fauxklore

Because I was hosting a story swap last night, I spent much of the day going through the scraps of paper that seem to accumulate on my dining room table and, alas, the floor of the study nook. I was trying to be good and actually handle them, instead of just tossing them in the box of shame to deal with later.

So here are some odds and ends from things I scribbled down for some reason or other.

1) I have no idea why I wrote down the word "perissodactyla." I just looked it up and it refers to odd-toed ungulates, e.g. horses and rhinoceroses and quaggas. Was there something in the news about them roughly a year ago July?

2) I also have no idea why I wrote "Bellhorn 2004" in my planner a few weeks ago. Yes, Mark Bellhorn played for the Red Sox starting in that year, but I can't imagine why I was thinking about him. (He was an interesting player - led the league in strikeouts that year, but became a real hero in the World Series.)

3) I have become a big fan of Christoph Niemann's Abstract City blog in the NY Times. His August 3rd visual diary of a flight from NY to Berlin via London is brilliant.

4) I missed seeing Red Green talk in Frederick a couple of weeks ago, but I was amused that he also made an appearance at a hardware store in Bethesda, where he autographed rolls of duct tape.

5) Most of the strange, unexplained numbers in my planner are phone numbers. Some are not. I am fairly sure I wrote down 16,000,000,000 because one of my colleagues could not figure out how many zeros there were in billion.

6) I was reviewing a document (having to do with an international joint project) recently that included a requirement to "repatriate data." I understood what it meant, but I found the usage to be a bit odd. On the other hand, I'm not sure I could think of a better way to say that the country that provided the sensor should get the data from that sensor.

7) I have completely lost control of my calendar. (Admittedly, that assumes that I ever had control of it). Does anybody know why I have blocked off the weekend of April 8-10 next year?

8) Speaking of the absurdity of my calendar, I need to find a weekend in November to go up to New York so I can see The Language Archive at Roundabout and The Scottsboro Boys. The former is about a subject (saving dying languages) I'm interested in. The latter is a Kander and Ebb musical with John Cullum.

9) Here is a language related link - the OED in limerick form. That the "O" stands for "Omnificent", not "Oxford" does not lessen the charm.

10) Moose can get arthritis. I have no idea why I think that is interesting, but I do.

11) I am not sure whether the credit card lightbulb is absurdly brilliant or merely absurd. It would probably need to produce more lumens than it does to be absurdly brilliant.

12) Lori Berenson is back in jail, the Peruvian government having bowed to public opinion. I'm okay with that, but her son is apparently with her for the remaining five years of her sentence. I admit that I don't really know how Peruvian prisons work, but what about the boy going to school?

13) I had this rather amusing conversation with Alaska Air (abbreviated AS below) this week:

Me: I'd like to make a partner reservation on Air France.

AS: Where would you like to go?

Me: I'd like to do an open jaw. I want to fly from Washington Dulles into Bamako, Mali and return from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

AS: Are those both in France?

I explained that, er, no, they are both in Africa. (And, yes, I got the tickets on the dates I wanted and am well on the way to making my land arrangements. I am actually going to Timbuktu, which is something I have wanted to do my entire life!)

14) The Wall Street Journal had an interesting obituary on July 16th of the traditional mariner / navigator, Tau Pilau. Unfortunately, I can't find the article on-line.

By the way, the story swap went well, despite a phone problem meaning I had to go downstairs to let people in. (The buzzer system is tied to the phone, which hangs up after about 3 seconds.) Ten people is not a huge number, but is just about what is comfortable in my living room. There was a good mix of traditional stories and personal stories. I told "Why I'm Not a Millionaire" which went over well. One person left his backpack behind and I had to make a quick call for him to return for it. I only just now realized that another person left a tupperware behind and I'll have to see what she wants me to do about returning it.

First, to follow-up on a news story I'd mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the American man who had been effectively exiled for 2 months via the No Fly List was allowed to come home. I'm not sure whether to be more disturbed by the story or by some of the comments about it I've seen on various news sites.

While I am on the Middle East related subjects, I went to an MIT Club of Washington event at the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates last night. I was a little surprised by the food. For one thing, they did serve wine and beer. But the big surprise was that the appetizers included crab cakes and sushi. The ambassador gave a brief speech before turning things over to people involved with the Masdar Initiative. I noticed that the ambassador did peek at his blackberry during the other two speeches. The gist of the presentations was that the UAE wants to be a leader in energy, not just oil.

The announcement had claimed that the presentations would be followed by "dinner featuring ethnic food." There was pita and some dips (very good pine nut hummus) but most of the food was fairly generic Mediterranean fare. There was beef tenderloin, chicken with sage, and Mediterranean sea bass, along with potato croquettes and grilled vegetables (zucchini and peppers). It was good, but not exactly exotic. I suppose the mango ice cream for dessert might have qualified as mildly exotic. Still, it is always interesting seeing different embassies and one gets to have a lot of conversation with intelligent people at these events.

Finally, I took advantage of having a medical appointment to stop at the Foggy Bottom farmer's market to pick up mushroom empanadas and cardamom gelato for supper. They have a lot more prepared food than the Crystal City market does, but fewer produce vendors. I did get some blackberries to have for breakfast tomorrow, but there wasn't anybody selling salad greens, for example.

Somehow I managed to miss these two clippings in my news wrap-up.

1) The crime section of a local free newspaper reported a story on a dog bite. The Animal Control Officer who responded is named Barker.

2) The Jewish Study Center is offering a cleverly named class. "Shir Havoc: Meshugah melodies for familiar prayers" is all about "fitting prayers to everything from Vivaldi to movie music to sea shanties and Irish drinking songs."

I scribble a lot of things in my planner, some of which I intend to write about here. These are kind of random and I have no idea why I numbered them.

1) The Washington Post reported on a ghost bike put up at Dupont Circle. I think I had vaguely heard of the idea (a white bike with a placard commemorating a bicyclist killed in an accident), but I don't think I'd heard of one in this area before.

2) The news about Spirit Airlines planning to charge for carry-on luggage in the overhead bin got lots of coverage. There was somewhat less coverage of Senator Schumer's objection to it (and plan to introduce legislation). I think he has a good point. Airplane tickets are taxable; fees are not. The unbundling of services is a way of cheating the taxman.

3) Speaking of taxes, I got the "your return has been accepted by the IRS" e-mail pretty quickly. Doing my Virginia taxes on line was quick and simple. The iFile system has always surprised me for its ease and simplicity in a state that is normally not interested in anything Thomas Jefferson hadn't thought of. So, sure enough, the neanderthals in Richmond are taking it away for people over a certain income. This affects about 12% of the state. Those people will have to pay for tax software to file electronically. The claim is that this is in alignment with the federal government, but that isn't true. The feds provide free fillable forms for (almost) everyone. (The exceptions involve the need to file certain less common forms.) The really stupid part of this is that, while it will allegedly save the state six cents a return by outsourcing the electronic filing, it costs a dollar to handle a paper form. There are plenty of people like me who refuse to pay a private firm 30-50 bucks to file our taxes. And, oh, I don't suppose it's possible that the large political donations to certain politicians by Intuit have anything to do with this stupidity, right?

3) Back to travel, United is introducing a fee to stand by for an earlier flight. You only pay the $50 if you actually get on, but what is irritating is that they are not exempting all elite frequent flyers, only 1Ks. I need to find the right email address to send my complaint. They have a legitimate concern about people booking cheaper flights and hoping to stand by for more expensive ones, but most elites are business travelers who are just trying to get home earlier if a meeting finishes before they expect it to. (I have also used that system when connecting from an international flight. It's hard to predict how long immigration and customs will take, so I err on the conservative side and switch to an earlier flight if I get through sooner. I have done this exactly twice in the past three years.)

4) There was another news story about the closing of the last sardine cannery in the United States. I have to admit that I can't remember the last time I ate sardines, though I used to eat the ones that came in mustard sauce fairly regularly and the ones in hot sauce somewhat less often. But didn't they switch to pull-tab opening at some point? Do people much younger than I am know about the old key system for the cans?
And did anybody else get the Stan Rogers song "Tiny Fish for Japan" stuck in their head while thinking about this?

5) I went to a reception for the new director of DARPA, Regina Duggan, on Thursday night. The traffic was bad and I missed the first couple of minutes of her talk. From what I did hear, I thought she spoke well - knowledgeably and entertainingly. It gives me hope for the future of science and technology in the Department of Defense. By the way, does it strike anybody else as odd for an event scheduled from 6:30-8:30 p.m. to be a coffee, wine, and dessert thing?

6) The resulting flight disruptions are making the eruption of Eyjafjallajoekull a real pain in the ash.

7) I bought my plane tickets for the NPL con in Seattle. I also discovered that next year's American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is the same weekend as the Virginia Storytelling Alliance gathering. How can I already have a schedule conflict for March 2011?

8) Holly wanted my comments on the last episode of The Amazing Race. ( Here they are, behind a cut )

1) I am intrigued by what news stories do and don't get major headlines. I'm surprised the Stewart Nozette case isn't getting more news. He is a former NASA scientist, who tried to sell classified data to Israel. Except it was the FBI and not the Mossad who contacted him. I don't think this will be another Pollard case, though, since it seems Nozette was seeking money, while Pollard acted on ideological grounds. (I also think that's why the parts of the Jewish community who think Pollard got too heavy a sentence are wrong, but that's a separate subject.)

2) Tuesday was the last day of the Crystal City farmer's market. It's been very convenient having it right outside my office and I'll be happy when it starts up again in the spring. In the meantime, I stocked up on Stayman apples.

3) Somebody is turning "The Man WHo Mistook His Wife for a Hat" into an opera. Just as I believe that mental illness is not a good subject for musical comedy, neurology does not seem like promising material for opera.

4) My list of things to write about here includes the word "exposure," but I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. In case I happen to ask about the string of numbers on the next page of my planner at some time in the future, it was a document number and Andy's fax number for me to send it to.

5) I managed to save myself about $130 on a trip to San Francisco in December by buying the ticket at exactly the right time. I love it when I get the last seat at the discounted price.

6) The metro had a little service challenge yesterday morning:

Amtrak fire at New
Carrollton this morning screwed
up the Orange Line

and then there is the usual behavior of fellow riders to write haiku about:

Someone should offer
a seat to the woman who's
holding a baby

(If I'd had a seat, I'd have offered it to her, of course.)

7) Go Phillies! (I am blaming last night on Pedro having had a cold.)

8) I vaguely remember putting my cell phone down somewhere when I came home on Sunday evening. And I remember thinking that wherever I put it was a bad idea because I would have trouble finding it again. Sure enough, I have no seen it since. If it doesn't turn up by the end of the weekend, I'll call to get it replaced.

9) An interesting tidbit from the new issue of Technology Review - in 45 BCE, Julius Caesar banned private vehicles from the center of Rome during daytime hours to try to reduce congestion.

10) This song is stuck in my head from my Bollywood dance class Wednesday night, so I thought I'd try to inflict the earworm on others. Unfortunately, it's the steps to an entirely different dance that are stuck in my head with it. (The choreography we did to it is not the same as the movie clip.) If you are wondering why there are so many blondes in a Bollywood movie, the film is apparently set in Miami.

1) The facebook glitch for the Voices in the Glen website fixed itself later in the day. I still think their help pages suck.

2) At least the Source of All Evil in the Universe didn't sweep the Red Sox. But I still had to put up with my Yankee fan colleague gloating today.

3) I read a news story last week about an effort by a Conservative rabbi to overturn the law in Georgia which requires kosher products to be certified by an Orthodox rabbi. I agree with that this is an unconstitutional mingling of government and religion. The appropriate approach would be to require disclosure of "who says so" in labeling a product as kosher. (Presumably the same would apply for halal food.)

4) I was fascinated by a detail in the recent case of the murdered model whose body turned up in Southern California. She could not be identified by fingerprints since her hands were cut off or by dental records, since her teeth were extracted. Apparently, she was identified by the serial numbers of her breast implants.

5) I am absurdly busy at work this week. Mondays are always hectic since I'm preparing the weekly summary for our senior leaders. Today I also had two meetings to go to, both of which were productive, but still took up time. I've got all day meetings the next three days and a half day on Friday. I'm not sure how I will get any actual work done at all.

Tonight is catchup time and catching up on writing here is one way I am procrastinating on other things.

First, I really liked this item from The Onion. The following paragraph is truly brilliant:


According to NASA officials, the epic postponement will occur in three progressively longer stages. The first, predicted to last anywhere from three to five years and cost an estimated $13.8 billion, is tentatively scheduled to begin in late 2012. The second stage—which will ultimately be broken up into 14 smaller stages—will comprise a series of advanced timetable adjustments that, if successful, could delay human beings from exploring the outmost reaches of the known galaxy for decades to come.

The third stage is largely theoretical at this point.


Moving on to more serious matters, I have to wonder about the Washington Post's headline writers. I got snookered into reading an article about "Suspicious Package Rocks Embassy" only to find out that a band named Suspicious Package had performed at the Embassy of Italy.

I think they did a better job with a piece about Susan Boyle, which they titled, "The Scot Heard Round the World." Unfortunately, they also let fashion reporter Robin Gihvan write about Ms. Boyle. Gihvan wrote, essentially, that Boyle should feel obliged to have a makeover because that's part of the Cinderella mythos and then, in her on-line chat, ignored that she had used the word "should" about 50 times in her essay when people called her on her bigotry. (Fashion reporters are, of course, clueless in general. Another example was a spread in the Sunday paper which reminded me that they have no idea of what is appropriate for adults to wear to work. And the fashion chat responded to a question about where to find affordable plus size garments with a mention of a store that sells sizes 0-18. Yeah, it's possible that the person asking the question could wear a 16 or 18, but that's a big assumption.)

My final news note has to do with the death of Venezuelan polo horses in Florida, possibly by poisoning. I have to admit my immediate reaction was to wonder how Dick Francis would use that in one of his mysteries.

I went to the Adventures in Travel Expo. I am inevitably disappointed in how many very unadventurous companies participate in this, but there's enough to keep me going, especially with half off the ticket price. (I figure the free travel magazines make it pay for itself). In particular, I've been contemplating somewhere in Central America for the November / December time frame and got some very good info from the Nicaraguan travel representative there. I can ignore the people who think a time share in Aruba qualifies as travel, never mind adventure travel.

In other adventure travel related news, I am pleased with this season of The Amazing Race so far. There are a few teams who irritate me, but two of the three who annoyed me the most have already gotten eliminated. I'm sure more teams will piss me off as the season goes on, of course, but it's off to a good start.

Finally, here's a rather distressing item about a place I am interested in. 71 children have died of rabies in Luanda, Angola in the past 3 months. The problem is, of course, infected dogs and poor children are more likely to come in contact with them and, hence, be bitten. Coupled with the lack of awareness that leads them not to get vaccinated right away, this has become a true tragedy. The government is now working to do something about the dogs, so there's hope. But I still found the story shocking.

1) I was at a meeting over in the Rosslyn office today, which is on the 26th floor. We were in the conference room that overlooks the river and the National Mall. I have to sit facing in towards the building or I get too distracted by the view, which is not a good thing when both your boss and grandboss are at the same meeting. Anyway, I did look out the window before the meeting and I noticed that the Potomac was completely frozen on the side west of Theodore Roosevelt Island, but the east branch (i.e. the D.C. side) had no ice at all. Presumably that's due to all the hot air from lobbyists?

2) The Washington Post is doing away with Book World as a separate section. It is, apparently, being merged in with Outlook. I'd have thought that Style and Arts would make more sense. This will sound surprising coming from me, but I'd actually like them to do away with their travel section, which has only about one interesting article every two years. (Admittedly, my tastes in travel are not exactly average.)

3) Memorable quote from meeting: "You can't ban people from thinking."

4) In the jaw dropping bad behavior catalogue, one of my colleagues was supposed to have lunch with somebody who was attending another meeting in our building. Apparently, when the meeting was over, the visitor asked if he could borrow somebody's phone to call her to meet for lunch. And the people he had been meeting with refused.

I am absolutely astonished.

5) The most interesting thing I've found so far on Facebook is the group that has to do with the summer camp I attended in 1972 and 1973. There is also a group for people from my home town.

Washington phrase of the day: "Filling the tree" refers to a legislator offering a second degree amendment to his or her own first degree amendment. A proposed Senate regulation banning the practice is now making its way through the rules committee.

How to stop terrorists: Some British news sources are reporting an epidemic of plague sweeping through an Al Q'aeda training camp in Algeria. Plague is actually quite treatable with modern antibiotics but those are not exactly readily available there.

Apparently no one else sees foreign films: The Oscar nominations remind me that I've been meaning to pass along a recommendation to see Departures, an exquisite Japanese movie about a man who, having lost his job as a cellist, ends up working in a funeral home. I'm sure I missed a lot of details because of cultural gaps, but the film is lovely and moving and extremely well acted.

I done good, part 1: I briefed my (government) boss yesterday on a project I've had a couple of my henchmen working on for a few months. He said it was exactly what he was looking for. He does have some further work he'd like and my (corporate) boss and I will sit down with him on Monday to talk about what resources it will take.

I done good, part 2: The women in my office do a monthly lunch outing. This month was my turn to pick a restaurant and I chose Jaleo, a local tapas bar. Aside from the men having to put up with us all reeking of garlic when we returned, it was a great success. Our waiter even comped us a second plate of one of the dishes. The wrinkled potatoes with green sauce were particularly awesome.

I done not so good, part 1: I still haven't finished the back of the sweater I cast on over 2 weeks ago. I can still salvage the "knit a sweater a month" project via the 5-hour raglan pattern, but it does not bode well for the project overall.

I done not so good, part 2: Friday New York Times crosswords are damn hard. I am terrified of Saturday puzzles.

Time to go finish chores (laundry, balancing my checkbook, paying bills - such an exciting life I lead, eh?)