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March 31, 2010

Ada Lovelace Day (late)

As you can imagine I have a bit of egg on my face due to being a week late (which I'm sure Ada Lovelace would not have stood for at all, being English and a mathematician to boot, as well as a Lady). But when I realized this day was actually so closely past, I couldn't resist the urge to put up a quick post about it. For those of you who know me well, you know I'm a big supporter of women in the sciences and frankly the more the better. There's something about walking into an engineering building in any college in the world, that changes the enterer (is that word?) from whatever gender they are into an Engineer, and that's a lovely thing. So kudos out there Women of Science! and don't let the bastards grind you down!

Post-script: Just want to thank Shaenon Garrity, creator of Narbonic and Skin Horse (for getting me into mad science ladies), and Sydney Padua, creator of The Adventures of Babbage and Lovelace for teaching me about Ada Lovelace and opening the door to a real discussion of women in the sciences. Ms Padua is also an accomplished animator and general art bad ass, so check her out talking about graphic storytelling and just random Babbage anecdotes.

Check out more about Ada Lovelace day at Finding Ada.

March 29, 2010

Inside Joke

I'm concerned. Lately I have been listening to what I say and it seems like everything that comes out of my mouth is a bit derivative. That's to say it's a riff off something in the popular culture, or a trope from retro comedy shows. When I look around that's what pretty much everyone is doing as well. So it would seem that the more I rail against the lack of original material in "Hollywood", the less original material I myself create. Troubling. Then again there are all sorts of asides in Shakespeare that refer to the Bible and previous playwrights (some of whom were hacks on a par with the writers for your average contemporary sitcom), so maybe I am being unreasonable.

January 29, 2010

Left v Right

Hey you. Yeah. YOU. You know me, right? You've met me or emailed me or read this blog (highly unlikely) or seen the many techy things I've posted to MyFace or whatever the young folks are using these days. You know that I am an engineer with an ax to grind, defending analytical rigor, science and the left brain with all the vigor of a tea party "patriot" in line for Sarah Palin's 'book'. So you'll be as surprised as I was at the response that a TED conference speaker's talk elicited.

The talk covers the subject of whether or not schools teach creativity and what the implications of that are for the future. The thesis of the talk is that the current method of education does a great job of training students to be cogs in the industrial-era machine, but it doesn't do a good job of teaching any of us to be creative. This creativity is of course necessary for engendering future innovations, although the talk is heavy with talk of the arts, dance, etc.

It got me wondering whether I had some of that same creativity. After all, I do write this, among other things, I draw, and so on. But is it really creativity, or just something I do to give the illusion of creativity and cultivate that "Renaissance man" image that I crave. Yeah, I can admit it. I know for a fact that I am a product of the education factory, molded into an engineer with the "slide-rule grip" and exciting "mouse action" arms. So does my desire for creative expression mean that the system has failed (either at stamping out creativity, or encouraging it)? The whole thing leaves me wondering what future education would be like in a regime like this - would we all try to be dancers or painters or singer/songwriters (please, God, not that); conversely, who will spend their time building things and making things. Indeed, considering the suffering of artists who struggle to express themselves, is all the creativity even going to make everyone happy? And how much of this question is legitimate or an attempt to justify my own experience? All questions that can't be easily answered.

January 28, 2010

Goodbye, Holden Caulfield

When I was 11 years old, I stood on my bed and looked at the books on the highest shelf of the bookcase that my parents had kept in my room. There were a lot of books there that my Dad had put there to relieve the overflow on the big bookcase in the living room, but most of them were "boring". Still, I had just finished my latest Hardy Boys book and wanted to keep reading (where has that feeling gone?) and picked a book that was about the same size. It had a maroon cover with simple yellow letters on it that spelled out the title and the author's name. I opened the book to page one and read this:


“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”

I gasped, laughed and reread it. Then I debated whether or not to read the passage out loud for my Dad in case he decided I was too young to be reading that sort of thing. Finally I did and he laughed with me, and smiled, probably remembering when he had first read the Catcher in the Rye. I read that book then, then again two years later, then again 2 years after that, then again when I got to college. It was simply written and brilliant and I loved it. Who was J.D. Salinger that he had so easily written a book that described everything and so perfectly?

It appears that he died yesterday, quietly. I hadn't ever read his other works, partly out of laziness and partly because there's no way anything could measure up to Catcher. Now I feel a bit foolish, as we say goodbye to him from beyond the fence. I guess I'd better start reading.

February 18, 2009

In Memoriam: Tayeb Salih

I got a dose of bad news this morning as I checked through my usual news sites. I read news of the passing away of ElTayyib Salih (Tayeb Salih to you non-Arabic speakers out there) at age 80 in London. This is a global tragedy for such a distinct literary voice to be so decisively silenced forever. It's also a national tragedy, certainly in Sudan, where we have had so little to be proud of in recent years; but it's also a tragedy on a personal level. My father met 'amu (uncle) ElTayyib during a conference in the UK more than a decade ago. The older man befriended my gregarious and inquisitive father, and they remained friends in the years after their meeting. My Dad made an effort to visit 'amu ElTayyib whenever he was in the UK, to catch up and exchange stories and news. In fact, it was during one of these trips that my Dad mentioned that I had never read his seminal book, Season of Migration to the North. He generously responded by giving my Dad two inscribed copies of the book in English and in Arabic. When Dad got home, we all read the books. My brother was shocked and scandalized by the books, with their frank discussions of sexuality and violence - taboo subjects in the Sudan in every sphere. "No Sudanese could have written these books!" he exclaimed. As for me, I wasn't sure; this had opened many intellectual doors for me, but rocked some of the foundations of my thinking on what it meant to be Sudanese. I wondered if I'd ever get to meet the man himself, thank him and talk a little about what he'd written.

Of course that cannot happen now, and I sit here feeling several things beyond the obvious loss. First of all is the general anger that this under-appreciated author recieved such shoddy obituaries in the press. There was no mention cause of death or anything. Yes, he's an old man, but considering that the New Yorker practically devoted last week's issue to John Updike, it wouldn't have been too much to just show a little more of the circumstances of his life and death. It wasn't till quite late in the day that those circumstances were revealed. I called my Dad, and he told me that he'd been in a coma due to his kidney condition, and it had only been a matter of time. Guess it was better to hear that from Dad than the NY Times.

The only other thing that I feel pretty strongly about is that he was never recognized on the appropriate scale. I feel like someone (maybe me?) should write to the Nobel committee and recommend that they consider him, but I'm not sure if all that mail goes directly to a shredder in Stockholm.

My outrage is running out steam, and I've stepped back from the precipice of emotion I was at when I started writing. Rest in peace 'amu ElTayyib, and thank you.

February 10, 2009

Disclosure

ALV: heehee- i love how you take time every so often to let the people in your world know what you think of them

The quote above came at the end of a brief chat session with a friend of mine. We had been talking back and forth, and I had thanked her for cheering me up. Then the conversation got silly for a bit as we discussed the vagaries of the Disney version of Winnie the Pooh, and I told her that she had reached the high water mark of silliness, which prompted the quote above.

At the time I sort of laughed it off, but at the same time it got me thinking: why shouldn't we tell the people around us what we think of them? In fact, as I went back in time trying to think of when I started to do it. As a kid, you take people for granted and their place in your life. Sometimes you change your mind when you get older, sometimes something happens to let you know what the dangers of taking people for granted are. In my case, I lost a very good friend in a senseless accident. When your last words to someone are something terribly inane, then you begin to wonder at what you have been saying - or rather, not saying.

So l started telling people what I thought. I started blurting them out, and not always at the right times, but then again who's to say if that time is not the last one? Over time, I have said some outlandish things to people, but I've never regretted it. After all, it could be the last time...

January 6, 2009

Wedding of the Season

Dec 23rd Khartoum Sudan

Part of the reason for my visit to Sudan this time of year is my cousin's wedding. Those of you who know me know that the word "cousin" is used very loosely, and in some cases does not denote any sort of blood relation at all (although in the Sudan that is nearly impossible). To those people I say, yes, I am actually related to this girl my blood, albeit distantly in the Western sense (but very closely in the Sudanese sense).

I somewhat naively did not think that this would be The Wedding of the Season. This was naive since my aunt (my cousin's mother) is married to a member of one of the large political families in the Sudan. Their political prominence is a result of their religious prominence, which stems from the days of the Mahdist revolt in the mid-19th century. Without delving too deeply into the history of the Sudan, there is a lot surrounding the family and they end up being a mix between the Kennedys, the Corleones (without the murder and extortion), and the royal house of Morocco (also less murder, I think). In other words, what else could the wedding possibly be other than the event of the year?

Sudanese weddings (for the uninitiated) are interminably long affairs spanning multiple days. Back in days of yore (say 30-40 years ago) a wedding could take as long as 40 days depending on the family and their stature. Nowadays a reasonably long wedding is more like a week. They go in roughly this order:

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The 'Agid (or contract): wherein, once the two parties have agreed to shackle themselves together for all time, their representative (typically fathers) solemnly agree that the agreement has happened in the witness of friends, relations, grandees, and so on. Slightly roundabout, but that's how it's done. This takes about 10 minutes and for all intents and purposes, the actual marriage part is done. This is a prime place for spotting long lost friends, or just watching a sea of white robes drown the father of the bride. In the case of my cousin, this took place at the mosque near the Mahdi's tomb. The family set up a large enclosure filled with tables topped with fresh fruit, dates and nuts, and fresh juices. The tables were ranged around a large dais where the family sat, surrounded by people from the other big families. Government ministers, policy makers, and all around important folks mingled with the rest of us common folk. The crowd was enormous and loud so you couldn't hear anything going on. Usually, everyone says a prayer over the union that it may successful etc, but this time the whole thing went off without my even knowing, due to the number of people.

The Shayla (gift exchange): this is a more or less defunct section of the wedding. In economically better and simpler times, the groom's family would pile into cars and buses and head over to the bride's family home and present them with all sorts of gifts ranging from sacks of charcoal to fine silk garments (for the ladies of course!). In part it is also a method for the two families to share the financial burden of the wedding ("we'll pay for the stuff, you cook it and here are some dresses" in short). This tradition has fallen by the wayside for the most part, and when undertaken it often takes the form of cash.

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The Hinna (bride and groom): These are two separate, but identical, events. At each event the person in question (bride or groom) is sat down and has their hands and feet stained with henna. For men it's just a flat coat on the soles of the feet, and a handful in each hand (or just the right) to stain the palms. For women it's much more elaborate geometric and arabesque shapes, which might be familiar from Indian weddings you may have seen. This all takes place against the backdrop of songs and some dancing, and family walking in and out. Technically all of the application of henna should be done by family members, although for women that has changed as designs have become much more elaborate. Professionals are brought in and all the women of the house avail themselves so that at the wedding, the bride, her mother, her sisters and cousins all have elaborate designs wrapping around their hands and wrists and their feet and ankles. If you play your cards right and keep going to weddings, you can be properly decorated almost all year long!

Raqs Al'Aroos (The Bride's Dance): In this step, the bride dances for the groom and her own female family members. The dance is very stylized and in many ways it is quite seductive, but unfortunately this tradition has almost completely disappeared. I haven't heard of one happening in many a year and most women nowadays don't even know how to do the dance itself. Moreover, as Sudanese culture skews more ridiculously conservative this sort of thing becomes even less likely. This is how the cultural heritage of a nation fades away and disappears completely.

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Dukhla or Zafaf (the Wedding Party): This is the most recognizable part of the wedding to most foreign observers. It most closely approximates the wedding reception in a typical American wedding, in that everyone shows up, eats a meal and then is treated to the sight of the bride and groom entering as husband and wife for the first time. There's a wedding singer, and lots of dancing to Sudanese songs. It's a rare thing to hear any western music, and I have never seen a DJ at a Sudanese wedding (except for one time at one located in Great Neck, Long Island, but even then he was simply a warm up to the wedding singer).
In the case of my cousin's wedding, the dukhla took place in the evening at a large date palm grove on the Nile in Omdurman (the Mahdist capital of Sudan, on the western bank). A cool breeze blew through the palms and whipped up the enclosure. All the women at the wedding were freezing as they ate their dinners, and the men laughed with forced joviality. The first wedding singer wrapped up at 11p, and people took that as their cue to get to a warmer environment, despite assurances that there would be a second wedding singer carrying us through to 2a. So it was a much smaller group that danced with the second singer, and made their bleary eyed way back to their cars.
My poor cousin was so exhausted at the end of that night - and has been looking so frail throughout - that I couldn't help but worry. At least, I thought, the wedding was over - but it wasn't, there was one last step the next day.

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Jirtik: There's no real translation for this ceremony, and it's a singularly Sudanese tradition with no roots, so far as I can tell, in the Muslim faith or Arab culture. The bride and groom (no doubt fresh from the presume consummation of their marriage) enter (again to much fanfare) and are congratulated by friends, relatives and assorted well-wishers, as they sit on a bed covered in red cloth. The bride is covered in a red shawl, and the groom has red headband with a brass crescent moon on it tied onto his head. The couple's oldest female relations sit with them, while the younger married women surround them, and smear their heads with a sandalwood paste (there are other things, but the sandalwood stands out). They are given a large basket with dates and rice and candy in it and pass handfuls back and forth to each other. Then they are given a bowl (or nowadays, a glass) of milk which they each drink from, and then the older women will spray them with some of the milk. It's my belief that this is actually part of a very old fertility ritual. It may date back all the way to pharaonic times. This certainly explains why the old women are involved, the red sheets (come on, do I have to spell it out for you?), the milk, and so on. It's really quite fascinating when you think about it.
My cousin's jirtik was held at the family farm about 35 miles south of the capital. It was set to start at 2p which had my mother yelling at me to get ready around 1p. Upon arrival we found no sense of urgency at all. Ladies were sitting around in the large living room - or perhaps lounging is the better expression. My Dad and I sat in the garden waiting for our 2p (3p, 4p?) departure. An hour and a half later, my Dad got in a car headed over and sold me out. Two hours after that, we had almost finished loading tea cakes and nuts into the last remaining cars, and the groom had just arrived. So it was that we found ourselves finally heading to the family farm at around 5p.
The far is set far enough back from the road that you begin to think that it doesn't exist. The way there is off the main road and onto an unmarked dirt road that meanders through an unremarkable dusty field. Eventually you are actually met by a traffic cop who directs you to another traffic cop who directs you to the farm itself. For miles around there isn't much to see, except for in the distance behind the farm where there is a minaret that tells you that there is a small village or town back there somewhere.
There were a lot of people (again) at the farm, all invited (how else would you know to come all the way out here). They were waited upon by an army of waiters and cooks, and watched by the local yokels - who stood at a distance and only dared come closer at night closed in around the mango trees (I've always wanted to say that). The Sudanese contingent was supplemented by some visiting poobah's, most notably the British ambassador. Her Excellency was accompanied by a retinue of crewcut military types. All no doubt good Yorkshire boys from the Royal Marines, they ranged around the garden with eagle eyes sharp, on the lookout for malfeasance of any sort. I think they were slightly disappointed at how friendly everyone was, offering them seats and food and drinks and such (or maybe extremely suspicious). One of them asked one of the family hangers on what was going on, and was met with a complete lack of understanding.
The crowd was composed of women, mostly, in fantastical peacock colors surrounding the singer (again), with their back to the "couple's bed". They in turn were surrounded by a cordon of white clad older men, beyond whom sat the "young lions", as they do at the edge of any pride.
Typically this is women's ceremony with very few men present outside of immediate family (silk and gold abound and you can tell it's the real thing because it doesn't gleam, it just sits matte and glowing). But it was the bride's great uncle, who - in a stunning turn of affairs! - performed the jirtik ceremony.

We drove back to my aunt's house afterward and said our good-byes to the couple, who were headed off to their honeymoon. My poor cousin was exhausted and it only showed slightly in her face, because she's a classy girl. The farewell was tearful, surprisingly so, and I felt overcome with the need to give them advice, which is my own wedding tradition. At the end of the wedding I think we all felt a little let down and empty.

December 24, 2008

Product Placement

Dec 19th Khartoum, Sudan 7:17p local time


Khartoum is where I spent my formative years (junior high and high school) and, for a place that I didn't really spend that much time in, I am tied to it very strongly. The city, and the country, have changed considerably even in the two years I've been away. After my last trip I had lamented the rampant consumerism that had suddenly engulfed the country, and on my return I find it even more pronounced than before, yet also more refined. To go back to my note about marketing abroad, I notice how different print advertising is here than it is in Abu Dhabi. Most new print advertising is very Sudanese in character, showing Sudanese families or individuals engaged in whatever behavior the phone company or the producers of toothpaste want them to.There is a tinge of humor (and good humor) to these billboards, which one does not find in Gulf advertising, and to my mind has a lot to do with the national character.

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That national character appears to be changing, of course, as everything inevitably does. I accompanied my cousin, Gift of Gab, and his wife to one of the new garden style cafes that have sprung up around the capital. There under a large neem tree (what is the English name of those?), and various large, fancy new umbrellas were arrayed around a lot of clean, glass-topped tables. Here in the land of cold Pepsi and somewhat cool water, was a menu with ice mocha frappacinos, Slush Puppies, and so on. This may not seem like much to the casual foreign observer, but growing up, there were only a few options: water, Pepsi (not Coke), fruit juice (of whatever kind happens to be in season), or tea (only hot, only black). The embarrassment of riches that these new choices represent is mind-blowing in light of this fact. The clientele of this cafe was not composed primarily of foreigners (and Westerners in particular), but mainly of Sudanese from a wide variety of age groups. The young folks were dressed in incongruously conservative clothes, which somehow managed to also be revealing and fashionable (this schizophrenic fashion is something I notice but am ill-equipped to discuss - you can look up a wide variety of articles on youth culture in Iran to get a feel for what I am talking about). The open flirting between tables of high school aged boys and girls is, again, not something remarkable to foreign sensibilities but quite surprising to those of us who have seen this change. While there is no where on earth where young people do not make goo-goo eyes at each other (and I mean nowhere), the openness or subtlety with which they do it marks out the inhabited boundaries of the culture (beyond which, of course, only dragons lay).

The second thing I noticed was the condescension of the young folks congregated at this cafe directed towards those who didn't belong there - including myself. With everyone dressed to the nines to see and be seen, my own much more casual style of dress marked me out, not as an expatriate but a lower-class pretender sullying the sanctum of their much more sophisticated world. Perhaps the small class warrior that unaccountably lives within me saw more than was actually there, but it seemed to me to be a sad commentary: that the gap between the haves and have-nots in the Sudan had widened so much, and that there was some perceived shame to being "poor" in a country that is composed primarily of poor folks.

December 21, 2008

Light Shopping

Mon Dec 15th 2008 1:23pm Abu Dhabi

Still in Abu Dhabi, having made the grand tour of the new Sheik Zayed Mosque and the homes of various Sudanese friends and family last night. This morning my aunt mentioned that she needed to pick up a few things for her own trip back home. We got to a store with the ambitious name of "The Ambassador" and started browsing.

In the Ross-like aisles Bollywood hits played in the background as I browsed through racks of ugly turtlenecks and sweaters that would make Bill Cosby blush. Beside them were Confederate flag buckled belts (and yes, that is a mudflap girl silhouette on the buckle for good measure).

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I'm always interested in media around the world, and particularly in advertising and the like. How is "cool" conveyed in different places? What are the particulars of how you get someone to buy your particular brand of hair cream? So when I am wandering around in shopping centers, stores, etc my eyes are constantly seeking out the outsized smiles of models, and the phrases emblazoned on the fronts of T-shirts and the like.

Along with whatever language is spoken in the country you happen to be in, invariably there is a lot of English (or "English") spattered across product packaging and in-store advertising. What confuses is how little effort (or worse how much effort) was put into these blurbs, and how little I feel one gets out of them. You're pretty much limited to the feeling of "hey, that's English! Awesome!". A particularly enjoyable example is the advertising for the "couture house" Louis Phillipe, whose motto, "The Upper Crest", is coupled to winsome looking white boys pouting at the camera or exclaiming with well-paid joy. Those of us who are part of the "upper crest" of society appreciate this little nod and of course would buy no other lime green striped shirt. For the kids we see a lot of T-shirts emblazoned with phrases like "I do it coz [sic] I like it!" and "We are the Team [sic]!" But these are all frivlous ad copy, right? It doesn't extend to care tags does it? Which you'd think until you were picking up the 100% silk "machine-washable" ties labeled "Lavorazione a mano" (I'm no linguist but I think that means "wash by hand" in Italian).

But I digress. The main point here is the separation of advertising from the run of real life in the country (even more so than it usually is), especially in the surreal world of the Gulf nations.

December 8, 2008

The Riddler

I went to see JCVD with my brother (who is visiting). It was surprisingly good, and I'd recommend it. Anyway, we walked past City Hall on our way to the theater and it seems there was some sort of gala going on - you could tell from all the white coated valets ranged on the sidewalk outside. The flower of Fan Francisco society was wandering in, and my brother made the best remark. To wit, "This is exactly the moment where the Riddler or somebody would swoop to hold this place hostage. 'Commissioner Gordon, if the Batman doesn't show up and unmask himself then I will destroy every building in the City!' " Comedy gold!

November 19, 2008

Psychological Warfare

As the self-appointed "voice of rational Muslims" everywhere, I feel I have to speak out on (so-called) Dr Ayman el-Zawahiri's recent statement on behalf of Al-Qaeda. He was making a statement regarding the recent election of Barack Obama to the highest office in the land, and has, of course, stirred up controversy. It wasn't the usual threats, or the claims that Mr Obama was a puppet of "the Jews" or what have you, that I found to be particularly infuriating. No, it was the use of the term "house Negro", the genteel cousin of "house nigger", that really lit a fire under me.

The men in the caves in Afghanistan have a particular worldview, which, among other things needs the United States to be both oppressive and openly unjust. While The election of the Mr Obama to the highest office in the land undercuts part of that assertion. This is not to say that the particular audience that they are playing to will necessarily outright reject their message, but perception (especially the subtle ones of Mr Obama's racial make up and complicated religious past) is a powerful thing. Unless the new administration does something nakedly belligerent in the region, the tide of public opinion in the region can be shifted, finally. Frankly, this can/should be assisted with a PR campaign to paint the would-be theocrats in Afghanistan as racists based on these remarks. This would play particularly well in the non-Arab parts of the Muslim world (large swaths of Africa, south and southeast Asia - see where I'm going with this?).

As for me, I never liked these guys to begin with, but this remark just leaves a terrible taste in my mouth. Having been on the receiving end of Egyptian ideas about race and culture, I take even less kindly to this. Hopefully this will backfire on them... hard.

November 11, 2008

Crybaby

The other night I had a few friends from the Couscous Collective over for dinner and a movie, as part of my silent movie kick. The evening went well and everyone enjoyed the movie (a silent German full length feature film "The Adventures of Prince Achmed"). As the night wound on most of the guests left, and eventually it was just the Young Marrieds and me. The conversation drifted to Barack Obama's electoral victory of two nights before. We had watched the returns come in together, and during his speech I had gotten insanely choked up, as had Mrs Young Married. We agreed that we had been in spontaneous tears for the rest of that night and most of the rest of the week.

aside: I have always been a little "emotional" (cf a big girl's blouse) and while the emotion of choice has typically been anger, there's also been some tears. As I get older I find that I am more and more prone to having tears sneak up on me. Consequently I get choked up at surprising (yet perhaps wholly predictable) times.

That prompted a discussion of (unusual?) things that made us weep, which is to say, movies or books that for some reason cause you to spontaneous get inappropriately emotional. So I decided to list a few (in chronological order), just as an exercise, to see if there is some sort of pattern (yes, I am an engineer):


  • "A.D." (miniseries, 1985) - I was only 10 years old and was watching the scene were young Christian children are given lambskins to wear by a nice Roman who tells them they are going to play a little game. They'll pretend to be little lambs running around! The children are delighted and prance as they are sort of guided out into a courtyard, which happens to be the Coliseum. Then the mastiffs are released, their jowls already bloody from previous sport, and the scene ends as the children start to scream. I ran out of the room to my mother with tears streaming down my face at the unfairness - they were only kids! I said.

  • "G.I. Joe" (series, 1985) - still 10 years old (man, how did I not get my ass kicked all day for this?) and as I watched my favorite cartoon, there was a scene where my favorite character - Snake Eyes - was nearly killed in an explosion. I started to wonder whether he'd make it or if he could be killed in some sort of incident! I mean people were firing lasers and throwing grenades all over the place! I freaked out a little and there were some waterworks before I realized it was only fiction and hence it wasn't likely that he'd die on the show.

  • "Microserfs "(book Douglas Coupland, 1995) - I had this book recommended to me at Barnes and Noble (by a clerk I subsequently dated for 3 years), and read it through in a weekend. It's the first book that has ever moved me to tears, and one of the few books I felt related to.

  • "Umi Says" (Mos Def, Coachella Music Festival 2005) - Mos Def and Talib Kweli were the headliners at Coachella in 2005 and I pushed up almost to the front with the Byrninator after the all the goths left once NIN was done. I am a big fan of Mos Def because he's just lyrically gifted, but even I didn't suspect that "Umi Says" would set me off.
    "I don't want to write this down/ I want to tell you how I feel right now ... hey, tomorrow may never come/for you and me, this life is not promised ... I ain't no perfect man/I'm trying to do the best that I can with what it is that I have .... my Umi says, shine your light on the world/shine your light for the world to see."

    Just typing the words right now I'm a wreck. It's very clear to me why it makes me feel the way it does, but I have a hard time expressing it. The quickest explanation I can give is that it sings my life and that recognition strikes me like a blow to the chest, since it is so rare. After all my Umi (Mama) said the same thing to me, and while I do my best I feel like I am constantly falling short of that mark.

  • "Ghost Town" (film 2008) - this one is slightly cheating, since I watched this movie after breaking up with someone I cared about a lot. The movie's plot follows a particularly cold and misanthropic dentist's attempt to rid himself of a haunting by helping steer his spook's widow away from a suitor. Predictably he has to become charming in his own way, and falls in love with the girl. The part that did me in was when he admitted that he was her dead husband's agent, but that wasn't why he was trying to help, and was subsequently hit by a bus. Cheesy, I know, but at that moment I really felt for the guy, getting rewarded for finally coming out his shell with several tons of steel, rubber and fiberglass traveling at 30 mph.


October 18, 2008

Black Marks

On September 12th 2001, I stood outside my house in a neat little sub-division in Chandler, Arizona staring up at the sky at dusk. The sky was empty, and clear. Occasionally you could see the blinking red trail of jet fighters on sortie over the valley. Tears were rolling down my cheeks for several reasons. The day before I had awoken (like many people) to images planes, towers, smoke and bedlam. Standing there right then, knowing who had perpetrated this crime, I know that life was going to get much much harder for me and my family. The thought of my little sister getting harassed the next day on her way to classes, or walking around on campus had me in a panic. I feared a massive backlash, and a future in an internment camp.

Many of those things did not come to pass, but prejudice increased, and a sense of not belonging did too. I could ignore it most of the time, not thinking about being pushed to the edges of civic life. As Obama battled through the primary season, I was saddened that this man who was in some ways like me was pandering to the middle, but knew these were the vagaries of presidential politics. When he emerged as the Democratic candidate I thought about canvassing for him, but as rumors of his being a Muslim came out, it occurred to me that my campaigning for him could be a liability. I found myself becoming ashamed of who I was for a moment, and then got angry; angry that I was being made ashamed for something there was no shame in; angry that I was forced to stay on the sidelines of a crucial election; angry that after all the effort to become a citizen, I was being told I would never be a part of this country, that my presence was tolerated so long as I kept quiet.

So it was nice to hear someone finally stand up and point out how unacceptable all this talk of Obama's being Muslim is. That it is an open slur, to imply Muslims constitute some kind of a fifth column, or are incapable of being good Americans. It was such a relief that I sent an email to CNN to express my gratitude.

UPDATE 10/19/08: Colin Powell has endorsed Obama on Meet the Nation, and had this to say on the "Obama is Muslim" trope:


"I'm also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the [Republican] Party say... such things as 'Well, you know that Mr Obama is a Muslim'.

"Well the correct answer is, 'He's not a Muslim, he's a Christian, he's always been a Christian'. But the really right answer is, "What if he is?' Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is 'No', that's not America."

October 12, 2008

Politics As Usual

politics.jpg

On my back from Phoenix last week, I had a quick visit to the "smallest room", as they say. I saw this written on the inside wall of my stall and had to take a picture. Judging by the numbers, the Palin "bounce" was more of a full McCain eclipse, making this terribly appropriate.

October 6, 2008

Jump!

This sign expresses the rage at having to bail out the Wall Street "fat cats" (who else hates that expression? I might have to blog my disdain for it). I don't care what This American Life might say, I won't change my mind about this. I think we need to have them dance the little lame piggy dance for our money - in their boxers - in the middle of the street. bastards.

link courtesy of PhatMunkay

September 23, 2008

Passing the Collateralized Debt Obligation (formerly, the buck)

Like many of you fine folks I've been trying to get my mind around the collapse of the world financial markets since last August. To that end I've been doing a lot of reading, radio listening, and have subscribed to a variety of podcasts to try and figure things out. It was during a piece on NPR that I heard a financial analyst talk about the root causes of the crisis being due to the complexity of the financial "instruments" being utilized. By way of exculpation, though, the analyst said something along the lines of, "the problem was that these instruments were created by 'rocket scientists' and people didn't really understand how they worked - so you had these physics PhD's coming up with instruments that were far too risky and eventually brought the market down."

You see what happened there?

The financial meltdown is not caused by greedy investment bankers, or the cupidity of executives - no, it's those nerds again. The same people who were to scapegoated for everything from Enron to nuclear arsenals are called back into play. See, folks, it's not the people who decide to deploy weapons/strategies/financial instruments without bothering to understand even remotely how they work - it's those eggheads who tinker with things and force their ideas on the decision makers. How cleverly they deflect blame from themselves and onto their subordinates.

These folks are adept at dodging blame for their bad decisions and now it seems like they will also escape the inevitable market-driven consequences for their string of apparently willfully uninformed decisions. I wish I could say I was surprised but as I've remarked in the past these guardians of accountability have no need for any accountability themselves.

This whole affair seems to be yet another front in the popular war on reason in the United States. From politics to business, there's an undeniable hostility towards intellectuals of various stripes. This anti-intellectual strain in American society is both pernicious and widespread, materializing whenever a complex problem arises. It makes me ashamed thazt my adopted countrymen should be so shallow, and proudly lowbrow.

September 17, 2008

Blasphemy?

I just read that they have commissioned some guy to write another installment of the (increasingly inappropriately named) Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I don't know whether to be livid or hopeful, but am leaning toward livid. What do you guys think?

August 17, 2008

Wordplay

I found this neat java application the other day. Wordle creates word clouds like the one below:



Where the size of the words is determined by the frequency with which they appear in the source text. The fonts and orientations of the words are configurable for a variety of neat looks. Take a look and play around.

June 25, 2008

Change = Bad

It's been a tough couple of weeks for me, leading up to this week. Things are changing pretty fast at NewCo which is no less inscrutable than it has been in the past. Most of the changes are minor like moving cubicles or some talk of new projects etc, but there are more concerning ones. For example there was a recent email about tightening our belts. Mainly it involved not traveling unless entirely necessary, and of course doing so in "economy or economy premium" where possible. I'm surprised that anyone was allowed to travel at a higher level than that initially considering the company was created with an inbuilt cost consciousness. Two days later we got an email that there was a problem with the payroll system that would lead to our pay getting in on time but our pay stubs being delayed. I'm glad that they let us know, but it is worrying on the heels of the "cheapness initiative" as I like to call it.

Outside of NewCo, there's the issue of the impending end of our old business unit. There's a feeling like a mixture of last day of high school and the funeral of a close friend haunting the halls. Every day, it seems, there is a luncheon to say goodbye to someone, who's moving on to a new job or something. It's been toughest with Becklesworth (who is still around) and Fat'n'Happy and his little family to whom I've grown quite attached. I had dinner with them on Monday and when I was dropped off at the train station had to fight against a surprising wave of emotion. Curse this all too human heart that beats in my breast!

Still got some more time with Becklesworth, who underscored his overall value to the team by organizing a brewery tour at the Anchor Steam brewery. It was a nice way to spend the afternoon, plus the company was good (Dr Germ, The Married Guy [hey, you said they called you that!], Flanders and one other for whom I have no current nickname) so it all worked out. For such a small operation it was amazing to see how much they could make and distribute! I looked for Oompa Loompa's but couldn't really find any - must be part of the development plan though.

May 31, 2008

Dorks in the Movie Line

Best quote of the last 4 days: "All those women dressed up in line to see the Sex and The City movie, I realized they're not just dressed up, they're dressed up like the characters in the movie! It's like Star Wars for girls, which character are you?"

May 14, 2008

Summertime Memories

Today was so warm that it sublimated memories of New York, 1985 and losing my brother in Central Park.

Let me back up a step. I stepped out of the building for lunch today with my colleague Fat'n'Happy, bent on getting a slice or two of pizza. As we walked through the doors of our building, I found my eyes closing and a small smile spreading on my face. The air was warm and silky as bathwater and frankly I'd been waiting for this for the last seven months or so. Thinking this I was suddenly aware of a scent that was distantly familiar to me, which I eventually identified as the smell of New York in the summertime. Not the urine drenched muggy stench of midtown, but the lightly stifling scent of the parks and the less traveled streets. Essentially the warmth of the lunchtime air had sublimated the solid stuff of my memories, releasing the sweet scent of my childhood summers and bringing up a specific memory tied to that smell.

(Wayne? Garth? Tootle-oo-to, Tootle-oo-to, Tootle-oo-to, Tootle-oo-to …)

Continue reading "Summertime Memories" »

April 18, 2008

Tales of the Pen-pal King

I just found this blog entry while puttering about avoiding my job. It's a remarkable post, not because it's particularly well written but because of the sentiments expressed in it. It certainly captures a period in my life fairly well; the obsession with comics and the awkwardness around girls may be common but as anyone who went through it will tell you, it always feels like you're the only one.

Moreso, I had a similar experience with female penpals. Flying Lufthansa from Khartoum to Boston almost 20 years ago I was given their kid's in-flight magazine. On the back cover was a list of the newest kids in the Lufthansa pen pals club. The small selection of kids seemed to be from all over the world and I suddenly wanted to be among them - not necessarily to write to any of them, but to be one of the names on the back of the magazine that some other kid would see and think was exotic and exciting. So I sent in my name and surprisingly they must have posted it since I started getting letters. More surprisingly the letters were all from girls.

They were from diverse backgrounds but all more enamored with getting a pen pal, I think than keeping one. There was one German girl who wrote enthusiastically and hoped we'd be in touch "forever" - but neglected to write down her address anywhere. There was the Nigerian girl who stopped writing after the second letter. In those and every other case the glamour wore off fairly soon. Perhaps it was me but I am convinced that it was the nature of the whole thing. Kicking off the correspondance was exciting and sort of romantic, putting you in touch with strangers on the other side of the world. After all, I had also been lured in by this idea - but after those first two letters what is there? Mostly banal accounts of the daily grind: school, sports, family; and those don't keep up the interest. In some ways it's a shorthand for most relationships, with their passionate beginnings descending into dull familiarity.

The interesting thing is that even these abortive attempts and pen pal-ing were a great boost to my adolescent confidence. It seemed that even as I schlepped along unnoticed in my daily life, there was some version of me that was cool, and attractive to people. On paper, anyway.

May 23, 2006

Marvell

Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Andrew Marvell "To His Coy Mistress"

Doing my part to bring culture to the masses...

February 3, 2006

La Racisme

It all started with my cousin's phone call last weekend. She was worked up about a visit to Bayside. Bayside is a mostly white neighborhood in Queens, NY, famous for its Sopranos-like residents and for race issues. It's no Bensonhurst but then again, does it have to be? At any rate, the car she was in was blocking the street and when honked at they moved it. In response she and her girlfriend were met with the finger, and then, at the window of their car, a belligerent middle aged gent who (of all the words he could have possibly used to express his displeasure) chose to use the word "nigger". "Just like a nigger," he apparently said to them, repeatedly.

My cousin was, understandably, in shock. After all, this is not 1955 and she was not in Mississippi, and yet here she was hearing the sort of language that one had thought confined to movies about the "bad old days". I tried to calm her down on the phone (this is days after the event mind you), and remind her that she did the right thing by not starting a ruckus right there in the street. That would have been playing into his hands and in a neighborhood like that could have caused her far more pain than just to her dignity. Still I was appalled by the whole thing and I shared her impotent rage. How could such a thing be said in this day and age?

Flash forward to today, at the morning meeting, where one our mid-level managers (Keifer) was referring to something that hadn't happend in a long time as not having happened in "a coon's age". I'm not sure if he realized that the expression has nothing to do with raccoons or any other cuddly woodland creatures. I felt a cold knot in my stomach that was mirrored by the silence in the room. Even our Ditka-like floor supervisor shot me a glance of "are you going to flip out?" My leg twitched and I calmly stood up and walked out of the room, and took the corporate way out - a strongly worded email. Does that make me a coward or a fool? It certainly made me an angry oaf that I snapped at my lunch partners and stomped off to eat by myself.

La Racisme

It all started with my cousin's phone call last weekend. She was worked up about a visit to Bayside. Bayside is a mostly white neighborhood in Queens, NY, famous for its Sopranos-like residents and for race issues. It's no Bensonhurst but then again, does it have to be? At any rate, the car she was in was blocking the street and when honked at they moved it. In response she and her girlfriend were met with the finger, and then, at the window of their car, a belligerent middle aged gent who (of all the words he could have possibly used to express his displeasure) chose to use the word "nigger". "Just like a nigger," he apparently said to them, repeatedly.

My cousin was, understandably, in shock. After all, this is not 1955 and she was not in Mississippi, and yet here she was hearing the sort of language that one had thought confined to movies about the "bad old days". I tried to calm her down on the phone (this is days after the event mind you), and remind her that she did the right thing by not starting a ruckus right there in the street. That would have been playing into his hands and in a neighborhood like that could have caused her far more pain than just to her dignity. Still I was appalled by the whole thing and I shared her impotent rage. How could such a thing be said in this day and age?

Flash forward to today, at the morning meeting, where one our mid-level managers (Keifer) was referring to something that hadn't happend in a long time as not having happened in "a coon's age". I'm not sure if he realized that the expression has nothing to do with raccoons or any other cuddly woodland creatures. I felt a cold knot in my stomach that was mirrored by the silence in the room. Even our Ditka-like floor supervisor shot me a glance of "are you going to flip out?" My leg twitched and I calmly stood up and walked out of the room, and took the corporate way out - a strongly worded email. Does that make me a coward or a fool? It certainly made me an angry oaf that I snapped at my lunch partners and stomped off to eat by myself.

February 1, 2006

Boustrophedonic

I had no idea this word existed, or what it meant. Frankly it sounds made up, doesn't it? I ran across the abbreviation BOUS in one of our parameter sets when I first started working at the Blue Beast. It seems that it is a holdover from the days of [begin dork-speak segment] screw-actuated stages, which were not always perfectly matched, leading to a different overlay offset depending on what direction you were scanning[end dork-speak segment]. Hence, as the plough furrows. I learned all this from my colleague who owns that particular part of the process.

The problem of course is that the word sounds completely fake, in the same way that budonkadonk does. That's compounded with my colleague's dead pan delivery to almost anything. Just listen to yourself saying the word: boo-strof-a-donic.

"Did you hear that new Black Eyed Peas song? It's boustrophedonic yo!"

"Twenty dollars for that? That's boustrophedonic!"

"I'm sorry, sir, your wound, it's gone boustrophedonic, we'll have to amputate."

It's amazing that a word like this really exists, and it's a pity we can't put it to more use.

October 10, 2002

PS

I forgot to mention. The word of the day two days ago was daedal. For those that don't know what it means, it means this:

daedal \DEE-dul\ (adjective)
1 a : skillful, artistic *b : intricate
2 : adorned with many things

Did you know?
You might know Daedalus as the mythological prisoner who
fashioned wings of feathers and wax to escape from the island
of Crete with his son Icarus. But it was as architect and
sculptor, one said to have designed a labyrinth for King Minos
on Crete, that he earned his name. "Daedalus" (from Greek
"daidalos") is Latin for "skillfully wrought." The same
skillful Latin adjective also gave English the adjectives
"daedel" (in use since the 16th century) and "Daedalian" (or
"Daedalean"), a synonym of "daedal."

Who else identifies with Daedalus? The proto-engineer/Renaissance man, he embodies the spirit of human curiousity and drive to make more sense of the world through reason. I always felt some kind of kinship with Daedalus, especially after his daring escape from the palace of king Minos on Crete. Too smart for words but not smart enough to save his only son.

This probably makes no sense but it's late and it is a postscript so let's call it a night