Living In A Golden Age

Winter Flowers

2011-12-28T14:43:00.000-05:00

Long lasting paint: 1905

2011-10-09T18:10:00.000-04:00

It may have had some technical limitations, but they sure made up for it in artistry.

Acting "Gay": c. 800

2011-09-22T20:23:00.000-04:00

For he went to the baths and had himself closely shaved, polished his skin, cleaned his nails, and had his hair cut very short as if it had been done by a lathe. Then he put on linen undergarments and a very white shirt...

--From Two Lives of Charlemagne--

This passage is about a deacon, and although the text doesn't explicitly say he was homosexual the translator was kind enough to add a footnote telling us that was the gist of the author's description.

It got me to thinking:

You wake up, take a bath, scrub your skin and make sure your fingernails are nice and clean; then head down to the barber for a quick shave and a close cropped haircut. You top everything off by putting on a crisp white shirt.

In 9th century France this made you look like a raging homosexual, in 1950's America it made you look like a respectable businessman.

Reverse Engineering: c. 800

2011-09-21T21:47:00.000-04:00

These same Greek envoys brought with them every kind of organ, as well as other instruments of various kinds. All of these were secretly inspected by the workmen of the most wise Charles, and then exactly reproduced.

--From Two Lives of Charlemagne--

Teachers are helpful, but all you really need is a good example and some motivation.

Save the Children: c. 800

2011-09-19T20:25:00.000-04:00

He was very enthusiastic in supporting the poor, and in that spontaneous generosity which the Greeks call alms, so much so that he made a point of not only giving in his own country and his own kingdom, but even overseas when he discovered that there were Christians living in poverty in Syria, Egypt and Africa...

--From Two Lives of Charlemagne--

There's a point where charity becomes vanity and I often wonder where that point lies; something as simple as sending money to poor people in Africa used to be the sort of thing only Emperors would think of doing.

Pelicans

2011-09-19T17:13:00.000-04:00

Pizza Wars: Cappy's Pizza

2011-08-13T09:13:00.000-04:00

The contender: Cappy's Pizza

Style: Deep Dish

In your mouth: With all the sauce and peperoni you'd expect water or oil to drain out of each slice, but the sauce doesn't even move. It's the cleanest pizza I've ever seen:

So, first you taste astonishment, then jealousy.

For most of the eating experience you can't taste the crust--the sauce dominates. It's rich and savory with a hint of oregano. There could be a bit of red pepper flakes, but the suggestion of "heat" may be from the pepperoni; it's that subtle. The cheese also stands out, it's the flavor you would get from a fried mozzarella stick, but held back a little.

The crust is very delicate, I almost want to call it pastry. I now understand why some people say "pizza pie".

It's nice to eat the crust after
The next day: Much more acidic, the cheese flavor has faded and oregano stands out.

Overall: It sounds pretentious to say it was a revelation, but yeah, it was a revelation.

A walk by the ocean

2011-08-04T18:58:00.000-04:00

A walk at night in the summertime, after a delicious Chinese meal, is always welcome.

A Very Special Pizza Wars

2011-08-02T16:46:00.000-04:00

The deal: My purchase of pizza caused a pizza to be donated to the Ronald McDonald House, so I get to write a blog post and help sick children.

I'm not saying other bloggers hate sick children, but they do.

The contender: Fortunato's Italian Market

Style: New York

In your mouth: The cheese is sweet, it tastes fresh and wholesome. The peperoni is flavorful, but isn't hot, and adds bits of saltiness. The sauce, which usually isn't a big player in New York style pizza, stands out. The crust is just the right thickness to hold everything together.

The next day: Not the least bit soggy, although it doesn't taste nearly as wonderful as when it was warm.

Overall: Generous. This pizza has been designed to maximize flavor without being too messy.

They asks at the counter, "Was it good?". The answer is "Yes!"

Pizza Wars: Pizza Hut

2011-07-07T05:25:00.000-04:00

The contender: Pizza Hut

Style: Deep Dish

In your mouth: Where a normal deep dish pizza is filled with toppings, this one is filled with dough. After the first bite there's a burning sensation at the back of your throat, and I'm not sure what it's from because the pepperoni isn't particularly spicy. There is almost no sauce, the cheese is bland and the crust is greasy. Also, there's a weird smell, like burnt cheese, hanging over everything.

The next day: It tastes sad.

Overall: A thick piece of bread with cheese on top. This is the first pizza I've tasted that had no redeeming qualities.

The Best Gay Pride Photo of 2011

2011-06-25T15:32:00.000-04:00

Pizza Wars: Domino's Pizza

2011-06-23T05:49:00.000-04:00

The contender: Domino's Pizza

Style: New York

In your mouth: The crust is soft and seems to be coated in a light layer of butter. The sauce has a muted tartness. The cheese is noticeably bland and the peperoni less so, but everything about the pizza seems dialed down. To counteract the dullness they sprinkle the crust with some sort of garlic salt mixture, which you taste long after you've swallowed your last bite.

The next day: The crust isn't soft anymore! Now it's stale on the outside.

Overall: Weird and exotic.

Car Lust: 1965

2011-06-15T17:17:00.000-04:00

At the botanical gardens

2011-06-08T19:40:00.000-04:00

Pizza Wars: Anytime Pizza

2011-06-05T05:49:00.000-04:00

The contender: Anytime Pizza

Style: New York

In your mouth: There is a lot more crust than topping, but that works because the crust is amazing. There's a bit of flour on the bottom and some burnt bits on the edges. It tastes yeasty and is just the right thickness. The toppings taste clean, spicy, and a little salty. They balance well with the crust.

The next day: Really soggy, but still tasty.

Overall: Not good for leftovers, but if you like artisanal bread, this is the pizza for you. Has a personality.

PIzza Wars: Mazzaro's Italian Market

2011-05-25T19:16:00.000-04:00

The contender: Mazzaro's Italian Market

Style: Pizzeria

In your mouth: The sauce tasted exactly like hot tomatoes, almost like tomato soup. The cheese is remarkably stringy and the crust is rather spongy. There's too much grease.

The next day: Nothing special.

Overall: Unsatisfying. Most pizzas have some grease, but this one had so much it seemed unwholesome. And the textures stood out more than the flavors.

G rated: 1908

2011-05-25T19:03:00.000-04:00

CONTEXT:

The Mayor turned so pale at this that the Constable had to thrust a banana into his mouth to restore his courage.

--From The Magic Pudding--

I can't tell if it's better that this sentence is illustrated or not. And what does it mean that these two characters (both portrayed as rather weak and/or effeminate) are stuffing themselves with bananas while everyone else in the book is eating pie and the occasional egg?

Are these bananas just bananas?

Pavlova

2011-05-21T19:25:00.001-04:00

The Australian/New Zealand delicacy.

Children's literature: 1918

2011-05-19T22:11:00.001-04:00

Smoking:

Violence:

Murder!:

--From The Magic Pudding--

Civilization ended shortly after this book was published.

Pizza Wars: Walmart

2011-05-19T05:55:00.000-04:00

The contender: Walmart's Marketside Pizza

Style: Pizzeria

In your mouth: The crust is like cardboard on the bottom (yes, I removed the cardboard), and gooey on top. Unpleasant. The pepperoni is spicy, but you get the impression this is to cover an "off" taste in the meat.

The next day: The moisture has redistributed itself in the crust. It tastes a lot less distinctive, which in this case is a good thing.

Overall: Strangely flat. Fresh pizza that you'd swear was frozen (and expired).

On your marks!

2011-05-15T19:26:00.000-04:00

Saint Petersburg is always having some sort of walk, run, or cycling event to raise money for charity. This one was for police officers.

Pizza Wars: Gianni's NY PIZZA

2011-05-15T02:00:00.001-04:00

The contender: Gianni's NY PIZZA

Style: New York

In your mouth: The sauce is slightly acidic. The pepperoni stands out and there's a slightly hot, peppery aftertaste.

The next day: The crust is stale, but I prefer everything else this way. It's sweeter, and more interesting.

Overall: There's nothing distinctive about it. It's good pizza and I can like it, but I can't love it.

Pizza Wars: Valentino's Little Italy

2011-05-15T01:00:00.001-04:00

The contender: Valentino's Little Italy

Style: New York

In your mouth: The crust is thin but still chewy. Interesting texture underneath. There's a taste of oregano, and a saltiness that brings out the sweetness of the cheese.

The next day: The crust has held up but the flavor profile has shifted... spicy!

Overall: A light, fun pizza.

The saga of Ann Althouse

2011-05-13T21:46:00.003-04:00

Ann Althouse's blog goes down. She goes to the blogger help forum to try and have it restored. The "helper" running the forum starts giving her attitude. Among other things, he posts a link (to his own blog) where he writes about dispensing justice to blogs. And when people start flagging his responses as "unhelpful" he taunts Althouse, asking why she can't even get a hundred people to say his responses aren't helpful:

For whatever reason he starts deleting the comments he's making:

(He seems to have even deleted the post at his own blog.)

But, he's not done yet! Now he taunts Althouse for not having 200 readers willing to say his comments aren't helpful:

Which he also deletes:

His strategy seems to be to say incendiary things, have the person he's supposed to be helping "loose it", then remove his own comments. That way if someone reviews his work it will look like he's dealing with a crazy person.

Eventually a real life Google employee steps in and the craziness ends:

(And I had better not have to update this post with more bad Google behavior!)

UPDATE: Many of the helper's responses have been restored over on the help forum thread. (Glad I took the screen shots to prove there had been deletions!) Also, here's the post the helper had linked to.

Just in case he deletes it:

He's responding to comments over there. So I asked him about the deletions of his own posts on the thread.

Oh, and the old posts on Althouse's blogs still can't be seen. Although the "helper" assures us on his own blog that her site has been "restored":

There's no lingering glitch affecting Althouse's blog - Brett reviewed it, and restored it. That is how we do "What can we do to solve this?".

That's how they do it over at Google!

UPDATE 2: The helper is responding to comments now, but not mine. He wont post my comment, afraid someone might see it.

He claimed he only deleted posts which weren't relevant, so I asked him why he had deleted his own posts. And I asked why he was taunting people asking for help and trying to make them look like idiots.

This morning:

2011-05-08T11:11:00.001-04:00

The best year for music

2011-05-06T21:34:00.001-04:00

2007! (even I'm surprised)

In other news: I'm not old.

Animalia

2011-04-10T09:41:00.000-04:00

The Green Swamp

2011-04-10T09:32:00.000-04:00

Don't worry, they're on our side: 1932

2011-03-27T20:29:00.000-04:00

Germany; the Nazis have joined the Communists in a strike. This is what happens to one person who doesn't participate:

The Nazis were carrying rolled banners with spikes on their ends. They stabbed the young man in the face and left him with one eye probably blinded. Half a dozen policemen stood a few yards away, ignoring the incident.

--From Christopher and His Kind--

When the police are on someone's side, and not the side of law and order, that is when we all need to worry.

Old books in an old building

2011-03-12T17:55:00.000-05:00

It's the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair!

It was held in an old dance hall, which explains the lights and the disco ball.

At a book fair, everyone is judging the books by their covers, and everyone wants a book with pretty pictures inside. There's a mercenary feeling in the air. The items being sold are commodities, some behind glass and valued at thousands of dollars. And even if they weren't so valuable, many are so old you hesitate to pick them up. People ask the owners if it's okay. (It always is.)

Some people ask the proprietors obscure questions, to show how smart they are. Other people haggle. Everyone seems to be searching for something. Some people want certain types of books, other people have lists of specific books they are looking for. Most people are just browsing. But the serious people compare prices on their laptops and mobile phones.

Oddly, it's hard to find anything you'd want to read at an antiquarian book fair. Perhaps the best books were read so much they fell apart. Perhaps the best books aren't sold. What I did see was a lot of history, a lot of religion, and a lot of poetry (with a healthy dose of children's and cook books). The two easiest books to find were The Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant and Pilgrim's Progress.

Here's what I bought:

It has an inscription which reads:

To Nellie,

A wedding gift from Lewis Campbell

January 1894

Winter in Iraq

2011-02-21T17:42:00.000-05:00

When my friend in Iraq saw my pictures of Florida, they sent these in response (see if you can tell the difference!):

In the morning light

2011-02-19T12:03:00.000-05:00

Spring has sprung

2011-02-19T11:58:00.000-05:00

Only yesterday I was talking about it being winter, but it feels like spring today. I'm not sure how it happened so quickly, but I was in a field today and smelled the overpowering aroma of dandelions. It's a summer smell in February now, a winter month, so I thought it best to split the difference and say it felt like spring. It's what the flowers seem to be saying:

A winter's walk

2011-02-18T13:10:00.000-05:00

Impressions of The Florida State Fair

2011-02-13T08:45:00.000-05:00

Krispy Kreme donuts are so bad...

2011-02-12T18:18:00.000-05:00

They use them as hamburger buns:

You can get them with either glazed or chocolate donuts. I had them make mine with glazed:

And this was all I could eat:

The depths of winter

2011-01-30T19:43:00.003-05:00

Climate Change Meets New Age Mysticism

2011-01-04T18:19:00.000-05:00

Every year Saint Petersburg has a maze with lights around it for kids to walk through. This year they decided to give it a theme:

The labyrinth is The Pier Aquarium's free outdoor activity in South Straub Park for St. Petersburg's family-oriented New Year's Eve Celebration. Traditionally a labyrinth is used as a walking meditation or spiritual practice and we have adapted ours, built in the Classic 7 Circuit Pattern dating back some 4,000 years, to include an interactive educational science component on Climate Change. The walkers strolling the labyrinth will pass by (and hopefully read!) luminary bags decorated with environmental messages and the posted Climate Change information signs.

Critics of climate change theories have questioned the theories based on their apparent lack scientific rigor. Some critics think the people who tout climate change due so out of a belief system that deifies nature. So, imagine my shock to see climate change tied to an ancient religious ritual that deified nature.

Beyond the fact that this isn't a very inclusive event (I saw parents dragging their children away from it!) are signs on paper lanterns the proper format to have a vigorous debate? And don't think that's a facetious question, because one of the first signs literally asked "Does climate change exist?". This display pretended to debate the question. For five-year-olds.

Mangroves at low tide

2011-01-02T11:34:00.000-05:00

Three faces of dawn

2010-12-31T11:38:00.000-05:00

Best movies of 2010

2010-12-27T23:00:00.001-05:00

Winter's Bone

A film noir about hicks in the backwoods that treats its subjects (and its audience) as sophisticates rather than bumpkins.

Poverty is the main character of this movie. We don't like seeing him anymore in American movies, but he almost always is an excellent actor. Damn, he did a good job here.

Heartbeats

A high-concept art house film that's secretly a buddy movie.

Beautiful cinematography, dialog, and soundtrack. The movie is gorgeous and everything you imagine a French movie could be. Two friends fight over a man. A very simple concept, but how the characters in this movie choose to fight!

Watching it with my friends, I found the movie could be viewed as a tragedy or a farce. I say it's a farce, perhaps because I can see myself getting into the same situations the characters do, so I was able to laugh at them.

Black Swan

Psychological torture porn.

I think this movie is Natalie Portman's All About Eve. Portman, like the character she plays, is aging in a industry full of fresh faces and has a squeaky clean image she needs to get rid of if she wants to stay around.

The cinematography sometimes overreaches in an attempt to look artistic, but the movie was unlike anything I had seen before.

You may feel somewhat like a monster when you've finish watching it.

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-25T08:26:00.002-05:00

Tell it to the birds: 1860

2010-12-12T13:03:00.000-05:00

Lovers have a rage for talking of their martyrdom. Rather than be silent, they would tell it to the birds that fly, or the cloud which passes.

--From Catherine--

According to Google Books, the phrase made its way into the English language via a translation of a French novel. It seems to have taken awhile for it to gain the tone of sarcasm with which we associate it today.

Tell it to the birds

2010-12-11T09:06:00.000-05:00

Winter colors:

2010-12-04T15:38:00.000-05:00

Four views of the Saint Petersburg Christmas Tree

2010-12-02T19:30:00.000-05:00

Just an old fashioned love song: circa 1450

2010-11-21T14:06:00.000-05:00

Freedom of expression: 1605

2010-11-14T09:54:00.005-05:00

But all these inconveniences, and many more I have not mentioned, would cease, if some intelligent and judicious person of the court were appointed to examine all plays before they are acted, not only those made about the court, but all that should be acted throughout all Spain; without whose approbation under hand and seal, the civil officers should suffer no play to be acted; and thus the comedians would be obliged to send all their plays to the court, and might then act them with entire safety; and the writers of them would take more care and pains about what they did, knowing their performances must pass the rigorous examination of somebody that understands them.

--From Don Quixote de la Mancha--

Don Quixote goes mad from reading fantasy books, mistaking them for true stories. People burn books; it's portrayed as a good thing to do. And there are long passages, like the one above, where characters endorse government censorship.

Paternalism was seen as something all right thinking people should get behind.

Potty humor: 1605

2010-11-13T11:48:00.000-05:00

Now, whether the cold of the morning which was at hand, or whether some lenitive food on which he supped, or whether the motion was purely natural, which is rather to be believed, it so happened that Sancho had a desire to do what nobody could do for him. But so great was the fear that had possessed his heart, that he durst not stir the breadth of a finger from his master; and to think to leave that business undone, was also impossible: and so what he did for peace sake, was to let go his right hand which held the hinder part of the saddle, with which, softly, and without any noise, he loosed the running point that kept up his breeches; whereupon down they fell, and hung about his legs like shackles: then he lifted up his shirt the best he could, and exposed to the open air those parts which were none of the smallest. This being done, which he thought the best expedient towards getting out of that terrible anguish and distress, another and a greater difficulty attended him, which was, that he thought he could not ease himself without making some noise: so he set his teeth close, and squeezed up his shoulders, and held in his breath as much as possibly he could. But notwithstanding all these precautions, he was so unlucky after all as to make a little noise, very different from that which had put him into so great a fright. Don Quixote heard it, and said: "What noise is this, Sancho?"

--From Don Quixote de la Mancha--

All those poop jokes they have on TV? Just subtle homages to Don Quixote.

Why that hot chick/dude doesn't dig you: 1605

2010-10-31T07:14:00.000-04:00

Heaven, as you say, made me handsome, and to such a degree, that my beauty influences you to love me whether you will or no. And in return for the love you bear me, you pretend and insist that I am bound to love you. I know by the natural sense God has given me, that whatever is beautiful is amiable; but I do not comprehend that merely for being loved the person that is loved for being handsome is obliged to return love for love. Besides, it may chance that the lover of the beautiful person may be ugly; and what is ugly deserving to be loathed, it would sound oddly to say, I love you for being handsome; you must love me though I am ugly.

--From Don Quixote de la Mancha--

And this was in a comedy!

Legalizing prostitution: 1605

2010-10-30T19:05:00.000-04:00

"...for the office of a pimp is not a slight business, but an employment fit only for discreet persons, and a most necessary one in a well-regulated commonwealth; and none but persons well-born ought to exercise it; and in truth there should be inspectors and comptrollers of it, as there are of other offices, with a certain number of them deputed, like exchange-brokers; by which means many mischiefs would be prevented which now happen..."

--From Don Quixote de la Mancha--

The Game: 1605

2010-10-29T06:48:00.002-04:00

And so, in process of time, the devil, who sleeps not, and troubles all things, brought it about, that the love which the shepherd bore to the shepherdess, was converted into mortal hatred; and the cause, according to evil tongues, was a certain quantity of little jealousies she gave him, beyond measure: and so much did he hate her from thenceforward, that, to avoid the sight of her, he chose to absent himself from that country, and go where his eyes should never behold her more. Torralva, who found herself disdained by Lope, presently began to love him better than ever she had loved him before." — "It is a natural quality of women," said Don Quixote, "to slight those who love them, and love those who slight them: go on, Sancho."

--From Don Quixote de la Mancha--

Of course Don Quixote would say something like that. Everything a knight-errant did was to pick up a chick, why shouldn't they be pick-up artists?

The poor: 1605

2010-10-28T06:18:00.005-04:00

In the meantime Don Quixote tampered with a labourer, a neighbor of his, and an honest man (if such an epithet may be given to one that is poor), but very shallow-brained.

--From Don Quixote de la Mancha--

The elite today would never say such a thing, but they sure seem to act like they think it's true.

Literacy problems: 1605

2010-10-27T06:36:00.002-04:00

You must know, then, that this gentleman, at times when he was idle, which was most part of the year, gave himself up to the reading of books of chivalry, with so much attachment and relish, that he almost forgot all the sports of the field, and even the management of his domestic affairs: and his curiosity and extravagant fondness herein arrived to such a pitch, that he sold many acres of arable land to purchase books of Knight-errantry, and carried home all he could lay hands on of that kind....

...With this kind of language the poor gentleman lost his wits, and distracted himself to comprehend and unravel their meaning; which was more than Aristotle himself could do, were he to rise again from the dead for that purpose alone.

--From Don Quixote de la Mancha--

"Don't read too much kids, it'll make you poor and might just make you go insane!"

I like anything that begins so subversively.

Obama to gays: if you want equal rights, become a Republican

2010-09-23T21:34:00.002-04:00

"Instead, the Department of Justice argued that the immediate effect of her decision should be to prohibit the military from discharging openly gay service members who belong to the Log Cabin Republicans."

--From Reuters, via Drudge--

With incentives like this, how can any homosexual be a Democrat, or like myself, an Independent? The writing is on the wall people, we must become Republicans and join the Log Cabin! Look at the benefits!

UPDATE:

I've filled out my change of party application and sent it in. I may have overdone the postage, but the purple-heart stamps seemed especially appropriate:

It's only safe to be "out" in the Republican Party.

Happy Labor Day

2010-09-06T16:35:00.000-04:00

I think beer would be the obvious drink for Labor Day; Chinese beer, since they do most of the labor.

Traffic

2010-09-05T16:06:00.000-04:00

Every line on the street in China is a suggestion. That's how they drive anyway (and I would say they are some of the best drivers in the world).

From what I heard, to get a drivers license you need to win a lottery. Even if you win, you can only drive on highways in your home province. Everywhere else you have to use back roads. The Chinese government is also happy to take away your drivers license, for anything, so people wont report accidents to them or insurance companies.

You also aren't allowed to drive your car if it has a dent. If you get in an accident, you pull into a nearby repair shop and settle the damages, in cash, with the other driver. Witnesses will help determine who was at fault.

In America, we give people tickets and fine them, but usually let them continue to drive. In China if you're a bad driver they take you off the road entirely. All together their system seems safer and to involve a lot less paperwork and judicial oversight. I saw no car accidents when I was there. That's not to say the Chinese system was planned. The government's bureaucracy is so completely unusable that an informal system has taken over.

I've blogged before about how sidewalks double as parking spaces, but small streets also double as sidewalks, even if the streets have sidewalks around them.

There will be people everywhere with cars driving through them. You wont notice the cars coming up behind you and it can be a little scary.

In America there are often lanes going slower than other ones. In China, everyone in the slow lane would move into the faster ones, then switch over just before they had to make a turn. It's very fluid. Everybody is cutting in front of everybody else.

I've been on highways where people were driving on motorcycles, against traffic.

There doesn't seem to be any road-rage involved. I saw one incident where a truck driver had turned too late and was stuck. Everybody, even people in other lanes, honked their horns once or twice, then a police officer walked over and looked at the driver. The sense of shame he must have felt! I think that's all they need.

Lawn work

2010-09-04T22:45:00.000-04:00

You need the weeds pulled out of a lawn. Do you have someone spray chemicals? No. It's cheaper to hire someone who does this all day long for a living:

Note: I filmed this in a park, with HUGE expanses of lawn. I guess it pays better than weeding a rice paddy, but still!

Road work

2010-09-03T22:00:00.000-04:00

From what I saw, when they are tearing up a road in China they don't close it down. A machine will jack-hammer starter holes in the entire street surface, but cars will still be using it, even with the holes.

It lets the road be used as much as possible, causing the least disruption. Not that people wont stand around and gawk at the racket.

Things I thought in China (part 2)

2010-09-02T21:22:00.001-04:00

I saw a cow in an abandoned field, grazing on a bush.

The Chinese like to offer Americans Coke for lunch, but rarely have it themselves.

I saw a woman in a shed. A shed where one entire wall was a mirror. She was watching TV sitting in front of an electric fan. The shed was at the end of a small alley filled with garbage bags on a street with no lights.

I had strawberry yogurt along with my breakfast. When I opened the container it was white and liquidy. I reached in with a spoon to stir up the strawberries, but there were none. It was meant to be drunk and only had the lightest hint of strawberries.

I saw a bumper sticker today; the only bumper sticker I've seen here.

You can make all sorts of faux pas and no one will correct you, or even act like they notice. But sometimes, just sitting somewhere, a stranger will walk very close to you and give you a dirty look.

I have never seen anyone wear a seat-belt.

It is very rare to see a Chinese person with a dog, but if you want to be garunteed to see one, go to a park which doesn't allow dogs.

Stores

2010-09-01T21:22:00.000-04:00

Walking down the street the sidewalks are literally lined with shops. Smaller streets, with less traffic, are home to street vendors, who cook food in the shadows.

Many stores are completely open to the outside. Convenience stores especially.

Produce sellers are the best. They let their wares almost pour into the street.

You just want to walk everywhere and see everything. Sometimes you luck out and come upon a night market.

It's flower stalls, fruit stalls, fish mongers and butchers. All close together, all open to the air, all inviting you to come and see their wares.

And you're never far away from somewhere selling food.

Reflections

2010-08-31T21:59:00.000-04:00

Green jobs will go where all jobs go

2010-08-30T09:57:00.011-04:00

The factories I saw in China were closer to being green than anything I've heard about in America. The workers lived within walking distance of their jobs and ate communal meals. Sunlight was used in place of electric lights, fans instead of air conditioning. Nothing was purchased unless it was absolutely necessary, there weren't even chairs, most people stood while they did their jobs. Cleaning was avoided, the architecture was simple and reusable.

If the factories I saw were hooked up to nuclear power plants (the Chinese are building them) and the plastics were replaced with something biodegradable or recycled (which will happen naturally as prices for those items come down) the factories would be greener than anything possible in America.

So how can we compete?

Right now our green jobs only exist because we subsidize them with money the government borrows. They aren't profitable. We don't even know if the technologies we've chosen to invest in will be the ones favored in the future. Meanwhile, the Chinese have an economy that can turn a profit, create jobs, and produce things people are willing to buy. We don't have that experience. If the green economy ever materializes, the Chinese will have no problem taking every job we've created away. They can do it cheaper and greener. They only have to take the jobs they already have and make them green, while we haven't even figured out how to make jobs, let alone green ones.

While we've borrowed money hoping to be prepared for tomorrow, the Chinese have been making money dealing with today's world, and developing the flexibility to deal with tomorrow's. America's "green jobs" are jobs for a future that may or may not come, and even if it does, probably wont want them.

Metropolis

2010-08-29T21:24:00.000-04:00

Today I went to the Tampa Theatre to see a one-time only showing of the newly restored 1927 movie Metropolis.

It's always great to see movies in this theater because inside it looks like this:

It was considered a "movie palace" when it was built in 1926 and may have shown Metropolis on its original American tour.

Here's the trailer:

The movie had only ever been shown in its original length in Europe, after which it was shortened for world distribution. The cut parts were thought lost forever, but they recently found 25 extra minutes and what we saw was the result of their incorporation.

The Tampa Theatre is one of only twelve theaters in America to screen the movie. Our theater wasn't the first to screen it, but it was the first in North America to present the movie with the original score, played by organ, as it was originally shown in Europe.

I got there an hour and a half early and found a line:

The movie sold out. (1400 people can be seated in the theater.)

This is one of the people who made the show such a success:

He came from Michigan to play our Mighty Wurlitzer Organ, the 1920's version of surround-sound. He replaced an entire orchestra, even pushing buttons to control percussion instruments. Well, he almost replaced an entire orchestra. He did have to pound on the organ when someone on screen was pounding wood.

This is him at the organ's controls:

While the movie was playing the organ's controls retracted part-way into the stage and the organist watched the movie along with the audience, making sure the sound stayed in sync with the action on screen.

The organ is a powerful instrument, they said there are ten tons of it hidden in the walls. When you saw machines moving on screen, the organ would have a sound effect for them and you could feel the sound in your body, like you were right in front of the machines. All the sound effects were incorporated into an orchestral score, and it was amazing to hear one man perform everything so well.

The movie itself was good. It had strong political messages often presented in Christian terms that weren't offensive (I say that as an atheist) and also seemed pertinent to our times.

It's a sci-fi movie where poor workers and elite thinkers live in separate communities. They don't understand each other, even though they need each other to survive, because they never intermingle. Kind of like America today.

The heroine is a community organizer working out of a church. She tries getting the two sides together, telling them they are all brothers. She literally brings a group of poor children to the rich community and says "Look, these are your brothers!"

Some of the political messages are easy to spot, because they are shown in bold text on screen (with exclamation points). In the movie, the heroine is mainly talking to the poor. She doesn't want the workers to be violent because the elites are their brothers, and someone is sure to come along soon to bring them together. In reality, she's talking to the movie audience, both the workers and the thinkers.

"Look, these are your brothers!"

Something to remember in the heat of American politics, because we all need each other and attacking each other will only destroy us.

I will leave you with that thought, and some shots of the theater's decorative details:

The feel of a city

2010-08-28T21:52:00.002-04:00

Advertising = Art

2010-08-27T20:01:00.003-04:00

I had a wonderful time walking around Xiamen. The city doesn't come alive until after dark. Many buildings are covered in garish advertisements and amazing light displays. But it's not unusual to see streets and alleys with no lights, even street lights. It might sound scary, but you feel safe because there are so many people. And even in dark alleys there might be vendors grilling food or people sitting in the street in front of their businesses.

The advertising I saw at night in China makes me realize there is an art movement we in America barely know about. Strange to say, the art form is advertising, and in Xiamen I saw works that could rival anything by Michelangelo. We work so hard to keep our cities clean of billboards and signs, and what do we have? Boring architecture to look at. But in China every modern building is an art gallery, some with displays that change by the week.

This is all one building, note how the advertising (using Western models), is incorporated into the building's decoration:

This is the front of the building, many of these signs have motion:

One big sculpture of light:

More examples of common place decorations/advertisements:

Even places as mundane as pet hospitals and gynecological hospitals can light up a neighborhood:

Update: I take my ideas on a walk, and they seem to have legs.

China isn't Westernized

2010-08-26T21:58:00.000-04:00

Pete Terranova: I'm still struck at the Westernization of their culture.

In China they tend to not say the word "Westernized", instead they talk about the "international" craze. They seem to want to emphasize how they have joined the world, rather than how they have been changed by it. And it does seem like a craze. I saw a brand of moon cakes, one of the most Chinese of things, being advertised with a tag-line like: "take a trip around the world", showing images of people in different national dresses eating them.

In the city where I was, no one was wearing anything that looked remotely like traditional dress, other than hostesses at fancy restaurants. There were a few workers who had a peasant look, but they really stood out:

During the ~~Cultural Revolution~~ Great Purge they destroyed much of their traditional culture. The government today is doing what it can to destroy what's left, removing old buildings and trying to standardize everything from the language they speak to the exercises they perform, or putting it safely behind glass in museums.

Obviously, having Western things like clothing has a connotation of wealth and status, so everyone wants them. Add to that the fact that the government embraces Westernization and it would be surprising to not see people and buildings which looked "Westernized", or in other words "completely normal".

Working in China

2010-08-25T20:18:00.000-04:00

I had a tour of several Chinese factories. An area that has factories will be filled with identical five story buildings. Lots of the buildings will be empty, some of them may even have signs of people living in them (I saw a few clotheslines). What space is occupied by manufacturing will be simple and spartan, and run down. Big windows are used for light during the day, fans provide cooling, and nothing looks brand new.

It's gives them flexibility. If a business needs to expand, they can take over floors in nearby buildings. If they need to shrink, there isn't much to get rid of. Nothing there is permanent, I was told it is normal to have three different jobs in a year.

The vast majority of the workers I saw were young people, who are their mobile workforce. Most of them wore polo shirts with company logos, but a few wore shirts with brand names like Fendi or Polo. Lots of men had extravagant haircuts, kind of goth, a few people even had their hair bleached to a light brown color. Almost everyone was standing.

I used to look at plastic molded objects with a few parts and wonder what sort of machine was able to put them together. Well, I have seen where they come from, and there isn't any machine. It's mainly done by hand. People will stand together in a group making an object. Each person will have a part in the process. Some of them have simple machines, some of them manipulate the object somehow, some of them are doing the packaging. You give them a bunch of parts and they hand you the finished product, ready to appear on the shelf, inserts and all. They work as fast as the slowest person can go; only if a person is working at a machine making a part might they be stockpiling anything. And they all seemed pretty happy.

The picture you see at the top of the post is what is served in a factory cafeteria. (Everybody took more than I did.) I got to eat in the executive cafeteria, which has an air conditioner, but serves the same food as everyone else eats. We picked our plates, ceramic, chipped, and miss-matched, out of a pile, still wet from being washed. One day was rice, sweet corn with bits of broken pork bones, green beans, some sort of light stew, greens, and bitter-melon soup. The second time I ate there I had what you see in the picture.

TV in China

2010-08-24T21:58:00.001-04:00

I think I watched the ending of an episode of China's Next Top Model. All the contestants seemed bad (just like on America's Next Top Model). The woman they kicked off the show was as thin as a ballerina. Just before she left they had her stand on a scale. As she stood there, the refrain from "You're Beautiful" played. She cried when she saw she weighed 56.9kg, a clip was shown of a plumper, more confident, version of her in an earlier episode, and everyone hugged her and cried. It was pretty clear the show had broken her spirit and started her on the road to an eating disorder. Even the girl that "won" the episode had to undergo several minutes of criticism.

This show consisted of four people with laptops and a host. You watched the people play a game similar to hearts on a computer screen:

I saw an infomercial for "Sand" watches (obviously not a brand form an English speaking country). They looked very gold, had two certificates of authenticity, were coated with 0.03microns of 99.9% gold, and had "Au999" prominently displayed on their face:

I think there was a teeny tiny diamond on there, too. The announcer had a mustache that was obviously fake. (The watches cost 44 American dollars.)

There was a period drama:

And a cooking program:

Some guy in a pink shirt talks to people in chairs. The books behind him have titles like "STRUTS IN ACTION" and "Javaserver Pages", but measurements unrelated to computer programming appear on the screen, like ">150mg/dL", ">50cm", and something with "moles", so I have no idea what he was trying to teach (if he was teaching at all).

There were several American channels with Chinese subtitles. American news channels do not have Chinese subtitles, so if you don't know English you wont understand what is being said.

This seems to be a soap opera set in a rural area. the buildings look dilapidated but the people seem to be dressed in brand new clothing, right off the rack:

An old woman sings while young men dance synchronized hip-hop behind her. A large audience waves lights as she performs:

Chinese opera:

A Tide commercial:

Some sort of comedy with a nerd-type with big glasses and a group of attractive female co-stars:

They seemed to work in a clothing store and always had very strong emotions on their faces.

There is an Arabic channel, with subtitles in Arabic, Chinese, and English. This program had a black guy, an Asian guy, and an elderly white lady showing how to do Tai Chi:

There was also a Russian channel. I asked why the Chinese government had television channels in Arabic and Russian. I was told it was to send propaganda over the border.

There were some shows made by the Chinese government in English, so I could consume some of their propaganda. It was a lot of touristy/panda/"learning Chinese is fun" crap but I did enjoy the show "Crossover" which always seemed to end abruptly (right in the middle of conversations). I see the show is available on-line and even there the shows end the same way.

I caught the ending to the American movie "Carrie". What was weird was how they censored the ending. They had all the violence at the prom, but when the mother was killed they only showed a close-up of her face; all the Christian iconography was cut out. I think they were trying to cut out the Christianity, even though the ending isn't exactly material anyone would use for proselytizing. The censors had no idea what they were doing.

Anyway, TV there looked boring; drained of anything interesting or truly cultural.

Things I thought in China

2010-08-23T20:03:00.003-04:00

"Learning to say thanks and goodbye in Chinese will get you a lot of friendly laughs (they aren't too impressed if someone can say hello)."

"If you are ever offered tea, have it, because it will always be fantastic."

"I saw a truck loaded with geese (or possibly white ducks). There geese were alive and transported in groups of two or three, in bags of white netting. I could see the geese picking at the netting with their beaks"

"Entire neighborhoods are emptied, torn down, and replaced by new construction. Often the new construction lies empty, giving it the feeling of a ghost town. The neighborhoods which are being torn down are often surrounded by walls of billboards so they can't be seen by passing cars (or bikes, or buses)."

"I am struck by how many beautiful people there are here."

"As westerners we see empty, decaying buildings and think of an economic bubble. But is it a sign of a bubble in China? They seem to be tearing down and constructing buildings with lots of manual, but cheap, labor. Perhaps buildings here are disposable items, like our paper napkins or plastic forks."

"Someone in the street handed me two tiny cards. Inside were pictures of topless women. Either they were advertisements for a strip club or the gentleman was some sort of pervert."

Western food

2010-08-22T23:10:00.000-04:00

The Western-style food in China is clearly tailored to Chinese tastes:

No surprise since they're the ones who will be eating the vast majority of it.

This is what I got at an Italian restaurant:

It had fancy plates, a great atmosphere, it even served Pellegrino water; but the lasagna tasted exactly like Chef Boyardee.

It's not anything against the restaurant though, the Chinese seem to like their Western-style food to be heavy and dense. No vegetables, no fresh herbs, not even pickles. It's very unbalanced.

Their club sandwiches are three pieces of toast, meat, and a fried egg (they love fried eggs). If you're lucky, there's a shred of lettuce on it. And the bread they use is always sliced thin and strangely chewy.

The worst place to eat is:

Not that I'd recommend KFC in America.

In China, they focus on the chicken sandwich:

I've heard horror-stories about it, but mine wasn't all skin and gristle, so I lucked out. It did have much too much mayonnaise, and not good mayonnaise either.

There was also this stuff on the side:

I think it's sweet corn, carrots, and cucumber in even more mayonnaise.

The orange drink was good though. The Chinese are good with oranges.

These people made a good chicken sandwich:

I have no idea what they're called, because the Western letters on their logo are upside down and backwards. You can see a little statue of liberty on their place-mat so they're clearly trying to do something American. The fries were a little greasy, but I'd eat them if they were in America. Whatever the hell they're called.

The delivery boy was really excited to have a Western customer and came over, practicing his English on me. He was good, too, even doing a tomato/potato bit when he delivered the fries and ketchup.

It was also the first restaurant to give me a receipt. In China, I was told, restaurants don't like giving receipts, so they can cheat on their taxes. The better restaurants seemed to be required to have scratch-off lottery tickets on their receipts, so customers wouldn't forget to ask for them.

I didn't go into, but saw some Pizza Huts, that looked upscale. It was shocking how upscale they looked; some had specially designed, circular architecture.

Burger King in China is pretty much like Burger King in America, except it's burgers actually taste like beef, and their french fries are like McDonald's french fries. Also, they serve beer:

Much better than a regular burger joint in America!

Piano Island

2010-08-21T23:56:00.001-04:00

Off the coast of Xiamen, the city I stayed in, is a little island called Piano Island. It's not really called Piano Island, that's just what they tell foreigners. In China it isn't unusual to tell foreign tourists and natives completely different things.

The tourist story is that the island used to be the home of European consulates, and since so many Europeans were concentrated there, it had the highest rate of piano ownership in China. Supposedly, the sound of pianos was often heard floating from the island. You do hear classical music there today, but it's coming out of speakers they have hidden all over the place, and none of it is piano music.

Not that there were a lot of foreign tourists to tell this story to. This guy held his camera out to us:

We thought he wanted help taking a picture of him and his girlfriend. It turns out she wanted to be in a picture with my coworker.

What the island is about for the Chinese is the person depicted by this giant statue:

Apparently he defeated the Dutch on Taiwan, which was "always part of China" according to signs in the nearby museum. The island is a big anti-imperialist site for the Chinese and a very patriotic spot. Not the sort of thing they brag about to foreign tourists.

Everybody was taking pictures or having their pictures taken:

It was hard to travel in some places, because you were constantly letting pictures be taken.

Many of the old mansions now look like this:

Mansions which aren't too dilapidated have been turned into restaurants or have stalls selling things in front of them:

In the less affluent areas it seems like every house has a store on the ground floor, selling things to tourists. It's cheap crap you can buy somewhere else for less, and our Chinese friends were happy we didn't buy anything.

The island had Western restaurants like KFC, McDonald's, and Dairy Queen, but also many traditional ones, some which let you select your fish before it was cooked for you:

We also saw fish drying in many places:

No cars are allowed on the island. The architecture is traditional and there's just no room for them:

I loved looking in the side streets and catching glimpses of how people lived (I doubt these people play pianos):

Don't be shocked by clotheslines:

Even in the city it wasn't unusual to see clotheslines in almost every balcony.

I loved the street vendors:

In China they are some of the greatest people to see; full of entrepreneurial spirit.

Several times a band of marchers in some sort of para-military garb came by:

They were high school or college students performing their mandatory military training.

We saw Christian churches on the island:

They seem well kept, but also well locked.

If you pay a fee they let you see some of the less commercial parts of the island which, because it's a small mountain, are also the higher parts of the island. Some of it is gardens meant for the public:

But other parts are clearly where people live:

There was a Buddhist temple, actively being used:

As you make your way further up the mountain, you can see carvings in the rocks, painted red:

Some of it is very steep. It had a nice view though. The very top was a small fort used to defend against foreigners:

At this point a Chinese friend joined us and we went to the former German consulate to drink beer and discuss politics (the best part of the trip).

We toured a piano museum, where all the fabled pianos have ended up, and saw some of the coast:

One thing I noticed was how Chinese people dealt with garbage. If there was no can around they would throw it on the ground, but they would all do it in the same spot:

I realized this would make it easier to clean up. Even their garbage had this spontaneous order to it. That's not to say there was a lot of garbage on the island. People came up to us to take our empty drink bottles. I'm pretty sure they were paid to do so.

The island was also great for people watching:

We saw a lot of men carrying children. And it wasn't raining. Men and women use umbrellas when it's sunny outside because they don't want to be tanned. Strangely, many of our Chinese friends wanted to take us to the beach, where I suppose we would have desperately tried to not let sunlight fall on us.

We got off the island the same way we got on it, by boat. You can either take a massively crowded ferry or a private boat:

The private boat seems like it would be more fun, but it bounces!

Environmentalism

2010-08-20T21:30:00.000-04:00

I wouldn't think of China as a "green" country, but at least in the city they seem to have taken up the environmental movement. There were recycling cans everywhere, the city looked clean, and I stayed at a "green" hotel (just like any other hotel, but with signs saying it was green).

A facade, for sure, because I was told I visited during one of the rare weeks the city wasn't choked with smog.

However, I heard on the news, and we have to assume it was government propaganda, that the government's environmental moves, to close polluting factories, was one of the reasons behind China's slowing growth rate. The government was trying to sell pollution. Pollution=jobs is the story in China, much different, and more believable, than the "green jobs" talk we hear in America.

You gotta stop and smell the roses

2010-08-19T18:55:00.000-04:00

Or stop and watch a kite.

At the unknown restaurant

2010-08-18T20:44:00.000-04:00

I have no idea what the name of this restaurant was. It was in an area full of factories, which we were told had once been farmland. When the land was taken from the farmers, to make sure the farmers had some income (and keep them from protesting), the farmers had been given apartment buildings near the area. Factory workers rented the apartments, and the ground floor of the buildings were rented to restaurants which the workers streamed into during lunch brake.

We walked past this to get to the restaurant:

The place had the feel of the Old West about it.

This shot, this shot, and this shot were all taken in the same area.

It would be called a slum in America, but I loved something about it. The food I had there was the best I had in China, and it would compete well with a Vietnamese restaurant in the US.

We were told it served Sichuan-style food. Things tended to be spicy and flavorful, with smokey flavors in many of the dishes. They seemed good at cooking fatty-parts of pork and vegetables. Some of the food tasted very familiar, sometimes in odd ways. I had greens there that tasted exactly like Campbell's chicken noodle soup.

Clockwise from the bowl of rice are: a fish and tomato soup, chicken (tasted exactly like Buffalo wings), cucumbers in chili sauce, and greens.

This is the best dish I had in China, bacon. It came to the table still cooking with a flame underneath it. It was smokey-tasting and peppery. Everyone picked through the vegetables to get to the bacon.

Manual labor

2010-08-17T19:41:00.001-04:00

I saw an amazing amount of manual labor in China, with an odd absence of power tools or safety equipment. Even at construction sites. Here's a movie, showing heavy wheelbarrow action:

Here's another showing a guy shoveling stuff, in one of the top stories of a huge skyscraper:

It also gives you a little tour of the construction area. They would be building these beautiful, modern buildings and all around them would be shacks where the workers would live. And they didn't look like nice shacks either:

Even some of the half-built rooms of the skyscraper were obviously being occupied:

Sidewalks

2010-08-16T18:32:00.000-04:00

I saw lots of sidewalks in Xiamen:

Beautifully paved:

Some of them had had raised tiles, which felt wonderful to walk on with tired feet. But the sidewalks were even more multi-purpose than you might think:

Lots of times when you were walking you had no idea where the street ended and the sidewalk began. Sure, there was a raised portion meant for people, but that didin't mean cars wouldn't be there, too. Often the sidewalk was used as a parking lot, so you could be walking on the sidewalk and see headlights in front of, or behind you:

Did I mention most places don't have street lights? You really had to pay attention.

The homeless

2010-08-15T18:16:00.002-04:00

I saw two beggars the entire time I was in China, and they had real problems (one of them had no legs). There were plenty of people selling stuff on the side of the street though. Why don't we have that in America? Because it's illegal. Our unintended consequence of banning most street vendors is beggars everywhere. And our only response to beggars is to try to ban them or force them to live as dependents, instead of letting them be productive members of society.

We have a sick society in some respects and it's our own fault.

Crossing the street in China

2010-08-15T13:03:00.000-04:00

It's very dangerous to cross the street in China, and probably stupid to videotape yourself doing it, but everything for the blog!

You'll notice in the movie that even though people are walking across the street, cars, and even city buses, are traveling over the crosswalk. And as soon as we moved out of the way, they were traveling behind us, too. Taxis are especially prone to this.

There are spots on the street, part way across, where people will wait. Double yellow lines seem like one of these spots, not that Chinese drivers pay much attention to lines.

I'm assuming there was some rhyme or reason to it all, but I always tried crossing when Chinese people did and I never got hit (although I know someone who did).

In China, free internet access ain't so free

2010-08-15T11:42:00.002-04:00

When I saw the "Free Internet" terminals in the Shangai International Airport there were a few sites I wanted to check out. Drudge Report, Instapundit, even flickr could all be accessed. But Twitter and anything on blogger, like Althouse, just showed error notices when you tried to access them. You could search for Althouse and find links to Althouse, but there was nothing there.

What's on Althouse, blogger sites, and Twitter that the Chinese government doesn't trust its citizens to see?

Day shots: Xiamen, China

2010-08-14T20:00:00.000-04:00

My Best Coffee

2010-08-14T07:32:00.000-04:00

Michael_Haz: Jason, I'm curious - were you able to get coffee in China or was tea the only beverage?

Yes, and most places that sell coffee make a big production of it. I saw some of the best presentations of coffee in China--lattes in glass cups so you can see the layers, that sort of thing. The coffee vending machines offer lattes and cappuccinos; every style of coffee you can think of plus some you've never heard of.

At work people are offered tea and bottled water. If you want coffee you go to a coffee house which never offers just coffee, they always are restaurants with huge menus, usually with some western-style dishes and often ice-cream.

One of my co-workers who had been to China recommended we try My Best Coffee, a chain of these coffee houses, because the menus also contain English.

It had some weird translations like "Fried French Fries", but it was understandable:

I'm there with a coworker; when I make my order "something" happens and it seems like every waiter and waitress in the place comes to our table. It was every tourist's worst nightmare. They were all looking at their watches and talking about time. I have a very limited ability to speak Mandarin and they had very limited ability to speak English, but they were finally able to tell me I was only able to order Chinese food at the current time. Which was strange because I thought what I ordered was Chinese.

I ended up with this (I think it's also not Chinese, but they were probably just humoring me):

At the Peony Restaurant

2010-08-13T05:59:00.000-04:00

A Xiamen specialty: jellied sea worms, with a mixture of peanut, chili, and wasabi sauce. They were eaten with toothpicks.

The white bits in this dish are pieces of fish. I think the were made into a paste, extruded, and then steamed:

This is another Xiamen specialty, noodles with different mushrooms:

A cute crab:

A big fish:

This was a fancy restaurant, with lots of private rooms; two or three servers to a room, bringing in dishes and serving beer in glasses.

Everything was served family-style (except the noodles), so each dish was placed on a big lazy-susan and we took whatever bits we wanted. There were more dishes than I have pictured here, and they were all subtly flavored. Each was brought out one at a time and we were given small dishes of vinegar and soy sauce to dip our bits of food in. Nothing was sweet or salty. I think this was Catonese-style cooking, and they didn't seem to like spicy either. Most Westerners would consider the food bland, but you really had to focus on the textures and how each dish tasted compared to the others. It was a cerebral eating experience. I'm sure some of the pleasure comes from eating unusual things, just like an American experiences eating sushi.

The serving style lent itself to eating slowly, so there was a lot of time for talk, which was great because we had such a nice host.

Airplane food

2010-08-12T05:09:00.002-04:00

United Airlines to China

The "salad" for this one was lettuce, just lettuce:

United Airlines from China

The food on the trip from China seemed better than the food on the trip to China, I'm assuming because on the trip from China they sourced the food locally (where it is more affordable than in America). Desserts and sandwiches in the meals were rather odd.

China Eastern Airlines

This is the box their breakfast came in. It looks pretty appetizing, right?

Inside were some rolls, a bit of angle food cake, and a package of pickled vegetables (not like American pickles, trust me):

Their dinner meal was very good:

Chicken and vegetables with rice. No chop sticks (they'd be messy on a plane). You can see a plastic box in the picture. It contained a grape tomato, half of a hard boiled egg, with the shell still attached, and some sort of pickled vegetables, one of which I think was peanuts(?).

Extremely weird to me was this:

It's labeled "Drinking Purified Water" which is Engrish for "Purified Drinking Water". You don't want to drink water from the tap in China, everyone either uses bottled water or has a personal drinking water purification system. (They'll usually drink something other than water: juice, tea, or alcohol.)

I saw the person sitting next to me dip their utensils in this water before using them, which is apparently not unusual. The hotel I stayed at left bottled water in the room every day and you used it to brush your teeth.

I went to Western-style restaurants with Chinese people, where water was left at the table in glasses, and neither they nor we picked it up. No one wants anything to do with water if they don't know where it came from.

I did see a few public water dispensers in airports, but they had a little LED screen on them showing the temperature at which the water was being sterilized.

Something fun with airline food was to see where the soda came from.

I found Coca Cola from Vietnam, Austria, and Canada; along with Sprite from China:

There was a statement on the Vietnamese Coca Cola which was very adamant about how it was not supposed to be exported from Vietnam under any circumstances, so I have no idea how I got a hold of it; I just enjoyed my black-market Vietnamese Coca Cola.

Roads to nowhere

2010-08-12T04:23:00.002-04:00

I just got back from China and I realized something as I was driving home from the airport. A lot has been made in America about "the bridge to nowhere" and other wasteful government infrastructure projects, but almost every road we have here is a road to nowhere; we don't have the population density to support them. What makes it especially wasteful is that we also have zoning laws to purposely keep the population density low.

I understand many people dream of living in a house in the country, but the laws we enacted to
protect those dreams haven't worked. We don't have homes in the country, we have suburban sprawl. We live next to gas stations, or in trailer parks, or in neighborhoods that are empty most of the time. It's no wonder taxes are high when so much land is taken up by roads. It's no wonder we can't support basic manufacturing when workers need to be paid enough money to buy a car, pay for car insurance, and pay for gas. By fighting urbanization we have crippled the future of America and disfigured its countryside.

I'm Going Home

2010-08-11T06:00:00.000-04:00

Don't Forget About Me

2010-08-10T06:00:00.000-04:00

What Me Worry

2010-08-09T06:00:00.000-04:00

Ain't It Strange

2010-08-08T06:00:00.000-04:00

I Turn My Camera On

2010-08-07T06:00:00.000-04:00

Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

2010-08-06T06:00:00.000-04:00

North American Scum

2010-08-05T06:00:00.000-04:00

Traveling

2010-08-04T06:00:00.000-04:00

Fear of death: 1807

2010-08-03T23:41:00.000-04:00

Hasty interment is still a prevalent custom in Russia; and even premature burials are said to be not quite unknown. A short time previous to my departure, the following horrid circumstance was related at St. Petersburgh...

--From La Belle assemblée--

You didn't just have to fear death, but getting sick enough that people would bury you anyway.

The big four-oh: 1807

2010-08-02T23:10:00.001-04:00

Now this care ought to he used in the time of manhood, that is, about the fortieth year of a man's age, when the beauty of a man is at the height.

--From La Belle assemblée--

Manly men: 1807

2010-08-01T23:33:00.000-04:00

Yesterday's manly man is today's fop.

One week you're in, the next you're out: 1807

2010-07-31T22:28:00.000-04:00

The Queen of Etruria (November):

When Bonaparte had ascended the imperial throne, it is reported that he sent Engenius de Beauharnais to ask the hand of the royal widow; who returned a polite refusal.

Secured from the fear of foreign enemies by the same hand that has overturned and created kingdoms, this Princess dedicates all the blooming hours of her youth to a strict performance of the duties of her station, and all her cares to the prosperity of her subjects and the education of her children.

--From La Belle assemblée--

The Queen of Etruria (December, 4th):

...yesterday evening, the queen (to whom other states are to be assigned) departed hence with a train of between forty and fifty carriages, containing baggage and private property; after which the Etrurians were discharged from their oath of allegiance, and the government declared to be dissolved...

--From American register--

Table manners: 1807

2010-07-30T22:24:00.000-04:00

All ceremony should he banished among epicures, especially at table. This is a truth, which we shall never cease to repeat; the reason is not difficult to define. In the first place, when epicurism is thoroughly established among people who meet for the first time, a close intimacy soon succeeds, for no formality can long exist between real lovers of the table. A similitude of tastes is ever acknowledged the best basis for friendship to rest on; real epicures also are seldom known to quarrel; they leave coolness, and dissentions to lovers, and live together like true children of Epicurus.

--From La Belle assemblée--

Real sticklers, weren't they? Almost sound like hippies!

Sermon of a carpenter: 1859

2010-07-29T22:35:00.001-04:00

"Nay, Seth, lad; I'm not for laughing at no man's religion. Let 'em follow their consciences, that's all. Only I think it 'ud be better if their consciences 'ud let 'em stay quiet i' the church--there's a deal to be learnt there. And there's such a thing as being oversperitial; we must have something beside Gospel i' this world. Look at the canals, an' th' aqueduc's, an' th' coal-pit engines, and Arkwright's mills there at Cromford; a man must learn summat beside Gospel to make them things, I reckon. But t' hear some o' them preachers, you'd think as a man must be doing nothing all's life but shutting's eyes and looking what's agoing on inside him. I know a man must have the love o' God in his soul, and the Bible's God's word. But what does the Bible say? Why, it says as God put his sperrit into the workman as built the tabernacle, to make him do all the carved work and things as wanted a nice hand. And this is my way o' looking at it: there's the sperrit o' God in all things and all times--weekday as well as Sunday--and i' the great works and inventions, and i' the figuring and the mechanics. And God helps us with our headpieces and our hands as well as with our souls; and if a man does bits o' jobs out o' working hours--builds a oven for 's wife to save her from going to the bakehouse, or scrats at his bit o' garden and makes two potatoes grow istead o' one, he's doin' more good, and he's just as near to God, as if he was running after some preacher and a-praying and a-groaning."

--From Adam Bede--

Meaning has a way of overflowing anything you try to hold it in. It wont stay in a book, it wont stay in a painting; and if you look for it, it will cover you, and you will carry it everywhere you go and see it in everything you do.

Cover girl: 1807

2010-07-28T22:00:00.001-04:00

--From La Belle assemblée--

Every issue of La Belle assemblée had a beautiful woman on the cover, "photoshopped" in effect by an artist's hand. They were all celebrities, but also royalty and therefore politically powerful.

When your celebrities are movie stars I suppose you consider it fashionable to be informed of their latest movies. Likewise, when your celebrities are politicians, politics becomes fashionable for you.

How much of a person's "depth" is just just chasing after what is fashionable; chasing after stars?