1% cashmere is not cashmere

I'm skimming through Sierra Trading Post's online catalog for gift ideas, and I come across a "moon wool cashmere windowpane throw". I was vaguely contemplating getting my parents some sort of cashmere throw, so I click on the description.

The description reads, "Windowpane throw blanket from Moon is made in England with the finest wool and cashmere. Chilly mornings are best enjoyed wrapped in the soft luxury of a warm wool throw, coffee in hand."
So far, so promising.

Then I scroll further to look at the fabric contents, and it's 99% wool and 1% cashmere.

Why bother listing something that is 1% cashmere as a "cashmere throw"? I mean, I don't call my 98% cotton/2% spandex buttondown top a spandex top, even though it has twice as much spandex as this throw has cashmere.

It's like a certain cereal company that calls its cereal "honey'd" raisin bran, even though honey is listed lower than salt as an ingredient.

Is it too much to ask for more reasonable labeling guidelines? Such as not calling something "honey'd" this-or-that if it contains less than a teaspoon of honey in an entire box of cereal, or not calling something a "wool/cashmere throw" if it contains only 1% cashmere?

Dumping my friends

I think I want to dump my friends this week. Well, not all of them, and not for real, but part of the point of a blog is to vent, and I don't know what is up w/ people this week. Is it let's-be-quintessentially-Californian-flakes week or something?

Here is a scenario that has happened multiple times this week, but also seems to happen recurringly with certain people. Now if this is your nature w/ everyone, then fine.

It's a variation of one of these (and if the shoe fits, wear it, please):

A. I attempt to make plans with or catch up w/ someone. I email/call them. Like a zillion times. No response.
Comment: I can't be making all of the effort, here. Last I checked, friendship is a 2-way street. I know I sometimes blow people off b/c I'm busy/tired, but if the other person is exhibiting attempts to contact/get together, at some point, I start feeling guilty, and even if I can't give them a full email/call, whatever, I give them a quick call/email to say sorry and will talk longer sometime soon, sort of thing. As for making plans, it takes 15-seconds to draft an email that says "sorry, I can't." I find it hard to believe that you can't occasionally take the 15-seconds to draft such a reply.

B. I make lunch/dinner/rendez-vous-type plans with someone. We set a date to do something in advance. The day of, I check in w/ lunch-plan-friend to confirm, and I get a reply of "sorry, I can't. I have to pick so-and-so up from Zimbabwe.
Comment: You surely must've know about this earlier than 2 hours before our lunch plan when you write back to tell me that you can't meet for lunch. Besides, I don't mean to be a courtesy-fascist, but in my books, this warrants an email from your end. Would you have even let me know if I hadn't thought to confirm? Again, another less-than-one-minute ordeal that can go like this:

friend: "Hey, Y, I need to cancel the lunch plans we made on x-date. I have to pick up a friend who is visiting from Zimbabwe. Sorry."
me: "No worries! We'll try again some other time."

Wow. Look how simple and uncomplicated that is. 15 seconds of effort to not piss me off. That's all I'm asking.

B2. (Variation of B) I make other outing (opera, symphony, etc.) plans with someone. We make this plan in advance. We put it on the calendar. I buy tickets. I email you during the week to "confirm plans/figure out carpool, etc.", but I hear nothing. Finally, the evening of, I get a VM telling me that your roommate doesn't feel like going, so you're reneging as well.

Comment: Again, I'm not objecting to your last minute change of mind, even though I thought we committed to doing this thing and I already have tickets for this event we planned to go see. In the east coast, this wouldn't happen, but here, I'm not terribly surprised that this happens. But if you suddenly don't feel like going, instead of my sending you multiple VMs and emails "to confirm" and you telling me that you're not going 2 hours before on the day of, how about letting me know earlier? Especially, since I've been emailing/calling you these past few days to figure out plans for this particular evening?

This doesn't annoy me so much as confuse me on the notion of "making plans". You're obviously free to cancel, change your mind, etc. But if we make plans to go see an opera in the city, and we set a date well in advance, I buy tickets (and assume you do the same), etc., can you just change your mind and decide to hang out with your roommate, b/c she "doesn't feel like opera tonight"?

I'm not complaining about the cancelling of plans per se (even though this happened enough times this week to warrant a blog entry). Your kids/boyfriend/pet iguana gets sick, or some emergency happens, or in my case, I'm about to cancel plans myself, b/c I feel really run down and can't talk for more than 30-seconds. I'm not trying to be a plan-nazi, and often times, I prefer to make nebulous plans, too.

Nor am I complaining about the oft-nebulous plans I make w/ people. (e.g. I might bike down to the south bay, in which case, I'll give you a call and we'll meet up. Or, if we have time, let's get together and do somethingthis weekend. Or, I might go to Jammix tonight. Maybe we can meet up.)

But if you are cancelling longstanding plans that we made--like lunch at a certain date, a show for a certain evening--and you realize that you have to pick up your Senegalese lepidopterist friend from the airport or whatever and it conflicts w/ our schedule, or you decide to cancel plans for something I thought we planned months in advance, b/c your roommate/SO doesn't want to go, I have a suspicion (from my unreturned multiple emails) that you knew about this way in advance.

Instead of me doing the tracking down to confirm things, why can't people be proactive about letting me know? Not 2 hours before, but as soon as you figure out that you can't stick to the original plan. This doesn't piss me off. Even if 5 people do it all in one week. Things happen.

Personally, if I make plans to cook dinner for someone or go to an opera or go see a recital that someone's in, unless something is dire (illness, emergency babysitting, or other reason), I try not to cancel on people. Like I won't cancel plan A w/ someone, just because a better plan B comes along. Much as I wish people would reciprocate and not double/better deal, I'm not even expecting this of people.

However, is it too much to ask people to exercise common courtesy?

I've often felt like cancelling plans like shows, etc., perhaps b/c I'm not feeling well, or I'm suddenly not into the idea, but I don't, b/c I don't like backing down on my word. I like to follow through on things I said I'll do.
I've been to many shows/recitals/concerts that I sometimes didn't feel like going, just to support you.

Well, from now on, I think I'm just going to be selfish with my time.

My delusions about pristine organics tainted

Now, I'm not one of those people who insist on everything organic. Personally, I'd rather buy "not necessarily organic" things at the farmer's market, where veggies have traveled 50 miles, than organic avocados from Whole Foods that have come from Chile or Turkey. I also don't care if my eggs come from chickens that don't eat organic feed, and are therefore not organic.

The idea of insisting that my chickens eat organic feed when a large percentage of the world population doesn't have access to food period is a bit odd to me, but that is another blog entry.

However, the one thing I do get organic is salad greens. Not only organic, but triple or quadruple washed as well. I know that it's fallacious to associate "organic"--and even triple washed--with "clean", but for years, I have been buying organic pre-washed salad greens just so I don't have to wash them.

I will pre-cut fruit to bring to work, shell fava beans, peel chestnuts to make chestnut rice, occasionally make vegetable broth and ricotta cheese from scratch, but the one thing I really can't be bothered doing is washing my salad. (Unless I have people over.) I don't mind the washing part so much as the letting-it-dry part.

I don't like soggy wet greens, and I don't want to wait for it to dry or take the time to pat it dry, so this ends up being a big barrier to eating salad greens.

(And yes, I am aware of the existence of salad spinners. Every time I go into a kitchen gadget section, I stare at it and weigh the pros and cons of owning one, but the simple fact is that I do not have room to store it anywhere. Also, I do not believe in buying gadgets that can only do one thing. Not economically efficient. As soon as they invent the salad spinner that also chops and kneads dough, I will buy it, but for now, it's not worth owning one.)

Enter prewashed organic salad greens--well, prior to September 2006. This was my answer to my dilemma and utter lack of interest in washing salad greens.

However, thanks to this recent spinach E-coli scare, my delusions about organic prewashed salad greens being exempt from harmful microbes have now been completely shattered.

I think that I will eventually default back to my original state of not washing organic pre-washed salad greens, but for the past few weeks, this has been my pattern at the farmer's market.

0.5. I go to the farmer's market with list in hand. At the top of the list is always "salad greens".
1. I think "oh, I want some salad." as I linger over the organic (still pre-washed) salad greens at the farmer's market. (usually my very first stop.)
2. I think, "wait. I bought salad greens last week and ended up not having salad, b/c I have this hangup about washing my salad greens."
3. But I'm really craving salad, so this week, I resolve to make an effort to wash them.
4. With this determination, I buy the salad greens and move on to the next stand.
5. I get home.
6. About 5 nights out of the week, it occurs to me to have salad with my dinner. However, I neither want to risk getting E-coli if I don't wash the greens nor deal with washing the greens.
7. I end up not having salad, b/c I'm hungry and want instant gratification. Instead, I opt to spend an hour cooking something else.
8. Somewhere towards the end of the week, I discover a bag of brown wilted salad greens that I bought weeks ago and toss it in the trash.
9. Another week ends. It's time to go to the farmer's market again.

And thus, steps 0.5-9 become a sort of recursive function.

This morning, though, I was finally able to break this vicious cycle and not purchase any salad greens. It took me several visits to the salad place and every ounce of self control to not get them.

Who would've thought that I'd ever feel "virtuous" for not buying salad greens?

Asians do not have "slanted" eyes.

I have dealt with comments such as this throughout my childhood while growing up in a semi-metropolitan area in Northern N.J., but in my nine years of being in the Bay Area, have never really encountered the sort of comment that my co-worker made the other day that had me quite riled up.

This woman, ordinarily a really nice woman, keeps telling people that she has "slanted eyes like those Asians", b/c Genghis Khan raped her ancestors and so she has Asian blood.

Where to begin my rebuttal/rebuke. . .

First of all, I have asked a bunch of people at work about whether this woman looks "Asian" at all, and there seems to be unanimous consent that she doesn't look the least bit Asian.

Second, I thought Genghis Khan only made it to around Russia, but assuming he or his descendants made it to Switzerland or thereabouts, this was in the 13th century. 800 years ago. Now, perhaps, it's very possible to lose all other Asian features but have this one feature remain over the course of 800 years, but I find it highly suspicious that someone can have "slanted eyes", just because back in 1200, one of their ancestors was raped by Genghis Khan. Sometimes, it is even difficult to discern "Asian" features in someone who is one-eighth Asian.

Third, there are many studies out there that suggest that Genghis Khan may not have been a mongoloid.

And most importantly, we do not have slanted eyes. Back in the early 80s, maybe to some ignoramuses (such as my high school classmates), we had slanted eyes. At the turn of the century, we had slanted eyes, and during World War II, we were yellow and had slanted eyes, but come on lady. This is the 21st century. Actually, we never really had "slanted" eyes in the past either.

Let's be precise here. We have epicanthic folds, and perhaps smaller eyes, hidden eyelids, or "almond-shaped" eyes, but my eyes are neither slanted nor mere slits. They are straight like Caucasian eyes. They are not at an angle, as portrayed by many cartoons, which cause people to think that the proper word to describe our type of eyes as "slanted".

This woman's comment wouldn't piss me off so much if she didn't act like this was a defect. In fact, she said she had eye surgery done to "fix" this, as if this were a problem that needed fixing.

Thanks to the pervasiveness of mentalities such as hers, I've spent most of my childhood and part of my adulthood thinking that these epicanthic folds and my "flat nose" are ugly. I never learned to see Asians as pretty or in the case of men, handsome, probably until these last 10 or 12 years of my life.

Whereas this was unfortunately a ubiquitous attitude in the east coast, thankfully, here in the Bay Area, this attitude is almost non-existent, but every once in a while, I meet people like this and wonder-- damnit, are these people here--underneath their shroud of multiculturalism and tolerance and all that kumbaya stuff--actually no different from people from my home town?

Oh, and btw, on a similar note, I really don't need to be told that so-and-so is black, but is smart. (What do you mean but?) I know that you're saying this to be complimentary and respectful to so-and-so, who is black, but it's really not at all complimentary. Think about it. You would never make qualifying statements like that about caucasian people. Why do people automatically assume that we are going to think that someone isn't smart just because of their race?

Why sixty degrees?

Chocolate--it is probably among my top five favorite foods, but. . .

they didn't perfect it quite enough, imo. The only thing I have to complain about this otherwise divine creation (well, ok, other than the fact that one can't stuff oneself silly with it and not gain weight. . .) is the utterly impractical ideal storage temperature it demands: 60 degrees (F). Neither room temperature nor fridge temperature, but vexingly and elusively betwixt these two.

How about 70 degrees, or better yet, 68 degrees? That is room temperature. My apartment, which is on the second floor, may be 68 degrees on a cool day, but hardly ever 60 degrees. Actually, in the winter, I think it may be this cold. But even then, it's usually more like 63 or 65 degrees. In the summer time, however, it may get as high as high 80s or low 90s, and perhaps even hotter on the warmest days. Thus my bar of dark chocolate is banished to the fridge, where the temperature is not 60 degrees either, and where one is not really supposed to store chocolate, if one is a true chocolate afficionado.

You would think that given where cacao beans are grown, and considering the climates of civilizations where cocoa was first used/consumed, that chocolate would be more conducive to storing at higher and more reasonable temperature ranges. Didn't the Aztecs and Mayans live in subtropical climates? (Granted, they used the cacao beans in an entirely different way than we do, and it was actually the Europeans who tweaked this product to make it sweet. . ..)

I wonder if it is coincidence that red wine, which goes splendidly with chocolate, also has similarly impossible "ideal" storage temperatures--as does cheese (which doesn't go as splendidly with chocolate, but goes splendidly with wines, or by itself).

The fine line between academics and propaganda

There really shouldn't be a fine line between academic research and propaganda, but every once in a while, I read something that starts out sounding seemingly scholarly, and then get to the punch line and wonder whether it is actually propaganda.

Take Japan Focus for example. Its articles are posted in serious academic newsgroups. The subjects are academic. I often recognize at least some of the contributors. The list of associates are all reputable people. All of these traits point to the makings of a solidly credentialed scholarly journal, which for the most part, I think this journal is. Although I have read some articles I did not agree with, I have also read some insightful ones.

I don't read all of the articles, but the one that struck my eye this week was an article about Japan's and China's oil activities in Africa.

The article started out neutral enough-- comparing the two countries recent pursuits for fossil fuels in Africa and some background info about the consumption/production of oil for each country.

It then goes into an explanation of recent deals Japan has made with countries in Africa-- Libya, Ivory Coast, Egypt, and Congo. (At this point, I start to wonder about the ethicality of oil attained from potentially war-ravaged countries or countries that are politically unstable, but I confess that other than keeping relatively abreast of current events, etc., I do not know too much about individual African countries, and sometimes lose track of which country is or was in a civil war.)

It also mentions countries that China is pursuing deals with--Nigeria, Angola, among others.

The article carries on like this--comparing the two countries and expounding on some of the key oil deals.

It was mostly fine until I got to this paragraph: "China does not seem to be fussy about where its oil comes from. It gets oil in Sudan, for example, despite the international uproar over the Darfur crisis. To be sure, Japan won concession rights for oil and gas in Sudan in June last year. But the winner, Systems International Group, is a company newly established by a Japanese non-governmental organization, Reliance. It plans to use the profit from oil development in eastern Sudan to finance humanitarian support in Africa."

Hmm. A negative statement about China. Do I detect a bias? It doesn't help that the author is Japanese. Furthermore, Japan isn't exactly dealing with model nations in Africa either, so who is he to point fingers? However, I continue on, willing to give him the benefit of a doubt. Perhaps he is an expert on this topic.

Then I get to this penultimate paragraph: "Unlike China, Japan, the self-proclaimed champion of democracy in Asia, cannot turn a blind eye to poor records on democracy and human rights in many African countries. Japan has applied strict criteria for aid provision to developing countries in Asia, Africa and elsewhere in the world, with democracy and human-rights protection as basic conditions." (emphasis mine)

I stalled for a moment on "Japan, the self-proclaimed champion of democracy in Asia". Ok, perhaps more than a moment, since I'm taking the trouble to blog about this questionable phrase.

Who the heck--other than wartime propagandists--in this day and age would dare to refer to Japan as a "self-proclaimed champion of democracy in Asia"? Does Hisane Masaki actually believe that Japan is a "self-proclaimed champion of democracy in Asia"? Surely, he must know the implications of making such an assertion. Even if this happened to be true today, given Japan's history, it's really stupid to make a statement such as this in an article that criticizes China's lack of concern for human rights.

Appalled by this statement, I googled him to find out more about him and found this page, which also lists more articles by him. His credentials seem solid enough; he has worked long enough in international journalism, that one would expect him to be culturally sensitive and understand the implications of calling Japan a "self-proclaimed champion of democracy" --in Asia of all places.

Of course, it is possible that he sincerely believes this. However, if that is the case, given Japan's history in Asia, he really ought to qualify what he means by this loaded phrase. Perhaps he means that Japan is the highest contributor of humanitarian aid in Asia. (note: I don't actually know this; I'm just proposing possible scenarios of what he meant.) But then, wouldn't it be less ambiguous to just say that instead?

It's amazing how one phrase can shatter the credibility of an expert. I was ready to dismiss this article as an "informative but biased piece" on China and Japan's oil pursuits in Africa, but with this one phrase, it reads more like a propaganda/PR ad for one of these oil companies.

While I understand the idea of intellectual freedom and the importance of reading viewpoints that are contrary to one's own, reading something like this that treads a very fine line between scholarly and propagandistic made me question the editorial discretion of this journal.

Mourning Pluto's banishment- a perfectly good mnemonic ruined

When I first started writing this post, there was talk of there possibly being 12 planets. I was against this idea, b/c it would totally throw off the ingenious mnemonic that generations of us learned our planets with:
My very educated mother just showed us nine planets.

I mean, how could you beat that in terms of a clever mnemonic? What do you do with the three extra planets?

But then I read this op-ed in the NYT (which you may not be able to read if you don't have access to Times Select--in which case, read it here.), and I was relieved.

The op-ed author proposes this silly mnemonic:
"my very energetic mother just served us nine pizzas, sans xenophobia"
which makes no sense whatsoever, but I was ready to accept this as a perfectly legitimate mnemonic. After all, how can you reject a non-xenophobic pizza (although it is unclear whether she is serving sans xenophobia, or whether the pizza comes without xenophobia. Of course, it could be that the energetic mother is without xenophobia, in which case, the grammatically correct way to rephrase this is: my very energetic mother, sans xenophobia, just served us nine pizzas. But we are kindof constrained by the order of the planets and thus must throw out any notion of grammatical scruples out the window. Alas.) ? Though this one only accounts for the possibility of 11 total.

Just when I convinced myself that I could live with this slightly bastardized version of the original mnemonic, I found out the very next day that Pluto is no longer a planet. Now, I know that the planetary commission has better things to do than to take mnemonics into consideration when voting on whether or not something is a planet, but this is just wrong.

So now we have neither non-xenophobic pizzas or nine planets, but:

My very educated mother just showed us nine

Nine what? You can't just leave us hanging.

My very educated mother just showed us nothing.

Ok, that completes the sentence, but that's so anticlimactic, and not nearly as thrilling as non-xenophobic pizzas or nine planets. I mean, what's the point of having a very educated mother, if she isn't going to show you anything?


My very esoteric mnemonic--just skewered, undid, (and) negated.
My very educational mnemonic just showed up nonchalantly.

Ok, does anyone have a better mnemonic sans pluto?

8/29 update:
So I posed an email query, and the best one so far (though it is off by one letter):
Mean vitriolic educated mother just shit-canned (o)ur ninth.
Thanks to Betsylan for this clever one!

Mozart was six when he composed this!

This was one of my favorite quotes during my recent travels to Central Europe. During a dinner conversation, one of the spouses who came along mentioned that when he was in college, he had a roommate who either played piano for fun or was a music major. One day, he overheard his roommate slam his music down after hours of practicing on the piano, and say, "Damnit. Mozart composed this when he was six, and I can't even play it right."

Well, join the club.

I shudder to think of all of the music that people composed when they were of a single digit age, that I cannot "get right" after hours and hours of practice.

I guess this is why some of us compose; others of us just play what others have composed; and then there are some of us who can't even proficiently play what others have composed (that would be me). . ..

I would just love to have a conversation with people who can compose such intricate things at the ripe young age of six. (Though actually, of the two, my preference is to meet Bach.)

More on fair-weathered diplomacy

Sometimes, you come across an op-ed that summarizes exactly what you are thinking, better than you could summarize-- which I guess is why some people write op-eds, and others just blog about these things.

This op-ed by Dan Froomkin in the Washington Post pretty much sums up my attitude towards this administration's non-diplomacy diplomacy. You know, the kind where they only talk to people they are on good terms with.

At a press conference devoted to the Middle East crisis, asked why Bush isn't pursuing direct talks with nations like Syria and Iraq, he comments:

Q Many strategists say that we'll never get to the bottom of this crisis unless the U.S. engages directly with Syria and Iran. Why not talk to them directly about this, and have a back-and-forth conversation?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, that's an interesting question. I've been reading about that, that people have been posing that question. We have been in touch with Syria. Colin Powell sent a message to Syria in person. Dick Armitage traveled to Syria. Bill Burns traveled to Syria. We've got a consulate office in Syria. Syria knows what we think. The problem isn't us telling Syria what's on our mind, which is to stop harboring terror and to help the Iraqi democracy evolve. They know exactly what our position is. The problem is, is that their response hasn't been very positive. As a matter of fact, it hasn't been positive at all.

And in terms of Iran, we made it clear to the Iranians that if they would honor previous obligations and verifiably stop enrichment of nuclear materials, we would sit at a table. And so there's a way forward for both countries. The choice is theirs. Now, I appreciate people focusing on Syria and Iran, and we should, because Syria and Iran sponsor and promote Hezbollah activities -- all aimed at creating chaos, all aimed at using terror to stop the advance of democracies.
(Italics and emphasis mine.)

You know, if the world successfully operated based on what other people, countries (heck, your own parents and kids) "knows what we think", there wouldn't be a need for dialogue, diplomatic relations, etc. This is kind of an inane way to operate. I'm sure North Korea "knows what we think", just like parents must "know (what their kids) think" when then have that difficult conversation about not trying drugs. Does that deter them from testing missiles? Should the parent simply not have this talk with their children simply because they "know (what their kids) think?" Is knowledge ever legitimate grounds for not pursuing talks? Evidently, it is with this administration.

And it's not like this administration's knowlege has been terribly impressive thus far.

Then there are the faltering talks with Iran. The precondition for talks with Iran is for them to stop enrichment of nuclear materials. However, it's like the chicken and the egg argument. Iran is unlikely to stop enrichment, or answer to our government's quasi-ultimatums. "The choice is theirs," says both an impervious and imperious Bush.

But is it?

As this excellent article states, with a U.S. that is hell-bent (or at least it seems this way to the government of Iran) on destroying Iran, present in four of Iran's bordering nations, it's going to be a bit difficult to convince Iran to give up on uranium enrichment. I mean, let's imagine a world order where the U.S. weren't the superpower that it is. Instead, Iran is that superpower. Canada and Mexico own nuclear weapons and are both hostile to the U.S. Iran just waged war on the Christian minority living in Canada. In such a situation, were Canada or Mexico to demand that U.S. stop developing nuclear weapons technology, "or else", would the U.S. listen? We've just destroyed Iran's neighboring country, and we keep selling weapons to nations that are hostile to Iran, Syria, etc.

It doesn't really seem like we are giving Iran much of a "choice". And if he is indeed giving Iran a "choice", then what a dumb choice that is. Essentially, Bush is accepting no talks as an answer.

How is this productive diplomacy? Or even still, how does this constitute diplomacy at all, to return to the point made in Froomkin's op-ed?

The OED defines diplomacy as:

1. The management of international relations by negotiation; the method by which these relations are adjusted and managed by ambassadors and envoys; the business or art of the diplomatist; skill or address in the conduct of international intercourse and negotiations.

Well, according to this definition, what the Bush administration is doing hardly constitutes diplomacy. You can't reason with terrorists, but it seems like you can't reason much with this administration, either.

Hallmark friendships

A few weeks before leaving for Hungary, a "friend" from grade school called and left a long message about how she recently got engaged. I'm supposed to call her to catch up with her, but am finding it difficult to call her. Not that I'm not happy for her-- that's wonderful news, and I am excited for her. However, ours has lapsed into what I will term a "hallmark" friendship-- meaning, we--well, she-- seems to only want to be in touch when there is some sort of "big news", whether good or bad.

It wasn't always like this. But I made the mistake of speaking my mind.

I don't always do this, but every so often, either my friends irk me to the point of my needing to express annoyance, or a series of unfortunate combination of events lead me to be sensitive about things that alone wouldn't ordinarily bother me.

So in this particular case, this "friend" kept on forwarding me annoying emails. I really dislike excessive forwards. The list of 101 ways to annoy your roommate really stopped being funny after the 10th person sent it to me during freshman year in college. (I also hate when I have to ask for something more than three times.) Plus, all too often, I find that people use this as a substitute way of seeming to keep in touch, instead of taking the time to occasionally write me an actual email with substance.

I asked her once to not send me every single forward she got. And when I say forwards, I don't mean getting a joke or something silly every now and then. I forward these too. No, it was more like getting inane jokes several times a day. The first time, I used the tactic of nonchalance. (Hey, no big deal, but please XYZ.) She stopped for a while, and then resumed. I asked a second time. This time, I used humor. And then another time. (This time, I asked directly.) When it still didn't stop, I think I sent her a sarcastic email about the kinds of forwards I really don't like to receive. It was right after she or another mutual friend had sent me the forward about if you send this email to all ten billion of your friends, Bill Gates will give you two thousand dollars.

Not to sound disdainful, but in addition to being already annoyed about my multiple ignored pleas, I think I was more annoyed that someone would be stupid enough to send me a forward about Bill Gates doling out $2000 to people. Did people not take Econ 101 in college?

Anyway, the outcome of this was that my friend-- a friend of over 12 years at the time--got extremely annoyed. Fine. Understandable. Even though I was kind of miffed at having to ask her more than three or four times. I let her have her own space, though every so often, I'd check back in to see if she was still mad at me.

But what I didn't--and still don't--understand was that long after I tried to re-patch our relationship, resume our normal course of friendship and move past this silly episode, she continued to harbor a grudge. Things were never quite the same after that.

Maybe it was my stupidity for speaking my mind-- but a)she annoyed me past the point where I could keep quiet about it, and b)I was kindof banking on the fact that we had been friends for such a long time--half of our then-lifetime, to be exact--that if our friendship was actually significant to her (as it was to me) we'd eventually get over this. I certainly did, after a week or two. Also, c) siblings and family members fight all of the time, but then at some point, it's a given that you make up. Furthermore, d) she is allegedly a practicing Roman Catholic, and they're supposed to be into the whole forgiveness thing. So for all of these reasons, I was expecting to "resume" our status quo friendship after I let her fume for a bit. Well, it turns out that I overestimated the bonds of our then-twelve-year friendship. Also, it takes two people to make up, so no matter how willing I may be to move past this, it's really not possible if she's not willing, and she wasn't.

It's not that she ever explicitly stated this, but she slowly stopped responding to my emails. No matter how hard I tried to resume our pre-confrontation status, she was oddly distant. And every once in a while (even as recently as a year ago), she'd send me an email, and then preface it with an emotionally laden, "I know you *HATE* forwards, but I thought I'd send this along since . . .." Talk about baggage. It's been about ten years since we've had our altercation. Although I might tend to have a short fuse, I don't like expending energy to stay mad at people or hold grudges for that long a period. So I really don't understand people who harbor such strong feelings for years. (And I'm not even a regularly churchgoing Catholic like she is.)

We never resumed the several-times-a-week emails. Getting her to call me back when I called her or reply to my emails was like pulling teeth. When we did talk, although she pretended to be happy to hear from me and we'd "catch up", the conversation was strained and superficial. The birthday cards that used to come religiously on my birthday were at first, just tardy, and then eventually stopped coming altogether. She'd always email a week later to wish me a happy birthday, and then apologize for not sending a card because of xyz reason, but when someone has been sending you birthday cards on your birthday since you were twelve, it's simply not the same.

So fast forward about ten years, and we've gone from emailing each other several times a week to this odd situation where we go for nearly a year without talking/emailing, and then she calls me out of the blue to tell me that she's "gotten engaged!" and "We have a lot to catch up on!!" And I'm supposed to eagerly call her back and squeal with excitement as if we're blood sisters.

Except that when I got her message, it felt more like a vague stranger telling me that she had gotten engaged.

The problem with friends is that whereas with family, it's usually a given that you'll eventually make up--perhaps because circumstances necessitate it--you just don't know how friends will react to bumps in the road, such as a confrontation. Take this friend. She seemed like the easygoing type, and for 12 years, there were no rocks or bumps in our friendship. But our "friendship" as I see it ended up not surviving our first (and only) "bump".

And thus, it's been relegated to a "Hallmark" status relationship where we update each other on major news-- engagements, marriages, babies. This is the kind of "friendship" that I have difficulty maintaining, because I don't like superficiality and don't like being fake. I'm simply a lousy actor.

I'd rather be in-your-face and direct than be polite and fake, but it seems that sometimes, even the best of your friends really can't take direct. (And then you resort to blogging about it.) But then, what kind of a friendship is that when one can't be direct about one's feelings without it affecting the friendship in the long run?

Am I expecting too much of a friendship to expect that a good one (as this one was) will be solid enough to overcome an occasional altercation/confrontation/moment of tension? It's not like I confront people on a weekly, monthy, even annual basis.

If I can't make the occasional "you've irked me"' statement to my friends without it adversely affecting our relationship, then perhaps it's no wonder that our president's definition of diplomacy is to engage in conversation with only those nations that he doesn't find contentious or he is not currently irked at.

Hallmark diplomacy. . ..

An Inconveniently Timed Truth

I watched An Inconvenient Truth yesterday. Given all of the things I should have been--and should be--doing (uh, like memorizing the Hungarian national anthem? Cramming some last bits of memorization? Trying to master counting to ten in Hungarian?), perhaps it wasn't the most productive use of my time.

The movie was very illuminating. On the effectiveness scale, it fell somewhere between Michael Moore's documentaries and The Fog of War. It lacked the subtlety and poignancy of The Fog of War, but was more effective than Moore's in-your-face, preaching-to-the-choir style documentaries, which I tend to find a bit much. Which is not to say this movie doesn't preach to the choir; it does, even though it attempts to address critics and skeptics of his claims.

In the documentary, Al Gore presents a slide show on global warming. The slide show itself was excellent; had I seen Gore at Stanford or the Commonwealth Club giving this presentation, I would've given very high ratings for the lecture. His presentation was engaging; the slides were interesting; his main points came across well; he used very good examples; showed rather than told, etc. Although I had some issues with some of the claims he makes about population projections and about the Kyoto protocol, overall, his presentation seemed very well researched. I would've been perfectly happy with a movie that consisted of just his slide show.

The movie is also about the process of presenting the slideshow-- thus we see Gore toting his materials across airports, presenting it to audiences around the world, tweaking slides on the airplane, etc., while other times, we hear him thinking out loud. It was the addition of these extraneous clips-- his wistful reminiscing about the 2000 election situation; a very moving (but nonetheless distracting) story about losing his sister to lung cancer and how this affected his father's attitude towards their tobacco farm--which I felt detracted from the overall efficacy of the film. Take the 2000 election reference. At the opening of the film, he introduces himself as the former "next president of the United States", and then (jokingly) retorts to a laughing audience that he doesn't find this funny. This one reference to the 2000 election would've been fine, but then it is brought up again, halfway through the film. Although inclusion of this reference is probably the director's (and not Gore's) choice, I still found it detracting from an otherwise powerful message on global warming. Everyone who watches this film knows who Gore is. Even if he had not mentioned the 2000 election, the vast majority of us probably would've still made the association in our head (we already had one reminder of the situation from his self-introduction at the start of the film), which is why there is really no need to keep bringing this up. It is almost as if he implies that as a result of this devastating loss, he decides to channel his energies into global warming--or at least, I found myself making this subconscious connection, even though he mentions in the film that this topic has been a passion since his college days.

That said, although some of these tangential personal anecdotes made the film less effective for me, I still found his overall global warming message riveting. I also liked how in spite of its oft doomsday-sounding rhetoric, he ends his presentation by showing that this trend is still reversible, as well as concluding with a list of things we can do to change this trend. (A bibliography of sources and a longer list of things that can be done would've made me even happier.)

Finding a message "riveting" is not sufficient, though. There have been many positive reviews of this movie, which have led to many people going to see this movie, but one wonders whether this will lead to significant changes--whether among individuals or at the corporate or legislative levels. Those of us who are interested in seeing this film are probably already recycling, buying energy efficient bulbs, appliances, turning the water off while brushing our teeth, biking into work, and whatever else we can on the individual level. However, this is the kind of movie I'd want my ebullient co-workers and the very people who aren't likely to heed the warnings Gore gives to go see. The ones I not-so-jokingly harass when they (daily) toss an empty coke can or a newspaper into the garbage can, rather than into the recycling bin. The ones who think nothing of owning 9 mpg gas guzzling Hummers. The management of hotels that encourage you to reuse your towels, but yet do not have any recycling bins for paper, water bottles, pepsi cans, etc. (I stayed at 4 such hotels in the past two weeks.) Airlines that still don't seem to sort out their trash, despite the hundreds of thousands of cans and recyclable cups they must use daily. I doubt that any of these people or constituencies will be affected by this film, which is unfortunate.

Thus, in spite of its overall high ratings, I'm not sure if being "illuminating" or a "knockout success" is sufficient. Will anyone do anything differently as a result of this film?

Perhaps I'm asking too much of this film. But isn't this why Gore is has been giving this presentation to tens of thousands of people around the world? Not simply to rivet or impress, but to incite to act, to change?

In this regard, it seems to fall short of the unstated but clearly understood goal it sets out to achieve.

It's definitely worth going to see, but not something I'd add to my DVD collection.

Honey'd?

I got a box of "Honey'd Raisin Bran" from the store the other day. A certified organic cereal from Naure's Path.
I didn't actually catch the "honey'd", but I got it more because of the cereal's high protein and fiber content, and low sugar content and only noticed the "honey'd" after the fact. Once I noticed that this raisin bran was "honey'd" raisin bran, I tried to detect the honey taste. Not tasting even the slightest bit of honey, I got suspicious and checked the ingredients.

Well no wonder. Honey is the very last ingredient. After sea salt, and I can barely taste the salt in this cereal.

In fact, I got curious and tried to figure out exactly how much honey is in this thing. There are a total of 7 servings of cereal, and each serving has 240 mg of sodium. So total sodium content is 1680 mg. Each 1/4 tsp of sea salt contains 440 mg. of salt. So 1680/440 is 3.8. That is 3.8 1/4 tsps of salt-- which amounts to less than a teaspoon of sea salt in the entire box of cereal. If honey is listed as an ingredient after sea salt, and we assume that ingredients are listed in weight order, and we furthermore grant that honey is denser than salt, then it should roughly follow that there is even less than "less than a teaspoon" of honey in this cereal.

These are rough estimates, so I'm not claiming accuracy, but I think I'm making reasonable conjectures. It's quite a grandiose claim to describe something as "honey'd", when there is less than a teaspoon of honey in the entire box--about 5.25 cups of cereal.

By this logic, they could put less than a teaspoon of raisins in this cereal and call it "raisin bran".

Wouldn't it be more accurate to call this cereal sea-salted raisin bran?

Teaching History in Florida

The History News Network, a history blog that I follow from time to time, has an interesting post on the new legislation passed in Florida state on teaching "objective" history.

Says one part of the bill:
“American history shall be viewed as factual, not constructed, shall be viewed as knowable, teachable, and testable, and shall be defined as the creation of a new nation based largely on the universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.”

Actually, this passage seems to be over-quoted in the blogosphere, so at the risk of sounding trite, its oversweepingness and grandiosity got me thinking.

What does the bill mean by this, precisely?

I mean, for starters, aren't all histories "constructed"? And don't most high school history textbooks purport to teach "factual" history? Moreover, just because something is "factual" doesn't mean it isn't constructed. Are they suggesting that a history that doesn't teach the things they outline in the bill--the Revolutionary War, Civil War, etc. is "constructed", whereas a history that covers these topics is not? I'm not sure why it's necessary to point these things out in a bill. Does this mean that history taught in other states and previously in Florida is not viewed as "factual"?

It's as if by calling history "knowable", "teachable", and giving it a definition, the legislation is saying that history is definable and definitive, and in this particular case, touting one interpretation of American history as the authoritative version. Do the people who drafted this bill know anything about history? Or more importantly, about teaching it and about historiography? Are these same people who evidently know little about history the ones who get to determine which version of history is the "factual" one?

I am not saying that the Declaration of Independence, Civil War, etc. shouldn't be taught. Of course they should, as should the other topics this bill highlights--the holocaust, the plight of African Americans, contribution of women, and contribution of Hispanics. However, this bill already is a "constructed" history. Whoever wrote the bill chose to construct a history that doesn't necessarily include Native Americans, for example. I am not downplaying the importance of the topics the bill says should be covered. But what of the Vietnam War, the Palestinian-Israel conflict? In my recollection of k-12 history education, I remember it as being mostly dull, repetitive, inaccurate, monolithic and totally useless in the context of being an informed citizen in the world. From third grade till twelfth grade, 4-5 of those years were spent learning about the Revolutionary War and colonial history. (Yet, despite the repetition, I'm chagrined to say that I barely remember the details of American History. ) 2 weeks total (of those ten years) was spent on the Vietnam War.
And forget about different and alternative narratives of history. I had to wait till college/adulthood to discover those.

I should actually carefully peruse the full text of this legislation (some day when I'm not prepping for a trip with our choir or memorizing music, etc.), before interpreting/judging it, but this is just a stupid bill.

The meaning of "I have to go"

To my landlord and other people who have a penchant for maundering on and on on the phone. . .

If I say to you, "I have to go", please let me go. Please don't talk my ear off for another fifteen minutes. My attention span is about 5 minutes unless you are really scintillating. (Note: most of my friends are scintillating, but most landlords are not. ) If I am changing subjects and sounding restless and prompting you to make your point quicker, that probably means my attention span is shot. You really don't have to repeat the same phrase and rework it four times. Once is enough, really. Twice is annoying, but FOUR times? This is why a conversation that ought to take 5 minutes ends up taking 19 minutes and 22 seconds.

This is why I never bother answering my phone anymore. B/c people from this area can't comprehend the phrase, "I have to go".

There are 4 different types of "I have to go".

The first is more like a 10-minute warning (because I learned the hard way that after I say "I have to go", I typically get talked at for 10 more minutes. ) The tone of my voice is restless, but at this point, probably not annoyed-sounding. But really, I do want/need to go. So this is not a time to start asking me how my job is going. Take it as a warning bell to wrap up your yakking.

Then there is the non-commital "I should probably get going". That means, "I've been on the phone long enough, but it's not absolutely necessary that I get off." I might say this as I'm making one "last" point or something so as to indicate to the listener, that yes, there will be an end to this point soon. Or I might say this if I feel like I've talked someone else's ear off.

The third type is a more urgent "I have to go". At this point, I'm starting to get antsy and am really not paying much attention to what you are saying, but I'm staying on to be polite. I think my voice might sound agitated, but still somewhat under control. At this point, you should really let me go in under 2 minutes. Ideally in under 1 minute. Besides, if I'm not really listening to what you are saying, then you're kindof wasting your breath anyway.

The last type is the type where I sound audibly annoyed/agitated/miffed, etc., and the one where I'm so annoyed that I couldn't cut you off earlier that I might throw the phone across the room in frustration after I get off with you, or if I could get away w/ slamming the phone, this is probably what I'd do at this point. Either that or gripe about it on a blog such as this. You really don't want to hear this "I have to go", or if you do, you really want to let me get off the phone or let me go within ten seconds. This "I have to go" usually happens if I have a certain expectation that discussing x,y,z should take s amount of time, but instead, the conversation ends up taking 5s, and the amount of talking I'm doing is about .25s.

I can talk people's ear off. So if I'm not talking much, and all I'm saying is u-huh, or "ok, so--" (to prompt you to get to your point, or "right right" or "got it got it got it", that's probably a sign that your conversation is taking longer than I'd like.

So when I say "I have to go", for heaven's sake, let me go.

How media can affect Whole Foods shopping bag design

I don't know if any of you (hmm. I say "you" as if I am imagining some sort of audience. . ..) have been following Michael Pollan's online food blog on the NYT. His most recent (as of this writing) posting is a rebuttal letter he wrote to Whole Foods in response to a long letter the CEO of Whole Foods wrote to address some of the things that Michal Pollan wrote in his book, The Omnivore's Dilemma.

Read both (and now there appears to be another rebuttal letter from Whole Foods in response to Michael Pollan's rebuttal. Wow. I am lagging behind.), since I couldn't possibly do justice to the various threads by simply summarizing their arguments, but one of the main things both letters address is the idea of "local" food. I haven't read Pollan's book yet, but the first letter from Whole Foods basically goes on about how the company is indeed doing what it can to support local producers, etc.

Pollan's rebuttal letter challenges Whole Foods' claim that 45 percent of its products are "local". He raises the interesting question of whether Whole Foods counts the 3 big-corporation organic companies that are included in this 45 percent count. I still need to read Whole Foods' rebuttal letter #2, which seems to address Pollan's questions.

I went to Whole Foods today after work to pick up some stuff. I usually ask for a plastic bag, but today I was in a paper bag mood. I immediately noticed their new bag design: there is a picture of a ear of corn, with the text "LOCALLY GROWN" sort of diagonally written across the front. Then on the sides of the bag, there is a list of "a few of our local growers". On the back of this bag (well, as much as these sorts of bags have an actual "front" and "back"), there is a blurb about "Our regional growers" bringing us the freshest seasonal produce, etc. etc.

I can't help but wonder if this bag design was inspired by the recent exchange that has been transpiring between Michael Pollan and Whole Foods about the notion of "locally grown". I feel like I've only seen this design debut fairly recently.

Sales can bring out the stupidity in me

I am declaring a moratorium on clothes shopping. Last week I spent all week eating. This week, I feel like I spent all week shopping.

I'm not actually much of a frequent shopper (I'm a frequent browser, but a less frequent buyer), but I needed some stuff for work, travel, and running, and this was the week that everyone from Macy's to REI seemed to be having a sale, so I kept going and spending.

In fact, I bought a skirt that I can't imagine ever wearing. On the surface, it seemed like a perfect buy. It looked really cute, it was on sale for like $25, down from $140, and they had my size. However, there were several problems with the skirt. First, due to size inflation, it was way too big. Second, this skirt had pleats all along the front, and I don't do pleats. One or two, I can tolerate, but gosh, all across the front? That's so 1982. Or at least, that was the last time I wore such a skirt. Third, it was a dry-clean only skirt, and unless it is a very versatile clothing item, (which this wasn't) I don't do "dry clean only" apparel. Fourth, I wasn't crazy about the color: this skirt had pale pinks and pale greens. I'm not necessarily excluding pinks and greens from my wardrobe, but these shades of pink and green, I don't typically do. Last and least (since this was the most remediable of problems), since I don't typically do these colors, I suspected I didn't own a single thing that would match this skirt.

But for $25, one can be duped into a false sense of flexibility.

The back didn't have pleats, and actually, if the skirt was like that all around (pleatless), that would solve problem 1 (b/c it would look less silly as a low-rise skirt. Can skirts be "low rise" like pants?), 2, and 3 (the pleats would make it impossible to hand-wash, b/c I also don't do the ironing thing, but w/o pleats, it can easily be hand-washed and line dried).

So I bought the skirt, because it was only $25, and if the front looked like the back, then a,b, and c (see previous paragraph for values of a, b, and c).

Last week, I kept the skirt out to see if I would be inspired to wear it to work, but no such inspiration came.

I wasn't sure what I was thinking when I thought "well, if the front of the skirt were like the back. . ." The very same thought transpired when I tried on my skirt again at home a few times. But how does this help me? It's kind of like saying, "well, if I had a million dollars. . ." Well, yes, but I don't, and the skirt isn't. Except that I never base my decisions on a hypothetical million dollars. So why did I buy a skirt based on this kind of ridiculous logic?

I blame it on the $25, and the display mannequin who made the ridiculously pleated skirt look so cute and fashionable. When I wore the skirt, I looked nothing like the mannequin. See what happens when stores use mannequins that are size zero amazon women? We start flattering ourselves and buying unflattering things we normally wouldn't think of buying, b/c we think we will look like the mannequins. This seems like a perfectly complain-worthy point, except that I think that is the whole point of having unrealistic-sized mannequins. Where are the mannequins with love handles? Where are the mannequins that are 5'4''?

Well, that was just the start of my shopping rampage. I also ended up getting a few more items over the weekend. I went to Union Square yesterday, then to REI today. But after spending more $ on things I would actually wear, I decided that even though $25 is a steal deal for a skirt that was originally $140, it's still a wasted $28 (by the time you add tax), if I won't ever wear it.

It's funny that it sometimes takes spending an extra $200 to arrive at this seemingly common-sensical thought--or in other words, I need to spend $200 to not spend $25 stupidly.

I concluded my weekend shopping spree by returning this skirt.

A rebuttal to my pink lady theory

Sometimes I wonder if people actually read these things, but evidently they do.

So earlier, I posted about my speculations on what kind of apple Eve ate. I said Pink Lady, hands down.

Gerswin, whose real name is Gershwin, except that he cannot spell, so now he is Gerswin. . . actually, in real life, he's neither of these identities, but on the pretense of being quasi-anonymous, my real-life people get pseudo-monikers, but I digress--anyway, so Gerswin, a lapsed trumpetist who won't tell me which non-quotidian-sounding composer dude whose name begins with an R wrote the double trumpet concerto in E-minor that I like and thus want to get a recording of, wrote back this interesting rebuttal:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Knowing your penchant for detail, I was astounded to learn that you would
believe Eve's Apple to be a pink lady. Although I quite agree with you on the
quality of the apple, I think we had this discussion before, I would believe someone
as pedantic as you would have done your research. To help you out, I
have provided a cut from a website:

Pink Lady--
Yet another import from the land "down under" this variety was
originally named Cripp's Pink. Developed and bred by the agriculture
department of Western Australia in 1973, Pink Lady apples are a cross
between Golden Delicious and Lady Williams. Introduced to the United
States by way of New Zealand in the late eighties, the fruit is medium
in size and conical in shape, with a distinctive pink blush over a
yellow background. The fine-grained flesh of this apple is crisp and
crunchy and, because it does not brown easily after being cut, Pink
Lady is a desirable addition to fresh vegetable and fruit salads. When
eaten out-of-hand, the first bite tastes pleasantly tart and is
followed by a delicious sweetness. Pink Lady ripens in September and
can be found in most markets right through late spring months.

http://www.appleorchardtours.com/fruit.htm

You realize that by identifying Eve's apple as being a pink lady, you
throw off the whole evolution/creation debate by adjusting Genesis to
somewhere around the mid 60's, assuming of course that Adam and Eve
had the opportunity to hang around a bit before being banished from
Eden. Not to mention to what you do to throw off the values on carbon
dating. :-)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Interesting. He has a valid point. I'm not going to go into my religious beliefs, but if this is the same god person who created the universe and managed to populate the earth with humans all in 6 days, and somehow his 6 days corresponds to the human timeline of several billion years, isn't it perfectly plausible that this same god can have a post-1960s-dated pink lady apple tree in the garden of Eden? I mean, we're not talking about a normal passage of time here. . ..

Confession and Continuation of Rant about Zeros. . .

I went to the shopping center yesterday and have a grave confession to make. I parked my Camry in a parking spot clearly marked "SMALL CAR". Horrible, aren't I? Actually, if it weren't for the fact that it aggravates the heck out of me when SUVs do this, I wouldn't feel so guilty about doing this.

Also, I once wrote an essay for one of my classes (half in jest, but half serious, actually) about why Americans can't do math-- and one of the reasons I gave was that large Hummers park in spaces marked "compact". (I mean if a 50-year old adult can't get the spatial perception thing, we expect 9-year olds to figure out proportions? ) By parking in this space, I feel like I'm contributing to math illiteracy.

Granted, my car is hardly a Hummer or the 5 mongo SUVs that were parked next to my car in spaces marked "SMALL CAR", but I still felt a twinge of guilt as I pulled into the parking space clearly marked "SMALL CAR". However, the reason I chose to park here, in spite of my guilt is perfectly logical: my sense of resignation exceeded my sense of guilt--so much so that I only hesitated for about 10 seconds contemplating my hypocrisy, before I thought out loud, "well, if these 6 mongo SUVs and Hummer, and this ginormous truck is considered a small car, then for sure my Camry is a midget." In economics jargon, my marginal resignation exceeded my marginal guilt. However, if my marginal guilt had exceeded my marginal resignation, I wouldn't have parked in the small car space.

If a Hummer qualifies as a compact car, then the next time I rent a compact car, can I request a Volvo station wagon as a compact car? I surely don't want to drive a Hummer, but surely a Volvo is a compact far more legitimately than a Hummer is, no?

How come the rental car companies never confuse "compact" in this way?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In an earlier post, I questioned the sizing practices of Banana Republic, because they claimed that zero was a legitimate size. I went into Banana Republic to look for basic t-shirts (hey, they might not have the size thing down quite right, but I still like their clothes. . .), and as I was rifling through the sale racks, guess what I saw? Something more egregious than a size 0.

Can you possibly guess what size they had? 00! That's double-zero, which is even smaller than a size 0, if one can fathom that.

I'm trying to wrap my brain around their logic (Yes, I've been doing a lot of brain-wrapping lately. . ..) of why 00<0.
Well, ok, technically, zero is zero is zero, so regardless of whether you have one of them or a googol of them, it is the same quantity.

Fine. I'm a flexible person. I can suspend my mathematical scruples for a while to try to comprehend this. Let's suspend this perfectly logical arithmetic notion that 0=00=0000000000000000 and treat zero like a number that has a value--a 1 or 3, for example. But even then, 1<11<111 and 3<33<333.


But the Banana Republic sizing folks are saying the converse. Wait wait. I think I got it. They are saying that a 00 is "more zero" than a regular zero. More quintessentially zero than zero, if you will. But then this brings us back to 1 and 11. Based on their logic, I'm confused as to whether 11 should be smaller or larger than a 1.

If Banana Republic keeps inflating their sizes, at some point, they will have to come up with an even smaller size than a 00. Will they just keep tacking on more zeroes, or will they start having negative sizes?

Telling time in Hungarian

I got up earlyish this morning and decided to study Hungarian in lieu of going running. So I take out my Teach Yourself Hungarian book and flip through. This book is not structured in a way that is terribly useful to me, so I end up skipping around.

For example, in one of the earliest lessons, you learn, "You speak Hungarian very well."

Now tell me.

I can barely count in Hungarian. I still haven't done my full lesson on ordering food (I know how to ask if a table is open, and say, "I'm very hungry" or "I'm a little hungry", but that is about all), and I'm just today going over dates/times. In what situation would I possibly need to know how to say or comprehend this phrase?

Well, ok, I can think of two scenarios. 1. I speak this phrase to someone--for ex, I compliment someone on their Hungarian speaking abilities. Who? A native speaker? Would someone whose vocabulary is 30 words ever praise a native speaker for their ability to speak their native tongue? Besides, I don't understand enough Hungarian to know if someone speaks Hungarian well. So that's out.

2. I need to understand this phrase, b/c someone is saying this to me. As of this writing, I know maybe a dozen phrases, so I don't think I need to worry about that.

So this begs the question, why do they put "you speak Hungarian well" so early into the book?

Why can't they put something more practical like location and time vocab words?

As I was saying, I was flipping through the book to look for time/date words--days of the week, months, today, tomorrow, yesterday, and time. The first few items were easy enough (to copy and comprehend, but not necessarily to learn). Then I got to time.

5:15 is "a quarter to six"
and 5:45 is "3/4 to six"

shenme? (That's not Hungarian, btw.)
I decided that I needed to quit my lesson at this point and revisit it during lunch. So I went into work.

6 hours later, the logic part made more sense--you just envision a pie and 5:15 is 5 and 1/4; 5:45 is 5 3/4. So it's like saying 3/4 on the way to 6 o'clock, except that mathematically, that's not exactly correct. "3/4 to 6 o'clock" is really 4:30 (I think), so I'm having a minor hangup here, but if I can overcome that, this logic roughly makes sense.

In fact, they write their time 1/2 6 van (5:30) and 3/4 8 van (7:45).

However, it's one thing to passively understand the logic; it's another thing to attempt to apply this to come up with an actual time. For example, it is 11:22. How would one say that?
5:20 (applying the same logic above) is 1/3 on the way to 6:00. So by the same logic, would one say, haromed (if 4 is negy and 1/4 is negyed, since 3 is harom, I'm wildly guessing that 1/3 is haromed.) hat van?
(That would make Hungarian a very logical language.)

Sajnos, nem tudom.
Or I didn't have the patience to think this through, so that was where I ended my Hungarian lesson.

Perhaps I ought to learn numbers first. . . (Tomorrow. Oh wait. I learned that today--holnap.)

A non-foodie's past week's gastronomical highlights

Despite my love for good food--both eating it and talking about it--I must not be a real foodie, because if I were actually a foodie, I'd remember to bring a camera to photograph my gastronomical adventures. For example, this past week was full of such opportunities.

Sunday--I went to Project Open Hand's nth (I think n=6) annual Dessert First (note: this is the website for last year's, b/c they don't have this year's up yet. You can get the gist of the event from looking at these pictures from last year.) w/ some friends. This has become a sort of quasi-tradition for me; I think this is the fourth time going with them. (Interestingly enough, I think that every time I have gone to this function with these friends, there is a new addition to their family. Well, the "addition" between the first and second times might be a bit of a stretch, but the first time, I think they were just dating; then they added each other (i.e. got married); then child #1, and this time, child #2. Hmm. Ok, enough of a digression.)

This would've been the perfect bring-your-camera opportunity, but I missed it. Imagine a beautiful array of aesthetically pleasing desserts of all varieties lined up for miles and miles. Ok, maybe not miles, but several hundred square feet worth.

Wednesday--I made ratatouille with basil dumplings. The brilliant hues of the various veggies--red, purple, bright green and bright yellow--serving as a backdrop to the green speckled pale yellow dumplings looked very colorful, and would've made for a good photo, but again, my mind was on other things--like eating this before it got cold.

Thursday--I went to Vung Tau II in Milpitas. Excellent Vietnamese food, and no pho! Not that I have anything against pho (except cilantro, which I detest, despise, abhor, etc. etc.), but it's like Japanese food and sushi. Many people here think Japanese food=sushi, teriyaki, and tempura, b/c that is all they serve at most restaurants around here. So I imagine the same is the case w/ Vietnamese food. We did family-style, which I don't usually get to do w/ Vietnamese food. I got to try more dishes this way. They didn't have banh xeo, but they had other stuff that was very good. Here was another occassion where I would've liked to have taken pictures of some of the stuff we ordered--lotus root salad, shrimp cupcakes, lemongrass shrimp, seabass dish among others--just because it's not your typical bun, pho fare. (Plus it would make for a much more interesting read with photos)

Friday--I had my friend Verdant over. We were supposed to "cook" together, and I had planned a menu of pasta w/ herbs from my garden plus an herb souffle that I had recently cut out, but it was sweltering hot in my apartment, and I was in no mood to increase the temperature of my apartment by another 20 degrees (F). Thus I decided to change the menu to cold sesame noodles, a summer staple. It's sort of Japanese food, but not really. Well ok, they serve it in Japan, but they call it "cold Chinese-style noodles" or 冷やし中華. I'm sure it's a Japanized version of a Chinese dish. There wasn't much to do except boil noodles, and julienne slice some veggies, make a salad, thinly slice cucumbers, so I ended up finish much of this before Verdant came over. The arrays of different colors again called for a photo-op, but again, who thinks, "Oh wait. I just finished cooking. Let me preserve this moment on camera" when one is starving and winding down with a chilled glass of Asti Spumante, not to mention dying from oppressive heat? However, I did get some silly (It's impossible to not be silly when there are only two of us, and we are trying to take a picture of the two of us. Half of the photos were useless and utterly silly-looking.) shots of the two of us.

This was actually more eating out than I usually do in a month (or sometimes even two-- including lunch outings which I didn't mention here)!

Go Running at 5:30 in the Morning

Today, I got up at 5:20 and went running at 5:30. In theory, I got up at 5:20 to "practice" getting up at this time to drive my friend to the airport this weekend at an ungodly hour, but then it occurred to me that duh, that's usually around the time I get up.

While I can probably think of better things to do with one's time than go running at 5:30 in the morning, I've managed to do this twice this week, and kindof like it.

First, as some of my friends know, I don't like walking/running on sidewalks. This poses a problem when walking with 2 year olds, because walking on streets exhibits bad model behavior. In fact, it seems to be bad model behavior if I do this near anyone who has kids under 5 or so. But at 5:30, there are hardly any cars or toddlers walking about, so I can run in the middle of the street (or at least in the middle of a lane) w/o worrying about cars or worrying that I will be a bad influence on the 4 year old who is being told by his parents that he must walk on the sidewalk because the street is "dangerous". I saw maybe 2 cars total on my 35 minute run today (and no toddlers).

The sun is just out enough that it isn't scorching hot or too bright, but light out. It is the right brightness and the right temperature.

Maybe it is the rebeliousness aspect of it, or perhaps the novelty of it, but for some reason, I can keep running for longer without stopping or getting tired when I run very early in the morning. I enjoy running in the evening as well, but for example, on a day like today, there is no way I would've gone running in the afternoon. Too hot. But this morning, it was just cool enough that it made my run enjoyable.

I also like that I feel like I've done something "productive" so early in the day.

I can't do this every day, but I think I'm going to try to do it at least a few times a week.

6 Signs of Summer--yay!

1. Fresh pea sighting at the farmer's market
2. I have the energy to go running at 5:40 in the morning
3. It is light enough to go running at 5:40 in the morning
3.5. I have the option to go running at either 5:40 in the morning or 5:40 in the evening
4. The tomatoes available at the farmer's market (only at this one particular stand though. . .) finally taste like tomatoes and not like cardboard.
4.5. I am so inspired by non-cardboard-tasting tomatoes and its many potentials that I plant some of my own tomato plants along with herbs.
4.75. A good five minutes of my day is spent staring at aforementioned tomato plants (just in case the tomato guy lied to you about the 60-day maturation period and there are early bloomers hiding) and fantasizing about all the things one can do with very sweet cherry tomatoes.
5. I have to be more careful about transporting fruit to work, b/c they are more fragile than winter fruits. (peaches and cherries, vs. apples and oranges)
6. I can finish eating at 8:30 and it is still light out!

Zero means zero

If I ever apply for a job in the food industry, I am going to list my GPA as a 4.0 on my resume. If they are allowed to round down .5 grams or less of trans fats and claim "zero" transfats, then conversely, I should be able to round up my GPA.

So why is zero no longer zero? When I was growing up, zero meant zero. Nothing. Nada. Rien. However, in this postmodern world of the twenty-first century, zero sometimes isn't zero.

For example, let's take Banana Republic. They have a size 0. How can 0 be a size? I thought zero meant nothing. Granted, a size 0 is so tiny that it is almost nothing, but "almost nothing" is not the same thing as nothing. Am I the only one that has conceptual issues with a size 0?

But my biggest contention with zero abuse is with the food industry and how they label the transfat content of foods. For example, take girl scout cookies. Not to bash something that is for a good cause, but I have been on a vigorous campaign to cut transfats out of my diet, so this means a near obsessive reading of food labels. Several of the girl scout cookies list partially-hydrogenated oils as the second ingredient, and yet, the transfat listing is zero.

This is not possible, since partially hydrogenated oils are transfats. Subsequently, I have seen many foods that list partially hydrogenated oils as an ingredient but also claim that the transfat content is zero.

I was very suspicious of this mathematical anomaly, so looked into it. It turns out that if the transfat content is less than .5 g, they can list it as zero.

Perhaps this is why Americans can't do math--because the food industry is telling us that 0.5=0.

But again, my contention-- "less than 0.5 grams" is not the same as zero, which means nothing. If you multiply nothing by 100, you get nothing. However, if you multipy 0.49999 grams of transfats by 100 servings, that's 49.9 grams of transfats. 49.9999 does not equal 0, so by a simple law of algebra, 0.5 doesn't equal 0.

If a food label says there are zero grams of transfats in my thin mints, to me, that means there are no transfats in my thin mints, whether I eat just one or 100. Given that you have to buy these things by the box, it's a little misleading to label a box of cookies as having "zero transfat", when that applies (and dubiously so) to only one serving, no?

Who lets the food industry get away with this kind of number illiteracy?

Bad Food Day

Do you ever have one of those bad food days where everything you try to eat/cook somehow ends up not working out? Today was one such day for me. I came home from a street fair craving something healthy and simple to counterbalance the bad stuff we had at the fair.

I made myself a big green salad with glazed walnuts, chopped up mango, cucumber, sunflower seeds, etc. I was so looking forward to this salad, but then after taking a few bites, a big caterpiller peered out from underneath one of the leaves. After debating whether or not this grossed me out enough to toss out a salad I was so badly craving, I decided that it did and ended up throwing out the entire salad. I was fully aware that there are probably worse things to eat than salad that a caterpillar has trampled all over; yet, this did not abate my feeling of being grossed out, even when I pointed out to myself that I had no problems eating this insect-trampled salad before when I was blissfully ignorant of the caterpillar's existence.

Then there is the mac and cheese I tried to make. Ok, not exactly "healthy", but I wanted something easy, and my food supply was quite low. Well, the noodles where almost done when I started "prepping" the sauce. Much to my dismay, when I opened the milk carton, I found the milk--despite being days away from expiry--had curdled and gone bad. Argh. Luckily, I had some plain yogurt, and used that instead, but as you can imagine, it didn't quite come out the way I envisioned.

And thus it was an entire day of bad food mishaps.

Oops. I forgot to muse about Chinese history. . ..

I got so caught up in extolling the virtues of uttapams at Madras Cafe that I forgot to talk about Chinese history. One of Patita's friends who came w/ us to the cafe is a Chinese gal working for some media company. She mentioned how she often needs to find experts in the field of Chinese studies to get info and quotes.

She made an interesting comment which I have heard before from Japanese people as well, albeit in a different variation. She said that as a Chinese person, she felt funny asking non-Chinese scholars their expert opinion about China, and how odd it was that these non-Chinese people who speak Chinese w/ a "funny accent" should know more about Chinese history than Chinese people.

In the quasi-academic (I am not in academia, but via work and personal connections and interest, I sort of have my foot partially in this realm.) world which I inhabit, this is not so "odd". I am perfectly used to non-Chinese (i.e. caucasian) people knowing more Chinese history or literature than Chinese people, and likewise with Japanese history. In fact, considering that the history field is 90 percent male and 80 percent white (note: I may have these figures reversed, but the point is that an overwhelming majority is white and male) in the U.S., and not all of them studying western history, it means that there are a whole bunch of non-_______(pick any non-caucasian race) studying ________ history for a living, and therefore knows more about _______ history than the ________ people.

I'm not sure why this is so odd. In fact, I find it more odd that people find this odd. I do not mean any disrespect to her, but since I witness this similar why-does-this-foreigner-know-more-about-Japan mentality so often in Japan as well, I found myself immediately on the defensive and mentally rattling off reasons why it's not so odd for non-Chinese people to perhaps know more about Chinese history or even know more Chinese than the Chinese.

There are roughly 1.3 billion Chinese, of which--according to the CIA factbook--79.2 percent are over fifteen. Of this adult population, 90.1 percent are literate. Let's humor the CIA and trust that these stats are accurate. A quick plugging in of numbers in the calculator shows that 223,423,200 Chinese people are not literate. Would a Chinese person find it odd that a caucasian China specialist is likely to read and write Chinese better than 223 million Chinese people? Though it's not nec. the case that literacy and history knowlege are related, it's probably not too farfetched to suggest that many of these people don't have an adequate Chinese history background, either.

Nor is literacy necessarily a proof of history knowledge. Given the control that the communist government wields over the history curriulum--even today, and especially during the Cultural Revolution, I wonder how much information is withheld in history education. In fact, I just recently read an article about this in the Christian Science Monitor. The article talks about a book that challenges the the conventional wisdom of modern China's founding legend. One of the book's arguments is that the famous battle that occurred during the Long March did not actually occur. I'm not a China scholar, so cannot speak to the veracity of these claims (She interviews 40 people who claim that the battle never happened. 40 seems like a very small fraction of 200,000.), but the more interesting but not terribly surprising point I extracted from this article is that the official history that is taught in China has been rewritten and reinterpreted by the government according to their needs. For example, this article states that during the height of the Cultural Revolution, the gang of four rewrote Chinese history as a history of class struggles .

Another example of this is evident in the historiography of the Nanjing Massacre. During the Cultural Revolution, in order to maintain good relations with the Japanese, the government left this out of the history curriculm.

History being used as a political tool is certainly not endemic to China; I'm not trying to suggest that. Instead what I'm trying to suggest is that it is not so "odd" that caucasians who speak Chinese "with a funny accent" might know more Chinese history than the average Chinese person.