The earth is flat?

Here's an article from BBC saying there are people who really believe that the Earth is flat and that there's a vast conspiracy to say that the earth is round.

"People are definitely prejudiced against flat-earthers," says John Davis, a flat earth theorist based in Tennessee.

Imagine!

George Quote

I've been quoting Einstein lately, and here's one from another genius near and dear to my heart.

"It's handy to have fingers." - G

News from NASA

OK, this is good stuff. First and very timely - there will be a solar eclipse tomorrow morning. It will appear full only in very northern places, like Greenland. It's not clear to me if it will be visible as a partial as far south as Chicago or not. Here's the site. (Admittedly, I found this out from my friend's blog - thanks, P.)

Secondly, water has been discovered and tested by the Phoenix rover on Mars.

While we're on the subject of NASA, here's one of my all time favorite pictures: Earth at Night.

Brazil: Country of Tomorrow

There's a bit of dark humor in Brazil that it is always the country of tomorrow, with the implication that tomorrow never seems to come. Here's an article in the NY Times saying that Brazil is experiencing an economic boom. Let's hope it's true at long last.

Obama at U of C

Here's an interesting article in today's NY Times about Obama's time at the University of Chicago's law school. My understanding is that the law school is pretty far to the right, but that by and large they support and like him.

Another Einstein Quote

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.

I'm working in an environment where people talk about programs and initiatives that are "metric-driven." I understand that it is useful to count things, but sometime it's just a bit much.

Semolina Cake

There was an article in a NY Times Magazine section about a month ago on semolina cakes that I'd left out for George to read. It had a Greek version and a French version. G's ideal version should have yogurt in it, so I've searched around and this one, with lemon from a blog called Cooking Adventures, sounds good to me.

I'll let you know how it is if we actually make it. I never bake, so odds are slim even though it sounds so tasty.

Einstein Quote

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.

English summer pudding

A few days ago I bought both red and white currants at a farmer's market and I did what anyone would do - I started looking for recipes for English summer pudding. And I found one on an English food blog called Becks & Posh. It's very simple, cook a bunch of mixed berries for just a few minutes with a bit of sugar then put into a bowl you've lined with white bread. Refrigerate for a few hours while weighted. Good stuff, especially with cream drizzled over it.

Water Footprint

Have you thought about your water footprint? Global water demand will increase by 40% in the next 20 years. 1 in 5 people in the world do not have access to clean water, and municipal water prices are only increasing, 27% in the US over the past 5 years, 48% in Canada.

So, spend $2 and put an aerator in your faucet, put a brick in your toilet tank, plant indigenous plants in your garden, don't worry about your grass.

So much attention on Afghanistan

Is Afghanistan suddenly everywhere in the news after about 4 years out of the news because Obama thinks it's important?

I'm beginning to wonder about the herd mentality of news organizations - a few years ago, everyone had a cover about avian flu, because everyone else did. It was sensational.

Now, everyone has a cover, or at least an article, on Afghanistan. It's been there all along. Was no one paying attention?

A roadside restaurant anywhere in the world

On the coastal road on the west side of the Peloponnesus in Greece, we stopped for the night in an unpromising village 15 kilometers outside the big, ugly port town looking for a hotel. We found quite a nice, modern guest house just above the municipal beach, with a view of the Ionian Sea and olive trees.

For dinner, the proprietor suggested either of the two tavernas on the main road through the village just 2 blocks away. Both had tables in the open air facing the road with the kitchens at the back. The one we chose was lit by an abundance of florescent lights, making it a pool of white in the black night that was otherwise broken mostly by headlights. As we sat down and ordered a very simple, very Greek dinner of souvlaki in pita it occurred to me that I had eaten at this same place by the dusty side of the road in Panama and in Brazil. Each time I’ve wondered, why would anyone want to eat along the side of the road with exhaust fumes and grit? Why wasn’t the restaurant designed with the outdoor seating to the side, or to the back, protected from the road by the building?

Is it that outdoor seating at the back would isolate the patrons from the people passing by? Is this type of set-up more conducive to drop-ins and impromptu gatherings, thereby benefiting the proprietors? If you can see as you pass by that a group of your friends have gathered for a meal or a drink, you’re likely to join them. If on the other hand they are hidden in the back, you may not realize they are there and therefore will not become another paying customer. Perhaps this outweighs any disadvantage that the patrons might want to be secluded from the hustle-bustle and grit. Besides, if that were the case, they might have just stayed home.

So, does such a roadside restaurant only exist in small communities where one is more likely to pass by and recognize other patrons? Or does it exist on thoroughfares where the outdoor roadside presence is advertising, letting passers-by know that a restaurant exists?

I do know that the ones I’ve eaten at tend to have simple, good fare. Perhaps nothing to write home about, but nothing that’s made me ill either.

There is also a different sense of private space in restaurants in much of Europe and Latin America than in the US or Britain. In the US few restaurants would allow people to wander into the restaurant or even any outdoor seating selling flowers, serenades or sunglasses, but sitting for lunch on a Greek Island the passing hawkers approached the diners both inside and outside. Is the restaurant more of a communal space in Europe and Latin America than it is in the US? And by communal space, I mean that it is accessible to all parts of the community, not just the customers.

Friedman on Energy

Once again, Thomas Friedman has it right. A few years ago, Bush announced that we're addicted to oil. Bush, for once, was right. But, instead of doing anything sensible about it, like putting real money behind alternative energy technology or extending the tax credits for solar, wind and geothermal, he refused to ask Detroit to increase their average mpg and has continued his love affair with the Saudis.

Now, just as he's preparing to leave office, he's trying to give his oil buddies two last gifts: he wants congress to allow drilling off-shore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which will do nothing to bring down oil prices before 2030, and he wants the Saudis to give us more oil in the short term to lower prices, increasing our dependence on foreign oil, which would help to kill alternative energy development at home.

Bush has never had an energy policy, except for the completely shady one drawn up behind closed doors with no names attached, early in his first term. Once again, no leadership, just crony-ism.

And I thought I was the only one feeling ADD...

Here's a great piece discussing the lack of attention and focus that people have in the workplace. I talks about how being distracted and then trying to shift back takes up 28% of an office worker's day. Some companies are also now implementing quiet, unwired rooms for people to use to focus and think.

What a revelation! I find myself answering emails and getting all the small things taken care of, without the time to think, plan and tackle the big stuff.

Most delicious snack ever

I went to a new restaurant in town, Graham Elliot, this week. It was pretty good, but by far the best thing was the popcorn they brought to the table instead of a bread basket. It had truffle oil and parmesean on it. I made it the very next day at home and it was just as good.

Easy, delicious, and you'll get it next time you come to a party.

Lion Cubs

Check out this webcam of new lion cubs at a Norwegian zoo. Very cute.

Great minds really don't think alike

There's a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any overlarge concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause.

  - PJ O'Rourke

Obama Abroad

There have been a couple of articles lately talking about how Barack Obama is seen abroad, especially now that he is the nominee.

Last week, Thomas Friedman wrote a piece called Obama on the Nile, discussing how Egyptians see Obama. They're stunned that an outsider could "allowed" to win the nomination. In Egypt, a Copt or a Shi'ite could never expect to become president. They're also pleased that someone with familiarity with Islam might be running the US, unlike the present clueless crowd.

Today, an article in the International Herald Tribune describes how blacks and Africans in France are finding hope in Obama's success. France has never thought it had a race problem in the way the US knows that it does - until a few years ago when the black and Arab kids in the suburbs of Paris exploded into riots. If you're of African or Arab descent in France, the glass ceiling is very low and those who can leave for England or elsewhere.

Ultimately, I think it's really interesting that the rest of the world cares about our politics in a way that we don't care, or know about any one else's. I suppose Americans knew when Blair left and Browne came in, and we noticed the election that brought in Sarkozy, but we didn't think about it very deeply. The rest of the world notices and cares about our politics.

Star-struck

I've never been one, even as a teenager, to have a favorite movie star, but there's something about Angelina Jolie. Is the bod? the Brad? the boldness to adopt kids from here and there? the way she seems to be so sure?

Vanity Fair has an interview with her this month.

Taxis & Brains - similar?

"my brain is like a taxi-it responds when hailed."
-Isaiah Berlin

Do you sometimes feel like your brain's not being hailed much?

Darjeeling - the place

I was talking (well, IMing) with a friend of mine tonight whose family is in the tea biz in India. He sent me these awesome pictures of the area around Darjeeling. I think I want to go.

And a vintage label of some tea that's produced there.

Do real men read?

I went to the Printer's Row Book Fair this afternoon, which is one of my favorite street fairs of the summer. It's always on the same weekend as the 57th Street Art Fair, which is one of my other favorites. (I'll go there tomorrow.)

The Book Fair has readings, used book stalls, obscure publishers, and apparently literacy groups, like Real Men Read. The only troubling thing was that there was no one there - not even a little stack of brochures. I was struck that it appeared that no real men were reading, or even talking about it.

This brings to mind for me the trouble that some of my clients face as well. If you claim to be doing good, but then don't do as well as other people expect you to, you get more criticized than if you'd never tried to do good in the first place. So, do I criticize Real Men Read for not showing up? Maybe they were out actually teaching reading this afternoon.

In my work, I help companies and commercial buildings become greener and the environmental watchdogs are ruthless when someone misses their targets, but are fairly quiet about companies that make no attempts to do the right thing. It hardly seems fair. My father, somewhat cynically, has been known to say "No good deed goes unpunished."

So, am I punishing Real Men Read by pointing out that they're MIA at the Book Fair? Or is it reasonable to hold people who have declared a goal to a higher standard?

Oil - Where does it come from? Where does it go?

Check out this fantastic map done by the FT. It shows big oil producers, consumers, reserves and the movement of trade.

Obama & Henry V

If you've been following the speeches of Barack Obama lately, talking about being on the cusp of history, see if you hear echoes of Shakespeare's Henry V St. Crispin's Day speech.

"This day is called the feast of Crispian:

He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,

Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,

And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

He that shall live this day, and see old age,

Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,

And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.

And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'

Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,

But he'll remember with advantages

What feats he did that day: then shall our names.

Familiar in his mouth as household words

Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,

Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,

Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.

This story shall the good man teach his son;

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remember'd;

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition:

And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day"

Upside Down

From the International Herald Tribune today, a discussion of how the developing world is eating up the developed, with Mexican and Indian companies vying to buy American ones. We need to get used to not being on top....

For a while the world was flat. Now it's upside down.

To understand it, invert your thinking. See the developed world as depending on the developing world, rather than the other way round. Understand that two-thirds of global economic growth last year came from emerging countries, whose economies will expand about 6.7 percent in 2008, against 1.3 percent for the United States, Japan and Euro zone states.

The sharp rise in prices for energy, commodities, metals and minerals produced mainly in the developing world explains part of this shift. That has created the balance of payments surpluses fueling dollar-dripping sovereign wealth funds in countries like China. They amuse themselves picking up a stake in BP here, a chunk of Morgan Stanley there, and why not a sliver of Total.

We of the developed-world Paleolithic species are fair game for the upstarts now, our predator role exhausted. The U.S. and Europe may soon need all the charity they can get.

To place this inversion in focus, it helps to be in Brazil, where winter (so to speak) arrives with the Northern Hemisphere summer, and economic optimism, as exuberant as the vegetation, increases at the same brisk clip as U.S. foreclosures.