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May 25, 2005
U.S.A. blues
Here’s a quick and dirty comparison between a new map of the U.S. and one that probably is all too familiar. I’ve seen a map of the Confederacy overlaid in this same manner, but I’m not going to do too much wild speculating here, just let the dark shades of blue speak in the way that only numbers can. There are no earth-shattering conclusions to draw from this comparison, only a hint at one aspect of the divide of the union. A few basic observations:First, the more known map of the two, from a UMichigan faculty “site” (need I explain?):http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/ :
Second, a lesser known and recent map from the MMWR :
Update: a recent Daily Kos post has an interesting addendum to these charts (or these charts are an interesting addendum…whatever, you get the point).
Posted by nick at 08:19 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 24, 2005
On the road for respect
I’d been hearing rumblings about this trip for almost a year now, but this massive roadtrip now looks like it’s really taking shape. The basic idea: hit a U.S. state capitol every day for 50 days (starting on July 4th) and each day “offer a free acoustic concert on the capitol building grounds”.
The mission is both artisitic and political, a familiar chord with the anize crowd.How can you call a place home if you are a stranger to its names? Especially today, in a media age, when names have newfound power, when until you have been to Alabama it will remain an immaculate myth, subjecting you to its celebrity, estranging you from the union to which it � undeniably - belongs. But it is our union; this is not a matter of choice or opinion; we have been born into it and bear its name. We will not be estranged from it; we will not be homeless; we will take ownership.There’s a raw boldness here, a willingness to go out and experience the state of the union (our country is in fragments, they say); a set of familiar liberal values (Free performances. Outdoors, at sites open to everyone, on ground dedicated to the public trust) coupled with the admirable and ambitious goal of seeking a common language and a middle-ground. A New American Language a la Dan Bern — we can only hope that more travellers hear his cutting advice as a similar call to action:
Tourist towns can be a drag sometimes But in non-tourist towns, you can get beat up
Just for looking a little different
I guess the thing to do, is just stay at home.
-Bern, in NAL
Posted by nick at 11:42 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
May 18, 2005
Star Wars: Don't believe the hype
This just in from the BBC:
A US consulting film has calculated the film’s release has cost $627m (�342m) in lost productivity.Consulting firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas said the buzz about the film would prompt many people to skip work for daytime screenings.
John Challenger predicted the loss to companies based on absenteeism caused by the other prequels, the proportion in full-time work, and their average pay.
“Of course, these estimates are probably on the conservative side in light of the great reviews the moving is receiving,” he said.
I just hope Mr. Challenger took into account the time that he spent putting together this report. Talk about hype. Sheesh.
Posted by nick at 01:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 16, 2005
Popcorn
Find that large saucepan that you don’t care about anymore. You will save much elbow grease down the road by sacrificing this pan to the popcorn gods, accepting the black build-up on the bottom and resisting the impulses to wash it every time you make the popcorn. Letting the leftover oil season the pan in between batches makes it taste a little better every time, I swear.
The goods
canola oil
popcorn
soy sauce
brewers or nutritional yeast
The process
Coat the bottom of the pan with canola oil. Turn the burner up as high as it will go and put in three kernels of corn. Get out the receptacle (bowl or sawed off paper shopping bag at the crease will do) while you wait for the pan to heat and the three kernels to pop. Swirl the oil once. Make sure two pot holders are handy.
When the three kernels have popped, pour in enough popcorn to cover the bottom of the pan and a little more. The kernels should be between one and two deep in the bottom of the pan. Shake the pan with a circular motion that I’ll call “swirling” (hands at either side of pan making small circles, you should feel the kernels moving around the pan, turning over, heating evenly). Repeat the swirling for a few seconds every fifteen seconds or so. Every time you hear a few kernels start to pop, swirl again. Do what you can to keep the kernels moving and any popping at bay so that they pop at the same time. Once they all start popping, stop swirling. Shake lightly to drop any unpopped kernels down to the bottom of the pan and keep any from sticking and burning at the bottom. The popping should crescendo, then calm. As popping rate slows, turn down heat gradually. Lightly shake once more as popping stops (not too late, otherwise it’ll burn!) and turn off heat.
Pour about a third of the finished product off into the bowl or bag or whatever. Lightly coat with soy sauce. Fill up the rest of the receptacle, coat with soy sauce once more and sprinkle heavily with brewers yeast. Lightly shake bowl so that excess yeast sifts down to the bottom kernels.
Serve with a movie or a good book.
Posted by nick at 09:45 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
May 15, 2005
Games 1 & 2 -- patience
We lost to the Athletics 14-8 on opening day last week. I think they had something like 5 hits, the rest were walks and errors. And we blew a good pitching performance from our ace Alan yesterday against the Senators and lost 3-2. I had one at-bat over the two games, a strikeout looking in the 7th yesterday (we play 7 innings, not 9 ). So I guess that makes my line sad and simple:
0-1, K (looking)
It’s been a harder adjustment than I expected, playing baseball again. It’s not as welcoming as an ultimate field, that’s for sure. I don’t step onto the grass and know that I can at least hang with anyone I go up against. There are so few oportunities to prove your worth during games, and so many constraints. You can’t mess with the structure of the game and can’t have control over the flow in the same way that you can by getting open or playing sick man defense. You can’t will ground balls to be hit into the hole so you can make a diving stop and the on-the-knees underhand flip to the second baseman; you have to wait your turn in the lineup. Opportunites are scarce and especially as a rookie there’s a lot of pressure to show what you’re made of each time. Fuck the numbers that say you’re great if you succeed 30% of the time. To break in as a rookie, you need to be damn close to 100% and squeeze an extra 20% on top in the form of hustle and heart.
I’m not doing that right now. So my resolution for the next few weeks is to step up the mental focus. Not to take the 3-2 pitch because you’re already thinking about getting a walk and stealing on this catcher’s glass arm. This is the biggest athletic challenge I’ve had in a while, a real combination of sports psych and an acute athletic ability. I think it likely that this whole experience will be humbling, forcing me to accept an athletic mediocrity in comparison to these other players. I can accept that, but it would be harder to feel as though I’d lost the mental game.
If there is one part of competing that is transferrable from ultimate to baseball (or any other competition, for that matter) it is the competitive edge, the calm confidence that it takes to win and win big. I’ve had it before, been part of a winning tradition, but right now the trick is to translate it from the disc to the diamond.
Posted by nick at 07:45 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 12, 2005
MUD
For those of you not checking main anize site who might have missed the post (or as a reminder for those who haven’t had the time), here’s a link to Volker’s pictures from JazzFest in New Orleans two weekends ago.
It was pretty damn glorious. Some of the mud shots begin to capture the madness. The music was great and I’ve been trying to recreate some of that cajun spicin’ to no avail since getting back.Black pepper, lots of it. Cayenne. White pepper.What’s the secret? recipes.anize.org, anyone?
Posted by nick at 05:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 08, 2005
My kind of church
We woke up late today, Sunday—rolled out of bed and ate our Wheaties. What better way to spend a Sunday than at church, we thought.
One phone call later, and we had fine seats at the best church in town, thanks to the rain which convinced most of the disciples to worship from home today.
It’s going to be hard to leave this house in Cambridgeport, only a ten minute bike away from the 33,993 gleaming holy red and blue seats. At least Baltimore’s got some fine pews of its own.
Posted by nick at 03:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 07, 2005
There goes the neighborhood
Here’s an old (or so I’ve been assured) picture of a proposed highway bypass ramp that would, according to my calculations, be visible from my bedroom window. (For orientation: you can see the Charles River and the BU Bridge crossing it in the lower left-hand corner.) Like any good citizen with a the revolution will not be motorized handlebar sticker on my bike, my first reaction is pure righteous indignation. That said, I’ve been reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy this week (to decide if I want to spoil it with the new movie). The first scenes made me feel a bit like Arthur Dent, the bumbling and somewhat charming earthling hero of the book, as his house is prepared for demolition to create a highway bypass. Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what’s so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there, and what’s so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be.We learn soon after Arthur that the Earth is about to be destroyed by an interstellar spaceship for “the building of a hyperspatial express route through our star system”. Leave it to a good sci-fi writer to put things in cosmic perspective.
[pause]
That said, I’d still get my ass in gear to stop a concrete invasion in my ‘hood.
Posted by nick at 06:00 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
May 04, 2005
A Rocky sense of freedom
Last night was the first time in a while that I had watched some TV. A friend has TiVO, so we skipped around between the Sox game and various recorded goodies. If I ever do become a TV-watcher (please no) it seems like TiVO would be the way to do it. Commercial-free, finds the shows you want, when you want, etc…
I got the crib-notes version of Rocky IV, skimming to the best scenes here and there (training scene with 80s music, Rocky’s mourning scene, the fight). I don’t remember the Cold War much other than reading about the collapse of the USSR on a family vacation in the southwest and my dad telling me that I should remember this moment. So Rocky IV makes me think about that older different culture of fear and and the national enemy of the 1980s (back when bin Laden was on our side, kind of). Rocky’s good ol’ American rhetoric is “I’m doing this for myself and my family”. And Ivan Drago, the Soviet muscle machine prototype, calls out in his final moments “I fight for myself” (or something along those lines), a revolt against his fatherland trainers who have been engineering him towards human perfection. To top it off, Rocky tells the hostile-turned-friendly Soviet crowd that he felt them change toward him during the fight and that he knows they are capable of more change.
It’s a fresh reminder of the historical context to current political debates. It sounds obvious, but to people (like me) born late enough that the Cold War was really over by the time young-adult consciousness set in, a lot of the lessons and dynamics of this conflict are not ingrained. For example, Rocky IV reminds me why people have a bad impression of communism (cold, bald men breeding blond-haired human machines for the state) when I think of it as an innocuous localized ideology espoused by my hippy friends. But it’s also a reminder that the freedom that we enjoy here in the US comes from an intellectual and practical tradition of individualist values and self-reliance.
It’s where that individualism turns to self-interest and in turn empire that I start to fall out of love with the ideals of this country.
Posted by nick at 09:26 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack