Psychedelic Frogfish!

This is awesome, and the timing couldn't be better. News today of the discovery of a new kind of frogfish, called the psychedelic frogfish (good picture here):

A brightly-coloured fish which bounces along the seabed has been hailed as a new species by scientists - who have dubbed it "psychedelica".

Best of all is where they found it:

...the fish was spotted by scuba divers off the island of Ambon in eastern Indonesia.

As it turns out, that's exactly where we're headed next week. Our dive cruise through Raja Ampat starts at Ambon. I guess I shall have to demand that they show us this new fish!

But really, as the AP article points out (quoting Mark Erdman from Conservation International):

"It also speaks to the tremendous diversity in this region and to fact that there are still a lot of unknowns here — in Indonesia and in the Coral Triangle in general."

That is why we go to these places. Cool stuff!

This is Ominous

As Turkana at The Left Coaster points out, this is not just some senator, it's a member of the Intelligence Committee speaking. He knows things.



I have a feeling I may be glad I'm going to be out of the country while this stuff starts coming out. Brace yourselves.

Fluffy Toilet Paper

I noticed that one of my pet peeves made the news yesterday:

Americans like their toilet tissue soft: exotic confections that are silken, thick and hot-air-fluffed.
...
But fluffiness comes at a price: millions of trees harvested in North America and in Latin American countries, including some percentage of trees from rare old-growth forests in Canada

.I realize that soft, fluffy toilet paper is nice, but it is definitely a luxury, and one I decided long ago I couldn't justify. There are certainly purposes for which cutting down trees is justifiable. Wiping my tush is not one of them.

As usual, your mileage may vary, but the statistics cited in the article are quite dramatic.

By the way, I'm very pleased to see that Costco now stocks recycled T.P. in addition to the super-ultra-fluffed stuff. That's a step.

Reefer Madness or Real Science?

Just saw an article via Yahoo! News linking marijuana use with testicular cancer. Long-time readers know that I have an interest in cancer and cancer research, and testicular cancer in particular, as my dad had it (the first of several cancers in his life).

I have to admit that any correlation between pot smoking and testicular cancer seems a bit odd to my non-medically-trained self (though my degree in Environmental Science is not entirely inapplicable here). What's really interesting to me here is looking at how the study is reported from several different wire services and other sources.

Here's the lede from the HealthDay News story I initially saw:

Smoking marijuana over an extended period of time appears to greatly boost a young man's risk for developing a particularly aggressive form of testicular cancer, a new study reveals.

That sounds pretty definitive, doesn't it? They do include some cautions from study authors later on:

Though Daling emphasized that the findings are preliminary, she suggested that attention should be paid.

"We know very little about the long-term health consequences of marijuana smoking," she cautioned. "So, although this is the first time this association has been studied and found -- and the finding does need to be replicated before we are really sure what's going on -- this does give some evidence that testicular cancer may be one result from the frequent use of marijuana. And that is something that young people should keep in mind."

And this:

"But certainly, the idea that cannabis may cause cancer cells to proliferate is interesting," Schwartz acknowledged. "It could, however, also be that recreational drug use is simply a marker for affluence, since we know that testicular cancer is traditionally a disease that is more common among the affluent. Or it could be a marker for some other event that comes along with it, that triggers lesions that lead to tumors. So, at this point, it's just not clear to me how exactly the association between marijuana and testicular cancer would work."

Now, the AFP story is much shorter, and carries this lede:

Smoking marijuana may increase the risk of testicular cancer by as much as 70 percent, a study published on Monday suggested.

Although they do quote Dr. Schwartz, there is no indication of the preliminary nature of the findings, or any suggestion that there might be other factors involved:

"Our study is not the first to suggest that some aspect of a man's lifestyle or environment is a risk factor for testicular cancer, but it is the first that has looked at marijuana use," said Stephen Schwartz, an epidemiologist and one of the report's principle authors.

Now, here's the Reuters lede:

Marijuana use may increase the risk of developing testicular cancer, in particular a more aggressive form of the disease, according to a U.S. study published on Monday.

And their quote from Schwartz is much more circumspect:

"This is the first study to look at this question, and by itself is not definitive. And there's a lot more research that would have to be done in order to be more confident that marijuana use really is important in a man's risk of developing testicular cancer," Schwartz said in a telephone interview.

CNN has the most balanced lede, and actually interviews scientists other than the study authors:

Do men who frequently smoke pot have a higher risk of testicular cancer than those who do not? It's possible, according to a new study. However, the researchers say the link is currently a "hypothesis" that needs further testing.

UPI (touting their "100 years of journalistic excellence") has a much briefer and less detailed story that starts with this:

Being a marijuana smoker at the time of diagnosis was associated with a 70 percent increased risk of testicular cancer, U.S. researchers said.

Perhaps more disturbing is the article title on that one: "Pot increases testicular cancer risk".

A blog at Scientific American starts with this:

Fellas, you might want to think, well, twice about following Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps' lead. A study published today in the journal Cancer linked frequent marijuana use to the possibility of a slim increased risk of testicular cancer.

The rest of the post is less folksy and more balanced and analytical, including these disclaimers:

The prevailing belief has been that a man's chances of developing testicular cancer is largely determined in the womb, as cells in the fetus are developing and those known as germ cells (which later develop into sperm cells) fail to mature properly. This work shows the possibility that marijuana use–an environmental factor–might also play a role. But researchers acknowledge that it does not prove a definitive link–and that there were weaknesses to the study, including that it was based on a relatively small group of men and relied on self-reported drug use, which can be iffy.
...
"We're not exactly sure what role the marijuana is playing," Daling says, but it has come out as a possible factor that warrants further investigation.

Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, says that the study is a potentially promising clue, but that is by no means a firm conclusion.

Long story short: it makes a big difference where you get your health and science information. My take is that journalists are rarely trained in science at all, and tend to jump to whatever conclusion a study suggests, without necessarily reporting the scientific nuances and disclaimers (which I'm guessing they don't understand, or at least don't understand the importance of).

Probably most annoying to me is that none of the stories contained any links to the study itself or any way to get more information about it, other than either other new reports of the same study (which is how I started down this path today) or to past reports on related topics. A few mentioned that the study was published (some said "online") in the journal Cancer, but none indicated how to find that.

And for comparison purposes, here's the original press release from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. It, too, says the study is published online, but doesn't say how to get there.

Adding to the Blogroll

Those of you who are paying attention (and I know you all follow the details of this blog minutely) will see that I've added a new blog under my list of friends who blog. This one is by Jothy Rosenberg, who I worked with many years ago at Borland International.

His blog focuses on a lot of the issues of (dis)ability, a subject he knows a lot about. Jothy lost a leg to cancer as a teenager, and later part of a lung. But that hasn't stopped him from being an excellent biker, skier, swimmer, and more, on top of being a successful serial high-tech entrepreneur.

Although we didn't work together directly, our offices were near one another, so we got to know each other a bit. I was quite impressed when I played volleyball against him (although I still maintain that crutches gave him a big advantage in certain respects!), and he eventually played on my softball team, which is when I really got to know him.

His blog includes a number of really thought-provoking posts, and I look forward to reading it further.

Chard says, check it out!

Spanglish

A friend just restored to me a local tourist paper we picked up in Quito last year. I had wanted to share a particularly confusing bit of translation.

It's an advertisement for a seafood restaurant called Las Redes with Spanish and English text, side by side. After a paragraph that seems pretty accurately translated to say that I will get a pleasant surprise when I visit Ecuador, citing its fine geography, nature, culture and friendly people, it then says this:

Las Redes lo sorprenderá deliciosamente por sus especialidades.

The English translation reads exactly as follows:

You will also recieve a delicious surprice fom with it's grat foot

We were in our last moments in town when we read this, otherwise we might have had to go find out what "delicious surprices" awaited us, courtesy of "it's grat foot."

Googaritaville

Coolness abounds. Yesterday I got an e-mail about the upcoming Jimmy Buffett tour. He's playing this year at a more convenient venue for me, the Sleep Train Pavilion, formerly Chronicle Pavilion, formerly Concord Pavilion, which is, in fact, in Concord.

One of the things the e-mail emphasized was that one could now track Buffett's tour using Google Earth. Today I get a blog update from a friend at Google highlighting not only the Buffett tour, but the tools for making your own.

I've not been a big Google Earth user, but I might have to be now, just to make y'all extra jealous of my next vacation! Since it's a dive trip, I'll have to see whether I can combine this tour thing with their new underwater maps.... Geek nirvana meets Margaritaville!

You Don't Need a Weatherman

I know I can't deduce too much about global climate change from local observations, but hey, it's Groundhog Day, and our Japanese plum trees are all blossoming, thinking it's spring. I realize that we're entering the third year of a drought, which is no big thing in the Bay Area, but really.

The snow (PDF) up at Tahoe this weekend was getting pretty thin. They've had one small snowstorm in the last month, and even it was preceded by some rain. The snow pack is way below what it should be, and I'm not just talking from the perspective of someone who wants to ski.

Twenty-five years ago, when I was studying climate, my professors said that the first indications of global climate change would be greater variability and more extremes: more droughts and floods, extreme freezes and heat waves. And that's all out there, worldwide.

As the famous meteorologist Robert Zimmerman once noted, "The climes, they are a-changin'":

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Dumbest. Company. Ever.

I've been meaning to switch from DSL to cable internet for a while. My DSL service is too expensive for what it gives me, and my former local ISP has been sold to some larger entity, which is never a good thing. So the things that bound me to my existing service no longer apply.

And after ignoring AT&T's entreaties for some time about their services, I finally realized that they weren't, in fact, trying to sign me up for video over phone lines, but actually trying to get me to switch to their fiber-optic system, called U-Verse. Lame name, but whatever. The service and price points are pretty appealing, so I start to look into it.

I go online to sign up, it looks good. Until I get to the page where it says, "Sorry!" Because they see that my existing phone line is shared with my DSL service. Well, yeah. That's why I want to change. Duh. But they can't take the order online.

So I call them, figuring they can just override that. Oh boy, was I wrong. They run into exactly the same issue. They can't order the switchover because I have "shared service" on my existing phone line. It's not that there's any technical reason they can't switch me over, just that the order system won't let them enter the order, either.

So my option is to cancel my existing DSL service, and then order U-Verse as a replacement. Meaning I'll be without Internet access for a while. Yeah, great solution guys. Or I can just go with the cable company option, which costs more and gives me less service. And sends me to their competition.

Brain-dead. I can't be the only one in this situation, but they have no solution for me.

Ice? Who Needs Ice?

This cannot be good news:

Scientists on Wednesday unveiled evidence to suggest global warming is affecting all of Antarctica, home to the world's mightiest store of ice.
...

The research, published in the British journal Nature, takes a fresh look at one of the great unknowns -- and dreads -- in climate science.

Any significant thaw of Antarctica could drown many coastal cities and delta regions. Bigger than Australia, Antarctica holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by 57 metres (185 feet).

Maybe my house will be beachfront property before too long.

Skiing While Canine

Had a new experience this weekend while skiing at Alpine Meadows. My wife and I had just taken the Sherwood Express chair for the first time, and as we paused to put on our pole straps and such, I noticed a very nice looking dog standing off to the side. Then I noticed that it was wearing a little bib of some sort, which I recognized as being for the Ski Patrol.

Then I looked away for a few moments, and next thing I knew I felt something warm rubbing against my leg. The dog had come for a little love. It started making its way around the skiers, getting lots of attention, then walked over to my wife, who patted him on the head nicely, prompting him to sit right down on her ski.

We chuckled as several kids came over to pat the dog, then decided we really wanted to go ski. So my wife tried to convince the dog that she was going to leave (no reaction). So she started to slide her ski out from under him, at which point he just lay down across both skis. Much hilarity all around, as now more skiers come to admire the dog and his captive. (Forgive the picture quality; my little old mobile phone has a terrible camera.)

Eventually a couple of the Ski Patrol humans took pity and called the dog over, but it took a lot of prompting. Apparently Trevor (or Mr. T) does this sort of thing fairly often. He gives the impression of having been there a long time, and is very sweet and good-natured.

In any case, I can now tease my wife about having been stopped by the Ski Patrol. And a quick visit to Google reveals that there are ten ski patrol dogs at Alpine, and they have their own trading cards! Here's a video about the dogs and their training, and lots of fine portraits on Flickr.

Fantasy and Reality

Maybe it's because I never watch the show, but I just don't get the phenomenon that is the television series "24." I mean, I get that it's an exciting drama and all that. What I don't get is the way so many people (including pandering politicians who should know better) seem to think it's reflective of real life:

Bauer’s fictional defense of torture and his fictional claims of its effectiveness are having very real consequences. Over the last two days, right-wing commentators have cheered Bauer’s belligerent Senate testimony, wondering how Congress could be so ungrateful to a torture advocate like Bauer. Often their commentary has been directed at critics of the Bush administration’s torture policies and suggests that the “average person” would approve of Bauer’s conduct.

Maybe people need to drag themselves away from the teevee a little more and get out in the real world with real people. The fear culture that is gripping this country is not healthy. People grossly overestimate the danger to themselves and their families from criminals, terrorists, child molesters, kidnappers, and so on.

I'm not suggesting that these things aren't real or that there aren't precautions one should take against them. But when the perception of risk is out of proportion with the actual risk, we end up doing things like overprotecting children so they can't even go outside to play or giving up fundamental rights and freedoms in exchange for protection from overinflated risks.

I realize that crime dramas and such can be very compelling, but they're not real.

I'm reminded of a line by Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller about people misunderstanding media (my emphasis):

We believe violence is exciting in entertainment. In America we have the First Amendment; there are no censors. But there are anti-violence censorship letter-writers. They want to make sure you'll never see anything that they wouldn't want to see. They say that if we had nothing on TV but shows like thirtysomething and Growing Pains all the world problems would be worked out in an adult, peaceful manner. They don't understand EVERYTHING's fake on TV. Homer Simpson doesn't work in a nuclear power plant! Homer Simpson is just an actor!

It seemed funny at the time. Perhaps, like many entertainers, he was just prescient.

Overdue Book Review

I've been meaning to write this up ever since I finished reading it. Life got in the way, as usual.

Anyway, my dear friend Laura Goodin recently got her first story published in a book called Canterbury 2100. As far as I know, the book isn't yet available in the U.S., but Laura was kind enough to send me a copy for Christmas (along with two packs of Tim Tams!!!). So the least I can do is tell you about it.

The premise of the book as a whole is sort of an update on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: a bunch of people making a pilgrimage by train to Canterbury in a post-apocalyptic future (in oh, about the year 2100). The train stops, the passengers pass the time by telling stories.

In this case, each tale is written by a different author, and the whole thing is strung together by editor Dirk Flinthart. He manages to make it all pretty cohesive, which is impressive.

Now, here I have to admit that I have never read Chaucer's stories (though I do own a copy, at the behest of another writer friend who wrote her thesis on Chaucer, and I still plan to read it), so I can't tell you whether Flinthart did a great job of fitting this tale into the mould of the original. But for me, the overall flow worked pretty well, especially considering that there are eighteen different writers involved.

As you might expect from a collaborative effort of this sort, the quality is a bit uneven. The good news is that nothing is bad enough to be unreadable, and most are really pretty good. If I have a general complaint, it is that too many of the tales are written like short stories (as opposed to episodes in a larger tale): they try to have a little twist at the end, and most are too predictable.

I should mention Laura's contribution, "The Miner's Tale," in particular. And not only because she's my friend. Her story manages to avoid the pitfalls I've mentioned above. I resisted the urge to read it first, and instead read it in the flow of the book. Because the story and its characters don't really rely on anything particularly special about the ficton, the story just works. It's a good story about good people trying to do right in a difficult situation. Very human, very nicely written.

Some of the other tales get a bit too tied up in magic and/or religion and/or technology that doesn't quite fit the overall picture. My favorite stories are those like Laura's (and the Doctor's and Hunter's Tales) that are stories about human nature and how the people react to the situation forced on them, rather than being about the situation itself.

All in all, I enjoyed the book, and look forward to reading Laura's next effort. And it made me want to go read my Chaucer. Not right away, but it is back in the queue.

They Obviously Want Me

Just came across this little job opening:

The Caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef is a newly created position. There are a few minor tasks that need to be taken care of, but the most important duty is to report back to Tourism Queensland (and the world) and let us know what’s taking place on the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef.

Right. One blog entry per week. I can do that. Heck, I'm even qualified for this job!

We’re looking for someone with an adventurous attitude, passion for the outdoors and good communication skills. A broad range of experience is considered and Tourism Queensland will be selecting applicants based on:

- Enthusiasm for the role

- Entertainment value (personality and creativity)

- Presentation skills (being media-friendly)

- At least one year's relevant experience

I am so there!

Yumbolicious

That is the word my fine foodie friend used to describe this.

One can just feel the arteries hardening while reading it. But in a good way.

Oh, No! Not Liberals!

I missed this one while I was out of town. Apparently there is much wringing of hands over the notion that President-elect Obama might be listening to...liberals. I rather agree with Steve Soto's take on this:

Their candidate just ran on their platform and got his head handed to him by a centrist Democrat, who is allowing the broadest possible input into his policies and agenda, and still there are knuckle-dragging goons who are unhappy that Obama isn’t only listening to slugs like them.

Well slugs, let me clue you in: You lost, and so did your agenda and your policies.

Except of course, I wouldn't call them slugs (in public). But really, who did they think Obama was going to ask for advice? Them?

And then I might point out that the Washington Post article that Steve refers to (it's just one example) is a particularly pathetic exercise, both from a journalism standpoint and from the flimsiness of the argument put forth by the quoted conservative spokesperson. The article cites just the one spokesman, and he apparently doesn't know that there are liberals out there, but he's heard there are:

"It is disturbing," said Roger Clegg, a conservative opponent of Lee's appointment who is now watching the Obama advisers at the Justice Department. "The transition team as described to me was made up of nothing but people on the far left. Though Obama is more moderate, that makes you wonder what kind of advice the president is given, and what range of choices he'll be given when it comes time to make appointments."

That's it. That's all he's got. Not that some raving lunatics are taking over the asylum, but an unnamed person or persons described the transition team as being really, really liberal. But wait, there's less! The article describes two controversial Clinton nominees who are advising Obama. One is gay, and one is Chinese American and supports affirmative action. Oh, and someone from the NAACP is reviewing civil rights. Clearly these people must be plotting the radical overthrow of all we hold dear!

Apparently it wasn't enough for these folks to engage in all the fear mongering while they held power the last eight years or during the campaign season. They now apparently want to make us all afraid of ourselves. But the voters didn't seem to buy it, and I'm guessing they won't look at the moderately liberal government we're about to see with any degree of trepidation. Mostly they want their jobs, their health care, and their homes. Most of them are not terribly concerned with the labels attached to the people who help them out with that stuff.

Skiing While Ursine

We spent the weekend visiting friends and skiing at Bear Valley. Most of you probably know that I'm a long-time fan of bears in general (and my California Golden Bears in particular). Bear Valley is kinda wonderful in that it's one of the few places where you can find lots of bear pictures and other decor items without it seeming forced or kitschy.

In addition, the ski resort has named all of its lifts (and some of the runs) after bears (Cub, Bear, Pooh, etc.). My only objection is that one lift is called "Koala," and of course, that's not a bear at all. On the other hand, I was initially confused by the lift named "Kuma," until a quick visit to the Google informed me that "Kuma" is Japanese for "bear."

One highlight was skiing down toward one of the lifts on our first run down the back side, and having my daughter look up in surprise and say, "That lift is Pooh!" And indeed, right there on the lift, it says its name is Pooh. Very cute.

Anyhow, the skiing was quite nice. Friday was a blustery, snowy day, but that produced a lot of good snow. Saturday was cold, so the powder stayed good. Sunday, most of the people disappeared even though the snow was still great. I guess they'd all had enough on the holiday weekend, so we had the run of the mountain in great conditions.

Holiday Composition

Tonight we had a little family sushi dinner at Tachibana, and somehow got inspired to write a topical version of the Twelve Days of Christmas song. I'll just present the twelfth day:

The SUSHI Twelve Days of Christmas

Twelve Cups of Sake
Eleven Pairs of Chopsticks
Ten Zaru Soba
Nine Tuna Toro
Eight Pickled Ginger
Seven Edamame
Six Amaebi
Five Wasabi
Four Tempura Shrimp
Three Soy Sauce
Two Turtle Rolls
And a Big California Roll

Happy holidays, y'all!

Stunningly Superficial

That's about the best summary of a TV "news" talking head I can imagine.

What's really impressive is that Scarborough doesn't get why he's being taken to task. He keeps saying that he reads the newspapers and Foreign Affairs, so obviously he knows what's going on.

It brings to mind a snippet of dialogue from the wonderful movie "A Fish Called Wanda":

Wanda: But you think you're an intellectual, don't you, ape?

Otto: Apes don't read philosophy.

Wanda: Yes they do, Otto, they just don't understand it! Let me correct you on a few things; Aristotle was not Belgian! The central message of Buddhism is not "Every man for himself!" And the London Underground is not a political movement! Those are all mistakes. I looked them up.

I think it's safe to say that Joe Scarborough is not an intellectual, either.

Update: Purely coincidental, but TBogg used that same exchange as the title of a post on a completely unrelated incident.

Presents for Feet

Did I mention that I got ski boots for Christmas? I have never bought a pair of new ski boots before. When I went skiing as a kid, I always had used boots, since they weren't going to last long on my growing feet, anyway. And as a teen, I think I had hand-me-downs.

So since we started skiing last winter, I've been renting boots (and skis) with only limited success. I have very ordinary feet, but somehow, the boots nearly always manage to be uncomfortable. And when the feet, ankles, shins, etc. are unhappy, the skier is unhappy.

My new boots are very nice. I wore them in the store for quite a while. I'm looking forward to trying them out this weekend! My only disappointment is the color. They come in red/black, which is not my favorite. But they're comfortable, and I don't plan to look at them very much.

Nice present. My wife loves me, and wants my feet to be happy.

All Things Must End

Still not much explanation for the whole thing, but the guy who was camped out in the Mexico City airport for the last few months is gone.

I still have nothing cogent to say about it, but I like to follow up when I can.

You're welcome.

Thanks, Dad

There's nothing quite like getting back to the car after a full day of skiing, only to find one of the tires completely flat. Now, one could call the auto club and wait for them to come and change the tire. But it's cold, and about to get dark, and really, I just want to go somewhere warm and have a beer.

So I changed the tire. And it's really not a big deal. Sure, there are better ways to end the day than lying on the cold ground getting the jack set under the car, but really, it's not a huge thing.

My dad could fix anything (and frequently did). I'm really glad he taught me some of those tricks, like changing tires. I realize there are other ways to deal with it, but now and then it's nice to recognize one's own self-sufficiency, even on such a mundane matter.

Not Important, But...

I really hate it when you're rushing to get dressed, and when it's too late to actually do anything about it, you realize that the jeans didn't quite get fully dry.

Just sayin'.

Totally Great News

After eight years where politics has trumped science at almost every turn, I am thrilled to see that President-elect Obama is about to appoint a Real Scientist as his science advisor.

I'm particularly thrilled because I know John Holdren a little bit. Back in my young days as an academic debater, I used to quote from professor Holdren on various science issues, mostly pertaining to climate change (yes, it was an issue even way back then!). And as a student in the Environmental Science program at Berkeley, I had to take a required upper-division course taught by him ("Quantitative Aspects of Global Environmental Problems"), which was one of the best classes I ever took, and still shapes my thinking on a lot of matters.

But professor Holdren himself really impressed me. And it wasn't just that he'd recently won a Macarthur "Genius Award" Fellowship or the campus Distinguished Teaching Award, or that he was on the board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. What impressed me was that this very busy, very accomplished man had time, even when I was no longer in his course, to talk with me and advise me about an article I was writing.

So I can say from first-hand experience that John Holdren is a terrific choice to advise the new president about all kinds of matters of science and public policy. He is not only a brilliant and accomplished scientist, but also a student and teacher of science policy with a terrific ability to communicate complex information in ways that it can be understood by different audiences.

Obviously, there are still political battles to be fought, but I now have confidence that the side of science will have a tremendous advocate.

Update: Good profile from the NYT here. Good link at the bottom of it to an appearance on Letterman. Worth watching.

Sick, Sick People

No, I'm not talking about the virus that's been ransacking my family for the last couple of weeks.

I'm talking about some key people in the U.S. government for the last several years. Buried in an update to a long post by Digby on Dick Cheney is some material from Vanity Fair about the use of "intelligence" gleaned from torture:

“As soon as I learned that the reports had come from torture, once my anger had subsided I understood the damage it had done,” a Pentagon analyst says. “I was so angry, knowing that the higher-ups in the administration knew he was tortured, and that the information he was giving up was tainted by the torture, and that it became one reason to attack Iraq.

“We didn’t know he’d been waterboarded and tortured when we did that analysis, and the reports were marked as credible as they could be.” However, approval for Abu Zubaydah’s treatment had been given at the highest level.

We've been over this before (though not recently): not only is torture wrong, it doesn't work. At least, not in the sense that it provides accurate information. At some point, the victim of the torture just tells the interrogator what (s)he wants to hear. But some sick folks find that useful:

“The White House knew he’d been tortured. I didn’t, though I was supposed to be evaluating that intelligence,” the analyst says. “It seems to me they were using torture to achieve a political objective. I cannot believe that the president and vice president did not know who was being waterboarded and what was being given up.”

So there it is: I thought it was bad that they lied about the intelligence to justify invading Iraq, but it's actually worse. They tortured people to generate the "intelligence" they wanted to justify starting a war that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions displaced, turmoil in the region and the loss of international respect for the country.

It's just stunning what these folks have been up to in our name. As the apologists keep making the rounds on their "Bush legacy" tour, we need to remember that this is the legacy we inherit and will have to work to live down.

Public Service? Whassat?

Buried down at the end of an article about the foreclosure mess in today's NYT:

In the meantime, homeowners are unlikely to see any new policy unveiled soon.

“It’s become clear that if you stick your head up, it’ll get cut off,” said one White House official. “We’re done in two months. The next administration can try to find a way out of that maze.”

Sheesh. I'm really, really hoping that the incoming administration has something more of a public-service ethic about them. Did I say "more"? How about any?

Hat tip to Josh Marshall at TPM; "Profiles in Courage," indeed.

P.S. Still ridiculously busy, but hoping for a long, curmudgeonly post soon!

Guilty Pleasures

I admit it: crab for Thanksgiving sounds pretty great!

Thanksgiving Alternatives

Amusingly written, and I thought it sounded tasty:

And if you’re going in with pork, you might as well go all in. The December issue of Food & Wine features a dish so trayf it could be served at the dinner reception for a Holocaust-denial conference in Teheran: bacon-crusted pork loin roast.

I actually like turkey. Go figure. Be he had me at bacon-crusted.

Racing Toward Extinction

I was terribly bored at lunch, so I was perusing the entertainment portion of the Sunday paper that was still sitting on the table. As I skimmed, I saw by chance a review of a new CD by Dido, and it wasn't the review per se that caught my eye, but the description of the industry approach to reviewers:

Because record companies no longer send out advance albums because they're convinced that all music critics moonlight as pirates with CD pressing plants in their backyards, we attempted to download the new Dido album from several rogue Web sites based in Russia, only to wind up with a desktop full of naughty videos (thanks for that!) and nasty viruses (not so much!).

Now, I know that the recording industry has been trying to kill online music for a long time, claiming that their old business model was the only one that would work. But now it appears they are trying to tick off all the reviewers who drove sales of their old model. Brilliant: Driving the reviewers to the pirates so they can hear the music they review!

They're doomed, and they don't even know why.

BTW, the review of the new Guns N' Roses CD on the same page was pretty funny. I suppose a review that starts out with "Axl Rose is an idiot." can't really end well for Rose.

It's a Nice Food Court, But Really...

I flew through Mexico City last summer, and had about a 4-hour layover in the airport, a part of which I spent in the food court, which was quite large and varied. But it never occurred to me to take up residence:

For reasons he can't explain, the Japanese man has been in Terminal 1 of the Benito Juarez International Airport since Sept. 2, surviving off donations from fast-food restaurants and passengers and sleeping in a chair.

Odd. Very odd. I've never been to Japan, but I can't imagine that life in the airport terminal is actually preferable to going home.

Memories of Past Geekdom

Oh, how old I feel!

A friend just pointed out that we're observing the 25th anniversary of the release of Turbo Pascal 1.0. I didn't actually buy it until it was at version 2.0 (for my CP/M system), but I used that (and succeeding versions) a lot.

Anyway, here is a blog post with reminiscences from Turbo Pascal's creator, Ander Hejlsberg. I had the good fortune to work with Anders and the Turbo Pascal team at Borland International back in the 1990s, on Turbo Pascal 6.0 onward through its migration to Windows and eventual morphing into the underpinnings of the fabulous product Delphi. As the technical writer for the TP team, I was told my job was to get inside Anders' brain and translate it for the rest of the world. That was a cool experience!

Anders may be the best programmer I've ever worked with; he's certainly the most proficient assembly-language programmer I've ever encountered. And he had a tremendous knack for knowing the right features to add to a product for the market.

Sadly, Anders went over to the dark side shortly after I left Borland (completely unrelated events!). He's done some amazing work on products there. Although his work is now in more customers' hands, he will probably never again have the same kind of influence over an entire generation of software developers that he had with Pascal and Delphi.

It's an amazing experience to be part of a team that works so well together on a product that is so important and influential. The Turbo Pascal team was tiny (about ten of us worked on TP 6, including doc, QA, and management), but always produced great stuff, usually on time, and was consistently profitable. I certainly owe most of my later success to the valuable lessons I learned while working at Borland.

Only a Miracle Can Save the Bears...

Indeed. This still brings tears to my eyes.



Yeah. I was there. Go Bears!!!

Speaking of Responsibility

First Mr. Greenspan discovers that there is greed messing up his perfect little free-market view of the economy. And now we're supposed to feel sorry for Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who has to clean up this big ol' economic mess that has been foisted upon him.

From today's Washington Post:

In reflecting on his term, which comes to an end in January, Paulson said his biggest regret was not seeing the extent of the financial crisis as it developed. ... "We were always behind. We saw the problem, but it took us a while to see the severity of the problem," he said. "But even if we had been more clairvoyant, we wouldn't have been able to do much differently that what we have done."

Well, excuse me, but boo-hoo.

As Dean Baker points out:

The point is extremely simple. There was a huge housing bubble that should have been visible to any competent economic analyst. The bubble was fueled by an enormous chain of highly leveraged finance. (As head of Goldman Sachs, Mr. Paulson personally made hundreds of millions of dollars from this bubble.)

It was entirely predictable that the housing bubble would burst and that its collapse would have a huge impact on the financial system and the economy as a whole. There is zero excuse for Paulson being caught by surprise by a "storm" that he helped create.

Can't put it much more succinctly than that. Not only does Paulson personally and professionally bear responsibility for creating the situation in the first place, he has also been in a position to do something about it for some two-and-a-half years. Now we're supposed to believe this all came as a surprise to him?

Here's a hint, Henry: If you want to see where this economic crisis came from, or maybe see some of Mr. Greenspan's newly-discovered greed, just look in a mirror.

I am so ready for this pack of rats to be run out of town. Even if the next bunch is bad (and I don't see how they can be nearly as bad), it will at least be fresh rats. Oy.

Sad Passing

I was sad to read today of the passing of Pete Newell. Although the story mentions that he had cancer a few years ago, I don't know that it's accurate to say he died of it.

I know of Newell primarily because of his affiliation with my alma mater, where he was the most successful basketball coach in school history. But what really impresses me about Pete Newell is that he was known, loved, and respected by people in his field the world over.

Perhaps most important, I respect that he was able to walk away from a wildly successful coaching career to become sort of a wandering teacher and ambassador for the game. His ability to serve as mentor to players and coaches and entire programs speaks volumes about the kind of man he was.

Pete Newell will be much missed, but his legacy will last a long, long time.

Terry Jones on the Economy and Responsibility

Ran into this column by Terry Jones (formerly of Monty Python) yesterday. Like all the Pythons, Jones is very well educated and quite thoughtful. I found his comments on Alan Greenspan quite refreshing; one rarely hears such forthright analysis in the U.S.

Greenspan apparently just discovered the concept of greed:

When a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee recently asked Greenspan if he had discovered that his "view of the world" or his "ideology" about an unregulated financial market was "not right … was not working", Greenspan replied: "Absolutely! Precisely! … That's precisely the reason I was shocked …"

That would be the equivalent of my surgeon saying he'd suddenly realised that he ought to have been using anaesthetic all these years. "I wondered why my patients kept screaming and writhing around," he would have said.

Of course, Greenspan claims that the problem is not with financial instruments (such as "derivatives") themselves but with the fact that the dealers got too greedy. Those peddling derivatives, he suggested in a recent speech, were not as reliable as "the pharmacist who fills the prescription ordered by our physician".

So the chairman of the Federal Reserve – under the last four presidents – has been working on the premise that there are no greedy or unscrupulous people who would care to get mixed up in a market that was last valued at $531 trillion.

And Jones points out some of the issues with reliance on "experts" like Greenspan:

And yet one can't help feeling sorry for Greenspan. There is he is: 82 years of age, having to look back on a career that has been based on a totally false ideology, that has ended up by plunging the world's economy into chaos and that has caused the collapse of the system he dedicated his professional life to propagating. He must feel pretty choked.

Perhaps the only crumb of comfort he can take from it all is that he won't suffer any financial hardship as the result of his mistakes.

Indeed, one of the stunning aspects of modern society is that there seems to be no sense of responsibility or consequences. Experts and politicians advocate positions that turn out disastrously, yet we keep turning to those same people. Pundits, columnists, consultants all seem to live in a world where it doesn't actually matter how things turn out. They will still be invited back or hired by someone else.

Here's an odd notion: actions have consequences, but so do opinions. We need to hold people accountable for the ideas they advocate and the outcomes of policies. It strikes me that a big part of the problem is ideology trumping analysis. Greenspan got blindsided by his belief in free market economics as espoused by Milton Friedman. And people who wanted to believe that free markets worked were happy to have Greenspan confirm their conviction.

Lots more examples available, but you probably get the point. It's more important to examine the truth and consequences of ideas than it is to hang onto what seems comfortable.

Think!

My Mother's World

I voted for Barack Obama this morning.

No big surprise there for those who know me. But I lay awake this morning in the predawn hours thinking about the election and the many that have preceded it, and realized that this one really is something special.

For me, elections are all about my mom. Some of my earliest memories involve her taking me with her to vote. In our precinct, the polling place was almost always in the multipurpose room at the elementary school on our block. Later on, that would be my school, and I would use that room for lots of other things: glee club, band practice, concerts, talent shows, hot-dog lunches, tumbling class, rainy-day recess. Truly, it lived up to its name. But to me, the room always looked wrong without the red-, white-, and blue-striped voting booths around the sides.

I got it drilled into me very early that voting is not optional. Mom truly voted religiously. It's not like church where lots of people go only on the big holidays. If there was an election, even if it's "just" a runoff or a local primary or something small, you vote. And you don't just show up and cast a ballot, you learn the issues and cast an informed vote, even if that just meant you read the ballot pamphlet and recognized the arguments for or against a proposition and learned to recognize which supporters or opponents were out there grinding the same tired axes again.

But most of the time, we had a horse in the race. It might be a local bond measure or a slate of right-minded school board candidates or a proposition of local or statewide import, but there was pretty much always some cause we were either supporting or opposing. So election day wasn't just a one-day event. It was the culmination of a campaign that we had probably been involved in before it was even a campaign.

I learned early and personally of the dangers of single-issue politics. I recall vividly when a group won the majority on our local school board running on a platform of "neighborhood schools," which I now understand to have been a euphemism for segregation, couched in terms of not busing children to schools away from their homes. So they won, and they gutted the district's very successful integration program. Unfortunately, they had no particular interest or skill in actually running a school district, and the quality of education went down for all (but at least we didn't have to ride buses to our declining schools!).

And somewhere along the line, I realized that although there were ebbs and flows and issues that came and went, there are underlying themes to politics that transcend some of the apparent issues, and these core values are really the bedrock of my political beliefs.

Interestingly, both of my parents came from very conservative (in the old sense) backgrounds. But my mom came to realize that there were some social institutions that needed changing, and she was particularly moved by the civil rights movement. Her sense of fairness and equality was one of the things that came through loud and clear. I knew who Martin Luther King was and why he was important from a very early age.

So seeing Barack Obama on the threshold of the highest elected office in the land holds a particular poignancy for me. In so many ways, this represents the culmination of what my mother has worked very hard for most of her life and all of my life. So much has changed in her 80+ years, not all of it for the better, but I hope she takes particular satisfaction in today's election. I know I do.

What Happens in Vegas?

I'm in Las Vegas for a trade show. It's been about 15 years since I was here for another trade show (back when COMDEX was the largest trade show in the world, and could only be held in Vegas because it had the biggest convention facilities and enough hotel space). Oddly enough, I still don't like Las Vegas.

I keep thinking of all the advertisements about "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas." As near as I can tell, what happens here is a lot of littering. As one walks around The Strip and the convention center (or between the two), one sees seemingly endless stands which in any other town would hold newspapers and real-estate advertisements. Here, they contain advertisements for GIRLS.

I have no idea how many of these are actually used for girl shopping. But a huge number of them end up lying on the sidewalk and in the gutter. Just paper trash, blowing in the wind, getting trampled. All day, every day.

Yuck. I can't wait to go home.

Growing Older But Not Up

The busy musical week continued last night with a Jimmy Buffett concert at Shoreline Amphitheatre. I don't like having to drive all the way down to Shoreline for a show, but it's always worth it to see Jimmy. [Though I must say that ticket prices are getting way out of hand; for mediocre seats in the back of the bowl, we paid something like $130 dollars plus the "convenience fee."]

Having just been to the Tower of Power 40th anniversary concert last weekend, it was fun to hear Jimmy thanking us for giving him a summer job for the last forty years. Nice way to rub in that we're all getting a bit older!

But as I've noted before, these "old" bands I like so much put on much better shows than most of the newer artists I've paid to hear.

One definite highlight was Jimmy's rendition of "Fruitcakes," a song he recorded about fifteen years ago (there's a line about "We're seven years from the millenium..."). Not only did he update some of the lyrics for the passage of time, but he filled the song with local references to the bay area. I couldn't tell whether he was reading those lyrics, but it didn't seem like it. It's remarkable to me that an artist could rework one of his old songs like that, more-or-less on the spot, and have it come out so well.

Another highlight came right after the intermission, when one of the members of the Coral Reefer Band, Mac McAnally, sang one of his older tunes that he says keeps coming to mind during this election year, called "The Ass and the Hole." It's pretty funny.

I guess another sign that we're getting older is that one of my friends brought his 10-year-old daughter to her first Buffett concert: our first parakeet! My daughter hasn't shown the interest in either Jimmy or concerts, so she might miss out.

Meanwhile, I'm happy to shell out a few bucks to keep Jimmy employed and entertaining me every summer. There are certainly worse ways to spend it.

Bump City

Last night was the roughly-annual Tower of Power concert at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. I always enjoy it because a) I love T.O.P. and find that they're still making great music after all these years, and b) the Fillmore is a cool and historic place to see a show.

This year there were two additional highlights: a group of friends in attendance and a Very Special Show.

After I showed up at a function for my daughter's school wearing a Tower of Power t-shirt, I got lots of comments from other parents about how much they liked the band and so on. So I agreed to alert everyone the next time they played locally. So we had three other families as well as a long-time friend and former coworker who is a big fan, and we all met for dinner in Japantown before the show and went over together.

It was during dinner that I got my first inkling of what a special show it was to be. I knew the band was observing its 40th anniversary, and that tickets were priced therefore at $40. What I didn't realize was that it was going to be a huge band reunion, with a whole bunch of former band members joining in for anything ranging from one number to whole sets and even much of the show. Accordingly, they played tunes from various eras of the band's history, including many that we hadn't heard live in a long time, if ever.

Probably the best moment came at the end, after more than three hours of playing, during the encore, when they brought out even more former bandsmen and performed "You're Still a Young Man" with something like a 15-piece horn section (it's usually five), and brought out several great soloists for "What is Hip?"

It was all fabulous. And best of all, it was all being filmed for a high-definition DVD to be released next year, so I can relive the show long into the future. Life is good.

The New Academy

Yesterday we went to the new California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. The academy itself isn't new, rather they've just had the grand opening of the new facility, which is in the location of the old facility, which they rebuilt while they were in an interim facility. Clear now?

Anyway, this was my first chance to see the new digs, as they opened while we were in Indonesia. My daughter and niece had gone to a pre-grand opening session (since we're members), so they had seen all the cool new stuff. But my wife and I were seeing it all for the first time, and surprisingly enough, I thought it lived up to the hype.

The facility is lovely. The green roof gets a lot of attention, but the whole thing just fits nicely into the space (much better than, say, the big ol' tower they tacked onto the DeYoung Museum across the concourse...). The exhibits are very modern, and traffic flows through them very well. This is a good thing, because all the hoopla has drawn tremendous crowds.

We didn't get to see everything, because it was too crowded. So we missed the new rainforest exhibit, which looks quite spectacular from outside (it's in a big glass sphere). Conceptually, it reminds me of the one at the National Aquarium in Baltimore. We also didn't get to see the new planetarium. We spent quite a bit of time in the new global warming exhibit, which was quite good, and a LOT of time in the evolution area, which highlights research from the Galapagos (including lots of marine stuff, which had obvious appeal) and Madagascar. There was plenty of interest for the adults and the child as well. And we went through the renovated African Hall fairly quickly, spending most time watching the penguins in their nice new habitat. They really seem to like all the attention.

But we most wanted to see the new Steinhart Aquarium. My wife and I both have great fondness for Steinhart from many visits as children. She also took fish classes there years ago. Needless to say, it is very different from its old incarnation, which was very old fashioned, very rectangular, and very much one tank after another.

The new exhibit flows in graceful curves (there are very few rectangular tanks, and most of those have shaped facades in front of them), and most of the exhibits are grouped thematically. Unfortunately, the traffic flows are not well thought out. There are dead ends and tight spots, which is completely unlike the flows upstairs in the exhibit halls. And once an hour the walls in the center gallery turn into a 360-degree immersive video thing about water. It's cool, but intrusive.

So I'm a little disappointed in the new aquarium. It's certainly nicer than the old one, and may grow on me when I get to see it with fewer people. All in all, it's nice to see the academy back where it belongs, in lovely Golden Gate Park. The facility had great promise, nice spaces, lots of old favorite exhibits spruced up and much improved. The cafeteria is quite nice, and the restaurant below it is getting great reviews.

I'm looking forward to many more visits. It's a terrific place.

Surreal Slips

Weirdness abounds in the world. I had just finished reading a post by Digby suggesting that John Roberts of CNN was pushing Republican talking points, when I saw a tiny item in a column in today's San Francisco Chronicle (boldface in original):

The Chronicle's Mike Lerseth was listening to CNN on Wednesday when John Roberts, introducing an election segment, referred to that morning's guest, Willie Brown, as "former San Francisco Mayor Willie Horton." In a mob of Willies - including Mays and McCovey - it does seem odd that Horton should be the one in the newsman's mind. (Brown had been talking about race playing a role in the presidential election.)

OK, that's just weird. For those who don't remember, Willie Horton was the scary, black bogeyman of the 1988 presidential election. Willie Brown is hardly scary (although he is African American), and he definitely dresses better than Horton. Something is obviously going on in Mr. Roberts' psyche that I really don't want to know about.

Say It Ain't So!

*SOB*

Bank failures, insurance collapse, stock market plummeting, all OK. But not this! Not the cookies from my childhood!

Iced raisin, oatmeal, circus animals....

Oh, it's just too much. So sad...so depressed....

Cephalopods!

One last post, while it's still International Cephalopod Appreciation and Awareness Day. I wish I'd known about it earlier.

And it was only after I got back from vacation that I realized I had again missed Talk Like a Pirate Day (again), which was especially galling this year because we were on a beautiful sailing ship that day.

Arrrrrrrr!

Bear Blogging

In which my sister, normally gentle and kindhearted, decides that loud tourists deserve a different position in the food chain.

I'll see if she'll post the picture she took of the cinnamon bear. If not, maybe she'll let me post it. Beautiful animal!

UPDATE: Picture posted here.

Reality Impacting

Goodness. Hard to believe I've been home for a week. I keep having things I want to blog about, but I've been trying to catch up with all the blog entries I wrote while traveling without network access. I am now caught up on that.

And of course, there's been lots of work to catch up on, and our Granny Nanny is out of town, so we have to actually pretend we're real parents, too. Man, life is so unfair! But it's actually nice spending the extra time with our daughter, since we missed her so much while we were away.

As I predicted, I am not loving the fact that I'm back just in time for the last throes of the presidential election. One thing I should mention is some of the comments we got about the election from people in Indonesia.

First, just the fact that lots of people in Indonesia wanted to talk about it was interesting. They know a lot about the candidates, and not just because Barack Obama spent some of his formative years in Indonesia. To a person, they made it clear that they cared about our election because it matters to them. That's an amazing fact. Most Americans couldn't name the president of Indonesia, and frankly, it doesn't matter to most of us. But our president, our national policies, matter to them--a lot.

Second, there was a very strong perception among them that Obama will win. Some already refer to him as President Obama. There are two reasons for that: out of self-interest, they can't imagine that we would elect yet another disastrous president, but also because nearly every American they meet agrees with them.

One ex-pat put it this way: "Republicans don't travel." I corrected him, because they do travel, but I'm guessing not very many of them travel to Indonesia. Travel is so broadening, and challenges so many of our notions about ourselves, that it's hard to imagine someone visiting Indonesia, talking to Indonesians, and believing that the last eight years have been good for the world and that four or eight more years of similar policies would be a good idea.

So the Indonesians we met almost unanimously support Obama. A farmer we met in the hills of Bali was wearing an Obama campaign button pinned to his jeans. He was very proud, very interested, and very pleased to know that we were supporting Obama, too.

The world is watching, and they care very much what we do. Like the U.S., Indonesia is a country born of colonialism, and Indonesians look at our country in many ways as a model for what theirs can become. It seems clear to them who would be better for them as our president. Apparently the choice is not as clear to many Americans.

Interesting times.

Duke's on Sunday

Through the magic of the International Date Line, I find myself blogging again on Sunday, despite having flown a great long way overnight. I mean, we left Bali at 10:30 on Sunday night, and arrived in Honolulu at 5:40 on Sunday afternoon. Ah, well.

And as so often happens to me as I'm on a tropical island, I have a Jimmy Buffett tune bouncing through my brain. Entirely appropriate this time, as the tune in my head is "Duke's on Sunday," a tribute to the very beach we just walked past on our way to and from dinner. Duke's is named for Duke Kahanamoku, the Olympic gold-medal swimmer best known as the man who popularized surfing around the world.

So here I am, on Sunday, at Duke's. Cool.

We've moved across the street from our last hotel, to the Moana Surfrider, which is right on Waikiki Beach, and our room has a window that opens right out over Duke's beach, with a view of Diamond Head. It's great to open the window and listen to the surf, which should be very soothing to our jet-lagged selves.

We had another nice dinner at the Hau Tree Lanai, and Danny the sommelier gave us another fine wine recommendation and also a taste of his newest acquisition, a fruit-infused sake that is really yummy.

Tomorrow, we hope to hit the Waikiki Aquarium, which we always seem to just miss, then hop a flight back home. That'll be another short day, but work awaits on Tuesday, so go we must! Until then, Hawaii is a pretty gentle way to slip back into the U.S.

One little travel note I should include is that we had something like 25 minutes to make our plane connection in Guam overnight, and I was dreading that, because of having to clear immigration and customs. But hey, they've changed things since the last time I went through there. Yes, we all had to clear immigration, but that was just a matter of swiping the passports. Customs we didn't have to clear until we got to Honolulu. So it turned out to be no sweat to make it to our connecting flight. Yay!

Large Numbers

I've been thinking a bit about large numbers recently, probably in part because I read Richard Dawkins' book The Blind Watchmaker on the boat and here in Bali, and he talks a lot about both large and small numbers, and interestingly, how the human mind is really only adapted to think clearly about certain ranges of numbers. All quite fascinating, as Dawkins always is.

But what's really on my mind here is money. When we were in Mexico a few months back, the exchange rate for pesos and dollars was roughly 10:1 or 11:1, but for convenience, everyone sort of thinks in 10:1, and that's easy. If something costs 10 pesos, you can pay with one dollar, and it's all good.

Here in Indonesia, the exchange rate for rupiahs is about 9,200:1, so not only is it a less convenient quantity to figure in your head, you also have to deal in numbers on an everyday basis that sound more like annual salaries to me. For example, yesterday we had a buffet lunch, which costs Rp80,000 (just under US$9) for each person. We shared a large bottle of Bintang, the local beer, for Rp35,000. Suddenly the bill for lunch is Rp195,000, plus the ubiquitous tax and service charge, and now lunch costs Rp235,000. That's really only US$25 for lunch for two people, which isn't outrageous in a tourist context. But that number just seems large.

Going to the ATM to take out another million rupiah is...daunting, even though I know it's not unreasonable. I can only imagine the effect of the rampant inflation in places like Zimbabwe, where you suddenly need millions or even billions of the local currency to get anything.

And yet, many things here seem very inexpensive. Our hotel costs us only US$45 per night, which is great. We bought a shirt and a sarong from Dewa's wife's shop, and it totaled US$32. There are certainly bargains here. It's just sometimes hard to wrap your head around what they are.

Surreal Dining

Good dinner last night, but it hardly felt Balinese. We dined at Mosaic, which came highly recommended by our ex-pat friends on the dive boat. It's the only place we've encountered that requires reservations a day ahead. Dewa dropped us off for our 8:30 reservation, and we stepped into a very modern, western-style lounge. Cocktail orders taken, a free canapé arrived, and we got to look at the menu.

The menu has four options, all prix fixe, six courses with optional wine pairings: An Indonesian experience, a daily tasting menu, a vegetarian tasting menu, or the Surprise menu, where you tell them what you like and/or can't eat, and the chef improvises for the whole table.

We went with one each of the Indonesian and the tasting menus, figuring we would trade some dishes along the way. And of course, we did. I'll spare you all the details, but the highlights included some Japanese-style oysters, a lightly-smoked salmon over citrus, a duck fois gras, and my favorite, cinnamon pork belly with Langoustine.

One of the desserts included fresh durian with chocolate in phyllo pastry. First time for either of us with the durian, and neither was very impressed. The other dessert was much more to our palates, passion fruit baked in phyllo, with coconut sorbet. Very nice.

The whole dinner took some three hours, and was very pleasant. My only criticism of Mosaic is that they had a live jazz combo playing in the lounge, and we could hear it quite clearly at our table. That's fine, except they were still playing their recorded background music through a speaker on the other side of the table, and the two did not blend well at all. Quite distracting, that.

I Can Use Some Rest

Oh, my. Another busy day in tourist land!

Dewa picked us up this morning at 9:00. "Sleeping in" seemed like such a luxury. After early morning diving, we've just pretty much stayed on the same schedule, waking around 6:30 and crashing into bed right after dinner, around 10:00. Tonight's dinner reservation isn't until 8:30, so we'll see how we hold up. I guess last night we didn't eat until well after the dance show ended at 9:00, so this should work out fine.

Today's destination was upward, to two big temples and then the volcano.

First was the Tirta Empul water temple at Tampaksiring. This is the site of a sacred spring, where people come both to use a public bathing area and a ritual cleansing area. We just came to look at the beautiful and large temple. First thing we saw on entering was some small deer in cages. These are native animals which are in the temple as a kind of refuge; people kill them for sport outside. They're very small, and quite cute.

Then on into the temple. It's quite large an ornate, particularly when compared to the small, community temple we visited the other day. The most noticeable difference to me is that more things are painted, so it's just much fancier looking. Of course, it's also much bigger. The spring flows directly into a pool, and the water then flows into several other pools, each of which has specific cleansing properties. To my view, it's mostly very lovely. With all the water, there are also fabulous flowers, especially the red Bird of Paradise flowers.

Next stop, just down the way, is the carved stone temple of Gunung Kawi. This is sort of the next stop for the water flowing from the water temple. In a deep-carved canyon in the volcanic rock (much like the one we rafted through yesterday) we walked down a long, stone staircase lined with the obligatory vendors hawking batik cloth, woodcarvings, t-shirts, bed coverings (quilts made from the batik), and so on. Eventually this goes through a gate or doorway in the rock itself, and you're in a valley that has been carved into a temple or palace, right out of the living rock.

The guide books all say this is a temple dedicated to the royal family that ruled Bali around the 10^th or 11^th century CE. Dewa reckons that yes, it was a temple, but also a palace. And it is huge and stunning, both the parts sculpted from the hillside rock and the parts built within. In many ways it's reminiscent of the Mayan works we saw last summer in the Yucatan, though that was pretty much all built up, as there are no hillsides to build into!

It's hard to describe the immensity of the works here, either the statues, the shrines, or the waterworks. Dewa and I cleared some leaves that were blocking some of the water flow in one area. It was satisfying to see water starting to flow again. This temple must have been incredible when it was first built.

After climbing back up the huge stone stairs to get back to the car, we stopped for a cold drink, then headed toward the volcano. On the way, we stopped at an agricultural area, where they grow and display many of the food plants of the area and allow one to sample some of the product (and buy some, of course!).

We saw arabica and robusta coffee trees, cacao, vanilla, papaya, jackfruit, snakeskin fruit, cinnamon, pepper, turmeric, ginger, lemon grass and more. We got to try some of their cocoa and coffees, and also some lemon and ginger teas. They also served us some tamarillo and the snakeskin fruit. The former isn't all that interesting; inoffensively flavored, but nothing special, The snakeskin fruit is really quite good, and the skin of the fruit really resembles snake skin. The snake tree is also really interesting. It has huge, sharp thorns all along the trunk and branches.

They also had several Asian palm civets on site. These are the animals that eat coffee cherries, then pass the seeds through undigested in their feces. Apparently, such beans make some kind of incredible, rare, expensive coffee called luwak coffee. Yet another reason I don't think I'll be taking up drinking coffee.

OK, finally to the volcano. Bali has several volcanoes in the middle of the island. We were sitting on the rim of the caldera of one ancient one, Batur, where at least one secondary cone has grown up in the middle. The view from our restaurant was quite stunning: we ate at a counter overlooking the volcanoes and the caldera. We could see the results of two relatively recent eruptions, within the last 15-20 years. The buffet was decent, but the view was great.

I've left out more details, but as you can see, it was another typical vacation day for our family. We went to a couple of bookstores and bought some reading material for the trip home,based on recommendations from the ex-pats on the boat last week.

Tonight, a nice dinner at a highly-recommended restaurant, then tomorrow, a little down time before we start heading home. We have a couple more touristy stops to make, too, so I'm sure it will be yet another full day.

My Friends

Yesterday, our river rafting guide was pretty much putting on a show, spinning the raft, rocking it, steering us under waterfalls, and so on. I described him as one part river guide, two parts clown, which probably isn't too far off.

But the thing I just realized this morning is that I found it really irritating as he did all those things, not because he did them (they were fun!), but because always as he did them, he would laugh and say "Sorry, sorry my friends!" Now, he doesn't know us, and probably can't remember our names (just as I can't recall his), and it's all a part of the act. But that repeated phrase, "my friends," just rubbed me wrong.

And this morning I remembered why: it's a catch phrase of a certain U.S. Senator from Arizona who is running for president, and I am not, not, not looking forward to plunking back into the middle of a presidential election campaign when I get home. Ugh.

One thing I also realized is that after the ride, as we were walking back up from the river, we actually struck up a conversation with our guide, and despite his limited English, he didn't use the "my friends" tic except when giving his canned directions on where to go or sit, how to board the truck, etc. It's part of the act, and only part of the act.

I'm just guessing that John McCain doesn't address his actual friends as "my friends," either. Just a thought.