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November 30, 2005
Illness, part II
Curiously the headache I had this afternoon closely resembled those from earlier this year around the time of the Lyon marathon, headaches relieved by Dr. Handtschoewercker when he clamped down on the back of my skull and then released his grip to push through whatever obstruction was preventing proper flow of blood.
I wonder if that's related to my sinuses and ears. My sinuses and ears have been troublesome for so long it seems normal to have a stuffed up feeling.
Posted by Mark at 08:39 PM | TrackBack
Illness
This is the second time I've been ill on a day off. It's as though it were planned. Don't recall the last time I called in sick, although I did leave early one afternoon last year or the year before last when coming down with stomach flu.
Woke up this morning feeling like I couldn't quite catch my breath, and I still feel like that. Weak. Decided I couldn't go running this morning, and don't think I'll go this afternoon. Slept after lunch but woke up feeling just as tired.
Posted by Mark at 03:02 PM | TrackBack
Bladder control
This morning I went out to clean off the cars. Somebody four-legged has great bladder control. You could see that in the snow. It looked like he'd climbed atop the hood of my car and applied urine with an eyedropper so he wouldn't use too much and wouldn't miss any spots. Then he proceeded to cover another 3-4 square yards of snow along the edge of the yard in the same manner.
Before it snowed and then warmed up enough for the animals to go out during the night I didn't realize that marking one's territory was similar to painting one's living room. For some reason it seemed like a few strategically-placed odors were all it took. Guess that was naively anthropomorphic thinking.
Posted by Mark at 08:47 AM | TrackBack
November 29, 2005
Organic cereal vs. sugar cereal
This morning I sat down to a bowl of organic cereal, made with 12% quinoa. Not sure why Nathalie bought it. This was the second bowl from the box, which was empty at that point. Not only that but also the cereal didn't taste that good. It reminded me of a joke Woody Allen told in Annie Hall about two women eating in a cafeteria or some cheap restaurant:
"The food's terrible here!""Yes, and such small portions!"
Allen's character said that joke's about life. The whole story's also in that organic cereal.
The message is that to get something that's good for you requires extra investment, and it won't be as pleasant as giving in to your childish urge to eat a sugar cereal (now made with whole wheat). You have to suffer more to get something good; you have to work for it. And once you get it, it'll be disappointing.
Since few end up eating the organic cereal, it'll remain a niche for masochists. It's obviously pointless. Just give in. You're not really doing yourself any good anyway in the long run. There Is No Alternative.™
Occasionally we do run into a case where the only choice is one or the other, true or false. Those cases however are not only rare, they are also tightly constrained. Most complex systems have many degrees of freedom. You see this turn up even in systems built strictly with true or false, like computer programs with feature creep, bugs, too many options.
So what about most of our human systems? The organic cereal vs. sugar cereal question remains an oversimplification.
Posted by Mark at 09:29 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Worldaround electricity, etc.
Jon Udell's radio blog from today suggests Web 3.0 activities like negotiating your own electicity sources and your own air taxi to wherever you're flying. He'd written about these things way back in 2004 and 2002.
Bucky Fuller proposed a solution in his 1980 book Critical Path. Back then we weren't all going to have to run personal Enrons. The idea was more that we already had the technology, 25 years ago and earlier, to build a worldaround electric grid with infinitely more upside than being free, "To expose my electricity consumption to price-sensitive management both by me and by a management service."
Posted by Mark at 09:10 PM | TrackBack
How to lower unemployment
As everyone knows, but nobody says out loud, the primary mission of the French ANPE is to reduce the numbers of people registered as unemployed... by whatever means necessary. Basically the most difficult way of getting you out of the stats is finding you a job, so they don't try to do that. It's considerably easier to eliminate you by having you jump through silly bureaucratic hoops until you give up or get eliminated for getting caught up in one of the hoops.
Nathalie worked 7 hours this month. That's not yet enough for her to be completely off the roll. So the first thing they tried, since they know from the information they required earlier that she's a mother of three children who are at home all Wednesday, was to set up a mandatory meeting in the middle of a Wednesday. They claim it's impossible to change the meeting time once it's arranged. By definition you are not employed, so therefore your schedule is wide open. They don't even have to ask you before requiring your presence at a certain time.
Another way they get you is to make it technically difficult to get the papers you must have in order to prove that you jumped through the useless hoops. Assedic.fr has some unpleasant features, such as a useless pop-up on the cover page that Firefox of course blocks by default, and scrolling text that gets garbled in Firefox. If you're out of work on the dole but want to be able to use the site, you still have to pay the Microsoft tax.
But they outdo themselves on the page that handles getting a version of the monthly declaration you need to avoid getting thrown off the list. You do your declaration online, then they generate a PDF for your printing. Unfortunately neither Adobe Acrobat nor xpdf can actually read or print the content of the generated file. And oh, by the way, you can only go through the process and generate the file once.
When you contact their tech support, they tell you how to configure your browser to accept the pop-up.
Posted by Mark at 08:42 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Robert Fisk on the Middle East
Miguel de Icaza posted a link to a talk by Robert Fisk, who covers the Middle East for The Independent. (Bio from Wikipedia)
Unlike NGF proteins, the topics are such that everyone has an opinion or two. Most of us have lots of opinions on whole ranges of subjects. The corresponding value of those opinions due to the law of supply and demand is predictably low. Fisk however seems to have spent considerable time and effort examining some situations up close. What's good is that most of what he provides in this talk are facts, i.e. he's a revisionist.
Posted by Mark at 05:40 PM | TrackBack
In search of
Another good article today, this time in the Column Two blog, about intranet search. Take the "few practical steps" from this one, cross it with my last post, and see what you get.
Posted by Mark at 03:06 PM | TrackBack
Public beta
WSJ.com has an article with one of the best quotes I've seen in a while, concerning public beta software:
"I deplore it as a consumer; I admire it as a marketing professional," said Peter Sealey, a marketing professor at the University of California at Berkeley and former chief marketing officer at Coca-Cola Co. "I can't come up with anything else in the entire marketing world where marketers knowingly introduce a flawed or inadequate product [and] it helps grow your user base."
Somehow professor Sealey manages to explain the fundamental design problem of our civilization in only two sentences. It took Philip K. Dick a whole book.
Posted by Mark at 02:56 PM | TrackBack
Kudos to subversion
Recently I changed my password at work, the definitive version of which is stored centrally. I'd rather have one oft-changed password stored distributively, but we're still on Web 1.0.
After I did that, my mail knew to ask me, and my browser usually knew to ask me, but lots of applications that stored my password somewhere for their own purposes didn't. cvs was one of those applications. Maybe that's fixed in a more recent version, but I don't care to go upgrade my version just for that. subversion on the other hand did know, and prompted for the new password. How useful.
Posted by Mark at 01:33 PM | TrackBack
32:07/141
Gentle 6 1/4 km with Joanne, Nigel, and Phil over wet ground.
Posted by Mark at 01:22 PM | TrackBack
November 28, 2005
Infatuation and NGF proteins
The Register is running an article about scientific findings that love-related brain chemicals dwindle after about a year. It was probably faster than that when you were a teenager.
The researchers found that those starting a relationship experienced increased levels of nerve growth factor (NGF) proteins, which causes sweaty palms and the butterflies...Levels of the NGF protein in the 39 people (out of 58) still in the same new relationship after a year had reduced to base-line levels.
Nerve growth factor proteins? Sounds like something good for you, like something that would make you smarter.
Posted by Mark at 08:42 PM | TrackBack
Broadband subscriptions up in Europe
BBC News has an article about the boom in home broadband access in Europe. Apparently the boom's predicted not to last, with saturation coming when 60% of households have broadband. Maybe wireline services will top out at that sort of penetration.
This morning I was sitting across the aisle in the train from a teenage boy watching a music video on his mobile phone. My guess is that if we get to accessible wireless broadband, then the saturation point won't be 60% of households, but closer to whatever the penetration rate is for mobile phone-style devices, of which people may have several, such as a phone, a video device (personal TV set), a webtop, maybe a small digital music device, and things I've not thought of yet.
Posted by Mark at 08:22 PM | TrackBack
32:40/165
Back to the station in Gières. Thought I was late leaving work, so I ran fairly hard for these 8 km. It's a drag running in the snow at night. I'm sure 5 heart beats per minute are lost to the stress of feeling like I'm going to twist my ankle, step in a deep puddle, or slip and fall.
When I got to the station I had to take off my hat, gloves, neck warmer, thin windbreaker. The temperature was above freezing. I was a steam machine.
Posted by Mark at 08:10 PM | TrackBack
36:18/157
Jogged into work from the station in Gières. Commuting on foot looks incompatible with what I should be doing in terms of training, unfortunately. After reading up on the subject Saturday and Sunday, I'm planning base training with a focus of two 90+ minute runs per week and almost no speedwork. My aim is to build a solid aerobic base on which to add stamina and speed in the spring and summer.
Posted by Mark at 09:36 AM | TrackBack
November 27, 2005
Balloon ascent
Mom and Dana have moved into their new home. Mom shot a picture through the trees outside her window of this balloon lifting off. Diane thinks it looks good.
She also thinks she weighs "100 kilometers," which she claims is a lot. She's now riding her mom's exercise bike to get that weight down to 99 or 98 km.
Posted by Mark at 03:19 PM | TrackBack
Double or nothing
The New York Times online -- registration required, with some constraints that render it impossible for me ever to recall either my ID or my password -- is running an article about pension funds starting to push real money into hedge funds. If you thought having your index fund manager buy GOOG was a problem, you must not have money in a pension fund. According to the article, pension funds account for "40 percent of all institutional money," and their investments in hedge funds are growing exponentially.
Of course the author has to write something about how safe this all is, but it's driven by reasoning like that of the managers at General Motors:
The company is using hedge funds, along with other unconventional investments, in hopes of getting something close to stock market returns without the market's volatility, Mr. Dubrowski said. To pay out the $6.5 billion G.M. owes to its retirees each year, the pension fund must produce annual returns of a little more than 7 percent. Otherwise, G.M. will have to dip into the fund's principal. At current interest rates, G.M. cannot get those returns with bond investments, and if it tries to juice returns by betting on the stock market, it will have to cope with market swings.
Translation: We didn't know how to manage our pension fund, so now we're playing Ponzi games and buying lottery tickets in the hope that we'll be working somewhere else when stuff hits the fan.
My guess is that hedge funds play an appropriate role when they're used as hedges. In other words, when they're used to balance the risk of other investments supposed to provide the expected gains. Inevitably though they've given off the strong scent of tulip bulbs, and that scent has been blow into the noses of people "managing" your retirement money. Watch what happens as a few of them come back with early high returns.
(Early large winnings correlate with addiction to gambling.)
Posted by Mark at 09:47 AM | TrackBack
La chanson de Colombano
Ludo lent me this book, which is set in and around the village of Chiomonte over the Italian border from here. Alessandro Perissinotto wrote La chanson de Colombano after investigating this odd mountain song about Colombano digging a high canal, narrowly escaping lynching for the alleged murder of a family. Investigating the folklore of the mountains around here, Perissinotto'd heard an old woman sing the partially forgotten stanzas, and wanted to know more.
His investigations eventually resulted in this detective story. A young judge named Ippolito investigates the murders, then the reasons why some powerful folks might want Colombano dead. The perfect story for late fall, with winter descending from the mountains.
If you want to find out what happens, you'll have to read the Italian or the French translation. Amazon.com lists only two books by Perissinotto, Il testo multimediale and L'anno che uccisero Rosetta.
Posted by Mark at 09:12 AM | TrackBack
Bitter blue
We're halfway around the world from the sunrises in Kauai. There's nothing I have to tone down in these photos. The colors are clear and cold this time of year.
Bitter blue dawn this morning, and the sky remains nearly cloudless. All the heat seems to have radiated away into the sky. On the porch we'd left some crumbs for the birds. They must be looking for somewhere to warm up.
Yesterday the garage door was ajar. When Tim went down to get his boots and sled gear, he left the door to the garage open, and a bird managed to fly inside the house. It went to Emma's room where the morning sun comes in through the window. Nathalie says that already happened this week, and the bird crapped all over Emma's room. Maybe it was the same little bird, which must've been a male. He had some brightly colored yellow and blue feathers.
Posted by Mark at 08:58 AM | TrackBack
November 26, 2005
Music for running, part IV
In the dark and the cold, either you listen to music that takes you away from the conditions outside, or you listen to music that takes you even deeper into the dark, the cold, the winter nightmares. Larks' Tongues in Aspic is music of the latter kind.
Bill Bruford is reputed to have left Yes for King Crimson to explore the darker side of music. For a long time this album would've been classified as progressive rock, but it always strikes me as regression back to the time of Hieronymous Bosch and the inquisition.
What does that have to do with running? In normal, pleasant running conditions, probably nothing. It fits, however, with cold, stumbling, fog, gray light, and the general menace of early winter snow.
Posted by Mark at 03:04 PM | TrackBack
First snow, part II
Nath hadn't taken any still pictures of the snow. This is a quick one out the window upstairs.
Diane helped to put together a snowman this morning at school. He wasn't very high, but plenty round. Tim's now off to Florent's. He took his sled. We had trouble keeping him inside long enough to eat some lunch.
Posted by Mark at 02:09 PM | TrackBack
1:33:44/150
A relatively slow 19.6 km (12.2 mi) run this morning on the frozen streets and sidewalks of Pontcharra. Had to take small steps in spots to avoid falling on the ice.
In fact I did fall down, twice, but not during the run. Both slips were at the train station where I was buying my ticket for next week. I'm thinking of donating a bag of salt to the SNCF.
Posted by Mark at 02:04 PM | TrackBack
November 25, 2005
What I missed
This looks like the commute I missed this morning by taking the bike and the train instead of the car. Of course it took me more than twice as long to ride as it usually does, but there were lots of folks coming into work late. I think Christopher spent about 75 minutes going 10 km.
Too bad Nathalie didn't take any still pictures of the kids. They apparently played in the yard all morning. She shoveled out the driveway... a couple of times. Quite a bit of snow fell during the morning.
The folks who own businesses that depend on downhill skiing are probably feeling pretty optimistic at this point.
Posted by Mark at 08:29 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
10:15/159
This was the second part of the run home, from the station in Pontcharra up to the house.
I notice both running times are quicker than the corresponding times to ride the distance in the snow.
Posted by Mark at 08:20 PM | TrackBack
33:47/172
The back roads were still slick with ice and snow, so I ran home. This is the time running to the station next to the university. My heart rate was high for 8 km in this amount of time. I was afraid of sliding on the ice and falling on my knee or something. I was also running through snow for 1/3 of the distance.
Posted by Mark at 08:18 PM | TrackBack
First snow
The kids were delighted. 6 inches of snow this morning at our house in Barraux. I hadn't put the snow tires on Nathalie's car. Didn't even clean out the driveway. So they got to stay home from school and are probably out right now building snowmen.
My time to the train station from our house was 15 minutes. Luckily the train was late. I left 10 minutes early, but that wasn't enough. When the roads are clear it takes me under 4 minutes to get to the station.
From the station in Gières the ride was about 40 minutes. As long is it would take to run the same distance. I made fairly good progress along the Isère in fresh snow, but once I got to the road and the ruts created by cars, progress slowed severly.
Posted by Mark at 09:48 AM | TrackBack
November 24, 2005
Happy Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving to people celebrating in the US.
Tim said he wanted pumpkin pie. I might try to make some this weekend. Not sure I want to go to the trouble just to have him turn up his nose at the finished product.
Posted by Mark at 08:34 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
1 fix, 3 to go
A few days ago I listed the weak points identified when riding in the cold. So far I have one semi-fix, which is to wear not only a thin cap under my helmet, but also to wear a stretch fabric tubular garment around my neck and chin. Many cold weather riders suggest balaclavas. I want to keep my mouth uncovered, partly to breathe, partly to keep from having a sopping wet balaclava when I arrive.
I tried long underwear beneath my tights for knees and theoretically for ankles. That was a bad choice. This evening I was late, riding hard with the long underware pinching my knees, leaving my ankles unprotected. It did nothing for the wind, either. At least it didn't bunch up around the crotch.
My gloves, rated to -5 C, just don't do it when the temperature goes down to around freezing. not sure what to do there. Maybe I need mittens.
I may need something for my eyes.
Posted by Mark at 08:17 PM | TrackBack
When the NFS server dies, part II
After the server with my $HOME came back, Gnome was doing some really weird stuff. Boy, is there ever lots of stuff you have to delete to get rid of Gnome and start over...
Posted by Mark at 02:44 PM | TrackBack
53:57/153
Around the lake with Jerome. 11 km total, with the very last km fast. Cold weather.
Posted by Mark at 02:33 PM | TrackBack
When the NFS server dies
When the NFS server dies and nothing can be read in my $HOME dir, my ability to get things accomplished at work grinds to a crawl. That's a sign that I'm still in the industrial part of the economy, rather than pure services.
If I were pure services, like a manager, I could continue with just browser, email, and phone access. I would create product documentation, but would only enable others to do so.
Posted by Mark at 10:57 AM | TrackBack
November 23, 2005
More thieves and liars
From the ISP providing DSL, I got email that started out this way:
Pour plus de transparence et de simplicité, Wanadoo fait évoluer ses Conditions Générales de Vente au 21 décembre 2005.
11 pages of legalese with no change bars. I probably do have the old version somewhere, so I could spend a weekend afternoon figuring out how what they're doing.
The root problem is, you have no choice. If you're just a normal individual, you remain naked and defenseless compared to those with lawyers. If you're an ISP, you hire a lawyer to protect you from your customers. If you're a big customer, you hire a lawyer to protect you from your suppliers... and your own customers. We do it to our customers as well, giving them reams of contractual crap they have to agree to before using our products.
Isn't the rule of law great? It used to be even worse, though. Now they take you to court rather than beating you up.
Posted by Mark at 10:46 PM | TrackBack
Taxing frequent flyers
BBC News online has an article mentioning French government approval of Jacques Chirac's plan to add a tax to plane tickets "to boost aid for the world's poor."
According to an earlier article:
The tax will contribute to the International Finance Facility for Immunisation, a body set up by donor countries to buy vaccines.
There doesn't seem to be anything long term in view. I wonder which pharmaceutical company's going to be selling those vaccines. Maybe people at Air France and KLM should've contributed more to Chirac's last campaign for reelection.
Posted by Mark at 10:15 PM | TrackBack
Dumping the shopping cart
Granted I live in France and want to read books in English, which makes me unusual. But I just dumped out my shopping cart at Amazon.com. The cost of the books was about $49, but the cost of shipping -- to receive things in 36 days -- was $23. It just seemed like too much.
Amazon.co.uk may be a better choice, though they seem to have an expensive shipping scheme for Western Europe. And banks are starting to award themselves commissions for currency trading done on your bank card.
For some reason the books I was looking at could be had in English at Amazon.fr... except that you pay double. Maybe it'll all be good to Amazon shareholders, since they'll eventually make money in shipping and handling. Doesn't make me want to buy their stock, at a P/E of about 40, nor buy anything from their stores.
Posted by Mark at 09:55 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Spellcheck duel
Jean Véronis examined the spellcheck capabilities of the French version of OpenOffice vs. the French version of Microsoft Word. It turns out that OpenOffice, the free-as-in-beer derivative of Sun's StarOffice product, does about as well as Word, which costs money. In fact, Microsoft Office 2003 Standard Edition seems to cost 400 euros at Amazon.fr. Hmm.
Posted by Mark at 03:24 PM | TrackBack
35:45/147
4 km easy with Phil, then picked up speed for 3 km. Cold day with snow flurries. Not too motivated.
Posted by Mark at 02:42 PM | TrackBack
November 22, 2005
Tired and cold
Although I slept from before 10 pm to 7 am this morning, I'm still lethargic. Maybe it's some sort of bug.
This is the first week it's been freezing cold since probably last winter. Maybe it's a question of adjusting to the season.
Posted by Mark at 02:18 PM | TrackBack
A compliment
Joachim came up to me after the presentation Monday to say I'd managed to do an interesting presentation on a boring subject. He thought that was commendable.
Nobody fell asleep. I wonder if they do fall asleep while reading my documentation.
Posted by Mark at 02:11 PM | TrackBack
30:54/132
6 1/4 km fun run with Stu. Feeling tired, cold, and sluggish today.
Posted by Mark at 02:08 PM | TrackBack
November 21, 2005
1:04:12/168
A little over 14 km as a tempo run.
Feels like my shoes combined with the current orthotics could be one of the causes of my cramps during the Grenoble marathon. After running the hard part of the tempo run, I had the same painful feeling around the left ankle that preceded the cramps.
Posted by Mark at 02:36 PM | TrackBack
Inconvenienced, part II
Looks like the strike's planned for only about 36 hours, at least on the line I take to work. The tough part riding in today was the cold. It's frigid out there. Even my knees were cold from the outset.
But at least I don't have to sit in traffic. Guess I'll be doing that tomorrow morning.
Posted by Mark at 08:58 AM | TrackBack
November 20, 2005
Inconvenienced
After having avoided the car 5 days in a row last week I might have to take the car to work this week. For an hour I've been looking for the lightweight, windproof hat I wear underneath my helmet. Without that riding at subzero temperatures will be truly, almost dangerously unpleasant.
Also there's a strike starting Monday night. I cannot determine from the information online which trains will be affected and for how long. There's a chance it wouldn't make sense to buy a ticket tomorrow, since I might only be able to use it Monday.
Posted by Mark at 08:58 PM | TrackBack
Parecon
You can read Michael Albert's book, Parecon, online. Although you probably won't when you see the subtitle is Life After Capitalism. Just ignore this blog entry.
Albert's book discusses his vision of a participatory economic system, parecon. Parecon relies on planning, rather than markets, to drive production and allocation. But not central planning. A parecon has every participant involved directly and iteratively in requesting, allocating, producing, and planning. Albert starts from the premises Hahnel reaches in ABCs of Political Economy about what we want from the economy, applying the principles to arrive at parecon. He further compares parecon to market, centrally planned, market socialist, and bioregionalist economies to demonstrate how parecon better fits the principles from which he went forth. Of course if you don't agree on the principles, you'll reach a different conclusion, but the principles themselves are fairly well defended in this book.
Albert then explains parecon for the non-economist covering ownership, councils, job complexes, remuneration, and allocation, also providing a hypothetical parecon to give body to the abstractions. This vision, like an external specification in software, doesn't describe everything. Indeed, since participation is the the core of the system, participants are not expected to follow the vision exactly, but instead to adapt it to their circumstances and preferences. So long as an implementation fits the vision (external specification), it's still a parecon. Another way of looking at it is to say there are lots of different recipes for pizza.
Finally Albert rebuts criticisms of parecon that he's encountered, addressing questions about productivity and efficiency, but also about whether parecon would be too invasive, too inflexible, out of touch with basic human nature, or somehow generally impossible to implement.
The very last point addresses my own criticism. Albert's proposing a significantly different economy from the ones we have today. In software, you'd say some of the backwards incompatibilities are going to put the brakes on widespread deployment. For example, from the chapter on ownership in a parecon:
In short, we simply remove ownership of the means of production as an economic consideration. Property in the form of means of production becomes a non-thing.
Not that the rest of parecon wouldn't, but getting to the point where means of production are not owned would probably be hard to achieve in practice. Not because it would in fact be hard to switch, but that people who stand to lose their existing privileges of ownership would likely resort to force to return to the former circumstances, and the people who own the means of production have overwhelmingly more force to apply.
At least coming up with a realistic implementation would be interesting work. I wonder how it's been prototyped.
Posted by Mark at 06:33 PM | TrackBack
On the move
Mom and Dana have been out of contact for the last couple of days. They're moving to their new home, and are probably at Evelyn's. We no doubt have Evelyn's telephone number somewhere, but I haven't called. Hope their move is going all right.
Posted by Mark at 06:31 PM | TrackBack
Working from home
A guy needs an office. With a padlock.
I was trying to finish up my slideware with two girls climbing on my desk, one little guy trying to get me to read about how to catch bees and to write out my part of his homework-related interview of me, the TV blaring some Disney movie, my wife asking me to decide which cooking utensils to buy, and to sign the kids notebooks from school. Meanwhile, I was supposed to be making lunch. Some of the time was less interruptful than that, but I'm not misrepresenting overall conditions.
Posted by Mark at 01:48 PM | TrackBack
November 19, 2005
Minister Azouz Begag asks for data on race
The French Minister of Equal Opportunities, Azouz Begag, is asking legislators to overturn a ban on collecting data about race and religion, according to a BBC News article. Dad was asking about race and how people see it here.
Opinions are all over the spectrum, I guess, as they are in the US. But there's an interesting bit in the article I didn't know:
At present not a single member of parliament from mainland France is of African or Arab origin - although an estimated 10% of people are.
That's one of those telling little coincidences, like the fact that far fewer than 50% of elected representatives are women. How you change that is another question entirely.
Posted by Mark at 05:54 PM | TrackBack
Homemade pizza
The kids' favorite meal to cook is homemade pizzas. We start with the dough.
About 1 1/2 c warm water 3 tbsp olive oil 1 tsp yeast 1 tsp salt About 4 1/2 c flour
Dissolve the yeast in the warm water with olive oil. Add 1/3 of the flour, and mix until smooth. Add the salt. The kids should still be able to stir the dough at this point. As you add more flour a cup at a time, it becomes too thick for them.
But they can help knead if they wash their hands first. You knead the dough on a floured board or counter until it becomes smooth, elastic, and sticky again. Our kids like to slap it, roll it into a ball, tear it into pieces, and so forth. Once kneaded, the dough needs to rise for at least an hour in a quiet place like a cool oven.
While waiting you can prepare the toppings. Over time I've learned not to add too many vegetables, meat, fish, or cheese to any particular pizza. Each topping goes a long way. Today we have:
4 fresh mushrooms 1 small onion A handful of green olives 2 3-oz. pieces fresh mozarrella 2 artichoke hearts 4 oz. sliced chorizo 4 small hunks cheese Grated swiss cheese Grated parmesan cheese 1 can pizza sauce Garlic powder Basil Oregano Olive oil
We might add some canned tuna if it looks like there aren't enough toppings. I slice everything, except for the grated cheese. Thinly sliced rich cheeses melt about as well as when grated.
I roll the pizza crusts out on the same floured counter where I did the kneading. We always make small personal pizzas for the children, so they can add their own toppings. Usually we have 3 small personal pizzas and two large round ones.
On each crust I spread the pizza sauce, then dust with parmesan, garlic, basil, and oregano before adding toppings. It seems to work better if you put the cheese on next, before the rest.
We cook these in our oven turned all the way up, preheated. It usually takes about 15 minutes, but that no doubt depends on your oven. Let them cool a minute or two before slicing. Enjoy.
Posted by Mark at 05:20 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Mountain biking with Tim
After lunch I accompanied Tim to his mountain biking club. Pierre suggested last night on the phone that I'd go with the bigger kids to keep them in line. They were getting a ride uphill to a parking area on the way to the Granier pass from Chapareillan. But another guy Pierre expected to show up didn't, and so I tagged along with him and the four younger boys, including Tim.
Probably just as well. I'm a timorous downhill mountain biker, and don't see the point of going only downhill. We stayed mostly on the flats down by the quarry in Pontcharra. Around the lakes were they excavate the gravel are bumpy trails the boys enjoy. Then we came back up the hill behind La Gache, the one to the north rather than up the road in front of our house. That trail brings you out on the other side of Fort Barraux.
That trail is quite steep and rocky. The boys ended up pushing their bikes before we even left the street. The road there looks to me like an excellent short, straight climb for intense hill repeats or intervals. But when you're under 10 you don't see it that way.
Emma's been at a birthday party, and Diane's been painting. Diane was calm enough that Nathalie could finish one of her frames around a photo of a little girl looking in a mirror. Time to pick Emma up soon.
Posted by Mark at 05:07 PM | TrackBack
1:02:16/160
Started this off as a gentle run around the fields outside La Gache, and gradually sped up. I ran past the frozen tobacco plants four times, each loop being about 3.5 km.
Posted by Mark at 05:04 PM | TrackBack
Slideware blues
This morning while Diane is rolling around watching TV, I'm doing slideware to present Monday morning at work. OpenOffice 2, Firefox screen captures, and The Gimp are my tools. Easy to work with.
But it's not going to be a screencast. How much longer would it take to do that instead? What tools should I use (that work on Solaris and Ubuntu)?
Posted by Mark at 10:47 AM | TrackBack
November 18, 2005
Inside the event horizon
On waking up this morning I was convinced our universe is inside the event horizon of a large black hole. It seemed the edge of the universe was our view of the event horizon, expanding as the black hole collapsed. Compared to time outside, our time had slowed to a crawl. We therefore saw the event horizon as receding quickly.
Time was curiously backwards in another way, however, since the big bang was in fact the flipside of a big crunch at the center of gravity of the black hole, the moment in which matter collapsed to infinite density and therefore could only decrease in density.
Then I started coming to my senses, figuring my mind was playing lazy tricks on me. It couldn't explain expansion in all directions at once without some center of gravity for the black hole. So my dream was wrong. But why was I dreaming about that?
Posted by Mark at 08:38 PM | TrackBack
About 100 km
This week I rode back and forth to the train, so about 100 km. My mountain bike doesn't have a bike computer attached at this point, so I don't have any stats. I agreed to accompany the kids tomorrow on their mountain bikes as well, so I'm getting in a fair amount of biking this week.
Posted by Mark at 08:31 PM | TrackBack
24:23/172
Fairly hard 6 1/4 km, punctuated by a bio break. I felt cold at 12:30 when I ran, so wanted to get it over with.
Posted by Mark at 08:26 PM | TrackBack
Icy ride
This is the first commute in on the train where I saw frost on the cars before leaving. Weak points (re)identified this morning:
- Face and neck are not covered
- Ankles get chilled as shoe covers ride down and tights ride up
- Gloves (supposedly rated to -5 C) inadequate
- Tights provide inadequate knee protection
The jacket and hat are great, however, although they both make me look even sillier than usual. Why didn't people double over with laughter when Superman came out dressed in royal blue tights and a flapping red cape?
Posted by Mark at 08:53 AM | TrackBack
November 17, 2005
Pigs in Heaven
Barbara Kingsolver's book, Pigs in Heaven, tells the story of several people who lost family struggling through many difficulties to get back to it. After all the non-fiction, science fiction, detective stories, stories by guys, it seemed like the story got off to a very slow start. Kingsolver spends a lot of time getting you involved in her characters.
Kingsolver does such a good job, however, at making you believe her characters and at getting you to appreciate them that you get drawn in anyway. You keep reading to find out how Annawake's going to help resolve Turtle's custody, whether Taylor's going to fight so hard she ends up putting her and Turtle's lives into jeopardy, whether Alice is going to declare herself Cherokee or not.
There's a strong family message amidst the characters, showing one case where the family can work out a thorny legal problem and save the emotional day in a way that allows potential adversaries to live happily ever after together. At the same time the family is getting exterminated by the legalistic, individualist, anti-family tendencies in the surrounding society.
You don't have to go all the way from white America to the Cherokee nation to see that sense of family disappearing. It was obvious the first time I met my wife's parents in their home town, that family looks quaint already to my generation. The episode I recall was years ago. We were eating at the kitchen table in Nath's parent's house. Michel and Colette were catching up with the gossip about everybody they knew in Desvres. They seemed genuinely interested, eager to know who was up to what. For a male American of my background, it was a visit to an alternate universe. So was this book.
Posted by Mark at 09:54 PM | TrackBack
50:18/164
Ran uphill with Joanne, Stu, Jerome. When I got halfway to Rochasson, I ran hard to Corenc. Good workout.
Posted by Mark at 03:50 PM | TrackBack
November 16, 2005
Why tagging is useless after the fact
When you're a writer, you have to write about something. As a reader, you must know that doesn't mean you have to read what gets written. You certainly don't have to believe what gets written.
C|Net has published an article called, "'Tagging' gives Web a human meaning." The author's smart enough to leave the question open as to whether tagging is really useful. But why even write the article?
Sure, tags can be useful if everybody at an event like baychi05 wants to pull their pictures together in one spot. In other words, it's great when people agree on something up front. It's always easier to organize things when people agree up front, isn't it?
But when you come back to search for something, you didn't know you wanted to look for it. That's what makes Google useful. It helps you find stuff no one knew at the time you were going to have to look for. And it's like a hash. No matter how much is out there, you go (almost) straight to what you wanted, even though you didn't know you wanted it until just now.
Tagging's no help there. I get to do it with my own files, my own email, my own blog entries. I still wish I could search my work files and email with Google. That's also why there are so many techie entries on this blog.
Posted by Mark at 04:59 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
29:15/151
6 1/4 km jog with Nigel this morning. Taking it fairly easy, but I notice from my heart rate that Nigel runs more quickly than some of my other jogging companions.
Posted by Mark at 12:54 PM | TrackBack
November 15, 2005
Surfing the anti-empire wave, part II
BBC News is running another story on the Chavez-Fox tiff. According to the article, only 5 of 34 nations' representatives are opposed to turning the Americas into a free-trade area.