Movies

L and I have been going on what, for us, is quite the movie marathon. It started with Hero, which I thought would be just escapist fun for me. But L, who has generally put the kibosh on Asian martial arts movies, actually loved it, too. Then, last weekend: we rented My Neighbor Totoro and Tampopo, the latter a movie we both fondly remembered but hadn't seen in a long time. In addition, we actually went to two movies in theaters. We finally saw Syriana and, again to my surprise, L liked it a lot. (I want to see it again on video.) Then, at a friend's invitation, we went to see Street Fight at the Roxie. Again L liked it. And we got to go to the Mission, an area we make it out to all too infrequently considering how much we like it and how accessible it is.

Iraq as VietNam

Okay, so this is lazy blogging. I'm simply linking to an article by Lt. Gen. William E. Odom titled Iraq Through the Prism of VietNam, with no extra commentary from me. I'm doing this just because I think it's the kind of analysis and perspective which should be read more widely. However, I can't think of anyone in particular to whom I could usefully forward the link: anyone who'd care would probably already believe stuff like this and anyone who wouldn't care, well, probably still wouldn't. Posting it just allows me to vent a little bit of the frustration I felt pre-April, 2003, when I was reading pieces making similar points and was unable to change anyone's mind. Thanks. (Link to this article via Josh Marshall's blog, although unfortunately I have to count Josh as one of those who didn't see such things at the time.)

(untitled)

Two Friends

A certain person came to the Friend's door
and knocked.

"Who's there?"

"It's me."

The Friend answered, "Go away. There's no place
for raw meat at this table."

The individual went wandering for a year.
Nothing but the fire of separation
can change hypocrisy and ego. The person returned
completely cooked,
walked up and down in front of the Friend's house,
gently knocked.

"Who is it?"

"You."

"Please come in, my self,
there's no place in this house for two."

-Rumi, Barks trans. (excerpt)

Not Cynical, Exactly

In the personals ad that L answered, I asked something about how my meditation practice might inform an understanding of international relations. Could an understanding of human nature gleaned from meditation be applied to an area in which nations generally behave in rather naked self-interest? I was, at the time, slightly hopeful that I might gain some insight which could be applied for the betterment of the world. However, instead of my being able to use my meditation practice, my practice has "converted" me.

First, having looked more at the grasping nature of the "small self" with which we do most everything, I no longer think there's such a large dichotomy between interpersonal relationships and international ones. Pretty much, we do what we like and avoid what we don't like, and we get as much of what we like as we can without provoking negative consequences we don't like. (BTW, I thought the movie Kids made this kind of statement very well.) A lot of those negative consequences are those put in place by our society, enforced by general agreement and, at last resort, by violence. Nations, although more complex, don't seem to be fundamentally different. They're all angling for what gets them advantage relative to other nations and will do anything possible as long as the negative consequences aren't too bad. The "societal punishments" around for nations aren't as effective as those around for you and me, and thus nations often behave much worse than you or I do.

Second and related, I used to think of those with power as corrupted by that power, and that these people should by fought by those not in power. Now, however, I'm less sure that the powerless are so virtuous. For example, President Carter's calls for energy efficiency didn't make him very popular. If there were an informed, popular vote about, say, increasing vehicle fuel efficiency standards, would Americans really vote to give up their SUV's? Even with the effects of global warming becoming more clear, would they have done so without the high gas prices of late? I'm a little doubtful. It's not that I no longer think that those in power need to be challenged, but I'm more of the opinion that humans in general have a hard time doing what they (might) know they should. I'm still hopeful, though, that decisions can be optimized under these limitations through good information and inclusive discussions, if those can be brought about. (I'm still supporting Clean Money.)

I write this all with an additional sense of frustration because I'm a bit stuck in my meditation practice. I don't really understand what's going on, but what it appears to be is this. I could continue to expand my awareness beyond my "small self", but this larger awareness appears very threatening. It feels like I'd have to give up all the things I dearly love, such as wine. (I think this is where the motif of wrathful gods originates.) This fear has interrupted my practices a few times now, no matter from how many angles I rationally argue to myself what I need to do.

Black Trumpets!

Yesterday L and I went mushroom hunting in the woods which were so plentiful last December. In contrast to that visit, there were hardly any mushrooms at all, even after all the rain last week. Although L found some chanterelles, the main excitement for me was that I finally found Black Trumpets! They were in very pretty (looked more like this), in pristine condition, and smelled earthy and pungent. These are supposedly hard to find because they blend in so well with their surroundings. Indeed, although these were pretty prominently visible, growing out of the edge of the path, they blended in perfectly with the damp madrone leaves scattered around them. I looked around in the surrounding woods, but was unable to find more. Were they there, and I just couldn't see them?

We at them in scrambled eggs this morning for breakfast, in which they were very tasty.

What happened?

The lead-up to the April, 2003, U.S. invasion of Iraq was a pretty frustrating time for me. It seemed obvious to me from the fall of 2002 that the Bush administration was consistently lying about everything, and was just itching to get at it regardless of whatever its stated reasons were. It boggled my mind that otherwise reasonable people were willing to give Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell, etc., any credence at all. Why? Because very quickly a pattern emerged of a Bush admin official making a claim, and that claim being refuted or at least significantly "clarified" a day or two later by an independent source, such as Hans Blix, Mohammad El Baradei (International Atomic Energy Agency), former National Security Advisor under (G. H. W. Bush) Brent Scowcroft, centrifuge experts at Oak Ridge National Labs, the CIA itself, the head of Czech intelligence, etc. The easiest explanation for all these contradictions was that there was no evidence that Iraq was a threat to anyone, and that the Bush admin wanted to invade for reasons it was not telling the public. This is not that hard to put together, if you see all these news stories, and this is where sources become important. I was reading lefty sites which culled relevant stories from the worldwide English-speaking press, such as Truth Out and Common Dreams. In contrast, most people were reading headline news, which was dominated by eager support of adminstration talking points. For a discussion of how critical pieces were buried in the back pages by major papers, see the story Now They Tell Us in the New York Review of Books (link to non-NYRB site because NYRB now requires payment). At least this is the explanation I have for most people going along with the whole thing. More, related, thoughts later.

My Favorite (Bay Area) Coffee Roaster

I stopped by Cole Coffee today and picked up a half pound of their featured "Red Sea Blend" of Yemeni Mocha and Ethiopian Harrar for $5.25. Haven't tried it yet, but it smells great. The cup of Timor Organic I got at the same time was very tasty. Sorry I'm not as developed at describing coffee flavors as I am at wine flavors.

Update: The web site linked to above is printed on the coffee bag, but doesn't seem to work. It's the place on College just off Claremont, across from Safeway, which used to be called Royal Coffee. When I made the Red Sea blend this morning in the drip coffee maker, it was okay, but a little disappointing. While it had the hard earthiness of coffees from East Africa, it lacked the mid-palate body and richness that I like. Then I made a cup as described in the comments here, and it was much better, rich and full, with greater complexity.

Noam Chomsky on the current situation

Chomsky: 'There Is No War on Terror'

Excerpts:

Same with global warming [as with terrorism]. They're not stupid. They know that they're increasing the threat of a serious catastrophe. But that's a generation or two away. Who cares? There's basically two principles that define the Bush administration policies: stuff the pockets of your rich friends with dollars, and increase your control over the world. Almost everything follows from that. If you happen to blow up the world, well, you know, it's somebody else's business. Stuff happens, as Rumsfeld said.

What gives me hope actually is public opinion. Public opinion in the United States is very well studied, we know a lot about it. It's rarely reported, but we know about it. And it turns out that, you know, I'm pretty much in the mainstream of public opinion on most issues. ... I think the United States ought to be an organizer's paradise.

TMI

Several months ago, there were a few days in a row in which I saw someone with a t-shirt that said something like "I see your lips moving, but all I hear is BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH", or "It's cute how you think I'm listening". Perhaps my running into this series of shirts was just a fluke, but I found this barrage of apparent indifference to other people rather disconcerting. How, I felt, could we possibly function as a society, especially a society that will increasingly need more connections with the rest of the world, not fewer, if we went around shutting out all attempts at communication? It made me want to get a counter-shirt that read, simply, "listen", or, if one were more sarcastically inclined, "to listen, perchance to hear".

Of course, this is not to say that I give the same level of attention to all forms of demands on my attention, nor possibly could I. (My wife or Fox News? Hmmm....) It is quite true that in most of the U.S., at least anywhere that people watch TV, there are constant demands on our attentions: attempts to sell us things, requests to contribute time or money to a legion of good causes, queries about the completion of work projects, desires to go to lots of fun entertainment possibilities, and the never-completed household tasks... just reading all that is tiring. Of course people resent it sometimes. And the absorption with one's self to the exclusion of others has a long tradition in the American character.

But, nonetheless, surely we can accept what we want to listen to and politely refuse the rest. I hope it's not just I who would privilege interactions with the people directly in front of me, the people who will be reading my t-shirt. Part of the reason I take offense at people being proudly inconsiderate is my own self-effacing personality. I'd usually rather be mildly inconvenienced myself than know that I was annoying someone else. But I think the deeper reason it bothers me is the irony that people who ignore others probably aren't paying attention to themselves, either. If we never pay attention, life becomes an endless series of preferences and distractions before we die, with no way to become aware of what we all have in common.

What to make of it all?

I mentioned in perhaps the first post here that my graduate advisor and I had finally sent off a paper based on my thesis work. The reviews came back a week or so after I returned from Eritrea, but at that time, planning the wedding was foremost on my mind. Afterwards, I got in touch with him again and we started the revisions. To be fair, he did nearly all the work. In the last couple weeks, about the same time frame that I was in the midst of early conversations with the trader I'll be working with, he resubmitted the revised paper. In one of the final emails about the paper, he wrote:

I like it. In fact, the odd thing is, now that I really think I understand it, I believe it to be a really brilliant piece of work. Far more original and compelling than that done by my other students (don't tell them that). [I don't think any of them read this blog, or would really care if they did.] It's unfortunate that this work is being delivered to the planetary audience; it will be a case of pearls before swine, and they won't understand it. You should really stay in science.

What came immediately to my mind is the truism that the lover who leaves you and breaks your heart and never calls finally decides to get back in touch right when you're starting to date someone you might truly care about again, e.g., Swingers. Although the idea of staying in science is nice in some ways, I didn't really see how it could work. My original and compelling thesis used fairly basic numerical methods and would not be obviously interesting to any particular community of scientists. Besides, I'd probably have to take another post-doc, maybe two, probably outside the Bay Area.

Although the dream of being an academic scientist is almost certainly dead, it nonetheless appears that this trading gig will get me most of what I think I would have wanted: learning about a diverse field with branches into lots of others, freedom to think creatively about technical subjects, and interaction with a collaborator. It also has a stronger financial incentive than being a scientist, something which, particularly after being unemployed for a year, doesn't hurt (as long as we're successful :) ). To close, this quote from the insightful and entertaining Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb:

Particularly thoughtful are those who had to abandon scientific studies because of their inability to keep focused on a narrowly defined problem. Without excessive intellectual curiousity, it is almost impossible to complete a Ph.D. thesis these days; but without a desire to narrowly specialize, it is impossible to make a scientific career.

Yet another field change

After returning from Eritrea (free trip there for the work done, but no pay otherwise), I made another promising connection in the renewable energy / energy efficiency business. However, that led to neither work nor pay. It seemed that there was little need of someone with my sorts of skills and interests in the field. There are companies running weather simulations for wind prospecting and forecasting, but there are only a few in the country, and none in the bay area. Instead, it seemed more likely that I could find interesting employment in San Francisco's financial services sector, something that physicists have been known to do since the 80's or so. Basically, I'm a modeler, and I thought that I may as well see if I can earn a living and keep myself entertained modeling dynamics of markets instead of atmospheres. It would be nice to be doing something which felt useful, but one thing at a time, I guess.

When I mentioned this shift to a friend, she mentioned that she had recently met someone already in the energy business who was having a hard time getting into renewable energy. Another friend, a consultant in wind energy, opined that most of the challenges in renewable energy involved figuring out new ways to sell it, not how to analyze it better. So there I had it.

In response to posting my resume on Craig's List, I'm involved with a guy who's been successfully trading on his own for six to seven years who's putting together the ability to manage client money. He wants me to help him develop trading models to use for his clients, which sounds like fun to me. I've started reading Intro to Econophysics and have ordered Dynamics of Markets. Yum!

So let me join the chorus of folks thanking Craig's List: apartment, wife, job! Next: bicycle.

Holidays and afterwards

There hasn't been that much to this holiday season. The highlight for me was probably a mushroom hunt up in Marin a couple days before Christmas. It had been rainy and warm, just how fungae like it, for several days, so it seemed very promising. We drove up to some woods in Marin, and I have never seen so many mushrooms in my life. The forest floor was littered with mushrooms, both in quantity and in variety, many things I'd never seen before outside a mushroom guide: cup fungae, jellies, conks, corals, and the russulas! if they had decided to attack, we'd have been dead in minutes. Also, the forest was magical with the fog drifting through the tall trees, little streams cutting across the paths, meeting other people only very occasionally. For all that, there wasn't much in the way of prized edible species. We found some young chanterelles which were delicious in a pasta meal for two, but the main edible turned out to be shrimp russulas (R. xerampelina). They were in dense clusters of large mushrooms all over, and we were limited only by what we could carry. Also, I had never positively identified shrimp russulas before, much less eaten any, so I was rather wary about collecting large amounts, especially since I believe that some similar-looking russulas can be vomit-inducing. However, that night, we cooked up a few with the single (although very pretty) coccora (Amanita lanei) we found, and they were both delicious. Moreover, neither of us had any digestive issues with them, so the next day we put a whole bunch of the most "typical"-looking shrimp mushrooms in a rice pilaf to take to the family Christmas dinner on Christmas eve.

While on Thanksgiving, everyone came over to our place, for Christmas, everyone went over to the parents' house. In contrast to a relaxed and gluttonous Thanksgiving, Christmas dinner seemed to me rather cramped and tense. But as far as family duties go, it was hardly onerous. There were no mushroom poisonings that night, either.

Now, the holidays are finally past, and the rain is gone for the moment. Both seemed kind of stifling this year, mushrooms or no, and I'm glad they're over.

Mushroom season! (finally)

Okay, so there were a few Agaricus bernardii that I managed to find on the lawn of an office building in Livermore, but, for the most part, there were no mushrooms coming up because, after all, there had been no rain. But this week changed all that. Decent rains on Monday and some on Tuesday, and then the lashing of the storm on Wednesday and Thursday promises to get the mushroom season really going.

On Friday, (ahem) my wife (still getting used to that phrase) and I went hunting at two locations in the East Bay hills. At the first, we found a lot of white russulas, which are technically edible, but supposedly insipid: "better kicked than picked, better punted than hunted". There were also the scattered death caps and uninteresting Suillis (also edible but insipid), but the only thing we came away with were a small amount of decent oyster mushrooms.

At the second location, we found a few chanterelles, which seem to have come up after the rains earlier in the week, as they were surprisingly non-waterlogged. In fact, they were nearly brittle, splitting apart easily - as opposed to the somewhat rubbery texture I find more often. When we cooked them up last night, they were probably the most flavorful I've ever collected. We quite lazily didn't make anything nice with them, but had them over some short-grain brown rice with pan-roasted pine nuts. However, that combination was actually great. The mild nuttiness of the brown rice nicely complimented the honeyed earthy nuttiness of the chanterelles, and the richness of the pine nuts blended and smoothed out the slight edge to the mushrooms.

The oyster mushrooms we ate for breakfast yesterday. Fresh wild oyster mushrooms are so much better than the farmed ones, with so much flavor that they resemble seafood. I cooked them with eggs into which I had mixed some cooking rice wine, a little soy sauce, and a dribble of sesame oil. This worked quite well.

We're Programmed Wrong

When someone's being selfishly demanding, our instinctive reaction is to try to deny them what they want, when actually that selfish behavior indicates that they need our generosity. Our usual reaction to someone being angry is to run away or to return anger, "fighting fire with fire". Instead, we should help them try to figure out what to do about the situation that's making them angry, even if they're being angry at us. If they're so angry that they can't start to deal with the situation, we should just patiently let them be angry.

long vs. short, II: meat and murder

For instance, many people like to eat meat, but don't want to know about the lives of the animals involved and the processing entailed before their bodies wind up on dinner plates. Would more people be vegetarian if they had to be directly involved in farming and slaughtering?

Similarly, if people everywhere felt the same thing as relatives of people killed in Iraq or the US Gulf coast, would we still be debating when or if to leave Iraq, or whether to plan for the greatest benefit to those displaced (instead of for the benefit of the companies which received no-bid contracts)?

long vs. short lengthscale interactions

Something that's puzzled me, and about which I've probably commented earlier, is, somewhat flippantly, why knowing something and experiencing something aren't the same. For example, if your child were killed in a bombing, you'd likely engage in activities that helped to numb your pain: withdrawal, crying, drinking, travel, political activism, whatever. But just our knowing that this happens to all too many people these days doesn't affect the rest of us that much. We go on living our lives more or less as usual because, after all, it hasn't "happened to us", a way of thinking which strikes me as somewhat tautological. It didn't "happen to us" because we insist that it didn't. But how can these things not happen "to us", since we exist and they happen?

Job?

Okay, now that I'm married, the next items on the agenda are finishing up a bunch of unpaid work and getting a job. If the demand for renewable energy is growing so much, and if markets do so well at allocating resources, why aren't people banging on my door to hire me? Perhaps because I have yet to build the series of bright flashing neon signs which point them to it.

Married

I don't think there are very many people who read this blog who don't know, but I got married last Sunday. It was a bit of effort getting it together, but altogether it went very well. The weather even cooperated, with the clouds clearing so rays of sun slanted through the redwood grove. Family left yesterday and this morning, and there are a few more tasks to finish up, but it's pretty much done. For those who came, and especially those who helped out in some way, thank you! We had a wonderful time.

A common question was whether or not we were going away somewhere. For those who didn't get to ask us, the answer is "no". After going to Eritrea and Burning Man (which was great this year), we're staying put for a while. Besides, where better to have some relaxing time than scenic North Beach, San Francisco? And we want to get together with all those friends with whom we got to talk only so briefly on Sunday. :)

Laundry List

When I went down to put the laundry in the dryer, there was a puddle of water on the floor about a half inch deep at most. There was still some water at the bottom of the washing machine chamber, but it cleared quickly and easily when I started the cycle on the final spin. The washing machine drains into a sink with a lint trap in the drain. One side of the sink and the sink rim above it had bits of red and blue lint stuck to them. The same bits of red and blue lint were in the lint trap of the dryer, which contained a couple bath mats and assorted hand towels.

This all seems to suggest that the bath mats and towels produced lint which clogged either the washing machine, the sink, or, somehow, both. The water in the machine appears to indicate a clog prior to the exit pipe, but that this water later cleared easily seems to negate this hypothesis. The lint on the rim of the drainage sink appears to offer the alternative event that the sink clogged and overflowed.

I suppose further experiments could point the way beyond this impasse, but laziness will likely prevail.

Beet Salad

Last night I made a beet salad with which I'm so pleased that I want to share. :) The beets were boiled, peeled and chopped, with balsamic vinegar poured over them. In some olive oil, I blended a couple cloves of pressed garlic, chipotle chili powder, and a dash of Chinese 5-spice. This mixture was then stirred into the beets. Salt to taste. The "chili powder" was made from whole dried chipotle pods ground up in a coffee grinder. Be careful with the 5-spice. It's wonderful with just a dash, but becomes repulsive (to me) when it's a distinctly strong flavor. The beets went well with buttered brown rice, braised spinach with sesame, and a 2002 Turley Juvenile Zinfandel.

I'm particularly happy about this because these are the sort of flavors I've been trying to blend with beets for years, but this is the first combination that has really worked out.