First Exam Done!

I just finished my first exam! I can't remember the last time I was this elated. That was my hardest class and now I have three weeks until the next exam. And as Matt said, a few days of having no obligations while I'm in Scotland! Tonight, we are celebrating with a drink 'down the local' i.e. at the nearest pub, which we have decided to consider our 'local'. Geez, after the last FOUR WEEKS of studying for this exam I NEED A DRINK!

What's Up?

All our free time is being eaten up. Grace has her first exam tomorrow! She has been studying pretty much night and day for a long time now. We don't go out on weekends. We don't go out at night (except to the grocery store or, once, to grab a pint for relaxation with some friends). Grace is at her desk, all the time, doing some studying.

And, very occasionally, watching the new BBC miniseries of "Jane Eyre." It's extremely good.

And also working out every morning. But otherwise, at her desk. Even as we speak.

My free time, on the other hand, has been completely eaten up by the forthcoming trip to Scotland with my brother and his friend Rob. Part of the free time goes to organizing the trip, which I really like. The rest of it goes to doing freelance work to pay for it, which is much less fun. I have my sights set for May 24th, the day Rob, Mike and me jump on a four hour train up to Edinburgh, Scotland. And I won't be coming back again until the first of June. For Grace, her sights are set for May 28th, the day her last exam finishes and when she hops on an eight hour train into the heart of the Scottish highlands, where we will meet her.

No pressure, but I'm really looking forward to this trip. We're renting a car and spending May 27-May 31 driving around the country, something I've yet to enjoy in Europe, except for the time Grace and I rented a car to drive all our suitcases up to Cambridge. I'm really looking forward to the freedom to be able to go where we choose, when we choose, to driving in the (I'm told) beautiful Scottish countryside, to getting out of the city for a week, and being in the wide open country. This is the first extended pleasure vacation Grace and I have taken to somewhere new in awhile. I think my brother is most looking forward to seeing the William Wallace monument - apparently there is a statue of Mel Gibson out front.

Still - I've got to wait out more than three weeks before we leave. I've booked most of that time full with work. I keep telling myself that, after this vacation, I'll cut back. I hope so!

English plumbing

Our adventures with English housing standards continue!

On Friday night, I couldn't get to sleep because our sink was dripping (this is the problem with sleeping 6 feet from your kitchen sink!) and Matt got up to tighten the cold water knob. I had actually noticed it dripping incessantly all week. It required more and more tightening on the knob. Saturday morning it was dripping pretty constantly and big drips too. Then Matt did the dishes and after that it simply wouldn't turn off. It came out in a pretty steady stream and wouldn't turn off no matter how tightly we turned the knob. So we got the guy from the front desk to come up and look at it. His advice: clear the sink of obstructions because they weren't going to call anyone until Monday and we shouldn't let the sink overflow! So our sink has been pouring a steady stream since Saturday morning and they won't call a plumber until Monday morning! In order to decrease the noise, we've tied a rag directly under the drip so that the rag soaks the drip up and wicks it down to the drain quietly instead of having a steady loud droning noise to contend with! We have been prevented from going crazy by keeping our window open for traffic noise and keeping some kind of music on all day.

A PR Disaster For The Olympics Torch Ceremony

Grace and I just got back from the passing of the Olympic torch ceremony and the Free Tibet protesters were extremely effective in sabotaging the event. From where I could see, the whole route was covered by protesters booing the Chinese and the British athletes. The procession had a massive police escort, and the torch bearer was barely visible, as he was flanked by so much security. It was not a cheerful event.

I have no reason to believe it wasn't like this the whole way through London, as there was nothing special about the place we were standing. Check out our video of the torch passing through and see if you can feel the Olympic spirit waft through the crowd... I couldn't.

What the--!

We woke up rather late this morning and putzed around a bit. The curtain on our one window was closed because we were still getting dressed. Once dressed and ready we opened the curtain and were shocked to find this:



Snow! And it's sticking around, and it's coming down even harder now!

As for our plans for the day, we're going to go see the Olympic Torch run through London. It passes by the British Museum, which is very nearby to us, at 12:30. What an unlucky time to have to run a fire-y torch through central London!

Yesterday, we went to a museum we had not gone to before called the Wallace Collection. The collection is the work of four generations of one family accumulating some of the most interesting pieces of art and craftsmanship in Europe. The building is their family mansion on Manchester Square just above Oxford Street. The last owner left the entire house and its contents to the people of Great Britain and it is a national museum now. Here are a few impressive shots of what was/is an extremely impressive townhouse:











It was very impressive indeed. But I was a little disappointed because I was hoping to see more personal spaces. Every room was taken up with art and furniture and as you see armoury. I'm more interested in seeing how people who lived in this house really lived. Such information was not to be had. It was simply a grand and richly furnished house filled with treasures. Interesting of course, but not exactly the history lesson I was hoping for!

Chart Fever

Hey everyone, sorry we haven't posted for awhile. Our friend Keith was here, visiting for a week so we've been giving him all our freetime. He's gone, but I'm working a ton to try and save money up for when my brother comes to visit at the end of May. Three hours a night! Anyway, we haven't had a lot of time. This is our first weekend since he's left.

By the way, while he was here, what we did was walk all around town. Four to five miles per day. We saw tons of stuff, but paid for very little. We also took Keith up to Cambridge, and it was nice to pull out my old student ID and get access to all sorts of places.

Maybe we'll make a longer post someday about Keith's visit. Right now, I've got chart fever.

I really like charts - a picture really is worth a thousand words. Here are two interesting ones:



This one shows how different Americans and Britons are. They tend to be far left of us on every issue. Grace and I were talking about how, the longer we live abroad, the more we realise that America is not necessarily the norm. When you grow up in a place you just assume that's the way things are everywhere. Anyway, not the case. Americans are more religious and more patriotic than is common in other developed countries, for example.

Here's another good chart.



London is the third most expensive city to live, in the world! Ay! And look, the first American city is New York, but it comes in at number 39! Whoa! (if you care why the American cities are so low, its because the dollar is so weak)

I also read a lot of economics blogs - and economists love charts. Here are some of my faves.


This is how happy people say they are, versus GDP per capita for lots of different countries. Perhaps not surprisingly, richer countries are happier countries. But there are some strange anomalies. China is richer than India, but also more miserable. And Pakistan - which is even poorer and didn't even have a very strong democracy when the survey was taken - is happier than both!

Finally, here's a good one for the current economic troubles in America.



This is the average cost of a standard home, adjusted for inflation, over the last 120 years. You might need to click on it to see it bigger. You can see prices have really shot up, and not really for any good reason. A lot people think they're going to come all the way back down to where they usually are, over the next few years. Yikes!

I should say though, this is an average for America, and things are really different in different parts of the country. In New York and California, for instance, house prices went way up, but in Iowa, probably not so much.

Anyway, I like charts.

Long walk day!

Today is what you might call a typical weekend day for us, or at least it was before we got too busy with work and school to do things on the weekends.

We took the bus down to Oxford Street with Micky, Julia and Evan and picked up a belt for Matt because his old one broke, thus making one of his workpants unwearable. I also got a pair of pajama pants because mine have shrunk so much they look a bit like accidental capris. It was a strange weather day, which is why we took the bus, otherwise we would have all walked. Like usual, London was sunny one minute and absolutely pouring the next, except today was so cold it was actually snowing! None of it stayed once it hit the ground though. It was bitterly cold and the wind was blowing right through you almost. It's the sort of day you want to duck into a pub and spend a few hours beside a peat fire.


Snow coming down as seen from the Senate House Library, University of London

After some minor shopping (at Primark, the short of supercheap mega store that tugs a bit on your conscience) we walked back home. Oxford Street is, as I mentioned below, one of the longest shopping streets in the world and it is always crowded. It's hard to walk, it's so crowded. So we walked up a block or two to the next street running parallel which was very nice and quiet. (See map below.)



We got home and hung around, then went to meet some friends in Islington, North London, to see a movie, actually Juno, which we had not seen until today believe it or not. (Matt's parents sent us some money to see a movie instead of Easter candy so that's why we went!) That also took some walking and it ended up that we walked about 5 miles total today, so we're a bit tired. The funny thing is that last year when we had more ready access to the countryside we would take walks more around 10-11 miles, usually over much rougher terrain, so we're obviously losing our touch.

Our good friend Keith is coming to visit tomorrow. Hope everyone is having a good Easter!

On a lighter note

There's just something about the rampant consumerism of Oxford Street (one of the longest shopping streets in the world)...



that makes me want McDonalds, even though normally I wouldn't touch it. Only on Oxford Street.

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.