Friday was one of those nights where the work hangover renders you useless. By useless, I mean somebody else cooked for us, we stared at the TV, and then we went to bed.
On Saturday we went to church, which was followed by fellowship at our house with Tim, Paul, and Mary. In addition to the human element, fellowship included eggs, potatoes, bacon, and donuts. Later in the day my parents arrived and we spent the rest of the day at our house.
On Sunday we toured the state capitol. Very nice. The capitol designed by Cass Gilbert and completed around 1905 at a cost of $4.5 million dollars. The structure features marble from Vermont, Georgia, Italy, France, Greece, and Egypt. If the capitol were built today I imagine it would somewhat less extravagant; the tour guide would be telling you about the craftmanship of the joint compound spread over the drywall. The capitol has a rathskeller, which is a cool word for a basement restaurant/tavern. Literally it means cellar council. After exploring the capitol we visited Garrison Keillor's bookstore called Common Good on Selby and Western in St. Paul. I bought a book of poems by Alex Lemon called Mosquito. Marye's mom joined us and we went to dinner at the Barbary Fig on Grand Avenue, where we saw Lucy. As if dinner were not satisfying enough, we ate cake at Cafe Latte.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Economist Picks
Chinese business
Truth from facts
Israel and the Jews
Diaspora blues
Second thoughts about the Promised Land
Venezuela
With Marx, Lenin and Jesus Christ
Health care
Pyramid power
Chinese accounting
Cultural revolution
Buttonwood
Oil's not well
America's money-transfer business
Check for cheque-cashers
Economics focus
How good is the World Bank's research
Neuroeconomics
The triump of unreason?
(my nucleus accumbens made me do it)
Truth from facts
Israel and the Jews
Diaspora blues
Second thoughts about the Promised Land
Venezuela
With Marx, Lenin and Jesus Christ
Health care
Pyramid power
Chinese accounting
Cultural revolution
Buttonwood
Oil's not well
America's money-transfer business
Check for cheque-cashers
Economics focus
How good is the World Bank's research
Neuroeconomics
The triump of unreason?
(my nucleus accumbens made me do it)
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Weekend Update
It was an eventful weekend. I bottled 27 1/2 bottles of Italian Pinot Grigio. It tastes good. And apparently the isinglass helped clarify the wine nicely. Isinglass is made from the air bladders of fishes, such as the sturgeon. The word comes from the Dutch word huizenblas, which I think literally means house of the bladder.
Marye and I watched our first movie of the year: Apollo 13. Before the movie, we ate dinner at the Town Talk Diner on Lake Street. I ate a half-pound burger, garlic fries, and a chocolate shake. Yes.
On Saturday we went cross country skiing in Minneapolis for the first time ever. We completed two 4.1km loops at the Hiawatha public golf course, which is next to Lake Nokomis. The cost to ski is $3 or $15 for a season pass. Hiawatha is flat, a good place for me to become more acquainted with my big feet. I always enjoy being outdoors in the winter when the sky is blue, the sun warms your body, the wind is calm, and the temperature is around 17 degrees. After skiing, we stopped at a Baker's Wife and bought many tasty pastries. Good times. In the evening we had people over for a chili dinner. Then we progressed to the Town Hall Brewery, where I consumed a sampler: Black H2O, Masala Mama IPA (cask and keg), Bright Spot, Wee Heavy, and Retreating Darkness. We culminated the night by visiting the Nomad World Pub. The three bands we heard were the Casados, Brass Kings, and Chris Koza. The Casados were a young married couple from Champaign, Illinois. The husband played guitar and sang and the wife played the harmonium - sweet. They were very honest and provided me with a dose of contrast, which is good. The Brass Kings consisted of a fiddle, washboard, steel guitar, and wash tub bass. The wash tub was turned upside down and had a piece of rope extending from the bottom of the tub to the top of a mop that served as the back of the instrument. The bass player wore work gloves, plucked the rope, and pressed the rope against the mop handle to change the pitch. Awesome. Then, in an effort to remind me I am old, Chris Koza started after midnight. It was fun.
Sunday was all about being lazy, which naturally included watching several hours of football americano and reading the Economist during commercials. Before indulging in one of the seven deadly sins, I went to church and then Marye and I went to the Longfellow Grill for brunch.
Marye and I watched our first movie of the year: Apollo 13. Before the movie, we ate dinner at the Town Talk Diner on Lake Street. I ate a half-pound burger, garlic fries, and a chocolate shake. Yes.
On Saturday we went cross country skiing in Minneapolis for the first time ever. We completed two 4.1km loops at the Hiawatha public golf course, which is next to Lake Nokomis. The cost to ski is $3 or $15 for a season pass. Hiawatha is flat, a good place for me to become more acquainted with my big feet. I always enjoy being outdoors in the winter when the sky is blue, the sun warms your body, the wind is calm, and the temperature is around 17 degrees. After skiing, we stopped at a Baker's Wife and bought many tasty pastries. Good times. In the evening we had people over for a chili dinner. Then we progressed to the Town Hall Brewery, where I consumed a sampler: Black H2O, Masala Mama IPA (cask and keg), Bright Spot, Wee Heavy, and Retreating Darkness. We culminated the night by visiting the Nomad World Pub. The three bands we heard were the Casados, Brass Kings, and Chris Koza. The Casados were a young married couple from Champaign, Illinois. The husband played guitar and sang and the wife played the harmonium - sweet. They were very honest and provided me with a dose of contrast, which is good. The Brass Kings consisted of a fiddle, washboard, steel guitar, and wash tub bass. The wash tub was turned upside down and had a piece of rope extending from the bottom of the tub to the top of a mop that served as the back of the instrument. The bass player wore work gloves, plucked the rope, and pressed the rope against the mop handle to change the pitch. Awesome. Then, in an effort to remind me I am old, Chris Koza started after midnight. It was fun.
Sunday was all about being lazy, which naturally included watching several hours of football americano and reading the Economist during commercials. Before indulging in one of the seven deadly sins, I went to church and then Marye and I went to the Longfellow Grill for brunch.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
New Content on Our Website
I added Lists and Recipes to our website.
Lists will track restaurants where we have dined, movies we have seen, and books I have read.
Recipes provides links to pdf version of recipes I have tried. At the moment, all of them are from one vegetarian cookbook. I encourage you to try the vegetable moussaka.
Lists will track restaurants where we have dined, movies we have seen, and books I have read.
Recipes provides links to pdf version of recipes I have tried. At the moment, all of them are from one vegetarian cookbook. I encourage you to try the vegetable moussaka.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Economist Picks
The United Nations
-A chance for a safer world
-Mission impossible?
-Call the blue helmets
Saddam Hussein
-The blundering dictator
Emerging Markets
-The global rusher
Obesity and Bacteria
-Greedy guts?
Here are some excerpts:
The new secretary-general of the UN: Ban Ki-moon.
Some of the worlds problems: Rising nuclear demons in Iran and North Korea, a haemorrhaging wound in Darfur, unending violence in the Middle East, looming environmental disaster, escalating international terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the spread of HIV/AIDS.
When the UN was created in 1945, its founder-nations—the four main victors of the second world war, America, Britain, China and Russia, plus France—allocated to themselves the only five permanent seats, with veto powers, on what was then an 11-seat Security Council. The other members, all elected by the General Assembly, held two-year non-renewable seats without a veto. Since then, the number of the UN's member states has almost quadrupled from 51 to 192, two-thirds of them in the developing world. Yet apart from the addition of four more non-permanent seats in 1965, membership of the Security Council, the only UN body whose decisions are binding, has remained unchanged. The system is not only undemocratic, anachronistic and unfair, but also—as Paul Kennedy, professor of history at Yale, suggests in his new book, “The Parliament of Man”—outrageous. Yet it cannot be changed without inviting a veto from one of the very nations whose powers might be diminished.
poverty, mortality, illiteracy
Thanks to an overhaul of the organisation's department of humanitarian affairs and much better co-ordination with NGOs in the field, the UN's once shambolic relief operations are now regarded as second to none. Around 30m people in some 50 countries currently depend on its services for survival.
Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary-general, liked to say that the UN is the only fire brigade that must go out and buy a fire engine before it can respond to an emergency.
* * *
Saddam's rule coincided with a huge surge in oil revenues. During the 1970s, a relatively peaceful interlude when he exercised real control as second-in-command to a weak president, dozens of ambitious projects swiftly created a first-class infrastructure of expressways, power lines and social services. In neighbouring countries, the oil boom generated garish consumption and commission billionaires. Iraqis could fairly claim that their national wealth had been used instead to create a broad, home-owning middle class, the symbol of which was the “Brazili”, a stripped-down Volkswagen bought by the million from Brazil. Generous state subsidies lifted even the very poor out of need. Corruption was unknown.
* * *
When Thailand's introduction of capital controls sent its stockmarket plunging a few days before Christmas, you could have been forgiven for thinking, “Here we go again”. It is almost ten years since the start of the Asian financial crisis, when capital flight on a huge scale caused financial markets and economies in the region to collapse. The problem that Thailand and other Asian countries face today, however, is the exact opposite: how to stop capital flowing in.
-A chance for a safer world
-Mission impossible?
-Call the blue helmets
Saddam Hussein
-The blundering dictator
Emerging Markets
-The global rusher
Obesity and Bacteria
-Greedy guts?
Here are some excerpts:
The new secretary-general of the UN: Ban Ki-moon.
Some of the worlds problems: Rising nuclear demons in Iran and North Korea, a haemorrhaging wound in Darfur, unending violence in the Middle East, looming environmental disaster, escalating international terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the spread of HIV/AIDS.
When the UN was created in 1945, its founder-nations—the four main victors of the second world war, America, Britain, China and Russia, plus France—allocated to themselves the only five permanent seats, with veto powers, on what was then an 11-seat Security Council. The other members, all elected by the General Assembly, held two-year non-renewable seats without a veto. Since then, the number of the UN's member states has almost quadrupled from 51 to 192, two-thirds of them in the developing world. Yet apart from the addition of four more non-permanent seats in 1965, membership of the Security Council, the only UN body whose decisions are binding, has remained unchanged. The system is not only undemocratic, anachronistic and unfair, but also—as Paul Kennedy, professor of history at Yale, suggests in his new book, “The Parliament of Man”—outrageous. Yet it cannot be changed without inviting a veto from one of the very nations whose powers might be diminished.
poverty, mortality, illiteracy
Thanks to an overhaul of the organisation's department of humanitarian affairs and much better co-ordination with NGOs in the field, the UN's once shambolic relief operations are now regarded as second to none. Around 30m people in some 50 countries currently depend on its services for survival.
Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary-general, liked to say that the UN is the only fire brigade that must go out and buy a fire engine before it can respond to an emergency.
* * *
Saddam's rule coincided with a huge surge in oil revenues. During the 1970s, a relatively peaceful interlude when he exercised real control as second-in-command to a weak president, dozens of ambitious projects swiftly created a first-class infrastructure of expressways, power lines and social services. In neighbouring countries, the oil boom generated garish consumption and commission billionaires. Iraqis could fairly claim that their national wealth had been used instead to create a broad, home-owning middle class, the symbol of which was the “Brazili”, a stripped-down Volkswagen bought by the million from Brazil. Generous state subsidies lifted even the very poor out of need. Corruption was unknown.
* * *
When Thailand's introduction of capital controls sent its stockmarket plunging a few days before Christmas, you could have been forgiven for thinking, “Here we go again”. It is almost ten years since the start of the Asian financial crisis, when capital flight on a huge scale caused financial markets and economies in the region to collapse. The problem that Thailand and other Asian countries face today, however, is the exact opposite: how to stop capital flowing in.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Resolutions
The new year is an opportunity to share with others the directions I am going. Here are a few areas of knowledge I have been pursuing and will continue to pursue:
1. PHP and MySQL Web Development
PHP is a free programming language and MySQL is a free database. I've already learned a little HTML and I've learned a little about CSS. I need to learn how PHP and MySQL communicate with each other. I know enough about databases that MySQL will be easy, but the PHP learning curve will be steeper. I want to create an e-commerce site and I want to create a few applications for things I do at work.
2. Chemistry
I like textbooks. And observing life in relation to elemental properties provides a great deal of fascination and satisfaction to me.
3. Certified Hazardous Materials Manager (CHMM)
At some point in the future I hope to become a chum, not for the initials at the end of my name but because I think the base of knowledge necessary for the distinction will benefit me in my work duties.
4. Feynman Lectures on Physics
Who doesn't want to know more about physics, especially electricity and heat.
5. Dutch
This resolution is very susceptible to failure. While I have good intentions, my guess is that my proficiency will remain only with formalities, food, and beer.
6. Economist
This weekly magazine is my commuting literature. Good stuff. I think I will be a subscriber for life.
7. Books
I want to read a few more books than last year. I just finished reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I also finished Nostromo by Joseph Conrad.
1. PHP and MySQL Web Development
PHP is a free programming language and MySQL is a free database. I've already learned a little HTML and I've learned a little about CSS. I need to learn how PHP and MySQL communicate with each other. I know enough about databases that MySQL will be easy, but the PHP learning curve will be steeper. I want to create an e-commerce site and I want to create a few applications for things I do at work.
2. Chemistry
I like textbooks. And observing life in relation to elemental properties provides a great deal of fascination and satisfaction to me.
3. Certified Hazardous Materials Manager (CHMM)
At some point in the future I hope to become a chum, not for the initials at the end of my name but because I think the base of knowledge necessary for the distinction will benefit me in my work duties.
4. Feynman Lectures on Physics
Who doesn't want to know more about physics, especially electricity and heat.
5. Dutch
This resolution is very susceptible to failure. While I have good intentions, my guess is that my proficiency will remain only with formalities, food, and beer.
6. Economist
This weekly magazine is my commuting literature. Good stuff. I think I will be a subscriber for life.
7. Books
I want to read a few more books than last year. I just finished reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I also finished Nostromo by Joseph Conrad.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
The Arbiter Says It's New
Happy New Year humans!
I am currently reading "The Autobiography of Malcolm X".
Malcolm X lived from 1925 to 1965.
In a similar theme, here are some other authors and books I have read:
Frederick Douglas (1818-1895)
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas
W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963)
The Souls of Black Folks
Richard Wright (1908-1960)
Native Son
Black Boy
Ralph Ellison (1913-1994)
Invisible Man
I am currently reading "The Autobiography of Malcolm X".
Malcolm X lived from 1925 to 1965.
In a similar theme, here are some other authors and books I have read:
Frederick Douglas (1818-1895)
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas
W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963)
The Souls of Black Folks
Richard Wright (1908-1960)
Native Son
Black Boy
Ralph Ellison (1913-1994)
Invisible Man
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