Human Rights Watch International Film Festival 2008

This past week and a half I have been volunteering in the evenings at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival. Human Rights Watch is one of the major international non-governmental organizations that monitors, studies and reports on human rights globally, they are hugely influential (though not as influential as the SHOULD be!) and do a lot of really important work. They are based in New York and have another major regional office here in London. Every year for 11 years, they have had a film festival for human rights-related films. As a volunteer, I was fortunate enough to be able to see a lot of the films for free, and I wanted to mention the ones that I saw. I recommend all of them, and if you get a chance to see them, please do.

The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo
This movie is about the armed conflict that is going on in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the way that rape and sexual violence are being used as a weapon of war. This is a subject I am really interested in, because I was going to write my dissertation about it. That has since changed, but my subject is still very nearly related. The filmmaker is an American woman who was gang raped in Georgetown, in Washington D.C. She became aware of this situation in the Congo and went there to record the stories of the women victims of sexual violence during the conflict. It is really an unparalleled look into the horrors through which these women have lived and are still living. I cannot convey the depth of the problem here. Suffice it to say this movie is extremely difficult to watch, but the filmmaker does not flinch from the reality. It is above all the other movies the one I most highly recommend.

Under the Bombs
This is a very interesting movie which was filmed largely during the 2006 summer war between Lebanon and Israel. During the bombing campaign, the filmmaker and actors took a few cameras out in the chaotic country and improvised a fictional story about a woman traveling to the south of Lebanon (where the bombing was most severe) to find her sister and her son. There is only one cab driver who will take her there, and though they are distant at first, they slowly form a bond. This was a very compelling story despite being improvised, and it was interesting how they married the real-life events (and sets and destruction, etc) and a fictional, yet really humanizing, story.

The Sari Soldiers
This movie follows six Nepalese women during the recent State of Emergency which was declared by Nepal's king (Nepal until very recently was one of the few remaining absolute monarchies in the world). One is a royalist who thinks having a stable monarchy is better than advancing democracy and creating a civil war. Another is a Maoist rebel, fighting in the rebel army, which is interesting because it is comprised of 40% women. Another is a woman who spoke out against the abuses of the royal army; her 15 year old daughter was subsequently arrested and became a 'disappeared' person; after a protracted legal battle with the state that caught the attention of the world media, she found out that her daughter had been tortured, raped and buried in a shallow grave behind the detention center to which she had been taken; the perpetrators were never really brought to justice. Another is her advocate, a human rights lawyer who has really done remarkable work in advancing human rights in Nepal. Another is a young woman who is enlisted in the Royal Army, which is recruiting and training more women in response to the Maoist rebel army. And the last is a young university student who is a political activist against the repressive regime of the king. All remarkable women, really.

Up the Yangtze
The Yangtze river is the great river in China that has been the lifeblood for the rural populations for centuries. It was recently blocked by a super-dam which is the largest in the world. Although this is touted as an indicator of the huge economic progress of China, the flooding it has caused is pushing many millions of people out of their homelands, even putting entire cities under water. This movie follows a luxury river-boat tour up the Yangtze, which is really a way for rich Westerners to see how the people have lived for one last time before they are pushed off their land and into destitution. Particularly touching and heartrending is the story of a young girl whose family is extremely poor and is about to be flooded out of their shack home. She wants to go to high school, but the family does not have the money to send her and she must go work on this luxury river-boat if they are to survive. There is an extremely difficult scene when they are at the dinner table talking and her parents are saying, "We are sorry, but we can't send you to school, you must go to work or your parents and your younger siblings will have nothing." The girl and her parents are crying and her mother says, "Do you think we would exploit you like this if there were any other way?"
***The filmmakers were present for all these films afterwards for a Q&A session and it turns out the director of this film has set up a charity and has paid for the girl to go to high school, which is great in the short run, but whether it is enough to elevate her and her family out of poverty, I don't know.
This movie is interesting in the way it contrasts the harsh reality of poverty in a supposedly communist China with the reality of China's super-rich and the West's super-duper-rich, gently poking fun at Westerners who are just there for the pretty scenery.

Strange Culture
There is an artist in the States called Steve Kurtz. He does a strange sort of bio-social-art where he tries to educate people about the possible dangers of genetically modified foods through a mixture of science and art. Consequently he does a lot of science work with bacteria, petri dishes, etc, and has some standard scientific research equipment to help him do his art, such as incubators, microscopes, etc, nothing you couldn't purchase yourself off the internet, nothing you wouldn't find in a high school science lab. He wakes up one morning to find his wife of 27 years has died of heart failure in her sleep. When he calls 911 and the ambulances come, they see the equipment and call the FBI, who then investigate him as a suspected bio-terrorist. This movie is an interpretation of his experiences because in fact the case is ongoing and he's not technically allowed to speak about it, so the actors (including the strangely androgynous yet lion-ish Tilda Swinton) give an interpretation of what might have happened. The main actor in the movie may be the most unattractive man I have ever seen.

A Promise to the Dead
When Augusto Pinochet Ugarte deposed the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, he killed everyone in the previous administration, except for the man in this movie. His name was crossed of the list of people meant to be executed by an Allende staff member so that he could live to tell the story of what happened. He views it as his promise to the dead. This movie follows him going to Chile to revisit the old places and discuss the events with his friends who were there at the time.

Well, I don't know if anyone will get a chance to see these movies since most of the filmmakers are struggling for someone to distribute them! Human Rights Watch is repeating the festival in New York City, so I guess that's your best bet.

They were all really diverse films, but they all show that human rights abuses are occurring now everywhere around the world and we're not even aware of them. And I guess the thing that I most concerned me after watching these films is that I would be ashamed, if I knew that these things were going on in the world, to stick my head in the sand and pretend that it's not my problem. I think it's everyone's problem, and of course, learning about it is the first step. So I'm trying not to shrink from that.

An Update on Hebron

We recently received some photos from the school we volunteered at last summer. They have just had their first 'Annual Day of Corbett School' celebration (apparently a school celebration day). Things have come a long way! Here was the school when we visited last summer:



As you can see, it was still under construction. Now...



Whoa! Looking great! The celebration was quite an affair also. Check out some of these pictures...









Looks like quite a good time. There's one more interesting photo, from my perspective...



See that building in the background? That's the vocational college, for kids 15 and up to learn computer skills, clothing design, and other professional skills. When we were there, this was all that was done...



Finally, some people have, in the past, asked us how to donate to the charity and we finally have a good answer. The Catherine Jones Foundation is one of the main donors to Hebron House and they've set up an online donation page here. We've been out for drinks a few times with Mathew Dowell, the guy who mainly runs this outfit and he's a really good, if really stressed guy. None of the people who operate the foundation are paid, so all the money goes to Hebron.

Just so you're aware, the price of food in India has really shot up because of global food inflation - especially rice, the main source of food for the kids there. If you feel like giving, it could really help them out.

The Sleeping Beauty (ballet)

I went to The Sleeping Beauty at the Royal Opera House, a ballet set to Tchaikovsky's score. Our flat building because it's student housing sometimes has amazing deals on 'culture' events, and Matt and I have learned to pounce when the opportunity presents itself. My seat for the ballet was a bit in the nose-bleed section, but it had a clear view of everything.

Matt and I have only ever been to one other ballet (except for elementary school field trips I guess) and that was Gisele in Paris for 8 euro when we were there three years ago. And I had no idea what the story was, so I walked out of there totally confused. This time I knew what the story was going to be, but knowing the story makes you think, "How are they going to interpret this story into a dance, especially one that seems to be primarily waving your arms about?" Here's the answer: make the story so clear and simple you'd be hard pressed not to understand and intersperse the rather thin plot with long passages of dancing which have no plot details but are simply beautifully transporting. And it was beautiful. I make fun of waving the arms about, but waving your arms about beautifully and dancing a full ballet is HARD and takes a lot of work. Make no mistake, these people are athletes. I could see everyone's clearly defined calf muscles from the nosebleed seats. Anyway, can you do this? :



The London Times gave the ballet 4 out of 5 stars, so it must be pretty good even if I'm no judge and have nothing to say but that it was beautiful. There is sometimes so much detail going on that I find it better to just let my eyes go out of focus a bit and enjoy the collective effect.

An Even Littler Post

What an interesting time to work for a company that does economic and financial market analysis! I reckon I'm learning a ton.

The March freelance deadline is Thursday, so I'm swamped till then. You have to count on Grace to put up a post.

But, I'll tell you this. I went to see a flamenco dance performance on Sunday night.

A Little Post

Here's a brief post. Grace is having an exciting time right about now. She went to a ballet at the main opera house last night, and this weekend (and beyond) she's volunteering at the "Human Rights Watch International Film Festival." In fact that's where she is right now. Hopefully, she can spare a moment to write about these things soon...

In other news, I am the only American in my office and everyone is very jealous of me because I am going to get a check from the US government courtesy of the economic stimulus package. I can't wait to stimulate the UK economy with it.

Wind!

We're having unusual weather. Eighty mile per hour winds are roaring through London. Sometimes with rain, sometimes without. It's been going since Monday and its supposed to last until maybe tomorrow.

Monday it rained and I walked to work with my umbrella, wind or no wind. I have a half hour walk each morning, and the whole time I was focused on one thing, "don't let the umbrella get blown inside out." The key is, you have to angle it, so the top-side of the umbrella is pointed into the wind. If the wind catches it from underneath, the umbrella is going to get reversed, and you'll look like a fool.

On Monday morning, sensing the wind's direction and keeping the umbrella braced against it was a full-time job. When the wind was blowing straight into my face, I had to basically lower the umbrella as a shield, and I couldn't see where I was going. When I got close to the river, things really started to pick up, and I had to use both hands to hold the umbrella, one at the bottom and one at the top. Even with all this effort, sometimes the wind reversed direction in a heartbeat and I was made to look like a fool, with an inside-out umbrella. But at least my head wasn't too wet when I got to work.

When I walked home though, I decided to give up on the struggle. It was a great idea, because the rain wasn't nearly as bad as the wind. I got wet, but not soaked, and I didn't have any stress. That day half of London got the same idea, and I had the unusual sight of lots of Londoners walking around with umbrellas folded up under their arms, just letting themselves get rained on.

Also on the way home, I walked through an umbrella graveyard. There were dozens of mangled and destroyed umbrellas everywhere, sometimes in trashcans, sometimes not. A cheap umbrella just can't handle wind like this - the metal frames will bend, or the joints will break. Crazy.

It hasn't rained since while I was walking home, but the wind is still howling fiercely. You can hear it, like a roaring, shrieking mob outside the office windows.

Today I took a walk after I ate lunch, because otherwise I would go crazy, just sitting at a computer all day. I work really closely to the Millenium bridge, so I usually go walk across it and along the river, as you get some great views. The millenium bridge is for pedestrians only - here it is:

I was going across it at lunch today and the wind was worse than ever, since we were right on top the river, no buildings to sheild us. You could literally lean right into it, and it would support your weight. That made walking difficult.

But I noticed that walking was harder than it should be. Something was wrong. Suddenly I realised, the whole bridge was swaying in the wind, moving beneath my feet. I was a bit worried about this. The bridge is infamous, because when it was first put up, it had to be closed within hours, because it was noticeably swaying. Interestingly enough, what happened was, by random chance, a bunch of people were walking with the same rhythym and got the bridge moving a tiny bit with them. Then, everyone else on the bridge started to adjust their steps to keep their balance, and the whole bridge fell into the same walking rhthym. And all those feet moving together - left, then right, then left, then right - really got the bridge moving.

So the closed the bridge and reinforced it a whole bunch. And now its supposed to be fine.

But it was definitely moving today. Not enough that you could see it visually, but enough that you felt a little motion sick while on it. Like you were walking on a boat. I don't know if its supposed to sway anymore or not, but I turned around and got off!

This is Grace on the bridge last year - she's looking a little scared. Maybe a premonition.

Mr. Black Swan

On Thursday I went to see a public lecture by the guy who wrote The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. The book was amazing, so I was hoping it would be a good lecture. The author has a pretty distinctive personality, so I was excited to see him in person. His name's Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Taleb was pretty much as I imagined he would be, although he was more soft-spoken than I thought he would be - in the book, you get the impression that he frequently flies into a shouting rage. He was fairly restrained here. And he had some recent examples of randomness to underscore his points - for example, on Martin Luther King's day this year the stock markets in Europe crashed. The New York Times reported the markets crashed because of "recession fears," but Taleb pointed out there were recession fears the day before and the day after and it didn't crash. In fact, sometimes it rebounded heavily, amidst recession fears. No, the real cause of the market crash was something much more unpredictable, and much more random.

It was because a rogue trader at Society General, one of the biggest banks in all of Europe, had used 50 billion euros of the bank's money to make bets on the stock market - bad bets. The bank wanted to get rid of the stuff he had bought, because it was certainly going to drop in price eventually. Anyway, for some reason they decided to do it on Martin Luther King's day, as quickly as possible, perhaps not realizing that the USA stock market was closed for business that day. So this bank goes to the stock market and tries to sell 50 billion euros worth of stuff, but half the world's buyers, the Americans, are taking the day off. So not enough people wanted to buy the bank's stuff. And, in the stock market, when no one wants to buy something you're selling, you lower the price. So they had to drastically cut the prices of 50 billion euros worth of assets, and this started a panic and the markets crashed.

Not because of recession fears, but because one person at one bank in Europe committed mass fraud, and then the bank picked a stupid day to try and undo the damage. Random. And some people think that, maybe if the markets hadn't crashed that day, then maybe we would be thinking "whew! We dodged the recession bullet!"

His other good example used a chart about Hillary Clinton.

This is a graph from Intrade.com, a website were people bet on, well, anything. The idea is that, since you have tons of people with money at stake, this is a really accurate predictor. You get the wisdom of the crowd, and you know everyone is actually saying what they think is most likely to happen, because they've put their money down on it. This is a graph of the probability that Hillary Clinton will be the democratic nominee, based on the bets from this website. As you can see, everyone though she was sure to win, until she lost Iowa in early January. Then everyone thought she was sure to lose, until she won New Hampshire. Then everyone thought she was sure to win until she did worse than expected on Super Tuesday. Then, after she won Ohio and Texas, people think she has a better chance of winning. The point is, obviously these guys can't predict anything. They have money at stake, but they don't know any more than the rest of us. The point is, prediction is really hard in the real world, and we think we understand more than we do.

And one more cool thing he said was this.

He put up a picture of the earth and said, look, this is the mother of complex systems. If we can't even predict little things, how can we think we know what's going to happen if we mess with this thing. So, let's error on the side of caution.

So that was cool. But the lecture had a lot of problems.

First, the guy's microphone died four times. Seriously. He had to switch from a wireless clip on his jacket, to one at a podium, to a wireless handheld, to a corded handheld, to a second corded handheld. And there was all this feedback. He didn't get through his whole lecture. because of this, and I think he would have been a lot more shout-ey if he hadn't had to keep switching microphones.

Second, the seats in this auditorium were the smallest ones I've ever seen in my life. Far worse than any train or plane. If we had another four inches, my knees would still have been jammed right up against the back of the chair. I switched seats to an aisle row, and sat completely sideways the whole time.

Third, it was a public lecture so we had to contend with crazy people at question time. This was a major problem at ISU too. There are these nutcases with elaborate conspiracy theories and they always come to these lectures to ask the speaker some question about their own conspiracy theory. And it's always a huge, long, rambling question that no-one understands, especially not the speaker. This time we had two of these guys. The first guy was in the middle of his awful, horribly long speech about knowledge and human psychology, when from somewhere else in the auditorium some guy yells out, "YOU CAN'T PREDICT IT!!!! THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT!!!!!"

Later the guy had another chance to be a loud crazy person. Some college kid was asking a question about random things, like 9/11, and as soon as he said 9/11 this guy yells out, "SEPTEMBER 11TH, 2001!!! WE NEED LINGUISTIC ACCURACY HERE PEOPLE! WE'VE BEEN CORRUPTED BY THE MEDIA AND BRANDING OF THIS PHENOMENON!!!..." I don't even remember what else he said. It was just gibberish.

Then, the moderator says, "Please sir! Can you let the speaker answer the question!"

To which the guy answers, "YES, OF COURSE, IT'S JUST THAT HAS TO BE FLAGGED UP! IT'S VERY IMPORTANT AND WE CAN'T LET THAT LANGUAGE SLIP!"

And the moderator says, "No, you don't have to flag that up."

So the kid goes back to his question, careful to say, "September 11, 2001" and the guy yells out, "THANK YOU!"

Ay ay ay.

Walking in London!

Due to a lack of discretionary funds, Matt and I do a lot of walking around London, both to save Tube money and because London is a really nice town to walk around in. Last Saturday, Matt wanted to go to the Tate Modern museum to see that house that was in the previous post. So we walked. It was a beautiful sunny day, with a bit of a crisp wind. Perfect walking weather. Here is a map of our walk:



Using this website Matt's aunt Bev told him about, called Gmaps-Pedometer, we discovered this is a little over 4 miles, not a bad walk for a Saturday morning.

London is great for walking because there is always something to see within walking distance, and in between, there's lots of beautiful stuff, because most of the stuff in the city that isn't modern dates from the Victorian or Georgian era. On this walk alone, which is into a less pretty part of central London called "The City of London" aka "the City", we saw the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, the Millenium Bridge, Tate Modern, the Thames river walk, Somerset House (a palladian mansion, now a set of museums) and various squares, etc. With so much loveliness around you can see why walking is a great British tradition.

Africa on the Brain

My work life is taking over my private life. I find myself drifting over to the BBC's Africa news page when I'm websurfing and all my bookmarked sites are increasingly blogs written by development economists. And in my free time I'm reading a book called Africans: The History of a Continet.

Grace got me gift certificate to my favorite store, Stanford's, for my birthday, and I used the money to buy two gigantic wall calendars, one of which is all about Africa. And then, on Saturday, Grace and I took a long walk down to the Tate Modern, where there is this new exhibit called La Maison Tropical.

It's a flatpack house designed by some great architect in the 1950s. It was made out of materials durable enough to withstand the harsh climate and humidity of African rain forest. Basically it was supposed to be stylish, cheap, housing for rich people in Africa. They could never get it cheap enough though, so they only ever made three. This is one of them. Some architecture buff went down to the Republic of Congo and brought it back to England to display (apparently he had to clean it up quite a bit - there were bullet holes in the walls from the Congo's civil war). Anyway we went down to see it. I thought it would be free to go inside, but it was £5, and we didn't think that was worth it.

But the most worrying development of all came very early Saturday morning. It must have been three or four in the morning and we were fast asleep. Suddenly this horrible, awful noise screamed out - it was probably a fire alarm going off in our flat. Since our place is so small, that fire alarm was really, really, really, really loud.

In a blind panic I sat bolt upright in bed. And you know what thought went through my head?

"Republic of Congo! Gabon!"

I think I was worried I had screwed something up at work or something.

The fire alarm stopped as quickly as it started, and then we went back to bed. But it happened again later that night, and once again, in my panic, I thought "Republic of Congo!"

Oh, Iowa City

You gotta love Iowa City. How can one town be so filled with intelligence and talent, and simultaneously such absurd stupidity.

I am referring of course to the case of the 'Three Michaels'. Three twenty-ish best friends (from suburban Illinois, that's where the stupidity comes from) apparently are now under arrest because last night one of them was getting a PAULA (under-aged drinking ticket) from an Iowa City police officer. Guy Number 2 comes up, grabs the officer's citation pad from his hands and runs off with it! A third guy pushes the officer backward and they all run away. Except the one with the citation book slips and falls on the corner of Clinton and Washington (yes, in front of Pancheros, bless the ice and snow this once!) the officer tackles him to the ground, but the third guy comes back and jumps on the officer's back trying to get him off of his friend. They both get away and start running again and AGAIN Guy Number 2 slips and falls on the corner! Guy Number 3 gets away but while the officer is booking Guy Number 2, he oh-so-casually walks by the scene again and is spotted by another officer! He runs and hides in some bushes, but obviously that doesn't work. He's arrested too! The first guy who was getting the PAULA in the first place meanwhile has disappeared, but later he is found and arrested at Currier Hall where he lives! Now they are facing various charges of intoxication, of course, as well as resisting arrest, interference with official acts, attacking a police officer, robbery, etc, some of which are serious misdemeanors!

AND they're all named Michael! Great mug shots at the Press-Citizen.com. Anyway, classic show of University of Iowa undergraduate stupidity, courtesy of the state of Illinois.

A Little Africa, A Little America

1. So, at work I cover Nigeria. And I'm reading this article from the news agency Reuters.

Ho hum, nothing much of interest for people who don't worry about Nigeria on a daily basis. But then I got to the end, and the last sentence sort of jumped out at me.

Now, that hardly seems like objective reporting, does it?

2. As I hinted in my last post, most people probably don't think about Nigeria on a daily basis. This video (for people reading who don't know what "The Onion" is, this video is a joke) goes with this idea pretty well. I like it, because I now know that the commentator's questions are actually really good. Her information is spot-on.

To see the video, go to http://www.theonion.com/content/video/in_the_know_situation_in_nigeria

3. Continuing on the theme that Americans are a little less knowledgeable about the rest of the world than some other topics is this picture. I think it's pretty funny.



4. On a more serious note, sometimes I hear people in the UK debate the American presidential election. A sad refrain that I hear a lot is that "I just don't think America will really vote for a black president, when it comes down to election day."

I think that's really sad and, hopefully, wrong. I'm not saying I would base my vote on this, but it would be a nice side-benefit if Barack Obama got elected, because I could rub it in some people's faces.

Favorite Paintings

We've been hitting some art museums. Here are Grace and I's favorite paintings thusfar.

Matt first:

"Surprise!" by Henri Rousseau

It's a surprised tiger in a big storm. For me at least, you really feel like you're in this jungle storm.


"Jason" by J.M. Turner

This one shows Jason (of Jason and the Argonauts fame) climbing into a cave to fight a dragon. The thing I like about it, is that you don't see the dragon at all, just a flash of its tail. You just know it's somewhere in the darkness, waiting for him. It's like a horror movie - it's scariest before you see the monster.

Now for Grace's:

"The Lady of Shallot," by John William Waterhouse


"Self-Portrait," by Elisabeth Le Brun

Update: On the whole, I tend to like big, epic paintings with lots going on, while Grace tends to prefer portraits. So, to shake things up, here is my favorite portrait:

"Monsieur de Norvins," by Jean-August-Dominique Ingres

I like the look of this guy.

And here is Grace's favorite "big" painting.

"Petworth Park: Tilington Church in the Distance," by J.M. Turner

Actually, we've been to Petworth house and seen this view.

Don't know where Tilington Church is. But there were deer there.

We haven't written in ten days now! But don't worry for the most part, here's what you've been missing from my (Matt) life.

6:30-7:00 - Wake Up
7:45 - Leave for Work
8:15 - Arrive at Work
1:00 - Lunch
5:00-5:30 - Leave work
6:00 or so - Get home
7:00 - Some kind of dinner
8:00 - 11:30 - Freelance work

I have to put in extra freelance work to pay the bills until my pay goes up in April. Two more months!

But, I should emphasize that I do like my job.

There has been some excitement though. Grace and I decided to make more of an effort to take advantage of living in London, by going to a free museum on the weekend. Last weekend we went to the National Gallery (of Art), which I haven't been to all year. And it was really nice. It's a real privilege to be able to go to an art museum and just look at the paintings, without worrying about being a tourist and having to make sure you see the most famous ones. I got sick of looking at art after about 90 minutes so, we just left. Easy as that. No guilt about only looking at half the museum. We'll go back later if we want to see more.

Anyway, tomorrow we hope to do more of the same. Not sure which gallery we'll go visit though.

And last night, for a late birthday gift from my parents, we went to see the epic Lord of the Rings stage musical, here in London. Trying to do all three shows in one night is just too much! You have TWO intermissions! But, it has amazing special effects (it cost $25 million to make). There's a giant spider, the balrog, tons of smoke, black riders, acrobatic orcs, people on 25 foot stilts and disappearing hobbits. And the guy who played Gollum was amazing. He comes on the set crawling straight down a 100 foot wall upside down. And he's super flexible and gymnastic and spastic and crazy. You really have to see it to believe it. He was just really, really good. In fact, you could say he stole the show. When everyone took bows at the end, people started cheering when he came out, but then STOPPED cheering when Frodo and Gandalf and all the leads came out! He was just better than everyone else.

They did have to rush things a bit, as they told the whole story in 3 hours, with extended song sequences. Mainly, they cut out... the entire second book! There is no rohan, no battle at Helm's deep, none of that stuff! Instead, when everyone splits up at the end of the first movie, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli just say, "Well, I hope the little hobbits did not get captured! (They didn't) I guess we should just go to the city of men, eh?" And then they do!

One more funny thing about it, was how fast they talked. I assume they had to, because they had so much to get through, but still, it's weird to hear this:

Gandalf: Frodo! Let me see that ring! Put it in the fire! Here it is! What does it say!
Frodo: Wow, there are markings here! I wonder what they say!
Gandalf: They are in the language of Mordor which I will not utter here but they say in the common tongue one ring to rule them all one ring to bind them one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them! This confirms it beyond all doubt! It is the one ring! And Bilbo found it! Imagine that! He always did seem quite fond of it! Well, what should we do?!
Frodo: You take it!
Gandalf: No! Don't Tempt Me! You will have to take it to Rivendell!
Frodo: Elves?!
Gandalf: Yes! Oh look, it's Sam! He can go too!

Are You Kidding Me?

I've picked the wrong career. At least in terms of great trips.

In Cambridge I was talking to my geologist mate Gar. His degree is sending him on a month-long North Atlantic "cruise." They're going to take a boat out to the middle of the ocean and drag the bottom for rocks for about a month. In all seriousness, its work. There'll be no ports and it's 8 hours on, 8 hours off, work all the time. But still, c'mon. This is in addition to the frequent trips he's taking to North Africa, Ireland, Greece and what ever, all to gather rocks.

Who would have thought you actually didn't have to go anywhere near Africa to write about its economy? If you want a job that travels, get a degree in rocks.

Shari'a Law Controversy

You may have heard recently about this controversy that is going on here in England about a comment made by the Archbishop of Canterbury about incorporating shari'a law into UK law. As someone who is interested in shari'a law and also as someone who is living in Britain, I thought it might be good to give our perspective on this. Basically what has happened is that the Archbishop of Canterbury, one of the leaders of the Anglican and Episcopalian Church has said that in order to encourage 'social cohesion' British law should incorporate aspects of Shari'a law, the code of law derived from the Koran which regulates all aspects of private and public life for Muslims.

Americans may not realise it (we didn't before we moved here, and especially after moving to London) but Britain has a lot of Muslims residents. Britain has a lot of immigrants anyway, but due to their prolific colonisation of the world, many of the inhabitants of the colonies (frequently still 'Commonwealth' countries) have immigrated here. Immigration is not quite the same issue here as it is in the US. There is only one party that believes that immigration should be stopped, and they are almost universally reviled and very small in number. A lot of those countries, such as Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Iran, are Islamic countries or have large Islamic populations. Obviously when they immigrate, they do not automatically assimmilate into British culture and start wearing Wellies and eating Sunday roasts. More accurately, immgrant cultures have really shaped modern Britain. For example, the national dish is chicken tikka masala, which is an Indian curry dish, invented in South London by immigrants. Britain is a true melting pot. The US is extremely homogenous by comparison, whatever platitudes we make about the American melting pot.

The mixing of extremely different cultures in Britain has been a long process and it has not been without controversy. There is the perennial debate about headscarves. Some codes of shari'a law (the exact codes differ depending on the country you come from, the particular type of Islam you practice, ethnic background, etc.) require women to wear clothes to cover their bodies in public. It can be a scarf covering the hair and neck, or you could be required to cover your entire body leaving nothing exposed and nothing but some sheer-er fabric to see out of covering the eyes. Matt and I see women in this dress all the time here in London because there is of course a big Muslim population here. At first, it was a little disturbing seeing a woman on a shopping street covered with a thick black cloak from the top of her head to her toes, but this is a sight we have now become used to. That doesn't mean we are entirely comfortable with it, but if you know anything about the treatment of women in Islam, you will know that headscarves are the lowest on the list of things to worry about.

Almost everyone thinks this claim the Archbishop of Canterbury has made is absolutely absurd on multiple levels. One aspect that Christopher Hitchens points out really well in an article on Slate.com is that Muslim women who have immigrated to the UK need the legal protections that all British women have, to protect themselves against the abuses to which they are subjected by shari'a law. And if the UK incorporates aspects of shari'a law into its own legal code, they will have no protections.

I think the most obvious point here is that the UK does not give special recognition or protection to any particular religion, why should it do so for Islam? The Archbishop's implicit argument is that if Britain shows more deference to Islamic law, British Muslims will be less likely to become extremists and terrorists. To my ears, it sounds like he is sacrificing his values as the head of a Christian denomination in the fear of future terrorism. Isn't that exactly the goal of terrorism, to make a society so afraid of physical violence against it that it will abandon its own values and goals and accept those of the terrorists?

One of the reasons this is so odd to most Britons is the fact that Britain has already been the subject of massive campaigns of terrorism from the IRA without having this sort of capitulation maneuver. And the IRA did much worse things than have been done in the last 6 years. Most British people are not afraid of this new threat. They have been through it already.

As Lily Allen says, "Sun is the sky, oh why, oh why would I want to be anywhere else?"

For that classic Christopher Hitchens hackjob article, go here. It's brilliant.

Matt is 24!

Matt is 24 today! He's reached his 'mid-twenties'!!! Here he is with some geese and swans at Hyde Park. One made a move like it was going for him and he got scared.

Update: Matt here. Please also refer to this picture of me looking more magnificent.

Cambridge!

We went up the Cambridge for the day yesterday. Our friend Gareth was going to be playing in a football (soccer) match against Oxford. We took the train up in the morning, got in around 11:30. I was incredibly hungry and we didn't have bikes this time which are usually essential in hanging around Cambridge. We stopped on the way into town and I had a jacket potato, which is very popular among the British. It's just a baked potato, with a cross cut in it, opened up and filled with every good stuffing you can think of. I had cheese, bacon and baked beans. It was an enormous mountain of food and I barely scraped the surface of it. Then we walked into town centre. It was interesting because a lot of the construction that had been happening while we lived there was finished and it looked really nice. Matt went to the Market Square and got his favourite green thai curry from the thai food cart. We sat on the King's College wall and ate up. Then we walked to the football field and met up with Gareth and his girlfriend Kirsten. We watched Cambridge get creamed 8-1. After that we went to a pub, then got 'an Indian'.

Pubs here are interesting because 1) they usually have a lot of outdoor seating and 2) it doesn't ever get so cold that a few outdoor heaters can't make the outdoor space comfortable. Imagine all that effort put into insolating homes, trying to squeeze out every last little bit of energy efficiency, and here they're just pouring it out into the atmosphere.

After a pint at the pub, we went on the classic British tradition of 'getting an Indian', which is just going out to eat at an Indian restaurant. There used to be this TV show here (I think it was called The Kumars) and it was a sit com about an Indian family and they would 'go for a British' and they would ask the waiters, "Can you make mine not too bland please?"

We came home late, and just managed to catch the last train into London. Otherwise we would have had to stay at Gareth's. It was a fun day!

Response

Okay, here is my response to Matt's cynical comment about my loving Star Trek.

First, that is true and I freely admit it.

Second, I refer you to the words of John F. Kennedy speaking at Rice University in 1962:

"Man in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space.

Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it--we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding...

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man...

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too...

To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year's space budget is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million a year--a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. Space expenditures will soon rise some more, from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in the United Stated, for we have given this program a high national priority--even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us.

But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun--almost as hot as it is here today--and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then we must be bold.

However, I think we're going to do it, and I think that we must pay what needs to be paid. I don't think we ought to waste any money, but I think we ought to do the job. And this will be done in the decade of the sixties. It may be done while some of you are still here at school at this college and university. It will be done during the term of office of some of the people who sit here on this platform. But it will be done. And it will be done before the end of this decade.

Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because it is there."

Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked."

How's that for inspiration?

To the moon!

I get really excited about space travel. Matt and I drove down to Daytona Beach one winter break and along the way went to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, which was amazing. The idea of space travel and the fact that human expansion into the universe has been embryonic and is moving into its infancy amazes me. It fills me with awe and childlike wonder like nothing else in current human endeavour. (Except, of course, for the development of human rights jurisprudence.) I wish I could have been involved in any way in designing, engineering or piloting the space shuttle, but I'm just not smart enough. The space shuttle Atlantis took off this morning from Cape Canaveral. It's going on a ten day mission to deliver the next section of the International Space Station, a science laboratory built by the European Space Agency, a coalition of 17 countries. This section, called Columbus, was supposed to be launched in 1992, but there were some delays and then in 2003, Columbia blew up and pretty much grounded NASA for a few years. I know since then there have been a lot of problems in NASA and people are getting tired of funding something that seems to have no immediate application and seems to break all the time. I say, give them a break. This is an incredibly complex machine and there are going to be mistakes made, parts broken, delays and accidents. But what is absolutely elemental to human existence is the desire to explore the undiscovered and to understand what was previously unfathomable. Going to space is our destiny, call it the manifest destiny of humanity. It sort of rhymes if that's important to you.

Anyway, I meant to say, also the Commanders of this mission have hilarious names: Commander Stephen N. Frick and pilot Alan G. Poindexter.

I hope the following image of the take-off today inspires you:

Ten Random Thoughts

1. I have so far this year been really intimidated by the law students in my law classes here. They just talk really authoritatively and they bring in a lot of outside information, and they know about other countries and stuff. Today I finally found out. These people are all frauds! Our professor asked us to explain the details of a case and NO ONE had read the case except me! These guys are coasting based on previously learned material! They don't even do the reading! Well, I'm not going to be intimidated anymore!

2. Earlier today I had pretty bad heartburn but did I stop eating chips and salsa? Heck no!

3. Monday Matt was walking to work and on the street, in the middle of central London, was a dead fox. How did it get there? How did it die? This is a mystery.

4. Is anyone still caucusing? What's that been like having only two or three candidates on both sides?

5. Micky and Julia are back in town with their toddler, who is hilarious.

6. Attorney General Michael Mukasey said if he was waterboarded, he would consider it torture. But for anyone else, he can't comment.

7. You know how Fat Tuesday is the last day before Lent and you use it to really indulge for the last time until the 40 days are over? Here in Britain they have a whole name for the day and it is descriptive of the particular naughty indulgence to which the British treat themselves in preparation for Lent. It is called Pancake Day. They eat pancakes FOR DINNER. What a bunch of crazy kooks, right?

8. My brother is engaged and we are going to be back in Iowa for the wedding by August 30th.

9. I've been eating a lot of Stilton, a type of smelly snooty English cheese that's only made in like a 10 square mile area of Cambridgeshire. The thing is, it has been shown that eating a chunk of stilton cheese before you go to bed makes you have weird dreams. Try it, because it works for me!

10. Matt went to see Eastern Promises last night, a movie about the Russian mafia in London. He said he recognized a lot places, including his office. Sweet. Back when we lived in Iowa City we never saw movies about where we lived! Except that one episode of friends I guess...

AV Club's 20 Obsessions Nerdier Than Rocky Horror Picture Show

We have nearly broken through winter here in London, spring is really just around the corner. The sun is still up at 5PM which is a really good sign.

The Onion AV Club had an article up about things that are nerdier than being obsessed with the Rocky Horror Picture Show and it turns out that Matt and I come out looking pretty good, especially since we are far from being obsessed with anything on the list. However, we do enjoy a few of these things, and I know you are all shocked about that. Here is the list, see how you fare.

20. Fanfic. And here they showed a picture of Harry and Hermione from Harry Potter. People are writing fanfic about 13 year olds!? Aren't there laws about that?

19. Secondlife/MySpace/Facebook. I don't think this is fair because there is a big difference between Secondlife, where you live a whole second virtual computer life to supplement your own, and Facebook, which you probably use just to keep in touch with your friends.

18. Live-action role-playing. I'm not entirely sure what this is, but it sounds nerdy.

17. Cosplay. I've never heard of this!

16. Anime. Matt may have to answer to some of this, but I think he has moved on.

15. Game-show tape-trading. Who trades game shows? Just watch them online!

14. Frank Zappa. I think I should know who this is, but I don't.

13. Dr. Who. This is very big in Britain, but I don't have a TV so I've never seen it.

12. The Simpsons. You know what, if liking the Simpsons and quoting it incessently makes me a nerd, then everyone in my generation, ten years before and ten years afterward, is a big ol' nerd.

11. World of Warcraft. I used to like Warcraft, but I've never played World of Warcraft. When I used to play Warcraft, what I mostly liked to do was use all the cheats, build up a huge army and just go kill everyone else, and complete this as quickly as possible.

10. Magic the Gathering. Matt gave this up a long time ago but his dad still likes to make fun of him over it.

9. Media-specific role-playing. I think this involves pretending you're Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

8. Josh Whedon. Don't know who this is.

7. Rocky Horror Picture Show. Never really understood what the obsession over this was.

6. Battlestar Galactica. Never seen it.

5. Wikipedia. Wikipedia is awesome if you need a quick shot of basic information! My master's dissertation is going to be based on knowledge obtained from Wikipedia.

4. Michael Jackson. Yuck! Why???

3. Fantasy Sports Leagues.

2. Renaissance fairs. I WISH there was a renaissance fair I could go to!

1. Star Trek. Unfortunately I have to admit that Matt and I have been watching a lot of Star Trek lately on our Netflicks, because it is pretty easy to watch, unchallenging but entertaining. Sometimes we do get really, really tired of it though, and its horrible writing and how the social situations are always so awkward. Matt and I have decided this is a combination of two factors a) that they have really bad actors (because who wants to be in a Star Trek series?) and b) because only the nerdiest of nerds wants to write for Star Trek and they don't seem to have a lot of experience in social situations, such as parties or dates, so they don't really know how to script them. That's why any time they have such a situation, it gets incredibly awkward and uncomfortable to watch. This is our reasoned analysis of Star Trek, although we do enjoy it.

Also, the plots are so off the wall, that Matt and I have started playing a game. We have until the opening credits to guess what the plot of the show will be. If you get it right, you get 45 points (because the show is about 45 mins long). Each time you have to adjust your guess during the show, due to new plot developments, you have to subtract the number of minutes you have gone into the show from 45. The person who gets the most points by the end wins. Recent initial guesses include: "They go on the demon planet and the demon planet turns them all into demons and they turn on each other!" and "Seven spends a whole month alone on the ship and learns the value of friendship!" The key is to start vague so that you have to adjust less. I won on the last one.

USA the Misunderstood

We were watching the news today and the BBC did a half hour special on the US elections. I think it goes a long way towards understanding why people abroad may have a wrong idea about us. Their interview choices were just bizarre.

First, they gave ten minutes to an interview with the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Nothing against the guy, but he's kind of a marginal player in the election. He wasn't the first person I would think you would interview, especially if he's the main guy.

Second, they interviewed two people with differing views on Iraq. They interviewed one guy who wanted to bring the troops home and, to balance things out, they interviewed someone crazy. The bring home the troops guy was very reasonable, a vet actually. The other guy said he supported the war because we had to fight them over there, or they would fight us over here, and hey, they attacked us first - he clearly didn't get the memo about al-Queda being based out of Afghanistan, not Iraq. The BBC could have found a lot more reasonable people to interview who represent the McCain/Romney type position, but oh well.

Third, they sent their reporter to New York to do all the reporting. Now New York is definitely a quintessential American city, but it's not a place that is particularly decisive at this point in the nomination process.

One thing I did like though - they compared Barack Obama's media image to Hillary Clinton's. Obama is like Apple they said - cool and youthful. But Clinton is like the PC - it's still what you buy when you have work to do.

Otherwise, Grace and I went to see Cloverfield this weekend with some friends - we've discovered theatres on the outskirts of London are a more reasonable £6.30, not the £10+ you get in central London. The movie was intense.

Tonight is the Super Bowl, but it doesn't start till 11 pm tonight. I don't think I'm going to watch it, as I have work tomorrow. Boo.

Skates and Lanes

Last year we tried to go ice skating at Somerset house with my fam, when they came to visit.

Sold out.

Turns out you have to order something like two weeks in advance. Whoa! This year we're more on the ball. Well, my office is - they put together a night of skating. So we went out last Monday night, for real this week.

The rink is in a real nice location, sort of one-of-a-kind. It's the courtyard of a former rich person's mansion (now its a museum). For £12.50 per person you get to skate for one hour. So Grace and I went, our one money splurge for every six months. Anyway, it was nice enough - kind of crowded as you might guess.

Last weekend, we had another night out. We went bowling! It was someone in Grace's class' birthday. I thought it would be silly, but actually, it was awesome. The bowling alley was basically out of pulp fiction. It was mostly a bar with fifties dance music and there were a few bowling lanes in one corner, a stage for a live band in the other, a movie theater showing classic old movies (Goldfinger that night), and a restaurant with fifties style booths. There were also lots of people with greased hair and leather jackets about. It was awesome. Plus, Europeans are, in general, really bad at bowling, so my 115 was good enough for second (I lost to another American).

I'm kind of blurry in this picture. There were also sound-proof rooms where you and your friends do karaoke. All booked, but still, amazing.

Next week, another birthday. This time - roller disco.

Running in the City

So, I've started running to keep in shape. Grace is running too, but at a gym, which means she's not dealing with the below issues so much. So far I've managed it for about two weeks, although only 3 or 4 times a week. It's been challenging to find a good route. My home is carefully positioned to be about 12 minutes run away from anywhere good to run, like the river or the big parks. Since I only want to run for a half hour most days, this means I spend the majority of my time dodging the people and waiting at the intersections you invariably run into away from the parks and the river. I have to say though, those 24 minutes are usually pretty exciting and go by pretty quickly. You're darting around people, you're glancing for cars and making the split second decision to stop or keep going, etc. It's exciting. Plus I almost always get really lost, which adds to the excitement.

London is a complicated city with few roads that go straight for very long. Sometimes the road gently curves and by the time I get to the end I don't realize it, but I'm running east instead of south or something. In fact, in three or four runs I've actually run an extra five to ten minutes, just because I got so lost I couldn't find my way home in time.

Anyway, I've got a decent route now. It cuts down mostly back streets, where people traffic and lighted intersections are least common, and it goes mostly straight south, although you have to change roads a lot and cut through London School of Economics campus. This takes me to the river, where I can run for miles without stopping. Still, it takes around 10 minutes to get there, so its not ideal.

There are a fair number of runners in the city. You definitely notice them more when you're running, probably because we all congregate around the same places - the parks and river. A lot of runners have backpacks, which I bet means they're copying my original plan to run from work with my work clothes in a backpack. I've given up on the plan for now - maybe later, when I'm a little more confident about running without a backpack.

Other than working out, we're doing good here. Last weekend we went to the Tate Britain, an art museum of British artists. We really enjoyed it and vowed to try and do something fun like that every weekend. However, this weekend we've already floundered. Grace is working and I'm doing freelance work, working hard for the money. We really have to step it up! Later this week though we're going bowling with some of Grace's class. And tomorrow we might be going skating at Somerset house with my work, although it may have fallen through. We'll see...

Working In Europe vs. America

So, I have a little over a year now before my current UK visa expires (it's based on Grace being a student and me being married to her). For awhile now the rough plan has been to stay in the UK, as my employer would probably get me a work visa (they've done it in the past for other employees at my level). Grace thought she could get some good work experience while here and I could as well - plus I thought I might take a part-time master's degree course.

Trouble is, they're ramping up the requirements for a work visa now and things are starting to look not as promising. This guy in my office asked me why I would even want to work in the UK and not the USA, where I wouldn't have to jump through all these work permit hoops and I could be in my home country.

I thought about it and mostly it comes down to wanderlust in me. I don't actually want to just take a gap year and travel exclusively for a year, but I definitely want to live in new and interesting places. I still am really curious about the wider world and the idea of returning to America at this point seems like a big let-down to me. My favorite store in London is Stanford's the three story travel store. And I asked for (and got - thanks!) "The Travel Book" for Christmas, a book where each page is a different country and it's full of big pictures. I really like looking through all those pictures.

So, in satisfying my desire for a little adventure, London has several advantages. First, it is a little adventure, being a foreign country. Second, it's so much closer to other countries, so much easier to visit Europe, Asia, and Africa from this base point. Third, it's normal to get plenty of vacation from work to permit heavy traveling (I get five weeks off this year). Finally, traveling to very unusual places is extremely common here. In my office, normal people took their Christmas vacation to visit Singapore, Namibia, South Africa (and probably more). In America, it's not so normal to do that. You would be "the traveler guy." Here you can be you, and also do a lot of traveling. Of course, with no money, I'm not doing a lot of traveling - still, I feel like I fit right in over here in that regard.

That said, I definitely plan to move back to America. Just not yet. I consider myself an American, and I consider America, and Iowa City, my real home. But they can't be your home if you don't intend to move back there someday.

Anyway, that's why I hoped to stay in Europe for a few more years. If I don't get that work visa, we'll see what happens. I've also applied for Grad schools in the UK and I might stick around here to get my masters.

Tips for living in a tiny flat

Get (relatively) sound-proof headphones.
And a sleeping mask.
Now one of you is rocking out while the other sleeps.

England Richer Than America

According to Oxford Economics in 2008, for the first time in a century, UK living standards will be higher than US living standards. Technically, they calculate that UK GDP per capita will be £23,500 while US GDP per capita will be £23,250, which is £250 less. However, its not all bad news. As all of you who listen to me complain a lot may already know, it takes $2 to buy £1, but generally speaking things do not cost twice as many dollars in the US as they do pounds in the UK. So, even though we have less money head to head in the USA, we can buy more stuff with it because US stuff is relatively cheap. Whew!

In other news, I've finally discovered the secret to walking through London crowds without getting stuck all the time. I used to always have to stop and do that little dance with strangers where neither one of us knows which way to go. First we both try going right, then both left, then right again, then finally I stop and he goes. Since I had a half hour walk to an from work everyday during rush hour, this was a lot of dancing. But not anymore!

The trick is, don't look at people! Just look straight past them, over their shoulder. If they don't think you are worried about bumping into them, they'll just slightly adjust their path to go around you, and you'll do the same. It really works! I swear I'm cutting ten minutes off my commute.

Lessons Learned

Whew. Back. Whew.

We've decided, for our own benefit as well as yours, to write out the lessons we've learned from all our air travel:

1) Pack a change of clothes in your carry-on luggage.

My mom actually warned Grace and I to do this, since we were in danger of getting stranded overnight. We ignored the advice and got stranded overnight, so I ended up wearing the same clothes for three days straight. You see, we were supposed to fly from Cedar Rapids to Detroit around 6 o'clock on the first, from Detroit to London over the night, and arrive in London on the 2nd in the morning. Before we even drove up to Cedar Rapids, we discovered our flight to Detroit was so delayed, we would have missed our connection that night to London. So my mom called ahead and we were rebooked. The new schedule was fly from Cedar Rapids to Minneapolis around 7, then catch the night flight from Minneapolis to Amsterdam, arriving in Amsterdam around noon (local time). We would then catch a flight on British Airways from Amsterdam to London Heathrow, finally arriving late in the afternoon on the second. I was supposed to be at work on the third.

Well, we got to Cedar Rapids and boarded with no major trouble (except Grace was "randomly" selected for searching, which seems to happen to her a lot). Then we sat on the plane for about two hours. Long enough to miss the night flight from Minneapolis. Sweet.

You see, they had to de-ice the plane, but most people were on holiday, so it took so long to get the truck out to us that the plane no longer had enough gas to get to Minneapolis. Then we had to go back and refuel, and that took forever. The pilot apologized for the mess and bought everyone on board drinks. But, with alcohol free, it disappeared pretty quick and, by the time the drink cart got to us they only had tomato juice, vodka, apple juice and soda available.

Anyway, we flew into Minneapolis and learned another trick.

2) When you need a voucher or a flight rescheduled go to the desk with no line.

Everyone seemed to assume they had to wait in line at the gate we exited from. Not true. We got a free hotel for the night and were rescheduled for the exact same 9:30 pm plane the next day. So we had the whole day to spend in Minneapolis and I would have to miss a day of work. Fortunately there was the mall of America and my relatives, with home cooking and a pool table, so, all things considered it was a pretty great detour. Except for having to wear the same clothes. Also, we found we were a lot better at pool with bright lights, no alcohol and good equipment.

We also got $21 worth of meal vouchers each, good at the hotel and airport, which we used even though we had been fully fed by my aunt and uncle.

That night we went back to the airport and made our flight with no trouble (well, Grace was "randomly" selected for searching again. She asked the guards if it was because she had a foreign passport and they basically hinted that, yes, that was the reason). We both slept most of the flight, treated ourselves to some complementary wine.

Upon arrival in Amsterdam we hit a snag.

3) Always pack things you absolutely cannot do without upon arrival in your carry on luggage.

In Amsterdam they told us they couldn't find our luggage to load on the plane. I guess its not surprising it went missing between being re-routed twice between different airlines. Anyway, the sum of Grace's work for her papers, due Monday, were in those bags. We made it to the UK and, surprisingly, found my bag waiting, but not Grace's. We filed a report, pretty exhausted and having worn the same clothes for two and a half days. It was Thursday afternoon, but the bag Grace needed didn't arrive until Saturday afternoon. Anyway, she's requested an extension on the paper, having lost three full days of potential work (since we thought we would arrive on the morning of the 2nd and she didn't get her stuff till the afternoon of the 5th).

Those were the lessons learned on this flight. We have some other ones though.

4) If you pack liquids, like shampoo, in your checked luggage, put it in a bag, or, better yet, two.

It took bottles blowing up twice for me to learn this lesson well.

5) Write down the phone numbers of people you are supposed to meet, as well as the numbers of people in cities you may be stranded in.

We still haven't learned this lesson.

6) Double check the times of your departure.

We almost missed the train to Paris once, and did miss it another time because of a failure to learn this lesson.

Anyway, we're back in the big smoke. I only had to work Friday this week because of the delays, and I was surprised how easy it was to get up for work. I guess I really do like my job. Grace did not have such a good day. She didn't have any of her things yet and the lack of a sun, especially after the bright skies and snow of Iowa, was pretty depressing.

Speaking of Iowa, it was a really great vacation. We were really busy, but there was thick snow almost the second day we arrived and we hadn't seen the stuff for years. It was also great to see all the family and friends. I stocked up on a year's supply of music thanks to Andy (whose blog is linked to ours).

I love this European system of five weeks per year of holiday. I was gone for two weeks and haven't even used half my vacation!

Aaaaaaand...

We're back in London.

Aaaaaand now...

We're home!

One more week!

We are coming home in less than one week!

...That was the Worst Christmas Ever!

No, we're really looking forward to coming home. It's just that London Christmas is... a little weird now that we're here all the time.

First there's the blatant manufacturing of Christmas by corporate entities.

At our local grocery store for instance they've hired choirs to serenade us. Actual singing people dressed in black and holding sheets of music. Charming I guess. But a little awkward when its real people singing right as you walk by them with your cart, and not just an overhead recording.

The worst was last weekend when Grace and I went out and about. It hasn't snowed in London for close to a decade, or so I hear. Not on Oxford street, though.

If you look carefully you can see a little guy on the roof carefully manufacturing Christmas cheer by blowing fake snow out onto the street. Is this what we can expect in the future, if global warming takes off?

Finally, take a look at this sad sight.



There's been no snow for a decade and certainly not enough for sledding down the one or two big grassy hills in central London. So, what have they done? They've built a hill out of wood and covered it in a slick tarp. Have fun kids. Just £1 or £2 pounds for a chance to go sledding during Christmas time!

The big fake sledding hill is part of Hyde Park's "Winter Wonderland." It's got a big ferris wheel, a ride based on "The Snowman" and lots of little stalls selling Christmas stuff. But something looks out of place...



It's a haunted house.
For Christmas.

And that's Santa hanging from the rafters.

That was the worst Christmas ever.

Workin' Nine to Five, Thinkin' 'bout Zimbabwe

Normally, I figure people won't be interested in what I'm working on, because economics is maybe not a general interest topic. I don't even talk about it - well, TOO much, - with Grace. But she gave me the go-ahead to write about this one, because she thought it was funny and demonstrated the sort of thing I'm doing over here. Even so, I should warn you it's a LOT of economics below.

So, on Thursday I was asked to write an article about Zimbabwe's new growth forecasts. For those of you who don't keep up to date with the latest developments in southern Africa, Zimbabwe is, well a mess, even by the standards of Africa (none of this is supposed to be funny, by the way). It used to be one of the richest countries in the continent, but things began to go downhill in the mid nineties. Normally it's a bad sign when an economy grows by 1 or 2 percent a year. That hardly keeps up with population growth. But Zimbabwe's economy started not just to grow slower than its population, but actually shrink. To be honest, I don't know for sure what happened, but when I've got some spare time at work I'll take a look at it. Anyway, the shrinking economy was a huge deal and people started rioting. So, to placate people the President, Robert Mugabe, seized the farms and redistributed them to the poor. Because Zimbabwe used to be a British colony, former colonialists owned all the farms - they basically stole them, so most of the population didn't think it was a big deal to steal them back.

The idea was, the poor would have farm land and be able to put food on their table. Then they would stop rioting. That was the idea, but it didn't work out. The ancestors of those colonialists may have stolen the land, but they knew how to run big commercial farms. The poor didn't and so food output from the farms dropped fast. Also, when President Mugabe seized the farms investors got very afraid that they would be next, so most cut their losses and left the country. So the economy shrank even faster. Things haven't really improved since. Every year the economy shrinks (it's about 70% the size it was in 1998) but the government still needed money to fund things (especially the wages of the military - you don't want an unhappy military in a region of the world where coups are frequent). Anyway, the government started printing money to pay its bills. Then inflation went crazy, since money was flooding into the economy but there wasn't any more stuff to buy.

Inflation in most developed countries is about 3% per year, but it was around 1,000% this spring in Zimbabwe. To fight inflation, President Mugabe declared inflation illegal - that is, he vowed to arrest anyone who was caught raising prices. Seems like a good idea, but again, no.

Since shop owners weren't allowed to raise prices, they just stopped selling stuff. The whole reason they had been raising prices was because the price of stuff from the wholesalers was going up. It didn't make sense to sell at a loss, so they just closed up shop. Anyway, there was no more official inflation, but the blackmarket was now open for business and the inflation there was shooting up.

Eventually they realized they had to give up this strategy because it just pushed everyone into the black market where the government can gather no taxes. When they gave it up, inflation jumped to 8,000%. It's actually probably a lot higher because statisticians can't find things to buy at any price, so they can't really calculate the inflation.

Anyway, I learned most of that Friday morning during my research for the article I had to write by 1 o'clock (when it would get sent out to subscribers via email). The government has now released a new budget and I had to write on it. (This part might be considered funny now).

The Zimbabwe government is forecasting inflation will drop to 2,000% next year and the economy will finally start to grow (by 4%). I had to evaluate these claims.

I started to read their announcement and my brain literally started to hurt. I'm serious. It was just incoherant waffle. They were inventing their own rules of economics to play by. Their game plan is to get people back in the fields and the factories and working so the shortages stop. Then the inflation will just... go away on its own. The authorities were predicting "the mother of all harvests next year." Despite that fact that they also announced, in the same speech, that imports of food would double next year. Despite the fact that the UN says 1/3 the population (4 million people) would need food aid next year.

And why could we expect "the mother of all harvests?" Because they had been pouring money into farming! The same money that loses almost all it's value within a few months! Great!

Also, they were going to cut taxes to ease the burden on poor - because people are really suffering from, you know, the hyper-inflation. All their savings, all their wages are worthless, and on top of everything they're being taxed! Even though the hyper-inflation is caused by the government printing money to finance its spending and, with less taxes and the same amount of spending, they'll have to print more money. But hey, the inflation will take care of itself when production goes up from the farms (or not) and the factories (they didn't even bother to give a reason why we could expect that). My brain really was hurting now. How could they think any of this was a good idea?

When you have hyper-inflation (like they do) you have to stop it. It's a really cruel phenomenon because it hurts savers most of all. I read an article where a reporter said the price of one banana now costs 15 times what she paid for 4-bedroom house 7 years ago. So if you had saved enough money to buy something like that, well, tough, now it was worth a banana. Why bother working, your wage is worthless in a few months?

In hyper-inflation, money becomes worthless and you want to get rid of it as fast as you can. The economy basically reverts to a barter-system. People just try to survive, which is not a good situation for healthy growth. Everyone's just trying to get whatever stuff is left - it's not really worth it to produce anything.

In case you're curious, the way to stop a hyper-inflation is to cut government spending (so you stop printing money) and reform the bank so people trust it and so it can stand independent form the whims of the government. Usually people also make new money - it's just inefficient when a banana costs 1.5 million Zimbabwean dollars. No sign of that happening.

Anyway, that was Friday morning. I wrote an article about 400 words and made a graph, then it got emailed away. It's a really interesting job for me. Too bad it doesn't pay very well. But good experience.