more travels tomorrow - back in a week!