Justice denied?

The NY Times has an editorial that raises some disturbing follow-up questions to the problems going on at the DOJ. Apparently some of the non-fired US attorneys may have been pushing cases just for the sake of damaging Democratic candidates; very scary.

Bolivian Baroque

CBS Sunday Morning had an interesting piece about Bolivian Baroque. (The article is a bit older, but is the only link I could find.) Apparently the Indian cultures in Bolivia produced a large number of Baroque compositions (all anonymous) that were discovered several years ago by a priest. Fascinating!

Variability

I read an interesting article on variability The Most Dangerous Equation that was published in American Scientist. It discusses the fact that variability in measurement decreases with the square root of the sample size (which is pretty slow), and then gives examples of real-world implications of this fact. For example, Prof. Wainer discusses how small schools maybe come out "better" in most studies because their variability is higher: not only are they among the best schools, they are also among the worst.

Crazy money advice

Robert Kiyosaki has an interesting post here about money. Unfortunately, most of his "advice" doesn't make sense. And his math doesn't either: he estimates that $25000 in 40 years will be equivalent to $250 today. What kind of inflation rate gives a 100-fold decrease in purchasing power in 40 years? Even a 10-percent rate of inflation would only give a 45-fold decrease in purchasing power.

Protect yourself and reduce junk mail

Optoutprescreen.com is a web site set up by the 3 credit bureaus that lets you permanently opt out of pre-approved credit offers. Highly recommended!

For reference, here is a useful fact sheet about how to get rid of paper junk mail.

And the blind shall see...

There's an interesting article about Matthew Dowd's public admission that George W. Bush's administrator is inept. It sure is hard for us humans to admit our mistakes, isn't it?

Gingrich: how sad

Newt Gingrich has done a great job of rehabilitating his image over the last few years (almost Nixonian). But now he comes out and shows his true colors...

Food problems

I've been reading an apocalyptic book titled The End of Food, by Thomas F. Pawlick. It opens with the most startling information, which is that the nutritional value of most foods has been dropping over the last half-century. The theory underlying this set of facts is that industrial production of food seeks to maximize production, which leads to examples such as overuse of fertilizers (which makes the soil less rich) and grain-fed cows (which leads to lower-quality beef).

Overall, the book presents some interesting information, but I found it a little too over the top. It is somewhat unsurprising that "mass-produced" food is low quality: it will always be the case that the highest-quality food costs much more than many people can afford. I agree with the author that it is very short-sighted of our civilization to misuse natural resources in the way that we do, but all of these implicit decisions are driven by increasing populations.

Future selves

NPR's Weekend Edition had a piece on futureme.org, which is a site where you can leave messages for your future self. Fascinating idea!

Deadwood Season 2

We finished the second season of Deadwood. What a great series! All of the characters are fascinating, and almost all of them live in that ambiguous zone between good and evil. Powers Boothe's character (Cy Tolliver) is probably the only truly despicable character; it's interesting that he is playing an evil character on 24 this season as well.

Without having done a careful analysis, it feels like this season was mostly centered around Al Swearengen: the end of the season finishes with a shot of him. The first season felt like it was more about Seth Bullock.

Time Warner Center

We grabbed lunch at Bouchon Bakery. Excellent sandwiches, although pretty pricey. It's a good thing we don't get a chance to go there too often.

We then went shopping at Whole Foods. Always an experience, and usually hard on the checkbook...

MOMA

We went to MOMA to see a few of the exhibitions. One of them was Comic Abstraction. A really funny work is called "Waiting for Jerry" by Juan Munoz: it consists of an small, dark, empty room with a backlit mouse hole: cartoon music is piped into the room.

We also saw through the Jeff Wall retrospective, and the exhibition on Armando Reveron. There were some fascinating paintings in each exhibition, although we weren't overwhelmed by anything in particular.

One of our favorite paintings at MOMA is Andrew Wyeth's "Christina's World":

 

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Flushed

Flushed , by W. Hodding Carter, is an amusing book. It talks a lot about the author's personal fascination/experiences with plumbing. The funniest anecdote was when Carter tried to manufacture his own lead pipes.

One minor note: this book would have been more interesting if there had been pictures of how different types of toilet work.

Sunflower

We watched a Chinese movie called Sunflower, which was set during the period 1976-1999 in Beijing. (1976 was the year that Chairman Mao died.) The primary plot driver is the conflict between a father and his son. The movie was well done, but kind of depressing and very predictable, and the ending was very unrealistic. I found the movie more interesting because it really demonstrates the economic, social, and physical changes that China has been through in the last 30 years.

Max Brenner

We stopped by Max Brenner, a chocolate store combined with a restaurant of some sort. (I didn't look at the menu.) Pretty good chocolate, but Vere produces higher-quality stuff.

Food Politics

I've slowly been reading Food Politics by Marion Nestle. It's a great analysis of how the food industry has an excessive influence on our government's food policies. The book is worth reading, if depressing. I've had to return it twice to the library already, because I couldn't finish it in 3 weeks; maybe next time I take it out I'll be able to finish it.

Borat

We watched Borat, which was both appallingly rude and ridiculously funny. The scenes in New York City were absolutely hilarious, especially on the 4-5-6 train. I didn't think it was as outstanding as some reviewers, but I'm glad I watched it. I can see why it is amazing comedy: "reality" comedy, I guess.

The extras on the DVD were almost funnier than the movie: in particular, the appearances that Borat made on Conan O'Brien and The Tonight Show.

no waste?

Zero waste: can we achieve it? This article made me wonder how right some economists are that the market will solve problems. Maybe they are right, but the time scale could be wrong for certain kinds of problems.

For example, it could be that we need the doomsayers to move the population to act; they could be the impulse function in reaction to the recognition of a problem (say, global warming). In that metaphor, government and the media act as delay functions. The problem is that if the time needed to act is longer than the delay imposed by the delay function...

John McPhee

I've been reading the John McPhee Reader, which is a collection of excerpts from a variety of his works. He's a fascinating journalist, and I enjoyed reading his writing. It is very dense, though, and he uses technical jargon freely, without defining it (it's up to you to whether this is desirable).

I really enjoyed the excerpts from A Roomful of Hovings. Unfortunately, the NY Public Library doesn't have this book! Some of the other excerpts didn't grab me as much: in particular, I found the story about Monopoly from A Sense of Place fairly awkward in its structure.

Lima's Taste

We seem to have been eating out a lot recently. We went to Lima's Taste, a Peruvian restaurant in the West Village. The ceviche was great (I'm tempted to say outstanding, but I'm afraid I don't have the experience to be an accurate judge of that), but the fried yucca was apparently not so good. Then again, who likes fried yucca? The food was reasonably priced.

Talk Radio

We saw Talk Radio with Liev Schreiber in the starring role. It was the last day that the show was in previews. Liev was fantastic, although there were a few weak moments in the first few minutes of the play.

Hurricanes and NYC

Here's a web site worth looking at if you live in New York City: the city's hurricance preparedness map.

Pongsri

We ate at Pongsri, a Thai restaurant at 165 W 23rd Street. Pretty good Thai food, although we've tended to avoid Thai food for the past few years. Very good service, above average food, average pricing.

Billy's Bakery

Grabbed some dessert at Billy's Bakery last night; it was pretty tasty! Apparently it is pretty well known; I (being a relatively new New Yorker) just learned about it.

Grand Sichuan, redux

I went to the 9th Avenue location for Grand Sichuan. Great food, as always, and very spicy! Good service, and pretty inexpensive for the quality and quantity of food.

Undercover Economist

I read through the Undercover Economist, which is a wonderfully written exposition of why capitalism works: because, as the author says, it reveals "the truth". Overall, I enjoyed it, but I think it is too optimistic about how economics can solve all of our problems:

• It is all well and good to say that externality pricing reduces the effects of the externality, but how politically easy is it to impose such prices? As we've seen in NY, it is extremely difficult.
• The book claims that as the standard of living in China has increase, that large-particle pollution has gone down. That may be true, but when I was just in China I felt like the pollution was stifling.
• The book claims that there is correlation/causation between protectionist policies and intensive farming. I'm not sure I believe that, and the book did not provide a compelling argument as to why that might be the case.

Liars and crooks

This is an interesting interview with two financial crooks. There are lessons to be learned.

49 Up

We watched 49 Up, the latest movie in the series that started with 7 Up. We skipped some of the movies in the middle; I feel like we should go back and watch them. These movies are fantastic pictures of human lives; I just feel sad that some of the characters have declined to participate as they get older. I can understand that each of them would want his/her privacy, but having one's life and thoughts recorded for posterity on film is a great honor.

Purity of Blood

I quickly read through the sequel to Captain Alatriste, Purity of Blood. Overall, I thought that the book is a better book to read on vacation than in my somewhat limited free time. I also thought that the first book was better, since the lack of plot development, the extended descriptions, and the slow pace seemed better suited to the first book in a series.

I did enjoy the depth of portrayal of 17th-century Spain, although I am not in a position the historical accuracy of the extended ruminations on Spain's downfall. However, for fiction I tend to prefer books with more interesting plots or with better character development. Well, I guess you can't expect everything from a novel.

Deadwood

We finished watching the first season of HBO's Deadwood. It is really well done, and quite a pleasure to watch. The casting and writing is quite a pleasure; the characters are all quite interesting and multidimensional.

Inside China

We saw an interesting show on TV called Inside China. The episode we saw talked about a photographer visiting Beijing, and about the 798 building, which is an artists' colony in Beijing.

John Singer Sargent

We literally ran across a show of Sargent's works in Venice at Adelson Galleries called Sargent's Venice. (As we were leaving the Met, we just happened to walk by this gallery.) They had some wonderful watercolors and oils (I was more impressed by the watercolors), most of which came from private collections.

Met talk: Italian Renaissance and the Kremlin

William Brumfield gave a talk at the Met about the influence of Italian Renaissance architects on the construction of the Kremlin. It was quite entertaining, and we learned about the history of Moscow.

The West invades China

Materialism invades China! Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that capitalism has won...

 

What could be less Western than Ikea?

 

And look at this: the shopping channel in China, which is selling toy pigs (2007 is the Year of the Pig)!

Veronica

I finished Veronica, by Mary Gaitskill, on the plane back from China. It is a searing novel, although it ends happily. Its intensity reminded me of The Things They Carried (which is another novel that I read while traveling). I don't know how Ms. Gaitskill accomplished it, but the novel switches back and forth between times seamlessly: there are only a few places where a paragraph's point in time is ambiguous.

Terra cotta soldiers

While in Xi'an, we visited the famous terra-cotta soldiers that were created for the Qin emperor's tomb. Amazing! It was a little disappointing when we learned that all of the items had been reassembled and refired; for some reason I thought that they had been carefully dug out of the ground.

Lucky numbers

Can you tell that this elevator panel is in China? The 13th floor is missing, as is traditional in Western buildings. Note that 4, 14, and 24 are also missing. The number 4 is unlucky because it sounds like the Chinese character for "dead".

Beijing/Los Angeles

After spending some time in Beijing, I decided that LA and BJ should be sister cities. They share many important characteristics of modern cities: traffic, sprawl, and smog. The first two are linked, of course, and contribute significantly to the third.
One noticeable change in China since the first time I went (in 2001) is that the number of cars has increased dramatically. In 2001, bicycles still outnumbered cars in Beijing. In 2007, cars vastly outnumber bicycles.

How different is China?

This shot was taken out of a window in the same building as the Red Gate Gallery. Can you tell that it is in China? I can't.

Red Gate Gallery

I visited a modern art gallery called the Red Gate Gallery. It is next to the Ming City Wall Site Park, inside the building shown in the picture. My favorite painting in the gallery was the one below, Silk Road by Zheng Xuewu.

Chairman Mao

Inside the same building as the Red Gate Gallery were some interesting historical items that depict various periods in Beijing's history. This calligraphy is a wonderful piece of work, and demonstrates the power of Chairman Mao's personality. Too bad I can't read Chinese!

Ming City Wall Site Park

This photo is of a pretty little city park that contains the last remnants of the Beijing city wall. Chairman Mao ordered the entire wall torn down, and this is the last remaining piece, unfortunately; otherwise, it would be a wonderful tourist attraction today! Note the Marriott's odd architecture in the background.

Turing

While on vacation in China, I read Turing, by Christos Papadimitriou. The author is a computer science professor at Berkeley (whose theory textbooks are widely used), and this book is really a novel for programmers. Overall, it was an interesting read: it does a good job of explaining the many levels of software and hardware that comprise a computer system. As a novel, I was not so convinced: it tried to hard to be learned, the love story was unconvincing, and the basic mystery of how the Turing AI was created was not discussed.

Vere Chocolate

I bought some chocolate from Vere for Valentine's Day (before leaving for China, of course). They manufacture some wonderful chocolates: not too sweet, like most standard chocolates!

Captain Alatriste

I finished reading Captain Alatriste, by Arturo Perez-Reverte, while on vacation. It was an enjoyable and fast read: very reminiscent of Dumas' novels about the Three Musketeers. I would have like to have read this book in the original Spanish (if I could read Spanish, that is).
Highly recommended light reading!

Animal Liberation

I finished Animal Liberation, by Peter Singer while on a plane to China. The book presents a compelling argument as to why we should not eat animals. Although it is not the primary reason I am eating more vegetarian, it certainly lends philosophical support. I have found it difficult to entirely give up meat, especially when we were on vacation in China. I suppose that the primary reason for this is that our society has evolved to use meat as a means of displaying wealth, since meat used to be relatively rare. As a result, large celebratory meals often have a fair amount of meat. Since we were in China for Chinese New Year, we had several such meals!

Emotional Intelligence

I've been reading parts of Daniel Goleman's book Emotional Intelligence.
Wikipedia has an interesting discussion about this topic. Overall, it talks about a lot of commonsense stuff, but maybe that's easy to see in hindsight. Some of the claims in the book about how society was deteriorating seem completely overblown: the book implies that a lack of emotional intelligence was responsible for many societal ills.

Company

We saw Company, which is a great musical. It should win lots of awards! Each member of the cast sings and plays at least one instrument, modulo the lead and one other character. The music and songs were good (some were memorable), but they weren't extraordinary. Some of the actors were amazing, though. The singer who played the lead role (Bobby), Raul Esparza, has a wonderful voice. The singer who played the oldest female role (Joanne), Barbara Walsh, was simply stunning.

Nutrition information

Here's a useful table that summarizes how much information various restaurant chains provide online about their meals. Very interesting: I wouldn't have thought, for example, that Chipotle would do such a poor job.

Pan's Labyrinth

We watched Pan's Labyrinth, which was a beautiful film. I still can't figure out whether it was more of a fairy tale or more of a war movie. Of course, we Americans can't relate to the Spanish Civil War in the same way that Spaniards would, so such speculation is probably fruitless.

Rome

We watched some episodes of Rome. Interesting TV and full of political intrigue. The actor who plays Julius Caesar did not demonstrate the charisma that I would expect from Caesar; otherwise, I really enjoyed the show.

Personality strengths

Now, Discover Your Strengths is an interesting book about personality types---more accurately, personality strengths. It makes an interesting claim that everyone should focus on building their careers around their strengths, not on fixing their weaknesses. They have an online questionnaire that evaluates the top 5 strengths out of their universe of 34. Mine were:

1. Learner


2. Deliberative


3. Responsibility


4. Restorative


5. Activator

I'm still mulling this over to see if this classification describes me well.

Climate

I watched An Inconvenient Truth, which was pretty good. But I thought the book was better, because I didn't have to listen to so many self-congratulatory platitudes. Interesting series of suggestions at the end, but I was annoyed that it encouraged the use of biofuels, which seem like an utter waste of resources.

The suggestion that Lake Chad has been destroyed because of global warming seems to be untrue, based on some of the reading that I have done.

Gore should have suggested that we eat less meat, buy fewer processed foods, and buy less stuff. The former consumes a great deal of energy (unless it is grass-fed), and I bet food processing does too. Finally, capitalism itself (more accurately, consumption for the sake of consumption) is responsible for a lot of the energy we consume, because all of the environmental damage is externalized. My conclusion is:

Consume less stuff. Consume less food. Consume less energy.

24

Well, another season of 24 has started. It literally started with a bang (a nuclear explosion). But it's degenerated into some really non-interesting stuff. Family squabbles for Jack (who barely appeared on-screen in yesterday's episode), political maneuverings in the bunkered White House, just not very good. Prison Break has been much more fun, if you want to watch complicated plots about the Presidency. Watching Jack Bauer torture his brother just isn't that fun.

Pesticides

My cousin Jack just pointed me at a post that he made about pesticides in food. Here's the link to the site, which rates which produce has more pesticides. Watch our for apples!

Another game

Yet another hilarious game, Oil God. It's made by Persuasive Games, the same company that made Bacteria Salad.

Recycling

Here's an interesting idea that probably works reasonably well in NYC: freecycling. It's like Craigslist, but giving used stuff away.

Amusing game

An article in the NY Times mentioned the game Bacteria Salad, which is hilarious (if not a very interesting game).

Michael Pollan article

Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, has an article
in this week's NY Times magazine. Well worth reading, even though its recommendations overlap with almost all of the other reading I've been doing about food. I love the opening sentences:


Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Silly food labels

We had some oatmeal this morning, and the box says "Helps reduce cholesterol". What a ridiculous claim: if you eat foods without cholesterol, then your cholesterol levels will go down. So every non-meat product could have that exact same label.

Vitamins

One of the organizations I learned about in What To Eat is Consumer Lab. They evaluate vitamin supplements; this is a valuable service, since no government agency regulates supplement makers. Most of the large corporations that manufacture supplements seem to be OK, but some of the smaller ones may produce supplements without all of the vitamins listed on the label. Even worse, some of the supplements may be contaminated with elements such as lead.

What To Eat

I finally got through What To Eat, an encyclopedic book about food: its marketing, health effects, and some about its environmental effects. Interestingly, the author also lives in NYC, so she talks about various groceries, delis, and restaurants here. More later...

Serenity

We've been watching all of the episodes of Firefly, and finally got around to the movie Serenity. The movie was kind of predictable in certain ways, but was fun to watch. I enjoyed the episodes a bit more than the feature film, because the episodes focused more on the characters. But it was interesting to see the film deal with some of the politics in the 'verse of Serenity.

The Met

From Around NY

Busy museum day. We went to the Met and saw two exhibits:

• Louis Comfort Tiffany and Laurelton Hall
. Tiffany was a brilliant artist who worked in many different media, which I didn't know.

• 
  Glitter and Doom was an exhibit of German portraiture during the Weimar Republic. There were some really incisive portraits. My favorite was Max Beckmann's The Old Actress, which seemed extremely familiar.

Both of them were amazing!

Cooper-Hewitt

We saw the Design Life Now exhibit at Cooper-Hewitt. Cooper-Hewitt is in a lovely building, and the exhibit had all sorts of interesting stuff. There were some novel designs for prescription drug bottles from Target (which is a sponsor of the Design Museum) that were really done well. There was even an exhibit on Google!

More garbage

Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage is also a documentary; you can see it on Google Video.

Garbage

Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage by Heather Rogers is a fascinating book about how the costs of capitalism have been externalized as waste.

She gave an interesting interview that is worth reading.

al-Qaeda

The Looming Tower is a fascinating book that describes the rise of militant Islam and al-Qaeda. It is frightening how the FBI and CIA bureaucracies rendered each other useless in the runup to 9/11. It is also amazing how well-educated the members of al-Qaeda are: alienation is a powerful force.

Lawrence Wright wrote a New Yorker article this is worth a read.

MOMA

We took a quick trip to MOMA, and saw a few exhibits: the retrospective on Brice Marden's work, Manet and the Execution of Maximilian, and OMA in Beijing. I must be too practical or just uneducated, but Marden's work was just not that interesting. Some of his later work is beautiful, but his earlier work did not move me. Manet's paintings were fascinating, but I also didn't find the subject matter that compelling. The OMA exhibit (which is about the construction of the China Central Television complex) was really interesting, though. I guess that I am just more interested in how art interacts the real world, rather than just abstraction for the sake of abstraction.

Seafood

I just found about the Seafood Choices Alliance, which publishes the Fish List: a list of fishes that we should or should not eat, based on environmental and health concerns.

Match Point

We watched Match Point, Woody Allen's latest film. I thought Crimes and Misdemeanors was a far more interesting film. This film seemed a lot shallower, and not as interesting. It was not a boring or bad film, just not great.

My first reaction after seeing this film: is Woody Allen working on some guilt because he killed someone? Why has he made two films about murder and guilt?

The Voysey Inheritance

We saw the Atlantic Theater Company's production of The Voysey Inheritance. The play has been adapted by David Mamet; it would be interesting to know what he changed in the play. The production was really enjoyable, in an intimate theater with a luscious set. It was definitely worth seeing!

Xi'an

We are thinking of visiting Xi'an (formerly Chang'an) in China. During the Tang Dynasty (8th century AD), Chang'an had a population of 2 million people!

Pinkberry

We walked by Pinkberry, a fancy dessert place in Koreatown. It looked very sleek and modern: as far as we could tell, it was a fancy frozen-yogurt place.

Electronics recycling

The
Lower East Side Ecology Center and Con Edison sponsor a recycling event every year in Union Square. Time to finally get rid of that old computer!

Money mistakes

I skimmed through Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes & How To Correct Them, by Gary Belsky and Thomas Gilovich. It's an interesting book about behavioral economics, and how some common irrationalities that we all exhibit can affect our behavior with money. Some of the issues:

• We tend to keep separate mental accounts for our money; don't let these mental accounts affect your spending patterns.


• Losses affect us more than gains hurt us, so we get more reckless in trying to avoid losses.


• Sunk costs do not matter.


• We are affected by how issues are framed: reframe issues so that you see them both as gains and losses.


• Don't ignore small numbers, such as mutual-fund fees.


• We tend to anchor on irrelevant information, and we treat events that are likely to be the result of change as non-random; don't pay attention to such irrelevant information.


• Don't be overconfident about your abilities if you have little training.


• Avoid "confirmation bias", which is our tendency to treat information as though it confirms our decisions.


• Don't follow the herd.


• Avoid too much information. Information can cause us to act emotionally.

Little Miss Sunshine

Little Miss Sunshine was a disturbing movie that had some outrageous laughs in it: I almost died at the very end (which I will not give away). It is definitely worth watching!

Happy New Year

And NY gets a new governor, Eliot Spitzer. His inaugural address is nice; let's hope he can achieve some of his goals!

My Chemical Romance

I heard My Chemical Romance sing their hit single Welcome to the Black Parade on Saturday Night Live a few months ago. I found myself intrigued by the song, and was reminded of it tonight when I heard it several times used in a commercial for something on TV (I can't remember for what, amusingly enough). I haven't actually listened to any "modern" rock for a long time (the last time was when my cousin and then roommate Jack was playing Nirvana in our apartment), but I may go out and buy this album.

Rules of the Game

We watched Rules of the Game, which is a translation of a play by Luigi Pirandelli, a Nobel prize-winner in Literature. Interesting play, and very well written.

Ardneh's Sword

I quickly skimmed through Ardneh's Sword, by Fred Saberhagen. This book is a 17-year-later sequel to
Empire of the East. I loved the latter when I read it as a teenager, but Ardneh's Sword was really bad. As far as I could tell, the only reason for its existence is to tie the Empire of the East universe to the universe of the Twelve Swords. I'm glad I took this book out of the library, and didn't actually buy it.

Wealth

Wealth is by Stuart E. Lucas (a descendant of the founder of the Carnation company). I've been reading this on and off for the last month; it is an interesting book. The author's family has a lot of money, and he talks about the challenges of managing it. The interesting parts for those of us with less money:

• He advocates index investing for almost all investors.


• He suggests viewing one's career as a form of investment that can be used to balance passive investing.


• He views the government as a "silent partner" in one's investing. The government actually takes more of the burden when one realizes losses, and only shares in gains. This is an interesting view of capital-gains taxes.

He talks about some of the interesting challenges of raising children (especially in the context of a great deal of money). Some of the more generally applicable pieces of wisdom: "fair does not mean equal", and good parents try to help their children realize their own personalities.

The Devil Wears Prada

The Devil Wears Prada was pretty funny. Meryl Streep was brilliant! The movie was fairly predictable, of course.

Firefly

We watched some episodes of Firefly this week. It's a fun series; too bad Fox didn't have the vision to keep running it.

Fragile Things

Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things was a pretty good read. There were some stories I did not particularly like, but there were also some wonderful ones. "A Study in Emerald" was a pleasure to read (Sherlock Holmes meets Chthulhu), and it deserved the Locus Award that it received. "October in the Chair" also deserved its award; for some reason it reminded me of Zelazny, although not in any obvious way.

Reds

We watched Warren Beatty's Reds, which I had never seen before. Great movie! And it certainly has relevance today, after our government has dragged us into a war that many people thought was unnecessary.

Influence

Influence
by Robert Cialdini is an interesting book. It talks about how we are all subject to basic human psychological pressures. The wikipedia entry on Cialdini summarizes the result pretty well: here is my one-liner summary:

• Reciprocation. Tactics used: unequal exchanges (free samples), rejection then retreat (propose an extreme position then retreat).


• Commitment and consistency. Tactics used: induce a small commitment to a particular image (ask for help with some trivial task).


• Social proof. Tactics used: create illusory consensus ("man-on-the-street" endosrements).


• Liking. Tactics used: good-looking salespeople, compliments, mirroring, sell through friends (Amway).


• Authority. Tactics used: false titles (ads from authority figures without expertise).


• Scarcity. Tactics used: time pressure, create false competition.

Vegetarian food in Flushing, NY

We ate at a vegetarian restaurant called Happy Buddha. The food was reasonably good: I wouldn't call it great, but I was happy enough to eat it.

Mystery Men

Mystery Men was, predictably, one of the worst movies I have ever seen. I just had to watch it, even though I knew it would be bad. It's weird how we humans can be silly.

I used to think Ben Stiller was funny. Now I'm not so sure. Zoolander was another bad movie that I forced myself (and my wife) to watch a few years ago, and it wasn't particularly good.

Fear: we really need to fear the media and politicians

I've been slowly reading The Culture of Fear, by Barry Glassner, over the last month. It's a somewhat interesting book, but not interesting enough to read that carefully. Distilled into my philosophy: do not trust anyone who has a vested interest in getting you to listen to them. This applies to the media and to politicians. The media want you to watch their news shows/read their newspapers, and the only way to do that is to create a sense of urgency. Politicians want to get elected or re-elected, and the only way to do that is to convince people that there is a problem that they can fix: even if the problem is not a real problem.

Water and food

Some of the startling statistics about water in When the Rivers Run Dry, written by Fred Pearce:

• 25 gallons to produce a portion of rice


• 40 gallons for the bread in a sandwich


• 130 gallons for a two-egg omelet or mixed salad


• 265 gallons for a glass of milk


• 400 gallons for ice cream


• 530 gallons for a pork chop


• 800 gallons for a hamburger


• 320 gallons for a small steak


• 50 cups for a teaspoon of sugar


• 37 gallons for a cup of coffee


• 66 gallons for a glass of wine/beer


• 530 gallons for a brandy


• 1200 gallons (assuming 50 gallons/bathtub) to grow 9 ounces of cotton

Pearce talks about the relative water consumption of various human activities:

• drinking: 265 gallons (1 ton)/year


• home use: 50-100 tons/year


• food and clothing: 1500-2000 tons/year

That makes clear that the bottleneck is clearly food and clothing, and that becoming vegetarian might actually be the best way to conserve water.

While I was walking home last night, I came to the minor realization that if we treat the human-earth relationship as a complex system, then some resource will always be the bottleneck. Pearce's book implies that it as water; the more obvious candidate (from a public perspective) has been energy (oil).

Water conservation

I've been reading When the Rivers Run Dry. An utterly frightening book about how humanity has done a bang-up job of ruining many ecosystems, and how we are utterly dependent on water in ways that most of us do not comprehend.

An interview with Fred Pearce, the author, sums up most of the issues discussed in the book.

Safran

Safran
is a good restaurant in Chelsea. We had sole, a bouillabaise, and sauteed chive flowers. They had a good selection of vegetarian entrees, and the dessert we had (sorbet with a white chocolate covering) was quite tasty. Thumbs up!

Sichuan food

Grand Sichuan is our favorite Chinese restaurant in Manhattan. Very tasty stuff!

Jonathan Coulton

Code Monkey was on NPR this morning, as part of an interview with Jonathan Coulton. He recorded a song per week. Pretty amusing!

William Bernstein

The Intelligent Asset Allocator is another worthwhile book to read about how to allocate financial assets. As with all sensible books, it recommends:

• Diversification


• Regular rebalancing to a fixed allocation

Thesis writing

Apparently you can buy anything these days, even a thesis! What has the world come to....

Deadwood

Deadwood is an HBO series that we are watching on DVD. We saw the first episode a few nights ago, and it was quite good!

Mindset

Mindset, by Carol Dweck, is a fascinating book about how one perception's of human abilities strongly affects one's ability to perform. It agrees with some of the research that I've heard about with respect to minority students, where students who are reminded of the stereotypes of their race perform more like the stereotypes. It's kind of scary how easily we humans can be manipulated, even unconsciously by ourselves!

Hoop Dreams

Hoop Dreams is a fantastic documentary from the early 1990's about two boys growing up in Chicago who were very good basketball players, and their experiences in high school. It is very moving, and Roger Ebert even called it the best film of the 1990's.

Here is a Washington Post article that talks about the two protagonists in 2004.