So I finally got to the hotel around 930pm (rather than 7pm as planned) – cranky, tired, low blood sugar, etc. etc.
This morning I get a call saying that the meeting I came down for is cancelled. Oh well, at least it’s not hot and humid down here in DC 🙂
I’m sorry, Amtrak, next time it’s Accela for me.
Heading to DC for a meeting tomorrow. Should I take the train or fly – well, Accela is more expensive than flying, and I am nothing if not a mileage whore. So I chose to fly on the US Airways shuttle.
And that’s why I’m sat here at the gate an hour after scheduled departure and 3 hours after leaving home second guessing that decision.
Somehow, though, classic rock of the 80’s on the iPhone makes it all a little more tolerable.
I love Martha’s Vineyard – another case of where I’m surprised that I like somewhere. Sure the rich people and the crowds bug me, but is that so different from NYC? I have a dream that one day I’ll be able to buy a small place out there and live on the island in the fog and overcast skies through the off season. Then I’ll leave in the summer and go somewhere quieter (back to Manhattan, perhaps?)
The island has good memories for me; and I enjoy the back roads, watching birds and fishing boats, the quality of light that comes from being surrounded by the sea. I also like the fact that it is off the coast of America and therefore somewhat insulated from the realities of day to day life (like a reliable cell phone signal).
Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances, he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. … Hiro used to feel that way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this is liberating. He no longer has to worry about trying to be the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken..
(Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash)
As a resident of New York City (and therefore a partial contributor to the $800 million cost of the new stadium), I’m interested to look and see what my tax dollars have contributed to. Cliff Cate was in town and suggested a Mets game, so we headed out on Tuesday night to catch a Mets/Braves game.
The new ballpark is nice (as it should be!) and the Jackie Robinson Rotunda is impressive, although I did wonder about the rain blowing into the open space, just proving my English-ness. Beer is less expensive than Yankee stadium (which is not saying much), and there’s an open area on the second deck “Promenade” level for more overpriced and unhealthy food and drink.
Overall, very nice; I never made it to Shea so I can’t compare it and I’m hardly a ballpark connoisseur, but architecturally it does the job. I look forward to comparing to the home of the evil empire for a Redsox game some time this summer.
We also managed to see the first ever streaker at the new park. His friend put the video up on YouTube here. Allegedly there is a mandatory one year prison sentence for that – if it’s true that’s an absurd waste of police and prison resources.
It’s cold(ish), windy and rainy in the city today and it made me reflect on the strange spring we have had so far – alternating substantially above-normal temperatures with below-normal. I wanted to see if this perception was just in my head or whether the pattern was real, so I headed off to Weather Underground to see what the actual temps have been over the past month.
I had to dig a little, but I was also able to get daily averages for May from MSN (although when I tried to import the data into Excel it crashed). Bottom line is that the positive anomalies were 5-10 degrees F above normal, but the lows were almost all still above average. I think it’s 20+ degrees change in highs within a week that fools us!
I’m not going to make any kind of climate change argument here except to point out that an expected result of climate change is increased climate variability, particularly in the transitional seasons. I didn’t research windiness or wind gusts against average, but I’d also expect those to be higher as the various colder and warmer systems come through and set up pressure gradients.
Actually, that’s not a fair headline, because the answer is that he’s been the voice of reason for a long time.
As a barely-tolerated alien in the USA (taxed without representation) I didn’t get the chance to vote for Jesse in Minnesota, but I would have, and was not at all surprised that he won the governor’s race. It was a classic confrontation between two entitled, complacent party representatives and when Jesse was finally allowed to take part in the debates he exposed the false choice for what it was. The correct answer to the choice between Norm Coleman and Skip Humphrey was “none of the above”.
Jesse was an above-average governor in Minnesota and I’ve often appropriated one of his most famous lines – “you can’t legislate stupidity“. In the years since then, he’s popped up on the radar from time to time and I think he reflects a valid strain of libertarian thought (but much more to the left than to the right) and anti-establishment sentiment. I don’t agree with everything he has said or done, but overall I agree with him more than I do with the vast majority of American politicians.
So all I can say is that I agree with him 100% for his comments on Larry King last night that all those involved in the illegal torture over the past years should be prosecuted – from Bush and Cheney down the line. It’s a disgrace that there is even discusssion about whether or not this should happen.
In addition, I’ll say that Jesse was also a very talented colour commentator for the WWF (as it was at the time), although I have no idea how I know that.
Schneier on Security: An Expectation of Online Privacy.
Very important and well-expressed article from Bruce Schneier. This guy really gets the intersection of security, privacy, and liberty – and the connected threats to all three. For me, the major threat of the ever-increasing intrusiveness of government and corporate surveillance is the fact that history shows these organizations are completely inept in their data security.
So not only do the credit rating agencies claim to own your data about you, they don’t even keep it safe; and as Bruce says in this article, it’s the consumer who bears the cost of dealing with the aftermath of such losses. I’ve lost track of the number of times my credit cards have been re-issued (with a new number) because of data losses at retailers or payment processing companies. And then my newspaper subscription, or EZ-Pass stops working because I have to get on the phone to notify vendors of new CC details. What recourse did I get from the companies? In one case (yes I’m looking at you, TJ Maxx) it was a one-day offer of a 10% discount – thanks, that should cover it.
This is an issue that needs to be addressed, but has been under the radar because most politicians have no concept of “the cloud” or the value (good or bad) of data mining. Corporations have demonstrated that they can’t be trusted, so government needs to step in and legislate. And while they are at it, the same legislation needs to completely reevaluate the same practices within government.
But I’m not going to hold my breath. And I’ll continue to treat webmail as if it were a postcard.
Now, I’ve been to Austin and it’s OK, but it’s still Tejas and therefore pretty weird to me as a transplanted Englishman. And with all this talk of a new Republic of Tejas, I wonder what will happen to good ol’ Austin? I imagine something like the pre-89 Berlin, with secure transit in and out (except not by train – this is Tejas after all). They could rename the Austin airport to Austin Tempelhof in honour – they are both pretty close in to the city.
Anyway, now I’m humming that George Strait song and it’s not often I have country tunes in my head.
Meteor City is actually in AZ, right by the meteor crater, but the sky over it looks a lot like the sky over the Tejas Panhandle and the truck I was driving was the truck I used to take to Austin, so there’s a more than incidental relationship.
Update – actually, I just remembered that I was in Austin the day that the Berlin wall came down (11/9/89) so it’s strange that the idea of Austin as Berlin came to me. Or maybe not, perhaps that’s where these links in the mind come from.
People always think that life in New York is anonymous and disconnected, but I find it to be the opposite. Case in point, I just dropped some shirts at the dry cleaner across the street and he filled out the tag with my name without asking me. It’s not like I’m there every day (or even every week), but that small gesture made me feel like I belonged here a little. Funny thing is that I don’t recall that kind of thing ever hapening in the various small towns I have lived in.
