Also, I can't sleep.

All those times I sincerely thought I was joking...

Google Chrome OS.

What!

Quarter-life crisis

I guess you could also call it the "real world" crisis.

Hey everyone in college and high school and so on: why do you build us kids up so much? Everywhere you turn it's "you're going to change the world" and "you'll do great things" and "here's a 24-year-old entrepreneur who started (internet company x)" and "this guy is a (senator, footballman, mayor of Pittsburgh, whatever) at 26". And then we get out and there's no way we can do that. We can't possibly measure up, because nobody can, unless he/she is very lucky and very very good. This year has been a fun voyage of convincing myself of that.

But the world needs us to be very lucky and very very good! Right? Fading into obscurity and carving out your own little niche would be fine, except that if everyone does that, the world implodes. Even if your little niche includes you contributing $100 to the stop-hunger-in-Africa fund, using reusable shopping bags, and driving a hybrid instead of an SUV.

I've heard all the soothing "you just have to do your best"s and they ring really hollow. Everyone's been doing their best, and our world is still hosed. (or else, everyone so far hasn't been doing their best, but I don't buy that either. Is our generation really the first one that's going to turn the world around with our wonderful unselfishness? Are we that much better than the Boomers and the Xers and whoever else? ... are we any better at all?)

I guess I figured that, even if I fizzle out someday, at least maybe during my wild, carefree, rocking 20's, I'd take out my giant boots and stomp a big Dan Tasse footprint into the side of the world. Or not even my footprint, just a footprint, that anonymously or nonymously leaves the world a better place. And hell, maybe I still will. But how to reconcile the "I don't need to do so to be a good person" with the "somebody needs to"?

How are your 20's going? Are you having a quarter-life crisis too? Or have you gotten over yours?

Finally, in my happier times, I tell myself that I'll always put a disclaimer on any really cynical things I think during my sadder times. So take everything I'm saying here with a grain of salt, and if you're feeling pretty good about things, don't let me harsh on your parade.

Hey, that game theory thing is actually real

I guess it's called "Braess's Paradox" but CS students everywhere (and math, polisci, etc students too I'm sure, but I'm not one so I don't know) know it as "that simple application of Nash equilibria that blows your mind. No, not the prisoner's dilemma. The other one. You know, with the roads that are in a diamond shape and you add another one and it makes everything worse."

It's actually real!

(okay, so not quite. the deal in real life is that fewer roads makes people drive less, not that it makes them route differently. either way, I like it.)

Also, highway interchanges are so cool. I mean, besides the whole "destroying the world and particularly the United States" thing.

So, I still hate musicals, BUT

"A Chorus Line" is a meta-musical, right? A musical about musicals?

Then that means... Every Little Step is a meta-meta-musical? Okay, no. False alarm. Apparently it's a documentary about a musical about musicals. Not quite meta enough for me to actually want to see it.

Then again, the last meta-musical I saw ("Title of Show") was pretty great. Someone just needs to make a musical about making "Every Little Step," and I'm so there.

Good is so good.

And by Good I mean Good Magazine. I am actually thinking about subscribing to an honest-to-god paper magazine for the first time since approximately forever, because every article they write is exactly a thing I want to read.

A couple things on my mind:
Don't travel, because you're just an obnoxious tourist. Plus a link to a story about a guy who was an obnoxious tourist. Now, my party line has always been "I don't agree with anyone who says this." But do I really believe that some people are obnoxious, but oh no, not me? (and regardless of whether I believe it, is it true?) I mean, there's something messed up about tourism. I've been over this a few times (in real life if not on my blog) but the point is, it just feels wrong. The tourist industry is a way to get money from foreigners. There's nothing about it to encourage, you know, friend-making between people of different cultures.

How do I know I'm not just a nuisance? Look, if someone came to Seattle, hardly spoke English, and wanted to chat, and I was at a restaurant or something with him, it'd be fun. But we wouldn't become good friends- there's nothing to talk about, especially with a language barrier as thick as it always is. You end up with a lot of shallow connections. (granted, the few deeper ones I've made have been awesome...)

But in between that, you're gawking at the Eiffel Tower or stomping around Angkor Wat or climbing up to Machu Picchu or whatever, and you're probably not having fun, and you're eroding a world heritage site, and you're making it worse for everyone else there. Think about it: when's the last time you were at a tourist site and didn't wish for fewer people? Or hell, when's the last time you saw tourists anywhere and didn't just want them to disappear?

And maybe sometimes you say screw it, I just want a little comfort, and then you make everything even worse by patronizing the tourist industry, be it a hotel or a restaurant or whatever, and rewarding people who get rich by selling up a fake version of this country. You bring your whiteness to the world, offering nothing but your tourist dollars and (hopefully) a friendly conversation, bringing the world one step closer to all-English-all-the-time, and carboning up the atmosphere horrendously with your airplane while you're at it.

Discuss.

Okay, another thing that's on my mind: I would love to see more facts about this guy who predicts stuff. Granted, it's the real world, so the truth is probably more in-the-middle, he's pretty smart but he's not actually so crazily accurate about everything, etc., and the Good folks only think he's so great at predicting because they've seen a limited sample of his picks. And you know, game theory blah blah, sounds really neat because "it's theories about games" or some nonsense and John Nash loves it but it's actually kind of boring, doesn't actually solve the world like you think it will.

BUT: he sounds cool anyway, and I'd like to learn more before making up my mind.

And people are saying "ooh he predicts stuff, then do we really have free will?" answer: yes. But my (sort of related) question is: how much free will do we really have? And how much of it is chemicals?

Sidetrack: cereal again. I've recently started eating cereal with more or less reckless abandon. I haven't been eating it until I felt terrible, but I have been feeling kinda ehh. And poor Jared- I think I ate about 3/4 of the last box of Quaker Oat Squares he bought. Why do I do this? I know my life would be better if I never ate cereal. Somehow, every time I think about eating cereal, I come up with a way to rationalize it. It doesn't help that every cereal box screams how healthy it is (even if you don't believe something, hearing it a million times makes you start to believe it) and I keep hearing about the benefits of whole grains blah blah.

So why do I eat cereal? Maybe I (and all of us) have less free will than we thought. Or we have free will in the sense that you could do a lot of things but you probably won't. Maybe I should be less judgmental towards {fat, nerdy, financially-careless, addicted, etc} people.

<3 weekends

Hey, hey, last weekend I totally did the coolest thing. My friend Nick, his friend Kevin who is a cool guy, and I went on an all-night bike scavenger hunt around Seattle. We did about 40 miles of biking up and down Seattle hills. Down a big twisty dark hill into Carkeek Park, maneuvering through downtown streets to find Dank Bags stickers, searching searching searching in vain for Olympia Beer (hey Nick, I saw a can on the ground today. Where did they get it?!), totally loving free donuts and coffee at 3AM, and above all, seeing a city in a way different light (or lack thereof). This thing seriously kicked face. Coming home (at 5 AM, after watching it get light really early) and falling asleep felt so good.

No, wait, I mean this weekend we did the coolest thing. It involved Miracle Fruit. Citrus was great, vinegar was great, plain yogurt was great, I mean, everything that people say is pretty much true. Plus, I really like hosting parties! Note to self: do this more.

Also, in between all this I've gotten to start doing some web programming a bit! I'll send you a link when I have something presentable.

And cooking Japanese. To the extent that I can learn from a book.

BUT, more importantly, Greg and Missy are now here for good; I just found out that their friends who are cool*, Liz and Laser, are here too; Ram was here for a while but now is not but will be again soon. Rob will be here this weekend, as will Henry and Killian. I am really happy that these people I like have found this city a pretty ideal place to live in or visit, as I have, because it means I get to see them now.

*I've used this phrase twice in this email. What I want to say is, I'd call them friends, but we haven't ever like actually hung out much, but I wish we did. People that I respect, although I do not know them very well.

Crafts, screams, music

More stuff about that essay about fixing motorcycles instead of investment banking. And more. My new take on this? It's not about whether you're fixing motorcycles or proving theorems or buying stocks; it's about ownership. If you were fixing motorcycles, but you could only fix the lug nuts on the front wheel, you would probably feel just as dissatisfied. People aren't robots, etc, etc.

Unrelatedly, I found myself wanting to scream at the top of my lungs today, and realized I couldn't. Even if I wanted to. There is no place I could go that would be far enough away from other people that I'd be sure that I wasn't frightening other people or making them think I was hurt or something. Isn't that weird?

Finally, maybe I'll start twittering my albums. The iTunes-sort-by-date-added is not necessarily going to be a good long term solution, but if I twit a little bit about each one, I'll remember when I first heard them and how I liked them. Plus, instant recommendations for you. It's one good use of Twitter, I guess, and then I could finally justify having an account.

Hyland Software Poem

or, using Google Analytics to help other people.

A useful Google Analytics feature: you can find out what people are searching for and then landing on your site. My #1 query, for a while, has been "sedate snail." That makes sense. #2 is "Hyland software poem."

I can only imagine that Hyland Software (where I worked for a summer ... 4 years ago?) has not changed their employment application in the last 4 years. It's a standard application, all the normal questions, but then there's one question that says "write a poem." I have to imagine a bunch of potential interviewees are filling out the application and then they get to that question and they're all like "what do I do?" so they look up "did anyone else write a poem? what did they write?"

Pro tip: nobody cares. Sort of like how there's a slide at Hyland, but nobody ever rides it. You can't transplant "fun" into a company just by cosmetic tweaks here and there. I wish them all the best, but I think they're a pretty conventional company that saw the fun of the dot com boom (or was part of it? I dunno, when did Hyland start?) and tried to inject it into their own place. Maybe I'm a little spoiled. (you know, just a little.)

BUT, for your own fun's sake, you ought to write a poem. The more epic, the better.

(post script: I used to be a lot less politically correct on this blog. huh. balance of "I don't want to be a jerk" and "hasn't bitten me yet." I also used to be a lot more hyper. well, your sense of humor changes.)

Way to go, this guy.

Guy wins Sufjan song, holds listening parties of strangers to listen to it. It's just one song! And yet, now it has some real value. I found myself thinking, I would like to go to this guy's house and listen to this song. It's so true- offer it as a free download and it could get lost among the internet. In fact, upload it to anywhere, once, and it'll instantly be everywhere.

He's created something unique out of just one song. It reminds me of Atlas Obscura (down for maintenance now I guess): cataloguing those really singular places/times/things in the world of everything being everywhere. Or Josza Corner, a Pittsburgh Hungarian "restaurant" that doesn't even have a website and is kinda just a guy's house. Or this site. Why is it that, even though we have so much these days, none of it seems to mean anything? The only way you can make something that does mean something is by going smaller. I mean, I doubt that "The Lonely Man of Winter" is any better than, say, "Chicago", (or "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." Oh my goddddd!) but having heard the latter 23870784 times, it doesn't mean much to me now.

As someone in the article said, at least approximately, "I can't believe that I'm hearing a song that I will never hear again."

Real values of things

A dozen eggs costs $6-$8. If you're paying less, it's because the chickens were stuffed in battery cages. Note: it's pretty hard to get cruelty-free (/disgustingness-free) eggs at a grocery store.

A pint (not a pound) of strawberries costs $4. The big red pretty-but-tasteless ones are cheaper because they come from fields where the guys who spray them wear haz-mat suits.

Milk costs maybe $5 for a half gallon? (don't have farmer's market prices on hand, but the point is, it's more expensive than $3 per gallon) There's of course antibiotics and grain feeding and so on to blame, but also industrial agriculture shadiness?

Finally, and perhaps most frustratingly, food from small producers costs more because the law is skewed towards big producers. (scroll down to the "workman's compensation" if you're in a hurry)

Ooh, I'm going to get an argument on this one...

Internets roundup

First of all, three people can convince you to do something. I had thought it was two. Like "Hey, you all want to do ______?" "Yeah, let's do ______!" and then it's a done deal. Either way, depending on who you are and what you're proposing, I will probably enjoy being your second or third, even if I'm not totally into it, because there's nothing that helps an idea more than a good second or third.

Fish chart fish chart fish chart. This is harder to carry, but easier to use, than the Monterey Bay guide. A few things to note:
- salmon is either The Best or The Worst. (farmed is bad. like fish in general. most farmed fish is worse than most wild fish. Also, Atlantic wild caught is bad. If you're on the East Coast, don't eat salmon unless it's specifically Alaskan wild salmon. They'll probably love to tell you, if it is.)
- all the tastiest tunas: pretty bad.
- most shellfish are okay. except those big fancy sea scallops.
- unagi is no good! sorry, sushi fans, I'm probably killing your buzz. Try the lesser-known fish, you're probably better off in terms of the environment and your brain. and smaller fish, in general, are better than bigger fish. don't know which is which? learn! fish do not grow in small blocky meaty pieces!

Names make things, and the name "foodie" makes a bunch of us sound ridiculous. Come up with the next name and a bunch of people who care about what they put in their bodies will beat a path to your door.

Ooh ooh hey I got a great idea for a new country

Or I guess I mean a new form of government. It's a republic, kinda like we have now, except votes are different. I guess I really mean a new form of voting. See, our current system is pretty good, except that it doesn't take into account how much people care. If I thoroughly research the issue and vote for candidate A, and some shmoe votes for candidate B because he likes his name better, great, we've just canceled each other out. Furthermore, it can be manipulated by richmen, because they just send out a huge advertising push or smear campaign or whatever in favor of their candidate.

Here's the fix: When there's an issue up for a vote, or a race between candidates for a position, it's not decided by "whoever has the most votes wins". Instead, it's "whoever logs the most hours wins."

Instead of polling places, we set up government-controlled voting rooms. There's nothing in the rooms. You can't do anything. You go in, you sit there for an hour, you come out, and your candidate gets one vote. You can do this as much as you want.

There are so many benefits to this! Who wins the election now? It's the one who has the highest product of (number of supporters) * (how much they care). Only the people who care would vote, and everyone has the power to make a huge change if they really want to. Instead of going door-to-door for a candidate soliciting money to indirectly make a change, you can sit in a room and directly make a change.

Flaws:
- so many people would try to pay you to sit in a room for them. And so many people would accept those payments. We'd have to solve that.
- we'd still be disenfranchising the poor, a little bit. If you're working three jobs to pay the bills, you can't sit in a room. But then, if you're working three jobs to pay the bills, you can't donate to a campaign or hire lobbyists, so it's not any worse than it is now.

Still, I think it's a good idea. Maybe when I found Dantasseland, that'll be the system of government. Who's with me?

Is it just because I want everything to be just so?

My dad really doesn't like Dennis Kucinich. I know he's recently made an effort to be a respectable politician, but back in the 70's he was apparently a pretty bad mayor of Cleveland. Though, given that my dad and I disagree on everything in politics, if he says Kucinich was a bad mayor, maybe I'd think he was a good mayor. But then, Cleveland has been pretty crummy in the past couple of decades, so we sure didn't have Abraham Lincoln at the helm in the 70's.

God! Who cares? Politics is not the point of this post. The point is that my dad purposefully calls the guy "Dennis Kuspinich". The joke here is that "spinach" is a bad thing (something I just straight up believed for like 16 years until I actually TRIED it... but that's a *sigh* for another post) and so morphing a guy's name to make it like "spinach" is mocking him. It's not a very good joke. But my dad will never call him Dennis Kucinich.

This quite bothers me. I have no idea why. I'm trying to construct alternate scenarios in my mind to see what would and wouldn't bother me. (what if he called Obama "dum-bama"? what if he called the green movement the "green bean" movement? what if he called toothpaste "moosepaste"?) but I can't quite place it. It's not that I like Kucinich. It's not that it's a terrible insult. Maybe it's because it's kind of cutesy and has gotten old, but he still gets some satisfaction out of that and I'm annoyed at the bad joke? I don't know. It bothers me, I don't know why, and it bothers me that I don't know why.

Maybe I should start calling him "dard" instead of "dad" as retaliation. But then always deny having called him "dard". Mu-hahaha.

I'm getting to the point where I'm posting for it's own sake, which is a bad sign

Your houses are more important than your cars

Your community is more important still

I stretched that to make it into a connection. The second is not really so much about community as about booze, although maybe you'd say the reverse. And it'll either read as a tour de force about wine, the universe, and everything, or a boring screed that duh we already know thanks.

The first one is pretty true though! Instead of whining about 35 mpg or 37 mpg, let's talk about making our buildings more efficient! (or better, let's do both. Cars do need to be fixed.)

Names

"We're constantly creating our world by naming, categorizing, applying value judgments to things." -not quite a quote from Foley Ah Doo, but as close as I can remember.
(I posted this back in 2005. Give yourself 10 bonus points if you know what Foley Ah Doo is. Otherwise, lose your next turn, and then we'll tell you it's a play by Ram.)

This is a phenomenon in cooking. Well, in the world in general, but it's easiest to explain in cooking. What if I told you I made a great dish: it's this thing with beans, peppers, avocados, cheese, rice, tomatoes, onions, in a tortilla? You'd probably think you're eating something that's pretty, and then forget it. What if I told you I made Jim Smith's Original Burrito (from the original Jim Smith recipe, winner of the best burrito in Texas contest)? You'd notice it more while you're eating it, think it's great, and remember it. Maybe even next time you'd say "hey Dan, can you make those Jim Smith Burritos?" Maybe it'd be a thing you remember about my cooking style: "he makes good burritos."

It's the same dish, but I gave it a name! All of a sudden it's memorable. Similarly with the internet: do you think Twitter would have caught on if it were called "Quick short message broadcasting service"? Or like in nature. You could be in a place that's pretty, but then you leave and it was just another place. Or you could be in Yosemite National Park, and all of a sudden it's a thing, and you've been there, and you're raving to your friends about all the amazing trees and mountains. Names make things.

I guess what I'm saying is not really revolutionary. Here's another point I'm trying to get at: you can remember things with names sometimes and not others. I mean, remember this list:
Pink Floyd, a grapefruit, citations at the end of an academic paper, STALAGMITES, gumby!
and then remember this list:
G, P, N, R, Z

Done? Now, say I tell you the second thing in each list is the best, and the fourth is the second-best. You'll probably have an easier time remembering that "a grapefruit" and "STALAGMITES" are good than "P" and "R". The list of "things" is heterogenous, the list of letters is homogenous. It's easier to differentiate among the "things."

(okay, disclaimer: I'm basing this on no actual science at all. I'm really mostly saying this stuff because it's a hypothesis of mine and I'd like to see some data backing it up.)

So this means that if there are restaurants in your neighborhood called "John's", "Barry's", "George's", and "Bill's", your new restaurant would be instantly memorable if you called it "How To Cook A Wolf". Or rather, if you were a restaurant critic, it'd be easier to remember a lot of different things about different places if they were all named way different things than if they were named similar things.

I'd love to find the best structures to represent things in our minds. I wonder if there's a memory trick involving mapping similar things to a very dissimilar space. Like if the restaurants are all called John's, Barry's, etc... what if I tried to remember them as like John's, Buried Alive, George Washington's Restaurant of Liberty, and Duckbills? Memory tricks memory tricks.

I'm too tired to think about this more unifiedly.

Jorbs

Wow, read this. It seems very appropriate.

I mean, not for me. I am thankful that I don't particularly have to doublethink to enjoy my job. I do, a little bit, sometimes. Like "we shouldn't be doing things like this" and also "really all I'm doing is making the company money" but those are both kinda false and I only feel that way when I'm particularly whiny. My work is kind of tangible, for being such an over-the-wire skill. But our economy is going more and more this way. I kind of hope we don't get too detached from doing anything ourselves. The world is getting a little too specialized, and it's like that because it's a little too big.

I postpone the Mr. T's Birthday Letter to this weekend

I had a date with Tom Robbins tonight.

Something else interesting: I organized all the areas in my life that I want to make sure I'm making progress in. Of course it's a work in progress. But here's what it looks like now, no real order, with subgoals preceded by a - and notes about them or how to accomplish them by a ---.

Cooking
- master specific worldly cuisines
--- this will structure my cooking so that I am learning something definite.
--- Japanese or Indonesian first
--- make sure to cook dinner at home sun mon tue?
- make fine food
--- higher quality, smaller quantities?
--- this was spurred by Ram's friend Pat's ability/enthusiasm for the "5 dollar 50 dollar meal". I realized I always make food that would cost $10 in a restaurant. It'd be great to be able to make food that would cost $50.
- always be able to make something good, given any ingredients I happen to have around
--- this will come with structured learning
- develop my own recipes
--- so when someone asks me "what do you like to cook?" I'll have an answer

Food advocacy
- organize my theory of food
--- to do on a project day
- make it available online
--- another project day, future?
- help other people learn to cook
--- this is a long-term goal. this is also what my youtube cooking show idea was about.

Exploring Seattle
- get to know all the neighborhoods (or at least all the interesting ones)
--- along with bike rides?
- be an awesome tour guide
--- this will happen, as long as I make sure to get out often.

Languages
- get as good with Dutch as Spanish
--- 30 minutes, 3 days a week. "Language or meditation."
--- why Dutch? Because I've got the biggest jump on it.
- pick up a new language every few yrs
--- this will happen if I keep up.

Traveling
- go places with a purpose, many times each year.
--- this year (india and japan) has been a pretty good start. it'll be important to keep that up.
--- burningman, and then ...?
- ski at least 4x next year
--- make skiing friends, ask them.

Computing
- get good at making things happen
--- python, then what? make my own web app?
- regularly program for fun
--- I like programming! really, I do!

Enlightenment
- suffer less
- enjoy life more
- develop a meditative habit
- make progress towards enlightenment
--- Wednesday talks will probably help, I should keep going to those

Friends
- keep in touch with everyone I want to
--- this is going well. technology helps a lot.
- make 8-10 great friends in my new life
--- this is the awkwardest goal, because it makes it sound like I'm just making friends to satisfy a goal. I mean, this is really the least arbitrary of most of my goals, because I need these people to really succeed and be happy. but it's not even just "I need friends", I mean, it's just what you do, right? you make friends! that's a thing that you do!
- make cool casual friends too

Creativity
- keep making projects happen
- get in a creative group
--- project day monthly

Biking
- ride the STP
--- biweekly training rides, then weekly

End of list. You may have noticed me mentioning "project days". The idea would be, once a month, we all (who? anyone who wants to!) get together and you bring something you want to work on. We just hang out and each work on our own projects. At the end of the day, you display/demo what you have to show for the day. I also mentioned "languages or meditation". This is a plan I have. Every day except Sunday, work on languages or meditate for 30 minutes. Ideally alternate days.

So that's the plan, anyway, we'll see how it goes.

Mr. T's Birthday is in three days

Which means that if you'd like a detailed recap of the last year of my life, in three days I will be sending out my first annual (shut up) Mr. T's Birthday Letter. Email me and I'll put you on the mailing list.

I figure this email gives me a chance to reconnect with some of you. I tell you everything about my life, then you can say "I didn't know you like to ride bikes now" or something, and we can start up a conversation. Or even "I forgot you existed, but I like you. Hi!" Plus, if you've been kinda skimming but not really reading my blog (understandable... I talk a lot), this will be a nice summary.

Now I will continue to talk a lot.

I've had two very interesting visitors in a couple vivid dreams over the last couple days. First was an unknown girl; we were dancing, and very well. This was notable because I'm not known to dance well. Second was one of my high school theology teachers, Mr. Prokop. He was known for bluntness. I liked him. He was kind of a jerk, and he was very sure the Catholic church was always right, but he did also teach World Religions, maybe the only theology class I took that was worth it. In my dream he said "What's your religion of choice these days?" and I stammered something half-assed about "well I kinda like Buddhism but I'm not like an actual Buddhist but I kinda think they have some good ideas and ..." and he goes, all smugly, "Well, how's that going for you?"

Argh! I said something weak, again, like "it's okay, I guess", but I should have said "It's fine. What did you want to hear, that I was lost because I didn't have a crucified Jesus Christ on a rosary around my neck? Listen, I'm doing pretty well, and having issues too, but that's because that's the way the world works. I'm not sure of anything because the world isn't so black and white, and the more you see things in black and white, the more goddamn destructive you become. And no, the truth isn't objective. Or, it is, but it sure doesn't include a Jesus rising from the dead and ascending into the sky. I've trivially got more reason to believe against resurrection than you have to believe in it. But you don't hear me smugging at you about it, do you? No, because I realize that everyone's climbing the same hill, and all their routes will get them there exactly as fast as yours."

So! That's how my dreams have been going. Speaking of things in black and white, I think my environmental footprint in the last couple years has doubled, and here's why: I read "State of Fear" by Michael Crichton. It's a book about how we shouldn't believe all that the media tells us because they just try to fill us with fear all the time. (hello, swine flu!) However, it uses as an example global warming, and the story is about how global warming isn't actually happening.

I questioned this for a while, and then came back to the side of believing in global warming. First of all, it's not like the experts are split 50/50... it's like 90/10. (source: I don't know. Go ahead, prove me wrong.) Second, even if global warming isn't happening, we are screwing up the environment in a lot of other ways, so we should do whatever we can to stop it. Third, I read another book by a global warming denier who took the position of "yeah, it's happening, but it won't really be so bad", which was not encouraging. Fourth, "State of Fear" is a novel. Fifth... argh! Pascal's wager! Believing in it, acting, and being wrong is much better than not acting and being wrong. (That's weak, I know. I'll just take the first 4 arguments then.)

Anyway, so I mentioned this book in passing to my dad a couple years ago. Since then, he's taken up the global-warming-denier banner, slagged environmentalism any chance he gets, made fun of everyone who happens to admit he/she might not hate Al Gore, and started listening to books like this. (side note: oh my gourd.) Dad, if you're reading this, the point I liked in "State of Fear" was that the media/government/etc has become a fear machine, not that global warming doesn't exist!

So! As a pro-environmentalist dude, my total track record for positive environmentalism in this world is -1. Le sigh.

Nap, a jlan, a canal: Japan

First of all, pictures are up!

Holy cow they took our temperatures with a camera. That was my first impression of japan, and it happened before we even got off the plane. Okay, swine flu blah blah, they have to take our temperatures before we get off, so I'm picturing little disposable thermometers. Nope. They came around with this thing that was for sure a camera, pointed it at us, and moved along. Ladies and G, the future.

My second impression, after a vending machine experience: this green tea tastes like tea. You can't find sweetened Liptonesque junk if you try. I was stoked! The next day I discovered that you can also buy said green tea hot in a bottle. Fantastic.

Food in Japan: is great. I can't figure out how it all comes together- I mean, sushi is a thing, and so are soba, udon, and ramen, and so is this izakaya tapas-like thing, and so is just eating a big eel, and then there's okonomiyaki and monjayaki, and etc. I guess it's just that I'm actually getting the full breadth of it. I mean, I used to think Indian food was just curry and naan, but then, there's really a lot of diverse kinds of dishes there too. Japanese food is a huge category!

I think I like it more than most, though. First, it's healthy (hey, longest life expectancy in the world; can't be too far wrong...). Lots of seaweed, seafood, miso, and other things that we generally think are healthy. The flavors are pretty unique- not as distinctive as India, say, but it just kinda tastes clean. And finally and maybe most importantly, they seem to care a lot about it. I mean, you can see that in sushi; it's food-as-art, or art-as-food, or something. Quantities are sometimes small, but quality is usually high. I'm all about that.

Notable things I ate:
- inari (those tofu skin things around a ball of rice)
- udon with lots of funny looking things that were probably all fish cakes in one form or another
- a terrible drink that this bar we went to just made up. They called it the "DOS", which was short for something that translates to basically "drink for assholes." It featured frozen pickled plums and gin. Actually, the first one was really good. The second one was a very bad idea.
- awesome sushi! and mostly nigiri; it seemed the thing to get, moreso than rolls. great squid, eel (of both kinds), a giant clam I think?, some things I don't know what they are, and the famous otoro, which really wasn't as transcendent to me as to some people, which is good because it's not great, generally, on the Monterey Bay Aquarium Sustainable Seafood list.
- monjayaki, a do-it-yourself grilled pancakey thing that I'm sure we messed up, but it was tasty anyway. Note to self: miso is great. start using it a lot.
- takoyaki, octopus balls!
- tayaki, an unrelated pancake-in-a-fish-shape that has a sweet red bean paste filling
- steamed buns in Yokohama Chinatown
- yuba, which is translated terribly unappetizingly as "soy milk skin" or "bean curd skin". ('s good though!)
- four kinds of ice cream from Ice Cream City. This includes sesame gelato, turkish tea ice cream (both of which were forgettable), edamame ice cream, and cheese ice cream (both of which were not). But really, any time I'm eating ice cream, I'm pretty happy.

If you're still reading, you're into long posts, so you might like this slapdash list of things I did that I'm really putting in here for my own sake so I don't forget them:
Saturday- izakaya in yokohama, bar in aobadai
Sunday- kamakura, government building, golden gai, karaoke, albert Nietzsche, tsukiji, sushi.

Wait a minute, hold up. This day was epic and requires further explanation. So we go to the Golden Gai, a district in Shinjuku (which is a part of Tokyo) that is full of tiny bars. It was mostly closed up, but we went into one that had about 8 seats and Ram struck up a conversation with the folks. Later, some other foreigners were looking in, and we waved them in too. A few silly conversations later ("you're from seattle? do you like rock music? do you like Fleet Foxes?"), and we all decide to go karaoke. At this point it's about midnight, and the trains in Japan stop running at midnight, and start again at 5. So if you're going out, you're out till 12 or till 5. So we were going big. (I couldn't possibly go home!)

Then at about 12:30 our newfound Australian friends bugged out. I do not know why. Lame. So we hang out with this Japanese guy whom we later named "Albert Nietzsche" because we couldn't remember his actual name, he looked like an Albert, and he liked Nietzsche. We are tired. We go to his house and take a nap. We wake up at 5 and go to the Tsukiji fish market. This was neat.

Back to the listing of things:
Monday/tuesday- staying out late and karaoking again (this time with people we actually knew), visiting some Shibuya staples like Tokyu Hands.
Tuesday- Yokohama Chinatown, trick art museum, Ram's friend's shop with a dysfunctional Tarot deck, and the very unique aquarium
Wednesday- Asakusa, Kappabashi-Dori (the cooking supplies street! I bought a knife!), conveyor sushi, the music supplies district and the bookstore district whose names I forget, and then Shimo-Kitazawa, a hip cool neighborhood that Ram and I like a lot.
Thursday- Hokane and Ice Cream City. A lot of trains this day.
Friday- Viking!

And finally, some funny things:

At one point before I got there, a guy came up to Ram and his friend Pat and greeted them by brandishing his fist and shouting (of course) "FIST!"

Ram taught me a drinking chant that you can say when someone's taking a shot. It translates kind of like this:
What have you got?
You've got it because you're not drinking.
(sound that's supposed to represent masturbating)
(sound that's supposed to represent masturbating)
(different sound that's supposed to represent masturbating)
Tea-bag-gu! (and then on the "gu" you drink the shot.)

My coworker Tyler has a t-shirt that has some funny pictures and says "Spartan Mother." I met a guy in Japan wearing the same t-shirt.

A step had a warning sign that said "be careful of a level difference." I found that particularly amusing. If I were playing Dungeons and Dragons, I'd put that as a warning on a dungeon.

After noticing a sign for "Bar April Fool", Ram and I were joking about what such a trick bar could be. He suggested "it's not a bar, it's a barber!" where you come in for a drink and leave with a haircut. Then we saw a sign for a place that said exactly that: "Bar-ber."

What an anticlimactic way to end this post. So it goes.

God, this is going to be embarrassing if swine flu DOES become a big deal

Still, it's not.

Things that make me happy:
This essay about how transit-oriented development is not just liberal wackiness. (augh, I said no politics, I know... maybe this can slip by because it's about uniting behind a cause that will help everyone and not just "left is right and right is wrong"?)
"Undeclared" by the Dodos. This album ("Visiter") is RIYL Death Cab meets Animal Collective, and this song is fully on the Ben Gibbard side of the spectrum, and if you don't like it you probably have no feelings. (a song I like without electricity! shocking!)
Biking biking biking!
Ignite Seattle. This was the coolest thing. First, there's a contest for how to build the tallest tower out of five sheets of paper, plus tape, in like a half hour. Recalling my 8th grade science class failure, I shied away at first, but eventually decided to try it anyway. (with Sarah, Daniel, and this other guy named Adam who needed a team). Our result: 37 inches. It looked like a sad giraffe.
But then like 20 people gave 5-minute talks on pretty much just "something that is cool. (and nerdy.)" Everything from "how mitochondria work" to "how we'll manufacture things on small scales in the future" to "people geek out about legos a lot" to "stick maps of the Marshall Islands". Super great stuff. They say they're having this quarterly, and I'm going to the next ones for sure.
Japan tomorrow! (well, I will arrive on Saturday. But I'm leaving tomorrow.)